He cut around the sharp corner that kept the peons from looking at their leadership. Not only was his immediate supervisor visible through the glass walls of the meeting room, but also a stout, angry-looking man he recognized from inter-office conferences.
Aaron stood straighter and adjusted his thin blue tie. He’d crack this nut with a knockout presentation. A thick file on Wade Rollins, complete with actions plans, sat tucked under his arm. With this much data against one person, he couldn’t lose.
Giving a nod to the secretary, Aaron entered the office through the open door.
Hands were shaken. Polite coughs, mumbled greetings, standing and sitting. The three men crammed into the smallest of the dull glass conference rooms. Both bosses sat on one side of the table, leaving Aaron on the other.
His supervisor pointed to the visitor. “You know how important Mr. O’Malley’s time is.”
Aaron gave their guest his firmest nod. “I appreciate your meeting with us today, Mr. O'Malley. I will only take a moment of your time.”
“Good, I have a plane to catch.” O’Malley stretched his hands behind his bald head. Wrinkles covered his cheap gray pants. His tie hung loose from his neck as if it gave up long ago. “I understand you’d like to access some new auditors, is that right?”
Aaron handed the folder across the desk to O'Malley, who opened the cover as if it weighed fifty pounds.
“That is correct, sir. All this data was gathered in my spare time because I believe in this project. Collection is slow with only one man on the job. Now that the computer is running full steam, we need men devoted to the task of research—”
The corners of O’Malley’s lips turned down. “You are aware, of course, that we’re in a recession?”
“That’s why I'm suggesting we reallocate existing staff.”
O'Malley held up his hand. Dublin quit talking. The sour old man glanced at the printed information, obviously not taking in what he saw, and making a poor show of it. “What we need here, son, is real evidence that this kind of wrongdoing occurred. Can you provide that data?”
“I have, sir. In your packet you will find an ideal first case. Since money is tight for the department, I homed in on one government contractor in particular.”
Aaron reached across the folder and pointed to a brief description of Department of Defense contractor Wade Rollins.
“This man has operated with a blank government check for the last..., who knows how long. Fiscal oversight in the Department of Defense is a joke. He orders equipment from foreign companies at an incredible rate. He's building classified machinery. Quiet stuff. But I have a contact over there that looked into these purchases. While many of them are essential for his research, several items have little or no direct connection.”
O'Malley cleared his throat. “And what has he done with these wrongful purchases?”
“That’s where we need field technicians, people with authority who can take a look at his work and find out what he's doing. We can't knock on his door and ask to see his records. We need clearance, equipment, a search warrant.”
“Search warrant?” O'Malley’s thick eyebrows shot up in surprise. “What do you think this is, the FBI?”
“With all due respect, sir, we can't accomplish much from the office. We need someone in the field.”
“Well, get your butt out there then.” O’Malley rocked back in his chair and hiked up his pants.
“Excuse me?”
“What's stopping you from getting out there and doing it yourself? Did you leave your bow tie camera at home?”
Aaron laughed, more at the condescension in the man's voice than anything else. He rubbed the back of his neck and waited a moment before he spoke. “I appreciate your humor, sir, but without your assistance—”
O'Malley leaned over the conference table. “Show some initiative, son. Get out there, and do it.”
“But—”
“No more of this stammering and playing dumb. If you want something done in this world, sometimes you have to do it yourself.” The older man stood and walked to the window, hands clasped behind his back. Gray Indianapolis sunlight backlit him against the view of the parking lot.
“You may not understand this yet, maybe you're too wet behind the ears, but this budget crisis runs deep. There are revolutions in the Middle East, wars in goodness knows where.... We've got our hands full. If some contractor is extracting an extra million or two here and there, well, that doesn't mean we can spend three or four million to bring the guy in. What we need now is young people like yourself who are willing to do the real work.”
Aaron put his head down. Did this guy hear himself? Was he really advocating letting a possible criminal go?
O’Malley toddled back to the table, leaning his considerable weight on the back of his chair. “I show the jerks at the Department of Defense a pie chart, you know what they're going to ask me? If it’s cherry or apple. Then they’ll send me back to my little accounting desk. There are radicals to shoot at. You hear what I'm saying?”
Aaron’s gut hurt. All of those hours installing computer equipment, digging through numbers….
“What I'm hearing, is that you aren't willing to consider my proposal.”
“You know what we do, son? We send out paper and bring paper back in. That's all. Somebody’s being a bad boy, we fire off a memo and hope it stops. If he doesn't quit, we send them another letter, maybe switch the font to something a little more terse. That's what we do.”
The large man plopped into his chair and closed the folder, slapping it shut.
“But, sir,” protested Aaron, “with all due respect, our job is to investigate fraud. If we're going to sit on our hands and pretend that we're playing office, what good are we?”
