Indelible Ink

by Matt Betts

  “Christ. You need to get a life,” Harper said. She tossed her magazine on the table and walked out of the room. Deena could hear the back door swing shut as her sister walked out of the house.

  Deena didn’t look away from the screen. “What the hell are you doing with yours?”

  Whenever Deena found herself alone with nothing else to do, she would look at the dot on her arm and try to decide whether it had changed, or if she was just imagining it. It seemed bigger some days and others it appeared to have moved a little to the right or left. She could never be positive, and she hated talking to her sister about it. Harper had gone to their dad and told him about it. He suggested they needed to make an appointment with a dermatologist to have it looked at, but he never pursued it.

  When she finally put the controller down, Deena noticed the little blemish sort of looked like the yellow button on the game controller that she pressed to shoot at things in some games and swing her sword in others. It was still round and black, but it seemed to have a raised ‘X’ in the middle.

  It faded quickly, and Deena decided to keep that to herself.

  13

  Two men in ill-fitting suits intercepted Pel and Garrett as they got closer to the mayor’s people. “We need two minutes,” the larger of the two said.

  Pel started to point to the group they were headed to talk to.

  “Just two minutes,” the other man said. He nodded his head toward the mayor. “Those guys aren’t going anywhere.”

  “We’ve got…” Garrett began.

  “We could be done talking by now.” The men were adamant about Garrett coming with them for a talk and confident that everyone else could wait.

  “What can I do for you?” Garrett looked around the men to make sure the mayor wasn’t, in fact, going anywhere.

  “Step over here,” the large one pointed to a nearby car and walked over to it. He opened a door and waited for Pel and Garrett to get in.

  “Seriously? Is this necessary?” Pel asked.

  “Two minutes,” the shorter one said as he opened a back door for them.

  In the comfort of their incredibly non-descript sedan, the tall one behind the driver’s seat spoke first. “I’m Agent Rice, this is Agent Rivers. We just want to talk to you about the crime scene.”

  “Agents of which agency?” Garrett asked.

  “One of the less flashy subdivisions of the Bureau,” Rivers said without missing a beat. “Reports put this event as beginning at 6:13 p.m. That’s about four hours ago.”

  “Give or take.” Garrett didn’t look at his watch.

  Rice shifted uncomfortably in his seat to get a better look at Garrett who was sitting directly behind him in the back seat of the car. “So, what do we know so far?”

  Garrett didn’t like the sound of that. The way the ‘we’ just snuck into the sentence was subtle and was, in Garrett’s experience, a prelude to someone horning in where they didn’t belong. “Unfortunately, not a lot. The explosion took out quite a bit of the evidence. As I’m sure you know, it’ll take quite a while to reconstruct the device for any clues it might give us.” He gave them the general overview that could have been easily gleaned from looking at the scene. Garrett wasn’t about to spill anything to some guys that wouldn’t fully identify themselves.

  “Right. Tell us about the ambulance.” Rivers looked tired to Garrett, but then he supposed that could be the agent’s normal expression.

  “Not much to talk about there yet. We’re running the plates and numbers on the ambulance to see where it came from. The company name on the side isn’t from around here, we know that much already. No ID on the victim, but we’re looking into him.” Again, nothing but surface-level stuff.

  Rice shifted again, awkwardly pulling a file folder from between the seats. He opened it and handed a picture back to him. “That your guy?”

  Garrett saw the man in the photo and cringed a little. It was a picture of the victim, minus the bullet holes. “Yes, that’s our guy.”

  “Federal witness in an organized crime case. Tom Jessup. We’ll give you his stats and whatnot.”

  “You think he was supposed to be on the bus?”

  “That’s a possibility,” Rice said.

  “What was he doing roaming around free if he was in danger?” Pel asked.

  “How the hell should I know? Wasn’t our case,” Rivers said.

  It all fell into place for Garrett. The hit man went to the extreme of bombing an entire bus to make sure the witness didn’t get off. It was overkill, but hits like this often were, just to make a point. Unfortunately, the mark never got on the bus to begin with. “So, this was a mob hit? Great. Are you guys going to take it off my hands?”

  “I’m sure someone will come along and help you with that aspect,” Rivers said. “What else you got?”

  Garrett wondered again how much they knew and wanted him to tell them. “Nothing.” He waited to see their reaction. “Seriously nothing.”

  Rivers handed Pel a small laptop. “How ’bout we both take a look at what’s on the tape?”

  Pel looked at Garrett for guidance and the senior agent nodded affirmative.

  “Wow. This is a great little piece of hardware,” Pel said as she attached the drive to the USB port. “Hendica? They’re not even distributing in America yet. Nice.”

  Everyone in the car tried to shift to get a view of the screen. The men in the front leaned over the seats, hanging halfway into the back. Pel tried to turn the laptop around and work the video controls from behind until she discovered the screen itself swiveled, enabling her to work the keys while the others got a decent view of the screen. It would’ve been comical, if not for the fact they were at a crime scene.

  They all watched exactly what Pel had described to Garrett earlier, culminating with the woman walking off into the alley next to the large black man.

