There was a loud clang from inside the home, the sound coming through the open windows and carrying clean in the early morning stillness. What was it? The sound of a toilet seat?
Matthias reached for his camera and then tried to snap shots of the bike tires, but his hands shook. His fingers fumbling with the miniscule little buttons, sometimes hitting the wrong one, his head darting back to the mobile home, scanning the surroundings. All quiet. Back to the bikes he went, taking closeup shots of the brand names and the tread design on each tire. It was the last bike, right before he would flee into the woods, that he discovered several strands of grass sticking out between the rim and tire of a 1989 custom Softail. He tugged at it, but the grass was stuck firmly. He considered unscrewing the valve cap and deflating the tire . . .but it would be so loud.
Another sound came from inside, a man’s voice, garbled but yelling.
Matthias ripped out the grass and jogged toward the thick brush, his footsteps carefully placed in a strip of weeds to avoid the noise of crushed stone, his heart pounding.
His first mission, complete.
Halfway to the city, surrounded by strip malls and big-box stores, Matthias pulled into one of the vast networks of empty parking lots. He killed the engine, hopped off the bike, and then sat on the rim of a concrete planter. Inside the planter was a cluster of half-dead hydrangeas. Ahead, across the lot, seagulls swooped and smacked into each other, fighting over bits of fast-food debris that sat in the middle of a parking stall’s oil stain.
Morning in big-box Americana.
Matthias felt good. Like he’d done something. Stashed away in his bike’s compartment was perhaps a crucial piece of evidence, blades of grass he’d hoped could be matched up to that of the airport. The start of a long trail which led to his revenge on Ernesto’s assassins.
He pulled out his phone and checked an incoming text message.
It was from Jackson.
Where are you?? What’s going on??
And then another. This one newer.
No Sentry today?
Matthias held the phone down to his side. He stared across the empty parking lot, wondering how to convey his answer through a fucking text. There was no way he’d call Jackson. Not now, and for a few reasons. One of them being the need to settle a more important matter.
It was time. The sun had been up for an hour now. It must be okay to call. Still, he felt sick about it. Not even sure what to say, or how. Sure, only, that he had to try.
“Hello?”
Her voice, as weak and tired as it sounded, filled him with warmth. With hope. But also urgency.
“Laurel . . .”
“Hi . . .”
He could hear traffic in the background of her call.
“Where are you?”
“On the street,” she said. “I’m walking.”
“Where?”
He heard a loud commotion in the background, the whooshing sound of a passing bus.
“Matt, I’ve got a real busy morning.”
He held his tongue, not wanting to explain about the type of morning he’d had. It wasn’t even really a morning, but an extended night with all its blurriness and haze. All the new information washing into him, overwhelming him. And through it all, he needed her.
“We should talk soon,” he said. “Can we meet? Are you coming into work today?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
“It’s about what’s going on with Sentry.”
“What about it?”
“I can’t say right now, but I think you know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes,” she said. “You’ve been sent to investigate me.”
Fuck.
She’d figured him out; at least she thought she had. His logical side tried to remind him it had probably only been a matter of time. The rest of him refused to listen. He couldn’t blame her in the slightest for her anger, which was all the more reason he needed to talk to her, and soon.
“It’s not like that, Laurel.”
“How can it be anything else?”
“No. I can explain.”
“You just need to stay away from me.”
“No.”
“Yes, Matthias. Maybe we’ll talk later, but right now, I . . . I can’t even . . .” It sounded like she was close to tears, her voice straining
His worst fear was materializing, becoming more of a reality with each word she mumbled to him. His heart choked with a physical pain from it. She thought he’d betrayed her, that everything had been a ploy for him to get closer to his target. That their night was just his first attempt to get inside her world, in her head, to suck out as much info as he could. She probably thought he was some kind of fucking cop or Fed.
“Laurel, I want to help you. And I really think you’ll want to talk to me.”
She sniffled.
“Where are you?”
“I might as well fucking tell you.”
“What?”
“Yeah,” she said. “You’re probably working for him anyways.”
“Who?”
“Your boss, Walter Smedley. District Attorney.”
“No.”
“Come on, Matt.”
“No, don’t.” Matthias wasn’t sure how, or why, but at the mention of the name he felt a certain gnawing horror. He didn’t know anything about the man, nor had he given any thought to how far the up the chain the corruption went, from the police through the state politicians who seemed, with each overturned rock, exceptionally corrupted. And dangerous.
“Laurel, please, you need to wait until I get there. We’ll talk.”
“No, I can’t.”
“Where are you?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“You’re at his office?”
“Leave me alone.”
“Laurel.”
“I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. Please . . . I need to talk to you about Caitlyn.”
There was a pause. And then the sound of another whooshing bus.
“Matt, I’m hanging up.”
