On the building’s top floor, those few people in the corridor were surprised to see a man walking around with a machine gun, but it would not have been in keeping with Bureau chic to pay too much attention — the man with the gun did have an FBI pass, and he was carrying it properly. When he walked into an office, however, it did get a reaction from the first secretary he saw.
“Is Bill in?” the agent asked.
“Yes, I’ll –”
Her eyes didn’t leave the gun.
The man waved her off, motioned for the visitors to follow him, and walked toward Shaw’s office. The door was open. Shaw was talking with one of his people. Special Agent Richard Alden went straight to Shaw’s desk and set the gun on the blotter.
“Christ, Richie!” Shaw looked up at the agent, then back down at the gun. “What’s this?”
“Bill, these two folks just walked in the door downstairs and gave it to us. I thought it might be interesting.”
Shaw looked at the two people with visitor passes and invited them to sit on the couch against the wall. He called for two more agents to join them, plus someone from the ballistics laboratory. While things were being organized, his secretary got a cup of coffee for the father and a Dr Pepper for the son.
“Could I have your names, please?”
“I’m Robert Newton and this here’s my son Leon.” He gave his address and phone number without being asked.
“And where did you find the gun?” Shaw asked while his subordinates were taking notes.
“It’s called Jones Quarry. I can show you on a map.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I was fishing. I found it,” Leon reminded them.
“I was getting in some firewood,” his father said.
“This time of year?”
“Beats doing it during the summer, when it’s hot, man,” Mr. Newton pointed out reasonably. “Also lets the wood season some. I’m a construction worker. I walk iron, and it’s a little slow right now, so I went out for some wood. The boy’s off from school today, so I brought him along. While I cut the wood, Leon likes to fish. There’s some big ones in the quarry,” he added with a wink.
“Oh, okay.” Shaw grinned. “Leon, you ever catch one?”
“No, but I got close last time,” the youngster responded.
“Then what?” Mr. Newton nodded for his son.
“My hook got caught on sumthin’ heavy, you know, an’ I pulled and pulled and pulled. It come loose, and I tried real hard, but I couldn’t reel it up. So I called my daddy.”
“I reeled it in,” Mr. Newton explained. “When I saw it was a gun, I almost crapped my drawers. The hook was snagged on the trigger guard. What kinda gun is that, anyway?”
“Uzi. It’s made in Israel, mostly,” the ballistics expert said, looking up from the weapon. “It’s been in the water at least a month.”
Shaw and another agent shared a look at that bit of news.
“I’m afraid I handled it a lot,” Newton said. “Hope I didn’t mess up any fingerprints.”
“Not after being in the water, Mr. Newton,” Shaw replied. “And you brought it right here?”
“Yeah, we only got it, oh” — he checked his watch — “an hour and a half ago. Aside from handling it, we didn’t do anything. It didn’t have no magazine in it.”
“You know guns?” the ballistics man asked.
“I spent a year in Nam. I was a grunt with the 173rd Airborne. I know M-16s pretty good.” Newton smiled. “And I used to do a little hunting, mostly birds and rabbits.”
“Tell us about the quarry,” Shaw said.
“It’s off the main road, back maybe three-quarters of a mile, I guess. Lots of trees back there. That’s where I get my firewood. I don’t really know who owns it. Lots of cars go back there. You know, it’s a parking spot for kids on Saturday nights, that sorta place.”
“Have you ever heard shooting there?”
“No, except during hunting season. There’s squirrels in there, lotsa squirrels. So what’s with the gun? Does it mean anything to ya?”
“It might. It’s the kind of gun used in the murder of a police officer, and –”
“Oh, yeah! That lady and her kid over Annapolis, right?” He paused for a moment. “Damn.”
Shaw looked at the boy. He was about nine, the agent thought, and the kid had smart eyes, scanning the items Shaw had on his walls, the memorabilia from his many cases and posts. “Mr. Newton, you have done us a very big favor.”
“Oh, yeah?” Leon responded. “What you gonna do with the gun?”
The ballistics expert answered. “First we’ll clean it and make sure it’s safe. Then we’ll fire it.” He looked at Shaw. “You can forget any other forensic stuff. The water in the quarry must be chemically active. This corrosion is pretty fierce.” He looked at Leon. “If you catch any fish there, son, you be sure you don’t eat them unless your dad says it’s all right.”
“Okay,” the boy assured him.
“Fibers.” Shaw said.
“Yeah, maybe that. Don’t worry. If they’re there, we’ll find ’em. What about the barrel?”
“Maybe,” the man replied. “By the way, this gun comes from Singapore. That makes it fairly new. The Israelis just licensed them to make the piece eighteen months ago. It’s the same outfit that makes the M-16 under license from Colt’s.” He read off the number. It would be telexed to the FBI’s Legal Attache in Singapore in a matter of minutes. “I want to get to work on this right now.”
“Can I watch?” Leon asked. “I’ll keep out of the way.”
“Tell you what,” Shaw said. “I want to talk to your dad a little longer. How about I have one of our agents take you through our museum. You can see how we caught all the old-time bad guys. If you wait outside, somebody will come and take you around.”
“Okay!”
“We can’t talk about this, right?” Mr. Newton asked after his son had left.
“That’s correct, sir.” Shaw paused. “That’s important for two reasons. First, we don’t want the perpetrators to know that we’ve had a break in the case — and this could be a major break, Mr. Newton; you’ve done something very important. The other reason is to protect you and your family. The people involved in this are very dangerous. Put it this way: you know that they tried to kill a pregnant woman and a four-year-old girl.”
That got the man’s attention. Robert Newton, who had five children, three of them girls, didn’t like hearing that.
“Now, have you ever seen people around the quarry?” Shaw asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Anybody.”
“There’s maybe two or three other folks who cut wood back there. I know the names — I mean their first names, y’know? And like I said, kids like to go parking back there.” He laughed. “Once I had to help one out. I mean, the road’s not all that great, and this one kid was stuck in the mud, and . . . ” Newton’s voice trailed off. His face changed. “Once, it was a Tuesday . . . I couldn’t work that day ’cause the crane was broke, and I didn’t much feel like sitting around the house, y’know? So I went out to chop some wood. There was this van coming outa the road. He was having real trouble in the mud. I had to wait like ten minutes ’cause he blocked the whole road, slippin’ and slidin’, like.”
“What kind of van?”
“Dark, mostly. The kind with the sliding door — musta been customized some, it had that dark stuff on the windows, y’know?”
Bingo! Shaw told himself. “Did you see the driver or anybody inside?”
Newton thought for a moment. “Yeah . . . it was a black dude. He was — yeah, I remember, he was yellin’, like. I guess he was pissed at getting stuck like that. I mean, I couldn’t hear him, but you could tell he was yelling, y’know? He had a beard, and a leather jacket like the one I wear to work.”
“Anything else about the van?”
“I think it made noise, like it had a big V-8. Yeah, it must have been a custom van to have that.”
Shaw looked at his men; too excited to smile as they scribbled their notes.
“The papers said all the crooks were white,” Newton said.
“The papers don’t always get things right,” Shaw noted.
“You mean the bastard who killed that cop was black?” Newton didn’t like that. So was he. “And he tried to do that family, too . . . Shit!”
“Mr. Newton, that is secret. Do you understand me? You can’t tell anybody about that, not even your son — was he there then?”
“Nah, he was in school.”