  “Can you freeze it on a good view of the woman?” Rice asked.

  Pel paused the video, and then toggled it backward a bit until she settled on a relatively clear view of the side of the face. She zoomed in a little and copied a grainy close-up of the woman’s face and left it up in the corner of the larger picture. “Best I can do. Dark alley, poor quality video. Give me some time back in the lab and I can do much better.”

  The men looked at each other and then back at Garrett and Pel. “OK. Thanks.” They both turned and faced forward, Rice’s hands moved to the steering wheel. They all sat in silence for a moment and Garrett couldn’t believe that was the end of the conversation.

  Rice revved the engine.

  “All right. What the hell?” Garrett asked. “You pump us for information then you don’t reciprocate? Not going to happen. Let’s go, make with the story.”

  “Yeah,” Pel said. “Squid pro quo.”

  Garrett never knew when Pel was being purposely funny or blissfully ignorant. He wasn’t going to ask.

  “Guys, I’m sorry. This isn’t something you need to know. We’ve told you what’s pertinent.” Rivers threw his hands up. “You have the victim’s name, a good motive. I’d say we’ve been more than helpful.”

  Garrett leaned forward. “How about a little more on the motive? Who was he going to testify against? Why weren’t your people protecting him if he was such an important witness?”

  “He wasn’t scheduled to testify against anyone, therefore, he wasn’t under anyone’s protection. It was who he could’ve testified against.” To Garrett, Rice didn’t seem all that focused on the story.

  “Who are we talking about?” Garrett asked.

  Rivers and Rice looked at each other again and their expressions didn’t change. “We need some good people on our team for this investigation, maybe even on a permanent basis,” Rice said. “You’ve got as much info as anyone. Maybe we could ask you to
be assigned to a detail with us.”

  Garrett was astounded. They dragged him into a car, gave him bullshit info and now wanted to offer him a job.

  “What exactly are you looking for?”

  Rivers continued: “Specifically a new field tech person and a lead investigator who can follow instructions and get results for us.”

  Garrett turned to Pel and saw the woman looked as incredulous as he felt. “Are you guys seriously offering us jobs? Here?”

  No one answered him.

  “Tell you what,” Garrett started fumbling through his pockets. He had a crime scene to get back to that wasn’t getting any fresher. He’d wasted his time just long enough with these clowns to ensure everyone at the scene had tromped over evidence and then promptly put their thumbs up their asses. “I’ll give you my card, when you’re ready to talk about this thing seriously, give me a…”

  He was interrupted as Rivers leaned back and handed him a different business card. Garrett looked at it carefully, and found his own name on it. Garrett Walters, Lead Field Agent—it said. The phone number wasn’t his. The office address wasn’t from his building on Hudson, rather on the west side, a Newell address on the 3rd floor. Below it were the initials FEI Garrett looked at it closely, wondering if the letter E was just a faded B.

  The doors unlocked unexpectedly. Garrett wasn’t even aware they’d been locked. Garrett opened the door immediately and Pel followed suit.

  As they both slammed the doors simultaneously, one of the men inside the car called out, “Be seeing you.”

  Pel joined Garrett and they walked toward the scene together. “What the hell? I told you to go straight to the office and check that tape out.”

  “An agent stopped me and said you were looking for me.”

  “I would have called you.

  “Sorry. It’s a fucked up night.”

  Garrett sighed. “True. You got me there.”

  The mayor’s people were standing around talking to Garrett’s bosses, Division Chief Harris among them. They didn’t look happy at all. Several more unfamiliar faces had joined the group.

  Harris waved Garrett over. “Walters, this is Marty Tan, he’s with the anti-terrorism taskforce.” He pointed to the man next to him in jeans and a windbreaker. “And this is Kara Lanford, she’s with the ATF. Marty and his people will be taking the lead on this one, Kara will be helping out. I need you to fill them in on anything you’ve got so far and hand over any notes that might be helpful.”

  Garrett looked closely at his boss’s face to see what he could read there. He wondered if Harris had any say in the decision to take the case away or if it was something forced on him. He couldn’t discern anything by looking, but he guessed the latter. “Are you kidding? I’ve been on this scene since the beginning. I’ve watched them carry the bodies, and bits of bodies out of the wreckage.” He moved closer to Harris until his face was a foot away. “And you’re going to just let them take me off this?”

  Harris pulled Garrett away from the group and talked to him low. “Jesus, Walters. What do you want me to do? This falls into their jurisdiction. It’s not like it’s a quiet little crime where we can stand and argue about who gets what. This is big, you know that.” He nodded around to all the camera crews that were set up around the scene. “I’m sorry, but let it go. This is obviously something we need the terrorism team in on.”

  Garrett pulled his arm away from Harris. He didn’t lower his voice like his boss. “Terrorism. Shit, this has nothing to do with terrorism. This is a mob hit, a plain old everyday mob hit.”

  The group of people they’d walked away from looked over, very interested in what was being discussed. Garrett nodded at them.

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Harris asked in his low tone. “Where did you get that idea from? Jesus, look around you. Where’s that coming from? Did you find something that might point to a hit?”

