Dreaming Death (Krewe of Hunters #32) - Heather Graham Page 0,46

right, let’s go. It’s one horrific game,” she said, “but...the game is afoot.”

He nodded gravely. “We’ll check in with Jackson and head on out.” He started for the door and then paused and said, “He wasted a kidney. If he’s selling organs...”

“I think we’ll find that it was damaged or diseased in some way,” Stacey finished grimly.

“We’ll known soon enough,” he said.

Eight

“I know you had an appointment, but it was supposed to be this morning. The congressman tried to fit you in—he wants to cooperate with and help the FBI, of course. But I’m afraid that Congressman Smith is busy now,” the woman behind the reception desk at the DC offices of Colin Smith told them.

Keenan had expected that Colin Smith would balk when it came time for their interview with him.

Smith was a public figure. A married man with a bad reputation he insisted was unearned. Stories spread quickly, tossed about by opposing candidates and rival politicians, whispered about between staff members, but remained hard to prove. However, he had been accused often enough, on social media mainly, of being a womanizer and an adulterer.

In Keenan’s mind, so much smoke surrounded Smith that, while many of his colleagues tried to cover for him, there just had to be fire.

“I believe he was informed that we were coming,” Keenan said. “He was asked to come down to my unit’s headquarters, and he refused. We understand. We’re here. But we’re not here to chat—or to complain about road construction. You can’t have missed the fact that a known associate of his was brutally murdered. We’re hoping he might know something that could help us catch a serial killer.”

“He’s—just busy. You should call his attorney,” the receptionist said, offering Keenan a card.

Keenan tried not to show his annoyance.

All field agents were given customary lessons in the art of interrogation. Keenan knew that a successful interrogation didn’t necessarily mean a confession, but a successful interrogation could provide some of the truth. Human behavior could give away so much.

Smith didn’t want to talk at all. That could imply guilt—or that if he wasn’t guilty, he did know something.

Keenan was already damned sure that Smith knew something.

The way someone waited in an interrogation room might mean something. The innocent often paced with confusion, wanting to know why they were there, and why they were brought in and then made to wait. The guilty sometimes became so anxious that they paced, twitched and knee-bounced until the adrenaline burned through them—and they fell asleep on the table.

Causing a suspect to wait and observing their behavior could give an agent or officer a direction to go with their questioning.

In Colin Smith’s case, the man would probably consider himself smarter than any officer or agent.

Keenan smiled dryly. Smith would enjoy turning the tables. Refusing to see them, or keeping them waiting. He couldn’t arrest or even detain the man—not for rumors or suspicion, no matter how rampant both might be, and not even on Tania Holt’s word that Smith was the “Coffee Boy” from Billie Bingham’s diary.

Keenan forced an easy smile, determining how to proceed, when Stacey slipped closer to the desk.

She gave the receptionist a sweet smile, leaning closer across the desk, her tone quiet and yet urgent. “Can you see if you have any sway with him? He really needs to speak with us.” She appeared distressed as she added, “The press is going to go wild with all this. And if it’s shown that the congressman has been nothing but completely happy to speak with the FBI, we’ll be able to say that he’s cooperating—which you just said he really wants to do. I mean, if it should be discovered that he was hostile and uncooperative—”

“He’s not being hostile. He’s busy,” the secretary said. But she appeared to be growing uneasy.

Stacey remained pleasant and concerned, her tone worried. “I’m sure I’ve stressed to you how much it means that we just have a quick interview with him,” Stacey told her.

The woman stood up, staring at Stacey. “I’ll see what I can do. I just know...that he’s busy.”

She walked toward her boss’s door, but it opened before she reached it. Congressman Colin Smith came out of the office with a young woman. She was about thirty, slim to the point of skinny, blonde and wearing a harried look. She clutched a tablet tightly to her chest.

Colin Smith, on the other hand, was on the portly side, with brownish hair—thinning, but he tried to hide it. He might