His face became serious. “You know, Chris, I haven’t pushed this Kneeley thing for any reasons of my own. I just want to help, and maybe it’ll uncover something useful.”
“I know that,” she said as she walked him to the door. “Bill, I’m sorry I snapped at you.”
“You’re tense, Chris, that’s all. It’ll all be over soon. Like I said—”
“Trust me.” She broke into laughter.
“Yeah, trust me. Good night. Get a good night’s sleep.”
“I’ll try. You, too.”
The moment she closed the door behind him she went to the phone, picked it up, and dialed Lizenby’s number. It was either do it then or not at all, and she wanted to get it over with. She was relieved when there was no answer.
Bill Tse-ay looked up and down the street in front of her building in search of a cab. He started walking to the corner, which was at the intersection of another small, quiet street, didn’t find a cab there, and headed toward what looked like a busy avenue. Chris’s street was dark and lonely. A heavy fog had drifted into Washington, which turned the few street lamps into shrouded balls of soft light. He paused because he thought he heard—sensed, actually—that there was someone sharing the street with him, behind him, footsteps barely audible, no real sound, just a presence. He glanced over his right shoulder, saw nothing, and took a few more steps.
Now, the footsteps were loud and deliberate, feet closing ground. Bill swung around just in time to catch the full force of a fist wrapped around a roll of dimes. His world became brilliant pinpoints of searing white light, a deafening roar, and a rush of pain. He slumped to the ground, one hand instinctively pressing his shattered left cheekbone. Blood oozed from his left eye and through his fingers as his head hit the red brick sidewalk.
His assailant quickly grabbed him by the shirt and dragged him into a clump of bushes surrounding a sedate Georgetown town house. He held Bill’s battered face off the ground with his left hand, brought back his right—the one holding the rolled dimes—and hit him again, this time smashing his nose flat against his face. He let go; Bill’s head thumped to the soft dirt.
***
Chris tried Ross Lizenby two more times without success. She called Bill at the Gralyn. He hadn’t returned yet. “Message?” the operator asked. “No,” said Chris. “I’ll try him again tomorrow.”
She climbed into bed wishing she hadn’t asked him to leave.
***
Bill managed to crawl just far enough to be visible from the street. A late-night dog walker discovered him at three A.M. and called the police.
An ambulance rushed him to Doctor’s Hospital, where, after a quick evaluation in the emergency room, he was wheeled into surgery to relieve a blood clot on the right side of his brain.
“He’ll make it,” one of the surgeons said to a police officer after Bill had been taken to Intensive Care. “Could be impairment, though. Did you notify family?”
“We’re trying. He publishes Native American Times, the Indian newspaper. According to what was in his wallet, he lives on a reservation in Arizona.”
“It’ll be a while before he publishes anything,” the surgeon said. “Whoever did it sure as hell didn’t like him. Couldn’t have hit him more perfectly to have done that kind of damage.”
“It was robbery,” the officer said. “Credit cards and cash gone. At least they left the identifying papers.”
“What was he doing in Washington?”
“Beats me, doc.”
24
Saksis went with trepidation to her office in the Hoover Building the next morning. She couldn’t decide what she feared most—the certain confrontation with Ross Lizenby, facing the ramifications of the rumor about her affair with George Pritchard, or putting into reality the plans to crash Richard Kneeley’s transmission of material to Sutherland House. Probably all three, she thought as she hung up her coat, poured coffee from the Ranger pot, and settled behind her desk.
There was a neat pile of memos that hadn’t been there when she’d left on Saturday. One of the secretaries was obsessively organized. Pencils were always sharpened and lined up in strict formation, note pads had a clean sheet on top, and telephone message slips were arranged in order of the time they were received, the most recent on the bottom.
