Threat Level Black

“They don’t know what they’re talking about,” said Kowalski. “They’re covering their butts because they blew it so badly on Korea. They didn’t realize the country was going to collapse the way it did.”

“What do you think, Andy?” asked Macklin. “Connected to the E-bomb case, or a red herring?”

“Definitely not a red herring,” said Fisher.

“So, what is it?”

“Damned if I know.”

“We got to break this,” said Macklin.

“I agree,” said Kowalski.

“I guess it’s time for desperate measures,” said Fisher.

“What are they?” asked Macklin as he got up out of his chair.

“Time to get a full night’s sleep,” said Fisher.

As a general rule, sleep didn’t particularly agree with Fisher, nor had it ever led directly to any particular insight, much less helped solve a case. But during the eight hours he stayed away, the others followed up a number of possible leads, including Mrs. DeGarmo’s phone bills.

There were calls to an Internet provider, and Macklin was now following up with a subpoena to see if they could come up with data on the account. The intelligence wizards had their fingers dancing on the computer keyboards, trying to pull up data from a myriad of sources.

Fisher stuck to the old-fashioned methods. He signed out the soil bag-just the bag, not the dirt-from one of the heated garages that was serving as the task force’s evidence locker. Then he took Metro North to Grand Central and hopped the subway to Queens, walking to the apartment from Grand Street before exploring the neighborhood back around Steinway. It took three tries before he found what he was looking for: a hardware store that sold Agfarma potting soil.

“I’m looking for someone who bought a bag of potting soil probably about two months back,” said Fisher. The store owner listened as he described Faud Daraghmeh, Mrs. DeGarmo’s tenant.

The store owner shrugged, as Fisher knew he would.

“This guy would have bought a whole bunch of Clorox bottles, probably at the same time,” the FBI agent told him.

“Like a dozen?”

“About that,” said Fisher.

“That I remember. He cleaned me out.”

“How did he carry them?”

“Had one of those two-wheel folding carts. You know the kind? Made two trips.”

“You wouldn’t have a name, would you?”

“You don’t have to give a name to buy bleach.”

“Maybe he used a credit card,” suggested Fisher.

The man went to his computer. His inventory program allowed him to search transactions, and he was able to come up with the date of the purchase: February 23. But apparently he had paid cash.

“There’s a couple of other times-twice, actually-when someone bought a lot of bleach,” said the store owner. “One of them is a credit card. Both in February.”

Fisher took the account number and the dates. There was nothing to tie the credit card transaction to Faud, however, which meant getting a subpoena to check that credit card account was highly unlikely. He walked back to the apartment, hoping inspiration would strike him somewhere on the way.

As usual, it didn’t.

Mrs. DeGarmo had gone to stay with her granddaughter on Long Island. Fisher went first to the detail watching the house from a car across the street and asked for the key and a volunteer.

“Volunteer for what?”

“I want to look for a receipt in some bags,” he told them.

The other detective, who obviously hadn’t seen Mrs. DeGarmo’s pantry, got out of the car.

“Jesus,” said the man when he opened the pantry door. “You sure there’s not a body in here?”

“If there is, it’s not our case,” said Fisher. He went upstairs and was still studying Faud’s closets when the detective came up with a collection of receipts. Unfortunately, they didn’t include any of the transactions involving bleach.

But there was one with the same credit card number.

“Thin,” said Macklin when Fisher showed it to him and laid out the logic.

“Come on. I’ve built whole cases out of weaker links. All we need here is a subpoena.”

“I don’t know, Andy. You sure this isn’t the landlady’s credit card?”

Fisher had naturally checked that first but let the potential slight to his common sense pass without comment.

“Your theory is that he used the credit card twice?” said Macklin.

“My theory is he used it more than twice,” said Fisher. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth checking.”

As it turned out, the credit card had only been used four other times: once more at the hardware store to buy twenty-eight dollars’ worth of mouse poison, once at a nearby florist to buy a forty-eight-dollar bouquet, and twice for cash advances at an ATM.

Much more interestingly, the account had been stopped as the result of an investigation into identity theft by the FBI.

Fisher got a list of other account numbers and transactions and gave it to Macklin, who passed it over to the task force members tracking down the other credit card data. If time allowed, they’d try and run down everyone who had used a phony card.

That looked to be quite some time. There were over a thousand accounts.

“Maybe if we just look at the purchases in New York City,” suggested Fisher.