by Jeanne Adams
On her own pad, she wrote: D’Onofrio. New York? California. Gallery. Berlin?
Reese tapped her toe with his, signaling for her to pay attention as the executive agent presiding over the Inquiry spoke. “Is this your statement, Agent Burton? Are there any amendments you would like to include?”
“No sir,” Ana said, forcing her tone to be level, unemotional.
“So noted.” To the woman at the far right, he said, “Please address your attention to the additional statements as they are read into the record.” The woman selected a folder, began to read the statement Agent Beverly Stanley had made before she died.
To distract herself, Ana focused on D’Onofrio again, writing: Prometheus equals California. Moroni equals New York. Pratch equals Berlin. Artful Walls equals Miami.
Wait.
The shipper in White Plains had done all the work for Moroni. Moroni and another New York gallery had used the same shipper in New York for two paintings of Dav’s for resale overseas.
The designer, the one who had dated Dav, had mentioned Moroni.
“Agent, do you agree with, or have any comment on the statements as they’ve been read?”
Shit. She’d missed it. She glanced at Reese and saw the barest shake of his head. No.
“No, I do not.”
“So noted. Moving on. Please read into record the actions of Agent Thomas James Michaels with regards to this matter.”
Wait a minute. What did TJ have to do with this? He’d been peripheral to the situation in Rome, essentially coming in at the end to help clean up and cover up, making sure everything got explained away. Confused, Ana forgot the data on the art case and focused on the current recitation.
“Agent TJ Michaels has been on approved leave of absence for several months in which time he has sought out leads in regard to this case. Upon his return to duty, he presented evidence of significant mitigating factors, factors which may have skewed the data and led to the conclusions drawn by Agent Burton. His dedication to uncovering leads on the matter of the events of the fifteenth of February, in Rome, has been above and beyond the call of duty,” the executive agent intoned. “Whereas our Agency did not approve his actions, per se, he has provided substantial additional information that leads the Panel to believe that the data Agent Burton provided was, in fact, accurate as far as could be determined. His return to approved duty to continue tracking is part of the record, in as much as…”
My God, they were saying her analysis was right, that it wasn’t the killing factor.
Ana redirected her thinking, refocused on the statements. “Furthermore, Agent Michaels’s dedication to this pursuit has been noted and now sanctioned, facilitating the ability to investigate his leads.”
Sanctioned. That meant he’d found something, something related to all that translation he’d sent her.
Another buzzing hunch flitted into her brain and immediately disappeared when the executive agent said, “Agent Burton, do you have anything you’d like to add, regarding this matter?”
She cleared her throat, took a sip of water before replying, trying to recapture the thought. The present took precedence however, with the panel members watching her, and the thought, the hunch, was gone.
“Sir, my only addition is a note of gratitude that Agent Michaels has been so dedicated to uncovering the truth, and the reasons for the events of Fifteen February.”
Reese scrawled, Good answer, in big letters on his legal pad.
She ignored that, as well as the next reading as she made more notes.
TJ. Translations. Cheating spouses. Shipper? Freight?
Wait. Shipping. Another thought occurred. Yountz. Freight. San Fran. Prometheus?
Holy hell. Yountz had been at the gallery opening. D’Onofrio had been there as well. Most of the victims, all of the West Coast victims, had been at the opening.
Was Yountz connected too? Ana knew better than to discount the idea. She had a gift for data, and if her brain brought it up, there was something in all the stuff she’d read, something small and seemingly insignificant that had put the thought in her head.
Despite Rome, she never, ever forgot to check that sort of thing.
“And from your current supervisor, Special Agent Sarai Elizabeth Sinclair Pretzky,” the first panelist read, drawing Ana’s attention back to the proceedings. She’d never heard Pretzky’s full name; she wasn’t sure she’d even known her first name. “The following statement is read into record.”
Ana held her breath throughout the narration, barely hearing words like “dedicated” and “perseverance,” “unstinting work ethic,” and “grace and aplomb.” The overall sense of Pretzky’s addition to the proceedings was positive and as fulsome as anyone could be.
Reese bumped her elbow and wrote on the pad again. Good job.
As if she’d done a good job in order to be reinstated, like kissing up. Right. Thinking in those terms made her think about Davis, the pus-ball. She wondered if everyone thought it was all about skating by these days, until you had to cover your ass.
That sparked a thought, and she wrote, CYA? Who? Covering for whom? next to the listing for the Moroni Gallery. They had closed down immediately after the forgeries came to light. Neither McGuire nor Hines had been able to track the owners. By the end of the time they worked on the case, filing it as cold, they’d still had no leads on the owner’s whereabouts. Doing her own follow-up, she’d come up empty as well.
She scrawled the word Disappearances next to the Moroni owners’ names. She also wrote, HINES!!! as a reminder to call the man again. He still had not returned her calls, and she needed to know if he’d checked the shipper in White Plains. It hadn’t been in the notes, and McGuire hadn’t remembered anything about the shipper, but he said Hines had been the one to talk to the Miami gallery owner, as well as Moroni in New York.
Then there was Berlin. The Moroni crew had disappeared; Pratch was gone too. Had his disappearance been about money, or ass covering?
