by Eva Hudson
Ingrid was impressed, and a smile of appreciation stretched her mouth. “Hello?”
“Hi.”
“Hey, Sol. I thought it’d be you.”
“I knew you’d figure it out.”
“Whoever delivered the paper had circled the word ‘sun’ rather excessively. Sol, sun. Sun, Sol. It was a decent sized clue.”
“I figured it wasn’t too big a leap for a linguist like you. Listen, I’m sorry I didn’t call last night. I couldn’t.”
Couldn’t?
“I had to buy a burner. I had to drive fifty miles. They’re probably listening to me too.” Too? Wind created interference on the line. Where the hell was he?
“And you send me to a hotel. That’s quite an elaborate plan to make sure this call can’t be traced. Should I be scared?”
Ingrid didn’t like the length of his pause. “Ingrid, I’m real sorry, but I don’t think I can help you.” Another pause. “But I can level with you.”
Ingrid picked up the cocktail stick and jammed it onto the counter. “Okay.” Her voice was tentative. She knew she wasn’t going to like what he had to say.
“Last week, I wasn’t in London for Madeleine’s work. I was there to see you.”
The skin prickled on the back of her neck. A shiver washed over her scalp.
“More accurately, I was asked to go and see you.”
“By who?”
Sol ignored her question. “You were right about that file on the system. There are several of them, and whenever anyone accesses them, a little flag is raised. When they saw you were the one who had pulled it up, they were confused. You hadn’t been in London when Mulroony disappeared, so you weren’t a suspect, but your Russian connections spooked them. They looked around for someone to find out what you knew. They asked me.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
“People real high up.”
“Director Leery?”
“High high.”
The Secretary of State? The White House? “But you’re not going to tell me?”
“I can’t.”
Ingrid’s jaw tightened. “Why are you calling me in a bar from a burner phone?”
“I’ll come to that.” It sounded like Sol had taken up smoking again. After a long exhale, he continued. “The best I can tell you is that, when Mulroony disappeared, someone somewhere wasn’t convinced he was Skylark, so they laid a trap. Several of them. They figured the only person who would access those files was the real Skylark.”
“And now they think I’m Skylark?”
“Correct. At least, they think you could be. It’s your mom. It’s always been your mom, hasn’t it? The Soviet defector thing always made them uncomfortable.”
Ingrid recalled several conversations she’d had with Sol about the bureau’s lingering suspicions over Svetlana, a woman who was so grateful for the sanctuary of the United States that she hosted Minnesota’s biggest Fourth of July party.
“Ingrid?”
“Yes?”
“I know, deep in my heart, I know you are not a traitor.”
“So why the burner?”
“Because tomorrow I’m going to call you on your cell and tell you I can’t help you.”
“And they’re going to be listening in?”
“Count on it.”
Ingrid’s head started to spin. The lack of sleep suddenly made her feel weak. “And this call? This is to say that you can help?”
“It’s to say I want to. I’m going to try to. But I’m on the outside now and I don’t get the access I used to.” A long drag confirmed he was definitely back on the cigarettes. “Listen, I worked with Mulroony. If he’s in the Black Dolphin and he has been set up, then I want to see him freed. I didn’t rate him that highly as an agent, but he doesn’t deserve this.”
In the pause that followed, Ingrid figured out why Sol couldn’t say this on a line that was being listened in to. “But the bureau, or whichever part of the government asked you to get on a plane last week, would rather he stayed where he is?”
Sol exhaled audibly before answering. “Right now, the public and the press do not know the FBI harbored a double agent for many years. If there is any attempt to free Mulroony, not only will the story get out that we had a Russian asset in our midst—”
“But it would expose the fact we still have a double agent on the payroll.”
They were both silent for several moments. “Yup. That’s about the size of it.”
“So Mulroony suffers to save the bureau’s reputation?” Ingrid asked.
“Not quite. If you blow the Mulroony situation open, then those traps that have been left for Skylark will never ensnare him.”
“So, we do nothing?”
“You might call it nothing, but officially it’s called waiting.”
“And right now they’re monitoring me?”
“Correct.”
Six months ago, she had been the bureau’s poster girl. Now they thought she was a double agent. “How worried should I be?”