25
Laurel
What bothered her most about Matt’s call was how fucking genuine he sounded. It would have been so much easier if he’d played into that sleazy, slimy spy role that she’d assumed he’d taken. He’d slithered around the office, and around with her in her own bed. It would have made things all the easier to call him out and then break contact with him. Call a spade a spade. The guy was narc, and a master manipulator who’d gone well beyond the realm of professionalism. And decency.
He’d gone way too far, and he’d crossed too many lines with her.
And then this phone call . . . It was either him doubling down on his character, going deeper into the performance like a true sociopath, or he was telling the truth.
Laurel couldn’t decide which was worse.
Why couldn’t there be something, just once, that was cut and dried? Why couldn’t there ever be an easy decision? If she’d had one easy decision so far, it was sleeping with Matt in the first place. And look how that had turned out.
As she navigated through a stone maze of capitol buildings and courthouses, and finally entered the cool, grand hall of the Attorney General’s office, Laurel knew that it was time to truly move forward. Without Matthias. And for sure without Sentry Systems. It was time for her to finally obtain some protection.
“I’m here to see Mr. Smedley,” she said.
The woman behind the desk smiled at her, but it quickly evaporated. “Well, this is his office.”
“Yes, I know.”
Smedley’s receptionist dropped the stack of papers she was holding and rolled her chair toward a computer. “Do you have an appointment?” She placed her hands on her keyboard, waiting.
“I don’t know. Someone called for me.”
The receptionist drew her hands off the keyboard. “What does that mean?”
Laurel sighed. It was too early for this. “Can you just search my name or so
mething?”
“I don’t think Mr. Smedley is holding office today, but I can look through his agenda.”
“Thanks,” Laurel watched the receptionist browse through her computer.
“Name?”
“Laurel Patterson.”
She thought back to the voicemail she’d left on her boss’s phone. She wasn’t feeling too well, but she could work from home. No biggie. Caitlyn could cover for her.
Caitlyn had been so nice.
Now, after a sleepless night, and after finally working up the courage, Laurel was standing in the office waiting room of Attorney General Walter Smedley. She assumed that he ranked high enough to actually deal with the information she’d had, and to take action. Perhaps formulate an investigation into AIDA’s dealings with laundering money from various green initiatives.
“I don’t see it,” the receptionist said.
“Can you check for Caitlyn Morse?”
“Who’s that?”
“She called for me,” Laurel said.
“She made the appointment?”
“Yes.”
A moment later, the woman’s demeanor had changed entirely. It was as if someone had flipped a switch, brightening up that smile and actually forcing eye contact. “One moment please,” she said before picking up the phone and murmuring something.
It looked like Caitlyn’s connections had paid off, a social key that helped unlock Mr. Smedley’s door to lowly little Laurel. Caitlyn hadn’t gone into the specifics at the time, and now Laurel felt even more curious about how some biker chick had such a privileged contact with someone as high up as the Attorney General of Georgia.
Laurel was shown into another, smaller room. A secondary waiting room, wood paneled and lined with nicer, more modernized chairs. Even the lighting felt different, its soft, welcoming glow contrasted dramatically to the previously harsh and almost medicinal quality of the more “public” room which anyone off the street could waltz into. Now, Laurel was one of them, an insider, and she came bearing gifts—insider information. Just how the Attorney General would react, she didn’t know. That was what scared her the most.
Caitlyn seemed to think that it was a safe, if unadvised, move—that Walter Smedley would not only protect Laurel, the brave whistle-blower, but also put the machinery in place for a legal take-down of epic proportions. She couldn’t fathom the alternative; rather, she wouldn’t let herself. The Attorney General smiling and nodding all the way with Laurel to the basement where she’d end up with a bullet in her head.
“Miss Patterson?”
A young man in a suit—looking almost like a teenager—stood in the doorway. High school was out for the summer and he was probably someone’s politically-aspirated kid. “Could you follow me, please?”
The kid walked her down two long corridors separated by a glass-doored sun room that connected two separate buildings. Plants were hung in this room. It smelled like wet soil and rotting wood, but was not altogether unpleasant.
He paused by an innocuous-looking door with no name. No distinction at all. It could have been a broom closet. Perhaps this was where they would snuff her out.
“He’s right through here,” the kid said, smiling, and then opening the door and showing her in.
Inside, more hanging plants. Big leafy ferns. Hanging baskets. Absorbing light from a large bay window which overlooked the Georgia State Capitol building. Walter Smedley had his desk there, his back to the window. The early morning light shone in hard and bright, making it hard to see his face. Even when he stood and approached her, his face seemed dark and mysterious. Laurel, in contrast, must have been well lit. She was well on her way to blindness from the glare.
“Laurel Patterson, I presume.” He shook her hand.
“Yes sir, thank you.”
“Don’t thank me. I always make time for friends, especially friends with . . . important information?”
“Well, we’ll see how important it is.”
“It’s enough to get you here.”
