her?”
“Nope, Professor. She’s staying in a hotel. Melincamp bunks at the deceased’s apartment.”
Berry grunted, tilted back in his chair, and ran his fingers over the short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair on his temple. Willie often called him “Professor,” not because of any wisdom or advanced degrees he possessed. It was the way he dressed—chinos, button-down shirts, always blue (he owned a dozen of them), nondescript ties, and tan, thick-soled desert boots. To Willie, men who dressed that way were usually seen on college campuses.
“Bring the Warren kid in,” the professor-cum-cop said. “We’ll talk to him again, see if his story changes.”
“Let’s go,” Willie told Sylvia, getting up with difficulty. “Buy you a chili dawg on the way.”
Berry raised his eyebrows and didn’t try to stifle his smile. “Bet you haven’t had an offer as good as that in a long time, Sylvia.”
“You’re right—fortunately. Come on, Willie, you can have your chili dog and I’ll provide the Pepto.”
“I love this lady,” Willie announced loudly as they left Berry’s office. “Love her!”
THIRTEEN
“B ased upon an elevated level of intercepted terrorist ‘chatter,’ the alert level in Washington, D.C., has been raised from yellow-one to orange-two.”
That terse announcement was delivered at five o’clock that afternoon by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Wilbur Murtaugh. The newest cabinet member declined to elaborate, and left the podium without taking reporters’ questions, leaving them, and by extension the American public, to speculate on how, where, and when they might die.
It had been a day of press conferences around Washington, each producing a news story of greater consequence than the mere murder of a promising opera singer. The president had spoken that morning in the Rose Garden about progress, or lack of it, in Iraq and Korea, contradicting military leaders who painted a less rosy picture than the Commander in Chief. The Treasury Secretary delivered a glass-half-full analysis of the economy to Congressional leaders, despite numbers that indicated considerably less in the glass. The leader of the air traffic controllers’ union predicted a bleak future for airline safety unless more controllers were hired. And then there was Secretary Murtaugh’s announcement that some vague, unstated threat to national security had changed the color of the threat meter.
Wearing his customary turquoise bolo tie and pointy, tooled cowboy boots—he’d recently served a lackluster one term as governor of Oklahoma—he made his announcement in the Homeland Security department’s temporary headquarters at the Nebraska Avenue Complex. The complex, consisting of thirty-two buildings on thirty-eight acres, was the permanent home to the Naval Security Station. Heavily guarded, it was surrounded by residential neighborhoods.
The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to become tenants of the complex did not thrill its neighbors. A citizen’s committee had been formed to protest the traffic congestion and parking violations that had developed since late 2002 when DHS began moving in personnel and material. The complex’s community relations staff did what it could to soothe neighbors without resorting to what it considered the ham-handed truth, that a few traffic jams was an economical price to pay for protecting the neighbors and the nation against terrorist annihilation.
It hadn’t been easy finding appropriate space to house the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters and many of its almost two hundred thousand employees. The situation was one of few that could not be attributed to the current president. The major problem could be traced back…well, to George Washington’s administration. The first president had signed into law a statute requiring that all government “offices” be located within the District of Columbia, unless exempted by
“Nope, Professor. She’s staying in a hotel. Melincamp bunks at the deceased’s apartment.”
Berry grunted, tilted back in his chair, and ran his fingers over the short-cropped salt-and-pepper hair on his temple. Willie often called him “Professor,” not because of any wisdom or advanced degrees he possessed. It was the way he dressed—chinos, button-down shirts, always blue (he owned a dozen of them), nondescript ties, and tan, thick-soled desert boots. To Willie, men who dressed that way were usually seen on college campuses.
“Bring the Warren kid in,” the professor-cum-cop said. “We’ll talk to him again, see if his story changes.”
“Let’s go,” Willie told Sylvia, getting up with difficulty. “Buy you a chili dawg on the way.”
Berry raised his eyebrows and didn’t try to stifle his smile. “Bet you haven’t had an offer as good as that in a long time, Sylvia.”
“You’re right—fortunately. Come on, Willie, you can have your chili dog and I’ll provide the Pepto.”
“I love this lady,” Willie announced loudly as they left Berry’s office. “Love her!”
THIRTEEN
“B ased upon an elevated level of intercepted terrorist ‘chatter,’ the alert level in Washington, D.C., has been raised from yellow-one to orange-two.”
That terse announcement was delivered at five o’clock that afternoon by the Department of Homeland Security Secretary, Wilbur Murtaugh. The newest cabinet member declined to elaborate, and left the podium without taking reporters’ questions, leaving them, and by extension the American public, to speculate on how, where, and when they might die.
It had been a day of press conferences around Washington, each producing a news story of greater consequence than the mere murder of a promising opera singer. The president had spoken that morning in the Rose Garden about progress, or lack of it, in Iraq and Korea, contradicting military leaders who painted a less rosy picture than the Commander in Chief. The Treasury Secretary delivered a glass-half-full analysis of the economy to Congressional leaders, despite numbers that indicated considerably less in the glass. The leader of the air traffic controllers’ union predicted a bleak future for airline safety unless more controllers were hired. And then there was Secretary Murtaugh’s announcement that some vague, unstated threat to national security had changed the color of the threat meter.
Wearing his customary turquoise bolo tie and pointy, tooled cowboy boots—he’d recently served a lackluster one term as governor of Oklahoma—he made his announcement in the Homeland Security department’s temporary headquarters at the Nebraska Avenue Complex. The complex, consisting of thirty-two buildings on thirty-eight acres, was the permanent home to the Naval Security Station. Heavily guarded, it was surrounded by residential neighborhoods.
The Department of Homeland Security’s decision to become tenants of the complex did not thrill its neighbors. A citizen’s committee had been formed to protest the traffic congestion and parking violations that had developed since late 2002 when DHS began moving in personnel and material. The complex’s community relations staff did what it could to soothe neighbors without resorting to what it considered the ham-handed truth, that a few traffic jams was an economical price to pay for protecting the neighbors and the nation against terrorist annihilation.
It hadn’t been easy finding appropriate space to house the Department of Homeland Security’s headquarters and many of its almost two hundred thousand employees. The situation was one of few that could not be attributed to the current president. The major problem could be traced back…well, to George Washington’s administration. The first president had signed into law a statute requiring that all government “offices” be located within the District of Columbia, unless exempted by
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