Founders' Keeper (A David and Martin Yerxa Thriller - Book 1) Read online

  The girl realized she wanted to touch her swan, and the thought stopped her tears. She had dreamed of touching it ever since she first saw it gliding across the pond, and now she could. She reached forward with a hand that was barely the width of one of the swan’s large feathers.

  Its body felt more firm than she would have guessed, and very smooth. She stroked one spot on the swan’s wing, just as she sometimes rubbed her father’s dogs on the peaks of their large heads.

  Then she heard shouting.

  She turned and saw her brothers running toward the pond carrying small swords in their hands. Not swords, she realized as they came closer; they had fetched the saw-back machetes her daddy used for clearing the brush from around the house.

  The girl started crying almost immediately, and she screamed at her brothers to leave her swan alone. She knew that her screaming was like fuel for their wickedness, but she couldn’t help herself. Her oldest brother grabbed her by one shoulder and threw her aside. Then the boys started to hack at the swan’s body.

  The girl cried out in surprise when she saw the blood. She had never imagined what a swan’s blood would look like, but if she had imagined it, she would never have guessed it would be red. She thought of the time she had fallen on a piece of broken glass out by the rye field, and how the top of her forearm had been covered in the same glistening, ruby-colored liquid.

  Just like mine, she thought as she stared at the swan’s blood.

  The sight of it had also startled her brothers. They stopped for a moment after their first swings. But, worried about looking weak in front of each other, they began again almost immediately. They didn’t stop until their muscles grew tired.

  When they’d finished, the two boys walked back toward the house with their daddy’s tools. They were quiet now—not because they regretted what they’d done, but because they realized they would probably be punished.

  The girl sat where she’d fallen when her brother pushed her. She tried to keep her eyes out on the pond, but they wanted to look back at what remained of her swan. Most of its body was a mess, but the girl saw that her brothers hadn’t ruined the swan’s head or neck. Its beak was still orange, just like her hair, and its neck feathers were still snowy white, just like her skin—though the whiteness now was flecked with splotches and streaks of red.

  The girl had stayed kneeling by the pond for a long time, staring at the swan’s destroyed body and looking at how the blood had stained its white feathers.

  It’s so pretty, she’d thought.

  Chapter 16

  CLARENCE PERKINS BENT over the electron microscope.

  David stood near him, hands on his waist, and watched as the enormous man prepared the scraps of dermis under the microscope’s purple light. Perched on top of the tiny stool, the forensic technician’s white lab coat made his six-foot-four, 270-pound frame appear even larger. Perkins had been a defensive tackle during his undergraduate days at Virginia Tech, and David appreciated the way his massive hands deftly adjusted the intensity of the UV bulb.

  After arriving at Quantico, he and Martin had joined Perkins in forensics analysis chamber 6, or FAC-6, as the analysts called it. The room was a drab rectangle of gray on gray. Gray walls, grayer floors, brushed steel tables and equipment.

  As he waited on Perkins, David watched his father pace restlessly along the far side of the room, hands stuffed in the pockets of his windbreaker, his coffee mug momentarily abandoned on one of the tabletops.

  “The chem analysis revealed the hidden script,” Perkins said, hunching over the purple glow. “And UV light renders the writing visible to the naked eye, even without a heat source.”

  “What happened to the Hokies this year?” Martin said suddenly, his voice comically loud in the quiet lab room. The smile he flashed at Perkins was goading.

  “Can’t win ten every year,” the big man said, his eyes never leaving his microscope. “Does Temple still have a football team?”

  Martin laughed.

  Perkins tapped lightly on one of the microscope’s knobs with the tip of his index finger. “Okay, here we go,” he said, stepping off his stool and away from the microscope. “Have a look. I only have the North and South Carolina pieces for you now. Print’s still working with the Jacobsen sample.”

