laptop. Kristoff was anxious and therefore impatient for results. “How much longer, Ginger?”
“Relax. I’m working it,” she replied tersely.
Kristoff hovered as Ginger’s fingers worked frantically over her keyboard. After five minutes, he was impatient. “Damn it, do you have anything or not, Ginger?”
“Almost there. I just need to get through one more layer of the system here, hold on …” There were more blinding fast keystrokes, followed by some play-by-play from Ginger which consisted of “no, no, yes, I got you, no I don’t, there, there it is, yes, yes, YES!”
“I’m in, now I’m just waiting for the map to pull up. Should be just a few seconds … Whoa!”
“What?”
“I found it.”
“Where?”
Ginger turned her laptop around for Kristoff to see, “Montgomery and the laptop are moving north on Interstate 35W, just south of Minneapolis. Kristoff, your boy is coming to you.”
CHAPTER NINE
“He’s natural police.”
Wire took in the lights of downtown Cleveland as her Learjet made its final descent to Burke Lakefront Airport. Governor Thomson thoroughly worked the state of Ohio all day. He started the day in Cincinnati and then worked his way northeast through the state, with stops in Dayton, at Ohio State University in Columbus, Akron and now Cleveland where he was making three different appearances. The campaign would then spend the night in Cleveland before leaving first thing in the morning for a day of campaigning in Iowa and then back to Wisconsin.
Wire spent the hour and a half flight from DC jotting notes down on her tablet on the day’s events.
Question: What have I learned?
Answer: Very little.
She made no progress in tracking down Montgomery other than to confirm that it was highly unlikely that he was in the Washington DC area. While Montgomery’s home did not appear to have been searched, Stroudt’s home and The Congressional Page had and there was little if anything left behind for her to work with. Detective Court thought they might find something in the forensics reports for the two crime scenes but she wasn’t holding her breath. She was up against professionals. It was highly unlikely that they would leave something behind. Nonetheless, the crime scene techs worked through both scenes and Court said he would call if anything jumped out at him and would be sure to get her a copy of the report.
Before she got on the plane, she’d given the Judge the license plate numbers for the blue minivan and the silver Ford sedan she saw hovering around Montgomery’s condominium in the afternoon. She hoped those plates might give them some idea of who they were dealing with.
The jet landed and taxied to the side of the runway where the Judge’s limousine was waiting. When the plane came to a stop, the copilot emerged from the cockpit and opened the plane door and eased the drop down steps to the tarmac. The Judge exited his limousine with an unlit cigar in his mouth, a beige trench coat draped over his right arm and his old tan weathered lawyer briefcase in his left hand. An aide grabbed the Judge’s luggage from the trunk and walked it over to the copilot who took care of storing it. Dixon climbed up the steps and onto the plane. He nodded to Wire as he dropped his coat and briefcase on an open seat opposite of her, loosened his tie and walked over to the galley and mixed himself a drink. He looked back to Wire who nodded her approval and he brought over two bourbons.
The Judge took his seat, buckled himself in and said, “We’re good to go,” to the copilot who simply nodded, ducked back into the cockpit and a moment later the jet eased forward, heading towards the runway.
“So how was your day, dear?” the Judge asked whimsically.
“Felt unproductive. And yours, darling?”
“Not too bad, not too bad at all. Huge crowds, lots of enthusiasm and the governor was really quite good. He’s not the most scintillating speaker but he has found another gear here the last few weeks and has turned into a helluva candidate. I think he’s starting to feel it.”
“How about the polling, at least your internal polling, what is that telling you today?”
The Judge leaned over and opened the latch on his briefcase, pulled it open and pulled out a report with polling data for the key states. “We picked up a point in Wisconsin and Iowa yesterday and we hit both those states tomorrow to cement those gains. So on the straight politics front, I