O’Malley wrapped his short arms around his generous gut. Face red, the old man didn’t seem too pleased with his younger counterpart. “Then bust me a bad guy. I don't care how you do it. I don't want to know. But if you believe in this, I'm going to need to see somebody involved in real fraud.”
“He's right there in your reports.” Aaron reached for the folder, but O’Malley clamped his hand down over it.
“Bag him. Do it fast. If we can't bring him in quick, there's no point. I don't want to hear any more about your special project until it happens. I’ve got government officials breathing down my neck, congressmen shaking their fists and demanding cutbacks, reporters banging on my door day and night. I don't have the patience for someone singing ‘The Song That Never Ends.’” O’Malley poked a meaty finger at Aaron. “This thing happens now, or it dies, and I write you up for wasting taxpayer dollars. Do we understand each other?”
Aaron leaned into the table. Sweat formed on his brow. He took a deep breath and prayed for wisdom, pushing back the anger. “Mr. O'Malley, I have a bad feeling about Wade Rollins. A bad feeling. What if he's building a bomb in his home? What if we've uncovered all of this information and we don't act? What will we tell the American people? That we were too lazy to investigate?”
“Son—”
Aaron rose from his seat. “We're talking about a contractor for the Department of Defense. It's not like he's making terra cotta pots in there. Chances are it's not something we want him to pull the trigger on. If this guy has experience in weaponry, we ought to take him seriously. We have no choice but to take him seriously. This could be another terrorist group from the Middle East for all we know.”
O'Malley gathered his things together like a child finished with his coloring. “You are the investigation. Don’t go and get the fibbies on my case. Find out what this clown is doing. As far as I’m concerned, you can do what you have to do. Don’t get other departments involved until we have physical evidence. Pictures, weapon plans, that sort of thing. I can’t hand them a spreadsheet and expect them to take me seriously. I need something tangible. Do we understand each other?”
Aaron nodded. “You got it.”
# # #
Aaron grabbed his
wife’s camera, telephoto lens, and a bag of snacks and hopped in his car. Forty minutes later he parked on Wade Rollins’ street a few hundred feet from the house. He did not anticipate the awkwardness of sitting in a car on an empty road like a cop in a police movie. Wade lived in a rural area. Forests and open fields surrounded him. The lot offered few defining features aside from a couple rises and a worn path leading to the back yard. The nearest neighbors were half a mile away. The boonies for sure.
Hours crept by as he mulled over what he might say if discovered, how best to situate the car each day so as to escape detection, and what he was looking for in the first place. A group of terrorists huddled over a bomb? A written confession?
He finished his last flip through Wade’s dossier as the sun set over the trees. Wade, an above-average saver, lived in a modest house with an attached garage. No criminal history, not even a speeding ticket. He never married and worked for the DOD all of his professional life.
It added up to the most boring stakeout in the history of the world.
There was a knock on the passenger door. Aaron jumped.
Who could it be?
Was it Wade?
Heart racing, he reached for the closest weapon. His hands closed on a hardbound copy of Crime and Punishment, and he waved it menacingly at the glass. The figure of a woman leaned down into the passenger window and produced a toothy grin. Adrianna. His wife wore a flexible yellow biking outfit, complete with a helmet, and waved a gloved hand. She opened the door and poked her head in.
“Did I scare you?”
“Only completely.” Aaron grabbed his chest. “I think I had a heart attack. You almost became a widow.”
She climbed into the passenger seat and took off her helmet, flipping her hair. “I’m sorry.”
“Did you bike all the way out here?”
Adrianna closed the door and settled in. “I didn’t want to give away your position by having two vehicles here, so I parked the car a few miles back and hid the bike in the weeds.” She pointed to a dense patch of high grass behind them. “Impressed?”
He put down the book and kissed his wife. “What are you doing here?”
“I couldn’t let you sit out here by yourself. I jumped online, used the GPS tracking thing the insurance company sold us, and found you. Besides, I hate the idea of coming home to an empty house every night.”
She opened her backpack and removed apples and two cans of soda for the stakeout.
How amazing. She came all that way to hang out with him. Aaron stared at the steering wheel, processing it all. “I’m sorry I left you alone.”
She quit fussing with the bag and ran her fingers through his hair. “When we first started seeing each other we sat in your car for hours, remember? Talking, talking, talking.” She took him by the hand. “Now that you have to sit here all night, who is to say we can’t recreate the past?”
Aaron’s heart swelled with love. Her pretty hair, her lovely features, and now this. How blessed could one man be?
He touched her knee. “I never wanted it to get this bad. I tried, I really tried to get O’Malley to listen to me.”