  He stepped aside, and David bent over the microscope. He felt the soft warmth of the UV light against his cheeks. The words were faint but legible:

  Current for the merchandise of heaven

  Seventeen Days

  “Out loud,” Martin barked, staring down at the gray floor tiles as he paced.

  David read the words, and his father stopped pacing.

  “And on the second scrap?” Martin asked.

  Perkins reached an arm across David and adjusted the lamp, bringing the words on the second section of skin into sharper relief.

  Repression will provoke rebellion

  Sixteen Days

  Martin pressed a fist to his forehead and began again to pace. “I feel like I recognize the second. Probably one of the founders.”

  “Founders of what?” Perkins asked.

  “Our country,” Martin said. He shook his head, frustrated that he couldn’t place the quote off the top of his head.

  “We’ll Google it,” David said to him, knowing how this would set him off.

  Predictably, his father scoffed. “Google. It even sounds stupid. You rely too much on machines to do your work for you, boy.”

  David turned to Perkins. “What can you tell us about the skin?”

  “Based on the pore density and hair follicle residues, I’m pretty sure it was cut from someone’s back. A man’s back. And both samples are from the same dude.”

  “Can we find out who he is?”

  “Workin’ on it. I called my boys up at CJIS. They’re trying to find a DNA match on the skin and a match on that partial print we found yesterday. Decent shot on the print, but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for the skin.”

  CJIS stood for Criminal Justice Information Services—the Bureau’s massive data hub based in the tree-blanketed hills outside of Clarksburg, West Virginia. Comprising the FBI’s criminal background check system, national evidence exchange, and automated fingerprint identification system, CJIS was the world’s largest repository of information on victims, crimes, and their perpetrators.

  “How long on the print?” Martin asked.

  Perkins shrugged. “You know that can take a while. And we only have a partial.” He folded his big arms across his chest. “We’ll have more luck if we can lift something new from the Delaware site, but right now the list of possible matches is a mile long.”

  David nodded. He knew fingerprinting was an inexact science. There were seldom “matches,” just prints with similar characteristics—closed loops instead of open whorls. You got lucky once in a while if the finger in question had a distinctive scar, but that was rare.

  “What about the SPD?” he asked.

  “SPD?” Martin said, looking from his son to Perkins.

  “Stamp-Print Database,” David said. “It’s a new NSA tool.”

  “Want to fill me in?”

  “About three years ago, all USPS sorting facilities were equipped with special stamp readers that pull fingerprints before applying a post mark. They store digital copies of the prints alongside snapshots of whatever return address is on the envelope.”

  “You’re fucking kidding me,” Martin said. “That’s legal?”

  David nodded. “Approved through an extension of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. It’s not public knowledge. It’s also not court-admissible evidence. But it can help focus an investigation, and it prevents people who’ve never been arrested from staying off our print grid.”

  Martin shook his head. “It’s government intrusion.”

  David couldn’t let that one pass. “You work for the government. You’ve never intruded on anyone?”

  Martin looked at his son. “Never without reason
able suspicion, smartass. That’s different than a blanket invasion of the public’s right to privacy, and you know it.”

  David didn’t reply to this. Instead he said to Perkins, “Nice work here, Clarence. Let us know when you have the message from the Jacobsen site.”

  “Will do.” Perkins glanced from one Yerxa to the other as though he were expecting fireworks. When he realized none were forthcoming, he turned back to his samples but stopped suddenly, slapping a hand on one of his large thighs. “Oh man, almost forgot,” he said.

  He paused to shake his head at the scraps of skin under the UV light.

  “The visible message, don’t tread on me . . . it’s written in someone’s blood.”

  Chapter 17

  IN A QUANTICO conference room filled with unoccupied, ergonomic desk chairs, Martin Yerxa sat in the lone straight-backed seat. David had watched his father carry the wooden chair down the hall from the sitting room adjacent to the elevators, drawing either knowing glances or confused stares from onlookers depending on how long the observer had been with the Bureau.

