by Erik Carter
Tinner continued. “We had the trigger words in place for you. When a set of words was said in a Channel 16 broadcast, you, Kelso, and Tyko Hautala were all woken, you all remembered your missions. Hautala’s was to get the theory out through mass communication. Yours and Kelso’s was to stop the other five from getting their theory out. Your theory. Then the killings began. Owen started with Isaac Bennett in Seaside.” Tinner paused. “And you killed Philip Vazquez in Washington.”
Copeland shook his head. “No. No.”
“Knowing Agent Conley’s expertise, we let the BEI search for the two of you while we continued our own investigation. We found you almost immediately. You weren’t as good as Kelso. You’re an accountant, Holzer. We brought you back here, used our same methods, convinced you that you’re a CIA agent, hoping that somewhere in that mess of the brain we created you could lead us back to Kelso. And you did. You’ve done a great service to your country. Take pride in that. Now, please, put the gun down.” Tinner gestured with his hands, slowly moving them down.
Dale could feel Copeland shaking. “I … killed someone?”
Tinner sighed. “I’m sorry, son.”
Dale was tossed from left to right as Copeland frantically scrambled in place, looking between Tinner and Adam Steele. His gun, which had also been wavering between Dale and Steele, stayed on Steele now. It shook in Copeland’s hand. Dale could hear Copeland’s breathing. Faster and faster. Something was going to happen. Dale could sense it.
“Copeland,” Dale said quietly, almost whispering. “Copeland, no …”
In a flash of movement, Copeland pulled the gun to the side and fired twice.
But he hadn’t aimed at Adam Steele.
He had shot Owen Kelso.
Then there was chaos, a loud and violent amalgam of sound and movement as the cops fired at Copeland. Dale was yanked to the side. A bullet hissed by. It missed Dale’s leg by six inches. Dale’s head whacked into Copeland’s. They stumbled to the side. The walls roared with reverberated noise.
And then it stopped.
Dale’s ears rang. He flicked his eyes to the side. Steele was uninjured. Owen Kelso was dead. Two shots to the back.
Dale did a mental scan of his body. He knew that his adrenaline was rushing, but he was certain that he would feel a gunshot wound. Dale had been used as a human shield, but when Copeland shot Kelso, the other cops still opened fire. Dale couldn’t blame them. They didn’t know if Copeland was going to try to shoot either of the other men after shooting Kelso.
Copeland jerked to the side, pulling Dale with him. Dale glanced down. Copeland had been shot in the leg. Blood poured out of his suit pants. He stumbled.
Copeland’s free hand grabbed the side of Dale’s head and squeezed, pushing their heads together. Dale glanced over. Copeland had his gun against his own temple, and he had the other side of his face jammed against Dale’s. His message to the cops was clear: If you shoot at me again, I’ll kill both myself and Conley.
A few feet away from them, Kelso’s body was completely limp. He was no robot. He wasn’t a zombie. He was dead. His head was turned to the side, and his eyes were open. Bright blue. Blazing, frozen blue. The man had terrorized the region, killing two of the Wisemen and a security guard, frightening families, shooting a police officer, kidnapping a child. Yet these were the deeds of an assaulted mind. Dale was a firm believer that everyone was responsible for their own actions, no matter the circumstances. But what could be said of a creature like that on the floor? The blue-eyed monster created by MKUltra. Was it not the CIA who bore the responsibility of his deeds?
The bullet wounds to Kelso’s back seeped blood into his dirty trench coat. Copeland had shot him. Twice in the back. Shot him to Hell.
With his head pressed again Copeland’s, Dale couldn’t look the other man in the eye. So he just looked away from Kelso’s body and said, “Why, Copeland?”
“Because this ends now. He and I hurt too many people.” Copeland yelled out to Tinner. “I only ever wanted to help people.”
Tinner took a step forward.
Dale knew what was about to happen. “Copeland …”
In one swift movement, Copeland stuck his leg in front of Dale, pushed him to the floor, then put his gun in his own mouth. Dale looked up. Copeland squeezed the trigger.
Dale reached out. “No!”
