working like normal people and going home for the night.”
“I love that concept. But I’m coming to know you. You have another idea.”
“Lafayette Square. I’d like to see my great-grandfather, if we can find him. He’s always investigating something. He’ll go after a dog owner who doesn’t pick up after his pooch if there’s nothing else going on. But if I know him, this case will have caught his attention, and he’ll be watching from vantage points we could never achieve.”
“Let’s do it. We’ll stop by Angela’s office first and ask her to search for Dr. Henry Lawrence?”
“Yes.” He glanced back at his computer. He hadn’t gone through all the video of the McCarron trial as Stacey had, but he’d seen something of it.
“I thought of someone else,” he said.
“Who?”
“Dr. Vargas’s widow. She might be able to tell us more of what was going on at the time.”
“You think it could relate to now?”
“Who knows? We must try any possibility.” He pulled out his phone. “I’m going to check in with Fred and Jean, and we’ll let Jackson and Angela know our thoughts and what we’re doing.”
He made his call to Fred, filling him in on his conversation with Sandra Smith and what they had discovered about Billie Bingham through the old tapes.
“Jean and I paid a visit to Congressman Smith’s office—not to speak with Smith, who is supposedly a cooperative witness, but to his secretary. Agnes Merkle. She is something!”
“And what did you get from that experience? Anything?” Keenan asked him.
“A great deal of appreciation that I’m not related to that woman nor have ever had to work for anyone like her.”
“Great. Anything else?” he asked. He glanced at Stacey. She shrugged.
“Well, she admitted that she talked with Billie for him, and they discussed a monetary value on Billie’s silence over her relationship with Colin Smith. She also said it was none of our business—no matter what his sexual appetites, he was a good man. It wasn’t his fault if his home life was less than perfect.”
“So Agnes doesn’t like Smith’s wife.”
“Doesn’t seem to like her much. We’re going in some circles, checking on Peggy, seeing if she remembers anything else that happened in the office that might help. We’ve started on the missing men and found it to be a similar situation. The skull belonged to an Ethan Jones, and his disappearance was reported after he’d been missing for days—and it didn’t much upset the police. His disappearance was reported by a fellow who shared a cardboard-box home in the center of Baltimore. He said that Ethan really liked to sleep on Poe’s grave in the churchyard cemetery, but people just kept kicking him out. No family to be found. We’re working on the other disappearance in the area. We’ll have more later. I hope. This case can’t go cold—or get worse before it gets better.”
They agreed to catch up the next day; Jackson would be calling another task-force meeting the following afternoon.
They finished the call.
He looked at Stacey. “Let’s go and pay a visit to the ghosts of Lafayette Square.”
* * *
“Took you a hell of a long time to get back here,” the ghost of Bram Wallace told Keenan. He studied Stacey as he spoke. “And this is your new partner, eh? A pleasure to meet you, miss.”
Keenan was already slightly aggravated by his great-grandfather’s manner. It didn’t seem to bother Stacey at all, though. Bram certainly knew that she worked for the FBI.
But Stacey was simply curious to hear if Bram did have anything for them. The ghost of Philip Barton Key II stood next to Bram, casually watching movement in Lafayette Square.
“Sorry. There are leads we’ve been following,” he told his grandfather.
He didn’t remember Bram in life; the man had died when Keenan had been a toddler.
But he was easily able to see the family resemblance that had passed from Bram to Keenan’s grandfather and father and on to Keenan.
Bram was tall. Not quite six-five, but almost. And, Keenan thought with some amusement, the ghost of his ancestor liked to stand very straight near him, chin in the air, because no matter how old Keenan might become, Bram would see him as a youngster who needed to be schooled.
“We’ve been vigilant here,” Philip assured them. “But...well, I don’t think this fellow—or these fellows—will operate in the same area twice.”
“Did you see or hear anything?” Keenan asked Bram.
Bram nodded gravely.
“I saw a car. Black—the same car that Philip saw,” he said.
“Oh,” Keenan said, hoping he