“It’s going, Bret. That’s all I’ll say. What are you doing here?”

“Run a vehicle ID for me.”

“Sure.”

Mullin handed the officer a scrap of paper on which he’d noted the make, model, and plate number of the car he’d seen “Charlie Simmons” get into after leaving the apartment building in which Rich Marienthal and Kathryn Jalick lived. He’d found it among a fistful of receipts he’d stuffed into his glove compartment. It took less than a minute for the information to pop up on the screen. The vehicle was registered to a Timothy Stripling.

“Charlie Simmons, huh?” Mullin mumbled.

“Huh?”

“Nothing. See what you can bring up on Mr. Stripling.”

“Who’s he?”

“If I knew that, I wouldn’t need you,” Mullin said gruffly.

The officer didn’t say what he was thinking, that Bret Mullin couldn’t retire soon enough. He typed in the appropriate commands, added the name Timothy Stripling to them, and hit ENTER. A picture of Stripling filled the screen. That’s Charlie, Mullin thought.

The officer scrolled down to where available information about the subject was written. There was surprisingly little on Stripling. The MPD’s central data bank, augmented by the considerably more extensive FBI data bank, had been collecting and adding information to its files for years. Dossiers on D.C. citizens, famous and not so famous, had burgeoned recently as more focus was placed on gathering information and new software had made the larger files possible. Some subjects had information on them that ran for pages. Not Stripling. Facts of his life were contained in a single paragraph.

There was his Foggy Bottom address; his Social Security number; two moving vehicle violations, one for speeding, the second for running a light; place and date of birth (Dover, Vermont-1951); no felony arrests or convictions; credit score of 730; no bankruptcies; registered handguns-9-millimeter Tanarmi parabellum model and snub-nosed Smith & Wesson.44 Magnum, custom; Occupation: Consultant.

“Consultant,” Mullin said aloud.

“Government,” said the officer.

“Sensitive job. What’s he need two handguns for?” Mullin said.

The officer shrugged.

“CIA maybe. The Bureau,” Mullin added.

Mullin took a printout of the listing back to his office, where he drank his cooling coffee and thought about the past few hours. This guy Stripling contacts Sasha Levine, uses a phony name, claims he’s a friend of the writer, Marienthal, and gets her to spend time with him.

One thing was certain. Stripling’s meeting with Sasha was no social visit. The Russo murder? Marienthal’s disappearance? An hour later, after having left a message for Chief Leshin that he was taking a personal day off, and fortified with fresh coffee and a half-dozen doughnuts, Mullin was parked up the street from the Lincoln Suites Hotel.

Washingtonians awoke that morning to thunderstorms that dumped torrential rain on the nation’s capital. It wasn’t an unwelcome event. The downpour broke the intense heat wave that had gripped the city the past week and boosted spirits, although that didn’t apply to Geoff Lowe and Ellen Kelly. He sat in a chair by a window and watched the rain cascade down the panes. Ellen sat up in bed. Next to her was an advance copy of Rich Marienthal’s book, which Lowe had taken from Senator Widmer’s office the previous night.

It was now a little after six A.M. They’d been up since five arguing.

He turned in the chair and said to her, “Don’t you get it, Ellen? How many times do I have to explain it to you?”

She bristled at his tone, but said nothing. He’d been ranting since they awoke, pacing the floor, standing over her, yelling, lowering his voice to an almost inaudible level for effect, slapping his hand on the nearest surface, chopping the air with open hands as though the gesture would cut through what he considered her denseness.

“Okay,” he said in a less strident voice, sitting on the edge of the bed and taking her hand, “we have got to find Rich and the tapes. It’s just that simple.”

“Maybe we don’t need the tapes or Rich,” she offered tentatively, “now that we have the book.”

“Oh, man,” he said. “Don’t you get it? The book only has what Rich wrote, what he claims Russo told him. But Russo saying it on tape in his own voice is something else. Come on, Ellen, get with the program. Christ!”

She wished she were back in her own apartment, away from him, away from Washington and politics and senators and hearings, all of it. “Don’t you think I would do something to help if I could?” she said.

“The Dems on the committee caucused late last night,” he said. “They’re holding a press conference this afternoon condemning the hearings in advance. They’re dismissing the charge against Parmele as nothing more than a writer’s unsubstantiated claims in a book. Somehow they got their hands on a copy of his contract with Hobbes House. The contract is for a novel. They’re using that to claim the book is fiction, made up, his imagination.”

“But Rich can testify to the book being true, Geoff.”

“Jesus, you still don’t get it, do you?” he said, repeating what had become a mantra that early morning. “Read my lips, Ellen. The Dems will destroy Rich and his credibility. Widmer made it plain to me last night that unless we have Russo’s own voice implicating Parmele in the Eliana assassination, there’ll be no hearing.”

“Maybe that’s just as well.”

“No, Ellen, Widmer’s not saying he’s willing to call off the hearing unless we find Rich and the tapes. What he is saying is that if he has to call off the hearings because I fell on my face, I can kiss my job goodbye. So can you.”

Lowe wasn’t aware as he uttered this threat that losing her job with Senator Widmer wasn’t an unpleasant idea for Ellen at that moment. She’d considered resigning for weeks, not only from her job with the senator, but from her relationship with Lowe, too. She’d discussed quitting with her father, a former mid-level corporate executive who’d been downsized out of his job and was currently selling cars to make ends meet. His advice: “Never leave one job until you’ve landed another, Ellen.” His words made sense, but did the same wisdom apply to leaving boyfriends? Looking for a new job while accepting a paycheck from a current employer smacked of disloyalty, although it was done all the time. Shopping for a new boyfriend while sharing a bed with the current one didn’t sound any more admirable.

What’s a girl to do?

Lowe left the bed and stood in the center of the room, hands on hips, jaw jutting out, a commander about to launch his troops into battle. His pillow-disheveled hair and frayed yellow terrycloth bathrobe detracted from the image.

“Look, Ellen, here’s what we do. I’m going to take another crack at Mac Smith. There’s no sense in me trying to get through to Kathryn. She sounds like a broken record: ‘Rich is off on a research project and I don’t know how to reach him, etc., etc.’ Yeah, right! I never liked her. What Rich ever saw in her is beyond me. She’s dumb as hell. But maybe she’ll open up to you, huh? Woman to woman. Get hold of her and tell her Rich’s life is in danger. Tell her that all we want is to keep him safe and at the same time help him promote his book. She’s obviously nuts about him, although why I don’t know. What a pair. You tell Kathryn that the best thing she and Rich can do is to give you the tapes and notes and whatever else he has.” He stepped toward the bed, as though what he’d just said was an especially intelligent breakthrough. “That’s it. Tell Kathryn that once we have the tapes and stuff, it’ll be out in the open and Rich won’t have to worry anymore. Who do they think they’re kidding with him hiding out? He’s not on any goddamn research trip. He figures if he’s not available for the hearings, they’ll be canceled and he’s off the hook. That means you and I are on the hook, Ellen, big-time, strung up by Widmer and left to dry.”