Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States of America, founding father and principal author of the Declaration of Independence. Served 1801–1809.
TWO
Nothing hit FBI Special Agent Patti Rogers in the pit of her stomach quite like getting summoned upstairs to see Assistant Director Margery Fisk. Somehow, no matter how benign the circumstances, it always reminded her of being called to the principal’s office.
She felt that way right now, as she rode the elevator up to Fisk’s floor. But if Joe Reeder—her task force’s consultant, and her good friend—had been with her, this trip wouldn’t have been unnerving at all. Or at least much less so.
She and Joe would be having dinner tonight. Since they had first been thrown together on the Supreme Court task force two years ago, the pair had become tight, and they had usually dined out every couple of weeks or so. In the last year, however, her social life had taken a decided upturn, so she and Reeder—there had never been anything romantic between them—were seeing less of each other.
When Rogers was shown into the Assistant Director’s office, Margery Fisk sat behind a desk the size of Rogers’ parking-garage space. The AD’s short, rigidly coiffed dark hair almost touched the collar of her impeccable, expensive business suit, a gray tweed offset nicely by a black silk blouse. Rogers, at five six, with her medium build and shortish brown hair, could not fill out a business suit the way Fisk could. Nor could she afford as smart a one.
As good as Fisk looked, the woman was even better at her job, a role model for, and occasional mentor to, Rogers, who saw in Fisk everything the young FBI agent aspired to become.
Right now Fisk’s unsmiling countenance betrayed not a trace of why Rogers had been called up here.
“Have a seat, Patti,” the AD said, without rising or even looking at Rogers, attention on her monitor, the dominant item on her almost too-neat desk.
Rogers sat, and waited, figuring there was nothing good coming.
Finally, without looking at her, Fisk said, “How do you like having Agent Altuve back on your team?”
“He’s a real boon to us. Nobody is better than Miggie when it comes to tech.”
Computer expert Miguel Altuve had been assigned to the Supreme Court task force Rogers and Reeder headed up two years ago. Miggie’s work on that case had earned him his own small but elite computer crime unit, which he’d been temporarily pulled off last year when Rogers (again with Reeder consulting) needed help in thwarting an attempted government overthrow.
“I’d like to say the change was made,” Fisk said, “for all the right reasons. But I assume you know how and why the reassignment went down.”
Rogers nodded—she didn’t need to say, Budget cuts, the reason for Miggie’s unit getting swallowed up by another one. And that quickly, Rogers understood why she’d been summoned.
“Things aren’t easing up either,” Fisk said unhappily. “We’re having to cut two more units, and yours could wind up on the chopping block, too.”
“I guess that’s always a possibility, ma’am,” Rogers said, unsure of what else to say.
“You’re not going to make a case for your team?”
“When that becomes necessary,” Rogers said, just a little tightly, “our record will be our best defense.”
Fisk nodded. “One might say that the Special Situations Task Force has virtually snatched this nation from the brink of disaster. Twice.”
But what have you done for me lately? Rogers thought, trying not to move a muscle.
“But lately,” Fisk said, “you’ve not been producing much.”
Working to keep defensiveness out of her voice, Rogers said, “We have closed over a half dozen cases since the Capitol matter.”
Again Fisk nodded. “You have. A kidnapping, two bank robberies, and a few other more minor matters . . . but nothing that gets us the media attention we need. Not like the two big cases, the second of which frankly remains necessarily unpublicized.”
Rogers sat forward. “They’re threatening to close us down because we aren’t providing enough publicity? Since when is law enforcement driven by how much press it generates?”
“Well, Agent Rogers, we’re in the J. Edgar Hoover Building. Doesn’t that say it all?”
Fisk did have a point.
The AD continued: “Your task force receives, agent-by-agent per capita, more funding than any other three units combined.”
“Well, our agents are at standard pay grade, and so far when Joe Reeder has consulted, he’s done so pro bono.”