Copeland fired. He collapsed.
Copeland was right beside Dale on the floor, their legs still intertwined. Copeland faced the opposite direction. The back of his head was a giant wound. Dark blood seeped out into his blond hair.
Dale had seen it all. But he’d never been tangled with a man who had just blown his brains out. He shuddered and scooted away, hands digging into the coarse, destroyed floor. He kicked Copeland’s leg off his and scrambled a few feet away on his butt. Cops ran up. And Tinner. They knelt over Copeland. Urgent shouts. Commands.
Dale looked to the left. Adam Steele was by the vault. Shell-shocked. A couple yards away from him was Owen Kelso, another dead man on the ground. More cops gathered around Kelso.
Dale took a deep breath and let it out. Then he looked to the front of the room. The rest of the cops—including Taft—were gathered around yet another person on the ground. A collateral hit. Dale could see blood. A body on the ground. Motionless. Legs. In a dress.
Spiro.
Chapter 57
Dale scrambled to his feet and sprinted over to Spiro. He pushed between the cops and dropped to his knees beside her. Her arms were splayed out. One leg was straight, one kicked behind her. The wound was to her stomach. Her tan dress, which he had earlier noted as being so fashionable, so pretty, was stained deep red all the way across her abdomen. The blood surrounding her pooled up on the concrete. Her eyes were open, barely.
Dale put a hand on her shoulder. She slowly turned her eyes to him. Dale felt something in his stomach. Nausea.
“Oh shit,” Dale said. “Oh shit, Spiro. Why’d you go and do this to yourself? You walked right downrange.”
Spiro smiled. “Inspiration struck me. Not everything fits into charts.”
Dale took her hand. Her eyes filled with tears. They were bloodshot, beautiful.
Dale wasn’t a spiritual man. Despite having waxed spiritual with Spiro throughout the case, it wasn’t something that he gave much thought to. But the nature of the case somehow put him in a sphere of spirituality that he’d never felt before. As he looked down at Spiro, into her pretty brown eyes, the feeling overwhelmed him. He had looked at her salaciously throughout the assignment, even when she was being a real turd, and he’d imagined her skin to feel satiny soft. Her hand was even softer than he imagined, but it wasn’t so much satiny—it was smooth and supple. The hand felt tiny in his, like he might crush it if he wasn’t careful. He wondered if his touch, somehow, could help her hang on.
“Hold on, partner,” Dale said. “We’ll get you through this.”
Chapter 58
Dale was in the back of an ambulance. There was a paramedic beside him, and another sat farther back toward the rear doors. The siren wailed, and the whole vehicle shook. Medical devices jolted around. Things rattled in the compartments. And the IV connected to Spiro’s arm swung.
She was on a stretcher. Unconscious. A sheet was pulled up to her waist. Straps went across her chest. Her head moved lightly with the undulations of the travel.
Dale still held her hand. He’d only let go of it while they were loading her into the back, and he refused to not ride with her. He’d flashed his badge. He didn’t like to abuse power, but he wasn’t going to leave her side—like Casablanca, when Sam refused to leave Rick’s side during his moment of drunken despair. Dale wasn’t going anywhere.
He was still amazed at how small her hand felt. He gave it a little squeeze, and he could feel the tiny bones inside; he could feel how thin the entire hand was. And so soft.
He watched her face as it continued to move about. He’d had so many short-term partners in his relativ
ely brief stint as a BEI agent. One guy got grazed by a bullet. Another took a severe beating. But Dale had never had a partner in a situation like this.
Dale had also never been in a position to see someone he knew clinging to life. He didn’t have much family, and in his life as his Prior Identity, he had about as many friends as he did now. His mother, despite her age and her feisty attitude and her overall negative outlook, was the picture of health. Dale had never seen someone he cared about in this predicament.
And he realized that, even though he had known Spiro only briefly, he cared. Dale had a soft spot for tortured souls. It had taken a long time for him to get himself to the point where he was. He wasn’t always the epitome of charm and cool-headedness. He knew where people like Spiro were coming from.
