Finely Ground

by Jennifer Templeman

  “He said it was right before he started with them, but he said he could get the back-up documentation, like a contract or some bills, and he’d be happy to turn those over.”

  “That’s great.” Ellie was relieved to hear they were being so cooperative. “When do you think you’ll get those?”

  “Well…” George seemed to have lost a little of his steam as Ellie failed to get on board with his excitement. “Probably not for a day or so, since they date back a few years. I sent you some excerpts from my conversation. I made good notes. Can you look over them when you get a minute and let me know if anything else stands out to you?”

  “Sure,” Ellie promised, not certain what she would be looking for. “And while you’re waiting, if you feel strongly Murphy was involved in some way, you should certainly check his alibis for where he was each of the nights a theft occurred.”

  “Right,” he agreed quickly, seemingly happy to have a new task, before they ended the call.

  Not long after getting off the phone with George, Ellie heard Phil before she saw him, glad to know all his canes weren’t as stealthy as the last few he’d had at the office. The rainbow swirls running down the stick in his hand made her smile. “Did the leprechaun give you the pot of gold, or were you only after his rainbow?”

  “Smart-ass.” He didn’t take her bait beyond that. “You’ve been giving Miller’s nephew a lot of airtime lately,” he began, making Ellie nervous that he was not pleased with her performance. “Don’t look at me like that… I’m not getting on you,” he said, and Ellie felt her shoulders relax. “But I have noticed you’ve been blending a little field work with your normal desk reviews. I’m okay with it—obviously you’re handling yourself—but just to keep everything above board, you need the shrink to sign off on it too. You’re cleared to return to your job duties as currently outlined, which specifically excludes field work. If you’re going to be interacting with the general public, you need the form in your file—preferably before the end of the day so there can be no dispute about any evidence that might be in the file because of your work.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Ellie argued. “Even if I didn’t have permission, facts are facts, and there’s no way they aren’t valid just because a form hasn’t been submitted.”

  “I’m just here to get the red tape out of the way so some highfalutin lawyer can’t use it to wrangle their client a free ride out. Get the form signed, and it’s not a problem.” Not giving her time to argue, he turned and hobbled back down the hall.

  Feeling like she didn’t have anything more pressing, she went upstairs to see if she might get lucky and find Mack. When she arrived at the oddly shaped office, she called out but didn’t get an immediate response.

  Just as she’d was turning to leave, there was a loud thumping sound, followed by a shrill: “By golly that hurt!”

  “Mack?” Ellie tried again, unsure if she wanted to have this conversation anymore.

  “I’m here, but I’ve probably got a concussion.” Mack crawled out from under her desk and stood up slowly.

  “Do I need to call someone? Are you all right?” Ellie asked.

  “It’s possible I’m overstating my injuries. I was trying to find a note I’d dropped a few days ago, and when I moved to get up, I hit my head.” The redhead rubbed at it, as though that would help Ellie to understand her words.

  “Why were you just looking for the note if you dropped it days ago?” Ellie wondered, hating it when details were out of touch with what made sense.

  “It was a list of things I needed to do before the month ends, and when it fell off my desk, it was far enough from that date that it wasn’t important. Now we’re three days from the deadline, and I can’t remember everything on the note—thus my hands-and-knees routine.”

  Ellie’s mind flooded with questions, but she tried to hold them back, not sure if the answers would help the scenario make any more sense to her than it already did. “Do you have a moment for a quick question, or should I come back?”

  “You should definitely come back,” Mack responded, quickly moving files around on top of desk until she found her glasses.

  Ellie turned to leave, assuming she’d been dismissed.

  “Why are you leaving?”

  “You told me to,” Ellie reminded her.

  “No, I confirmed that this shouldn’t be the last time we talked, but I never said we couldn’t pick up where we left off last time now too,” Mack corrected her. “What was it you wanted to discuss?”

  “My field clearance,” Ellie began, moving a little closer in the hope no one walked by the open door and heard them. “I’ve gone out a few times to do some very minor fact gathering, and Phil said if you don’t clear me for that duty, it could cause a problem with the case file.”

  “Probably not,” Mack disagreed, “unless the fact gathering you did was connected to an arrest and conviction, and then there could be serious admissibility issues in court on the back end.”

  Ellie sat down hard, unable to believe that because she’d tried to help George, his entire case could fall apart due to a technicality.

  “Oh relax. I’ll be happy to clear you and back date the form so everything is all tidy for those paper-pushers in the legal system,” Mack assured her. “I just need you to do three small things for me first.”

  Ellie heart rate instantly increased.

  “First, I need you to recap everything you did in the field.”

  That was easy enough. Ellie quickly recounted her time out with George and even her night out with Joe to get information from her mother.

  “Great.” Mack scribbled furiously as Ellie spoke. At the end of the story, she shoved her glasses on the top of her head, almost obscuring them with curls. “How did the night end?”

  “Well…” Ellie was a lot more self-conscious about answering this, especially with the memory of her conversation with Anne last night still fresh in her mind. “Joe walked me to my door, reminded me he had to open his shop early this morning, and then kissed my cheek.”

