by David Grace
Immerson and Sawyer reached the squad room where the GS-13 Investigators were based and Immerson paused at the entrance to give his standard speech about the important work performed by the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Special Investigations. As instructed, everyone was at their desks busily flipping through files or pounding their keyboards. Everyone except Gregory Kane who was notably absent. Immerson forced his gaze away from Kane’s vacant desk and pasted on his most sincere smile.
“We call this ‘the bull pen,’ Congressman. Each of these agents—”
“What I don’t understand,” Sawyer broke in, “is why we need all these people in the first place. Shouldn’t the FBI be handling whatever it is you do here?”
“The FBI is a fine organization but—”
“I mean, all these people pushing papers at taxpayer expense just to do the same sort of thing that the FBI is already doing. It all seems like bureaucracy run amok to me.”
Immerson made a conscious effort not to let his irritation show.
“Actually, Congressman—”
“You’re completely wrong,” Gregory Kane interjected, appearing from Immerson’s blind side. Sawyer turned toward Kane and looked as if he had just noticed a bad smell.
“Congressman Sawyer, this is Agent Gregory Kane.” Neither man offered to shake hands. “Kane the Congressman is—”
“Confused,” Kane said. “The FBI is organized into various bureaus and departments whose funding and manpower go up and down like Paris skirt lengths depending on the crime du jour. Right now that’s terrorism and human trafficking. Next week it might be industrial espionage and bribes to members of Congress.” Kane gave Sawyer a hard stare. “What never gets much attention or funding are threats against non-elected federal employees.”
“So, if my mailman gets mugged you spring into action? Is that it?” Sawyer snapped.
“No, we usually leave that to the Postal Inspector and the local police. We’re more concerned with something like an attempt to blackmail the chairman of an FDA review panel into approving a multi-billion dollar drug or bribing a testing lab to pass defective medical equipment destined for a V.A. Hospital or the theft of the access codes to the copy machines installed in the executive offices of the Department of Energy. If you think the FBI is going to give top priority to anything like that you’re . . . .” Kane finally noticed Immerson’s wild eyes and sweating brow. “. . . mistaken.”
Sawyer’s lips were pinched into a tight line. None of his employees ever spoke to him like that. Nobody, not waiters, not store clerks, not even bank managers spoke to him that way. He was a millionaire and a Congressman and, according to his deacon, one of God’s chosen for Christ’s sake, and this bureaucrat thought he could call him out? Sawyer very much wanted to do something about it but the investigator’s broad shoulders and big hands and most of all his hard eyes made Sawyer pause and think again.
“Kane, aren’t you supposed to be finishing the report on the Jeffers case?”
Kane turned to Immerson as if surprised to see him still there, then nodded contritely.
“Yes sir, I’ll get right on that. Congressman, a pleasure meeting you.” A polite nod in Sawyer’s direction and Kane was gone as quickly as he had appeared.
“I’m sorry, Congressman,” Immerson said in almost a whisper. “Kane is a great investigator but, well, you have to understand his history. He was a senior detective on the Baltimore PD when he and his partner ran into two gunmen high on drugs. The thugs killed his partner and tried to kill him but he charged into their fire and shot them both. He saved a store full of people but,” Immerson sighed, “he was shot in the head.” Immerson’s hand described a path along the left side of his skull from front to back just above his ear. “He recovered, he has a mind like a steel trap actually, and he’s a terrific investigator. Sometimes it’s almost like having our own little Sherlock Holmes, but, aaaahh, he’s a bit short tempered and he has a tendency to say things out loud that he would be better off keeping to himself. The doctors assure us that it’s temporary. In the meantime, well, he was a hero and we make allowances. And he closes cases. I’m sure you understand.”
“A hero you say?
“Charged right into automatic weapons’ fire to take out the criminals. They gave him a medal.”
“Well, wounded in the line of duty, I suppose you have to cut him a little slack,” Sawyer allowed.