Sol exhaled. “If I were you, I’d take it as a good sign that I’m having trouble getting answers out of anybody. That tells me the Mulroony thing is on the back burner, that it’s no one’s priority. If you don’t rock the boat, you’ll be fine.”
The stick snapped as Ingrid increased the pressure. “Every day I don’t rock the boat, is another day Skylark collects intel to share with his masters. Every day I don’t rock the boat, is a day a brother agent unjustly spends in a foreign jail.”
“I don’t know how they could doubt you.” The wind howled through the phone line. “Listen, I better get home. I’m going to keep trying, okay?”
Ingrid didn’t answer.
“I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Ingrid sighed. “And I’ll make sure I say the right things when you do. I appreciate the heads up.”
She handed the phone back to the bartender and nodded at her empty glass. “I think I’m ready for another one now.”
25
“Okay, Sol, I appreciate the heads up.” Ingrid ended the call and placed her cell into the outstretched palm of a Department of Justice employee. “Sorry,” Ingrid said. “I needed to take that.”
“Sounded real important,” the woman said. Ingrid wondered if it might be helpful that a representative of the DoJ had witnessed Sol officially tell her that he couldn’t help. It was even possible the lapel mic she was wearing had recorded their conversation. “It looks like they’re ready for you now.” The woman nodded at the screen on the wall.
Ingrid gulped. It was show time.
“Raise your right hand.” Judge Isaacs’ voice was crystal clear, a fact no doubt helped by the embassy’s secure line normally reserved for intelligence and State Department briefings. “Do you promise to tell the truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”
“I do.”
The Justice official from the third floor took the bible from Ingrid. There was another DoJ representative in the conference room, and they had both been sworn in as officers of the court for the occasion. They were there to check Ingrid was not testifying under duress and without outside interference. While that was technically true for the purposes of the trial, the duress and interference of the defense team weighed heavily on her.
Ingrid looked up at a screen that gave her a different view of the courtroom than the limited three angles of TV coverage. She could see the two desks where the defense and state’s attorneys sat, and beyond them were the public benches. She couldn’t see the jury, but she spotted Sheriff Stanton, her first boss. His complexion suggested his retirement involved a good deal of golf and an even greater amount of red wine. He stared at the camera, and Ingrid felt exposed under his gaze.
She knew he wasn’t the only person looking at her. According to media reports, over three million people worldwide were watching the livestream at any one time. Ingrid only cared about two of them: Svetlana, and Kathleen Avery.
The defense attorneys had their heads
together in a last-minute discussion of tactics. SuAnn McConnell got to her feet and smoothed out the creases in her dark orange skirt. McConnell was a well-presented woman in her fifties, with expert highlights running through her luxuriant chestnut hair, professionally manicured nails and unnaturally white teeth. Her fashion choices were bold and expensively tailored. As the second chair, she had often cross-examined the female witnesses in the trial. She smiled into the camera. “Miss Skyberg, thank you for agreeing to testify today.”
It was the sort of opening move designed to trick Ingrid into saying ‘no problem’ or ‘it’s a pleasure’ or ‘anything to help the court’ to make her seem like a compliant witness. Ingrid simply nodded.
“For the benefit of the jury, would you please tell the court about your current employment?”
“I am an FBI Special Agent.” Ingrid was going to leave it at that, but did not want the jurors to think of her as deliberately obstreperous. “I work at the embassy in London, which is why I cannot be there in person.”
“But you grew up here in Jackson?”
“Near enough, yes. About a half hour drive north.” Ingrid took a sip of water and glanced at the clock on the wall. The Laussat was due to arrive in Tilbury within the hour. Over four months of planning and she wouldn’t be there when it docked.
“Why did you want to become a federal agent?” McConnell had the warm persona of a daytime talk show host. She tilted her head to make a show of listening intently to Ingrid’s reply.
Ingrid breathed in deeply through the nose. She decided to take the bait. “My best friend was abducted when I was fourteen. I wanted to find her.”
“And your best friend was…?”
“Megan Avery. We attended Middleton High together.”
“Go Wildcats,” McConnell said with a small fist pump.
