Rachel Lee - Wildcard

Grant Lawrence was a media darling. He had been for years, and the kidnapping of his children had only pushed his star higher in the public consciousness. The firestorm over his shooting was already under way, and there would be pressure for a quick, clean solution to the case. Exactly the kind of conditions under which investigators were most likely to develop tunnel vision.

So yes, in that sense, Tom Lawton was exactly the kind of agent the Bureau needed on a case like this. But on the other hand, the psych evaluation was clear as day.

“Look,” Kevin said, “I know you like Tom. You’ve mentored him ever since he joined up. Heck, I worked with him for six months in Dallas before he was sent out to that mess in L.A. I liked him then. I like him still. But the simple fact is, he assaulted his superior. The guy needs plastic surgery, for crying out loud. Did you read Lawton’s psych evaluation? The report is four paragraphs long, and the phrase ‘distrust of authority’ appears four times. He’s on suspension for a reason, Miriam.”

“Can you blame him?” she asked.

“Hell no! The way things went down out there, any one of us could be in the same boat. I’d have done the same damn thing he did. But if I use him on this case, the director is going to be stepping all over me.”

She sighed heavily and nodded reluctantly.

“I feel for the guy, Miriam. I do. But right now he’s too damn volatile. He needs time to recover. You’re his friend, for crying out loud. You of all people should realize that.”

She looked away, the hurt evident in her eyes. He hadn’t meant it to come out the way it had, even if it was the truth. But there it was.

“You’re right,” she said, turning back to him. “He is my friend. I’ve read the reports on L.A. And his psych sheet. But I know Tom Lawton better than anyone. Better than that doctor. Better than you. What he needs is a way to prove to himself that he’s not a screwup. Which you and I both know he’s not.”

Kevin nodded. He’d never gone through what Lawton had, thank God, but he’d had his share of cases gone bad. After every one, he’d felt exactly what she was saying. He’d wanted to get right back at it. Do it right. Regain his confidence. The Bureau recruited Type A personalities. Goal oriented, driven to excel. The kind of individual for whom failure was almost a worse fate than death.

But he’d had enough trouble just getting Miriam on the case. She knew Grant Lawrence personally. Like any other law enforcement agency, the FBI had a clear rule about agents who were personally involved with a victim, witness or suspect. They were off the case, period.

He’d fought for Miriam for the same reason she was fighting for Tom Lawton. He’d mentored her. He knew her capabilities and her limitations. And he knew her well enough to know that she would not stay away from this case, regardless.

Ultimately, his argument had been simple. Special Agent Miriam Anson was a consummate professional, and if she were on his team, working the case officially, she would exercise professional judgment and restraint. If she were left to pry into the case on her own, she would have fewer inhibitions and might cause more damage. His bosses had bought that argument, with the caveat that she was to work under his personal supervision. And that she would be his responsibility.

That was good enough, then and now. Except that now she was pushing him out on a limb with Lawton. He could understand it, much as it irritated him.

“Okay,” he said, “here’s the deal. Tom works with you. No one else. Hell, I doubt there’s anyone else he trusts, anyway. And he’s all you get, for the same reason—I doubt he’d trust anyone else I put with you. He’s your responsibility, Miriam.”

She nodded. “Fair enough.”

Kevin looked at his watch. “How soon can you get him in here?”

“Five minutes. He’s downstairs in the cafeteria.”

Kevin shook his head, then laughed. “You knew what I was going to say, didn’t you?”

She didn’t join in the laughter. “You trained me, Kevin. Let’s get to work.”

Tom was the last person to enter the conference room, and he had no illusions about finding a chair. Instead, he squeezed into a space along the back wall. He caught Miriam’s eye and gave her a quick nod. He would thank her properly later. Any piece of the action right now was better than staring at walls and waiting for his next appointment with the psychologist.

“Here’s what we have so far,” Kevin Willis said, standing at the front of the room with a notepad in one hand and a remote control in the other. “At twenty-two nineteen hours last night, someone fired three shots in the lobby of the Hyatt Harborside in Tampa. Two of those shots struck Grant Lawrence. The other struck a campaign staffer named Ellen Bates. Ms. Bates was wounded in the left arm and is in stable condition after surgery.

“Senator Lawrence was not so fortunate. One bullet hit him in the chest, the other in the midtorso. He’s still in surgery. The doctors are saying fifty-fifty.”

Tom saw Miriam’s face sink at that statement, although he knew she was already aware of Grant’s condition. Karen Sweeney had called within an hour after the shooting, and Terry was already on a flight to Tampa. Still, hearing it described in the cold, clinical language of a briefing had to be hard to bear.

“Lawrence had just finished his victory speech after the Florida primary,” Kevin continued. “Apparently he’d gone out into the lobby to shake hands with staffers who couldn’t fit into the main ballroom. Powder residue on the victims and two bystanders put the shooter within three or four feet, but it was a tight crowd. So far, we haven’t found anyone who can identify the shooter or even give us a firm description.”

Tom saw heads nod around the room. It made sense. In close like that, with bodies packed in tight, a hand with a gun could easily slip beneath the arm of someone in front. Pop-pop-pop. Victim goes down. The shooter slips away in the panic. It was the nightmare scenario for protective services, worse even than a sniper. It was the reason the president never waded into a crowd.

“What happened to his security?” an agent in front asked. “Why’d they let him get into that situation?”

More nods from others who’d had the same training and followed the same line of reasoning Tom and the questioner had. It wasn’t rocket science. This was a basic breakdown in procedure.

“It was a spur-of-the-moment decision by Lawrence,” Kevin said. “He didn’t want the people in the lobby to feel left out. That fits with his profile. He’s the type who will stop and talk to people on the Capitol steps. I doubt he gave it a second thought. But his security team should have. We’ll need to talk to them, but you all know how the Secret Service is. They’re going to want to take care of their own.”

Just like the FBI, Tom thought. Or any other police agency. It was a mind-set as old as the human species. You look out for your own kind, because they look out for you. When they didn’t, it got very ugly, very fast. As he knew from personal experience.

“We did catch a break, though,” Kevin said. Fifty sets of eyes instantly became alert. “The hotel has good security, including video cameras in the parking garage and covering the sidewalk in front of the lobby. So we ought to have the shooter on tape. The guys in Tampa are trying to cross-match the news footage of the event with the video of people leaving the hotel. With any luck, that will leave us a short list of suspects. Then we’ll split them up among our teams and run them down.”

The brute force method, Tom thought. Standard Bureau procedure. It reminded him of a joke about a collection of law enforcement types looking for a beaver in a forest. The NSA put a surveillance camera in every tree. The CIA sent in an agent dressed as a beaver, who returned a week later scratched, dirty, breathless and pregnant. The L.A.P.D. sent in two officers, who returned in ten minutes with a bloodied, beaten raccoon that was ready to admit it was a beaver. As for the FBI, they rounded up every animal in the forest and held them for six months while a forensic veterinarian examined their dental impressions.