by George Fong
“Why do you think he did it?”
Jack shrugged. “I can’t say.”
“Geez, Jack. You’re accusing a man of killing his family.”
Jack raised an eyebrow and gave Iverson a quiet stare. “Maybe she knew something he didn’t want others to find out about.”
“Are you telling me he couldn’t think of a better way to keep things quiet?”
“Jeff,” Jack replied. “There’s only one way for two people to keep a secret.”
“How’s that?”
“One kills the other.”
“What are you, the dark side of a lounge act?”
Jack didn’t offer a reply, just continued collecting his papers.
Jeff Iverson began tapping his pen on the top of his notebook, wondering how Cooper could think killing was a rational answer to his problems—let alone his own family. “You think that’s it? A secret?”
“I don’t know,” Jack said. “I just know he did it.”
2
Five Years Later
Butte County, California
Monday – 7:15 a.m.
“It was the damnedest thing,” Paul Baker said to his secretary, Rose, after pushing away from his desk at the Diamond County Bank.
“What was?” Rose asked, not really focused on the conversation, but rather sifting through a handful of loan files.
Baker paused a moment, thinking about the past fifteen minutes.
“Did you see his eyes?”
Rose murmured something, her attention still attached to the stacks of files cradled in her arms.
“I said did you notice his eyes?”
Rose finally stopped sifting and looked over at Baker. “Eyes? What about them?”
Baker thought for a beat, trying to formulate his jumbled, maybe irrational thoughts to describe what he was feeling, but couldn’t come up with the right words.
Rose placed the folders on Baker’s desk, and gave a curious look as she pulled back one of the chairs and sat down.
“What?” she asked.
“The customer you just brought over, Hampton Carter.”
Rose paused a moment, wondering where Baker was going with his remark.
“Strange bird, don’t you think?” he said.
Rose shrugged.
“He reminds me of that guy, from that movie, Fargo.” Baker made a motion, circling his hands around his eyes.
Rose raised an eyebrow. “You mean Steve Buscemi?”
Baker tapped the top of his desk like he was dotting an i. “That’s the one.”
Rose nodded and smiled, looking like she was pleased with herself, guessing correctly on the first try. “What about him?”
Baker began to describe the short meeting he just had with the walk-in customer. “It just didn’t feel right.”
Baker was recently appointed the position of senior loan officer. His job was to evaluate all loans and—more importantly—the people asking for them. He had to determine not only their ability to repay but the willingness to do so.
Hampton Carter had been his first walk-in of the day, just some guy looking for a small loan. Rose had brought Carter over to his desk where he stood still for a moment, allowing Baker the opportunity to give him a good look-over. He was average in height, slender, wearing a blue-gray windbreaker, dark slacks. His hair was blond and short, combed straight back with gel that Baker could smell, even from a distance. But it was Carter’s eyes that drew Baker’s attention. His pupils were pinpoint, like periods on a page. And steely. Even when Carter smiled his greeting, his eyes betrayed a contradictory meaning, almost predacious.
Carter nodded and maneuvered himself between two large chairs that were in front of Baker’s Rosewood desk. They spoke briefly, Carter telling Baker he was interested in a car loan for his wife but Baker found it odd the man wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Baker started explaining the requirements for the loan, all the while, Carter gazed straight and steady as if watching a movie.
“Are you married?” Carter asked.
The question caught Baker by surprise.
“Yes,” he answered but then hesitated, not feeling inclined to elaborate. His voice stumbled before refocusing back on the loan.
Carter smiled.
Baker handed Carter a loan application, along with a handful of glossy bank brochures. “Mr. Carter, do you have an account with us?”
“No,” was Carter’s reply. One word. Baker wondered why a person wanting money from a bank where he was not a customer didn’t offer more of an explanation.
Baker slid a small card forward. An information card. With a pencil, Baker pointed at a string of lines needing to be filled in: home address, telephone number, Social Security number. Throughout his entire instruction, Carter never looked down at the card, his stare locked on Baker.
