MONDAY MORNING, I got a call to meet Kyle Craig and Betsey Cavalierre at the Hoover Building on Tenth Street and Pennsylvania Avenue. They wanted me to be at the director’s office at eight o’clock. An “emergency” meeting had been called.
The Hoover Building is sometimes called the “Puzzle Palace,” and for obvious reasons. Kyle and Betsey were waiting when I arrived in the FBI director’s conference room. Betsey looked tense for her. Her small hands were clenched into fists, the knuckles white.
I pretended to be annoyed that Director Burns wasn’t there yet. “He’s late,” I muttered. “Let’s get out of here. We’ve got better things to do.”
Just then, one of two polished oak doors into the room opened. I knew both of the men who walked in. Neither of them looked very happy. One was FBI Director Ronald Burns, whom I’d met during the Casanova killings in Durham and Chapel Hill, North Carolina. The second man was Secretary of Justice Richard Pollett. I had met him when I’d worked on a case involving the president.
“We’re getting an awful lot of heat on these robbery-murders. The big banks, Wall Street,” Pollett said to Kyle. He nodded in my direction. “Hello, Detective.” Then he looked at Betsey. “I’m sorry, we haven’t met.”
“I’m Senior Agent Cavalierre,” she said, and rose to shake the secretary’s hand. I’m the SAC.”
“Ms. Cavalierre is the agent in charge of the investigation?” Pollett asked Director Burns.
“Yes, she is,” Kyle answered the question. “This is her case.”
Secretary Pollett turned his unwavering gaze on her. “All right, you’re the SAC. Where are some results, Ms. Cavalierre? I walked into this room ready to make heads roll. Tell me why I shouldn’t.” Richard Pollett had run a large and successful Wall Street investment house before he came to Washington. He knew nothing about law enforcement but believed he was smart enough to figure out anything once he had some facts.
“Have you ever been part of a national manhunt?” Betsey stared right back into his eyes.
“I don’t think that’s a relevant question,” he answered dryly. “I’ve run some very important investigations, and I’ve always gotten results.”
“The robberies have been coming fast,” I found myself saying to Pollett. “Obviously, we were starting from nowhere. Here’s what we know now. A single man planned the Citibank, First Union, First Virginia, and Chase robberies and murders. We know he’s selecting crew members that are willing to kill. He’s only interested in recruiting killers.
“Our profile tells us he’s a white male between thirty-five and fifty. He’s probably well educated, with a thorough knowledge of banks and their security systems. He may have worked for a financial institution in the past, or even more than one, and might have a grudge against them. He robs banks for the money, but the murders are probably for revenge. That we’re not sure about yet.”
I looked around the room. Everyone was listening instead of bickering. “A few days ago we located and questioned a man named Tony Brophy. He was recruited for one of the jobs but was turned down. He wasn’t cold-blooded enough. He wasn’t a killer.”
Betsey spoke. “We have over two hundred agents in the field. We were only a couple of minutes behind them at the Chase robbery in D.C.,” she said. “We know that he calls himself the Mastermind. There’s been a lot of progress in a relatively short time.”
Pollett turned to the FBI director and nodded curtly. “I’m not satisfied, but at least I finally got a few answers. It’s your job to get this Mastermind, Ron. Do it. What’s happening makes all our financial systems appear vulnerable. The polls say confidence in the banks is down. And that’s a disaster for this country. I assume your Mastermind has figured that out already.”
Ten minutes later, Betsey Cavalierre and I rode the elevator down to the FBI’s underground garage together. Kyle had stayed behind with Director Burns.
When we got to the basement floor, she finally spoke. “I owe you one for upstairs. You saved me. Big time. I was this close to unloading on that pompous Wall Street asshole.”
I looked at her and a smile broke on my face. “You definitely have a temper. I hope you don’t have a grudge against Big Business or the banking system?”
She finally grinned. “Of course I do. Who doesn’t?”
Chapter 54
I SPENT THE NEXT COUPLE OF HOURS at the hospital with Jannie. She told me again that she was going to be a doctor and she sounded ready to take her med boards. She took delight in using terms like pilocytic astrocytoma (her tumor), prothrombin (a plasma protein used in the clotting of blood), and contrast material (dye used in the CT scan she’d had just that morning).
“I’m back,” Jannie finally announced, “and the new and improved model is better than ever.”
“Maybe you better go into the public relations or the advertising field when you grow up,” I teased her. “Work for J. Walter Thompson or Young and Rubicam in New York.”
She puckered her mouth and looked as if she’d just bitten into a lemon. “Dr. Janelle Cross. Remember where you heard it first.”
“Don’t worry,” I told her, “I won’t forget any of this.”
Around one o’clock I went over to the crisis center at the FBI field office on Fourth. After the meeting with Pollett and Burns, I knew we’d be working late. A conference room had been commandeered on the third floor. More than a hundred agents were working out of there. Also, about sixty detectives from D.C. and the surrounding areas.
We had a few more suspects up on the walls now. They were all bank robbers with the skills and experience to pull off big jobs. I studied the list and made notes on a few of them.
Mitchell Brand was a suspect
in several unsolved robberies in and around D.C. Stephen Schnurmacher was the person behind at least two successful bank heists in the Philadelphia area. Jimmy Doud was a bartender in Boston who’d never been caught but who had robbed dozens of banks up in New England. Victor Kenyon had been concentrating his efforts in central Florida. They all did banks, and they hadn’t been caught yet. They were smart, and good at what they did. But were they masterminds?