Steven Womack - By Blood Written

Now he hated Sundays, hated them with a passion. The only saving grace was his weekly phone call from Jackie, which was due in another hour or so. They spoke like clock-work, every Sunday after chapel at the school and just before lunch. Occasionally they would speak during the week, but as Jackie had learned, her father was easier to catch at the office than at home and sometimes you couldn’t catch him there.

Hank had taken to having a couple of drinks at night, just to take an edge off the stress buzz and make it a little easier to sleep. Hank and Anne had never been big drinkers, and he wasn’t one now. But lately he’d needed a single vodka martini upon arriving at home and then a snifter of brandy at bedtime.

It wasn’t just missing Anne that kept him awake at night.

Hank had taken the maximum amount of leave possible during his wife’s illness, and was truly, genuinely grateful to the Bureau for granting him that. After her funeral, Hank Powell did the only thing he knew to do: go back to work.

Ever since, the main focus of his life had been finding the man who had so brutally killed at least thirteen young women. Even in the post-9/11 era, when the politicians were trying to remake the FBI into a counterterrorism agency, he had fought to stay on the Alphabet Man case.

Hank woke up particularly early this Sunday morning, and had come to consciousness with an ever-widening sense of dread. He’d been warned and had seen the article in the Chattanooga paper last Wednesday, had been disheartened to see it picked up by the wire services and then the Friday edition of USA Today . But the real test was this morning.

Whatever rested in the snow on the sidewalk leading out from his front door would determine whether the next few weeks of Hank Powell’s life would be manageable, or chaotic and stressful on a scale he’d never experienced.

He brushed his teeth and combed his hair, threw on a flannel shirt and a pair of jeans, then went downstairs and put on the coffee to brew. He pulled the living-room drapery back and looked outside. Two more inches of snow had fallen on the Virginia countryside overnight, but the two plastic-wrapped bundles were on top of a shallow drift with just a dusting on top.

Hank pulled on his galoshes over his bare feet and pushed the front door open. The sharp, icy dry air stung his face as he stepped out onto the porch. The cold shot through the rubber soles of the boots and immediately began to deaden his feet. He jumped off the porch and trotted down the walk, the boots crunching on the dry snow. He reached over to one side of the walk and picked the Sunday New York Times off the snowdrift, then leaned down on the other side of the walk and plucked the Washington Post off the top of a wind-blown mound of powder.

Seconds later, he was kicking off his boots and wondering whether he should start a fire in the den fireplace. The smell of coffee caught him first, though, and he decided to sit at the kitchen table. He tossed the two papers, which between them weighed several pounds, onto the kitchen table, then poured a large mug of coffee. He pulled the chair away at the head of the table and then sat down in the large kitchen Anne had loved so much.

“Well,” he whispered, “let’s see what you’ve got for me.”

He pulled the plastic cover off the Post first, then removed all the inserts: the slicks and the advertisements, the Sunday magazine and the television guide, then thumbed quickly through the sections, separating the possibles from the not-likelies.

Hank Powell found the article on page six of Section A, above the fold, with about a thirty-point headline that read: FEDS STYMIED IN MULTI-YEAR HUNT FOR “ALPHABET MAN”

Hank’s spirits sunk as he read the article. The reporter had clearly taken the local article from Chattanooga and run with it. The reporter at the Tennessee paper had not done a bad job of writing up what little he had, but the Post reporter had considerably more resources to draw upon. As Hank read the article, which covered at least three-quarters of the page, complete with a clouded, out-of-focus crime-scene picture and another photo of Max Bransford in Nashville, he realized that the Post reporter had to have a source within the Bureau. When he read some of the details of the Milwaukee killing-the one in which the letter E had been left at the crime scene-he knew that somebody with access to the FBI case files had leaked.

Hank felt his face flush. He knew the press had a job to do, but the one thing he hated more than anything was a press leak. If Hank had gone the other way in life, if he’d become a criminal himself rather than an FBI agent, he’d have hated a snitch just as much. That’s what he considered guys who leaked confidential information that threatened the very success of an investigation: snitches who just happened to be on the same side as the good guys.

The Times article, on page two of the first section, was about as bad, only that the reporter had chosen to go after interviews with local cops. He’d focused on establishing a trail and had even discovered something that the Post reporter had slipped up on: The eighth murder-H-had taken place in Vancouver, just across the border in Canada. For the first time, the world would learn that the Alphabet Man was a killer for whom boundaries of every type meant little.

“Damn it,” Hank muttered. He sat back in his chair, his eyes focusing on the wall opposite him and then gradually losing focus as his mind shifted into an analysis of everything he’d read. A minute or so later, the process was finished, and he reached what he felt was a proper evaluation of the situation: It could be worse, but it was hard to imagine how.

Hank was so lost in thought, it took until the third ring for the phone to break his concentration. He looked at the kitchen clock and smiled. Jackie.

He stood up, grabbed the handset off the wall phone next to the kitchen sink.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said pleasantly.

“Good morning, darling.” The voice was heavy-set, masculine, definitely not his daughter’s.

Hank reddened, recognizing the voice of Lawrence Dunlap, an FBI deputy assistant director and his immediate supervisor. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said quickly. “I thought you were my daughter. She calls every Sunday about this time.”

“Then I won’t take long,” Dunlap said. Over the years, Hank and Larry Dunlap had had their differences, but Hank respected him for being an all-business, by-the-book career agent who had learned to play the game over the years without losing quite all of his integrity.

“Have you seen the papers?” Dunlap asked.

“I just finished them,” Hank admitted.

“Pretty bad,” Dunlap said. “Any idea who the leak is?”

“No, but when I find out I’m going to ruin his day.”

“I’ve scheduled a meeting for nine A.M. tomorrow,” Dunlap said, “in my office at the Hoover Building. The director himself will be there. I went out on a limb to keep you on this case, Hank, and now the pressure’s on. He’ll want a complete update on the progress of the investigation and how we plan to deal with the media on this one. It’s a whole new ball game now and we’ve got to get our ducks in a row.”

Hank ignored both the cliched mixed metaphor and the burning sensation in the middle of his stomach. “I understand, sir. I’ll be ready for any questions.”

“Is there anything you need to update me on since we last talked?”

“I’m sorry to say, sir, there isn’t. I wish I had better news.”

“So do I,” Dunlap said sternly. “The squeeze’s on with this one, Hank. The old man’ll want to know how we’re going to nail this. We don’t need another strikeout.”