And where was the body? Did they need to be looking for the Moroni owners’ bodies, as well? She scribbled another note. Pratch—body? Moroni—body? Jane/John Does? Check Potter’s Field burials/timeline.
“I have the fitness reports.” Another panel member spoke up, this time the gentleman to the left of center. “Reading into the record,” he intoned. “Review of the mental fitness of Anastasia Elena Burton, and her capacity to return to duty.”
When he started reading the review from the shrinks, she shut it out. She’d read the files, knew what they had to say about her stability, the way her mind worked.
What she needed was for her mind to actually work, to make the leap from names on a page to a solid direction. It was there, she could feel it hovering in the back of her mind. She’d started to flip the pages back, review her list of names when the lead panelist cleared his throat, calling her attention to him.
“Therefore, Agent Burton,” the executive agent intoned, a hint of a smile playing about his lips. Had he figured out she was working? Did he care? “In the matter of Fifteen February, we, the Panel of Inquiry, do hereby absolve you of any wrongdoing or fault. The matter, while noted in your record, will not be assigned as a reason for demotion or delay of benefit or placement.”
Reese made a noise that was probably triumph, well muffled since the panel was still in session. Despite her distraction, or maybe because of it, Ana got the socked-in-the-gut feeling that goes with either great upset or great relief. Having her thoughts keyed into the art case had distracted her from being a sweaty, nervous wreck for the panel. Thank God.
“Oh, God. Thank you,” she whispered, letting it sink in. She was not at fault. Not at fault. Thank you, TJ. She would never balk over doing a translation or favor for him, ever again. Ever.
“Is there anything you would like to say, Agent?”
She took a bracing sip of water before she spoke, knowing her voice was going to be shaky, no matter what. “Thank you to the Panel of Inquiry for your
hard work, and for this verdict.”
There, she’d gotten it out. The members of the panel nodded, closing folders and in all but one case, the executive agent, sitting back in their chairs.
“Agent Burton, I have been instructed to inform you that while your current assignment is ongoing, a number of urgent openings await you when you can wrap up your part of the investigation in progress.” He looked down at his notes. “Five teams have requested either a person of your capabilities or you, personally.” He smiled at her openly now. “These include several international postings, as well as a domestic case or two. While we, the panel, only felt it necessary to read three or four recommendations into record, I want you to know that there were at least twenty-seven letters of varying length that lent support to your skills and dedication to the Agency, and the security of the United States on a global basis.”
“Yes sir, thank you, sir.” Ana was stunned by the fact that so many people had taken time to post something positive. In her experience, more people were apt to focus on the negative, especially within the Agency.
“Very good. Unless my fellow panelists have anything further to add?” He looked up and down the line. “No? Very well, this Panel of Inquiry is dismissed at—” He checked his watch, stated the time, and brought down a gavel on the tabletop. “Good luck, Agent Burton.”
“Thank you, sir,” she said, standing in respect as the panelists filed out. The last panelist detoured to drop a fat manila envelope on the table in front of her.
“Some of those potential postings,” she said, tapping the CONFIDENTIAL seal. “Handle with care.” The woman nodded to Ana and to Reese, then left through the same door the others had used, leaving her alone with Reese.
“Congratulations,” he said, offering a handshake. “You’re cleared for return to serious duty,” he nodded at the envelope. “Any idea where you want to go?”
She shook her head, which was swimming with all her ideas, hunches, and thoughts on the current case. “I haven’t dared consider anything. I’ll look at everything later, but my mind is pretty full of the case I’m working right now.”
Reese frowned. “It’s a cold case,” he said dismissively. “Pass it off to someone else and get yourself out of there.”
“No, I need to finish it out, wrap it up if I can.”
Reese shook that off. “You heard the executive agent. He didn’t say finish it; he said wrap up your part of it. Move on, Ana. The less time on your record in the dead zone, the better.” He gathered his notepad, settled it in the pocket of his briefcase. “By the way, the pay-grade shift and increase that was frozen will be reinstated and paid retroactive to the freeze. Expect a nice bonus in your check this month.”
He waited expectantly for her to get her own belongings, walked out to the main part of the building with her. “Good luck, Agent,” he said, holding out his hand to shake hers in parting. “It’s been a pleasure to assist you in clearing this matter off your record.”
Ana stood a moment, watching him walk away, stroll down the sidewalk in the bright DC April sunshine. All is forgiven, all is forgotten? She wondered about that, wondered about the fraud case and her San Francisco colleagues all through the ride back to the hotel. The fat envelope full of options weighed heavy on her mind, but she didn’t open it.
She didn’t want to go there quite yet.
Kicking off her shoes, she lay on the bed, thinking. What was the connection she was missing? Where did all the pieces fit?
She was still wondering when she fell asleep.
Hours later, she woke in darkness. Her mouth was dry, her head hurt, and all she wanted to do was go back to sleep. Her dreams had been a welter of images, from Gates’s face in the mirror behind her, passionate and loving, to the grisly visual of Beverly Stanley’s burned and broken body on the cold steel in the morgue in Rome.
