Deadly Disclosures

by Julie Cave

  She drank a second glass as she sat in the dark room. In a fit of sudden resolve, she knelt beside a storage box and opened it.

  It was her — their — music. Their lives had revolved around music. They met in a tiny, smoky club where an unknown garage band had been belting out something that was truly awful. Dinah had endured the first three songs, then stumbled out the door. Luke had been right behind her.

  “Did you find that as insufferable as I did?” he’d asked her with a winning smile.

  “You didn’t like it?” Dinah had replied, dryly. “I thought their first song, “Roadkill,” was sensitive and poignant. And “I’m Gonna Punch You” was a particularly thought-provoking social commentary.”

  He laughed, they clicked, and they went down the road for coffee.

  Now on her third glass of wine, she pulled out each CD and experienced a flood of memories with each. There was Throwing Copper, the live CD they’d played incessantly when they first met. Luke would roll down the windows of the old Cadillac, and they would sing at the top of their lungs while the wind roared past them, flicking their hair into their eyes.

  There was Green Day’s “Time of Your Life” that became their college graduation mantra. It had been a tough summer. Luke had accepted a job in a law firm in Richmond, Virginia, while Dinah went to DC. He’d packed his Cadillac with everything he owned and left the following weekend. As Dinah watched the car drive toward the horizon, she was seized with a sudden panic that she’d never see him again. Instead, she went to the nation’s capital and tried to cope with nightly phone calls. They shuttled back and forth every weekend and worked like maniacs during the week to try and forget their loneliness.

  They’d been apart for ten months when Luke took her away to Vermont. He played her an old favorite U2 song, “All I Want Is You.”

  Luke took her hand. “My happiness is with you,” he’d said softly, “and nowhere else. I don’t ever want to be apart from you again. Will you become my wife?”

  She looked at him in wonder. “Of course,” she murmured, embracing him, whispering a promise that would haunt her. “We’ll never be apart again.”

  Their wedding waltz was to the Righteous Brothers’ “Unchained Melody.” She cried as they danced — shuffled, really; Luke wasn’t a dancer — and Luke had held her tighter in alarm.

  “What is it?” he whispered fiercely.

  “I don’t want this moment to end,” she said. “It’s too perfect.”

  “It won’t,” he promised. “This is what our life together will be like. As long as we have each other, we can face anything.”

  He was true to his word. When her parents died within six months of each other, he’d held her up at the funerals when she’d wanted to collapse, made her cups of hot tea, lain beside her, stroking her hair in silent empathy while she cried.

  He was with her when they found out she was pregnant. In the heights of their ecstasy, he whooped around the room like a little boy. He read every fatherhood book he could lay his hands on and whispered to her stomach, sweet nothings to his firstborn. When she gave birth to a tiny boy with a scrunched little face that made him look like an impossibly old, wise man, they named him Samuel, and he played Creed’s “With Arms Wide Open.”

  Kneeling in her living room, Dinah realized she was crying silently, the tears slipping down her cheeks with ghostly caresses. She put the CDs back in the box and edged backward, toward the couch.

  How could I have let my world leave me? she wondered. She knew now that Luke and Sammy had been her everything, and yet she had let them go. What would she give to hold her precious son just once more? When her parents died, she had certainly felt grief and loss. There had been many things she wished she’d told them — how she loved them, how she would never stop needing them. Yet, after a period of time, she began to live again — perhaps differently, in a way that would make them even prouder were they still alive.

  But when Luke and Sammy left, a large part of herself had gone away too — the part that was a mother, a wife, a worthwhile person. The void in her was bottomless. The elements of basic living — eating, sleeping, breathing — became infused with a pain she didn’t know existed. She struggled with buying groceries because there were so many memories: how she would buy chocolate with macadamia nuts, even though it was ridiculously expensive, because Luke loved it, how Sammy loved to gnaw on juicy plums until his chin and fingers and hair were red, how she would buy a surprise dessert to treat them every Sunday night.

  She struggled to pay bills simply because Luke had always done it. She struggled to cook for one person, because she had always cooked for three. She struggled when strangers asked politely whether she had any children. I am a mother! she wanted to scream. Just because he’s not here with me doesn’t mean I’m not a mother.

  She now knew, too, that it was impossible to have the meaning of her very existence ripped away from her and expect to keep living. It just couldn’t be done.

  And so the decision was made clearer in her mind. Once a foggy possibility lurking in the black area of the mind that most people don’t ever look into, it now became crisply clear. She couldn’t keep looking through music and photos and those tiny little baby shoes and feel like her life was worth living. Simply, it just wasn’t.

  Dinah felt calm and composed. She finished the bottle of wine and allowed herself to think of what she would do.

  That night, she went to bed feeling more tranquil than she had in a very long time.

  Perhaps it was because she knew the end was near, and that the interminable pain would soon be over.

  Perhaps it was because her only wish of falling into the darkness forever was about to come true.

  • • • •

  When Dinah stumbled out of bed the next morning, with a pounding head, fuzzy mouth, and rebellious stomach, she silently cursed herself for drinking the whole bottle last night.

