by Jeff Deck
I picture slamming the SSA against the nearest cubicle wall, then forcing her head back and plucking out each one of those tiny chin hairs. Maybe one of them will turn out to be really long, and I’ll just keep pulling. After I’m done with the chin hairs, I’ll start with the hair on her head. One hank of it at a time. Once she’s bald, I’ll gather her hair into a pile on the desk and set it on fire. Then I’ll make her eat it while it’s still burning.
Trigger. I can’t control the trigger. And I can’t control the emotion that reacts to it. But I can control the behavior that results.
“Funny story,” I say through a smile full of teeth. “Allard is my adoptive name. I grew up with adoptive parents in Manchester. As it turns out, ‘Allard’ is a common name in the French-Canadian community. Thank you for your interest in my family background, Agent Marsters.”
Marsters stands there for another couple of beats, assessing me. And then she backs up, gives me a little more space. “Divya Benazir Allard,” she finally says. “Your father’s name is Jean-Paul Allard. Twenty-eight years in the Manchester PD. Your mother is Joy Allard, née Cahill. West High biology teacher, recently retired. They still live in the duplex on Varney Street that you grew up in.”
My anger is fading now, as hard to hold onto as an afternoon dream. “If you’ve already seen my biopic,” I say, “why bother with the pretense?”
Her eyes are small and mean, but full of cold intelligence. “We needed to assess your emotional maturity, Officer Allard. We’re given to understand that you’ve had an issue with your anger in the past.”
My jaw tightens. I try to contain my amusement at calling a string of smashed possessions, a full deck of ruined friendships and partnerships, an arrest, and a wrecked career an anger issue. Understatement of the millennium. And what’s with the royal “we”?
“But your ongoing sessions with . . .” Marsters pauses, leafs through the file she’s holding at her leisure, and then finally continues: “. . . Kathryn Bergman have clearly taught you a few helpful techniques. Laudable. We might only suggest to leave off the sarcastic touch at the end, Allard. Sarcasm still has its roots in anger.”
“What, I’m not supposed to thank people for their endearing curiosity about my ethnicity?” I say.
The woman doesn’t smile. “If we don’t master our emotions, Officer Allard, our emotions master us.”
I don’t quibble over her persistence in calling me “Officer.” It’s better than “Detective,” I suppose. “Is it all right if I ask why brought me here you did, Master Yoda? Or do you have any further wisdom to share first?”
Marsters snaps her file shut. She glances at Jeong before speaking again. “Has Special Agent Jeong mentioned anything about what we do here?”
I shrug. “Not really. He’s been a good dog, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“This RA differs from the others under Boston’s jurisdiction in one key regard,” Marsters says. “Are you familiar, Allard, with the past initiative of the United States government known as Project Stargate?”
I find that staring into those cold eyes has worn me out. I picture a tall drink, an escape. But I also have my pride, and my curiosity. Soon, hopefully, this will all be over. “I don’t know. Might’ve read about it at some point. Is that when the CIA was trying to give American soldiers the power of ESP? To spy on the Russians from afar, or something?”
Marsters gives me a half-nod. “That was only the barest beginning of the experiments that fell under the umbrella of Stargate. The operation code-named GRILL FLAME gave the CIA remote viewing into the hostage situation in Tehran. And the FBI got a large piece of the Stargate pie to explore domestic applications for what might be termed paranormal or parapsychological abilities.”
“Mmkay.” This is what these folks get up to when they don’t have an extortioner to bust? And to think I’d felt silly daydreaming about elves and devils.
“What’s most germane here is—based on decades of intense and highly classified research, the FBI assigned extra responsibilities and resources to resident agencies in certain geographic locations. Locations with . . . strategic potential, as determined by what you might call para-data miners. Most of the locations never panned out. Glitches in the data, evidence turned to phantoms, or simple human error. However—Portsmouth never dropped off that map.”
Strategic potential? I have no idea what she’s talking about, but I nod too. “Portsmouth’s a real special place.”
