Love Thy Neighbor

by Mark Gilleo

  “So I called the guy in Pakistan and asked him if any other calls were made from his phone. He told me yes and gave me the number. From there it was easy.”

  “And you had never been to the farm before?”

  “No.”

  “And you wouldn’t know anything about a dead guy hanging from a tree in the back field?”

  Clark’s heart kicked up a notch. “Uh, no. I didn’t see any dead guys. Hell, I’ve only seen two dead bodies in my life: my father’s and my grandfather’s. I went to the farm and walked around the house once. It was kind of spooky. Desolate. You could just tell no one had been there. I headed back to my car and dropped my keys. I saw these seeds on the ground and picked up a few. Then I heard a door or something banging in the distance and decided to leave.”

  “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Like I said, it was spooky. I mean, I grew up in Northern Virginia. I haven’t spent much time on farms. But one of my roommates in college used to love to tell the story of how he was trouncing through a farm near some family land in Bath County and got shot by a neighbor with rock salt. For some reason, standing out there on that farm, that story came back to me.”

  Laskey smiled again. “Hardly anyone uses rock salt anymore. Nowadays they shoot you with real bullets. Though I did get a little rock salt in the ass when I was younger. In hindsight, I probably deserved it.”

  Detective Wallace chimed in. “OK. So we’ve established that neither of you deal with urban crime much. I’ve been a cop for thirty years and have never even seen rock salt … So what happened next?”

  “Came back here.”

  “Here being D.C.?”

  “Here being Northern Virginia.”

  “When did you go to the Merrifield Garden Center?”

  “On my way home.”

  “And after you found out you were carrying ricin, you didn’t feel compelled to call the authorities?”

  “I did. I called the FBI agent who came to the house a few weeks ago and left him a message. It was at 8:07 last night. He didn’t call me back and I called him again at 9:21 this morning and left another message. You can check my cell phone’s outgoing calls.”

  “I believe you. Did you mention ricin in your phone call?”

  “No. But I told him that I had some very interesting information on my neighbors.”

  Wallace’s face wrinkled as he digested deep thoughts that came to mind.

  Laskey asked a question. “Exactly, how many seeds did you bring back?”

  “Three.”

  “Why three?”

  “No reason. Like I said, the whole situation was a little nerve-wracking. Poking around, uninvited, on someone’s farm, looking for people who can answer a question about a phone call from Pakistan, made on a stolen cell phone. If my hands weren’t cold and I hadn’t dropped my keys, we wouldn’t be having this conversation. Besides, all the seeds looked the same. There was no reason to bring back a ton of them.”

  All three men stared down at the bag on the table. “Yes, they do look the same,” the sheriff concurred.

  “Where are the ones you brought back with you?”

  “Downstairs. In my dresser. In my underwear drawer.”

  “Would you mind getting them?”

  “Not at all. Give me a sec.”

  When Clark returned he put the beans, which where now safely stored in an empty prescription medicine bottle, on the table.

  “You never told me how you found me.”

  “Gas station receipt.”

  “The Pig and Whistle.”

  Sheriff Laskey nodded. “Nice deduction.”

  “Good ham and wheat sandwiches.”

  “The best in Virginia.”

  Clark took a page from his mother’s book of hosting guests and asked if anyone wanted coffee. Laskey and Wallace shook their heads.

  “If I may ask, what brought you to the farm?”

  “I think that conversation needs to be answered downtown. Let’s find your FBI buddy.”

  Agent Rosson chose the same windowless room where his boss, the Director of the Joint Terrorism Task Force, laid down the law for all investigations leading to Dorchester Lane.

  Detective Wallace had his notebook on the table and a plain manila folder in front of him. “This feels like an interrogation room.”

  “It was. In a previous life. Most of the interrogation rooms were relocated to the first level of the basement. Or to another offsite location,” Agent Rosson answered. “Now we use this room primarily for private conversations. The type of conversations that shouldn’t leave the premises.”

  “Understood. At police headquarters we use the john,” Wallace said.

  “We are a little more civilized here at the Bureau.” There was a pecking order in law enforcement and Agent Rosson was making sure that everyone in the room knew their position.

  “I think we both got our suits at Men’s Warehouse,” Wallace responded. “Two for $149 during the spring sale last year.”

  Clark watched the banter and tried not to laugh. Grown men in the professional sandbox.

  Agent Rosson deflected the attempt to be lumped into the same group. “What are we here to discuss?”

  “Ricin,” Detective Wallace answered. Everyone in the room, even Clark, could tell the answer caught the agent off guard.

  “Ricin?”

  “Didn’t Clark here tell you? I understand he left several urgent messages for you to call him back.”

  “There was no mention of ricin in his calls,” Rosson answered.

  “Well, if you returned his call, maybe you wouldn’t look like you were just taken from behind. At any rate, we’re here now.”

  “Please go ahead.”

  Detective Wallace nodded towards Clark. Clark cleared his throat. “There have been several developments with regard to my neighbors across the street.”

  “203 Dorchester Lane, Arlington, Virginia.”

  “That’s correct.”

  Agent Rosson motioned with his hand for Clark to continue.