“I’ll tell you what — why don’t you let me take you to lunch? I can fill you in on some of our more interesting cases. It’s pretty exciting stuff and it never makes the papers. All ‘need to know’ you understand.”
“Sure, I wouldn’t mind getting something to eat,” Sawyer said, giving Immerson a weak smile.
“Through that door,” Immerson told him, pointing, then he gave Kane a quick, nervous glance before heading for the exit.
Greg Kane tried to focus on his work but his brain continued spitting out data points — Sawyer’s watch was a $3,000 Tag Heuer but the $60 shirt and off-the rack suit and shoes screamed Macy’s. That meant that the watch was likely a present which meant that there was money in the family someplace but it wasn’t his. Either the parents or the wife, Kane decided, which likely made Sawyer a man who craved a lot more than he had. Based on him shooting off his mouth about something that he should have known he didn’t know anything about, it was pretty clear that Sawyer’s ego surpassed his intelligence. Kane absently categorized the Congressman as someone who had been born on second base and felt that he’d been robbed of a triple. That bulge in his tummy and the little veins around his nose told Kane that Sawyer was drinking too much and exercising too little.
The way he cinched in his belt and sported a red-silk tie signaled that he was concerned with his appearance. And Kane didn’t miss Sawyer’s sideways glance at Marjorie either. The Congressman was on the hunt for some action, Kane figured, while the wife and kids were back home planning church suppers and organizing prayer breakfasts. Useless sack of shit! Kane decided then sighed and tried to control his anger. Focus on the file, he ordered himself. Focus.
Everything had been so much easier before COV, Clarity Of Vision, had descended on him. His old life had been soft and fuzzy and half a blur and then Ricky Bazzel skipped a bullet across the surface of his brain and everything changed. When he came back to his senses he found that the world had suddenly become bright and sharp and hard-edged. He felt like a man who had lived a lifetime with poor eyesight and then had been given his first pair of glasses. And there were the dreams. He used to dream like everybody else, confusing, jerky little scenes in misty places where people appeared and disappeared without reason or warning. Now his dreams were detailed, crisp and clear, with all his senses intact and the most crystalline of them all were the recurring dreams involving his dead brother, Tommy.
Had people been this stupid, vain, petty and clueless his whole life and he had just never noticed before? Kane was reminded every day that the world was heavily populated by idiots and that most of the ones who weren’t morons were psychopaths, egomaniacs, bastards or crooks which was even worse. If he were in charge — No, stop it! he ordered himself. Stop bitching, stop complaining, stop imagining how much better the world would be if only people were smarter and better. You drove away your wife and ruined your job. Wasn’t that enough? Kane scolded himself. He closed his eyes and took three slow, deep breaths.
Greg opened them again and looked guiltily around the bull pen. No one seemed to have noticed anything. Kane forced himself to concentrate and paged through the Marilyn Jeffers file. Two minutes into the first interview he had known that she was up to something. It hadn’t taken him long to find out what. She’d started out by leaking the Mine Safety and Health Administration’s inspection schedule to the Tip Top Coal Company and then had branched out to supplying half a dozen other mines with not only advance notices of safety inspections but also the personnel files of the inspectors. She’d created a dummy LLC in Virginia to receive t
he payoffs but had foolishly listed her brother as the LLC’s Manager on the form she filed with the bank when she opened the account. Stupid, stupid, stupid! But stupid crooks were a good thing. If they weren’t morons it would be a lot harder to catch them, he reminded himself.
“You find something good, Agent?” Danny Rosewood asked, noticing Kane’s smile.
“The suspect put her brother’s name on the bank account where the payoffs were being deposited.”
“Score!” Danny said and raised five fingers up high. Greg hesitated then awkwardly raised his own arm as well. “Get you a cup of coffee, Agent?”