  Martin had studied engineering at Temple during his undergraduate days, and had served in the Army Corps of Engineers during the Vietnam War before finishing college and going on to earn his law degree with help from the G.I. Bill. Along with his interest in history, he was an avid tinkerer and woodworker; he had a small but well-appointed basement workshop in his Philly home, and his favorite projects were chairs. For philosophical reasons, he eschewed steel-and-synthetic “nappers”—his name for any chair that reclined and swiveled.

  “Who’s your expert?” David asked him.

  Martin stood from his chair as he finished dialing a number into the conference phone at the center of the table. He began to pace, coffee mug in hand, while he waited for an answer. “Shelby Kimball,” he said. “American History professor at Chapel Hill. Old friend.”

  When a voice came on the line, Martin shouted, “Shelby. Marty Yerxa here. Am I coming through all right?”

  The man’s accent was genteel southern; a mellow drawl smudged the edges off his consonants. “Marty, yes. You don’t have to yell, pal. I can hear you fine.”

  Martin lowered his voice, but only slightly. He introduced David and said, “Sorry to bug you, Shel, but we’ve run into a little roadblock here that we’re hoping you can help us clear.”

  Father and son had spent some time online trying to track down the sources of the hidden messages, but had no luck. Martin hadn’t been able to resist saying, “I guess Google doesn’t have all the answers.”

  “Are we even sure these are quotes?” David had asked him.

  “Pretty damn sure,” Martin had said, frowning. “And I know how we can find out.”

  From the conference phone, Shelby asked, “What kind of roadblock are we talking about?”

  “I’ve got three statements,” Martin said. “I think they’re all Revolutionary Period—Continental Congress and that era.”

  “A challenge!” Shelby said, his voice growing excited. “I love the opportunity to show off. Tell me, are there any attractive ladies in the room?”

  Martin grinned at the phone. “Not right now, but we may be able to rope one in here if you impress us.”

  “All right, fire away.”

  Martin read from the room’s dry-erase board, where each of the three quotations was written out in his blocky handwriting. “ ‘Our cause is just. Our union is perfect,’ ” he said into the phone.

  “Too easy,” Shelby said. “I can even give you the source document. Those are John Dickinson’s words, and they appear in The Declaration Upon Taking Up Arms, addressed to Great Britain and published by the Continental Congress in 1775. More or less a precursor to that more-famous declaration we’d send the Crown’s way the following year. Actually, Jefferson wrote the first draft, but Dickinson gets the credit.”

  Martin flashed David a “told you so” smirk. “Dickinson,” he repeated. “Damn, I should have remembered that.”

  Shelby laughed. “Don’t beat yourself up, pal. You’re getting old, that’s all.”

  “Go to hell,” Martin said. “Delaware delegate to the convention, am I right about that at least?”

  “Yes, sir,” Shelby said. “Also a Continental Congressman. He was a significant player among our circle of founders.”

  As he listened to his father and Shelby discuss the quotation, David was reminded of the dinnertime conversations of his childhood. Never silent for long, Martin would recall something he’d read or seen on the news that reminded him of some detail of the country’s struggle for independence, and off he’d go. With David and his mother listening—though not always with rapt attention—Martin would spin out the details of the Revolutionary War and the Continental Congress as though it were all a nursery fable, and the Founding Fathers more fairy-tale heroes than men. At least, that’s how they’d seemed to David in his father’s retelling. He knew Martin took after his own father—a man who felt a moral obligation to honor the founders of his adopted nation by learning about them and passing on his knowledge.

  And so, from these dinnertime lessons, David knew the Continental Congress had been the de-facto government of the United States before the founders agreed on a more-permanent system. He also knew the “convention” his father mentioned was the Constitutional Convention—the gathering of state delegates who had adopted America’s governing document in 1787.

  Martin stood and walked to the dry-erase board. David watched as he wrote John Dickinson’s name next to the first quotation.

  “All right, what’s next?” Shelby’s voice asked from the conference phone.

