Truth Insurrected: The Saint Mary Project

by Douglas, Daniel P.

  “Poor Huevos. Maybe he got in a bite or two before Alonzo’s cousin turned him into a clothing accessory,” Pete said, shuffling into Harrison’s office and sitting in a chair by the door. “You aren’t serious about calling Verone, are you?”

  “It’s just a simple phone call. Verone owes me.”

  “But to cash in your chips for an iguana?”

  Halting his search, Harrison leaned back into his chair. “When did we decide to hire Miss Evans?”

  Pete exhaled, rounding out his husky frame. “This morning.”

  “This morning?”

  “And she’s not ‘hired.’ She’s an intern. She won’t cost us a dime.”

  “Shush.”

  Gracefully, Janice entered Harrison’s office and handed him a cup of coffee. Her fair skin and Nordic features, along with the navy-blue suit and tartan scarf, summoned the memory of the flight attendant again. “I understand that you like it black.”

  “Yes, thanks.” Harrison took the cup, looking at her ringless fingers.

  “Mr. Zemdarsky, would you like some more?”

  “No thanks, sweetie. Are you off now?”

  “Yes.”

  “Off?” Harrison said.

  “To school. I’ll be back this afternoon, after my classes are over. I’m majoring in sociology at the university, with a minor in criminal justice. That’s what this internship is for.”

  “I’ve already signed her curriculum form, Bill. She needs to complete an internship in order to graduate, don’t you, Janice?”

  “Yes. I’m afraid I missed the regular deadlines for the government positions. My counselor approved my request to intern with a private company.”

  “How did you happen to choose us?” Harrison asked.

  “You’re close to the campus. Plus, well, I kind of liked your ad. Your portraits made you seem very professional.”

  Harrison peered out the door. The pastry cart was still sitting in the middle of the office. “And you haven’t changed your mind?”

  Janice laughed. “Of course I haven’t.”

  “I told her about your FBI background, Willy.”

  “Did you tell her about your background?”

  “I also mentioned how you speak Russian, and that you studied law and American history at UCLA. She seemed very interested. I think you’ll be of great help to her.”

  Harrison restrained the urge to roll his eyes. Instead, he stood and straightened his jacket. “Then let me formally welcome you aboard, Miss Evans.”

  “Thank you, and please, call me Janice,” she said, shaking hands with Harrison.

  “And Bill is fine with me.”

  “Gee,” Pete said, “now that we have gotten most of the formalities out of the way, can anyone tell me where today’s mail is?”

  “I have it at the front desk,” Janice said. “I sorted it into two piles, one for ‘Zemdarsky’ and one for ‘Harrison.’ I hope that was okay.”

  Pete grinned. “There, you see, Billy boy, things have already improved by having Janice here.”

  “Yeah,” Harrison said, finding it difficult to look away from the new intern.

  “Well, gentlemen, I really have to get going. Here is Alonzo’s number.” Janice handed Harrison a sticky note, which he took from her with a nod. “I’ll see you this afternoon.”

  While Harrison’s eyes escorted her out the door, his ears heard Pete chuckling.

  “So, Willy, what do you think of her?”

  “She seems bright. Her Spanish skills will be helpful.” He returned to his seat and opened the desk’s center drawer.

  “Yes, and her pretty face will be nice to look at, as opposed to your sour mug. What’s up, Bill? What’s been bothering you?”

  There it is, Harrison thought. Pulling the postcard from underneath an instruction manual for his computer, Harrison said, “Nothing. Just a little bored, I guess.”

  He glanced at the picture of Explorer 1 on the front, and then flipped it over. The postcard represented the first in a series printed by the National Air and Space Museum, commemorating the early years of space exploration.

  “A little? I haven’t seen you taking on many clients lately. I could not believe you were actually considering the case of the missing iguana.”

  “I was just trying to be helpful.” Harrison gazed across the desk at Zemdarsky. He realized how, more and more, they were beginning to resemble each other. The beards, the suits, the large builds, the clientele. “Honestly,” he continued, dropping his head, “helping Alonzo was probably the most useful thing I’ve done in a long time.”

