“That’s okay —”

“Uh, Price?” Rick turned to David, who was waiting next to the door. “I wouldn’t argue with her. You’ll lose.” He chuckled at the young man’s indecision. “Besides, you think better with sleep. Isn’t that right, Agent Reis?”

Price glanced back at Alex, surprised to find her blushing.

“Don’t start, David.”

David’s grin got wider. “See, our fearless leader over there was going on adrenaline and instinct for most of the night, and we didn’t come up with much. But, give her a few hours of sleep, and she’s been brainstorming ever since. Even got us our first solid physical lead.”

“Really?” Price sat down and faced Alex. “Wanna share? Or is this a Washington secret?”

David could clearly see the sudden lines of tension in Alex. Price noticed it, too, and thought back over his last statement. He groaned.

“Damn, Alex, I’m sorry. Either Keller and the others are wearing off on me, or I have been up for too long. I didn’t mean it to sound the way it did.”

Alex took a breath, and ordered her voice not to shake. “It’s okay, Rick. Sometimes things can get a little strained with a case like this. Everybody’s tense, and things get said. It’s no big deal.” But it was to her. “Anyway, the evidence isn’t really that great. I just remembered that the shooter had a coat on when he entered the building, but didn’t have it when he left. After a few phone calls, we found it. He had checked it into the coat room. It was still there this morning. We’re pretty sure it’s his because it matches the one Leonard said he was wearing.” She pointed to a package sitting on the bed. “After your nap, you can take it to the lab. David and I would drop it off ourselves, but we’re not going near the office, or the lab. We already checked pockets, and wrote down the labels and such. I don’t think it will actually amount to much, but it might.”

Price got up to look at the sealed package, which was tagged with the initials of both Agent Reis and Agent Wu. He looked up at Alex. “You’re not taking it to Washington?”

“You want us to? I thought it should be looked at down here first. Then if you want to send it to Headquarters for further analysis, it wouldn’t hurt.”

He nodded. “I’ll get it to the lab right away.”

“No. It will keep until you get some sleep. I want you to get it there safely, and right now, you look like you couldn’t drive a shopping cart safely.” She grinned at him, pleased to see the sheepish smile on his tired face. “We’ll be gone several hours. Make sure your cel-phone is on. And if you and Keller are free about five-thirty or six, meet us back here. We’ll all meet one more time before David and I go back to D.C.”

“Sounds good.” He paused. “Isn’t Ken going back with you?”

“No. He’s going to stay here, and try to cover any loose ends. He might fly back in a day or so, or he might stay for a couple weeks. Depends on what he finds.”

“You think there’s that much for him to find?”

“I don’t know. But he’s the expert, and if he can figure out how the bomb was made, it might get us closer to who made the bomb. Then we’ll be half a step closer to who killed Dabir.”

Price nodded, and watched as Alex and David left the room. David took one last look back before closing the door.

“Get some sleep, Price. We promise, we won’t solve the case before you wake up.”

*******************************************************

David drove them to the police impound lot. Connected to the lot was a garage that housed the vehicle lab. It wasn’t really a lab, but the location where vehicles involved in crimes were examined. They entered through a side door after showing their ID. A technician in blue led them to a blackened shell of a car. He pointed at the legs of a person that were poking out from under the vehicle near the front wheels.

“Hey, Ken, you got a minute?”

Agent Thomas slid out from under the car. He was dressed in coveralls similar to the tech that had just left them. Grease and soot coated most of his front, and he had to pull a pair of rubber gloves off his hands before pulling off the mask that covered of his face.

“Didn’t think I’d see you before tonight. Skipping the autopsy?”

“No, we’ve got a few minutes, and I wanted to check in with you. Anything new you can tell me?”

David, who had disappeared with the tech, reappeared with a bottle of water.

“Here, Ken, I thought you could use this. God, it’s hot in here.”

“Thanks, Dave. Yeah. Nobody’s allowed to wear their regular clothes when working in here. Not that you’d want to; you never know what you might get on them. But since you can only wear your boxers and your overalls, they have to keep it a bit warmer. Then you add in the machines, and the lights…”

“And you get a lot of heat.”

They all shared a grin, then Ken turned serious. “Well, I’m still waiting for a call about the ballistics on those guns. The only thing I can tell you with any certainty is that both were Sig-Sauers, twenty-two caliber.”

“Standard assassin’s weapon.”

“Yeah. One had a suppresser; I haven’t seen the report so I don’t know which body that came off of, but I’m betting it’s your murder weapon.”

“Any possibilites of serial numbers?” David had pulled out his notebook and was quickly jotting notes.

“I haven’t heard. It should be in the report when I get it. But somebody said they might have been filed.”

“Filed, or removed by acid?”

“Don’t know. I’ll wait for the report on that one.” Ken took a few long swallows from the bottle, then wiped his hand across the back of his mouth. “But there are some other interesting bits here.”

Alex waited, patiently, for exactly ten seconds. “And?”

“For one thing, our firefighter was right. The bomb was under the drivers side, in the front. What few components were left I’ve already sealed and sent to the lab. I don’t think it was rigged to the accelerator; I didn’t find that any of the internals were messed with. That means it was probably a remote.”

“Not a timer?”

Ken shrugged. “Could be a timer, Dave, but then how did they know when they’d get the best shot at Dabir?”

Alex nodded. “If they wanted to make sure that Dabir died, and so did the killer, they would have had to use a remote. Otherwise they wouldn’t know the right time to blow the car.”

“But that means that someone nearby had to blow it.”

“Yep.”

The three of them were silent for a moment.

“Okay, Ken, good work. Any other little tidbits to pass on?”

“Oh, yeah. The seat the kid told us about, the baby seat in the back?”

“Yeah.”

“He was right about that as well.”

Alex’s eyebrows narrowed. “Car was stolen, huh?”

“Yep. I asked for that report to be sent over along with the lab results.”

She smiled. “You ever get told you ask a lot, Ken?”

“No. Just got a lot of complaints ‘cause I wanted it all done on Sunday.”

They grinned at each other.

David was still writing. “Okay, stolen vehicle, baby seat in back — wait, baby seat?”

Alex rolled her eyes. “Bout time you caught up, David.”

*******************************************************

The morgue was chilly, and Alex kept her suit jacket on as she slipped into the small room. She sighed in relief when she realized there was no one there. Choosing a seat, she set her notebook down, then cracked the seal on a can of coke.

The room itself was small, with several school type chairs gathered around a thirty-two inch television screen. There were no windows, and very little in the way of comfort. That wasn’t surprising, she thought to herself. After all, this was a theatre for watching the post-mortems performed on dead bodies — something that serious shouldn’t be comfortable.

Leaning forward, Alex turned on the t.v., switching channels until she found one entitled John Doe 7-00. That was her guy, the passenger of the car that had blown up on Society Hill. “John Doe” meant, of course, that the man had yet to be positively identified. The number seven-dash-double-zero referred to this being the seventh unidentified body so far in the year 2000.