conversation.
It was fruitful. She’d pushed the asset to reveal more than anticipated. Maybe she had a talent for this HUMINT stuff after all. Matti wondered why the skill had never translated into her personal life.
She wasn’t “needy” professionally or socially. But by trying to make everyone around her happy while adhering to a rigid morality, she sometimes neglected her own desires or missed out on opportunities.
Matti hadn’t gone to her senior prom. Instead, she had stayed at home and finished Larry Ragle’s Crime Scene: From Fingerprints to DNA Testing—An Astonishing Inside Look at the Real World of C.S.I. She’d been hoping it would reveal some sort of knowledge that might help her piece together disparate clues in her mother’s death. It hadn’t. Neither had a lengthy phone call with the detective on the case nor the fifty-dollar bribe she’d paid the owner of the junkyard where she found the car that hit her mother. Matti refused to accept that she might never know what happened.
There had to be an answer. She had to find it, to piece it all together.
Matti put down the mangled pencil and flipped back through her notes. She organized her thoughts and began the business of typing a report for her supervisor.
She’d learned about a clandestine meeting; she’d familiarized herself with all five Daturans while determining that their myopic view of the world was violent and self-aggrandizing; her asset had revealed to her the vague outline of an imminent deadly plot involving untraceable explosives; and she now believed the ultimate goal of that plot was to gain attention for a particular ideology.
Not bad, Harrold!
It would be another long day ahead. Between the lack of sleep and a conspiracy to help unravel, she would have to pace herself. She would need to find a way to connect more of the orphan dots floating around in her mind.
Matti reopened the thick file on her desk and spread out the pictures of the five men. Which of them was the asset? Was it the artist? At first it seemed reasonable to assume that, however, Matti determined it would be too revealing for him to invite her to his own show.
Was it the wealthy politico, Sir Spencer Thomas? He seemingly was the leader of the group. At least that was Matti’s impression. He had the heft and experience to coordinate an ideological movement.
But why would he sabotage his own gang?
Maybe it was the handsome philandering professor. Matti presumed, from his dating carousel, that he was an insecure child of a man. He might have been jilted by the group and decided to retaliate. He might have figured that resorting to violence wasn’t his style. He was a possibility.
Bill Davidson was possible too, she theorized. He was a popular man who was deeply connected to the Establishment. Fringe thinking was one thing, she reasoned, but fringe violence was something else altogether. The AG might be the turncoat.
She didn’t figure it to be the drunk bar owner. He didn’t seem savvy enough to play both sides of the fence. Matti discounted him as the possible asset as quickly as she had the knight and the artist.
She settled on two viable possibilities: Bill Davidson and Art Thistlewood. She would go to the art opening and see them in person. The asset was right; it would help. Matti knew, however, she would first need to convince her boss.
Chapter 16
The E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse was one block west of the US Capitol building, sandwiched between the intersections of Pennsylvania Avenue, Third Street, C Street, and Constitution Avenue. Its main entrance faced the spot where Pennsylvania and Constitution merged.
It was a large complex that, to one side, sat on the edge of John Marshall Park. The park, named after the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was part of a major redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue in the early 1970s.
In front of the building on Constitution was a beautiful marble statue of Major General George
It was fruitful. She’d pushed the asset to reveal more than anticipated. Maybe she had a talent for this HUMINT stuff after all. Matti wondered why the skill had never translated into her personal life.
She wasn’t “needy” professionally or socially. But by trying to make everyone around her happy while adhering to a rigid morality, she sometimes neglected her own desires or missed out on opportunities.
Matti hadn’t gone to her senior prom. Instead, she had stayed at home and finished Larry Ragle’s Crime Scene: From Fingerprints to DNA Testing—An Astonishing Inside Look at the Real World of C.S.I. She’d been hoping it would reveal some sort of knowledge that might help her piece together disparate clues in her mother’s death. It hadn’t. Neither had a lengthy phone call with the detective on the case nor the fifty-dollar bribe she’d paid the owner of the junkyard where she found the car that hit her mother. Matti refused to accept that she might never know what happened.
There had to be an answer. She had to find it, to piece it all together.
Matti put down the mangled pencil and flipped back through her notes. She organized her thoughts and began the business of typing a report for her supervisor.
She’d learned about a clandestine meeting; she’d familiarized herself with all five Daturans while determining that their myopic view of the world was violent and self-aggrandizing; her asset had revealed to her the vague outline of an imminent deadly plot involving untraceable explosives; and she now believed the ultimate goal of that plot was to gain attention for a particular ideology.
Not bad, Harrold!
It would be another long day ahead. Between the lack of sleep and a conspiracy to help unravel, she would have to pace herself. She would need to find a way to connect more of the orphan dots floating around in her mind.
Matti reopened the thick file on her desk and spread out the pictures of the five men. Which of them was the asset? Was it the artist? At first it seemed reasonable to assume that, however, Matti determined it would be too revealing for him to invite her to his own show.
Was it the wealthy politico, Sir Spencer Thomas? He seemingly was the leader of the group. At least that was Matti’s impression. He had the heft and experience to coordinate an ideological movement.
But why would he sabotage his own gang?
Maybe it was the handsome philandering professor. Matti presumed, from his dating carousel, that he was an insecure child of a man. He might have been jilted by the group and decided to retaliate. He might have figured that resorting to violence wasn’t his style. He was a possibility.
Bill Davidson was possible too, she theorized. He was a popular man who was deeply connected to the Establishment. Fringe thinking was one thing, she reasoned, but fringe violence was something else altogether. The AG might be the turncoat.
She didn’t figure it to be the drunk bar owner. He didn’t seem savvy enough to play both sides of the fence. Matti discounted him as the possible asset as quickly as she had the knight and the artist.
She settled on two viable possibilities: Bill Davidson and Art Thistlewood. She would go to the art opening and see them in person. The asset was right; it would help. Matti knew, however, she would first need to convince her boss.
Chapter 16
The E. Barrett Prettyman Federal Courthouse was one block west of the US Capitol building, sandwiched between the intersections of Pennsylvania Avenue, Third Street, C Street, and Constitution Avenue. Its main entrance faced the spot where Pennsylvania and Constitution merged.
It was a large complex that, to one side, sat on the edge of John Marshall Park. The park, named after the former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, was part of a major redevelopment of Pennsylvania Avenue in the early 1970s.
In front of the building on Constitution was a beautiful marble statue of Major General George
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