  Harrison read the postmark: “July 24, Dayton, OH.”

  Zemdarsky got up and shuffled toward the door. “Training Janice to be a great investigator would make someone feel pretty useful as well, someone who has real expertise and is in need of a good challenge. You’re the right man for the job, wouldn’t you agree?”

  Suddenly, Harrison was embarrassed. Not from the compliment, but because he had forgotten how perceptive Pete could be.

  “Remember, your mail is out here, in the ‘Harrison’ pile.”

  “Thanks.”

  Harrison read the neatly printed words on the back of the postcard.

  “Oh, look,” Zemdarsky said from the outer office, “the ‘Zemdarsky’ pile is bigger!” But Harrison did not laugh. He winced and rubbed his injured leg. It had started to ache again.

  Chapter 4

  Systems Normal, Tell No One

  In a private conversation during John and Anna Ridley’s thirtieth wedding anniversary, Nick Ridley’s sister, Megan, had arranged to meet with him to discuss her husband, an air force sergeant based at Nellis. Now sitting on a bar stool in his apartment’s kitchen, Ridley sipped coffee, read a UNLV alumni newsletter, and waited for Megan. He yawned, brushing toast crumbs off his faded blue jeans and gray polo shirt.

  Three years younger than Ridley, Megan always found her brother to be supportive and protective. She often came to him for advice, but this was the first time since her marriage that she sought him out for help. Ridley cared deeply for Megan, and he liked his brother-in-law, but with the strain from his job and difficulties with the police department’s brass, he had enough of his own worries.

  A light knock drew Ridley’s attention from the newsletter. The door opened, and Megan’s soft voice drifted tentatively from behind it. “You up, Nicky?”

  “Come in, Megan. Just getting some coffee. Want some?”

  Megan stepped inside and closed the door. She declined the coffee, and, sighing, she set her purse and sunglasses on the kitchen counter next to her brother.

  “I hoped you would bring my little nephew with you,” Ridley said, noticing Megan looked sad. “Is he okay?”

  “He’s great, Nick; he’s with Mom and Pop for the day, and Eric is still up at the base.”

  “Did they ask what you were up to?”

  “I’m Christmas shopping.” Megan feigned a smile and winked. With her hand, she brushed long strawberry-blond locks away from her freckled forehead and cheeks.

  “Well, you better pick something up after you leave. You know, supporting evidence.”

  “I’m not the one they’d blame for telling a fib.”

  Ridley chuckled, and then said, “Did you come here just to give me grief?”

  “Don’t be so silly.” Then, sniffing the air, Megan said, “Did you have a date last night? She wears lovely perfume. Oh my gosh, Nicky, is she still here? Maybe she’d like to meet me?”

  “You’re too much. Yeah, I had a date. And no, she’s not here. Are you here to spy on me for Mom and Dad, or to talk about Eric? What’s going on with you guys? Is there a problem? You guys seemed fine at the anniversary party.”

  Megan’s complexion noticeably whitened, almost matching the color of her long-sleeve blouse. The ache in her heart prompted tears to appear. Her next words came timidly. “Eric is in some kind of trouble at work. He won’t talk about it. He tells me not to worry. But he just isn�
�t the same.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “He just says his work in air traffic control puts him under a lot of pressure. But he’s been doing that kind of work since I met him. Until last summer, he never seemed stressed out.”

  “So that’s when this started? Maybe it’s the fact that he’s a new father. Maybe it’s not work at all, but the demands of being a parent.”

  “That’s what I thought too. He’s been so good with Owen. But he’s been having nightmares, and walking in his sleep. Three or four times a month since about July, I’ll find him standing next to the window in our bedroom, just staring. I don’t dare wake him up. You know what they say, ‘Never wake a sleepwalker.’ The thing is he’ll be talking to himself.”

  “What’s he say?”

  “It’s gibberish. But sometimes it sounds like he’s taking orders. He’ll say things like ‘yes, sir,’ or ‘no, sir.’ It varies. But there’s one phrase he always repeats.” Megan paused to wipe away a tear from her cheek. “He says, ‘Systems normal, tell no one.’ At first, I wasn’t sure, but I know that’s it. I’ve heard him say it a dozen times. And then he will sometimes cry.”