“But your investigations generate considerable expense at a time when President Harrison is cutting the budget of every agency in DC. The only way I can keep arguing against the deep cuts other agencies are taking is to generate publicity, to close high-profile cases, the kind that make the public sit up, take notice, and write to their congressmen to keep the FBI fully funded.”
Rogers could not conceal her frustration. “You’re saying that if I want to keep my team together, I need to find a high-profile crime . . . and that we need to be the ones to bring it to a successful conclusion. How is that supposed to work? We don’t generate the crimes. And you assign the cases.”
Fisk took in a breath and let it out. “Patti, I like you and I admire you—you’ve done amazing things in your surprisingly short career. The Director himself has expressed how impressed he was with the Supreme Court and Capitol investigations . . .”
The former attracting considerable media attention, the latter a state secret.
“. . . but the fact remains: you are the least senior team leader we have. Right now you face the imminent possibility of being reassigned to another leader’s unit.”
“Director Fisk, how am I supposed to—”
“Agent Rogers,” Fisk interrupted, the “Patti” familiarity gone, “I’m not suggesting you do anything. If the right case comes along, I’ll send it your way. If you can again attach Joe Reeder as your consultant, that would be a big PR plus. But you needed to know where you stand.”
Rogers realized the nod that followed was the end of the meeting, and she quietly exited the AD’s inner sanctum.
Not what Rogers wanted to hear, but not completely unexpected either. She’d figured that budget cuts would become an issue at some point—the United States had nearly defaulted, just six months before—but had hoped her work with Reeder would keep her and her team afloat a while. Now her hopes rested on some minor case evolving into something major, or Fisk coming through for her with a barn burner.
Maybe Joe would have a thought.
Bob & Edith’s, a diner on Columbia Pike not far from Rogers’ condo, drew an eclectic crowd that, depending on the time of day or night, ran the gamut from families with kids to whores with habits. Even when the clientele overlapped, there was never any trouble—whatever people brought in the door, they left in the parking lot. The place was an island of biscuits-and-gravy-induced peace, a Switzerland of comfort food. The only change in about the last fifty years had been the addition of flat-screens riding high in the corners, 24/7: CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ESPN.
In a back booth, Joe Reeder, in a black polo and matching jeans, his ABC Security windbreaker flung on the seat next to him, waved Rogers over. His short, prematurely white hair, contrasting with the tan of a recent Florida vacation, made him easily the most striking man in the place, not excluding guys with mohawks, transvestites, and a couple of ripped bodybuilders.
She plopped down across from him.
“Another rough day at the office, huh?” he said, not really a question. His craggy good looks, as usual, gave nothing away, except perhaps tiny smile lines around the brown eyes in their white-eyebrowed settings.
She shuddered. “Brutal.” Sometimes she hated that people-reading thing of his.
Reeder’s expertise in the field of kinesics—the science of facial expressions and body language—dated back to his Secret Service years. It remained a major selling point for his firm ABC Security, whic
h consulted with law enforcement agencies nationwide.
They took time to order coffee while they surveyed the menu.
Then he said, “It’s the budget cuts, isn’t it?”
She gaped at him. “How the hell . . . ?”
Her friend gave her half a smile. “Don’t worry, I wasn’t ‘reading’ you—it’s not like these cuts haven’t been in the news ad nauseam.”
He nodded toward a screen where CNN was excerpting this morning’s press conference with President Harrison explaining his latest efforts to balance the budget.
“It was only a matter of time till it was the FBI’s turn,” he said. “What’s the skinny on your task force?”
She gave him the details of her meeting with Fisk, pausing briefly as the two friends ordered.
Reeder looked like he was about to advise her, then he stopped short, seeing somebody approaching. Without looking, she already knew who it was—Joe Reeder wasn’t the only people reader at the table. Kevin Lockwood dropped into the booth next to her and squeezed her thigh under the table—he was working, so a kiss on the cheek was out of the question.
