Jeanie was quiet for so long, Jess thought the call might have dropped, but eventually she said, “Did you know I didn’t always want to be an FBI agent?”
“No,” Jess said, unsure why she was telling her this now.
“I was an English major when Paul and I met. I loved poetry. I could happily read it all day. My plan was to be a high-school English teacher so I could get my fill of poetry and still have time to spend with all the children we were going to have. We wanted four at least.”
Even through the phone Jess could feel her sadness. Jeanie’s life hadn’t turned out the way she had planned either.
Jeanie sighed. “But then of course we found out we couldn’t have children and I no longer needed the summers off because there was no one for me to take care of, so I stopped reading poetry and I started thinking about how my life could have meaning again. I found the FBI and it healed me in ways I never imagined, so I threw myself into my career.”
Jess stared down at her bloodstained bandage, not sure what to say, or why Jeanie was telling her this.
“When I got my first big promotion, Paul gave me the sweetest gift. It was a framed copy of my favorite poem. I still have it in my office at work. It’s called ‘We Are Many’ by Pablo Neruda. Have you ever read it?”
“No.”
“You should. It’s beautiful, everyone should read it. It’s about how we aren’t one thing or another but different people at different times, and none of them are more valid than any other. We are all lots of people over the course of our lives, even throughout the course of the day. We are strong and courageous and weak and cowardly and kind and vindictive. They are all the real us. We need all the parts to make us whole. What I’m trying to say in perhaps a very clumsy manner is… well… I’ve see the photos—all of them—and they aren’t you, not all of you. You are so much more than your mistakes. Do not let anyone ever tell you that that is all you are because you are so much more.”
Jess tried to speak but she couldn’t.
“I’ve known you a long time and I have never regretted advocating for your appointment. I saw something in you the first time I met you. You were so young and so timid then but I knew you had fight in you and I was right. No one fights harder for victims than you. You gave me back Levi’s memory. The Founding Fathers stole him from me and then they stole his memory but you gave it back.”
“I’m sorry I couldn’t bring them to justice.”
“Justice will happen. I believe that the same way I believe I will see Levi again,” Jeanie said with absolute certainty.
Not for the first time, Jess wished she had something to believe in, something bigger than herself to hold onto, because right now she didn’t feel like anywhere near enough. But she didn’t believe. Justice was not something that was given by a magnanimous creator, it was something that had to be fought for. “Are you still in DC? You need to get out of here. Go to Utah.”
“We’re on our way. I wanted to make sure you’re leaving too. It’s not safe for you here either, Jessica.”
“Yeah, I know.”
There was nothing more to say so Jess said goodbye, hung up the phone, and switched it off completely. She bent her knees and pulled her legs tight against her chest, folding in on herself. She wanted to be small, to disappear.
Jamison knocked on the bedroom door. She looked up when he came in. He stood in the doorway with Stan by his side. The dog followed him around everywhere. If she left, Stan wouldn’t mind or even notice as long as he had Jamison.
He came in and handed her a glass of water and a bottle of ibuprofen. “I got stuff to change your bandage.”
“Thank you.”
“We need to keep an eye on it. You don’t want to get an infection.”
She nodded. “The news is saying this was a suicide attempt. Some shitty network psychologist was speculating that I created the suicide game because I want to die but I’m too much of a coward to do it. And he said I targeted boys because I was secretly jealous of my father’s victims because they got all of his attention.” She tried to open the childproof bottle but she couldn’t with her bandaged arm.
Jamison took the bottle from her and opened it, pressing his thumb through the foil to break the final seal. “Shit, Jessie. Why are you watching that?”
“How could I not? You would too if people were saying you were a homicidal pervert with daddy issues. He actually used those words.”
“When this is over, you can sue the network. You’ll never have to work again, but right now, you need to get out of DC. I know there is no way in hell you would go to your mom’s but you need to go somewhere.”
She took four tablets and swallowed them with a swig of water. He didn’t get it; no one did. This wasn’t just a job for her. It was her life, her absolution, and her punishment, all rolled into one. She couldn’t not be an FBI agent. It was all she had. “There is talk of bringing federal charges against me for the suicide game.”
“We can deal with that later. If you don’t want to go to Texas—” he paused for a second like he wasn’t sure how to finish the sentence “—come with me.”
Her mouth dropped open. She couldn’t keep the surprise off her face. He was only offering because he thought it was the only way to keep her alive, but still he was offering, which probably shocked him as much as it did her. “I don’t want to go to Alabama.” There were a million reasons for her to say no but that was all she could think to say.
“No, neither do I. We can go to California, stay there until this blows over… and then see what happens.”
She sucked in a sharp breath. Why did he have to be such a thoroughly decent person? She hadn’t done anything to deserve it but he was willing to look past the hurt and regret between them because he thought it was the right thing to do. She’d nearly killed him and yet he was still here offering to help her. Part of her wanted to say yes, to depend on someone else to get her through this, but she couldn’t. They couldn’t outrun this, and even if they could, she couldn’t outrun herself. She’d caused this, the choices she’d made. “This won’t blow over. It will always be hanging above my head. I won’t ever be able to exonerate myself: they won’t ever bring charges because if they did, there would be another investigation and it would give me a chance to tell the real story. They’re too smart for that.”
