Color Of Blood

by Keith Yocum

“Have you had any luck finding out what happened to Mr. Garder?”

  “Nothing I can tell you about,” he said.

  “Of course.”

  A dull, muffled silence fell over the two men, and Dennis wondered what St. Regis wanted. Dennis had requested Langley look deeper into the consul general’s background and was waiting on that report.

  “In full disclosure, Mr. Cunningham, I have to tell you that I have lodged a formal complaint about you. I spoke to Mr. Roby after his meeting with you, and I will follow up with young Miss Carter as well. I don’t appreciate how you’ve treated us and wanted you to know that you’ll doubtless be hearing about it through channels. I’ve requested you be replaced with someone more agreeable.”

  St. Regis proffered the wan smile again. “That’s all,” he said, opening a manila folder on his desk.

  Dennis sat in the chair, staring above St. Regis’s head at a strange, primitive painting on the wall. It appeared to be a landscape in a shadow-box frame made of tree bark and dabs of white and black paint. He was momentarily captivated by its three-dimensional quality, and it gave him a good excuse to process what had just happened. He had made a stupid, self-destructive mistake. Marty would surely come down hard on him.

  He sighed, looked at his watch, and said, “I have some work to do.”

  St. Regis did not acknowledge him as he walked out. Dennis made his way to a small office door marked 209. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the stainless-steel key Casolano had given him. He unlocked the door, turned on the light, and looked at Geoffrey Garder’s small, windowless office.

  Chapter 9

  Cunningham, he kept repeating to himself, what is wrong with you?

  He sat down in the small chair in Garder’s office and planted both elbows on the desk. Cradling his face on both sides with his hands, he rocked gently to and fro.

  Work, he finally told himself. Get to work. Do something, for God’s sake.

  So he began to bore into the minutiae of Garder’s office. Nothing intrigued him more than a subject’s personal surroundings.

  How a person stacked pencils or organized folders, or even maintained a supply of staples, told Dennis a lot about their personality. Of course these days it was more complicated because of the computer.

  The IG’s office maintained a stable of forensic computer engineers that could retrieve old data off hard drives and deleted emails and texts from servers. That’s what he’d been told, though he was typically suspicious of all things digital.

  Still, he discovered to his amazement that accomplished thieves and liars write the most incriminating emails and texts.

  Dennis had already seen a list of Garder’s emails. They had been retrieved and reviewed by the two analysts from Operations. The emails turned out to be innocuous and ran the gamut from gossipy workplace items to laborious interchanges with a local rental car agency. Garder was also a member of something called a Fantasy Baseball League, and there were many emails in which he traded for real-life baseball players.

  Dennis also had seen a list of websites Garder had visited, and they consisted of long URL strings. Some of the sites were obvious, like the link to the Western Australian University English Department or an eBay link to a specific watch, but many of the links were unintelligible and useless unless he sat down and entered every single link, looking for a lead.

  Typically Dennis might have requested a low-level Langley analyst pore over the URLs and prepare a report, but Marty would never authorize that kind of investment in such a small case. Dennis had been told that most of the geeks in the IG’s office had been repurposed to Operations teams tracking down Al Qaida cells.

  Garder’s room appeared orderly and well kept. The small metal desk had a flat-screen computer monitor, a keyboard and mouse, an oversize official US Consulate coffee mug doubling as a pencil holder, a metal ruler, a black standard telephone, a small metal table lamp, and one of those give-away stress balls. Dennis picked up the soft stress ball and read the label: Compliments of the WA Agricultural Agency. He squeezed it softly in his right hand as he continued looking around the room.

  A gray metal, horizontal file cabinet stood behind the chair, and he swiveled to open it. Three stacked drawers of vertical file folders held absolutely nothing. The sound of the vacant drawers echoed like an empty airplane hangar.

  Turning back to the desk, he checked the drawers; one of the three small drawers to his left held blank sheets of computer paper, a small tray of push pins, and notepads; another held a dog-eared internal phone directory as well as a telephone directory for Perth. The other drawer held hanging file folders that were empty.

