“No one’s using that desk,” he said, pointing to where I was sitting. “If you want to just plug in there, there’s a socket on the floor. Captain told me to ask you to let us know before you’re going to drop by, but otherwise you’re fine for a few days.”

“I appreciate it,” I said.

“Did you talk to them about Sani’s body?” Redhouse asked.

“I did,” I said. “When we’re done with it I’ll give you a contact in D.C. to have the body shipped.”

“That’s not going to be cheap.”

“When they find out how much it is, let me know,” I said. “I’ll have it dealt with.”

“Who do I tell them is dealing with it?” Redhouse asked.

“Tell them it’s an anonymous friend,” I said.

Chapter Eleven

I WAS ON THE corner of Pennsylvania and Sixth Avenue, walking away from the Eastern Market Metro, when I heard them in Seward Square: a bunch of young, probably drunk, and almost certainly stupid dudes braying at each other about something.

That in itself didn’t interest me. Stupid, drunk young men are a fixture of any urban setting, especially in the evening hours. What got my attention was the next voice I heard, which was a woman’s, and which didn’t sound particularly happy. The calculus for that many drunk young men and a single woman didn’t strike me as especially good. So I continued on Pennsylvania into Seward Square.

I caught up with the group where the little walkway cut across the grass from Pennsylvania and Fifth. There were four dudes who had taken it on themselves to surround someone, who I assumed was the woman in question. As I got closer, I saw that the woman was also a Haden.

That changed the dynamic of what was going on a bit. It also meant these guys were drunker or more stupid than I had previously guessed. Or some combination of the two.

The woman in the center of the dude pocket was trying to shoulder her way through the group. When she did, the four would move and re-form their pocket around her. It wasn’t entirely clear what they were planning to do but it was also clear that they weren’t interested in letting her get away.

The woman moved again and the four men moved again, and that was the first time I saw the aluminum bat one of them was carrying.

Well, that was no good.

So I walked up, making as much noise as threepily possible as I did so.

One of the men caught the movement and got the attention of the others. In a minute, all four of them were looking at me, the woman still in the center of their pocket. The one with the bat was bobbing it lightly in his hand.

“Hi there,” I said. “Softball practice get out late?”

“What you want to do is just keep walking,” one of them said to me. It was clear to me that this was meant to be threatening, but he was pretty drunk, so it just came out as the drunk version of threatening, which isn’t very threatening at all.

“What I want to do is check on your friend here,” I said, and pointed to the Haden in the middle of the group. “Are you okay?” I asked her.

“Not really,” she said.

“All right,” I said, and then looked at each of the men in turn, using the second I held each one’s gaze to scan their faces and send the scans to the FBI database for identification. “Here’s my idea, then. Why don’t you let her walk away, and then you all and I can talk about whatever it is you wanted to have a conversation with her about. It’ll be fun. I’ll even buy a round for you all.” Because what you need is another drink, I thought, but did not say. I was trying to make this all nice and pretend friendly. I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to work, but it was worth it to make the attempt.

It didn’t work. “How about you fuck off, you fucking clank,” said another one of them. He was just as drunk as the first, so this was as ineffectively blustery as the first threat.

So I decided on a course of lateral motivation. “Terry Olson,” I said.

“What?” said the dude.

“Your name is Terry Olson,” I said, and then pointed to the next one. “Bernie Clay. Wayne Glover. And Daniel Lynch.” I pointed to the one holding the bat. “Although I’d bet twenty bucks that you go by Danny. And your last name is full of irony at the moment.”

“How do you know who we—” Olson began.

“Shut the fuck up, Terry,” said Lynch, thereby inadvertently confirming the identity of at least one of the four. These guys were geniuses, all right.

“He’s right, Terry,” I said. “You do have the right to remain silent. And you probably should. But to answer your question, I know who you are because I just did a facial scan of the four of you, and your information popped right up from the database I’m plugged into. It’s the FBI database. I’m plugged into that database because I’m an FBI agent. My name is Agent Chris Shane.”

“Bullshit,” Lynch said.

I ignored him. “I tried to be nice to you, but that’s not how you wanted to do this,” I said. “So why don’t we try it this way. While we’ve been standing here having our little conversation, I’ve already put in an alert to the Metro police. Their station house is just two blocks away, which is something I have to believe you didn’t know, because otherwise you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to try to bash someone here.

“So. You are going to let her”—I pointed to the woman—“come over and stand by me, and then you four are going to go home. Because if you’re still here when the cops show up, at least one of you is in trouble for underage drinking, Bernie, and at least one of you already has an assault charge on his sheet, Danny. The cops take a dim view of each.”

Three of the four looked at me uncertainly. The fourth, Lynch, I could tell was calculating his odds.

“I figure at least one of you is thinking he’s not going to get into that much trouble for taking a shot at a threep,” I said. “So this is where I remind you that D.C. law treats crimes against threeps the same as it does against human bodies. So all of you are going to be on the hook for assault. And, since it’s pretty clear to me you’re targeting this person because she’s a Haden, you’ve got a hate crime charge to go with it.

“So you just want to think about that,” I said. “While you’re thinking about that, I should mention that I’ve been recording this entire event from the minute I walked up, and that footage is already in the FBI’s servers. So far, all I have is four guys being drunk and stupid. Don’t let’s change that.”

Terry Olson and Bernie Clay stepped aside. The woman began walking toward me. As she cleared the men, Lynch let out a grunt and pulled back the bat to take a swing at her head.

Which is when I zapped him, because I had my service stunner behind my back the entire time and had him already zeroed in as the target. All I really had to do was fire when my interior reticle went red. I had him pegged as one of the “not quite clear on long-term consequences” types as soon as I had walked up, on account of there was only one idiot in attendance with a bat. He’d come out to dance. The others were just drunken wingmen.

Lynch stiffened and then fell to the ground, convulsing and vomiting. The other three men bolted. The woman knelt next to Lynch, checking him.

“What are you doing?” I asked, coming up to the two of them.

“I’m making sure he’s not aspirating his own vomit,” she said.

“What are you, a doctor?”

“As a matter of fact, yeah,” she said.

“Can you do that while I’m cuffing him?” I asked. She nodded. I cuffed him.

“Great,” I said, and stood back up. “Now I really do have to call the police.”

She looked up at me. “You hadn’t already?”

“I was pulling their data from the database and targeting this asshole,” I said. “I was a little bit busy. Why didn’t you, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“They just seemed like harmless drunks,” she said. “They came up from behind me and I didn’t think about it until they started talking to me. And I didn’t realize they were a problem until this asshole started asking me how far I thought my head would fly if he took a bat to it.”