Friendly Fire

by John Gilstrap

  Then an internal switch flipped or something. She abruptly sat up straight, and patted the table with both palms. “Nope, we’re not doing this,” she declared. “We’re getting unnecessarily crosswise. Hand to God, I don’t know yet whether or not your story is credible, but I can tell you this: I am one hundred percent convinced that you one hundred percent believe every word you’re telling me. You’re not spouting a line of bullshit—at least I don’t think so. How’s that?”

  Ethan remained passive. It was too early to commit.

  “Okay, fine, hold your cards tight,” Wendy went on. “I get it. You’re angry, and you’re frustrated. Not just about this, but about a lot of things in your life. If you let me, we can explore all of that, and I promise that I will try to help you cope with whatever you need to cope with. But the first step is to be forthcoming, and that’s the ball that you seem particularly adept at dropping. I said at the beginning of this meeting that I wanted you to trust me. That means giving me a break.”

  Ethan was tired of the lecture, so he took a breath to speak.

  “I’m not done yet,” Wendy said, cutting him off. “You, young man, need to recognize that this is a two-way street. You can’t treat every question as an affront. This interview process is in fact how truth is discovered. That means not getting pissy at every other sentence.”

  “This is hard,” Ethan said. “This is shit that I’ve spent the past eleven years trying to forget, and you and the others are doing everything you can to bring it back to life.”

  “You want exculpatory evidence, don’t you?”

  “I want it all to be a bad dream!” He knew he’d said the words too loud, but she needed to adjust, too. “Those assholes ruined everything. They ruined . . .” He was surprised when his voice disappeared. He took a moment. “They ruined me.”

  The words just hung there. Neither of them said anything for the better part of fifteen seconds.

  “So, do you want to know what happened next?” Ethan asked.

  “No,” Wendy said. “We’ll get to that in time. Tell me about your previous encounters with mental health professionals.”

  Ethan’s shields flew up. “Why?”

  She waited for the answer.

  “Okay, they were bullshit,” he said. “Nobody really wanted to hear what happened—well, okay, at first, I wasn’t willing to share what happened—but folks don’t want to hear about an eleven-year-old boy getting ass-raped. You bring that up, and they reach for their prescription pads. But there’s a world of difference between dulling a memory and coping with it.”

  “Why do you think you weren’t willing to share?” Wendy asked.

  Ethan fought the instinct to throw out an I-don’t-know. “Because it hurt, I suppose.”

  She waited for more.

  “And because I was afraid.”

  “Of?”

  Ethan’s mind raced. Did he want to go here? It was the room in his memory that he’d promised years ago never to open. And when he did, there’d be no going back. But if not now, then when?

  He settled himself with a breath, and looked over his shoulders to verify that they were still alone. “How much time do we have?”

  “As long as you need.” Dr. Wendy looked like she was preparing herself for an interesting story. She had no idea.

  “Ask me what happened to Joey,” Ethan said. “Ask me what happened to all the others.”

  Chapter Eleven

  When Jonathan was done with his recap of his conversation with Wolverine, Dom rose from his chair around the War Room’s teak conference table and walked to the door. “I don’t think I need to hear any more of this,” he said. “As much as I admire your ability to compartmentalize information, I’m afraid I don’t share it.”

  “Really, Padre?” Boxers asked, clearly surprised. “You hear confessions all day.”

  “From people who want forgiveness, Big Guy,” Dom said, placing a hand on Boxers’ shoulder. “The way this is going, I don’t see a lot of contrition in the immediate future. Besides, I don’t want to steal Digger’s thunder from a future meeting.” He winked at Jonathan, whose last steps in closing out most operations was to seek absolution from God via Dom.

  After the door closed, Boxers said, “I’m not sure why he was here to begin with.”

  “Because I asked him,” Jonathan said.

  “Why?”

  “Because I wanted him here.” Jonathan engineered his tone to cut off all further discussion. Fact was, Dom was a solid source of strength for him during the first dance with Ethan Falk, and Jonathan felt comfort in his presence.

  “So, what exactly is our mission?” Venice asked.

  “I want to know why Stepahin was back in town,” Jonathan said.