“You have no conception of just how special,” Marsters says. She clears her throat—apparently she’s not going to tell me about all that special stuff at this early point in our relationship. “We have an interest in finding out just what happened to that boy. Tsoukalas. The Portsmouth police are not inclined to be helpful in this matter. Quite the opposite, for reasons unknown to us. You, however, will be helpful. And you’ll tell us everything you know.”
“Will I?” I say. “That doesn’t sound like me. A little too generous.”
“Here is the bargain we propose,” the SSA goes on, as if I haven’t spoken. Clearly she’s sick of my shit already. “You proceed with your informal investigation. You feed all of your findings to us, via Special Agent Jeong. In return, we will use our considerable power to clear your way. We’ll keep your old colleagues off your back. And . . . we will tell you everything we know about the murder of Hannah Ryder.”
I suspected they would use you as a bargaining chip. But it still hits me in the stomach when she says it. It’s the first time—if you don’t count the not-so-sly allusion by Anonymous Caller—that I’ve heard someone outside my own head call your death a murder. Not an accident, and not a fucking suicide. A murder.
I think back to the Portsmouth PD patronizing me, putting me off, my old boss Chief Akerman cutting me loose just when my questions got too uncomfortable. “Not inclined to be helpful,” indeed. Maybe SSA Marsters is just talking out of her ass and manipulating me, but my anger takes the bait. I fume at the cops who’d dared pretend to be my friends. And the Portsmouth Porthole, eagerly dismissing me as a goddamn loon.
I’m trembling. I need to smash something.
Instead, I close my eyes, and then I open them again and I say to Marsters in a perfectly even tone: “Why don’t you investigate Tsoukalas’s death yourself?”
In the dimness of the office, it’s hard to read the supervisory special agent’s face. “We may be located here, but—we are not part of this community. You are. Even if you feel like an exile, you still have far greater access in Portsmouth than we do. Our specialty is . . . force. Yours must be persuasion.”
So she basically thinks I’m a detective after all. I appreciate the vote of confidence. But I’ll have to stretch myself to fit the role I never got the chance to earn.
“Do we have a deal, Allard?” Marsters adds sharply. “Our time is short.”
I’d be an idiot to refuse this offer, as long as I’m already determined to wade into ethical murk in my pursuit of the truth. But something about this whole arrangement makes my skin crawl. Why would the FBI care so much about a dead community college kid? What’s their stake?
I sigh, run my hand through my hair, and decide that their motivation is not my problem. My self-appointed duty is simply the following: to find out why two wrist-implanting fitness nuts met their respective ends.
“Fine,” I say. “But I hope you don’t mean to have Agent Jeong babysit me the whole time. I don’t deal well with babysitters.”
“I’ll just check in with you from time to time,” says Jeong. He’s got an easy grin. “You can stay up as late as you want, and even watch scary movies. Best babysitter ever, right?”
Marsters turns from me without acknowledging our bargain and walks away. I guess that’s all I’m going to get. Ethan Jeong smirks at me. “How about I escort you out, Divya?”
And so ends my brief visit to the FBI resident agency on Daniel Street. The moon is out, though clouds keep scudding across it. Jeong parts from me
in the parking lot with just a few words: “We’ll be in touch.”
I notice that my car is now in the lot. The keys are on the front seat. One of the other SAs must have pulled re-parking duty. I get in and adjust the seat to my liking.
It’s late. I’m no longer thinking clearly, as I’m just not used to the second shift anymore. I’ve gotten soft working security for the nine-to-fivers. I should probably put my adventures to bed and start fresh tomorrow.
But—I’m worried about Akerman’s cleanup crew lapping me while I sleep. Right now I have a significant advantage over them: the DVD.
I need to get to Graham’s pair of lovers before the police do.
5
For the first time, I think about how my actions tonight could affect my day job.