She was breathing. She was alive. But aside from the warmth that it gave off, the tiny hand in his felt dead.
Dale pondered the weight of it all. He wondered where Gillian Spiro had been in her life, what she had done. He wondered who had loved her. He thought about her mother. Spiro had been ten when she passed. What would her mother think of how Spiro had turned out? What would she think of this moment now? How would Calvin Dunnett react to seeing Spiro on this stretcher? What had Spiro done in her nearly forty years? Where did she go to college? Was it hard for her, or had she been a natural student? He thought about what her daily life must have been like. There must have been television programs she watched, something other than Casablanca repeats. And foods she enjoyed. She wasn’t an early riser; he knew that much. And she took her coffee black. She liked fashion. And she had a heart. She tried to bury it in charts and graph paper. But it was there.
It all seemed so simple and so terribly complicated. When you were forced to think about it.
Chapter 59
Beep.
The heartbeat monitor pulsed slow and steady.
Beep.
Dale stood over Spiro. She was unconscious. Wearing a surgical gown. Blankets pulled up to her armpits. A new IV in her arm.
Beep.
Dale’s arms were crossed. Now that some time had passed after her surgery, Dale’s mind had had a chance to wander away from deep profundities and into cold realities. He looked at Spiro, and his earlier feelings washed over him, but they were now wrapped in a sense of anger. Anger for how she had ended up in this situation. And anger at who was to blame for it.
He reached out and touched her hand again, brushed his fingers over the back of it. Then he re-crossed his arms.
Beep.
There was the tapping sound of dress shoes approaching behind him. Dale’s eyes looked up from Spiro, but he didn’t turn around to see who it was. He already knew.
A presence stepped up right beside him, so close that their arms brushed. Still Dale looked forward. He heard the familiar voice.
“The bullet entered her from the front,” Taft said. “Ricochet.”
Dale spun on Taft. Absolute contempt poured out of him. He knew he had to look like a maniac. He didn’t care. “You sold us out, you son of a bitch!”
Dale pushed Taft with both hands. Hard. Taft stumbled back. Dale went to shove him again. Taft pushed his arms out of the way and stepped aside, allowing Dale’s momentum to carry him forward. He wrapped an arm around Dale from behind and grabbed one of his wrists, put him in a headlock. Dale was well-trained and knew how to use a man’s body weight against him, but Taft had a library of real-world experience, and he had the ox-like strength of a guy his age. Old man strength. Taft pulled back against Dale’s neck. Dale grunted, more out of frustration than anything else.
“I didn’t sell you out, Conley,” Taft said slowly and surprisingly patiently. “Let’s talk. Just not here in a hospital room. Not with Spiro.”
Moments later Dale and Taft were in the stairwell that was on the far end of Spiro’s floor. Cinder block walls. Cement steps with spots of paint and plaster where the construction crews had taken considerably less care than they had with the interior of the hospital. It was dusty. And cold.
“You’ve been working with Tinner this whole time,” Dale said. “Having me solve a little problem for the CIA, letting me think that this was my case, having her,” he said, pointing back towards the hospital, “think it was her case for a while, putting someone with zero law enforcement experience in harm’s way. Now she took a god damn bullet!”
Dale’s voice echoed harshly up and down the stairwell.
Taft didn’t speak for a moment, letting Dale’s anger subside and his echoing words fade away. “Conley, I’ve been your SAC for years now. We butt heads every time we’re in the same room. But I’ve never put you in any compromising situation that you weren’t fully aware of. I didn’t know what was going on with this case either. They used me too. There’s nothing either one of us can do about it. And there’s nothing you can do except choose to believe me.”
Dale was breathing hard, his chest rising and lowering rapidly. He didn’t want to believe Taft. He wanted to distrust him. To hate him. To turn him in to the Attorney General. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t distrust Walter Taft. Like the slightly condescending tone Taft had taken with him outside Andrew Riley’s home—when Taft had taken Dale down a notch or two about his attitude toward Spiro—Taft had a way of speaking that could be amazingly comforting and one hundred percent genuine. Dale prided himself on being able to read people. And as big of a piece of crap as Taft was, he was a damn honest man.