  “And how are we going to do that?” Boxers asked.

  “Well . . .” Venice drew the word out to fill three seconds as she typed. “The Braddock County Police Department will do a fair amount of our heavy lifting for us on that one,” she said. “The ICIS entries make it clear that they’re trying to retrace his steps. For what it’s worth, they’re as confused and concerned as we are by the fact that he’s a John Doe.”

  “What all are they doing?” Jonathan asked.

  “Everything I would, but they’re doing it with permissions and warrants.”

  “How boring,” Boxers said with a rumble of a laugh.

  Jonathan stood and moved to a window, where he could look out toward the swaying masts of boats moored at the marina. “Let’s think this through,” he said. “They’re going to trace where he’s been. They’ll tap into every security camera they can find. If he was using a false cover for credit cards, they’ll have that trail, too.”

  “He had twelve thousand dollars in cash,” Venice said. “I doubt that he’ll have needed to use credit.”

  “And he’d have been a fool if he did,” Boxers agreed.

  “Still,” Jonathan said. “My point is that the police will take care of tracking where he went. All we need to figure out is why he went there.”

  Boxers laughed again. “Well, okay, if that’s all we have to do, we’ll have lots of spare time to cure cancer and uncover the secrets of Area 51.”

  Jonathan acknowledged the irony with a smile. “Okay, maybe it won’t be easy.”

  “Do you think that the BCPD will have access to Stepahin’s secret past?”

  “Absolutely not,” Jonathan said.

  “So, when they put together their trail, they’re going to try to connect dots that don’t exist.”

  “Which means they’ll make them up,” Boxers said. “That won’t be good for our pal Ethan.”

  “No, it won’t,” Jonathan said. It was the job of a police detective to stitch strands of evidence into a narrative that will make sense for a prosecutor, and ultimately for a jury. Since they were starting with the supposition that Ethan Falk was a cold-blooded murderer, Jonathan had every expectation that the evidence trail would demonstrate to the police that their John Doe had spent a lifetime merely minding his own business.

  “How do you intend to bridge that information gap?” Boxers asked.

  “I have no idea,” Jonathan said. “Let’s find the new information before we worry too much about bridging the gaps.” When he turned away from the window, he saw a faraway expression in Venice’s face that intrigued him. “Okay, Ven, what aren’t you saying?” He was particularly intrigued that her thoughtfulness involved neither typing nor staring into her computer screen.

  “I’m a little confused as to which case we’re working,” she said. “Are we doing Wolverine’s bidding and finding out what Stepahin’s mission was, or are we trying to build a case that will help Ethan Falk?”

  “As far as I’m concerned, a little bit of both,” Jonathan said.

  “The kid’s a lost cause, Dig,” Boxers said. “I mean, even if we paint the perfect picture of Stepahin being the monster that he was, that wouldn’t justify a cold-blooded attack in the middle of a parking lot.”
<
br />   Jonathan glared. “Whose side are you on?”

  Boxers’ features darkened. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t ask such a stupid question.”

  Jonathan felt instant regret. “Sorry,” he said. “This guilt thing is new territory for me.” He returned to his seat. “Okay, then, what’s our next step?”

  “In which direction?” Venice asked.

  “Let’s deal with Wolfie’s request first,” Jonathan said. “How are we going to figure out if Stepahin was here to kidnap somebody, and if so, who that somebody might be?”

  Silence prevailed for a solid half minute as they each worked the problem. “There’s no string to pull,” Boxers said, finally.

  Venice agreed. “We don’t have direct access to the evidence from the stabbing, and we don’t have direct access to the body, though I can’t imagine what they would show. The electronic trail lies in the hands of the Braddock County PD, and until they update ICIS—which they’ve been pretty good about doing so far—I don’t think we can get an angle to leverage.”

  “I’m hearing a lot of defeatism,” Jonathan said.

  “I believe the word you’re searching for is reality,” Boxers said.

  “All we need is a little nudge,” Jonathan said. “Just enough to get some momentum, and from there, to get some enthusiasm.” He stood again and returned to the window. If he craned his neck to look through to the right, he could see the near edge of the beginning of the commercial fishing pier.