It’s a fleeting thought, but it leaves me rattled. After I cursed out Chief Akerman, and subsequently the entire Portsmouth Police Department, he fired me. He may have had no other option, but at the time I just took it as further evidence of his corruption. I spent months prying where I shouldn’t have pried, scrabbling for scraps of information and alienating my friends and former colleagues, telling anyone who would listen that the department was rotten to the core. Either they didn’t care what happened to you—or they were covering up the truth!
My hobbies during that period included raging at the TV and getting shitfaced, sometimes simultaneously. I shunned the attractions that made tourists cream themselves over Portsmouth, turning away from the waterfront charms of Prescott Park and the isle of New Castle. I preferred to drown myself at State Street Saloon, or the Portsmouth Book and Bar if I was feeling a little fancier.
I only broke the cycle once I started actually listening to my court-mandated therapist, Kathryn Bergman. (You would like her, I think.) By that time, I was down to pocket change for my savings. If I could no longer pay even the cheap rent of my apartment, I’d end up on the street. Pretty much nobody in town wanted to hire me, not with my reputation. My parents kept urging me to move back to Manchester, move in with them. But that felt like it would be the final nail in my already decaying ambition.
Then someone took a chance on me. Jacobi Investment Advisors actually responded to my resume when I applied for a security opening in their relatively new offices downtown. Mr. Baldini, the head of security, was willing to hear me out. It turns out I had helped a friend of his while I was on the force. Mr. Baldini was a recovering alcoholic, and he’d learned the value of forgiveness.
I’ve been a loyal employee of JIA for the months since. Now, if I do anything to embarrass them, I’ll be letting down not just the company (which I care little for), but also Mr. Baldini (whom I do care very much about).
So I resolve, now, to be more careful than I’ve been so far. It’s not just my battered reputation on the line. What do they say, no man is an island? All islands are connected to the earth, somewhere under the water. Even New Castle’s got bridges to the mainland.
It’s too late at night to look for Wallace and Neria at Great Bay Community College. Most likely, they’re home at their apartment off Islington Street. But I find myself driving past their street and pulling into the Hannaford shopping plaza.
I know! Technically I’m still legally barred from going anywhere near the Tenacious Trainers gym. And I don’t know what I expect to find there. I’ve been down this road before. But the problem then was that I tried to break into the place. I skipped the persuasion step completely. If I could just talk to someone—nicely, politely . . .
It’s supposed to be a 24-hour gym. But the front door’s locked. There are no windows to peer inside. Knocking yields no response.
And then I pick up on a coppery smell.
Maybe others would miss it. It’s faint. But I smelled blood many times during my short career as a police officer, and there’s no mistaking it now. Where is it coming from?
The gym is an end unit in the plaza; I walk around to the back. The smell gets stronger. I see a dumpster in the back of the place—and a pool of blood on the pavement. Hmm.
I check for my gun, and then remember that it’s not there. I only get to carry while I’m working at JIA. I whirl, looking for assailants. That blood is fresh. I see no one in the darkness.
Having assured myself that I won’t get jumped, I open up the dumpster. The only trash inside this dumpster is a corpse.
I scramble away and the lid slams down. I fumble for my flashlight. Then I summon the will to open the lid again and shine the light down on the mound of stinking flesh inside.
The face is unmistakable, battered though it is. I’ve seen that face earlier tonight in photos (and, memorably, in a video). It’s Graham Tsoukalas.
What the fuck?
Graham Tsoukalas is supposed to be dead on Peirce Island, not in a dumpster behind the Tenacious Trainers gym.
How did the cops fuck up the body ID on the island?
Okay. I’ve found a body; I should call it in to the Portsmouth PD. But—I’m haunted by Christine Figueroa’s warning. Akerman showed up at the Porthole office to clam them up about this case. Just like with you. No, the last thing I should do is surrender custody of this body to the likely compromised police force.
I sigh and hoist myself into the dumpster to take a closer look at the body. Graham’s face has taken a noticeable beating. His neck is twisted at an unnatural angle, which I don’t think was caused by being deposited into a dumpster. Then again, I’m not a pathologist.