“Come away with me, Jessie. We can get away from all this. We both need a fresh start.”
She looked away. He had to see he would never have a fresh start with her. He deserved more, something better than anything she could offer. “I can’t.”
“Why? Why can’t you? What’s keeping you here?”
“I can’t leave it like this. I’ve lost everything—”
“No, you haven’t. Stop being such a goddamn fatalist. You’re always saying things are going to turn to shit, and when they do, you use it as proof that you’re right. But you know what, your life is shit because you want it to be. You don’t want to be happy, do you?”
She didn’t even know what happy felt like anymore. She just wanted the chance to keep going. Happy didn’t enter the equation.
“No, answer me. Are you scared to be happy because you think you don’t deserve it?”
“I don’t want to have this conversation right now.”
“You never want to have this conversation or any meaningful conversation ever. You know why you don’t want to talk? Because you might just resolve some shit and you don’t want to do that. That’s why I left. I left because I didn’t want to be in love with someone so self-destructive. That’s right, I said it. I love you. But I still left because you don’t have a monopoly on shit decisions.”
She blinked several times. For a moment, she couldn’t think or speak. I love you. They were the words she’d wanted to hear for a long time but now she wanted him to take them back. She didn’t know what or how to feel so she stood stunned as the words washed over her in a continuous loop. Slowly, something in her shifted, the fear and shame
faded, replaced with an emotion she couldn’t identify. All she knew was that she wasn’t scared anymore and she was ready to fight. “I need to go back to my apartment.”
Jamison threw up his hands in exasperation. “Are you fucking kidding me right now? I just told you I love you and that’s what you say? Unbelievable. Do you see now why I left?”
“I need to get the blond wig I used when I was undercover in Florida while we were investigating that serial rapist.”
He scrubbed his face with his hands. “Have you lost your mind?”
“Probably, but I can’t run away. I need to fight. The case isn’t over. The Founding Fathers think they’ve won but they haven’t. I can’t let them. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder for the rest of my life. I can’t do that and I can’t ask you or Jeanie or Tina to live like that. I need to finish this.”
“Finish this? What are you talking about?”
“I have to expose what’s happening at Gracemount. To do that I need to find Hagan’s files but I can’t very well go into police headquarters. Thanks to those assholes, everyone knows what I look like.”
“Are you kidding me right now? You still want to break into Hagan’s office?”
“Unless you have a better way of getting the files. I have to do this. I need to finish this.”
“Jesus, Jessie. We can still just leave. You don’t have to take every bad situation and make it worse.” He shook his head. “I swear to God you will be the death of me. You really are a mess. You know that, right?” He let out a long stream of air. “But you’re brave. I’ll give you that. So, what’s the plan?”
“You’re going to take Stan and leave. I don’t care where you go, just someplace safe.”
“Jessie, stop talking. You’re not doing this alone.”
Thirty-Four
“Did you get it?” Jamison asked.
“Yeah.” She got in the back of his car and shut the door. She winced as she lowered herself down on the floor so the journalists could not see her when he drove out of the underground garage beneath her apartment complex. With any luck, they might think she was still in her apartment, and it would buy them a little more time.
She tried to be gentle with her battered body but there was no way she could maneuver herself without putting pressure on her arm, so she just held her breath and did what she needed to do.
“You good to go?”
She took small, panting breaths and waited for the throbbing pain to fade into a dull ache. A red splotch seeped through the bottom of her bandage. She must have ripped one of the stitches. Shit. She would add that to the list of things she would deal with later. “Yeah. Drop me off at the National Gallery of Art. Journalists know your car so you can’t take me all the way. I’ll get changed in the bathroom and walk to police headquarters. You get a taxi to Hagan’s.” She went over the plan they’d made, looking for any loose ends. That’s how she and Jamison worked: they went over things again and again, looking at every angle. They had decided that Jess would check Hagan’s work office while Jamison broke into his house and searched there. It was divide and conquer and hope that one of them found something, and that neither of them got caught.
“I got to say, Jessie, I don’t love this plan. It doesn’t feel right. We need more time.”
“Yeah, well we don’t have any.” She pushed up on her good arm to try to reposition herself but Jamison hit a pothole and she lost her grip and ended up with her head slammed against the back of his seat. She bit into her lip to keep from swearing out loud and letting Jamison know she was hurt.
“Change of plan. I’m going to check both places. You’re still hurt.” Under his confident exterior there was a thread of doubt. He was nervous. Most people wouldn’t have noticed but she did, and she liked it better when he was cool and cavalier. She did not need him doubting her ability to get it done right now. She wasn’t her best physically or emotionally but she would sure as hell pull her own weight. She would never ask Jamison to put himself in danger if she wasn’t willing to do the same.
“Can you physically be in two places at once?”
