Steve Martini - The Rule of Nine

We brought in a professional security service to check the office for electronic bugs, wires, and taps on our phones. Everything tested clean.

The print press, always the first to find a story and the last to give it up, made a few calls to the office, mostly voice-mail messages that we never returned. One enterprising reporter tried to inspire a new angle with the rumor that we were preparing to sue the government for defamation and invasion of privacy. He wanted to know if it was true. Before Harry could warm to the idea, I shot a one-line e-mail back to the guy telling him, “No truth to the rumor and no further comment.” A lawyer unwilling to file a lawsuit; this seemed to kill the last vestige of the beast. Life had finally returned to normal.

Bart Snyder sat staring at the half-packed cardboard transfer box resting in the middle of his desk. One of his fleet of meaningless mementos was sticking out of the top like the prow of a sinking ship. The wall of respect behind his executive leather chair now stood stripped nude except for the patchwork quilt of nail holes and little brass hooks.

It seemed that this was all Snyder had to show for forty years of labor in the trenches of the law. He had resigned his position as managing partner with Todd, Foster, and Williams, a firm with more than three hundred partners and associates and with offices in five cities. Snyder was waiting for the man who might be able to give him at least some clue as to why the stars, moon, and sun had caved in on him. Certainly the Washington Metropolitan Police were no help. They would call if they had any further information. That was three weeks ago, and Snyder hadn’t heard a word. Bart Snyder wanted to know who had killed his son, Jimmie, and why. And he wasn’t taking no for an answer.

The phone rang on Snyder’s desk. He punched the com line on the speaker. “Yes.”

“Your two o’clock is here,” said the receptionist.

“Show him in.”

A few seconds later the door to his office opened and a tall young man with dark, closely cropped hair wearing a blue serge suit with broad shoulders entered his office. He was carrying a light leather briefcase and all of the expression was in his eyes; he had a serious face that looked a lot like the actor Russell Crowe’s.

“Mr. Snyder, I’m Special Agent Joseph Wallace.”

Snyder got up from his chair. “Yes, of course, please come in. Can we offer you anything-coffee?”

“No, thanks. Your secretary already offered.”

“Please have a seat.”

The agent took one of the client chairs on the other side of the desk and Snyder picked the half-packed box up and put it on the credenza behind him. “You have to excuse me. I’m in the process of moving to another office down the hall. I’m going to be taking some time off for a while.”

“I understand,” said the agent. “First let me express my condolences and those of the entire bureau for the loss of your son. I know it’s difficult, and I’m sorry for the intrusion at a time like this. But it’s necessary that we gather as much information as quickly as we can.”

Snyder settled into his chair. “I understand. And I want to help in any way I can.”

“Good,” said Wallace. He reached down and pulled a notepad out of his briefcase, then drew a pen from the inside coat pocket of his suit with the dexterity he probably used to draw a gun.

Snyder couldn’t help but notice that the agent was probably no more than a few years older than Jimmie, but in terms of force of character and focus there was a galaxy of time between the two. It was a painful thing for Snyder to accept.

“First let me say that some of my questions may be difficult for you, and I apologize for any pain they might cause, but they are necessary.”

“Please, ask away.”

“To your knowledge did your son ever use narcotics or any other form of illicit or illegal drugs?”

“No!” Snyder said it emphatically, then leaned forward and planted both hands flat out on the desk as if to punctuate the point. “Jimmie never used drugs. I know that to be a fact.”

“No pot, no pills?”

“Nothing,” said Snyder.

This was the conclusion the FBI was leaning toward as well, as the result of a thorough postmortem and interviews with most of James Snyder’s friends. The victim possessed no apparent history of drug use. For his first experiment in the recreational world of narcotics to be a full-blown hit of heroin was unlikely.

The agent then covered the usual questions, whether Snyder knew anyone who might want to harm his son, and whether Jimmie had been depressed or may have wanted to hurt himself.

“No. Jimmie was a good boy. He was never in any trouble, even when he was young. He was an easy child to raise,” said Snyder. “Sometimes a little too easy, if you know what I mean.”

“No, why don’t you tell me?”

“Well, there were times when I wished that he might have been a little more headstrong. You could say he was easygoing, but Jimmie never seemed to argue with anyone, over anything. He seemed to have very few personal boundaries that others couldn’t invade. You didn’t have to push him. All you had to do was touch him and he’d move in any direction you wanted. I’m not saying he was weak,” said Snyder. “Please understand. I know he had a solid sense of values, and I’m sure there were limits beyond which he would not go. But I have to say, I couldn’t tell you what they were.”

“Except for the use of drugs?” said the agent.

“Well, there you go. You’re right,” said Snyder. “There’s one right there. The things a father never sees.”

“Did you know that your son was in some difficulty at work?”

Snyder looked up at him. “No. What kind of trouble?”

The agent told him about the breach of security, the fact that authorities were looking into it, and the discovery that James Snyder had been informed of this by a coworker, something the FBI turned up in their preliminary interviews.

“Was it serious? I mean, was he going to lose his job?”

“I don’t know,” said the agent. “But it’s one of the threads we’re checking out.”

“Did it have anything to do with Jimmie’s death?” said Snyder.

“We don’t know. As I said, we’re still investigating. There are a couple of other items,” said the agent. He reached into his briefcase and pulled out three glossy color photos, five-by-sevens. “I’d like you to take a look at these pictures and tell me if you recognize the other man walking next to your son.”

The photos were freeze-frames from the surveillance video in the building the day James Snyder had violated security with an unidentified man.

Bart Snyder looked at them closely. Two of the pictures showed his son in various strides walking with another man down a stark white hallway. There was nothing on the walls except a single sign over Jimmie’s shoulder in the distance in one of the shots. The other man looked as if he was late middle age, overweight, heavy jowled, and, from what Snyder could see, he possessed a fair-size gut hanging over his belt. He was perhaps an inch shorter than Jimmie and was wearing a baseball cap, so it was difficult to make out the features of his face in two of the pictures. The third shot looked like an enlargement taken earlier in the sequence, because the sign on the wall was larger and he could actually make out some of the lettering. When he read the few words that were visible, Snyder knew instantly where the pictures had been taken. He had often heard about it, but he’d never seen it. It was off-limits, like the holy of holies, one of those insider places in D.C. that the active set among the power elite talked about, like playing the back nine at Spyglass in Carmel. It had been in the news recently because the president wanted to use it. He didn’t have one like it. The picture showed only the head and shoulders of the man in the baseball cap. Here his face was a little clearer, but the angle of the shot was still bad, so the bill of the cap continued to obstruct a clear view of one eye and put a shadow across his face.