“No, Danny, thanks. I’m good.” Rosewood nodded and Kane watched him wander toward the break room. Officially Danny Rosewood was a GS 10 support tech but his actual job was doing whatever the investigators wanted that they didn’t have the time or energy to do for themselves, everything from subpoenaing bank and telephone records to reviewing surveillance footage to making coffee and ordering another box of file folders. Danny was a glorified gofer, but a gofer with a dream. Rosewood wanted to be an Agent. He wanted to carry a badge, which wasn’t unusual but, unlike most wannabees, Danny had a plan.
Rosewood constantly scanned the Internet for classes on police sciences. If some college was offering a night-school seminar on interrogation techniques, Danny was there. When the Government Printing Office issued a new manual on investigative procedures or forensic protocols, Danny was their first customer. He made a pest of himself to the investigators like Greg Kane, always asking questions, always wanting to know how they did what they did. Half the Agents avoided him and the other half competed to see how ridiculous a war story they could con Danny into believing. But not Greg Kane. Danny Rosewood was the only person in the office, except for maybe Fred Immerson, whom Kane actually respected.
Danny wasn’t especially smart or creative. He certainly didn’t have a charismatic personality and he wasn’t a deep thinker. But Danny Rosewood had one quality that Greg Kane admired — Danny worked harder to make the most of whatever talents he had than anyone Kane had ever known. Kane was sick of nonentities like Travis Sawyer who were mediocrity personified and were too arrogant to even know it. At the other end of the spectrum were gifted people who wasted their talents or drifted along, doing just enough to get by when they were capable of so much more. Danny, on the other hand, knew he wasn’t the smartest guy in the room and that he never would be, but every day he made a hundred and ten percent effort to be the best person that he could possibly be and that determination earned him something beyond price — Greg Kane’s respect.
Kane turned back to his computer and started typing the Jeffers report which Immerson would forward to the U.S. Attorney. Just as he was about to hit “Send” Kane’s cell buzzed. The caller was one of his oldest friends, Professor Martin Fouchet. Marty’s wife was sick and Greg could tell from the way Marty’s eyes darted away when he talked about Caroline that she wasn’t doing well. Kane said a little prayer that Marty wasn’t calling to tell him that Caroline had died and tapped the “accept” icon.
“Marty, what’s up?”
“Greg, I think I need your help. I think something’s wrong.”
“Wrong?”
“I was supposed to have a meeting today with the Senior Deputy Director of the Department for the Control of Dangerous Biological Agents and Toxins and he wasn’t there, hadn’t been there since the middle of last week.”
“Hadn’t been where since last week?”
“The Department of Health and Human Services. He’s disappeared. Gone. No one’s seen him or heard from him since last Wednesday. No calls. Nothing. He’s not answering his phone, not responding to emails. A man with his responsibilities doesn’t just wander off. I think something may have happened to him.”
Half a dozen questions raced through Greg’s head.
“You said biological agents and toxins? What are we talking about?”
“Chemicals, drugs, things that could be used to make poisons or illegal substances, precursors. I filed a request for an exemption for . . . well, the name wouldn’t mean anything to you, the short version is ACX. It’s on the prohibited list. I have to have a supply of it for my research. He was going to approve my request for an exemption, Greg! He told me that last week. Today was just supposed to be a formality, one last interview and he was going to sign off on it so I could get the ACX past customs. But now he’s disappeared and nobody wants to do anything.”
“OK, Marty, I understand—”
“Greg, you’ve got to find him. As long as he’s just missing I’m stuck in limbo here. I’ve got to get permission to import the ACX in order to complete my research.”
“I understand. Give me the missing guy’s name and contact info.”
“Albert Brownstein, Senior Deputy for the Health & Human Services Department for the Control of Dangerous Biological Agents and Toxins. His office is on Independence Avenue.”
“OK, Marty, I’ll go over there and see what I can find out. In the meantime, email me Brownstein’s contact information and anything else you think might be helpful.”
“You’ll let me know what you find?”
“I’ll call you this afternoon.”
Kane hung up and looked around for Immerson but his boss was still at lunch with Congressman Asshole. Shit! Greg sent Immerson an email on where he was going and retrieved his gun from his bottom desk drawer.
