Rauch looked at Andy for an instant, then he shut down, like he just realized jawing with the reporter was the wrong call. “Look . . . I didn’t say CIA. You did. I said they were Homeland Security. Do me a favor and get out of here till they leave. Come back in the morning.”

Rauch tossed his cigarette in the gutter and headed up to knock on the next door.

Andy walked back to his car, then he stood there for a few minutes looking at the scene, awash in flashing red and blue lights. Finally one of the beat cops stepped up and asked him if he wouldn’t mind backing off a block or two. Normally Andy would have told the man to kiss his ass, but not this time. He climbed in his Ford, then drove around the corner, parked, and got back out with his camera. He walked between a pair of apartment buildings, squinted out the reflections of flashing lights, and made his way one block north of the crime scene.

On the street in front of him were two black Chevy Suburbans that clearly didn’t belong. Drivers sat behind the wheels, and each vehicle had a passenger in the front. Andy stopped in his tracks before the men saw him, then he retraced his steps back to the apartment buildings. Under a stairwell he found a place in the dark where he could keep his eyes on the vehicles, and there he waited.

Ten minutes later several figures in overcoats approached the Suburbans. One was a white-haired man in his early fifties, flanked by a pair of men Andy took immediately for bodyguards. Next to him was a woman in her thirties wearing eyeglasses, with her brown hair in a professional-looking bun. He snapped several pictures of both of them before they drove off, careful not to use his flash.

Back in his Fiesta he looked at the images on the digital display of his camera. He hadn’t expected to recognize either of them, even on closer inspection, and he did not.

But he knew someone who might. Sitting there in the shittiest part of the city, Andy looked up a number on his contact list and made a call.

—

A few miles west in Georgetown, a fifty-four-year-old woman slowly reached for the vibrating mobile phone on her nightstand. While doing so, she blinked the sleep from her eyes and checked the time on the phone’s screen.

It was a quarter after one.

She made no effort to perk up her sleepy voice. “This is Catherine King.”

“Ms. King? Andy Shoal here. I apologize for calling so late.”

“Who?”

“Andy Shoal. Metro desk.”

The woman sat up slowly, rubbing her eyes. “Metro? Sure,” she said, but she’d never heard of this guy. “What can I do for you, Andy?”