Edge

directors, is in fact the most efficient way to approach a suspect. It’s all about intimidation.
    We tugged on door levers and jumped out, all our jackets fluttering in the wet breeze. I was limping—the toe still stung like crazy. DuBois and I moved in slowly, behind the eight armed tactical officers, who were sprinting into Yu’s open garage, brandishing weapons.
    “On the ground, FBI! FBI!”
    Screaming is standard operating procedure too. Intimidation, again.
    In a moment the two men were on their bellies, hands bound behind them with Monadnockrestraints. Other agents entered the house, searched it and then returned, calling, “Clear.”
    Claire and I approached the two suspects, now being helped to their feet.
    One of the men stared at me with a gaze of disbelief that immediately turned to pure hated. Sandy Alberts, Senator Lionel Stevenson’s chief of staff, spat out, “Corte? I . . . Corte?”
    His partner, the muscle, was a pro, probably connected with the same outfit as the people Pogue and I had engaged in the facility on Route 15. He simply grimaced and said nothing.
    Freddy, the senior official law enforcer among us, said, “Mr. Alberts, you’re under arrest for the kidnapping of a Fairfax County resident, Amanda Kessler, yesterday, and conspiracy counts, involving the homicide of a federal agent.”
    Alberts gasped. I don’t think I’d ever heard anything other than a threatened animal make a noise like that. “But . . .”
    Agents searched his partner’s slacks and jacket but came up with no ID. “You going to tell me who you are?” Freddy asked him.
    The man was completely silent.
    The senior agent shrugged. He said to an associate, “We’ll get his prints, track him down. Conspiracy for him too. We’ll add more goodies later.” Freddy then turned to Alberts, saying, “There’ll be state charges too but those are Virginia’s. You’ll be hearing from the commonwealth’s attorney about them.”
    A crime scene tech was inventorying the contents of Alberts’s shoulder bag, which had been upended on the floor of Yu’s garage. I too looked over the stash. Documents and pictures and someplastic bags that would have physical evidence—probably some strands of Amanda Kessler’s hair or something else with her DNA on it. Alberts and his thug had come here to plant the clues to suggest that Professor Yu was the primary who had hired Henry Loving.
    “Sandy,” I said. “Senator Stevenson. Let’s talk about him for a minute.”
    Desperately the aide said, “I don’t know what you mean.”
    Freddy snorted a laugh.
    I said, “We know everything.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “Well, let’s start with: We know that the senator likes lecturing at schools. We know he likes the company of young ladies.”
    Alberts’s eyes grew wide. Then he recovered and looked down.
    I continued, “Sometime in the past year Stevenson met a student after a speaking engagement—at a community college in Northern Virginia. Her name was Susan Markus. He thought she was a college student. But she actually was in high school. Sixteen years old. A classmate of Amanda Kessler’s.”
    As duBois had pieced things together, it seemed to be the same event that I’d read about in my research on Stevenson: the community college where he’d given his popular “rule of law” speech.
    I told Alberts, “Whether he invited her to his office or a motel or the back of his limo, we don’t know.”
    “Yet,” Freddy added. “We don’t know yet.”
    “But we’re pretty sure there was some . . . inappropriate behavior on the senator’s part.”
    “That’s a lie!” But there was no conviction behind Alberts’s protest.
    I said, “The senator can’t be stupid. He didn’t think she was underage. He met her at a community college and he probably assumed she was a student there, not a high school girl. In any case, whatever happened was statutory rape at the minimum. Amanda Kessler was a volunteer at her school’s self-harm prevention program. Susan was depressed about what happened and she came in to get some help. Amanda was the girl she talked to. Susan told her she’d been involved with an older man and he was pressuring her not to say anything about the incident. Amanda set Susan up with an adult counselor but before she went to the appointment she killed herself. Amanda took the death hard and planned to devote her blog to the girl’s suicide, looking into why she killed herself,