“Children?” Carter asked.
Baker paused, confused. “Excuse me?”
“Children? Do you have any children?”
Baker backed his chair away from his desk. Without realizing it, he felt the need to put some distance between him and Carter.
“Yes. A daughter,” Baker answered as he offered Carter the pencil. Trying to be polite, he asked, “How about you?”
Carter kept his smile but didn’t respond. He simply took the pencil and started writing. He kept pausing, erasing and re-writing, as if he didn’t know his own personal information. After a minute, Carter said, “Would you mind if I took the forms home, so that my wife could help me out?”
“That’s fine.” Baker reached out, retrieved the old information card, and placed it on the corner of his desk. He added a new one to the application forms, dropped both into a large yellow envelope, and handed it over.
“Here’s a clean set,” he said to Carter. He held them out but Carter’s attention was elsewhere, focused on a framed photograph prominently displayed on Baker’s desk. A portrait of his family.
Carter turned his head and looked at Baker. A smile stretched across his lips. “What’s her name?”
Baker straightened up in his seat, feeling the hair on his neck tingle. “Who?” Baker knew who he was referring to; he just didn’t want to answer.
“I assume the lovely girl in the photo is your daughter?”
For the second time during this short meeting, Baker hesitated, but felt forced to respond. “Yes.”
A long silence followed as Carter waited for an answer to his original question.
“Jessica,” Baker finally said. “That’s my daughter, Jessica.”
Carter grinned, exposing a set of bright white teeth. He picked up the framed portrait, gazing deep into the picture, and repeated her name: “Jessica.”
Baker started feeling flush, hot and cold rushing through his body at the same time. He felt anxious but didn’t really know why. One thing Baker was certain of: he didn’t appreciate Carter’s interest in his daughter and he wanted him to leave. “She’s home with the flu.” Baker pulled the picture from Carter’s hand and returned it to its place. It was an uncomfortable moment as Baker stuck out a hand, thanking Carter for coming while shoving the envelope at him with his other. “Come back soon,” he said but didn’t really mean it.
Carter accepted the handshake and took the packet. He didn’t speak, maintaining his smile before turning and walking away, out the lobby doors.
“We get a lot of crazies,” Rose said after listening to Baker describe his meet with Carter.
Baker nodded, wondering if he was just being paranoid. He rested his hands on top of his desk and felt the coolness of the large plate glass. Fog formed around his fingers. He lifted his hands and realized his palms were sweaty. He pulled a tissue from his desk drawer and wiped his hands dry. That’s when he noticed they were trembling. Why? He met strange people all the time in this line of work.
Baker caught sight of Carter’s old information card and gave it one last look. What he had filled out was barely legible.
“Crazies,” he said to himself.
Rose had stepped away for a second but returned with another file folder, sticking it out for him to take. Consumed in his thoughts, Baker didn’t even notice the folder.
“Are you okay?” Rose asked.
Baker sat quietly for a moment, trying to place logic into his meeting with Hampton Carter—his inquiry for a loan that he didn’t seem to want, interest in his family portrait, interest in his daughter, Jessica. Baker looked up. “No, Rose. I don’t think so.”
3
Yolo County, California
Monday – 8:00 a.m.
FBI Special Agent Jack Paris watched the temperature display in his Bureau car climb. It was a typical summer morning in the Central Valley, sweltering and getting worse. He slid two fingers under his collar and gave it a gentle yank. Sweat had formed a moist ring around his neck, making him not only uncomfortable but irritable as well. Chatter came over the Bureau radio. Already, there was a silent alarm going off at the Bank of America in South Sacramento. Two FBI agents were sent to respond. Too early in the morning to be legit. Jack turned down the volume but kept an ear tuned to the communication with dispatch, waiting for the agents to confirm a false alarm, just in case. Traffic was light but he found himself maneuvering around slow-moving cars crawling in the left lane. He cranked the air conditioner and held an arm in front of the vent, letting the cold air flow up his sleeve.
