Murder at the FBI Read Online Free PDF Page B

us.
    “However, as of this moment, the cause of death has
not
been established. From what we’ve ascertained so far, Special Agent George L. Pritchard, a veteran of seventeen years of faithful and distinguished service to the bureau, was the victim of an unusual and unfortunate accident.”
    “Accident?” It was a chorus from the press.
    Gormley held up his hands. “If you’ll allow me to finish, Mr. Nostrand will be happy to accept alimited number of questions.” He waited until the noise had subsided, then completed his statement: “Special Agent Pritchard is the twenty-seventh special agent of the FBI to have died in the line of duty. The director, all who knew and served with Special Agent Pritchard, and I wish to extend our deepest sympathies to his family, and to assure the American public that it will know every detail of his death at the appropriate time. Thank you. You may now ask your questions of Mr. Nostrand.”
    “I’d like to ask
you
a question, Mr. Gormley,” a reporter from
Washington Weekly
shouted.
    “Sorry, but I have another commitment. Thank you again.”
    Most of the questioners demanded to know why the word
accident
was being used when, in fact, 200 tourists had seen Pritchard “gunned down” on the firing range.
    Nostrand’s answer: “We are under the impression at this early stage of the investigation that Agent Pritchard died of causes other than the firing-range shots. The tourists you refer to witnessed the unfortunate event from a distance and were not in a good position to see what transpired.”
    The questioning continued along the same lines, and Nostrand’s answers never varied. The final question he took was from a radio reporter who wanted to know the name of the special agent in charge of the Pritchard investigation.
    “I’m not at liberty to divulge that,” said Nostrand. “I can say that he’s one of the bureau’s best, a skilled investigator. Thank you. We’ve prepared a release, which is available to each of you as youleave. You’ll find in it background information on the deceased.”
    The Ranger team worked into the night. Food was ordered in. A second computer operator arrived and joined Barbara Twain in entering the names from the nonbureau list. Simultaneously, whatever background information was in the main computer on each of the names was retrieved and printed out in the bureau’s hard-copy room a floor below.
    Lizenby met with Saksis, and with Special Agents Joe Perone and Jake Stein, in the “bedroom.”
    Perone was a tall, muscular forty-year-old with heavy, sleepy eyes, a beak of a nose, and thick, black curly hair. He’d been an accountant before joining the bureau. Stein was considerably shorter and thinner. He’d been a lawyer before applying to the FBI. His brown hair was thin; most of it was gone from the front and top of his head. He wore round, tortoise-shell glasses; he’d barely met the bureau’s requirements for corrected vision when he’d joined seven years ago, and he was constantly worried that one day his eyesight would deteriorate below the minimums of 20/200 corrected to 20/20 in one eye, and 20/40 in the other. Unlike Perone, who had a reputation as a tough field investigator, Stein was better known for his keen analytic abilities, and for being perpetually bemused at the bureaucracy in which he functioned.
    “First of all,” Lizenby said, “we’ve got to put together an immediate suspect list.”
    Stein laughed and looked at Saksis. “How many names were on that outsider list?” he asked.
    “About three hundred.”
    “Not bad for openers.”
    “Gormley wants a viable list by noon tomorrow.”
    “That’s ridiculous,” said Perone.
    “Tell
him
,” Lizenby said. “Look, that list of three hundred has to have on it a core of people whose dealings with Pritchard can be turned into a motive.”
    Stein removed his glasses, blew on them, and carefully polished the lenses with his handkerchief. He said, “Everybody who