  Dennis looked in the small trash bin under the desk. It was empty. The walls were nearly bare except for a hanging calendar on the back of the door and a large wall map of Australia. Standing up and positioning his face inches away from the portion of the map portraying Western Australia, Dennis strained to see if any area had been marked, circled, or stabbed with a pushpin.

  It was hard to tell in the low light of the room, so he grabbed the table lamp off the desk and held it at an angle several inches away from the map. There were tiny holes here and there on the map that he took for pushpin holes. But these could have been from a predecessor who used the room. Putting the lamp down, he walked over and removed the calendar off the door.

  It appeared to be brand new, and there was not a mark on it for any previous month, though it was open to the current month.

  He sighed and finally put down the stress ball, tempted briefly to keep it, since he felt an odd satisfaction in squeezing it. Maybe if he squeezed it hard enough, his problems with St. Regis would simply go away.

  Before he left the room, he employed on old investigator’s trick to look for fallen or misplaced items. He pulled open the bottom drawer of the file cabinet and reached behind the hanging files, searching for items that had fallen to the bottom. He found three paper clips and an empty hanging folder.

  Standing up, he grabbed the entire file cabinet and hinged it forward at the top a few inches from the wall. Peering behind it he noticed a piece of paper had fallen and was wedged at the bottom. He managed to tease it out from the side, letting the empty cabinet boom as it went back into place.

  He opened the folded piece of lined notepaper. In longhand were four lines written in pencil:

  Not Kimberly

  Nor the way of the lake

  But a Savory treat!

  For all Europium

  This idiot was really into poetry, Dennis thought. Strange guy.

  He pocketed the verse, turned off the light, and pulled the door tight behind him.

  Casolano appeared to have been waiting outside.

  “Um, the CG would like to see you,” he said.

  “Again?” Dennis groaned.

  “Yes.”

  “Before we see the CG, can you show me your mail room?”

  “Can I ask what you’re looking for?” Casolano asked.

  “Garder’s mailbox,” Dennis said. “You folks must have a mailbox for messages and mail, stuff like that.”

  “Oh, I see,” Casolano said. “Sure, follow me. But we have to hurry. The CG asked me to tell you it was urgent he see you.”

  On the second floor, near a bank of copy machines, Dennis was shown an old-fashioned, wall-mounted maze of boxes with names above each opening. Dennis found Garder’s name and was surprised that there was a single pink message slip.

  Dennis snatched it. The message in longhand stated: Mr. Pearson returned your call. 899-1900, ext. 45.

  He jammed the slip in his top pocket and followed Casolano to St. Regis’s outer office and was left there. After several minutes, St. Regis came out and stood over Dennis, who was leafing through a Time magazine.

  “I just spoke to Jillian Carter, and she told me about the kind of questions you asked her,” he said, the corners of his mouth pulled taut with anger. “I find it unconscionable, your line of questioning. It’s boorish and unpro
fessional. I refuse to let you talk to anyone else here without my participation. That is, as long as you remain here. While the wheels at State work slowly, it should not be long before you’re recalled.”

  Dennis looked up while distractedly turning pages of the magazine. He vacillated between rage toward St. Regis for interfering with his investigation, and fear that he was facing a professional and personal disaster. He had brazenly broken Marty’s rules. For just a second, he felt a pang of self-loathing, the kind of feeling he dreaded because it might start a very bad fall into a deep, dark hole.

  Tossing the magazine onto the table with a flourish, Dennis said, “Why are you so hell-bent on interfering with the investigation?”

  St. Regis’s nose flared; the wrinkles on his forehead disappeared as his face was pulled taut with anger. “You little bastard,” he said.

  And with that, he turned and walked briskly into his office, slamming the door behind him.

  Dennis left the building feeling a little woozy. This was a rubber-stamp project, a get-your-feet-back-under-you mission, and he had blown it. Dr. Forrester would tell him he was being self-destructive, but he knew that.