  “Was it a fast peck like you give your crazy aunt on your mother’s side? Or was it slower and more lingering?”

  “I guess it was more the second option,” Ellie admitted. “What does that have to do with me getting cleared back to the field?”

  “Nothing, but it’s lot more interesting than mental-health checks,” Mack was quick to admit. “My question was more about how you did last night after being in the field. Did you have trouble sleeping? Did your mind play through the situation in a way that made you anxious even once it was over?”

  Realizing she’d given more personal information than she needed to, Ellie quickly let Mack know she’d been fine after her time on a case out of the office.

  “Final thing,” Mack said, leaning forward. “I want you to write down whatever you dream about tonight, and as long as it isn’t post-traumatic indicative, and then I’ll be glad to submit the right clearance to everybody involved.”

  “What exactly would be indicative of post-traumatic stress?” Ellie wondered.

  “If I told you that, then you’d either have exactly that kind of dream because I planted the seed in your subconscious or you’d lie and give me some goofy rainbow and leprechaun tall tale. I want the truth—completely unfiltered.” Mack pointed her glasses at Ellie. “I know people think I’m eccentric, and I don’t mind it too much, but don’t let my unfiltered mouth lead you to believe I can’t tell when people are holding back. If you aren’t a hundred percent open with me on this, I won’t sign off on anything. I didn’t care how big the case is or whose relative has a career at stake.”

  Throughout the rest of the day, Ellie worried about the possibility of having done irreparable harm to George’s case, even accidentally. There were periods in Ellie’s life when she’d been afraid of going to sleep because she knew exactly what she would dream about. For the first time, the uncertainty of a blank slate had her terrified, and as much as she might like to fin
d the comfort of a good cup of coffee, the caffeine it would provide was the last thing she wanted with so much riding on her having a good night of sleep.

  Chapter 16

  Ellie loved this tree. She had no idea how many times she’d climbed it, but it had to number in the thousands. Once she pulled herself up to the third branch, the sounds of the world changed. She heard more of the leaves blowing in the wind and the songs of the birds and less of the neighbor’s lawn-care service. Sitting on her branch and leaning against the trunk, Ellie let her right leg hang down and swing, making her feel free and unrestrained. Her mother wouldn’t dare climb a tree, and her father would occasionally come up, but he had a gift for knowing when to talk and when to just sit and listen to the wind with her. Most of her major life decisions had been made here—everything from which boy to accept as her date to the prom, all the way to her college major. She’d even spent the morning before her father’s funeral on her perch. There wasn’t a single songbird around that morning. It was as if the wildlife knew something wonderful was gone and there was nothing to celebrate on that day.

  Being here was more a homecoming than walking the twenty feet to the house and going to her childhood bedroom. Opening her eyes, there wasn’t much natural light filtering through the trees, making her believe it was early in the morning. She let her fingers run over the bark of the branch, feeling each familiar groove, knowing when to increase the pressure and when to pull back. Ellie never understood why her mother stayed alone in such a large house, but she was relieved to know she could always come back and climb up here, where the world bore a much greater chance of making sense to her.

  Time was of no importance here as wave after wave of peace washed over Ellie. After a period, she began to wonder why she’d come. There was nothing overly pressing on her mind for her to mull over, but she didn’t feel like rushing to leave either. Eventually, she began to hear footsteps approaching and then the call, “Ellie girl!” from down below. Her father was climbing the tree, taking the same path she had and sitting on his branch opposite hers.

  “We’ve been spending a lot of time together lately, haven’t we?” he asked.

  “Not really,” Ellie answered. “I’ve been reading your journals and trying to make sense out of your files, but you haven’t been here for me to ask what they mean.”

  “Yes, that’s it, lots of time,” he repeated, as though they had said the same thing somehow.

  “It might be a refreshing change if you just came out and told me what you were talking about, Dad.”

  “No fun in that,” he answered, sounding amused. “Besides, that’s never been our way, has it?”

  The wind blew the leaves, and Ellie watched as a few of the vibrant green ones began to lighten.

  “Do you remember some of those late-night calls you came on?”

  “Sure,” Ellie replied. “You’d go to a scene, and I’d stay in the car.”

  “Did you ever learn anything from looking at my notes while I was preoccupied?”

  “No.” She laughed at the absurdity of a high school girl understanding her father’s mind. “Besides, it was always written in code—I didn’t stand a chance.”

  “Of course you did,” he disagreed. “You were the only one who did because you were my…”

  Ellie knew he was prompting her to finish the sentence. After Elliot moved into his own apartment and Ellie began to spend the weekends with him, he’d refer to her as his number two. He was in charge, but she was his second. It was funny because there were lots of times when it felt like it was her and her dad against the world, or at least against Janice, which felt like the world. “…I was your number two.”

  “That’s right.” He sounded happy with her answer. “I knew you wouldn’t forget.”

  Silence fell once more, and Ellie grew distracted as the leaves that had lightened earlier seemed to be turning orange and yellow now. She’d never been able to see the transformation from summer to fall before, and it was fascinating. What began as a peaceful and green place now appeared to be aflame with color.