He made his way off the freeway and down several surface streets, eventually pulling his Crown Vic up to the gate of the Sacramento Field Office. Jack waved his photo ID badge across the Hirsch keypad—an electronic card reader—as he punched in his private code. Several seconds passed before green lights flashed. The 3,000-pound black, steel gate lumbered open. A security guard on the other side stood at attention.
Jack found an open space, exited, and entered the building. More keypads, double-locks and man-traps. He made his way to the squad bay and fell into his chair, greeted only by the glowing red bulb of his telephone message indicator. Jack Paris hated messages. They were mostly electronic packets of bad news. His eyes drifted away from the phone, to the right, resting on a copy of The Investigator, a monthly newsletter about things happening throughout the Bureau. It was opened to a page with the heading “Anniversaries.” Jack glanced nonchalantly through the rows of credential photos filling the page, each with the employee’s name, years of service and their current office assignment. There, just above center, was Jack’s picture. Someone—presumably whoever left the newsletter for Jack to see—had given the photo a make-over by penciling in Groucho Marx glasses along with the standard comedy mustache and an Alfred E. Neumann missing front tooth. Classy. Below the photo: Jack Paris, Twenty Years, Sacramento.
He studied the picture. With a Caucasian father and Asian mother, Jack didn’t look like your typical agent. He took on his father’s height at six feet and his strong jaw line. From his mother, her olive skin. He also inherited a good part of her tenacity. From the day he first became an agent with the FBI, he never thought of himself as different in any way. Agents were all the same, everyone equally abused by the Bureau. Today, however, he looked at the photo and finally saw a difference, but in a good way. He recognized his heritage from both sides and what it brought to his life as an agent. He was an amalgam of his parents. What they had ingrained in his character stared clearly back at him, even if it had taken twenty years to see it.
“Nice, eh?” The question came from behind him, steep in a Boston accent. Jack craned back and found Special Agent Sean Patrick Dooley, or Dools as he preferred, puffing his chest out, proclaiming himself king of the cartoon doodle.
Jack pointed at the drawing. “Nice artwork.”
“Congratulations,” Dools said.
“For what?”
“Twenty years. That’s a big accomplishment.”
“I guess.”
“Your ex can now start collecting your retirement benefits.”
“We’re separated, not divorced.”
“Yet,” Dools added.
Jack stretched forward and tapped at a photo on the bottom right. It was Dools’. They were classmates at Quantico, both reaching the twenty-year mark together, both ending up in Sacramento, Jack by choice, Dools not so much.
“Speak for yourself.” Dools was recently divorced.
“Touché.”
Dools stuck out a hand, rocked it from side to side. “Not one of my best.” He reached around and tapped a pudgy finger just to the right of Jack’s. He laughed. “Look at that. Dale Cortavin.”
Jack had slouched back in his chair, his eyes zeroed in on Cortavin’s photo.
“Yup,” Dools said with bite in his tone. “Cortavin with twenty and already an SAC.” As in Special Agent in Charge.
“You got twenty,” Jack said, reminding him that in the eyes of seniority they were all equal.
“Yeah, but I never aspired to rise to the top.”
“You mean like a turd in a punch bowl?”
Dools pressed his finger on Cortavin’s photo like he could smash the smile off his face. “Yep.” Then he shook his head. “A real piece of shit.”
Jack remained silent.
“You know I’m referring to Cortavin?” Dools said.
Jack nodded.
“You got to be a dick to be an SAC.”
Jack knew Dools was just blowing off steam.
“Cortavin,” Dools continued, “thinks he’s the best thing that came to the Bureau since J. Edgar, himself.”
“Don’t think much of him, do you?”
