Sam’s phone vibrated. Phil Quartermain. The last time she had thought about him was when she left the John Abrams scene, which seemed like seven decades ago. Apparently, the crooked cop who had tried to Taser her hadn’t gone inside the house to mess with Phil.
Or, maybe Phil was in on the thing, whatever the thing was.
She took a deep breath to try to cleanse the sobs from her voice. “Hi Phil.”
“Darling, you sound positively awful,” Phil said. She couldn’t tell if the overt gayness was an affectation he had acquired since being fired from the FBI – for his gayness, everyone said – or if it was a natural part of himself that he had stopped suppressing.
“Rough day,” she said.
“Boy troubles?”
“Among other things. How can I help?”
“Do you remember that key we found under John Abrams’ flabby ass? I found a suitable lockbox for it.”
“Where?”
“Can you come over? We’ll talk then.”
“Sure. You’re at Metro?”
“No, I’m taking a sick day. I’ll text you my address.”
“See you in a few,” Sam said.
The text with Quartermain’s address arrived seconds later, and she left the parking spot by the greenbelt near her house, where she had gone to think and suffer in private. She rounded the corner and headed toward 395 Southbound, which would take her to the Shirlington address.
Shirlington was a hip little micro-development with a couple of high-rise apartment complexes and a number of trendy shops, stores, restaurants, and boutiques. Like all of DC, it was overpriced, but not pretentiously so. Probably a great place for a single guy to live.
As she accelerated up the on-ramp onto the highway, she noticed a DC Metro police cruiser tuck in behind her. Her pulse quickened. Not this again.
She only had a couple of miles to go before the Shirlington exit, but Sam got all the way over in the far left lane. The police cruiser remained a dozen car lengths behind her, but followed her lane changes. I’m so over all of this, she thought.
She moved back over into the right lane and slowed to a crawl. The cruiser followed her lane changes, but came up on her quickly as she lowered her speed. Her move was designed to force the issue – either the cop would have to slow down below the flow of traffic to remain behind her, making it excruciatingly obvious what was going on, or he would have to go around her.
The policeman did a little of both. He stayed behind her for a while, until he realized how drastically she had slowed. Then he went around. She noted the car number as he drove past, and jotted it down on a parking garage receipt. She left a message for Dan Gable to track down the officer behind the wheel. Following her was a pretty brash move in light of the weekend’s events, and Sam planned to find a way to get her boot on the guy’s throat.
Her heart rate had almost returned to normal by the time she arrived at Phil Quartermain’s building. She rode the elevator to the twelfth floor and walked around to find apartment #1223.
It was a nice building – relatively new, well-appointed even by DC standards, and very clean. Maybe Brock will move down here. She realized that she really did think it was over between them. Lies were deal-breakers. But she knew that breaking up with Brock was going to be like losing a limb. She would never be the same.
Apartment #1223 was as far away from the elevators as possible, and she walked the entire length of a long hallway before arriving. The door was ajar. “Hi Phil,” she said, rapping lightly.
When she didn’t get a response, she called out and knocked a bit louder, but with the same result. She started to get a feeling of dread, like she knew what she was about to discover. She inhaled deeply to steady herself, and smelled the unmistakable, metallic scent she had come to recognize all too well.
She drew her .45, chambered a round, removed the safety, and announced her presence: “Federal agent. Hands up!”
Hearing no response, she kicked the door open, then immediately moved for cover around the jamb and listened intently for any movement. Backup would be ideal – necessary, most would say – but it was a luxury she didn’t have. Quartermain might still be alive, but if there was enough blood for her to smell it from the entryway, he wouldn’t be alive for long.
Sam ducked through the doorway and rolled quickly to her right, crouching behind the kitchenette counter. She peered around the edge and saw that the apartment opened beyond the kitchenette into a large room, but her view was obstructed by a large L-shaped couch. She listened again for movement, shouted again for hands up, and made her way toward the edge of the couch, being careful to stay low.
She peered around an end table and was instantly revolted by what she saw. Phil’s throat had been slit from ear to ear. The cut was catastrophically deep, and she could see the white cartilage of his exposed trachea. The carpet was soaked in his blood.
It took discipline to clear the rest of the flat, but it wouldn’t be healthy to be caught off guard by the killer if he was still on the scene. So she took her time.
The killer was long gone, and she returned to the great room to snap photos of the scene.
The large ottoman had been displaced from its carpet indentations, and a lamp had been knocked over, indicating a brief struggle. Quartermain had fought, but it hadn’t taken the killer long to subdue him, and saw the knife through his throat. Either the killer was a strong guy, or he had gotten the jump on Quartermain. Maybe both.
Sam realized that she had a problem: she didn’t know who she should call to report the murder. She wasn’t about to give the Metro guys unfettered access to her, especially after her most recent encounter moments ago on the freeway.
But until there was a bureaucratically compelling reason for Homeland to assert jurisdiction, the Metro guys called the shots, and they always got first dibs on a scene.
Safety over protocol, she decided, dialing Dan Gable’s number. As the phone rang, she looked absently around the apartment. A bright pink box caught her eye on the kitchen counter.
A music box.
The music box. Evidence in two crimes, and maybe an act of international terrorism. Or an act of war.
No way was she going to let Metro fuck it up. Or cover it up.
Gable’s voicemail picked up, and Sam cursed her luck. She really needed to talk to Dan about the events of the last half hour, and about the music box. Subconsciously, she hoped he would talk her out of doing what she was about to do, which was either a misdemeanor or a felony, depending upon how pissed off the attorney general got about it.
“Dan, please call me right away,” she said to his voicemail, then hung up her phone, realizing instantly how screwed she would be if Big Brother played the “where is Sam Jameson’s iPhone?” game using the same technology that had earlier revealed Brock’s deception. No turning back now.
She made her way to Quartermain’s closet, looking for a duffel bag or backpack she could use to abscond with the music box. She wrapped her hand in her shirt before touching anything to avoid leaving prints.
She found what she was looking for behind a raincoat, and quickly zipped the music box inside a black backpack, again being careful not to leave fingerprints.
As she hooked the backpack over her shoulder and made for the door, movement caught her eye. Red and blue emergency lights reflected rhythmically off the highrise across the street, and Sam rushed to the window. Two Metro cruisers were parked at the curb.
She dashed for the stairwell, not bothering to shut the door to Quartermain’s apartment on her way out. She ran down the hallway toward the elevators, arriving just in time to hear the ding of an arriving elevator car.
The door hadn’t opened a third when she recognized the black uniform and shiny metallic flair. Cops.
The nearest cop had his head turned away from Sam, and spoke into the radio transmitter clipped to his shoulder epaulet as he stepped out of the elevator. The far policeman turned to look in Sam’s direction, but was distracted by another resident getting in the elevator.
With every ounce of nonchalance Sam could muster, she put her phone to her ear and walked casually toward the open elevator door. She held her breath as she walked past the policemen, and prayed silently as she stepped into the elevator.
The doors closed. Sam breathed a sigh of relief as the elevator descended toward the lobby.
She glanced at the man in the elevator with her. She noticed the cleaning company logo on his shirt. Her eye was drawn to a horrific scar on the man’s neck, but she looked quickly at his eyes as he turned to greet her.
“Buenos dias,” croaked El Jerga.