  ***

  Dennis had set up at the hotel bar and was nursing a Macallan when his cell phone vibrated.

  “Hello,” he said.

  “Dennis?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Marty.”

  “Hey, Marty,” Dennis said after a brief pause. The older Agency-issued cell phones encrypted transmissions so that at the end of each sentence there was a brief half-second pause as the next speaker waited for voice data to be transmitted, unscrambled, and processed. It was a clunky concession to secrecy, and most agents found it a throwback to conversing on walkie-talkies, but it was the only technology the Agency felt comfortable with in 2007. One day soon they would be able to encrypt and decrypt in real time, but not today.

  “Dennis,” Marty said, “did I tell you I’m going in for an MRI?”

  Pause. “An MRI? Is something wrong, Marty?” Dennis said.

  Pause. “Yeah, I’m afraid something is wrong. I think I have a brain tumor.”

  Pause. “Oh, my God, Marty. Jeeze, when did you find out something was wrong?”

  Pause. “I must have a tumor, Dennis, because I could have sworn that I told you not to fuck this little assignment up. And it looks like you fucked it royally. So I must have a brain tumor, right?”

  Pause. “You shouldn’t joke like that, Marty. It’s not funny.”

  Pause. “Don’t tell me what’s funny, Dennis, you stupid idiot. You blew this simple little assignment. Now I’ve got to deal with State on this thing. The IG got a personal call from an under secretary of state. Do you understand how much shit there is flying around now because of you? Jesus, Dennis, I was trying to inch you into work, you goddamn ingrate.”

  Pause. “I’m sorry, Marty, I really am. Listen, the assignment is almost over. I promise there’ll be no more complaints. I promise—you can trust me on this.”

  Pause. “I already trusted you. Do you have any idea how much shit I’ve taken for you over the years? It was OK because you delivered, Dennis. But you started screwing up big time, and it hasn’t been worth it in a while. I felt bad for you, with Martha and all. And now you turn around and kick me in the teeth. I can’t deal with you any longer, Dennis.”

  Pause. “Marty, it’s OK. You’ve given me this opportunity, and I’m thankful. Really I am. I’m almost done here. I’ll be back stateside with the final report within a week. You won’t get another complaint about me. I promise. Really.”

  Long pause. “Marty? Are you there?”

  Long pause. “You’re this close to being cashiered out, Dennis. This one is going right into your file. You got that?”

  Pause. “Got it. See you back in Langley in a week. No more problems from here. I promise.”

  Pause. “Hang on. One more thing, Dennis. About your daughter.”

  Pause. “My daughter?”

  Pause. “Yes, your daughter, Beth.”

  Pause. “What happened to my daughter?”

  Pause. “Nothing. She called here looking for you. No one in your family has ever called here looking for you before. I don’t remember a call from Martha, much less your daughter. But she called yesterday. Kind of awkward, Dennis, because she didn’t know what your phone number was or how to get hold of you. She got bumped to a number of operators. I finally spoke to her.”

  Pause. “Beth spoke to you? Is anything wrong?”

  Pause. “Turns out she was just trying to reach you. She said she was worried about you.”

  Pause. “Worried? That’s odd.”

  Pause. “Call your daughter, Dennis. And please ask her to stop calling the operator at Langley.”

  Pause. “Sorry, Marty. I’ll talk to her.”

  Dennis ended the call and took a deep, anguished breath, letting the air filter out of his lungs slowly in a muffled hiss.

  Chapter 10

  They called it Grand Rounds, a not-so-inappropriate reference to a hospital-residency training program. It happened every Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. sharp.

  Miller was the director of the West Australian office and ran a tight little ship.

  Most of the investigators had coffee or tea in front of them, along with folders of their active cases. Miller would invariably start off with new directives from headquarters, and then he would list new national notifications or investigations of note, including their connection to Western Australia, if any. Next, he would give a brief pep talk that Judy found mawkish, invariably invoking military phrases like “let’s keep a tight order out there,” and “this war is being fought one battle at a time,” etc.