  Ferguson raised his eyebrows at her as she straggled to her desk. Despite brushing her teeth several times, using almost a whole can of body spray, and putting eye drops in her bloodshot eyes, Ferguson remarked, “Harris, did you hit the bottle again last night?”

  Dinah ignored him. “Aren’t we supposed to see the guy from the atheist lobby group today?”

  “Yes,” replied Ferguson. “But I think he might pass out from the fumes coming off your body.”

  “Well, what are we waiting for?” Dinah asked, rolling her eyes. “Let’s go!”

  “I might drive, though,” said Ferguson, as he stood and they walked to the elevator. “I’m pretty sure you’d still be over the limit.”

  “Okay, enough already!” Dinah swatted his arm. “I get the message.”

  Ferguson just looked at her and didn’t say anything. He didn’t need to. You don’t get the message at all — you continue to drink and come into work hung over or worse, still drunk. So when are you going to clean up your act?

  The headquarters of IAFSI was located in a small office block downtown. Damon Mason met them in a small reception area and took them into a multi-purpose office. He was an incongruous man — he was very tall and broad and would have been at home on a football field, but was softly spoken and clearly nervous at having two FBI agents in his office.

  “So, tell us about what you do here,” suggested Ferguson, once Mason had brought coffee.

  “Well, this is the headquarters of IAFSI,” began Damon Mason. He had a habit of entwining his fingers repetitively as he spoke. “IAFSI stands for Individualist Association for Scientific Integrity. Broadly, we seek to further the cause and protect the integrity of pure science. As a result, we also represent atheism, because we believe that scientific reason has abolished the need for the human race to superstitiously believe in God. That’s what the ‘individualist’ part of our title means — to pursue independent thought or action.”

  “Independent from who exactly?” Dinah asked, frowning.

  “From the church, the government, religion,” said Ma
son. “Science has struggled against religion for hundreds of years. The church used to execute scientists for suggesting that the world was round and not flat! Yet despite all the odds, science has managed to survive, and even flourish, because certain scientists decided to pursue individual reason rather than accepting what the church told them to do.”

  “It’s not the Spanish Inquisition anymore,” commented Ferguson.

  “That’s true,” agreed Mason. “Now of course the biggest problem we have are Christian fundamentalists denouncing evolution. Our struggle now centers around trying to keep science in schools and religion out, working for the separation of church and state, and influencing public policy to ensure we live in a society not dominated by religious dogma.”

  “Are you involved in politics then?”

  “Yes, we also support politicians who agree with our mission. We’re not lobbyists. We prefer to develop relationships that are mutually beneficial.”

  “In what way do you support them?” Dinah asked.

  “We help fund election campaigns, for example,” replied Mason. “We use our networks to raise awareness of the candidate, and hopefully influence people to vote for that candidate.”

  “And in return, you get someone in a position of power who supports your agenda,” guessed Dinah.

  Mason shrugged. “Nothing illegal about that.”

  Dinah thought about that for several moments and filed it away for future reference. Something about what Mason had just said resonated with her, but she couldn’t determine exactly why just yet.

  “So how did you meet Thomas Whitfield?” asked Dinah.

  Mason blinked. “The organization decided he would be an individual we’d like to sponsor,” he said. “Several years ago, Mr. Whitfield was gaining prominence as an anthropologist and had published some excellent articles. I contacted him and met him to decide whether we should pursue sponsorship. He was an excellent candidate, and therefore I began to work very closely with him.”

  “What do you mean, sponsor him?” Dinah pressed.

  “By and large, the scientific community fades into the background of society,” explained Mason. “People know they’re there, but they don’t know what they’re doing or why. Occasionally one of them will be on television or in the paper. The organization wants to promote scientific endeavor, through the media, to show people that science is the savior of mankind.”

  “Why did Thomas Whitfield make a good candidate?”

  “He had very good credibility,” said Mason. “He was a thorough researcher. He was articulate and well spoken. He could speak to people in simple terms. In short, he was the sort of person who could engender trust in the general population, and who would be very successful in furthering our cause.”

  “If he was already having articles published and rising in prominence and so forth,” Dinah interjected, “why would he need to affiliate himself with your organization?”

  “We are a nationwide organization,” said Mason with a smile. “We have thousands of members from all walks of life. Some of our members are in the media and other powerful positions, and therefore we could offer Mr. Whitfield a variety of media opportunities. For a scientist, to be able to talk about his research in the public arena was a tremendous opportunity. We felt he would be a natural doing television appearances, and he was. Everyone loved him. He could talk about a complex scientific finding in the simplest of terms that anybody could understand.”

  “Did you require him to mention your organization as part of the deal?” Ferguson asked.

  Mason shook his head. “No, we prefer to stay out of the limelight. In any case, we didn’t require of him anything. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement. We had a scientist in the media spreading our message and he enjoyed talking about his research to such a large audience. There was nothing sinister about it at all.” Mason laughed nervously.