  Clark started with his neighbors supposedly leaving the country and finished with Detective Wallace and Sheriff Laskey at his front door.

  “Are you sure it’s ricin?” Agent Rosson asked.

  Sheriff Laskey pulled out his evidence bag and Clark’s prescription bottle of seeds. “We’re sure. You want to try one?”

  “Tell me, just how did you get involved?” Rosson asked the sheriff.

  “I got a call from D.C. asking me to check on a residence in my jurisdiction.”

  “And your jurisdiction is…” Agent Rosson asked as he squinted at the badge on the sleeve of the sheriff’s jacket.

  “Nelson County.”

  “Home of Wintergreen.”

  “Yes, indeed. Home of Wintergreen, and as of yesterday, home of a ricin plantation.”

  In his best condescending tone Rosson kept his hand on the conversation throttle. “We’ll get there in a minute. You were talking about a call from D.C.”

  “I got a call yesterday morning from Detective Wallace, asking me to check on the whereabouts of a Nelson County resident.”

  Rosson turned towards Wallace. “And you were interested in this person, why?”

  “He was the cellmate of a body I pulled from the Potomac earlier this week. A dead guy named James Beach. Former guest who spent a couple of years choking down three squares a day on taxpayer money at the Petersburg Correctional Facility in Virginia.”

  “Anything unusual about the body?”

  “Nothing really. Still waiting on the toxicology report, but initial indications are that he drowned.”

  “And the call to Nelson County?”

  “Trying to notify next of kin. Wanted to ask a few questions to someone who might have known him.”

  “Procedural duties.”

  “If that’s what you call them here at the Bureau,” Wallace answered.

  There was a brief pause and the door to the room swung open. Eric Nerf, th
e Director of the Joint Terrorism Task Force walked in the room.

  “That is what we call them at the Bureau. In fact, consider your entire visit here a procedural duty.”

  “Thin doors for an interrogation room,” Wallace said, standing from his seat. “We haven’t met.” Wallace’s large frame shadowed the table and his mitt-like hand engulfed the well-dressed director’s.

  “Eric Nerf, Director of the Joint-Terrorism Task Force for the Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he announced to the room.

  “Is that your full title?”

  “Yes it is.”

  After shaking hands, Wallace took his seat again, this time further from the table, one ankle resting on his other knee.

  “And you are Detective Earl Wallace of the Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Force. Rank of Sergeant. Robbery and Homicide division. Lead detective on the Senator Day case, but I don’t think we need to go into the details of that here.”

  “Well, if you’re chasing the terrorists with the same energy that you’re doing your homework on other law enforcement officers, I think we can all sleep easy tonight.”

  Agent Rosson got his boss up to speed on the conversation with only a minor air of superiority. Clark sat back in his chair, taking in the room and the conversation. He told himself to be stoic but his stomach was bubbling beneath his Charlie Brown sweater.

  The director took his favorite position, sitting on the corner of the table. There was something about putting your ass at table-level that created resentment among those seated at the table. It was an insult he had perfected over the years. Wallace, Laskey and Clark all took silent offense.

  “Well, I’m fascinated by this conversation. I truly am. But what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential. Consider it top secret. And the only reason I’m telling you is out of professional courtesy and, of course, because I don’t want anyone in this room stumbling over something they shouldn’t.”

  “The CIA has informed the Joint Terrorism Task Force, in other words, me, that they have an operative on the case. This operative has worked for years in pursuit of a high-profile target. This agent’s contact with the CIA clandestine office is on an “as-capable basis,” meaning that there are long periods of time when the operative is dark. Completely off the grid. There are thousands of man-hours at stake in this intelligence effort, not to mention national security. With all due respect to everyone in the room, there is to be no further investigation of anyone involved. Right now 203 Dorchester Lane doesn’t exist. Leave it alone.”

  “Is that an order?” Wallace asked.

  “That’s a professional request. But if you call your captain, he will convey it as an order, if that would make you feel better.”

  The room fell into an uneasy silence. Wallace brooded. Laskey fumed; his first foray into the politics of big-time law enforcement was even uglier than he imagined. Clark sat at the table, his mind running through the details, the analysis of the situation in full-steam-ahead mode. His mouth opened before his brain could backtrack.

  “What about the ricin?”

  “We’ll take care of it,” the Director said.

  Wallace looked at Clark and Laskey. Clark started to speak and Wallace cut him off. “They said they’ll take care of it.”

  Clark missed the hint. “You know, there’s no one at 203 Dorchester Lane. The house is empty and has been for several weeks. Not to mention it suffered a severe fire.”

  “Then it should be easy to let go,” Rosson added.

  Wallace clapped his hands together. “Well, then, I guess our job here is done.”

  Clark and Sheriff Laskey followed Detective Wallace’s lead and got out of their seats.

  “Agent Rosson has some NSAs for you to sign before you leave,” the director said, turning his back on Detective Wallace’s extended hand.

  “One more thing,” Wallace said, moving the hand into the manila folder he brought with him. “Pass these prints along to the CIA. They are from the body I fished out of the Potomac. If they match their internal CIA files, tell them their agent is dead.”