  Finally Miller would turn to each investigator to give a brief update on current investigations; if two agents were involved, they’d co-present. Sometimes Miller would simply nod at an agent’s summary, but other times he would ask sharp questions, and it was important to remain vigilant, Judy found, or you’d get the full public wrath of the slightly pompous director.

  The only female agent on the West Australian team, Judy was always called upon first by Miller. Initially, Judy was impressed with Miller’s decorum, as if he were opening a car door for a woman, or giving up a seat on a bus to a woman. She soon found the gesture irritating and sexist; Judy didn’t need to have her car door opened or be picked to go first because she was a woman.

  She was working on seven active cases, two in conjunction with investigator Daniel Frankel, and four cases in progress in the justice system, one of which was going to trial soon.

  Judy quickly ran through her cases, hoping Miller would not interrupt.

  She finished the most recent case with Daniel: a drug-related murder.

  “Victim was an unidentified ethnic Chinese male, estimated twenty-eight years of age,” Daniel said, looking at his notes. “An undocumented immigrant. Cause of death was a single round to the chest by an extremely powerful weapon, eh, Jude?”

  “Quite,” she said. “Lynchy said he’d never seen anything like it. Round went through the victim and then through four walls, finally lodging in an outhouse.”

  There were a couple of giggles from other agents at the bizarre juxtaposition of a toilet and the death of a drug gang member. Even Judy and Daniel exchanged quick glances and smiled. In the cynical, depressing world of criminal investigations, it was a pleasant relief to laugh at preposterous coincidences or peculiar anomalies. If not then, Judy had come to realize, when would any of them ever laugh?

  “What kind of weapon was it?” Miller asked.

  “They’re not sure, but Lynchy thinks it’s something brand new and exotic,” Daniel said.

  “Like what?” Miller persisted in his not-pleasant tone of voice.

  Judy and Daniel exchanged glances; the last thing they wanted was their director to start picking apart a brand new investigation in front of the other agents.

  “The closest they’ve come is suggesting it’s a new ass
ault weapon, perhaps South African. Lynchy said it might be a . . .” and here Judy looked down at her notes, “a Klaxon personal assault weapon. Oversize round. Manufacturer brags that it’s the most powerful assault weapon in the world. That’s all we have at this point,” she said, looking up.

  “Motive?” Miller asked.

  “Some kind of turf battle going on between two of the Triads,” Judy said.

  “That’s some kind of bloody turf battle,” Miller said, “if they’re using assault weapons like that. Please write that up, Judy, and let’s send it back east. Let’s see if anyone else has seen anything like that.”

  Judy and Daniel nodded, glad to be done with their part of Grand Rounds.

  “Oh,” Miller said as an afterthought, “how’s that Yank thing going?”

  There were several muffled giggles again around the big table as other agents pretended to adjust notebooks or reach for their coffee mugs. Judy was painfully aware that babysitting the Yank was an absurdly low-level assignment given to her because of her perpetual not-quite-equal status in the group. The fact that an attractive Aussie woman would make the Yank more docile and happy was not lost on anyone.

  “It’s fine, sir, but I’m not entirely sure why it’s necessary that we have anything to do with his investigation. It seems a complete waste of time and resources.”

  “Now, now, Judy,” he said in his most patronizing manner, “it’s an agreement we’ve signed with the Americans. I did one of these about nine years ago. It demonstrates to the Yanks that they just can’t traipse around Australia willy-nilly and do whatever they want, whenever they want. No, this is a good thing, and important for Australia’s dignity.”

  Leave it to our posturing director to turn this bloody babysitting job into a matter of utmost patriotic importance, Judy thought.

  “Right,” she said, closing her file folder.

  ***

  The evening was pleasantly cool, and Dennis found himself walking the streets of Perth, staring into the store windows and following the flow of pedestrians as they made their way home after work.