Kevin and Rogers had been seeing each other for the better part of a year now. They’d met when he was a material witness on the last case she and Joe had worked—boy-band handsome, Kevin wore his dark hair clipped short, his tortoiseshell glasses enlarging slightly his impossibly long-lashed brown eyes.
Those eyes had first drawn her to Kevin, even though at the time he wore eyeliner and mascara. Kevin sang at a club called Les Girls where he appeared under the nom de guerre Virginia Plain, though he took occasional shifts here at Bob & Edith’s. Tonight he wore not a sparkly gown, but the customary waiter staff’s white shirt, black bow tie, and black pants.
“Mr. Reeder,” he said, nodding across the table.
“Mr. Lockwood,” Reeder said with a wry smile. She’d noticed some time ago that he’d stopped asking Kevin to call him “Joe.” Just didn’t do any good.
“Working graveyard, huh?” she asked Kevin.
“Yeah, lucky me. Alexis called in sick, so Pinky called me and I said, ‘Sure.’ I hope you weren’t thinking of doing something.”
Pinky was the heavyset, henna-haired gal at the register.
“No,” Rogers said, and raised her coffee cup toward Reeder. “I’ve already got a date.”
“Tomorrow night, then. I’m not working either place. I’ll take you somewhere nicer than this . . . meaning no offense, Mr. Reeder.”
“None taken, Mr. Lockwood.”
Kevin gave her a wink in lieu of a peck on the cheek, then rose and went off toward the kitchen window where somebody’s food waited.
“Been almost a year, hasn’t it?” Reeder asked.
She shrugged. “Who’s counting?”
“Your folks back in Iowa are going to love him.”
“Don’t be mean.”
“Hey, I like the guy. And I don’t have to be much of a people reader to see that you do, too. In a different kind of way.”
“So,” Rogers said, uneasy talking about this part of her life, “you were going to say something? Right before Kevin showed up? Something that might help us keep Special Situations afloat, I hope.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“You don’t know what you were going to say?”
He huffed a tiny laugh. “I don’t know if it will keep Special Situations together.”
She felt a tiny rush in her stomach. “You have something?”
“Maybe.” He sipped coffee. “You ever have occasion to meet Amanda Yellich?”
Secretary of the Interior Yellich—a hard worker and valued ally of President Harrison—had died just under a week ago at her desk.
“Just once.” Rogers shook her head, sighed. “Nice woman. So sad.”
“Sad as hell,” Reeder said. “Do you know how she died, exactly?”
Rogers shrugged. “Wasn’t it a heart attack?”
Reeder leaned in. “Are you old enough to remember Mama Cass?”
“Who?”
He rolled his eyes, then said, “The Secretary died from eating a sandwich.”
“A sandwich? What, did she choke?”
“Are you sure you don’t remember Mama Cass? Food allergy—sesame.”
FBI agent Rogers didn’t love that the cause of death of such a high-ranking public official was unknown to her. “And you’re privy to this how?”
“I know that she died at her desk over lunch because it was on the news. I know about the sandwich—and more importantly, the allergy—because . . . I knew Amanda.”
“Amanda? You knew the Secretary of the Interior well enough to call her by her first name?”
With a little shrug, Reeder said, “Her marriage broke up about the same time mine did. We went to dinner a few times. Maybe more than a few times. But it was never anything really serious.”
Rogers wasn’t sure she bought that. “How well did you know her?”
“Well enough to know about her OCD.”
Rogers cocked her head. “She had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder?”
“I don’t know if it was ever officially diagnosed or anything,” Reeder said, shrugging. “But I do know she ate at her desk every damn day. And that she had the same sandwich from the same restaurant every damn day. Hell, for all I know it was delivered by the same delivery person every damn day.”
With some lightness in her tone, Rogers said, “Please stop saying ‘every damn day.’” Because this clearly was something that was gnawing at her friend.