Superimposed over all the images were the photos of the tortures in New York, and the executions in San Francisco.
“Ugh,” she grunted, going to the bathroom to splash water on her face. She had to book a flight to New York, follow Davis’s lead to the shipper there. “What is it about that that’s bothering me?” She puzzled over that as she went online, booked her flight for the next morning. “What, what, what?”
She paced the floor for a few minutes. “Only two centers of killing,” she said, finally getting a handle on one thing that was bothering her. “But two different methods.”
She opened her connection to her office e-mail and felt her heart rate pick up at the multiple pings of incoming e-mail.
A frisson of excitement hit her in the gut when she saw the subject line, SEARCH RESULTS. That was the first e-mail she opened.
Agent Burton, re: the search you instigated on Case #5789420-A. Additional Warrants processed, search under way. Initial track is pointing to the shipping company designated in warrant #5832, issued by Judge Pierson…
Ana skipped through all the legalese to get to the results listed three paragraphs down and got a hard shock.
Case co-connection warning! This warrant intersects with warrant # 097843, Washington District, Case # 54973.
Whose case? She scanned further down, saw TJ’s name and stopped cold. What the hell? TJ?
It was connected.
She grabbed her phone, found TJ’s number.
“Come on, answer, damn it,” she muttered, opening the other e-mails one by one. The data was still incoming, but as the searches overlapped, the shipper came up sixty-one percent of the time in relation to the numbers called before and after the art fraud was discovered. Ana was not surprised when a second shipper came up in San Francisco.
“Two of them. Two shippers. Same fraud. Two different killers. Separate but equal, damn it,” she said, continuing to pace as the phone rang and rang. “Answer the damn phone, TJ.”
She stopped long enough to scribble her thoughts on her yellow pad. “Time for a new warrant,” she muttered, sending an e-mail to Pretzky as she waited for TJ’s voice mail to pick up. They needed all the data on that shipping company.
An e-mail popped up from TJ. She hung up the phone just as the message picked up.
Don’t ring the phone. I’m in something complicated. I’ll let you know. TJ
She quickly wrote back.
I’m in your kind of town. Crossroads on your work.
She paused, trying to think how to carefully let him know what was going on without saying it straight out.
All that stuff we talked about de Italia is connected. We need to talk immediately. A.
She waited for ten minutes, checking the e-mail over and over, but there was nothing from TJ.
She continued pacing. Should she call Gates, let him know what the search had turned up? Odd how quickly she’d come to think of him as a kind of partner, an equal. She’d never had—or let—anyone be in that position before.
“If I hadn’t slept with him, if he hadn’t treated me the way he did, would I call him?”
Before she could decide, her phone rang. She checked the number: Pretzky.
“Burton,” she said by way of greeting.
“Pretzky here, how’d it go?”
Warmed by the interest, Ana smiled. “It went okay, thanks. I’m clear.”
“Good. You deserved no less.”
“Thank you for all you did,” Ana said, wanting to say more, but unsure how to do it. Relief was coursing through her in a delayed reaction. Talking to Pretzky brought it home. She was free. She was reinstated. She had jobs waiting.
“Never mind the thanks,” Pretzky replied, oblivious to Ana’s relief. “I’m calling because we’ve had another incident.” Pretzky sounded pissed, now. “We’ve also got another body in the building. Probably isn’t related, but no one from this division’s died in,” she paused, to count, “the four years I’ve been here, except one guy who got hit by a bus. This was a hit.”
“Who was it?” Ana gripped the desk, willing it to be a fluke, unrelated.
“Gu
y named Perkins from IT. He’s been dead a few days. Probably killed soon after our computers got hit and you had that deep search. They found him with crack cocaine. He’s got some tracks, but the ME’s saying they’re probably post mortem. Nothing about it adds up. It was an execution-style hit, rather than an OD. Bullet to the back of the head.”
“Just like the others in California, in the art fraud case.”
“Exactly. Ties in with another like-crime in Vegas as well.”
Excitement flared in her gut. She remembered Perkins now. He’d been up on their floor, right after the hacking incident. She reminded Pretzky. “Remember? It was weird because he said he’d come up to help, but he was up on our floor, not down with Monroe and Talmadge, the IT guys that got us shut down. I think it’s connected.” Ana was sure, and her tone reflected it. “Besides that, we got another complication. I got three case-connection warnings via e-mail on our art-fraud case, intersecting in some searches and warrants on another case.” She read the file number to Pretzky; her boss returned the favor with the case number from Vegas. Also cold, also unsolved. “I’m positive mine’s a cross with a case from my colleague in Rome, TJ Michaels. Problem is, he won’t answer my calls.”
“I’ll check from here, let you know. There’s something else, though. You put all the files and notes from this case in the locked filing cabinet, right?”
“Of course. We agreed on that as a safety measure.”
“They’re gone.”
“Wait, did you say ‘gone’?” Ana’s voice rose to a stressed squeak. “As in missing, totally not there?”
“Exactly. It had to be an inside job because no one can get in here without authorization, even the cleaning people. I’ve got Pearson reviewing the surveillance tapes and the visitor logs, but so far we’ve got nothing.”