CHAPTER THREE
The Department of Health & Human Services filled a six-story concrete building on Independence Avenue across the street from Bartholdi Park. Washington’s bureaucracy was still struggling with the reality that the farther technology advanced the more mayhem a handful of people could unleash. Back in the days of black powder and brass cannons half a dozen determined malcontents might have managed to take fifteen or twenty lives. Now with C4 and step-by-step instructions on how to make nerve gas just a few clicks away, a couple of nut-jobs could kill thousands and shut down a city of millions. Looking at the endless warren of cubicles that stretched out in front of him Kane wondered if the Government’s efforts to prevent a disaster weren’t little more than a replay of the Dutch boy madly trying to plug the holes in an already collapsing dike.
Brownstein’s subordinate, the Senior Assistant Deputy for the Department for the Control of Dangerous Biological Agents and Toxins, was Sandra Cray. Kane found her in a packing-crate-sized office on the Department’s fourth floor.
“Ms. Cray? I’m Agent Gregory Kane, Department of Homeland Security,” Kane announced, holding up his creds.
Sandra Cray’s chair was jammed between a steel desk mounded with brown folders and a windowless gray wall. Her complexion, already sallow under the fluorescent lights and the glow from an ancient Dell monitor, now paled even more.
“What? Homeland Security?” Cray looked at Kane with an expression halfway between confusion and fright.
Greg took that as an invitation and squeezed into the lone chair with his knees almost bumping against the front edge of her desk. With a long stretch of his arm he closed the door behind him.
“When was the last time you saw Senior Deputy Brownstein?”
“What’s this all about?”
“It’s about the last time you saw or talked with or communicated with Senior Deputy Brownstein. Is there some reason you don’t want to answer that question?”
“What? No. Of course not!”
Frightened people usually talked more than was good for them which was just what Kane wanted. He stared at Sandra Cray and waited for her to begin babbling in an attempt to prove herself innocent of a crime of which she had not yet been accused. It didn’t take long.
“Ummm, last Wednesday, around a quarter after five. I usually stay later but my daughter had a cello recital and I, well, anyway, I said goodnight to him on my way out.”
“And after that? Any calls? Emails?”
“No, I mean, I don’t think so.”
“You don’t think so? What does
that mean?”
Cray looked helplessly around her tiny, steel box as if searching for a way out. A picture of a palm tree against a setting sun was stuck to the wall behind her. Kane calculated that she had just enough clearance to swivel around and stare at it during those moments when she felt the room closing in on her.
“I got a text, a partial text, from his cell around eight o’clock Wednesday night. I had my phone turned off for the recital so I didn’t see it until Thursday morning when I was getting ready for work.”
Kane stared at her for a heartbeat then snapped, “Am I supposed to guess what it said?”
Sandra gave him a chastened look and answered with exaggerated care. “Two words: ‘Sandy, I’m’ and that was all.” Kane stared. After another heartbeat she continued. “Albert was the only one who called me ‘Sandy’ so I’m sure it was from him.”
“You don’t like people calling you ‘Sandy’?”
“I’m not a beach!” she snapped, then continued in a forced-calm tone. “My name is Sandra, not Sandy.”
“But Brownstein was your boss and if he wanted to call you ‘Sandy’ you couldn’t stop him.” Sandra just stared at Kane. “When he didn’t show up at work on Thursday did you call him?”
“Of course. I called his home and his cell. He liked to keep his work calls separate from his personal ones so he had two phones, but they both went to voice mail. I also emailed him, several times, but I never got an answer. And I texted him.” Cray gave Kane a “so there” look.
Greg stared at her and conspicuously made a note in his pad. “What did you do next?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Your boss goes missing. You can’t reach him. You’ve got an interrupted after-hours text from him. Are you telling me that you just ignored it and decided that eventually he’d show up dead or alive?”
“Are you saying that Albert is dead?”
Jesus, how stupid is this woman? Kane thought but somehow managed not to say it out loud. Instead he took a deep breath and tried again.