There was something else on the desk that hadn’t been there Friday, a greeting card—size envelope with the name Christine written on it. She picked it up and recognized Lizenby’s handwriting. Her hands trembled as she carefully opened the sealed envelope and removed a piece of yellow paper that was folded in half. She read the terse, typewritten message:
You disgust me. You played games with me, and I hate women who play games. I heard about Pritchard and you, and know where you were this weekend and who you were with. You’re a goddamn slut, and I’m sorry I ever wasted two minutes with you.
It wasn’t signed.
She went through myriad emotions within seconds—burning tears, panic, wonderment, then anger. She went to the secretary’s desk and asked in a voice barely controlled, “Where is Mr. Lizenby?”
“He’s gone, Miss Saksis. Didn’t you hear?”
“No. Gone where?”
“Special assignment. That’s all I know.”
She looked in on Jake Stein, who was having coffee with Joe Perone. “I just heard Ross is gone on special assignment.”
Perone looked up from his newspaper. “Yeah, I heard that, too. Where’d they send him?”
“You don’t know?” Saksis said.
Stein and Perone shook their heads. “Why do you think we would?” Stein asked.
“I don’t know, I just thought that—”
Perone laughed and tossed the paper on his desk. “Come on, Chris, you know how it works around here. Nobody ever talks about where the Unkempts go.”
“Did you see him before he left?” she asked.
“No,” they said in unison.
“What about Ranger?”
The two men looked at each other before Perone said, “Jake’s been put in charge.”
“You have, Jake? I didn’t hear about it.”
Stein sighed and crossed his legs. “I just heard about it over the weekend. But don’t view it as a big deal. I’m in charge of folding it up.”
Saksis wanted to turn and run. It was obvious that they’d heard about the accusation that she’d slept with Pritchard, and equally obvious that she’d been relieved of her temporary job overseeing Ranger because of it. Stein and Perone were openly uncomfortable talking to her. She resented that most. She slammed the door and said, “What’s going on here? Ross leaves on ‘special assignment,’ I’m pulled off Ranger without being told, and you say it’s being folded. Why?”
“Why what?” Stein asked.
“Why everything?”
“Look Chris,” Stein said, getting up and leaning against a ledge that housed the air conditioning, “nobody wants to hurt you. Get that straight.”
Saksis directed a stream of air at a strand of hair that had fallen over her face. She looked up at the ceiling and said, “Somebody’s doing a damn fine job of it.”
“What did you expect?” Stein asked.
She glared at him. “What do you mean?”
“Chris, I’m a great believer in people living their own lives, getting it off any way they want behind closed doors, but when you start playing around here in the bureau, you—well, goddamn it, you ask for trouble.”
She took a few steps toward him, stopped, and pointed a finger in his direction. “You mean the lie about me and George Pritchard.”
Stein shook his head and looked away.
She looked at Perone. “It’s a lie, Joe, a vicious lie intended to hurt me.”
“Yeah, I know, Chris.”
“It is.”
Stein said, “It doesn’t matter, Chris. It’s all over the building.”
“But—”
“And hooking up with Ross didn’t help matters.”
“
I never—”
“That’s a lie, too?”
She looked at the floor. “No.” She asked, “Did Ross talk to you about it?”
“Not really,” said Perone.
“What the hell does ‘not really’ mean?”
“He—forget it, Chris. Ranger’s going out of business, Ross is assigned somewhere else, and we can all get back to the routine.”
Her anger gave way to sadness again as she said, “And what’s my routine—the bureau slut?”
“Nobody ever said that, Chris,” Perone said.
“No? What do you think about it?”
“About what, a little office romance?” Stein laughed to show how insignificant it was.
“How about conflict of interest, Jake? That’s what I was really accused of by Gormley, investigating the Pritchard murder without being unbiased.”
Stein said, “It’s water over the dam, Chris. It’ll all blow away and be forgotten.”
“Tell me that when you read my evaluation reports,” she said.
“You can always protest. There’s a system for it.”
She went to the door, drew in a deep breath, turned, and said, “So, officially, who did it?”
“Who did what?” Perone asked.
“Who killed George L. Pritchard?”