  Dinah frowned. “Why would we think there was something sinister?”

  Mason’s laughter dried up quickly. “Well, you know, you’re FBI agents. Don’t you see something sinister in everything?”

  There was an awkward pause. Damon started to squirm under Dinah’s flinty gaze.

  “How did Mr. Whitfield end up as the secretary of the Smithsonian?” Dinah asked at length.

  Mason looked rather proud of himself. “It was perfect timing, actually,” he enthused. “It was a very exciting time. We were certain he’d have great influence.”

  The agents waited as Mason gathered his thoughts.

  Washington, DC — 1999

  Thomas Whitfield had barely struggled awake on a rare Saturday morning when he had absolutely no commitments and nothing to do except sleep in, enjoy a leisurely breakfast, and read the paper. It was raining heavily and Thomas thought there was nothing better than the sound of rain on the roof.

  At least, he had nothing to do except for the insistent pounding on his front door.

  “Who on earth could that be?” Eloise wondered, hastily pulling on a robe while Thomas hunted for his own.

  Damon Mason stood outside his front door, soaking wet.

  Thomas opened the door and ushered him inside. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Damon Mason shook himself out of his jacket, and Thomas was reminded of a large dog shaking the water from his fur after being in the rain.

  They sat in the family room and Eloise brought in coffee.

  “Normally I would have waited until Monday,” said Mason. “But the news is so exciting I couldn’t wait. What would you say if I told you that a high-profile position at the most prestigious museum has become vacant?”

  “I would assume you’re talking about the Smithsonian Institution,” replied Thomas dryly.

  “Exactly. Can you imagine yourself as the secretary of the Smithsonian?” Mason asked. His excitement was infectious. “You will be in charge of leading a renowned museum and research center which attracts millions of visitors each year. You will have an annual budget of over $900 million. Can you believe that? The best part is the research and scientific investigation programs that are undertaken there.”

  Thomas did indeed know that the research program at the Smithsonian was enviable. For a scientist, having the freedom and funding to engage in these activities was akin to heaven. Being in charge of the research activities was even better, like being in charge in heaven.

  But Thomas didn’t want to get ahead of himself. “Wait a minute, how did the vacancy arise? Has it been advertised yet?”

  “The last one resigned,” explained Mason. “He was in his early seventies and it was getting to be too much for him. This is an important opportunity. The last secretary did a pretty good job, but he was a businessman and administrator and had been his whole life. His main passions were to balance the budget and have an organized desk. So if we could get a scientist, like yourself, into the chair with a passion for science and knowledge, then I think the institution would move ahead astonishingly. Given that the media are already quite comfortable with you, I think you could improve the profile of the Smithsonian as well.”

  Thomas looked at the other man thoughtfully. Obtaining the position of secretary of the Smithsonian would legitimize his entire scientific career. He would no longer be the scientist that sometimes appeared on television but whom nobody really knew. He would be the key speaker, he would be respected for his position as well as his achievements, and he would no longer have to duke it out on silly televised and radio debates.

  “I’m very interested,” he said finally. “But tell me, what’s in it for you?”

  Mason knew the question was coming. “You know what’s in it for me,” he said cheerfully. “Being in that position will give you the authority to espouse your beliefs that science is the answer. People will believe you.”

  “So continue with what I’ve been doing already?” Thomas asked.

  Damon raised his eyebrows. “Right. Except this way, you’re in a respected, unique position and you can help steer
the activities of the research programs, with the approval of the board, of course.”

  “The board?”

  “Yeah, the board of regents. It’s a group of people who oversee the running of the place,” explained Damon. “Not unlike a board of directors in a company. They report to Congress periodically and help you to get funding from the government on an ongoing basis.”

  “Who is on the board?” asked Thomas.

  “Who isn’t on the board,” replied Damon, chuckling. “Only the vice president of the United States. There are several senators and congressmen; a Supreme Court judge, the heads of some large philanthropic organizations, and some businesspeople. It’s a heady mix of power. They’re the sort of people who can get things done.”

  Thomas was already envisioning the stratosphere of funding and prestige he would occupy as the secretary of the Smithsonian.

  “So what do I need to do next?” he asked.

  “Meet the board,” said Damon, “for an informal chat. We’ll see how they like you and how you like them.”

  A sudden thought struck Thomas. “How do you know about this before the position is even advertised?”

  Damon smiled enigmatically. “I think I told you when you first joined IAFSI that we have members all over the country. Many of our members prefer to do our work quietly, without broadcasting to the world that they belong.” He chuckled again. “Certainly our members who are elected officials and have constituents who might find their membership offensive would never even mention it. But there are some on the board of regents who are members of IAFSI, like you.”

  “Who in particular?” Thomas asked curiously.

  Damon shook his head. “I swore I’d never tell anyone who they were, and I won’t break that promise. Suffice to say, if you become secretary, you’ll find out who they are pretty quickly. Just don’t expect them to broadcast it.” He sighed ruefully. “So, shall I arrange for you to meet the board?”