his real first name.
“I thought it captured the moment.”
“If the moment was for you to look pissed, you’re right.”
“I am pissed,” Dixon railed. “Somebody is going to pay.”
“And somebody will.”
A light drizzle was falling so the two men quickly dove into a limousine. “So what do we know?” the governor asked.
The Judge reported what he knew, reviewing the call from McCormick, the Judge and Wire’s race to his house, the murder of McCormick and Montgomery, the shooting at the bar and what they’d learned since, which wasn’t much.
“Is McRyan working the case?”
“He is, Governor. You know him?”
“I’ve met him. I know the family’s name. The reputation is well earned. McRyan’s the best around these parts, bureau included. Give him time and he’ll figure it out.”
* * *
Mac yawned and stretched. He was a night owl normally and rarely needed more than four or five hours most nights. It was a trait that served him well in college and law school when pulling an all nighter was a way of life. He once went three days sleeping a total of four hours when grinding through college finals. All As on the exams. Of course, once finals week was over he slept for the next two days. But that’s the way it was with him. Go for four or five days full tilt and then his body would make him shut down for a day or two and refuel.
So at 3:30 a.m. a yawn didn’t mean he was fading, it was simply an interruption.
He glanced across the conference table and Wire was the same. She was methodically working through one of the other notebooks, jotting down notes as she worked through, occasionally taking a sip of her coffee. Mac was curious as to why she was an ex-FBI agent and would need to get that story.
So he turned his attention back to the notebook. It was apparent to Mac that Montgomery never went anywhere without a notebook and if the inspiration struck him, he wrote down whatever idea it was he had. There were several articles outlined or written in long-hand. Interspersed with the articles were notes of phone calls, references to other articles, web and blog sites, the odd phone number and random names. As Mac got to each name, he would do a web search of the name to see what popped. Most of the time the names were political, representatives (Mac recognized most senators), staff people, media members and other bloggers. In some cases, the name didn’t bring up anything. In other circumstances, such as a name like Anderson, Smith, Martin or Johnson, the web results were so massive that with the lack of any other identifying information, it would take hours to go through the entirety of the results. Nothing was really popping but Mac was keeping a list on his laptop, just in case.
As he got to the end of the last notebook, Mac ran across the names Peterson and Checketts, but nothing else was written. Mac typed Peterson and politics into Google and had just north of 45,000,000 results. He clicked through three or four pages but nothing really looked good.
There was a knock on the door to the conference room. Mac looked up to see Jupiter standing in the doorway. “What’s up?”
“Mac, I overheard you say something about being tracked earlier.”
“That’s right. Someone was tracking Montgomery and then it seemed they were able to track Ms. Wire and company as well. You have something?”
“Well, I think I know how they did it. Montgomery’s laptop has LoJack on it.”
“The tracking system?” Mac asked.
Jones nodded.
Wire’s eyes closed and she shook her head. “A tracking system. I wonder if they found that while going through The Congressional Page offices.”
“Congressional Page offices?” Mac asked. “When were you there?”
“When I was in DC earlier today,” Wire looked at her watch, “Make that yesterday, I was at Stroudt’s condo, then The Congressional Page and finally Montgomery’s with an Alexandria homicide detective.”
“Carl Court?” Mac asked.
Wire nodded and asked, “You talk to him?”
“I did. The good detective said a pretty brunette with political connections had been snooping around.”
Wire grinned and then got back to business: “The files of The Congressional Page and Stroudt’s home were completely cleaned out. Because Montgomery’s building had pretty good security, it didn’t look like his home had been raided. I bet if we look further, we’ll find out that The Congressional Page had LoJack tracking on all of their laptop computers for some reason and whoever broke into