“That’s not—”
“No. No, you can’t. We’ve already been through this. We need to work fast. You’re better with house locks. You just are. And I can’t exactly sneak through a window or climb a trellis at this point, so it just makes more sense for you to check his house. Besides, if this goes to shit—”
“There you go again, assuming everything will go to shit.”
“That’s not me being a pessimist; things do have a nasty habit of turning to shit with me.”
Jamison didn’t answer. He was too busy maneuvering in and out of traffic. “I don’t think anyone followed us,” he said when he pulled over near the National Mall.
She held her breath as she pushed herself up onto the seat. The drops of blood that had bled through her bandage had now saturated her sweater, leaving it sticky and wet. Fortunately, it was black so only she knew it was blood.
“I’ll see you back at your house by six, seven at the latest. If I don’t come back, please raise Stan as your own.” She was only half-kidding.
“Don’t say that kind of shit. If you’re not back at my house at six, I’m coming to get you.”
She shut the door without answering. She didn’t want to talk about not making it back on time because they had no real plan for that eventuality. They didn’t have a choice, they needed to be successful. There was no plan B.
She kept her head down as she walked through the crowds of tourists that lined the pathways beside the National Mall. A group of foreign students all dressed in matching neon-orange sweatshirts were standing in a cluster trying to make sense of a map. “Sorry,” she murmured when she ran into a man taking a selfie with the Lincoln Memorial in the background.
She pulled her hood up and kept walking until she reached the National Gallery. She stood at the bottom and looked up the stairs at the looming Doric columns. She glanced over her shoulder to check one last time that she hadn’t been followed before she walked up to the entrance. There was no line because the museum would be closing in less than forty minutes.
“Excuse me.” A guard stopped her when she got inside.
The hairs on her arms stood taut. She looked up just enough for him to show she was listening, without fully showing her face. Most of her life had been consumed by the irrational fear that someone would recognize her, terrified that people would know her secrets, but now it wasn’t irrational; it was inevitable and she was going to have to deal with it.
“The museum is going to close in less than an hour.”
“I know. I’m just here to see the…” Her mind went blank. She couldn’t think of a single painter’s name. Freshman year in college she’d taken Art History as one of her general studies classes. She’d only picked it because it fit in her schedule but she’d still taken it seriously, making flashcards and memorizing everything on the syllabus, but currently she remembered none of it. “Um… the Botticelli,” she said eventually, praying that they had a Botticelli in the collection because that was the only name she could remember.
He nodded. “Portrait of a Youth is over there.” He pointed down a long hallway. “Would you like me to show you?”
“No, thank you.” She looked up just enough to smile.
She started walking in the direction he’d pointed her until he looked away, then she doubled back on herself and went to the women’s restroom. An elderly woman was already in there washing her hands.
Jess walked past her into a stall. With her good arm she closed the door and then pulled out the wig from under her sweater. She pushed down her hood, twisted her ponytail into a bun at the base of her neck, and then pulled the wig on, tugging it forward to adjust it. She waited until she heard the spray of water stop and the bathroom door open before she left the stall.
She glanced at her reflection. The hair of the blond synthetic wig fell just below her chin in an asymmetrical bob cut. She
looked so much different now than when she’d first worn it, so much older, more tired. The first time round she was posing as a teenager to lure a serial rapist targeting high-school girls. It was only four years ago but her face looked many more years older. Her cheeks were sunken in now and she had dark circles under her eyes. There was no way she would pass for a teenager now, but at least the wig completely transformed the way she looked. No one should recognize her now.
The cold air hit her lungs as she left the museum. She shoved her hands in her pocket to keep warm because she hadn’t had a chance to replace her coat yet. That too could go on her list of things she needed to deal with at some point.
The streets were full because people had already started to leave their offices to try to beat rush-hour traffic. It was impossible to walk down the street without bumping into someone but the sea of people made her feel safer, almost anonymous.
Jess walked up the stairs and straight to the information desk. A middle-aged man was manning the desk. She hadn’t prepared what to say to talk her way into the building in advance because every circumstance demanded a different dynamic. She stood for a second, taking in as much information as possible to get a read on the situation. Based on the way he kept glancing up at the clock, his shift was about to end. His wedding ring was tight: the skin rose up around it, burying the scratched gold in flesh. He’d been married a long time, long enough for him to get fat. That showed commitment and traditional values. She could use that.
She took out her credentials and flashed it at him, intentionally shielding the part with her picture. “I have a meeting upstairs. Sorry I’m late. I know I’ve held everyone up and I apologize. Traffic really is a beast out there today. There’s another protest at the White House. These people have too much time on their hands to complain. I mean, do any of them have jobs?” She hadn’t given him any information about who she was or why she was there, but she hoped it was enough, that she’d conveyed that she was conscientious, considerate, and most importantly that she belonged in the building. If he thought they shared common values, he would be more likely to like her, and if he liked her he would be less likely to question her further. She maintained eye contact the entire time. She couldn’t afford to come across as cagey.
Catch Your Death Page 19