  Agent Rosson was in the director’s office, stealing glances out the window at the cabs and black “for-hire” sedans on Pennsylvania Avenue two blocks down from the White House. “What do you think?”

  “The case is closed.”

  “And the ricin? I don’t remember that being mentioned.”

  “I’ll take care of the seeds. As far as you are concerned, you never saw them. I have only one concern. That the report in the database for that address remains closed. Just as it was the day you amended it. The CIA wants jurisdiction, the CIA can have jurisdiction.”

  “Are you going to give them the prints?”

  “Of course. But I don’t expect them to get back to us one way or the other.”

  “So, we just wash our hands of it?”

  “The way I see it, that report was officially closed before the CIA contacted us. Technically, our hands were never dirty.”

  Chapter 41

  If that is Washington D.C. hospitality, you can keep it.” Sheriff Laskey said, getting into the passenger side of Wallace’s car.

  “I hate to say it, but that’s Washington politics.”

  “Kind of like grabbing your ankles to me. Y’all have a funny way of catching criminals. I mean, we have the occasional turf war with the state police, but we try not to lose sight of the goal. Putting bad guys behind bars. The way I see it, the three of us in this car just went to the FBI with a bag full of material that could be turned into a weapon of mass destruction and they told us to go home.”

  “So now what?” Clark asked from the back of the unmarked D.C. police cruiser.

  “I thought the director made it pretty clear,” Wallace said, testing the air.

  Clark spoke. “He told us not to investigate 203 Dorchester Lane. I’m talking about locating a missing neighbor. There is no harm in that.”

  “You trying to convince us, or yourself?”

  “Both…” Clark said.

  “What was the reference to Senator Day all about?” Laskey asked.

  Wallace let out a grunt-like hum. “You all know what happened to the senator?”

  “Sure. Who doesn’t.”

  “Well, I was involved in the case, only I didn’t know exactly what the case was until it was too late. I caught a lot of heat for the way things turned out, through no fault of my own. Senators and congressmen have the ability to squeeze just about anyone they want to here in D.C.”

  “You mean you’re on thin ice.”

  “Let me just say I am still on a lot of people’s radar screens. But I try not to let that stop me.”

  “Here is my thought. What if the director is wrong?” Clark asked.

  “You’re a young man. The question you should be asking is what if you are wrong?”

  “What’s the worst that can happen?”

  “Non-enemy combatant status. Labeled a traitor. Maybe a vacation in Gitmo. End up in a brig on some military base without ever being officially charged with any crime. I can think of a list of things, and they all start at bad and head downhill to worse.”

  “I think you two have more to lose than I do. I have the responsibility to locate my neighbor, if for no other reason than to let her know her house is gone.”

  “You gotta love the youth of today,” Wallace said, ignoring Clark in the backseat.

  “What about you, Sheriff?” Clark asked.

  “To tell you the truth, I got a bad feeling about all of this.”

  “I think that’s a healthy response,” Clark said.

  “The first thing I’m gonna do is go back to Nelson County and burn what’s left of that field where we found the seeds. It might take me a few weeks to torch that many acres without causing a forest fire, but I know just the boys to call in. No fuss, no muss. No one is going to question the sheriff burning a field on a convicted drug dealer’s farm. As you said, ‘I am the law.’ I’m also going to dig around a little and
see who knew what about those plants. Check out what kind of equipment they have on the farm. I’m sure they didn’t plant or harvest those plants by hand. Probably needed some farming equipment.”

  “Farming equipment?” Clark asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “Large scale farming equipment?”

  “Something bigger than a tractor and a back hoe. And they probably needed some fertilizer. I have a few things I can check out without causing too many waves in the pool. Put it down to investigating a murder, which I’m still legally obligated to do.”

  The collective wheels of the three men were spinning silently as Wallace ran through a red light.

  Sheriff Laskey continued. “But I imagine the dead guy from the river killed the dead guy in the tree because someone was going to open their mouth.”

  “You think the dead guy from the river is a CIA agent?”

  “The likelihood occurred to me about mid-way through the conversation with the director, if you can call that ass-chewing a conversation,” Wallace said.

  “It is if you can consider a proctologist just a doctor,” Clark answered.

  No one laughed and Clark continued. “Follow my logic for a moment. Let’s assume this dead guy is the CIA agent.”

  “Ok,” Wallace answered.

  “Then the agent is dead, the CIA doesn’t know, and the FBI is off the case. The only thing left is us.”

  Laskey spoke. “We also have to assume that this CIA guy was in so deep he was willing to kill another American citizen. Jackson Price, the dead guy from the tree, was a troubled soul. No question about it. But he was still an American.”

  “I have no doubt that a CIA agent would kill another American. For ego, national security, career advancement, money. All that jazz,” Clark said plainly.

  “Well, if you believe it, then it’s got to be true,” Wallace jibed.

  “Have you watched the news at all in the last few years?” Clark asked.

  “The boy’s right about that.”

  Wallace took his turn at verbally working the case. “So, if we follow Clark’s logic, there is a sleeper cell running around out there who just jettisoned their CIA agent into the Potomac.”