When I approached the security door, a man’s voice came through the small box mounted on the wall. He asked me to send my purse through the bulletproof window that slid open as he spoke. I was instructed to remove my belt and anything that I might have in my pockets. Embarrassed at the contents of my pockets, I slowly set down a stick of gum, a used tissue, and a tube of Chapstick. I wanted the security guard to look up at me and give me a knowing chuckle to ease my fear. I watched him go through my purse, twice, and then I walked through the metal detectors and prayed that the dreaded buzzing didn’t go off as I passed through. There was a freedom that came from the silence of the metal detectors. Any attempt thus far to hold me back had failed, and I was slowly going from victim to victory.
I made it to the heavy metal door and pushed the button to be buzzed in. No doubt I had been filmed the entire way from my car to the door. Now that I think about it, I’d probably been followed from my house to the parking lot. Surely they had been watching me, maybe not for weeks or months but definitely from the moment I acknowledged I was his daughter. They had to have tagged me when I mentioned the laptop. I started to convince myself they had microchipped me in the middle of the night while I slept. It’s possible that I’ve watched too many episodes of Cops and Dateline. The truth was that they just wanted to talk to me. I refused to let my guard down, though, and waste all the years I had spent building up my brick walls, laying each brick one by one, day after day, in an effort to hide behind them. I wasn’t going to be had this late in the game. They weren’t going to get me. I was ready.
The buzzer sounded and I heard the bolt to the door unlock. I’d only heard those sounds on TV in shows about prisons. The guard always calls out to someone the eye can’t see, the buzzing sound comes through, and the guard is able to swing the bars open.
I walked through the door. The room I immediately passed into was a huge circle with nothing on the paneled walls. Nothing about it was inviting. Nothing about it was comfortable. There definitely wasn’t a welcome sign. There were three unlabeled doors that blended in with the walls and a front desk. Behind the bulletproof glass at the front desk sat an older woman who seemed to peer at me over her reading glasses. I didn’t expect a friendly hello or a hug, but a smile wouldn’t have killed her.
I signed in with a shaky hand, my signature almost unrecognizable, showed my ID, and then made the horrible mistake of asking where I could find the restroom. Evidently one of the three mystery doors did not lead to a bathroom. She used the intercom to call someone to the lobby to escort me. A man in a business suit opened one of the doors and guided me down the hall to the ladies’ room. He stood outside the entire time I was in there. I felt like I was in the middle of a drug test and felt the pressure of someone watching. He wasn’t actually watching me, but I knew he could hear everything I was doing from the other side of the door. I finished and stepped out into the hall where he was patiently waiting. I was hesitant to look him in the eye; it seemed weird that he had just listened to my every move inside the women’s restroom. He didn’t show any signs of caring and dutifully walked me back to the lobby. I sat down, still creeped out by how the doors blended with the walls and that there wasn’t a single sign anywhere to indicate which door led to what.
I wished I could figure out what the scent of the room was and where it was coming from. I love when you can associate a memory with a smell. When I smell vinegar it reminds me of my grandmother’s German potato salad. When I smell dryer sheets it takes me back to my best friend’s house. I can picture her mom cooking dinner with the clothes washing in the next room. The smell of a popular cologne from 1992 takes me back to my first date. But I couldn’t pinpoint the smell in the awkward lobby. Was it old books or fancy leather shoes? Did it smell more like my grandma’s house or an uptight store in the open air mall? I’d have to settle on a library and move on, or my mind would catch fire due to sensory overload.
The most uncomfortable thing about the room was the deafening silence. It hurt. I didn’t want to move in my chair for fear the sound of the creaking leather would pierce the room and make the receptionist call for backup. My heart pounded in my chest and I began to think I was stuck in Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart.
As I was redecorating the lobby in my head, I heard someone turn the handle from the other side of one of the doors and my heart skipped a beat. My breathing became labored and for a second I thought I might pass out. The door opened slowly and to my surprise a beautiful woman with a kind smile peeked through and said my name. Relief filled my body. Neither she nor the individual accompanying her looked like they were going to chop me up into small pieces and hide my remains in a secluded spot, never to be seen again. They both were very kind and compassionate. They escorted me through the hallways and after several turns we entered a small room with two chairs on one side of a desk, one chair on the other, and a suspicious mirror strategically placed on the wall. Nothing else was in that room except the five simple pieces of office furniture doused in bad fluorescent lighting. It took everything in me not to look into the mirror and wave, knowing someone just had to be in a room behind it watching our every move and writing down my every word. Actually, I imagine my words were being recorded, so the mystery person behind the mirror could just observe. I had to take a deep breath and slow my mind before I screamed profanity strictly out of fear.
The woman, the one I had spoken to on the phone less than twenty-four hours before, introduced herself and gestured with her arm that I should sit in the lone chair on the other side of the desk. As I got uncomfortable in my seat, they each pulled out a legal pad from their briefcases and twisted the bottom of their expensive Mont Blanc pens. I tried my best not to stare at the lanyards that hung from their necks. The cheap plastic was a stark contrast to their expensive, perfectly pressed and tailored suits. From my seat I could clearly see that each lanyard held their badge, accompanied by a photo, name, and “FBI” in huge letters.