  “We’re missing something,” he mused aloud. “Somebody give me a different angle to consider,” he said.

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Venice said.

  “We’re obviously running down the wrong alley.” When his team fell silent like this, Jonathan knew that they were humoring him. It was not uncommon for him to utter non sequiturs when he was thinking aloud, and he’d come to appreciate their hesitance to keep saying, “Huh?” as he worked the problem.

  “Let’s assume that Wolfie is correct,” he said. “Let’s assume that there is an organized effort to kidnap high-profile Americans. Who are the players?”

  “Holy crap,” Boxers said. “How do you begin to count?”

  “Let’s start,” Jonathan pressed. “You’ve got four hundred thirty-five members of the House, plus another hundred from the Senate.”

  “Plus their spouses and children,” Venice said. “And their grandchildren. In some cases, great-grandchildren. Big Guy’s right. The list is too high to count.”

  “And there’s no way to provide security for all of them,” Boxers added. “Is Wolfie even making them aware that they might be in danger?”

  Jonathan looked at him and made a pained face. “I doubt it. I hope not. They’re dysfunctional enough as it is without being driven to panic.”

  “She’s not even sure that such a plot exists, right?” Venice said. “Isn’t that one of the things we’re supposed to find out?”

  “Exactly,” Jonathan said. “That’s why it wouldn’t make sense to alert them.”

  “What about Congressman Johnson?” Boxers said. “Surely, he’s going to tell his colleagues what happened.”

  Jonathan dismissed that. “Given the events of the rescue, I’m not sure he’ll want to come forward with his use of nongovernment assets to get his daughter back. If he does, he does, but as far as he knows, this was just a one-off.”

  The door to the War Room rattled from a soft impact from the other side. Boxers rolled his chair back and reached for the knob. As soon as the door was ajar, JoeDog entered the space, her tail wagging hard enough to unbalance her back end. A stray black lab who had adopted Jonathan some years ago as her nominal master, JoeDog had unfettered access to wherever she wanted to go.

  Jonathan beamed. “Hey, sweetheart,” he said, clapping his hands softly, “I haven’t seen you in days.”

  She hit him with a running hug, her forepaws stretching nearly to his shoulders. She exchanged a chin lick for a quick ear rub, and then she was done. She curled up under the conference table and was snoring within fifteen seconds.

  “It occurs to me that we haven’t looked at this world from the bad guy’s point of view,” Jonathan said.

  Boxers and Venice exchanged looks of confusion.

  “Think about it,” Jonathan said. He could hear the excitement in his own voice. “If you’re the al-Amin group, and you paid a bunch of guys to kidnap the Johnson girl, how are you going to feel if you never hear anything about it? It’s not on the news, and the girl hasn’t been delivered. How’s that going to sit with you?”

  “I’m gonna be pissed,” Boxers said.

  Jonathan shot him with an extended forefinger. “Exactly. Now, let’s say you find out that another kidnapper you hired ends up dead in a parking lot. How are you going to feel then?”

  Venice said, “A little desperate, I would imagine.”

  “Or a lot desperate,” Jonathan said. “You’re going to wonder just what the hell is going on. You’re going to start feeling paranoid. And then what are you going to do?”

  They stared back at him.

  “You’re going to make a phone call!” Jonathan proclaimed. “If not literally, then figuratively. You’re going to reach out to whoever you reach out to, to find out just how deep a shit storm is on its way.”

  Venice’s eyes got wider. “You’re suggesting there’s a record.”

  Jonathan grinned. “NSA’s got a record of every call made by every citizen. If those calls—or e-mails or texts or whatever—originated with a known asset of al-Amin, they’re especially likely to have something.”

  Venice’s smile turned to a wince. “I’m among the best at hacking, Dig, but NSA files are a bit beyond my league. And my one source locked down tight after that business in Mexico.”

  Jonathan looked to Boxers. “Who do we know who just announced on the Unit message boards that he’d taken an analyst spot at No Such Agency?”

  Boxers’ perpetual scowl deepened. “How ‘just’?”

  “Within the last three months. He was on C Squadron, I think. At least at the end.”