Stein turned his back on her and said flatly, “It’ll be announced this afternoon, at five.”
“Oh, really? A press conference?”
“Yes.”
“Who’s announcing it?”
“Director Shelton.”
“Right from the top, huh? Do you know, Jake?”
He looked at her. “Yes.”
“And I can’t be told?”
“That’s right, only don’t take it personally. No one is to be told until Shelton’s announcement.”
“Except you.”
“There were reasons.”
“Give me two. I was in charge of Ranger right up until today.”
“Until Saturday,” said Stein in a voice that indicated he was losing patience with the conversation.
“Until the ‘revelation’ that I’d been sleeping with the deceased. Who came up with that? Rosemary Cale at someone’s behest?”
“Whatever you say, Chris,” said Stein. “I have to go. I’m late for a meeting.”
She looked at Perone. “Joe, this is all wrong.”
He nodded and fell into step behind Stein. Perone’s final words to her over his shoulder were, “Cool it, Chris. Don’t make it worse.”
She sat in her office for twenty minutes with the door closed. Someone knocked. It was one of the secretaries. “Miss Saksis, the building maintenance crew is going to start packing things up here. I’ve been told to inform everyone to have their personal effects in order before three.”
“Thank you.”
Ten minutes later she was summoned to Assistant Director Wayne Gormley’s office. He was pleasant and warm as he said, “Now that Ranger is dissolved, the question of reassignment for its staff has to be settled. I’ve decided to assign you to a resident agency office in Montana.”
“Montana?”
“Yes. We have a definite need there for someone of your background and experience in Indian and reservation affairs. It will give you a chance to get right back into an important area of bureau jurisdiction.”
“I see.”
“Frankly, I think I owe you an apology.”
Her heart beat faster and she said, “About—about the accusation that I—”
He smiled broadly. “Yes, Miss Saksis. I think I overreacted. I can claim many things, primarily the pressure of the past few weeks because of the Pritchard matter, but I won’t fall back on excuses. I realize that I’d come on rather strong to you on Saturday, and that was wrong. As concerned as we are—as everyone in the bureau is about maintaining strict discipline over special agent conduct—the capacity to understand and to accept human frailty isn’t unknown. Up until this unfortunate incident, your record has been exemplary and we respect that sort of performance.”
Her excited anticipation of a moment ago was replaced with the sardonic anger she’d felt all morning. She said, “But you don’t want to deal with the question of whether what I was accused of is false.”
Another smile. “I don’t think it’s germane to the larger issue, Miss Saksis.”
She didn’t know what to do, to argue it further with him or to accept graciously his offer of leniency. Leniency! I haven’t done anything, she thought. But then Ross Lizenby came to mind. She’d broken bureau regulations with him. Did Gormley know about their affair? Did it matter? Montana? It represented banishment in bureau terms. Resident agency offices were filled with special agents who’d broken a rule, stepped on big toes, fouled up in some way, major or minor.
“I’d enjoy talking further with you, Miss Saksis, but I have other appointments. Thanks for coming by. I spoke with the agent in charge of the Montana office and he’s anxious for you to arrive and lend a hand. I told him I’d see that you were there no later than Friday.”
“Friday? Sir, that’s impossible.”
His eyebrows went up as he escorted her to the door. “It is short notice, Miss Saksis, but that’s often the way it is with the bureau. Good luck on your new assignment. I’ll be taking a personal interest in your development out there. And give my best to Bill Thompson. You’ll be reporting to him. We go back a long way together.”
The maintenance crew was busy emptying out Ranger when she returned. She entered her office and absently began putting some personal effects in a box she’d found outside. Her phone rang. “Christine Saksis?” a voice asked.
“Yes.”
“This is Sergeant Flynn at MPD. We had an assault and robbery last night and are trying to trace people who might know the victim.”
“Who is it?”
“His name’s—I’m not sure how to pronounce it. It’s spelled Tse-ay.”
“Bill?”