  “Geez, Megan, I’m so sorry.”

  “Well,”—she attempted a smile—“other than some lost sleep and a bit of worrying, it hasn’t been too difficult. He’s going to need help, though. He’s supposed to start on these weird shifts again next month, and I’m afraid he might get worse. He won’t see anyone at the base, you know, a medical person.”

  “Why not?”

  “He won’t tell me. It upsets him when I ask about it. Look, he doesn’t know that I’m asking you this, but would you be willing to talk to him?”

  “I’d be willing, but if he won’t talk to you, or a medical professional, what makes you think he’ll talk to me?”

  “I found this.” Megan opened her purse and pulled out a wrinkled business card. “It fell out of his shirt pocket when I was sorting the laundry. Look on the back—it’s Eric’s writing.”

  Moving over to the sofa, Ridley knelt next to his sister and picked up the card. It was from a barbershop at the air base. On the back, a notation had Ridley’s work phone number and the date, July 7. Ridley looked up from the card and noticed his sister’s eyes were red and swollen. She pressed her arms tightly against her torso.

  “See the date? That’s right around the time when it started,” Megan said, trembling.

  “The sleep disturbances?”

  “Yeah, like I said, the nightmares.”

  “Is he…” Ridley said, but he did not finish the question. The question was easy to ask in the field, on duty, out where the violence happened to others. “Sure, Megan.” Each heartbeat carried a liberal dosage of anger. “How soon can I talk to him?”

  Chapter 5

  Echo Tango

  Harrison’s lungs expelled a gust of cigarette smoke, which blossomed into a wide plume before dissipating near the ceiling above his desk. After another puff, he looked again at the postcard, not at the photograph of US space satellite, Explorer 1, on the front, but at the odd message and signature on the back: “The truth about Harold Groom would give even healthy men coronaries. take Care, Echo Tango.”

  His reaction upon receiving the postcard last July was to dismiss it as an odd attempt at humor by one of his friends or former colleagues at the bureau. Harrison did, after all, have a reputation as an idealist, ever faithful in the wisdom of the governed. His respect for the virtues of democracy even earned him the nickname “TJ,” short for Thomas Jefferson. Someone may have seen Groom’s assertions about sinister deeds committed by the US government as a basis for poking fun at him.

  But why sign it “Echo Tango”?

  He had tried to contact his last partner, Art Holcomb, at FBI headquarters, but learned the special agent was on temporary duty elsewhere and unavailable. The secretary took a message, but Holcomb never returned the call.

  Looking again at the postmark, Harrison wondered whom he knew in Dayton, Ohio.

  Busy with his own work, Harrison probably would have forgotten about the matter entirely, except that Groom’s name kept surfacing. For nearly a year, occasional stories had appeared in the press. Groom, the death row inmate, had made unspecified claims about political conspiracies and government assassins. An elderly, articulate, and vivacious man, the media saw Groom as an unlikely criminal, especially for someone convicted on multiple counts of murder.

  But because of the overwhelming evidence against Groom, and his own admission of guilt, the angle was never about a possible miscarriage of justice, or even his claims. Rather, the Groom stories served another purpose. They focused attention on a disturbing new trend in capital crimes. Increasingly, felonious senior citizens were shooting, stabbing, bludgeoning, or poisoning their way into death rows across the country.

  Harrison stared at the postcard’s message, focusing on the words “take Care.” Why was that familiar? he thought.

  If it had been a joke, the announcement about Groom’s death, apparently from a heart attack, eroded any intended humor. Extinguishing his cigarette, Harrison set the postcard aside and convinced himself that there was no reason to attach any significance to it. It was just a simple coincidence.

  Swiveling right, he switched on his computer and angled the monitor downward, decreasing reflections of sunlight coming through the open window blinds. He grabbed the Hopkins file, opened it for reference, and began typing a summary for Susan Jacobs, the insurance company adjuster with whom he worked on the case. From the reception area, he heard the pastry attendant thanking Pete for tending to her cart.