  Big Guy shook his head. “This isn’t ringing a . . . wait. Was it Konan?”

  Jonathan snapped his fingers. “Yes. That’s him.”

  “Konan?” Venice said. “Like the Barbarian?”

  “Exactly like him,” Boxers said with a laugh.

  “His real name is Henry West. The man was a beast,” Jonathan said. “His biceps were the size of my thighs. A hell of a war fighter, too.”

  “Took a bullet, didn’t he?” Boxers asked.

  “I think so. Through-and-through gut shot. It’s good that he got to stay in the Community. He had skills.” Jonathan nodded toward Venice. “You’d have been particularly impressed.”

  “He’s a hacker?” Venice guessed.

  “Of the nth degree.”

  “Do you think he’d help us out?” Boxers asked. “I mean, he’s pretty new to his spot.”

  “We’ll be especially charming,” Jonathan said.

  * * *

  “They kept us in a dungeon,” Ethan explained.

  “Us?” Over the past few minutes, Dr. Wendy had become deeply engaged in the conversation. “Who is ‘us’?”

  “I wasn’t always alone in there. There were other boys, about my age. I knew their names at one point, but I don’t remember them anymore.”

  “How many?”

  Ethan pursed his lips and looked to the ceiling. “Over the time I was there—which they told me was only eight days, but I don’t believe it—there were three others. Two were there when I got there, but they left early. Then I was alone for a while, and then there was one who came in and was gone really fast after that.”

  “What happened to them?” Wendy asked.

  “Don’t you already have all this? I told—”

  “I want to hear it from you,” she said. Her voice was softer, kinder.

  Ethan took a deep breath and closed his eyes against the memory. “I think they
were sold,” he said. “I was telling you that they kept us in a dungeon. It was a room carved out from under the floor of the basement. The basement floor was concrete—which meant that the dungeon’s ceiling was concrete—but the floor was dirt. Lots of rocks and stuff. They’d dug a pit in the back corner about this big.” He made a circle with his arms, maybe two and a half feet in diameter. That’s where we’d shit and piss. You can imagine what it smelled like.”

  Wendy watched Ethan as he spoke. When he opened his eyes, the intensity of her glare startled him.

  He chuckled and scratched his head. “You know what’s funny? They gave us toilet paper. Lots of it, probably thirty rolls of it.”

  “Why is that funny?”

  “Think about it,” Ethan said. “They kept us naked on a dirt floor that smelled like shit—literally—they did unspeakable things to us, but they made sure that we used soft toilet paper.” He felt his eyes redden and he wiped them. “It makes no goddamn sense.”

  “Why do you think the other boys were sold?” Wendy prompted as she looked down and made a note in her book.

  “I assume it was for sex.”

  She looked up, momentarily confused. “No, that’s not what I meant. What happened that made you think they were sold?”

  “Oh. Every now and then, the trap door in the ceiling would open, and one of them—usually it was Bill—would stick his head down and call for the other boys to come upstairs.”

  “But not you?”

  Ethan shook his head. “No. From the very beginning, they said that they had somebody special in mind for me. I have no idea what that meant. Looking back, I figure I was somehow a perfect match for a specific customer. Jesus, those guys were disgusting.” He didn’t realize that he was crying until he sniffed.

  “Are you okay to go on?” Wendy asked.

  “I’m good if you are,” he said. “This is the part where all you shrink types start getting squirmy. Don’t worry, I won’t go into the gory details.”

  “You can go into as much detail as you’re comfortable with.”

  Ethan suppressed a smirk. Honestly, head doctors were as predictable as sunrises. They put the aggression in passive-aggressiveness. “So the kids would climb up the ladder—hop, actually, because they kept our feet cuffed, and then I wouldn’t see them again. In one case, two of them went up but only one of them came back. He told me that there was an Asian guy up there who looked them both over, and then picked the other one. The one they didn’t choose was sent back into the hole. He was gone for a long time, though, and when he came back, he didn’t say anything. He sat on the opposite side and cried.” Ethan waited to see if Dr. Wendy could read between the lines, or if she would ask the obvious. Her silence won her some points.