Том Светерлич - The Gone World

“Not yet,” said Njoku’s voice through her earpiece. Njoku was stationed with another NCIS special agent in the food court, O’Connor below near the foot of the escalators.

Imagining how all this might play out: Someone would spot Durr, Moss thought, and arrest her. Or if no one spotted her in time, Moss would see the lawyer as she ascended on the escalator to the food court. Or one of the patrolmen might spot the shooter, maybe Hyldekrugger himself—the police were under orders to stop and arrest anyone fitting the description of the shooter, any male in black fatigues. By now a short line had developed at the Five Guys burger stand. Moss tried to remember, hadn’t Carla Durr already received her food when she was killed? The image of that potential crime scene flashed in her mind: Durr’s body sprawled in front of the hamburger counter, blood slicking the floor, several shots in her back and head. Carla Durr would need to get in line now to have time to order, to receive her order, and be gunned down in the next few minutes. Moss looked frantically across the food court, to spot the man in fatigues, anyone suspicious, but she saw only groups of teenage girls and mothers with strollers, middle-aged men holding their wives’ bags.

Three-forty came and went, and a few minutes after four O’Connor’s voice spoke through their earpieces: “We have to close up shop.” NCIS warrants for pre-crime intervention were written only for specific windows of time, only for specific circumstances, constrained by the constitutional rights of individuals who had not yet committed the crimes they would be arrested for. The lawyer Carla Durr had never shown. What had happened? Maybe the extra police presence had scared off the gunman, but that wouldn’t explain why Durr hadn’t made it for her hamburger meeting with Dr. Driscoll. Durr wasn’t here, Driscoll wasn’t here, there was no gunman. Something had changed from the future that Moss knew, but it could have been anything—flat tire, indigestion, Durr grown too scared to meet with Driscoll, or she was already dead. Moss was annoyed at having wasted everyone’s time, but failed operations like this were a matter of course when serving pre-crime warrants. She’d been on plenty of operations where the circumstances had changed from the expected future, and nothing was accomplished. Moss had supplied the information that led to this abortive operation, which meant paperwork, but, more important, she owed the others involved the customary rounds of drinks special agents bought when their predictions failed.

Moss woke early the following morning, anxious for her debriefing with Admiral Annesley. She dressed in a charcoal-gray skirt-suit and silky blouse, and made it to NCIS headquarters with plenty of time to go over the notes she’d prepared about her IFT and to fine-tune her statement about her request for the pre-crime warrant. A few minutes before the debriefing was set to start, however, O’Connor brought her a fresh cup of coffee and let her know that the debriefing had been postponed. “Annesley called just a few minutes ago,” he said. A relief, in some ways, being spared the scrutiny of a roomful of men, some of whom would whisper about how she looked, how she used to look.

“You’ll need to write up your reports,” said O’Connor, “and I’m sure you’ll be called in to talk eventually, but the Navy is taking over, Shannon. Not every facet of the investigation, but the thin space, Libra . Carla Durr. They’re all military matters now. We’re through.”

“I understand,” said Moss. She knew that eventually, when Hyldekrugger was captured, or Cobb, or the others, they would be held in military prisons and tried in courts-martial. She would be called on to testify, to work with the prosecution, but her role in this investigation would be finished. Even so, having the military take over the investigation before any arrests had been made was disappointing, leaving behind work only half finished.

“What about Carla Durr?” Moss asked. “If the Navy’s taking over, is she dead? Did we miss her?”

“She’s very much alive,” said O’Connor. “I talked with Admiral Annesley that first night you returned, told him your theory about the Terminus, what you’d learned in your IFT. He was keen on finding Durr. And just this morning when he called, he told me the Navy had already arrested Carla Durr. She was already in the Navy’s custody when we were out at Tysons Corner waiting for her to show. So you saved her life, Shannon. But she’s out of our hands now.”

“Where was she?”

“Staying at a hotel in Chevy Chase,” said O’Connor. “The Navy filled the parking lot with military trucks, battered down her door—D.C. SWAT handled the operation. It was all over in fifteen minutes. Someone working with the admiral questioned her for several hours and then let her go. NCIS was never involved, strictly military.”

“All the death we’ve seen,” said Moss, like she’d been punctured and deflated. “All the killing, Mursult’s children—it all led to her. And we never had a chance to speak with her. The Navy questioned her for a few hours and just let her go, and we never had a chance. What about the FBI?”

“I’m meeting with the director this evening,” said O’Connor. “They’re moving forward on their investigation into the chemical-weapons lab we discovered at Buckhannon, and so are we. Domestic terrorism, the homicides. Jurisdiction’s a nightmare on this one. We’ll be untangling strands of this investigation for years.”

She worked with O’Connor over the course of the afternoon, translating her notes into a summary to send over to the admiral’s office in Dahlgren. O’Connor remarked on how tired Moss seemed. “Take some time,” he said.

“I think I’ll head home,” she said.

“William Brock’s funeral service is scheduled for tomorrow morning,” said O’Connor. “In Pittsburgh. You can represent our office if you’re up for it.”

She was weary. Brock’s death seemed from another lifetime. “Of course,” she said.

Over a thousand police officers in dress uniform from cities across the nation had gathered at St. Paul Cathedral in Pittsburgh, a cavalcade of men and women standing at attention along Fifth Avenue as the family arrived in limousines. The cathedral was crowded with friends and colleagues, but Moss made her way to an open seat in a rear pew rather than shake hands with people she only vaguely knew from crime scenes. Brock’s casket was near the altar, draped in an American flag.

She spotted Nestor during the homily; he sat toward the front, his arm in a sling. Nestor might look for her, she thought, might wonder if she were here, where she was sitting, might want to sit with her, Moss a victim of the same blast that had taken Brock’s life. But when she thought of Nestor, she remembered him shooting Vivian in the woods and preferred to avoid him even if it was unfair to judge a man for things he hadn’t done. The director of the FBI and the attorney general of the United States each offered words, the director presenting Brock’s wife with the FBI Memorial Star and announcing that Special Agent in Charge William Brock would be designated a service martyr, his name added to the other engraved names in the FBI Hall of Honor. Rashonda Brock and her two daughters were led from the memorial, grieving but proud. Moss waited while the front rows cleared, mourners walking down the center aisle. Nestor looked her way, but his eyes passed over her. She thought of what she must look like now and realized he hadn’t recognized her.

She slipped out a side door to a quiet courtyard, avoiding the chance of encountering Nestor or anyone else she knew on the cathedral stairs. A motorcade had formed along Fifth. Pittsburgh’s Bureau of Police motorcycles with lights flashing guided the hearses and the escort cars away from the church, a long train of police cars following. They were headed to the airport, where the casket would be flown to Texas for the family funeral and burial.