“Caitlyn already mentioned it to you?” She wasn’t supposed to. Laurel gave her strict warning about—
“Only that it’s some insider information about our state employees. That’s always important. So here you are.” He turned back and pulled a chair up to his desk. “Please, take a seat.”
She sat and looked over the room, a wall lined with framed black-and-white sports photos. Boxing. Track and field. Old stuff.
“Is this your office?”
“If you’re asking who that handsome young man is in all those photos . . . then, yes, it’s me.”
“I just didn’t see your name on the door, or even a number or anything. Just looked like any old door.”
“So?”
She let out a nervous laugh. “I don’t know.”
“I like to blend in.”
“The Attorney General can blend in?”
“Yes, I wasn’t sure about that at first, either.”
He was sitting on the other side of a large desk, arms stretched out onto it, hands folded. Laurel’s eyes had adjusted slightly to the glare, enough to see the almost bat-like appearance of his face. Bald with large pointy ears on each side. Aquiline nose. She couldn’t see any detail of his eyes, only that they were dark.
“Well, you don’t have to worry about blending in here,” she said. “I can barely see your face, from the light.”
He rose from his chair. “Yeah, I like morning meetings the best.” Walking over to the window, he pulled a cord, dropping the blinds and finally offering some protection from the glare. The room had darkened significantly, and she still couldn’t get a good look at him. “So, you’re with Caitlyn Morse at Sentry Systems. Forgive me for pressing the point, but, what exactly do you have to tell me today?”
“I think I’ve uncovered some evidence.”
“Evidence of a crime? What’s the crime?”
“I’m not sure, sir. Corruption?”
“That’s a very broad term. But, please tell me more. And do keep in mind that I am especially protective of whistleblowers. If your information is relevant and indeed accurate, and actionable, then I and the rest of Georgia justice will take every precaution in keeping you safe while we move forward with proceedings. But, please, go ahead.”
“Do you get many whistleblowers?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Do many people come forward to you like this?”
“Not exactly like this, but, they don’t all know Caitlyn.”
“And how do you know her again?”
“She’s family.” He said it almost coldly. “So what do you have for me today, Laurel?”
“I have documents obtained from AIDA’s servers.”
He gave her a blank look.
“That’s Atlanta Investment and Development Agency, whom we’re working for.”
He nodded. “Yes, of course.”
“Documents shared between them, Fourth Ward Bank, and Big Green.”
“Big Green? Are you talking about the folks who run the wind farm up in Union County?”
“Yes, sir, wind turbines.”
“Please,” he said. “Enough with the sirs.”
“I’m not an economist. So you’ll have to get someone who knows finances.”
“What do you mean?”
“To look at it,” she said.
“Hmm, yes.”
“To analyze it properly.”
“Yes, of course.” He grabbed a stack of pages, opened a drawer, and tucked them inside. “Of course we’ll do that.”
“And there’s also something else.”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Of course there’s something else.”
“I need . . . um . . . I don’t know how else to say this. But, I’ll need protection.”
“Well, like I said, Laurel, you came to the right place. That’s what we do, protecting our witnesses. We wouldn’t have anything if not for the trust of our witnesses. Trust that we’ll safeguard their secrets,
and their identity. To protect them right through the proceedings, and after, even, if it comes to that.”
“I understand you make efforts to protect your whistleblowers, as you’ve said . . . But it’s more complicated than that.”
“You keep saying that . . .”
“Someone . . . is . . .”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t know why, but someone is, like, trying to frame me.”
He scrunched his eyebrows.
“At work.”
“At Sentry Systems?”
“It sounds crazy, but I’m being set up. I know it.”
His face relaxed, and then eased into a smile.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Nothing’s funny. Nothing at all.”
“You know all this, don’t you?”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m under an investigation. And your office probably has something to do with it.”
“Even if we were, I . . .” He sat back in his chair, his hands folded behind his head. “Look, I don’t know every single little thing we do here. I’m not the guy you should talk to for that. That’s daily operations stuff. I’m more . . .”
“You’re above all that.”
He smiled politely. “No, that’s not what I meant.”
“So you have no idea what I’m talking about?”
“Put it this way. I’ve never heard your name before. How’s that?”
Laurel bit her lip. She had to decide how honest he was being. And it was a tougher call than she’d liked.
“And again,” he said, his face stretching out into a yawn. “I’m only seeing you, as you know, as a favor to Caitlyn.”
“I understand that, sir. And thank you.”
“Okay Laurel . . . If you think we’re investigating you, then why come here?”
“To clear my name. She stared at him hard in the eyes. “I’m not gonna run from you guys.”
“Then you wouldn’t be opposed to an interview? We could do it today.” He sat up straight and grabbed a tablet off his desk. “I’ll bring in some of my agents that might be more familiar with your case. And then you can tell them all about your side of the story, and, you know, how you’re being framed and all that.”
DARC Ops: The Complete Series Page 81