“Active interface?”Alex mutters. “What kind of bullshit corporate-speak is that?”
“One more thing,” says Amberson. “You might consider printing some flyers to put up around campus. Usually we frown on postings, but I’ll make sure they stay up.”
Alex feels like reaching over and grabbing this smooth-talking bureaucrat by his necktie. “You mean like the ones across the street?”
“Excuse me?”
“We just saw a brawl near the parking lot over a poster somebody put up.”
Amberson shakes his head. “That’s a different situation. It still shouldn’t happen, but I know what it’s about. There’s a lot of heat on campus about a speaker who’s coming next week. Both sides are riled up.”
“Who’s the speaker?” asks Bree.
Amberson reaches back to a credenza behind his desk and grabs a small color poster showing a young man at a podium, fist raised, face red with anger. “Michaelson Woods, from Young Freedom Fighters.”
“Young Freedom Fighters,” Alex repeats. “YFF.” He glances at Bree.
Those same initials were in one of Damon’s emails.
“It’s a right-wing group. Some of our students support Woods’s right to be here,” says Amberson, “free speech and all, but a lot of people are against what he says.” He rolls up the poster and tosses it into his wastebasket. “Between you and me, I’m hoping the little prick cancels his appearance. But that has nothing to do with locating your son. If you put your flyers up, I promise they won’t get ripped down.”
Amberson takes his pen and scribbles on a small pad. “I’m giving you Hugh Malone’s phone number. I’ll let him know you’ll be calling.”
“We won’t be calling,” says Bree.
“I’m sorry?” says Amberson.
Alex rises from his chair. “We prefer to just show up.”
CHAPTER 9
Sampson
THE WOMAN OUTSIDE SCREAMS again, louder. I run out of the Panera and into a street filled with broken vehicles, shattered glass, and injured people. That’s when I see her.
She isn’t screaming.
She’s shouting.
It’s a highly agitated woman, about five foot five, wearing jeans and a dark blue windbreaker with the lettersATFon the back, and her shouts are directed at two DC firefighters who are hosing down the burned wreckage of an Audi.
“You idiots, the goddamn fire is out! You expect the thing to spontaneously combust? All you’re doing now is wrecking my evidence! For fuck’s sake, shut the water off!”
A DC fire chief with a white bunker coat and helmet walks over. “Hey! Hey! What’s going on? What’s the problem?”
“The problem is these jerks are soaking my crime scene!” the woman says.
The chief looks at the firefighters and makes a quick cut sign across his neck. The firefighters switch off the hoses and the torrent of water shrinks down to a dribble.
Ned Mahoney steps up beside me and points in the woman’s direction. “That’s the other member of our team. Anna Rizzo. She’s an explosives enforcement officer with the ATF.”
I’m impressed already. Rizzo obviously knows how to get somebody’s attention. Mahoney waves her over. She’s an attractive woman—olive skin, brown eyes, black hair bobbed in a short, no-nonsense style.
Mahoney does the honors. “Officer Anna Rizzo, meet Detective John Sampson, DC Metro Police.”
We exchange a quick handshake. Then something clicks in my brain. “Hold on, I remember you!Rizzo. You’re the one who found the guy responsible for that series of bombings out in Iowa. The grain towers.”
“That’s right,” says Rizzo, hands on her hips, looking around at the burned and blackened carnage. “A shitty case. But it wasn’t just me, it was my whole team—and the locals who hated seeing their harvests ruined.”