  “This is our ten, isn’t it?” her dad began once more. “Of all the places we went, little trips we took, this is the place we liked the best.” It wasn’t like her dad to be this nostalgic, but they had often called the tree their perfect ten.

  “Why are you talking like this?” Ellie asked. “It’s like your journals have come to life, because when I read them, I get short bursts of sense, and then I feel like I’m reading only half pages of your thoughts. And there are these numbers all over. I know you had your own code, but unless you’ve hidden a key somewhere, I’ll never be able to break it.”

  “I didn’t have to hide a key,” her dad corrected. “I raised the key. Everything you need to understand what I’ve written is in your brain.”

  “But it’s all in code,” she reminded him. “Numbers with no meaning. You’ve got your own language, and I don’t know how to read it.”

  “Ah, yes, I told you once when you were younger that when I needed to get something out my head, I’d write it down. And if it was private, the kind of thing I didn’t want others to read, then I made up my own system of numbers that represented people, places, and things.”

  “I remember that, but I still don’t see what that has to do with understanding your journals.”

  “If you think hard enough, you’ll figure it out,” he promised. “You’re number two. No one else could understand it, but you will eventually come to a place…a perfect place…where you’ll find what you need.”

  As her father finished talking, the leaves that had been so vibrant moments before seemed to be dancing and then letting go as the breeze pressed against them. Fall had come, and the leaves were departing in preparation for winter. When Ellie realized she was growing cold, she turned to ask her father if he was ready to climb down, but he was already halfway to the ground.

  “What was the purpose of this?” she called out, worried that he would disappear before she could understand.

  He looked up with a smile and shrugged, as though he were as clueless as she was. “I don’t know, but if I’d been trying to write about it in my journal, I’d say that I was with my number two and we’d shared something important at our ten spot.” As he finished speaking, the wind gave a final gust and the leaves that had collected on the ground seemed to swirl around, surrounding her father until she could no longer make him out, only a sea of orange, yellow, and red.

  Ellie stood in her tree, cold, with no leaves for protection and no father for comfort.

  ****

  “Wow,” Mack said, taking off her glasses and setting them on top of the paper Ellie had given her first thing that morning. “You have to be one of the most vibrant dreamers I’ve ever tried to analyze.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  “Not for you, it isn’t,” Mack informed her, picking up the paper and squinting at it to see it without her glasses. “What is this stuff about the numbers all about?”

  Ellie explained quickly about the journals he’d left for her and how much of it was written in numbers. Because many of them reoccurred, she had a feeling they held meaning, but she hadn’t been able to make out the key of understanding them yet.

  “Have you taken them to a cryptologist to help?” Mack suggested logically.

  “No.” Ellie wasn’t sure how much to share now, but she hoped this whole conversation might be covered under some kind of doctor/patient confidentiality. “He left them for me years after his death as a way for me to stay safe. I don’t think he wanted any of the information to be shared within the Bureau, so I’m not ready to bring in anyone else from here to help.”

  “So basically, he left you a gigantic puzzle, knowing you were the kind of person who would feel a grain of sand under a thousand mattresses and wouldn’t stop until you’d figured out what was making you uncomfortable,” Mack summed up. “It’s amazing you sleep at all. From what I’ve been able to piece together, I’d think
you spend most of your free time poring over these books and files, trying out different code-breaking techniques.”

  “I did at first, but since nothing worked, I’ve just read a little each day and tried to not focus on the numbers as much.”

  “How’s that working out for you?” Mack seemed to be teasing.

  “You’ll have to tell me,” Ellie countered. “Am I crazy from it yet?”

  Laughing in return, Mack pulled out a manila folder and held it out for Ellie to take.

  “What’s this?”

  “The paperwork I filed yesterday, dated the day before, reinstating you to full field duty as approved by your supervisor.”

  “If you filed it yesterday, why did you have me write down my dream?” Ellie asked.

  “It’s never a bad idea to write down your dreams.” Mack didn’t seem concerned about the question. “Plus, we hadn’t gotten into too much meat in our conversations lately, so I thought this might give us a platform to launch from.”

  ****

  Ellie had only been at her desk for an hour before George appeared in her doorway, nearly out of breath.

  “What on earth is the matter?” Ellie asked.

  “Murphy is here, waiting in a conference room, with a copy of the billing statements we talked about,” George announced. “Can you come with me to look at them?”

  “Sure,” Ellie agreed, not sure why this was such a big deal.

  “Should I have them take him to a holding room?” George asked, standing up straighter and seeming to regain his composure.

  “No!” Ellie all but shouted. “You aren’t charging him with anything. Let him stay where he is.” She knew her voice was short, but the more she worked with George face to face instead of over e-mail, the more she worried about the future of law enforcement if this was the brightest and best.

  As they moved to the stairwell, Ellie noticed Phil’s door was open and a very rigidly seated, well-dressed figure was in a guest chair. “Did you run down here?” Ellie nearly whispered to George.