“Yes, ma’am, William Tse-ay. Your name and number was on a slip of paper we found in his wallet.”
“What happened? Is he hurt?”
“I’m afraid so. He’s critical at Doctors Hospital.”
“Oh, my God.”
“They performed surgery last night. The doctor’s name is Goldberg, Leslie Goldberg.”
“Thank you, I—you say he’s critical.”
“Yes. Miss Saksis, because you’re with the FBI, I was wondering whether the victim had any dealings with you and the bureau.”
“Dealings. Yes, he was—no, nothing official. We’re very close friends.”
“I see. Well, thank you. If you think of anything that might help us trace his movements leading up to the assault, or that might help identify his assailant, I’m here at headquarters, detective division.”
“I’ll call if I think of anything.”
“Thank you, ma’am. Have a good day.”
She didn’t bother with her car, grabbed a cab in front of the Hoover Building and went to the hospital, where she was referred to Dr. Goldberg’s office. He was there, and when she explained who she was, he told his receptionist to send her in. He explained quickly and simply what damage had been done to Bill’s brain.
“Will it be permanent damage?” she asked.
“Hard to say. I’m optimistic about him. I can see signs of improvement already, but they’re small.”
“Can I see him?” she asked.
“He’s still in Intensive Care, but I think it would be all right for you to spend a few minutes with him.”
“Is he conscious?”
“In and out. I talked with him this morning and he”—the doctor grinned—“made sense, but he slipped back into what’s basically a comatose state pretty quickly. Go on up. I’ll call ahead and tell them to admit you, but only for a few minutes.”
Saksis was ushered into one of the rooms in Intensive Care, where Bill was hooked up to a variety of tubes and machines. His head was completely bandaged. Only his face wa
s visible. It was purple, but relaxed, serene, as though he’d entered another dimension. “Just a few minutes,” a nurse said.
Saksis stood at the side of the bed and tentatively touched Bill’s hand. She’d expected it to be cold; it was warm and soft. She twined her fingers into his and said, “Bill.” He didn’t move, and his eyes remained closed. “Bill, it’s Chris.”
There was a flutter in his eyelids, and his chest heaved. He opened his eyes and looked directly into hers. “Hi,” he said, a small smile forming on his parched lips.
“Hi,” she said.
“Boy,” he said, “I—”
“Don’t talk, I just wanted you to know I was here. Dr. Goldberg said you’re going to be fine.”
“Who’s he?”
“He’s—he operated on you.”
“My head hurts.”
“I’ll tell the nurse.”
“Okay.” He squeezed her fingers and said, “You have to get the stuff I was supposed to get.”
“What stuff?”
“For Joey Zoe.”
“Bill, forget about that. What’s important is that you—”
“You have to. Please.”
She didn’t want to upset him. “Sure,” she said. “What do I need?”
He pointed to a sheet of paper on his nightstand, on which he’d listed everything before being attacked.
“Fine. You rest. They told me I could only stay a few minutes. Go to sleep.” She kissed his forehead.
“Get the stuff and hook in. It’s important.”
“I will. I promise.”
“Get a print-out. I want to see it.”
“Okay.”
“Chris.”
“What?”
“If I don’t make it, be sure to pay Joey Zoe what I promised. I don’t want to leave any bad debts behind. It’s $300.”
“I love you, Bill,” she said, quickly turning and leaving so that he wouldn’t see the wetness in her eyes.
25
Chris Saksis spent the afternoon racing around Washington in search of the items Bill said she’d need to crash Kneeley’s computer transmission. She didn’t bother returning to the Hoover Building, nor did she call in. It all seemed irrelevant, her responsibilities to the FBI. It left her with an emptiness in her stomach. She loved being a part of her country’s most prestigious law enforcement organization. It was her family, gave her a sense of worth and motivation in her life. But the organization that fostered so many positive feelings had turned its back on her, like a mother or father who misunderstood and who refused to forgive, to listen, to give the benefit of the doubt.
Murder at the FBI Page 20