John Miller - Smoke and Mirrors

“I’ve known Winter Massey for over twenty years. He is a capable man who acts in both a legal and deliberate manner. If anything happened to me, I’d want him finding out what happened. He’s the sort of person you want to work with, given a choice.”

“Very good,” Hayden Hatcher said. “Carry on. We should have lunch when you get back.”

“Absolutely,” she said.

He hung up.

Alexa knew that unless a company or an individual was flagged by Counterterrorism, there was no reason for Organized Crime to notify Hatcher. The Bureau was eighty percent politics and, like all intelligence organizations, it was a paranoid monster that lumbered about blindly, its feet entangled in red tape and its hands bound by sibling rivalry. Sharing information between departments usually took a request from one to the other.

Alexa Keen didn’t trust many people in the Bureau, and she especially didn’t trust Hayden Hatcher because his loyalty depended on the direction of the political winds. She trusted Winter Massey without reservation, and she knew that getting in his way was a very bad idea.

After hanging up, Hayden hatcher lifted his encrypted phone and dialed a number he had committed to memory.

“Yes?” the familiar voice said.

“It’s Hatcher. It appears we have another scented red toothpick left at the scene of a killing south of Memphis,” Hayden said. “This one is being handled by Bradley Barnett, the sheriff in Tunica County, Mississippi.”

“Who was the target?”

“A young black girl. Nineteen years of age. Shot from long distance with a rifle. Not like the others, is it? You said any reports of red, clove-flavored toothpicks at murder scenes. This makes four in fifteen months.”

“How did this one come in?”

“Through Alexa Keen, she’s in-”

“I know who she is,” the voice said. “You found out how?”

“Well, it was picked up via an overheard conversation.” He wouldn’t admit over the phone that she was under continuing internal surveillance ordered by Hayden at the behest of his benefactor. “She got a request for expedited DNA on the toothpick from a friend of hers. Are you familiar with Winter Massey? It seems he had a sample to compare it to.”

The only sound coming over the line was that of breathing.

“So the toothpick is connected to the man you’re looking for? The East German?” Hayden asked.

“We’ll deal with this. If anything else pops up, you will let me know immediately.” It wasn’t a question. The line clicked as the man hung up.

Hayden placed the phone in its receiver and rocked back in his chair.

He was excited. Pleasing his benefactor was the key to his amazing run of successful operations against terrorist cells inside the United States, its territories, and, most recently, Canada. His man had alerted Hayden to a Hamas cell that was bootlegging low-tax cigarettes from North Carolina to New York and other cities, and then to a group of amateur Canadian terrorists plotting to blow up targets across Canada, take over parliament and-as absurd as it sounded-behead the Canadian prime minister. Hayden had, as instructed, given the intelligence to the Canadian authorities, who had in turn given him personal credit for his assistance. It was this voice in the darkness that had put Hayden Hatcher this close to the throne.

Whoever this murderous East German toothpick dropper was, he was someone the shadow man’s group had been after for a long time-and he was someone his secretive friend clearly wanted very badly. Hayden certainly hoped they got him. And if all worked out as planned, he was confident that someday, as the man had insinuated on many occasions, Hayden Hatcher would be the director of the FBI.

Shortly after one P.M., Brad stepped to the podium in the sheriff’s department briefing room and was instantly bathed in the floodlights used by the TV news crews that represented the Memphis, Tennessee, and Jackson, Mississippi, affiliate stations. Roy Bishop stood to one side.

“I’m Brad Barnett, sheriff of Tunica County, and I’m going to make a statement. Yesterday morning, Sherry Adams, a nineteen-year-old resident of Tunica, Mississippi, was killed as she walked from a county residence to her car. Yesterday afternoon, Jack Beals, a resident of Tunica County, was killed in a room at the Gold Key Motel, while he was in the commission of an armed assault and attempted robbery. We believe that whoever killed Mr. Beals may have seen the attack in progress and acted in the urgency of the moment to rescue the man Mr. Beals was assaulting. We urge anyone who has any information on this incident to contact our office. At this time we have no suspect in that crime.

“Upon investigating these two deaths, we came upon what appears to be conclusive evidence that it was in fact Mr. Beals who fired the shot that killed Sherry Adams. We have recovered from Mr. Beals’s residence what we believe to be the murder weapon, along with other evidence, and are continuing to investigate these cases. As of yet we do not have a motive in the Adams murder, and it appears that it may have been a random act of violence.”

“Was it a hate crime?” a reporter yelled out.

Hands went up and almost every newsperson shouted a question.

“Since these are ongoing investigations, I will not answer any questions beyond what I have already told you. As there are new developments, and as we have verified them, my office will release that information.”

Brad left the room with his chief deputy following him. The reporters shouted questions behind them, but the sheriff neither responded nor slowed. Winter and Alexa, who had waited in the hallway, followed Brad to his office.

The press conference was part of Winter’s plan to get the media off the streets and away from the investigation. He hoped the press would report the few details they’d gathered, file their stories, and, without more information immediately forthcoming, lose interest by rapid degrees. And he hoped Albert White would sweat some and maybe do something dumb. The murder of a poor black girl in a rural Mississippi county-one that had been solved-was, when it came to the bottomless stomach of Americans for graphic violence, less filling than an airline snack.

“Here’s what is going to happen,” the man who’d kidnapped Cynthia told her when she came around. She was tied up and blindfolded but no longer in the barn. The place smelled of disinfectant and she was sure she’d been dressed in new clothes. They felt cheap and stiff and smelled like they had never been washed.

“Please, my stomach hurts really bad. Like worse than cramps. It’s what happens if I don’t get my insulin. I feel like I’m starving.”

“But you aren’t going to starve,” he said.

“It feels like I am. Even if I eat, it won’t help.”

“How about candy?” the man asked her.

“Sugar would make it much worse. I feel so sick. Please let me have a shot.”

“Well, that’s interesting. You feel like you are starving, but when you eat you won’t feel any different for it, even though you’d be full?”

“Yes. It’s diabetes. If I don’t get a shot, soon, I’ll have other symptoms.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve never gone without insulin since I was diagnosed, so I’m not really sure what all can happen. When I realize I’m really thirsty, I check my blood sugar and give myself a shot. If it’s, like, under two hundred fifty I’m feeling tired or my stomach hurts. If it goes to, like, three hundred fifty, I could go into a coma and have to be on an IV. I could die. So I need to do a check with my testing monitor. Look, I have two loaded syringes in my purse. You do have my purse, don’t you? My kit’s in there.”