Then he picked up Mitch’s pack, left everything else, and headed for the stairs without looking back at the evening’s third homicide.

Chapter 98

I’D BEEN WORKING at the Daly Building when the first terrible report came in, and this time I was on the scene within minutes of the gunfire. I tried hard to ignore the chaos in the street, tried not to think about the victims — not yet — and focused on the one thing I needed to know most.

Where did the shots come from? Was it possible they’d made a mistake this time?

An MPD sergeant on the sidewalk had an initial report that Cornelia Summers had gone down first, and that she’d been on George Ponti’s left as they headed into the Harman. Two Supreme Court justices — even now, it seemed unbelievable!

I looked to the left, down F Street. The Jackson Graham Building was a possibility, but if I’d been the gunman, I would have gone for the National Building Museum. It was a couple of blocks up, well clear of the scene, and had a flat roof with plenty of cover.

“Get me three more uniforms,” I told the sergeant. “Right away. I’m going to that building — the National.”

Within minutes, we were down the street and pounding on the museum’s front doors. One very alarmed-looking security guard came running to let us in. The Federal Protective Service had jurisdiction here, but I’d been told it would be a good half hour before they could get a team on-site.

“We need to get to the roof,” I told the guard. His tag said DAVID HALE. “What’s the fastest way up there?”

I left one patrol officer behind to radio in for a full lockdown of the building, and the rest of us followed Hale through the museum’s central hall. It was a huge, open space with Corinthian columns all the way to the ceiling, which was several stories overhead. That’s where we needed to go.

Hale brought us to an emergency exit at the far corner. “Straight up,” he said.

We left him there and took the stairs in rough formation, leapfrogging one flight at a time, with flashlights and weapons drawn.

At the top, we came to a fire door.

It should have been alarmed, but the metal housing was on the ground and the mechanism itself was hanging loose by a couple of wires.

My heart was already pounding from the run. It notched up again now. We’d come to the right place.

When I opened the door, an empty expanse of roof was in front of me, with the top of the Accountability Office visible across G Street beyond that. The rain was coming down hard, but you could still hear the sirens and shouting coming from the Harman.