“OCD or not,” Reeder said, “Amanda knew all about her allergy, going back to early childhood. She would have made sure the restaurant knew about it, too. It wouldn’t take much sesame to kill her, a fact of which she was quite aware.”
“Kill her? Really kill her?”
“Really kill her. Not a heart attack.”
“Is this being covered up or . . . ?”
“No. There was a general assumption that she died at her desk of a probable coronary, which made the news initially. Follow-up reports mention the fatal reaction to sesame, but that was not page-one stuff. I mean, you didn’t notice it.”
“Who’s investigating?”
Reeder shrugged. “Nobody that I know of. Death by misadventure, an accident. Might be that’s all it is, but the Amanda I knew was pretty damn careful.”
Rogers mulled a few moments, then asked, “You think Situations should look into her death?”
“Do you have any other pressing cases?”
“No,” she admitted.
“Might be worth a look. Death of a cabinet member, if it’s more than accidental or misadventure, could be just the kind of case that would satisfy your boss.”
She smirked. “Or I could be accused of spending government funds just to satisfy your curiosity about the death of someone you knew intimately.”
“Did I say I knew her intimately?”
“Did you have to?”
Their food arrived, fish and chips for her, a meat loaf plate for him.
About to dig in, he said, “Well, if funding is your big concern, if it’ll make you feel better—I’ll buy dinner.”
“Even though it’s my turn?”
“Even though it’s your turn,” he said, lifting his fork of meat loaf in salute.
Truth be told, Reeder could have afforded to take her anywhere in town. His highly publicized success with her on the Supreme Court case had helped turn his already thriving ABC Security into a multinational corporation. But the political paparazzi had made dinner practically impossible at such favorite spots of theirs as the Verdict Chophouse, the Blue Duck Tavern, and Vidalia.
Reeder had first hit the headlines back in his Secret Service days, after stepping in front of a bullet meant for then President Gregory Bennett. Prior to Reeder, Tim McCarthy—protecting President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981—had been the last Secret Service agent to take a bullet for a president.
Across the restaurant, a couple came
in. The man wore a nothing suit, but the woman was wearing expensive jeans and a T-shirt.
“Them,” Reeder said, as they sat quietly eating.
That was her cue for a game they’d been playing. In an effort to pick up her partner’s people-reading skills, Rogers had coaxed him into coaching her as she studied kinesics and tried to improve her powers of observation.
She watched until the couple was seated in a booth in the back, near the kitchen. Even so, she still had a clear view of both.
“Well?” Reeder asked.
“Married couple. Rings on both. Hers is a huge fricking diamond, so they have some money.”
“What about her body language?”
Rogers nodded at the prompt. “Defensive, arms crossed, brow furrowed.”
“Right. She’s pissed off. Any idea about what?”
She glanced at Reeder. “Oh, come on.”
“It’s there,” he said.
She sneaked a look at the couple. The man was fiddling with his wedding ring, slipping it off, slipping it back on. “Ah . . . They’re talking divorce.”
“They are,” Reeder agreed.
The woman smiled, but her eyes were teary and she used the napkin to blot them away. A waitress came and they ordered something without looking at the menu.
Kevin swung by and warmed their coffee. Smiles were exchanged. Then Kevin was gone, and Rogers asked Reeder, “How’d I do?”
“I’ll tell you after you sum it up for me.”
“They’re a couple deciding whether or not to split. He’s in favor, she’s not.”
“That’s one option,” Reeder said.
She glanced at them again, as discreetly as possible. “What am I not seeing?”
“His watch.”
Another glance, though it didn’t give her much. “What about his watch?”
“It’s cheap—a Timex or something.”
“So?”
“You said they’ve got money. His suit is inexpensive, off-the-rack. Shoes are worn. Yet she has a honking diamond ring, a professional manicure, and a hairdo that cost more than his suit.”
“Then . . . they don’t have money?” Rogers asked, unsure where this was going. “Or maybe they do but she spends it all?”
Executive Order (Reeder and Rogers Thriller) Page 2