Special Agent Margold appeared to be in a hurry, because after only a cursory inspection, she asked, "How do we get to the basement?"

The skinnier agent said, "Back by the kitchen. Second door on the right. Ben Marcasi's down there."

She glanced at me and said, somewhat curtly, "Come along."

So I came along.

We went through a short passage to the hallway and found the second door on the right. As we walked, I tried to piece together why the Agency was on the hook for this thing, and more selfishly, was Sean Drummond on the hook for anything? From the looks of things and the presence of the Bureau I ruled out the ordinary stuff: burglary, drug deal gone sour, and so on. In fact, what happened inside that dining room looked like an execution. There had been no conversation between victims and killers, no argument over money, no vengeful message, no negotiation, not even an exchange of good-byes.

Generalizations, like assumptions, can be misleading, yet it's a fact that executions nearly always are the tradecraft of mobsters and drug gangs. Both like to regard murder as just business, a swift and elegant way to settle a dispute, end a partnership, or terminate a misbehaving employee. But wiseguys would bring in only the Feds, and drug gangs might draw in the DEA but should not concern the CIA. A blown witness-protection thing? That could involve the Agency if the victim was a witness in an international terrorism case, I guess. So that was a possibility. Or was the dead guy at the table a CIA employee? Maybe this was some weird courtesy thing between federal agencies: Hey, one of your guys got whacked this morning-want to come see?

I smelled coffee as we passed the kitchen. For some reason, the odor sent a chill down my spine. Not three hours before three people awakened, never realizing they were dressing for the last time, sharing their final breakfast. Sad. So I followed Agent Margold down the stairs and into the basement, and at the bottom of the steps she yelled, "Ben!… Ben!…"

"Back here," a voice replied.

The basement was large with a high ceiling, essentially a spacious, open room with tan wall-to-wall, no sliding doors, no exterior entrances, not even windows. It was more casual and sparsely furnished than upstairs, and there was a feeling like it didn't see much use, but in the far right corner I spotted a tidy pile of toys; an Erector set, two balls, a toy truck, and so forth.

Like that, the couple upstairs were no longer clinical clue magnets; they were now Grandma and Grandpa, they took the grandkiddies to the Smithsonian and remembered all their birthdays, and their murder became more than an incident: It became a tragedy for some family and a matter of more than passing interest for me. Wondering if Margold's mood reflected some personal connection, I asked, "Did you know these people?"

She faced me and said, "Open your mouth again and you're gone."

We were getting along famously

Anyway, we proceeded to a door and entered a small room that, from the condition of the drywall and unmarred whitewash, appeared to be a recent addition.

A heavyset middle-aged male stood in the middle of the floor, running his hands through his balding hair, and he turned to face us as we entered. The absence of other living beings in the room indicated this would be Ben. The room-small and claustrophobic, because in addition to Ben were some ten wall-mounted video monitors, a high-tech communications console, a brown Naugahyde lounge chair, and a single bed in the far corner. Also, strewn here and about, three additional corpses.

Nearest to the door and us sat a young woman who had taken three or four slugs on the right side of her body. She was seated in an office chair at the commo console, her body pitched to the left, her right hand stretched toward the console, and it struck me she might've been reaching for something when she got popped. The other two corpses were males, late twenties and mid-thirties, wearing wrinkled gray suits and more bullet holes.

The younger of the two men had removed his jacket and was prone on the bed, and if you ignored the small hole in his right temple and the splatter of skull viscera on the far wall, the expression on his face was weirdly placid and content-arms crossed, feet crossed; his sleep had turned permanent without so much as a whimper.

The second male corpse was seated on the lounge chair, jacket slung over the chair back, eyes wide open, and his expression, not placid, was a mixture of shock and agony. His fingers were clutched at his throat, just like the lady at the door, where he'd also been shot. If you didn't know better, you'd think he'd had a heart attack. In a way he had. They all had.

Another thing got my attention. The dead guy on the bed had removed not only his jacket but also a holster containing a Glock automatic. A matching holster and Glock pistol were still hooked to the belt of his dead partner. I eliminated my CIA employee theory and leaned toward the blown witness thing. "Who are these people?" I asked Margold.

Margold was busy feeling the neck of the young lady at the console and said, "Shut up" to me, and then to Ben, "Roughly same time of death as the others."

"Yeah." After a long moment, he noted, "Nearly simultaneous."

"Same weapon as upstairs, right?"

"Uh… maybe. Same caliber. I'm thinking a thirty-eight."

"About. Had to be a silencer."

"Had to be," he agreed. After a moment, he said to her, "Can you reconstruct yet?"

"Yeah… it's pretty straightforward. Who's at the front door?"

"June Lacy" He added, "Been with us three years. From upstate Minnesota, I think… engaged to get married next week."

"Uh-huh. What time did Hawk's driver arrive?"

"Same time every morning, 6:15. Name's Larry Elwood. Anyway, Larry'd pull into the driveway, leave the car idling, come to the front door, and June, or whoever was on shift, took over from there."

Agent Margold was examining a clipboard on the console, apparently a security log, because she said, "The entry's right here. Six-twenty, Elwood arrived." She looked at Ben. "'Took over from there'? What's that mean?"

"The team had a morning routine. June would roust the Hawk out. She'd escort him out to the car, and Elwood drove him in. The Hawk liked to be at his desk at 6:45 sharp, even on Saturdays. You can tell by the condition of the house the man was a stickler… We got serious heat if we threw him off schedule."

"So that's what happened," Margold replied after a moment. "Elwood-at least someone who looked like Elwood-pulled into the driveway, came to the door, rang the bell, only this time, when Lacy answered, she took it in the throat." She added, "Nothing arbitrary about that throat shot. Drowned out her warning."

Ben nodded. "I just reviewed the tape. The car pulled up at 6:20. Like you said-five minutes late. And you're right, a guy who looks like Elwood walked directly to the front door. Obviously, the cameras only canvass the exterior, though."

"Yeah, well… it's fairly obvious what happened inside. After he killed Lacy, he stepped inside, capped the Hawk and his wife, then rushed down here and did these three." She pointed at the bank of monitors. "Let's see the tape."

I didn't think it was that obvious, but Ben raised no objections, nor did I. Ben moved to the console, pointed to one of the monitors, pushed a few buttons, and rewound till you could see the time was 6:19. He pushed play, and after about thirty seconds a shiny black Lincoln Town Car with impenetrably darkened windows crossed in front of the house and pulled up the driveway, not stopping till it was nearly to the garage door. A male got out, walked to the front of the car, then you lost him for a few seconds as he crossed the front of the car, but he reappeared as he headed up the walkway to the entrance. The camera lost his image again when he walked under the overhang supported by the concrete columns. So you couldn't observe what happened at the door, though from June Lacy's corpse, you knew what happened, just not how.