  “ ‘Repression will provoke rebellion,’ ” Martin read from the board. He walked to David’s side and put a hand on the back of his chair.

  “Oh come on, Marty. Haven’t you been reading your Tea Party newsletters?”

  “Must have missed one.”

  “Hugh Williamson,” Shelby said. “But I can’t recall the source document.”

  Martin slapped David on the shoulders and walked back to the dry-erase board. But as he wrote Williamson’s name next to the quotation, his smile faded. “Another Convention delegate,” he said. “North Carolina?”

  “Yeah, an old Tar Heel like me,” Shelby said. “How ‘bout the third?”

  “ ‘Current for the merchandise of heaven,’ ” Martin read.

  There was silence on the phone.

  “You there, Shel?” Martin asked.

  “I’m here, I’m here. Just thinking.” More silence. “Hold on a minute, Marty. Let me root around in my cave.”

  David heard drawers being opened and papers being shuffled. As he and Martin waited, there was a crisp knock on the conference room door.

  Chapter 18

  LAUREN CARNICERO ENTERED carrying a laptop and a stack of files.

  “Agents Yerxa,” she said. She flashed David a look that brought back for him their conversation on the bridge. He knew she was pleased Martin had joined them.

  “I like that shirt,” she added.

  “Pop,” he said, “this is Lauren Carnicero. She’s my second on this.”

  Martin walked around the table to shake hands with her. Not letting go of her hand, he looked at his son and said, “I was stuck working with ugly mugs like Bill Conway, and this is your second?”

  David glanced at Lauren, wondering if she’d take the bait. He knew his father tried to push people’s buttons to see how they’d react. It was his method of feeling a person out.

  “Don’t let the face fool you,” Lauren said, not loosening her grip on his hand. “When the job gets ugly, I’m adaptable.”

  Martin laughed heartily. “I like you already, Lauren.”

  She smiled and said, “Call me Butch.”

  Martin turned to his son with an amused look on his face. “This is Butch?”

  David looked at the files in her arms.

  Following his glance, she said, “I come bearing news. And gifts.” She slid a
few of the orange folders across the table to him. “By the way, we missed you last night.”

  Every Tuesday, a group of the agents in David’s section met for drinks and shoptalk at a bar near Quantico. David had never attended, but Lauren hadn’t given up trying to recruit him.

  “Missed him how?” Martin asked.

  “Some of us get together Tuesday nights for drinks.”

  “At Dunham’s?” Martin asked. When she nodded, he laughed. “That still goes on? Jesus, we did that every Tuesday when I was a field agent. That was twenty years ago.”

  “Well you’re invited next Tuesday,” she said. “Bring your son. He’s never been.”

  Martin shook his head and put his hands on David’s shoulders. “Don’t hold your breath. That’s not this guy’s scene.”

  If David was bothered by this banter, he didn’t show it. Instead he lifted from the table one of the folders Lauren had brought in, which bore the letters CITU on its cover.

  “The media reports you asked for,” she said as she watched David open the folder. “Omar said the senator’s would take a while longer considering the public nature of his job.”

  David had asked Omar Ghafari and his team to put together any information they could find on the victims that would have appeared in newspapers, online, or anywhere else in the public realm.

  Lauren heard Shelby’s rustling and looked at the conference phone. “Who’s that?” she asked.

  “Shelby Kimball,” David said. “An old Army buddy of Martin’s. He’s helping us sort out the messages, but he’s having trouble with the third.”

  Lauren took a seat at the conference table. “Perfect timing then. I stopped down at forensics. They had some interesting news on the scrap from the Jacobsen site.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  “The message was ‘A child of the people at large.’ Also, ‘Twelve days.’ ”

  As she spoke, a fresh burst of static came in over the conference line as Shelby picked up his phone and exhaled into the receiver. “All right, I’ve got it. John Rutledge. South Carolinian. Another CC delegate.”