But Dale wasn’t about to let him know all of this. After all, Taft hadn’t been totally open with him. So he just put his hands on his hips and scowled at him. If Taft was going to be annoyingly paternal, Dale was going to be insolent.
Taft put his hands in his pockets. “Tinner wants to meet with you shortly. Will you?”
Dale glared at him for a moment longer before answering. “Fine.”
“Good.” Taft smacked Dale hard on the shoulder and then put his arm around him as he led him out of the stairwell and back into the hospital. “You gotta learn to be more trusting, boy.”
Chapter 60
Dale stepped outside the hospital. It was dark and misty. Chilly. He had taken off his leather jacket in the hospital, but now he threw it on, pulled it in tight. To his left, on the edge of the hospital property, he saw a lamppost lighting up the mist. Tinner stood beneath it. He wore a trench coat. His hands were in the coat’s pockets. His head was down, gazing at the ground. Dale walked up to him.
Tinner glanced up as Dale approached. “Is she going to be okay?” The Texas accent. Dale wouldn’t normally find it annoying, but he did right now.
“She’ll live.”
Tinner nodded. He turned away, stared out into the darkness. A moment passed. He looked back at Dale. “I know just how you’re feeling right now.”
Dale scoffed. “Oh yeah? You CIA guys really know everything, don’t you?”
Tinner put one hand up in a mediating gesture. “Touché.” He put the hand back in his pocket. “Maybe you’re thinking that all this was a terrible breach of trust, that the CIA has preyed on unsuspecting fellow agencies.”
“To say nothing of the American citizens and foreign nationals that you abducted for MKUltra. To say nothing of your toying with people’s most deeply held beliefs.”
“I can see where you’re coming from, Agent Conley. I can appreciate it,” Tinner said and nodded slowly. “We’re both federal agents. But that’s where the similarities begin and end. You work for the Department of Justice. You’re a cop. You solve crimes. We’re not cops, and we don’t solve crimes; we change the world. Don’t presume to understand our methods.”
Tinner’s self-righteousness was disgusting.
“And how many innocent people have to get hurt for your methods?” Dale said.
“Our aim has never been to hurt the innocent.”
“I bet the six people who died because of this fiasco would have words with you about that if they could.” Dale nodded back toward the hospital. “Spiro too. And what about An
drew Riley and Adam Steele?”
“Andrew Riley has already been released. We’ve briefed Adam Steele. They both know the truth now and have been, let’s say, persuaded not to repeat anything. If they stay quiet, they’re of no more use to us. Steele has been reunited with his family, and we’ve made sure that his boss at the TV station—who he kidnapped—knows that it was our experiment that caused his employee to act the way he did. He’s also been persuaded to forget what happened. Riley and Steele will be fine. You saved their lives. You should be proud. Our intentions aren’t so bad, Agent Conley.” He gave Dale a smile that seemed like it came from a place of truth but nonetheless made Dale’s blood go cold. “Trust me.”
Tinner maintained eye contact for a moment longer, that smile still on his face. He turned to the sidewalk, glanced back at Dale, and then he walked away, out of the patch of light, and disappeared into the misty gloom. Dale watched him leave.
Chapter 61
Dale was at a Washington D.C. bar, the kind of ancient place with lots of wood, low lighting, and old curmudgeons in suits sitting at tables, drinking hard-nosed concoctions that made them feel good about themselves and forget about their piss-poor souls.
He leaned on his elbow at the bar, chatting with a girl named Sharon. She had a beer in front of her. Dale had a water.
“I found the guy just before he was about to pry open the sarcophagus,” Dale said.
Sharon was disgusted. “Oh my god. You’ve got to be kidding.”
Dale held up two fingers. “Scout’s honor. This guy was moments away from becoming the world’s most impressive necrophiliac.”
Sharon laughed and took a sip of her beer.
“But enough about perverts,” Dale said. “Let’s talk about me.”
Someone behind Dale cleared her throat. Dale turned. Spiro was there, on crutches. “Sorry I’m late.”