Dools shook a finger at Cortavin’s photo. “From the words of Senator Lloyd Bentsen, ‘He’s no Jack Kennedy.’”
That made Jack smile.
“You speak to Emily lately?” Dools asked.
The smile evaporated.
“You tell her about that job offer?”
Jack looked away.
“You should.”
His response was polite. “Back off.”
Dools opened his mouth but stopped short, deciding it was best not to venture forward in this conversation. He gave Jack two pats on the back, turned and walked down the hall to the file room.
Jack looked back at the telephone.
Lots of messages.
He took a deep breath and, with his notebook in hand, started cycling through a weekend’s worth of calls.
“You have . . . ten . . . new messages and . . . twelve . . . old messages,” the automated system informed him.
Jack didn’t wait for instructions, punching in the proper codes. He began logging those that were important and dumping the rest into the electronic trash can.
One message caught his attention. “Jack, this is Ray Sizemore out of Seattle. I was told to call you specifically.” There was a pause and the sound of shuffling papers. “I’ve got an old homicide that goes back about fifteen years. I may have new information pointing at a suspect in your territory. Give me a call and let’s talk.”
Jack cycled through the rest. Messages from defense counselors wanting time to cut a deal for their clients, news reporters wanting an interview. Jack jotted their numbers but already decided he had more important things to do. He came to the last message and a familiar voice.
“Jack, Border Collins.”
There was a long silence as if Collins was hoping Jack would pick up the line.
“The Board met today. They’d like you to come in for a second interview.”
Jack took a deep breath and held still.
“They were thinking this Friday, around ten o’clock. Listen, Jack, I know leaving the Bureau is a tough choice to make. It was hard for me, too. But you’ll get use to it. I think you’re going to be a great addition to our staff. Give me a call.”
The message stopped and Jack let the call soak in. He looked back over at The Investigator, pulled it closer and stared at his twenty-year photo. Too many years had passed unnoticed, and somewhere during that time, he’d lost what he’d wanted most. His home life. The twenty gave him an out. The ability
to start a new career and maybe find a way back to Emily. The job offer made him anxious and nervous at the same time. Maybe Dools was right. Maybe he should tell Emily. Twenty years was a long time, maybe long enough to now make a change. He knew he had to do something. He just didn’t know what. Jack reached over and pressed a button on the keypad, hearing an automated response: “Message Saved.”
Right now he needed coffee. Jack wandered to the kitchen, waited for a pot to brew, filled his office mug with what looked more like brown water and returned to his desk. He dialed Agent Sizemore, who he had heard good things about. The phone rang once before Sizemore answered. With a quick greeting, Jack opened up a fresh page in his notebook. “You said in your message you’re working on a cold case?”
“An old one that’s been sitting on the shelf for a while. Let me tell you what I got.” Sizemore sucked in a breath, like this was going to take a while. Jack’s curiosity was piqued.
“A little over fourteen years ago King County Sheriff’s responded to a suspicious activity report at an abandoned church in a town outside of Renton. Neighbors kept seeing a van coming and going. Thought it had to do with drugs. Every once in a while they overheard strange noises late at night. The van stopped coming and the noise went away. The neighbors talked, decided to call the cops, you get the idea. When the locals got out there and went inside, they found a girl who had been reported missing.”
“Dead?” Jack knew the answer but had to ask.
“Deputies found her body in a crawl space. She was fifteen-years-old. Based on the decomp, forensics estimated she’d been dead for a week by the time they arrived. They found her tied up, gagged and abandoned. The pathologist said she most likely died from dehydration. Whoever did this left her to die a slow death.”
“I remember reading about that one. Hard to forget a case like that.”
“It stayed in the news for months. Renton PD was able to I.D. the vic. Grace Holloway. Came up as an MP out of Seattle, Capitol Hill District, originally classified as a runaway. County ran an all out search for her killer without any luck. The crime scene yielded some evidence but it never panned out to much of anything.”