Before I Wake

by Dee Henderson

  “You still talk more than I do on occasion.”

  She rolled her head toward him on the back cushion of the couch and smiled. “There are a few years’ worth of talking bottled up unsaid. The trivial subjects have got some steam behind them now.”

  “Why wasn’t there someone to talk with?”

  She shrugged. “Dallas wasn’t so bad; I had lots of friends to hang around with the first year or two on the job. And the years before that at the academy—I was like a duck in water, quite comfortable and not even realizing how much I was missing everything I’d left behind. But Washington, D.C.—you know how hard it can be to work undercover, Bruce, all the things you know or suspect but can never talk about. It turned out to be a place where there weren’t safe people to hang around with.”

  “Talk to me about Washington. Not the ending, just the beginning. Did you want to make the move?”

  She had to think about it but then she nodded. “I did. It was a big assignment, the kind of case that gets followed by the director’s office and can send an agent up several rungs on the career ladder when it’s over. I was at the point in my career where that kind of return for the risk seemed like a good calculation to make.”

  She looked over at him. “That’s hindsight. You get asked to work a substantive case, you jump at it. That’s the cop in you. And this was one of those cases. I barely heard the basic details they laid out before I said, ‘When do I move?’ I regret that now. I regret I didn’t take the time to sort out how much was personal ambition and how much was the case that drew me to D.C.”

  She finished her hot chocolate and studied the bottom of the mug. “They approached me in Dallas with the need for someone with good undercover skills who would be a fresh face in the Washington area. They needed someone who had never done a rotation at headquarters. I wasn’t really aware of all the dimensions of the case or all the dynamics going on with it until I arrived in D.C.”

  “You were investigating another agent,” he guessed softly.

  “Yes.”

  She looked over at him. “Cuts doesn’t it, the very idea of a bad cop? They didn’t know who it was; they just had a list of names and a suspicion the agent they wanted found was on the list.”

  “A bad cop gave up my name for money and I ended up shot—I understand what it’s like to hear the news there is a bad cop in a place of trust.”

  “Maybe that’s one of the reasons I didn’t look so closely at the assignment before I said yes. It was a visceral need to get the guy located and out of our midst.”

  “What was he doing?”

  Bruce knew it was classified information; she knew it was classified. But it ate a hole inside her as she tried to sort it out on her own—and if Bruce was going to betray her, no one in the world could be trusted. “This will go to the grave with you.”

  “I’ve got so many secrets going with me I’ll be lining my coffin with the notes.”

  She smiled at his attempt to lighten the moment. “There is something scary about just how much ugly information you have tucked away inside that head of yours.”

  She studied her socks and the frayed edge on the left one. “Someone is selling the names and addresses of people in the witness-protection program.” She looked up in time to catch his wince. “Yeah, my thoughts too.

  “An internal investigation narrowed it down to nine people on the inside they thought might be the source. They transferred me from the Dallas office to D.C. to get close to one of the agents high on their list.”

  “It’s a bad kind of case to work.”

  “The worst. And there was an . . . urgency to the case. If enough witnesses die, it doesn’t matter if the rogue agent is found and stopped and prosecuted. No one will ever be willing to testify for the government again, when the protection promised them has been publicly turned into a piece of Swiss cheese.”

  Bruce nodded and she knew he understood the type of pressure she was describing.

  “It was the first time I’d met the counterintelligence types, Bruce. They’re a different kind of agent, the set of people who were running the investigation. You started to wonder if they believed anything anyone ever said to them.”

  “Finding spies in their midst—that’s a recipe to suspect everyone, and a motto that becomes trust, but verify.”

  Rae brooded over that. “I wasn’t ready for it, no matter what I thought about my undercover skills going into it. It wasn’t like undercover work where you knew the guy was guilty, but you were looking for the evidence. I was getting close to a guy that was numerically more likely to be a good cop than the one bad one, and I was trying to figure out if he was the one bad one.”

  She sighed. “I think I started to get paranoid; that’s the only way I can describe how the case affected me. I was trying so hard—knowing the investigators needed me to not miss any detail, knowing the guy that was selling these names was extremely careful and deadly, feeling caught between thinking I knew this guy I was investigating and yet suspecting everything about him—it messed up my head a bit.”

  He didn’t answer her right away and she was glad he wasn’t dismissing her words with the suggestion it hadn’t been that bad. It had been that bad.

  “Rae—when you’re undercover in a big case, you’re in the midst of a fast-flowing murky river. You’re often swimming in the dark, working with incomplete information, seeing only shadows of facts. You depend on your handlers, those spotters standing on the bridge watching everything, to put the details together and keep you swimming in the right direction. It sounds like this is a case where you didn’t have that help; your handlers weren’t connecting very well with you.”

  “I always felt like they were assessing me as much as they were assessing the details and evidence I brought them,” she agreed. She was grateful he’d worked undercover as long as he had and could articulate what she could only look back on and understand.

  “It didn’t help that I often used gut instinct to say something was right or wrong and they didn’t know me well enough to trust that answer. Since I couldn’t rely on it as a reason for what I reported, I was often on the defensive.”