  “He owes you for a bear claw and at least two cheese Danishes,” Harrison said.

  “Really, Bill, must you disparage me so?”

  The typing continued: “Subsequent to making a false burglary report to the Tucson Police DepArdment…” Spotting the misspelled word, he immediately corrected the mistake. “Department, Gerald Hopkins submitted his fraudulent claim for stolen property, given to him by his father…”

  “Wait,” he said. “What the hell is that?”

  The simple details of Hopkins’s crime were suddenly difficult to recall. Harrison’s eyelids fluttered, and his head began to ache. He felt like someone’s fingers were pressing against his temples, harder and harder.

  ARDCom’s in Dayton, he thought.

  He shook his head, moved the cursor, and then started typing again. “…stolen property, a personal computer described in an estimate from Bits and Bytes (See Appendix, Exhibit 1947). Amount of the purported loss was listed as a matter of national sec—”

  “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed…”

  The tapping on the keyboard stopped. The format and language for these investigative summaries, so routine and familiar, vanished from his memory, collapsing into a mere pinpoint of light, surrounded by an endless black void. Harrison’s expression became utterly vacant.

  Fingers hovered over the keys.

  Shallow breaths.

  Pupils widened. Glassy spheres. A glimmering droplet receded below.

  The volume on the cassette player was too low. Springsteen should be played loud. But studying came first. He reviewed laws of arrest and tried to translate them into Russian, just for practice.

  Ochen khorosho, tovaresh.

  The letter from his parents sat nearby. They were in Palm Springs, again. For a moment, he wished that he could be there too. A vacation would have been good.

  He wanted to see them, but he knew they would come to Quantico for his graduation, to see their son become an FBI special agent. Would his dad find the time?

  Aside from his books—more books than most people had—his possessions were minimal. Just the cassette player, some music, a few suits.

  And an old globe.

  A lonely heart too, but there was no time for dating.

  When the phone rang, he saw that it was already 2:00 a.m. Who calls this late? His roommate answered, guessing th
at it was his fiancée with another question about invitations or color schemes or the relatives in Poughkeepsie. The caller’s voice was stern.

  “It’s for you, Bill.”

  The caller did all the talking and offered condolences, assistance. He hung up the phone, closed his books, and packed a suitcase. In silence.

  Harrison’s parents were not coming to Quantico.

  He flew to LAX and then drove to Pasadena, to their home. A neighbor was there.

  “Hi, Mrs. Carr.”

  He went inside. Everything was the same, except for his room. The furniture was gone. It was a den now.

  The time went slowly. He sorted things, sold items, and gave others away.

  They went into the ground. Together.

  Nothing was left, as far as he could tell.

  A realtor and lawyer helped him.

  He drove to LAX, but made a detour on his way. There were no tears during the stop. A few smiles. Even a laugh, to himself. At his stop, he admired the building’s unique architecture and the view of the Los Angeles basin, but he did not go inside. Springsteen was on the radio as he drove away.

  A pinpoint of light dilated. The darkness dissolved.

  Quick taps on the keyboard resumed. He made a few corrections. Within minutes, two copies of the completed Hopkins investigative summary emerged from the printer on Harrison’s credenza.

  Although Harrison e-mailed a summary to Susan Jacobs, he also wanted to send her a hard copy, along with the signed disclaimer forms. After placing the materials in an envelope, he inserted the second copy into the Hopkins file. Normally, he would have prepared a billing statement, but he decided to wait until Janice Evans returned so that he could begin to explain administrative procedures to her.

  With the envelope in one hand and his coffee cup in the other, Harrison walked to the outer office. The basket for outgoing mail was in an alcove next to the front counter. In this small room, the two private investigators had placed a photocopier, safe, metal cabinet, water cooler, and coffeemaker. The only sizable area within the alcove without clutter was in front of an emergency exit, which led to the building’s lower-level fire corridor. There was also a drawer where Zemdarsky kept a flask of Jack Daniel’s and other medicinal items.