“The problem is you. You take the law into your own hands, you go to prison. Or worse. I won’t be a part of that. I can’t.”
He sat in the
desk chair and stared down at the carpet.
“Shaw, you can’t throw your life away over this.”
Shaw didn’t appear to be listening. “I thought I knew what real pain was, Katie. What it was to hurt like you’ve never hurt before. But when Anna died, I discovered exactly what it felt like.”
Katie crept forward and put a hand on his shoulder. “You need to let it out, Shaw, before it destroys you.”
He stood so quickly that she had to jump back. “I’ll call Frank and get him going on this.”
“Just like that?” she said, bewildered.
“Just like that. It’ll be faster that way,” he added ominously.
As he made the call, Katie stared at the crest of St. Albans School and then over at Shaw as he relayed her discovery to Frank.
When he clicked off, Shaw said, “Get your shoes on. We’ve been stuck in this room long enough. I’ll take you to dinner while they bang through the database.”
Katie retrieved her shoes, sat on the bed, and slipped on her heels.
He put a hand on her arm and guided her out the door. As they walked down the hall, her heart was thumping in her chest. She didn’t believe Shaw. Not at all.
And she was afraid. Not for herself.
She was afraid for him.
CHAPTER 88
THERE WERE EIGHT FAMILIES on the St. Albans database that owned black Mercedes S500s, a match with vehicle registration showed. Shaw, Royce, Frank, and Katie sat in a room at the FBI’s northern Virginia office studying this list.
“Two in McLean. One in Great Falls. Three in Potomac. The rest in D.C. Four of them have kids currently enrolled in the school,” an FBI agent rattled off.
Katie broke off staring at the screen and glanced at Shaw. His focus was totally on the list, she could see. As she watched, she saw him mouthing words to himself.
He’s memorizing the names and addresses.
“The smart thing to do,” Frank said, “is split up our assets and hit them all at once.”
“We can actually narrow the list down even more,” the agent said. “The house in Great Falls and the car are registered to a woman; she’s eighty-six. The ones in D.C. are men, Stephen Marshall and Sohan Gupta, but they’re African American and Indian, respectively. You said your guy was a white guy. We can check out those people later just in case someone had access to their cars, but it makes sense to prioritize.”
Frank said, “So that leaves five. Two in McLean, Virginia, and three in Potomac, Maryland.”
“We’ll have to get search warrants executed,” the FBI agent said. “That’ll take some time since the circumstances” – he glanced at Frank – “are a little unusual.”
“How long?” Royce asked.
The agent checked his watch. “We’ll push hard, but tomorrow morning at the earliest.”
“Do it.”
“Should we post surveillance teams at their houses?” Frank asked.
“Might spook them,” Shaw pointed out. “And if we don’t have search warrants in place…”
“Then they could destroy evidence and there’d be nothing we could do about it,” Royce finished for him.