  She felt the words themselves as a frustration, just remembering. “Then another witness got murdered; the intensity ratcheted up . . .” She let the words trail off as she remembered those last months.

  “What?”

  She realized tears were washing down her cheeks and she pushed them away. “It ended very bad.”

  “I saw your house.”

  She either told him the rest of it or she buried it again. She wanted to bury it, the truth was so raw, but it was never going to ease off. It needed to be said, at least once.

  “His name was Mark Rivers. The case looked solid against him. I thought it was him. But as it turns out, he was not the guy selling the names. I accused an innocent man of murder, Bruce.”

  She couldn’t look over at him, didn’t want to know his reaction to her words. It was so intensely bad, that ultimate failure. “And I can’t even apologize to him. He’s dead.”

  He let her drift in her thoughts, let those words settle before quietly asking, “What happened, Rae?”

  She looked up and saw nothing in his expression but the quiet stillness of him listening to her that she had depended on all her life. She tried to hold his gaze but couldn’t and looked away, back to the fire, blinking against the tears.

  “Mark found one of the hidden microphones. My back was to him, and I didn’t realize why he was asking the questions he did until the last moment. I saw the instant it clicked with him that I was suspecting him, that the wire was to capture him—and I think he lost it mentally in that moment. He had wanted to be an agent since he was a kid, and I was literally destroying his life even as I stood there and smiled at him and asked if he wanted pineapple in the stir-fry or not. He put his hand out to grab something and it happened to be the knife that was on the cutting board.”

  “Your handlers?”

  �
��They were in a house across the street, recording from a distance.”

  She didn’t say more, couldn’t. The night was still a living wound inside her. “It became personal, Bruce. And maybe that is where the biggest of the errors was made. I didn’t realize just how personal the case had become to me after that witness died.”

  “Have they caught the agent that is selling the names?”

  “No. And I’m sure my dramatic ending gave the guy they wanted to find plenty of time to go deep underground again. There was no way to cover up a dead agent and another injured one, not when the agents on the suspicion list worked in the same basic area of the building.”

  “I wish you’d called me. I wish I had been there for you in those first days after it came apart.”

  “I thought about calling you; it’s one of the reasons I had dug out your number.” She tried to smile. “I’m decompressing, Bruce; I know that, in my own unique way. I’m still trying to find my sense of balance again. I can’t figure out how to pace this fall into a new life—it’s cautious; no, fast ahead; no, cautious. I fluctuate between nothing and everything.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  She brooded over her empty mug. She did. “Tomorrow morning I’m going to hate the fact I told you.”

  “You’re already regretting it. But that’s why I’ve got such notoriously forgetful hearing. We can wait to talk about this again for six months if you want.” Bruce got to his feet and took the mug from her hand. “Hot chocolate or hot cider?”

  “Cider this time.”

  He ruffled her hair. “Welcome to the land of recovering cops.”

  She smiled but still caught his hand for one last serious question. “Tell me it gets better,” she whispered.

  His hand tightened on hers. “It gets better.”

  “How?”

  He thought for a moment, then ran his knuckles along her jaw. “Hang out with Nathan some more, and remember what 99 percent of cop work really is about. You loved this job, Rae. You still can. There’s just a couple nasty detours that have to be sorted out and left behind first. Don’t throw out the first love just because life kicked you in the gut.”

  “Easier said than done.”

  “So hang out with me too; I’m reforming slowly.”

  She smiled back. “Got to love a man that went from a cubbyhole of an apartment to a private hotel of a house.”

  Amusement lit his eyes. “Oh, that’s good. I’m going to have to remember the private hotel answer. Maybe add a couple signs to the front yard. Folks in the neighborhood would get a kick out of that.”

  “What did you say when people asked why you wanted this big old place for yourself?”

  “I mentioned I had a lot of ghosts coming with me.”

  She blinked. “Oh, that’s good too.”

  He smiled. “I thought so. Find us a movie; I want to listen to you snore before I send you home.”

  “I’m not falling asleep watching a movie on you, Bruce.”

  “Yes you will. Find something John Wayneish. Or Midway. I always like watching Midway.”

  “We’re going to town early tomorrow to pick up my car.”

  “I remember. We’re still going. Just after you watch a movie with me. You can’t break a Friday night tradition the first Friday night you happen to come over.”

  “True.” Who was she kidding, she wanted to stay. “Where do you keep the movies?”

  Bruce gestured with the mug. “Third shelf of the cabinet.”

  “You’re getting something more on the line of March of the Penguins.”

  He laughed. “All those animals; you never change. Hot cider coming up. If you’re good, I’ll find the popcorn too.”

  26

  Nathan leaned against the window in his office Saturday morning and watched the snow fall outside. It was finally coming down at a rate that would please the kids and make this day an adventure for drivers. He hoped it eased off soon. As stretched as this town budget was for finances, snow removal was always hoped to be an overfunded line item in the budget come April.He sighed and turned back to his desk. While he scanned papers, he picked up the phone and called his deputy chief to confirm the most pressing item of the morning was handled. “Will, are you sure the negotiating teams are tucked away in a private enough place?”

