would be enough abbreviations here to sink a battleship.
“Dollars to donuts the director himself will be out here too,” Connie
added.
The walls of Reynolds’s stomach started to burn. An agent being killed
was a shock. An agent losing his life on her watch was a nightmare she
would never wake up from.
An hour later, forces had converged on the scene, fortunately without
any media. The state medical examiner verified what everyone who had
even remotely seen the devastating wound already knew: namely, that
Special Agent Kenneth Newman had died from a distant gunshot entry
wound to the upper neck, exiting from his face. While the local police
stood guard, the VCU, or Violent Crime Unit, agents methodically
collected evidence.
Reynolds, Connie and their superiors gathered around her car. The ADIC
was Fred Massey, the ranking agent at the scene. He was a small,
humorless man who kept shaking his head in exaggerated motions. His
white shirt collar was loose around a skinny neck, his bald head
seeming to glow under the moonlight.
A VCU agent appeared with a videotape from the cottage and a pair of
muddy boots. Reynolds and Connie had noted the boots when they had
searched the cottage, but had wisely opted against disturbing any
evidence.
“Someone was in the house,” he reported. “These boots were on the back
stoop. No forced entry. The alarm was deactivated and the equipment
closet was open. Looks like we maybe got the person on tape. They
tripped the laser.”
He handed the tape to Massey, who promptly handed it over to Reynolds.
The act was far from subtle. All this was her responsibility. She
would either get the credit or take the fall. The VCU agent put the
boots in an evidence bag and went back into the house to continue
searching.
Massey said, “Give me your observations, Agent Reynolds.” His tone was
curt, and everyone understood why.
Some of the other agents had openly shed tears and cursed loudly when
they saw their colleague’s body. As the only woman here, and Newman’s
squad supervisor to boot, Reynolds didn’t feel she had the luxury of
dissolving into tears in front of them. The vast majority of FBI
agents went through their entire careers without ever even drawing
their sidearms except for weapons recertification. Reynolds had
sometimes wondered how she would react if such a catastrophe ever hit
home. Now she knew: Not very well.
This was probably the most important case Reynolds would ever handle. A
while back, she had been assigned to the Bureau’s Public Corruption
Unit, a component of the illustrious Criminal Investigation Division.
After receiving a phone call from Faith Lockhart one night and secretly
meeting the woman on several occasions, Reynolds had been named the
squad supervisor of a unit detailed to a special. That “special” had
the opportunity, if Lockhart was telling the truth, to topple some of
the biggest names in the United States government. Most agents would
die for such a case during their careers. Well, one had tonight.
Reynolds held up the tape. “I’m hoping this tape will tell us
something of what happened here. And what happened to Faith
Lockhart.”
“You think it’s likely she shot Ken? If so, a nationwide APB goes out
in about two seconds,” Massey said.
Reynolds shook her head. “My gut tells me she had nothing to do with
it. But the fact is we don’t know enough. We’ll check the blood type
and other residue. If it only matches Ken’s, then we know she wasn’t
hit as well. We know Ken hadn’t fired his gun. And he had on his
vest. Something took a chunk out of his Glock, though.”
Connie nodded. “The bullet that killed him. Through the back of the
neck and out the front. He had his weapon out, probably eye-height,
the slug hit and deflected off it.” Connie swallowed with difficulty.
“The residue on Ken’s pistol supports that conclusion.”
Reynolds stared sadly at the man and continued the analysis. “So Ken
might have been between Lockhart and the shooter?”
Connie slowly shook his head. “Human shield. I thought only the
Secret Service did that crap.”
Reynolds said, “I spoke with the ME. We won’t know anything until the