There was no mistaking where I was, and I had to stifle the giggle I could feel rising to the surface. Oh heavens, why was I about to start laughing?
Lord, please don’t let me laugh right now.
Nothing about this was funny. It felt like a bad episode of CSI, and I had somehow found myself on the wrong side of the interrogation table. For some reason that made me want to laugh—or cry. Was it funny that I was being interrogated by the FBI or was it sad? I didn’t know, but either way I had to keep my composure.
I couldn’t make sense of how I had ended up there, sitting in that small room with two FBI agents questioning me about my father and his computer. He was dead after all, and I just wanted to read his emails. A simple phone call asking for his computer from the evidence room at the police station led to a chain of events that put me in that seat. My obsessiveness has always gotten me into trouble, but I could talk my way out of almost any situation. I learned that from my dad. This time was different. I was stuck, and no amount of smooth talk was going to get me out of that room any quicker than I had gotten in. These people had obviously dealt with my dad before, and perhaps thought that somewhere deep inside of me I was like him. I chose to take the path of least resistance and gave simple and honest answers. I figured trying to talk my way out of that room would only show that I was like him, something I had fought for years to prove otherwise.
I wasn’t the criminal. I wasn’t then and I’m not now, but I have always worried that somehow I would be the one to pay for the crimes my dad committed. The burden of his sins stressed me out my entire life. I took ownership of it and carried it around until my back ached and my arms cramped. I felt that people could just look at me and see that half of me was rotten and half of me was something different. There was a part of me they could easily love, but there was also a part of me they feared. I’ve known my whole life that I possessed something few others did. For many years I thought I had been blessed with my dad’s gift of gab, but I learned through life that it was actually a form of ma
nipulation. My whole life I’ve dreaded checking the mail for fear of what was in it, or answering the phone for fear of who was on the other end. The moment my last name left my lips I could see people’s faces twist like they had just bitten into sour candy and desperately wanted to spit it out. The questions would start immediately and my stomach would begin to ache. After awhile I pretended not to be his daughter. I acted like I didn’t know who he was when asked, and I dreamed of the day I would get married and drop my last name.
After years of denial and avoiding my connection to him, I now found myself sitting in front of two FBI agents, stating my name, including my maiden name, and admitting that I was his daughter. It didn’t bother me as much anymore. He was gone and could no longer gloat in the fact that I had to call myself his. My quest to be a daddy’s girl had led me to that seat. All I ever wanted was for him to tell me that I was good, that I was valuable, and that nothing in his life was more important than I or my siblings. All I ever wanted was his approval, his love, and his honesty. Sitting in that seat I knew without a doubt that day would never come. I was never going to be a daddy’s girl. He was never going to cherish me, and he was never going to whisper quietly in my ear, “You matter.” It was all over and my chances of that were gone.
The day before my meeting with the FBI, my brother and I drove to the police station to retrieve the items my dad left behind in his hotel room. Those weren’t things that weighed on my brother. He didn’t require details to process what had happened, and I knew he didn’t want to hear all that our dad had done leading up to his suicide.
That’s where my brother and I were different. In order for me to begin to understand, I needed details. That started with getting my hands on the items he’d left behind, but I needed my brother’s help. As the oldest, he was the next of kin. The police wouldn’t release anything to me. He begged me not to go because he didn’t want me obsessing over all the details of our dad’s suicide. I begged him to go because I was obsessing over it and needed his help. He caved. He caved because he loves me and knew that it would consume every minute of my life if I didn’t get to the bottom of it. He caved because I’m his little sister and he’s watched my desperate attempts to gain our dad’s love our entire lives; maybe this was the one last thing he could do to help me get what I needed from our dad. He caved because he felt responsible for me. He caved not out of weakness but out of love.
I almost felt guilty when we finally made our way to the detective’s desk and started going over the list of items they recovered from the room after removing my dad’s lifeless body. The detective nonchalantly went down the list as if he were reading a grocery list to his wife. I listened with intent ears as if he were reading from the Bible the very moment Jesus gave his life for me. My brother walked away.
One black briefcase
Two pairs of reading glasses
One walking cane
One flannel shirt
One vapor cigarette
One black leather wallet with contents
One receipt from Home Depot
I squirmed in my seat knowing that I shouldn’t ask what was on my mind. I knew to keep my mouth shut but I couldn’t, and I prayed that my brother had walked far enough away to not hear me quietly ask if the receipt was for the item my dad used to hang himself. The question flew out of my mouth before I had time to negotiate with my brain all the consequences of knowing the answer. Out of the corner of my eye I saw my brother pacing but I hadn’t been brave enough to actually turn my head and make eye contact with him.