  The strikebreakers may have been able to leave the plant without incident on Friday, but if they appeared again on Monday Nathan didn’t expect that quiet to be repeated. He needed the strike to be history this weekend.

  “Your dad and I got them out of their homes while it was still dark and snuck them out to the lake pavilion,” Will confirmed. “No one knows they’ve assembled. They’re using Ford’s lakefront home as the meeting site. It was as far as I could get them out of town while leaving them in the city limits.”

  “We need a deal today.”

  “Both Adam and Zachary are more serious than I’ve ever seen them. They know what Monday is going to bring if they don’t get a deal done this weekend. I promised we would bring them out dinner around five unless they call us earlier. They’ll decide over dinner if it makes sense to do another round through the night or break for the day. Your dad is staying out there to facilitate anything the group needs.”

  “Have Dad call me if there’s any word from Adam and Zachary on progress. I’ll plan to go out to meet them when they are ready to break for the night.”

  “Will do, Boss.”

  Nathan hung up the phone. Losing the tile plant would kill this town. They had to get a deal this weekend. And there wasn’t much he could do to help make that happen. It was awful sitting on the sidelines waiting for news.

  “You okay, Boss?”

  Nathan looked toward the doorway. Sillman looked like the week had worn on him as much as it had on his boss. “Pending bad news on the tile-plant front. Come on in, Gray.” Nathan started looking again for the file on the stolen handguns. He was personally going to go talk to the top candidates on his list for having done the robbery. Even if he couldn’t get the guns to mysteriously turn themselves back in, maybe he could put the fear of life and limb into people that the guns should never be allowed to reach the street and be sold.

  “You want the interesting news of the day first?”

  “Hit me with it; I’m as braced as I’ll ever be.”

  “Nella shows no sign of dying by murder in the traditional way—no knife wounds, gunshots, broken neck. The coroner thinks she may have died of cancer.”

  Nathan stopped his search. “You’re kidding me.”

  “Franklin found bone cancer, pretty advanced. It was at a stage it would have begun spreading to her organs. Given the time lapse in finding the body, he may never be able to rule out other contributing factors to her death, but his opinion leans toward natural causes.”

  “Nella had no idea she had cancer.”

  “The aches and pains she complained about she probably wrote off to her age. She never got it checked out. If you’ve got to die of cancer, I guess not knowing you have it would be one of the better ways to go.”

  “How sure is Franklin that this killed her?”

  “The cancer is there, enough to kill her, but he said he’ll have to go by absence of other factors at the scene to rule on this one.”

  “You’re right. This would constitute interesting news. You’ve got more?”

  Sillman nodded. “The final toxicology reports are back on Karen Reese. They are clean. Franklin is ready to rule her case natural causes. Everything he has seen points to a heart attack. He was on the scene within an hour or two of her death and still nothing showed up in the toxicology. We’ll have the results of the last vending-machine-food tests today, but I doubt we find something. All the food tests so far are clean too.”

  Nathan squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Close the door.”

  Sillman moved aside the box fan and closed the door.

  “What are the odds someone in the county’s own forensic lab is in on the designe
r-drug production, and these blood-test results are being intentionally messed up?”

  His deputy chewed on the coffee stir stick he held and thought about it, then looked over at him. “You really want to go there, Boss?”

  Nathan knew what he was suggesting and the fallout that would come if his suspicions got out. “Just ask a couple quiet questions, okay? See if the tests are being run by the same shift. Ask the coroner if it’s possible to use another lab to rerun the most critical of the test results. I’ll pick up the cost to get it done.”

  “I’ll ask.”

  “Anything on the fingerprints you found on the wineglasses at Nella’s place?”

  “We’ve got unknown prints. DNA from the cigarettes may still give us something, but it will be a day or two more at the lab.”

  “That fits our luck with this case.” Nathan shook his head. “Three dead by natural causes? I just don’t buy it, Gray.”

  Sillman leaned back against the door. “Assume the reporter is murdered to stop her story investigation, assume Nella is murdered because she knows something; that still leaves Karen out there as a strange anomaly. There’s no way Karen could learn something dangerous about this community in the few hours she was passing through town. If you start saying this one is natural causes and this one isn’t, it needs something to hang its hat on. We just don’t have it, Nathan, that one tangible fact that says murder.”

  “I know we don’t. Keep on the environmental samples. Let’s try and rule out anything at Nella’s being a toxin that Peggy picked up.” Nathan looked at his officer. “Nella dies of cancer, two young ladies die of natural causes in Justice hotels—what are we going to be saying when the fourth body shows up?”

  “I hear you, Boss.”

  * * *

  Bruce eased his car into a void in the alley, creating a parking place for the Caprice between an overflowing Dumpster and a discarded mattress.

  “This is where you think the handguns are at?” Rae questioned, looking around the area before she considered opening her door. She didn’t mind the extra stop in their morning to pursue a lead, but normally Bruce had better information to work from than this. They were far enough outside of Justice that the Dumpster had a county address on it for the responsible collection company.