Dead Sleep

“Hey, aren’t you—”

With a screech of rubber, the cab is rolling toward the Queens-Midtown Tunnel.

My flight lands at Reagan National at 10:15 p.m., and when I deplane, there’s a man in a suit waiting for me at the gate. He’s holding a white cardboard sign that says “J. GLASS,” but he doesn’t look like a limo driver. He looks like a buffed-up accountant.

“I’m Jordan Glass.”

“Special Agent Sims,” he says with a frown. “You’re late. Follow me.”

He sets off down the concourse at a rapid clip and walks right past the down escalator marked “Baggage and Ground Transportation.”

“I have some bags down there,” I call after him. “My cameras. They were on the earlier flight, so they’re probably in storage.”

“We have your camera cases, Ms. Glass. The airline lost your suitcase.”

Great. Agent Sims leads me through a door marked “Airport Personnel Only,” and a blast of cold air hits my face. It’s fall in Washington too, but unlike New York, the humidity here adds a taste of home to the air. Home as in Mississippi. My present residence is in San Francisco, but no place I’ve ever lived has replaced the fecund, subtropical garden of creeks, cotton fields, oak, and pine forests where I grew up.

The concrete is slick with rain, reflecting the bright lights of the terminal and the dimmer blue ones of the runway. Sims helps me onto a baggage truck and signals its jump-suited driver, who takes off across the airfield. My aluminum camera cases are stacked in luggage that is well behind us.

“I thought we were going into the city,” I shout over the engine noise. “To the Hoover Building.”

“The chief had to get back to Quantico,” Sims yells back. “That’s where the meeting is now.”

“How are we getting there?”

“On that.”

As he points into the darkness, I see the sleek lines of a Bell 260 helicopter on skids. The baggage truck squeals to a stop. Agent Sims loads my cases into the chopper, then returns for me. He’s a tall man, and the Bell is cramped quarters for him. Still, he doesn’t look unhappy. Most of his fellow agents probably make the twenty-mile drive to Quantico in a Ford Taurus.

In less than a minute we are lifting into the night sky over the capital, the Pentagon receding behind us as we rotor southward over the lights of Alexandria, roughly parallel to I-95. In less than ten we’re descending over the Quantico Marine base, arrowing down to the FBI Academy helipad. There’s an agent waiting to handle my baggage, but Sims leads me straight into the maze of the Academy building. After a short elevator ride and a walk along a darkened hall, I’m escorted into an empty room, sterile and white, like some convention hotel meeting space.

“Wait here,” says Sims.

The door shuts, then locks from the outside. Do they think I’m going to prowl the halls, looking for something to steal? If someone doesn’t show in the next two minutes I might just sack out on the table. The last thing I want to do is sit down; my behind feels like a massive hematoma. Despite my exhaustion, I’m still nervy from the fire and the knowledge that Wingate is dead. The investigation will be severely handicapped without him. One thing is sure, though. It’s not going to be like last year. Nobody’s shutting me out this time.

The doorknob clicks. Then the door opens and two men walk in. The first is Daniel Baxter, looking scarcely changed from thirteen months ago when I first met him. He’s dark-haired and compact, about five-ten, and corded with muscle. His eyes are brown and compassionate but steady as gunsights. The man behind him is taller—over six feet—and at least ten years older, with silver hair, an expensive suit, and a bluff Yalie look. But his grayish-blue eyes, hooded by flesh, suggest a sinister George Plimpton. Baxter doesn’t move to shake my hand, and he speaks as he takes his seat.

“Ms. Glass, this is Doctor Arthur Lenz. He’s a forensic psychiatrist who consults for the Bureau.”

Lenz extends his hand, but I only nod in return. Shaking hands with men is always awkward for me, so I don’t do it. There’s no way to equalize the size difference, and I don’t like them to feel they have an edge. The men I know well, I hug. The rest can make do.

“Please sit down,” says Baxter.

“No, thanks.”

“I suppose you have an explanation for missing the plane I booked for you?”

“Well—”

“Before you go any further, let me advise you that Christopher Wingate has been under Bureau surveillance since you called me from the airplane.”

I wasn’t sure whether I was going to admit being at the fire. Now there’s no way to deny it. “You had people outside his gallery?”

Baxter nods, his face coloring with anger. “We’ve got some nice shots of you entering the building about forty minutes before it went up.” He opens a file labeled “NOKIDS” and slides a photo across the table. There I am, in low-res digital splendor.

“I knew Wingate probably had information about my sister.”

“Did he?”

“Yes and no.”

Baxter’s anger boils over at last. “What the hell did you think you were going to accomplish in there?”

“I did accomplish something in there! And it’s a good thing I did, because he would have been dead by the time you guys decided to question him.”

This sets them back a little.

“And if you had people outside the gallery,” I push on, “why didn’t they bust in there and try to save us?”

“We had one agent at the scene, Ms. Glass, doing surveillance from his car. The fire started on the first floor, and it was explosive in nature. An incendiary device made of gasoline and liquid soap.”

“Homemade napalm.” I know it well from the “little wars” that don’t make the evening news.

“Yes. The sprinkler system was disabled prior to the device being detonated, the fire alarm as well. We’ve since determined that the fire escape ladders were also wired in the up position. All inoperative.”

“You think you’re telling me something? I had to jump to save myself. Your guy couldn’t do anything to help?”

“Our guy did do something. He died there.”

A wave of heat tells me my face is red.

Baxter’s eyes are merciless. “Special Agent Fred Coates, twenty-eight years old, married with three kids. When the bomb went off, he called the fire department. He got out of his car and shot pictures of the building and the first people on the scene, in case the perp stuck around. Then he got back into his car and called the New York field office on his cell phone. He was talking to his Special Agent in Charge when somebody reached through the window and slit his throat. The SAC heard him coughing up blood for twenty seconds. Then nothing. The killer stole his credentials and camera. He missed one flash memory card that had fallen between the console and Agent Coates’s seat. That’s where we got the shot of you. We lost his pictures of the crowd.”

“Jesus. I’m sorry.”

Baxter spears me with an accusing look. “You think that helps anything? I told you to come straight here.”

“Don’t try to put this on me! I didn’t put that guy there, okay? You did. Whoever killed him would have set that fire whether I was there or not. And I do have pictures of the crowd.”

Both men lean forward, their mouths open.

“Where?” asks Dr. Lenz.

“We’ll talk about that in a minute. I want to clarify something right up front. This isn’t going to be a one-way conversation.”

“Do you realize how important every minute is?” Baxter asks. “By withholding that film—”

“My sister’s been missing for over a year, okay? I think she can wait another twenty minutes.”