My brother’s voice boomed over the voices in my head and made me shrink. “What does it matter? Why do you care?” He scolded me because he knew every question I asked was another stab in my heart from our dead father. His voice was crippling and heartbreaking, and I didn’t want to hear it. I wanted him to shut up and let me be the crazy daughter who was drilling the detective for more information.
I almost told him to shut up and go sit in the car if he didn’t like it. But I needed his signature and, honestly, I knew he wasn’t trying to hurt me. He was trying to stop the hurt, to finally, once and for all, end the pain that our father had inflicted on us. Deep inside, he was hurt too. We just showed it differently. Maybe I shouldn’t have asked what was on that receipt, but it was too late. The detective was already punching his keyboard to see what was purchased on that rainy Monday afternoon when my dad stole every ounce of worth from me.
I’d been right. The single item on that receipt was my dad’s weapon of choice. Knowing it didn’t take away any amount of pain. Instead, it filled out the picture in my head when I tossed and turned at night trying to figure it all out. A three-quarter-inch red tow strap that had been cut at one end gave me enough ammunition to fire bullets into my heart every single night for years. That tow strap gave me endless sleepless nights when I would hide in my bathroom with a towel over my mouth so my husband wouldn’t hear me wailing in the other room. More than once that tow strap caused me to pull my car over to the side of the road so that I could cover my face and sob so hard I would eventually vomit. That tow strap is the reason it took me two years before I could step foot in a Home Depot. That tow strap is the main villain in my worst nightmare. However, that tow strap wasn’t what I had been looking for in the items on the list.
The vapor cigarette made me laugh. He had always been a smoker. When I was a little girl I wrote him notes begging him to quit. The flannel shirt made me feel like a little girl. I was desperate to bury my face in it. I wanted to hold it up to my nose and smell him. But what I really wanted was his computer and cell phone. I needed to see if it was true that his last communication with anyone was an email to his girlfriend that read, “Tell my kids that I love them.”
Were we really his last thought? If we were his last thought, why weren’t we enough? How were the images of five innocent children not enough to make him stop? I wondered whether his girlfriend had told me about the email to help ease the pain or whether it was the truth. That’s the only reason I’d willingly sat in front of the detective trying to acquire all the items that were left in the hotel.
The list didn’t have his computer or his cell phone on it, the two items I was desperate to have in my hands. I questioned him about them and again my brother scolded me for inquiring. After a few minutes on his computer, the detective looked at us and said he had never had this happen before but the FBI had already taken the computer and phone from the evidence room. Neither my brother nor I was shocked, and I think that made the detective uncomfortable. When it came to my dad nothing could shock us anymore. The fact that his belongings were taken by the FBI didn’t faze either one of us. My brother may have been relieved and figured this was the end of the road. We could finally let it all go and move on. But he had to have known he was wrong and that my relentless pursuit of answers would not end there. He had to have known that I would push on.
I was silent on the car ride home, while the business card in my pocket felt like it was burning a hole straight through to my leg. The woman whose name and number were printed on the expensive, glossy card held the key to what I needed. My brother asked if I was going to call, even though he already knew the answer. I wished I could have told him no, but it would have been a lie. Of course I was going to call. I was going to call the second he drove out of my driveway and headed home
I could barely see the tailgate of his truck turning off my street when my fingers started dialing her number. I had never spoken to the FBI before. It was both terrifying and exciting. I’m not sure what I expected, but she was a stern yet kind woman who refused to give up a lick of information about my dad’s computer. Instead, she politely insisted that I come into the office the next day to talk to her. The control freak in me wanted to keep her on the phone and get as much information out of her as I could, but she was good, really good, and dominated the conversation so that I had no opportunity to manipulate her into giving me answers.
I hung up the phone and sat
there in shock. I had dialed the number with the intent of getting what I wanted. Instead I was holding an address that would lead me to the FBI building the next day where I would give up answers rather than get them. My dad had somehow won again.
So here I was, sitting across from two FBI agents making my brain weed through all the information in my head to find the answers that matched the questions they were asking.
The agent I’d spoken with was elegant yet strong, and everything about her was polished and seamless. Were we polar opposites or deep down inside would she get me? Was her daddy her hero or had she craved his affection the way I had craved my dad’s? Either way we were face-to-face, and I wasn’t the one in control. She had the wheel; I had prayers.
During our phone conversation I had mentioned to her that I was worried people would think I had the computer. I was worried that someone might come looking for it and that I would be responsible for putting my family in danger. That might have seemed odd to anyone else, but I guess she already knew there was danger attached to the computer, because I could hear her jotting notes. It was no surprise that her first question to me in that interrogation room was who I thought might want to get their hands on my dad’s computer.
ME!
I need to see it.
I need to peek inside just to catch a glimpse of his last email and then you can have it back.
That would have set off all sorts of red flags and possibly sent me into another strange and uncomfortable room. She already knew I wanted it or I wouldn’t be sitting across from her. That’s not the answer she was looking for, so I told her what she wanted to know.
The Con Man's Daughter Page 12