Senior Agent James Walsh arrived on the scene after I did. No Betsey Cavalierre, though. I went up to Walsh. He and I had gotten friendly over the past couple of weeks, but he seemed distant tonight. He didn't like what was going on here either. He'd been called late too.
"Where's Senior Agent Cavalierre?" I asked.
"She had a couple days off. I think she's visiting a friend in Maryland. You know this Mitchell Brand?" he asked.
"I know enough about him. He'll probably be heavily armed if he's up there. He apparently has a new girlfriend named Theresa Lopez. She lives in the project. Lopez has three kids. I know her by sight."
"That's really great," Walsh said and shook his head, rolled his eyes. "Three kids, their mommy, and an armed bank-robbing suspect."
"You got it. Welcome to DC, Agent Walsh. Anyway, Brand could have been part of the team that struck Metro Hartford He could be the Mastermind. We have to go get him."
I met with the raid team at an OP, an observation point, in a nearby building. The OP was a studio apartment used by Metro narcotics detectives assigned to the East Capitol Dwellings project. I had been in the apartment a few times before. This was my neighborhood.
A team of eight of us would go into the sixth-floor apartment to take down Mitchell Brand. Eight was more than enough; there's only safety in numbers up to a point.
As the team checked weapons and put on Kevlars, I stared out on to the streets. Sodium-vapor streetlights created a yellow fuzziness down below. What a bad scene. Even with this much police presence in the neighborhood, the drug game continued. Nothing could stop it. I watched a brazen team of lookouts and steerers selling crack on the far corner, beyond the projects. An addict approached, quick-stepping, his head down. A local fool is a familiar sight to me. I turned away from the drug deal as if it weren't happening.
I began to talk to the team," Mitchell Brand is wanted for questioning in the robbery of a First Union in Falls Church. He could definitely be our link to whoever is behind the robberies. This is the best suspect we've come up with so far. He could be the Mastermind.
"As best we can tell, Brand is up in the girlfriend's apartment. She's a new honey for him. Detective Sampson will pass around a standard layout for a one-bedroom in the building. You should know that inside the one-bedroom we may find Brand, his girlfriend, and her three children aged two to six."
I turned to Agent Walsh. Two of his agents were part of the go team. He had nothing to add, but he told his men, "The Washington police will act as the primary at the apartment. We will be backup in the hallway and going into the girlfriend's apartment. That's about it," he said.
"Okay, let's move out," I said to everybody. "Everybody use extreme care. Everything we know about Brand says he's dangerous and will be heavily armed."
"He was Special Forces, army," John Sampson added. "How's that for whipped cream on shit?"