Unremarkable clothes: jeans, sweater, a barn jacket, unlaced hiking boots on his feet. Wait. I push up his jacket and sweater sleeves. I want to get a good look at this “gadget.” I never got the chance to examine yours.
Both of Graham’s wrists are unblemished and unimplanted. No sign of a biometric device in either one—nor any sign of such a device having been removed. No scars, no stitches.
“Fuck,” I whisper. Anonymous Caller manipulated me. He made me think Graham had a link to you, just so I’d investigate his friend’s death.
But . . . No. Milly and Ulrich saw a gadget in Graham’s wrist. Ulrich was the one to call it a “gadget.” And Mrs. Tsoukalas confirmed that Graham had the implant. It’s disappeared. Someone took it. Somehow. Though it’d take someone with expert surgical skills to leave the skin this smooth and seemingly unbroken.
That sound right to you?
I ignore the impossibility of this detail. I’ll have to come back to it. What else? I check his pockets and they’re empty. His fingernails are clean, no sign of dirt. In fact, except for that nasty beating and neck wound, Graham looks pretty spanking spotless. No stab wounds, nothing that would bleed much.
So whose blood is on the ground?
I climb out, slam the lid down, and ponder what to do next. Graham isn’t supposed to be here. Who moved his fucking body, and how? Akerman couldn’t be this slimy, could he?
As I walk back to the lot, I put in a quick call to Agent Jeong. I’ve promised to keep the FBI in the loop, after all. But I don’t have to show them my whole hand, do I? I’d rather keep them one step behind. I would hate to see Marsters bigfoot me just as I’m closing in on the truth.
“Yes?” Jeong says.
“Found a body,” I say. “In the dumpster behind the Tenacious Trainers gym, in the Islington plaza. You’ll want to see it. And you’ll want to secure it too, before the Portsmouth PD comes sniffing around.”
“Another body? Wait, who—”
I hang up. Feeling like a jerk, but I need to keep the lead.
6
Unlike me, you grew up in Portsmouth. You had a genuine local pride, too. Despite all that false gods talk, you loved to hang out in the shops and restaurants downtown, and you loved to watch the people go by. The people you knew. You made me feel like a local, too. I always appreciated that. I loved to see this city through your eyes.
Wallace Riggs and Neria Francoeur live together in an apartment building in a neighborhood not far from where you used to live. That’s why I’m thinking of you wh
en I arrive. It’s just off Islington Street, not far from the plaza where I just found Graham Tsoukalas’s body. It’s not anywhere near the water, not a target for luxury condo development yet (though they are creeping westward), but I’m sure the rents are still jacked up way beyond what they ought to be.
I’ve pulled up a distance away, like before at the Tsoukalas household, so as not to announce myself. Now that I’m not a cop anymore, I have the luxury of being a sneak. I approach the house quietly and cautiously. Wallace and Neria live on the bottom floor of this four-story house. I can see lights on; I know they’re home.
Graham called his DVD “Backup.” Was he blackmailing his friends? Hmm. Could be a motive.
I creep to the side of the house, to peer through the windows and see what I’m in for. I wish I had a gun, just in case. But I can’t carry around the one I use for my security job. I’m on high alert because these kids could be responsible for making not just one but two people into corpses.
The lights wink out. The plan I’ve cooked up in my head dissipates when the front door of the house opens. The two college students come out clutching backpacks. It’s hard to see many other details in the dark. They’ve got their heads close together, and I can’t pick up what they’re saying, but they definitely sound distressed.
I recalibrate my plan. I don’t have the authority to arrest them or stop them in any way. If I call in Jeong and company for backup, these kids will be gone by the time the agents arrive.
My best bet is to follow them. There’s value in seeing where they end up. I hope they aren’t going far, though, because I’m pretty damned tired.
They haven’t noticed me yet, so I take a step sideways into the nearest driveway and conceal myself behind a porch. I watch them as they throw their backpacks into a red sedan parked on the street. As they get in the car, I sneak back over to my own ride. I start it up and follow them at a discreet distance.