Free Back Blast by Mark Greaney Page A

he doing on a canvass if he hasn’t even looked at the scene yet?”
    The cop did not answer. He looked a bit uncomfortable, but he also looked resolute. Andy knew he could whine about it a little more, but he also knew he
wasn’t
getting in that house right now.
    He noticed a flashlight’s beam shining through a small opening in a boarded-up front window. There was definitely someone inside. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    Mike turned away. “Man, go talk to Rauch.”
    —
    A ndy found Detective Rauch five minutes later, a half block away, stepping down from the stoop of a duplex. From the look of him he hadn’t gotten any good information from anyone inside.
    “Hey, Bobby. How’s your night going?”
    Bobby Rauch was a wiry, thin, and balding fifty-year-old who always looked like he needed a sandwich more than he needed the cigarettes he constantly smoked. He kept walking as he said, “It’s goin’, Shoal.”
    “How come you’re not over there at the murder? Seen ten thousand, seen ’em all?”
    Rauch took the young reporter by the arm and turned him away from the duplex, and together they started walking up the sidewalk towards the house next door. He said, “Do me a favor and go back over the river. Come back in the morning.”
    Andy looked at his watch. In a tone that was much more good-natured than smart-ass, he said, “Twelve fifty-eight a.m. It’s morning. Here I am.”
    Rauch sighed. “Sorry, but I can’t let you get any closer to that scene.”
    “What’s the deal? You got a dead celeb in there or something?” Andy half chuckled as he said it, but he turned quickly serious when he saw Detective Rauch just give him an uncomfortable look.
    “Oh man.” Andy got excited quickly. The prospect of this being a
real
story made him salivate. “Like a congressman’s kid? Who is it?”
    Rauch shook his head. “Nah, nothing like that. Just some white trash dealers, from what they tell me.”
    “Then what the hell is going on?”
    Rauch stopped walking in the dark, and he leaned in closer, causing Andy to recoil at first. Quickly the
Post
reporter realized the detective wanted to whisper something. As weird as this was, Andy leaned in himself.
    Rauch said, “Spooks.”
    “Come again?”
    “There’s a bunch of spooks in there. They won’t let us in till they are finished looking around.”
    “What do you mean ‘spooks’? Like, CIA?”
    Rauch shrugged. “They didn’t say that. But I was army, and they aren’t military intel. I ran into a few CIA when I was working Vice. A couple of guys in trench coats show up, not spit-shined like Bureau types, more scotch breath and chewed fingernails. They flash some general-looking Homeland Security credos and push past the PD like they own the fucking place. Same deal tonight, except one of the guys is a serious-looking woman in a trench coat.” Rauch shrugged his narrow shoulders inside his raincoat. “They’re
definitely
spooks.”
    Rauch turned and looked back at the house, and Andy did the same, taking in the dilapidated property from a distance.
    “This isn’t exactly Embassy Row,” Andy said. “What are they doing
here
?”
    Rauch lit a cigarette, shielding the flame from the misty breeze. “In true spook fashion, they didn’t volunteer much information about their motives.”
    “What else do you know?”
    “Just what the responding officers and the EMTs said. Two DOA. One with his head blown half off from a rifle, the other skewered with some kinda ninja sword.”
    “Damn. And the injured?”
    “They transported four to Medstar Trauma. All Aryan Brotherhood. One dude took three AK rounds, another’s got a busted face, a third has a concussion and possible neck trauma, and some skank took two to the legs. I’ll go interview them as soon as I am allowed in to see my crime scene.” The annoyance was evident in Rauch’s voice.
    “On the scanner they said it was one guy who did all this.”
    “That’s what the injured woman told