ALMOST AS SOON as we pulled away from the office, Maggie turned to me and asked, “What’s the latest on
Leonard Barr?”
“He’s being arraigned this morning at 10 a. m. The ADA told me I didn’t have to show up. They intend to revoke his
probation for when he threw acid on the parking-enforcement officer. That ke eps us from having to divulge
anything about our investigation.”
“That’s impressive. Are they doing it that way because it’s the smart way or are they doing it because they’re
friends of yours and doing you a favor?”
“That’s awfully cynical of you, Agent Chin.” My comment was as playful as her question.
“I see how they treat you in the city. They cut you all kinds of slack.
That’s the sort of thing I probably won’t find at the ATF. We’re too spread out to have those kinds of relationships.
Plus we get transferred to new jurisdictions all the time. I don’t know if I’ll ever have the chance to develop as many
contacts as you. I’m positive I don’t have the patience to do it.”
That made me chuckle. Maggie, like most of the people I knew who were interested in engineering and building
things, had a certain disdain for social interaction. On the one hand, I understood. But in my case, having a family as
large as mine meant that I was always engaged with people. It was natural for me to develop friendships at work. To
meet the clerks at the court or the lab technicians, even some of the local attorneys. And once I’d met and talked to
people, I’d always found it easier to come to some sort of an accord.
As we drove, Maggie told me that they’d had some leads regarding
Thomas Owens’s family members. “We may have located Owens’s uncle in Baltimore, and a brother in Chicago.
We have ATF agents going to both houses now, hoping to find them. Someone will get in touch with us pretty
soon.”
We planned to check the other addresses Maggie had come up with until we heard from the ATF agents trying to
find Owens’s family.
The first address was a tiny studio apartment in Brooklyn that Owens had rented for a summer while he was doing
an internship almost a decade ago. At least that’s how the elderly super remembered it.
The tall man, who appeared to be well into his seventies, said, “Tom was a nice boy. I haven’t seen or heard from
him since he moved out eight or nine years ago, but I remember him well. That brain of his, let me tell you, was out
of this world! I think he was finishing up his engineering degree and doing some kind of internship around here, but
he showed me a way to redirect heating in the building that is so much more efficient, I haven’t had one complaint
in all the years since he fixed it. He really was a visionary.”
While Owens had clearly made a big impression on the super, the same couldn’t be said for anyone else at the other
two addresses. No one there remembered anything about Owens. Finally, just as we got back into the car after
another fruitless attempt at finding someone who remembered Owens, Maggie’s phone rang, with a standard, boring
preset ringtone. It was clear she didn’t have kids who constantly changed her ringtone. She answered it, and all I
heard was “Okay, okay, good. Tell him to call me in two minutes.”
“What’s up?”
Maggie turned to me and said, “An agent is sitting with Owens’s brother in Chicago. The brother is willing to
cooperate with us and knows where Owens was living as of a week ago.”