  Garrett tried to identify the car they’d sat in, but it was obscured by a crowd of onlookers and an emergency vehicle. “Some agents gave me a heads up.”

  “What fucking agents? WHOSE fucking agents?”

  Garrett wanted to kick himself for not following up with their claims of where they were from. “The FEI?”

  “What the hell are you talking about? Did they show you any evidence, or are you just going on the say so of some guys you’ve never met?”

  “Pretty much just their word, sir.”

  “So you’re shouting crazy, unsupported theories for everyone to hear based on nothing whatsoever? That right?”

  “Yeah.”

  Harris stared at Garrett hard for a minute. “I think maybe you need to get back to the office and help coordinate things there. And you’ll cover anything else that comes in. The next case is yours and you’re out the door, your involvement in this ends at that moment. Got it?”

  Garrett thought hard about what to say. This was a new side of his supervisor that he’d never seen. They worked well together because they could bounce ideas off each other and collaborate in helpful ways. “Yeah.” He turned and started toward the yellow police-tape perimeter. His route took him past Marty Tan.

  “Don’t forget to leave your notes,” Harris called.

  Garrett took his notebook out of his coat pocket and handed it to Tan as he passed. “Good luck reading this, my handwriting sucks.” He didn’t wait for a reply.

  “You don’t use your tablet for notes?”

  Pel laughed and fell in step behind him.

  “They didn’t banish you,” Garrett said. “Just me.”

  “I’m not hanging around to work with those assholes,” Pel said.

  “You don’t even know them, I’m sure they’re lovely people.”

  “Right.”

  They ducked under the tape and pressed through the crowd. As they rounded a police van, they came to where Rivers and Rice had been sitting in their car. The two agents and the car were gone.

  “Great. I had a question or two for them.” Garrett felt tired. The weight of the day caught up with him quickly.

  “Well, at least now we’ll have time to polish up our resumes before we see them again,” Pel said. “Let’s just go back and look at that video and see what else we can see, maybe copy it before we give it to the terrorism guys.”

  Garrett walked a few feet before he discovered the woman wasn’t following anymore. He turned and saw Pel just standing there with her face scrunched up. “You didn’t take the disk out of the laptop when we left the car, did you?” Pel asked.

  Garrett had to shake his head no. “It crossed my mind, it really did, but… I had no idea how to do it.”

  “You’re the most technologically challenged federal agent I know.”

  “I’m taking classes,” Garrett said.

  “They’re not helping.”

  14

  In the cab, Avi spoke in low tones. “Why did you run away from me at the airport? If you were having so much trouble, you should have told me,” Avi said. He reached out and she moved away from him as best she could.

  “Avi, I don’t know what…”

  “And why are you suddenly acting all Amish?”

  “Amish? That’s a good one. Were you expecting me to jump you? Were you hoping that the little teenager would grab you hard and stick her tongue down your throat? That what you were looking for?” They’d had a pretty tumultuous relationship, punctuated by periods of deciding it was a bad idea for people in their line of work to be together in any sort of emotional entanglement. The times in between were not really much of a relationship. They had to keep things hidden from everyone in the organization, her sister included. It boiled down to brief periods of intense sex. “Pedophile much?” The cab driver looked at them in his rearview mirror, but Deena couldn’t be sure he heard her. She
frowned at him and he turned away.

  “What the hell? What do want from me? You leave on a job, we’re all handsy and fucktacular, you come back like a Catholic schoolgirl on a fieldtrip and announce you’re joining a convent.” Avi looked understandably confused. “And you expect me to shift gears without missing a beat? Fuck you.”

  “Oh, poor you. Poor Avi. You’re not getting laid today. That’s much worse than what’s going on with me. Take a good look at me. I lost ten years of my life here. My mind constantly fights with itself as to whether I’m going to have a coherent thought, or if I’m going to repeat lyrics from boy band songs over and over for an hour,” Deena said. It was frustrating to explain such a profound change to someone who didn’t seem to want to know.

  “You already look older than when we met up in the airport. You’ll snap back. You always do.”

  “Maybe my body will, maybe even my mind, but I’ve never questioned my life this way. It can’t go on the way things were. And you have to admit it’s a horrible time to become addlebrained, no matter what I decide to do.”

  Avi took a deep breath and Deena was sure he still didn’t believe her. “Just get some rest when we get on the train. We’ll decide what you want to be when you grow up later.” He turned and looked out at the city.

  “Jesus. Stop saying that. I don’t understand it, and I keep hoping it will get sorted out by the time we hit Los Angeles, but I don’t think it’s going to.” Deena looked at the little spot on her right arm. It looked innocent enough; small, lighter than normal. She knew it could turn on a dime if it were any other day. “I feel like I have the ability to make choices for the first time here. It’s always felt like I had to do what this inner voice has told me to for so long, for as long as I remember.” Deena didn’t look at him. She couldn’t come right out and say there was no way for them to be together again. She faked looking at traffic, but knew he could see through her. “All I’m asking is that we take our time getting back to the city. Give me time to heal. Maybe I can get myself figured out so I handle this change.”