She passed him a plastic container of trail mix and took a handful for herself. “You have a job to do. I respect that. You're only trying to provide for us. I want you to know that I’ve got your back. If it means sitting here staring at the dullest house on the planet for hours on end, let’s do it. I want to be here for you. I want you to know that I love you.”
What a blessing. He was loved by a beautiful, supportive woman even though he made so many errors. A lesser woman might have nagged at him, driven him to the corner of his roof. Perhaps he deserved that. She found a way to make it work.
Adrianna went back to her unpacking. “Some people have Italy, others have Paris, we’ll always have this guy’s front yard.” She pulled out two donuts and a thermos of coffee. “And what is a stakeout without the right food?”
“You’re the best partner ever.”
She sank down in her seat and poured steaming dark coffee into the thermos lid. “Well, maybe I should give full disclosure, now that we’re stakeout partners and all. Tonight I was at home, in my pajamas, getting ready to watch some horrible thing on television, feeling pretty bad for myself—”
“I’m sorry.”
She gave him a playful shove. “Let me finish. So, I was sitting there and I got to thinking that I had two choices. Either sit around and complain about the situation, or learn how to support my husband.” She passed him the coffee.
“All you’ve talked about is getting this computer analysis to yield some results to show your bosses what you’re made of. Not to mention this guy could be the next Unabomber. So wouldn’t it be selfish of me to mope around the house, cross my arms, and sit by myself all night while you’re stuck out here?”
She squeezed his hand, “I think so, anyway.”
They sat together for a long time, neither of them saying anything, enjoying the company of the one they loved.
She pointed at the house. “And, to think, I almost missed all of this.”
# # #
Wade stared through the viewfinder. Maggie didn't seem to notice his camera lens protruding from behind a tree as she strode to her front door.
His investigation unearthed numerous key facts. Her husband Rob worked in the loan department at First Bank of Indiana. She spent her days at a shipping facility where she supervised quality control. She was a real person with problems, a career, and a mortgage.
The file he stole from the abortion clinic led him right to her.
CLICK. CLICK.
His lens pulled behind the tree. Maggie unlocked the front door and vanished inside the house. She seemed upset, teeth on edge, brow wrinkled, bags under her eyes. His heart went out to her. Yet another helpless victim of a horrible relationship with an ungodly man.
The debacle at the abortion clinic stirred the noise in his brain. Why stop with Carter’s assassination? He could end wars before they started, thwart presidential campaigns that he disagreed with, fix the economy. The possibilities ended only at his imagination. Killing Carter meant he could date Traci, that Angela had a child and a loving marriage. No downsides in sight. Why not do it again?
He flicked through the pictures on his camera. What would a new future hold for this dour woman? Would she become a friend of his? Perhaps a successful doctor? First she must break free from the miserable wretch who controlled her life.
Wade stayed hidden behind the tree, waiting for her husband to show. The small, opulent beige bungalow occupied half an acre in a quiet, mature neighborhood. Few children played in the yards. Little traffic. Nothing to worry about in terms of nosey neighbors or inquisitive police. Only the relative calm of suburbia.
Rob rolled into the driveway forty minutes later, dressed in a long coat and stiff shoes. His shoulders drooped as he shut the door to his SUV. He checked the mailbox and crept into the house. Once Rob slinked inside, Wade tiptoed to the back yard to gain some privacy and watch the action. He had already placed strategic electronics around the house, forcing open four windows to conceal small microphones at the corner of the sash. The mics were impossible to detect if you didn’t know to look for them.
Two cameras waited in dark corners of the yard, aimed through windows, allowing him to watch the living room and kitchen from a comfortable distance. Another video camera stood by his hiding place, ready to capture whatever else needed recording.
Wade crawled behind a stand of thick bushes and picked up a small video screen. Images from all three cameras flashed in front of him. Pain radiated up his sore legs. How long was he standing in the front yard?
Killing Rob didn’t require much work, but he needed to know the impact that each victim had on the world. If some significant piece of society was held in place because of his target, he should get prepared for the aftermath.
The audio signal crackled to life in his ear. Maggie stepped into the frame on the tiny video
monitor, entering the living room. Wade wiped dust from the video screen with his thumb and settled in to watch. She sat down on the piano bench and stared at Rob slouching on the loveseat.
# # #
Rob’s life didn’t matter anymore. Maybe it was the beatings, or the fact that he hadn't made an honest decision in years. All his motivation had disappeared, if it ever existed in the first place.
If only she let him sulk on the couch alone. No, too easy. Instead, she sat across the room and glared at him, like a child who wants the lion at the zoo to roar, though the animal has nothing to chase.
Rob rubbed his eyes. The previous two sleepless nights passed in a blur, staring at walls, dealing with the ache in his heart. How could he lie in bed next to a murderer? Impossible. He should have stopped Maggie from going to the abortion clinic.
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