Somehow Ingrid managed to stop herself from saying ‘Go Wildcats’ in response. She did not want to get drawn in to McConnell’s folksy exchange. The fact she refrained made McConnell miss a beat, and Ingrid’s confidence grew.
“Now, as we all sadly know, you did not find your friend. Her remains were among those recovered from the Fielding ranch in 2013, but I am curious to know why your noble ambition was not to join the local police, but the Federal Bureau of Investigations.”
“Investigation,” Ingrid corrected. She instantly bit the inside of her lip. McConnell was deliberately trying to make Ingrid seem like a smartass. “It’s singular.”
McConnell nodded. “Of course. But, I’d still like an answer to my question.”
Ingrid narrowed her eyes. “Well, for the first few months after Megan went missing, we—and by ‘we’ I mean her family, my family, local law enforcement—thought she was the only victim.” Ingrid sipped her water from a paper cup. “As the months turned into years, I became aware of other girls who had gone missing at traveling carnivals in several states across the Midwest.”
“So, it was a federal crime, not a local one?”
“Potentially, yes. But it had been investigated as a local one. I always thought it needed federal resources.”
“And you thought this even though you were just a teenager?”
“We’re talking a few years later, but yes, I was still in college.”
McConnell moved to stand directly in front of the camera, obscuring Ingrid’s view of the rest of the courtroom. “And where was college?”
Ingrid couldn’t see how it was relevant, but she answered. “Chicago.”
“And what did you do after college?”
“I joined the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department.”
McConnell tilted her head again. “The same Sheriff’s Department that had failed to find the man who abducted your friend?”
Ingrid wasn’t going to let her sow the seed of doubt about investigatory competence in the jury’s mind. She pictured Stanton’s ruddy face. “The same Sheriff’s Department in the county where my mom lived. Lives,” she corrected.
“Of course.” McConnell tried to sound conciliatory. “How long were you with the Sheriff’s Department?”
“A little over two years.”
“And in those two years, did you attempt to re-investigate your friend’s disappearance?”
“By the time I joined, nine years had passed since Megan’s abduction. Like any new recruit, I had a very full caseload. But when I got a chance, I did look at the records relating to Megan, yes.”
McConnell nodded before walking away from the camera. This was far from Ingrid’s first time giving evidence, and in her experience, the closer the lawyer is, the softer their questions. Ingrid steeled herself for a zinger. Much easier to lob a grenade from twenty feet. “What did you make of the investigation? Professionally?”
Ingrid thought the defense had called her to create doubt that Jones had abducted Megan. She hadn’t considered they would ask her to discredit the entire investigation. She inhaled, steadied herself, and answered. “I found it strange.” Ingrid didn’t wait for McConnell to ask her to elucidate. “One of the first things I looked at was the transcript of my interview, the one I’d given as a fourteen-year-old. It was strange to see my recollections written down in black and white. It made them feel different, slightly removed.”
“There were discrepancies?” McConnell butted in.
“No.” Though actually Ingrid remembered that by the time her twenty-three-year-old self read the transcript, her memories of June 17, 1995 had warped and tilted. Certain images were bright and sharp, like neon, while others had become blurry and tentative. She hadn’t known which was more accurate; the account she had given Deputy Hanlon in 1995, or the truth her brain had held on to and forged into something more immutable. Throughout her career, that experience had shaped how much weight Ingrid had given to witness testimony delivered years after a crime had taken place. “And I was pleased to see that the Sheriff’s Department had interviewed everyone I would have expected them to. So, no, I thought the file was a very fair representation of the night Megan was taken.”
McConnell started to speak, but the delay on the line meant Ingrid inadvertently cut her off.
“When the carnival returned in 2004, I set up an incident station and we looked for new witnesses. On the tenth anniversary of Megan’s abduction, we were able to interview a handful of people who had been missed from the initial investigation.”
“But you still had faith in that investigation?”
“Carnivals, by their very nature, are transitory. People who work for them,”—Ingrid was determined not to use the pejorative ‘carnie people’—“tend to be wanderers. It wasn’t a surprise a few folks had slipped through the net.” Ingrid paused. “Anyway, these new interviews did give us a few new names, and that meant we briefly reopened the investigation.”
“And at any point in the ten years after Megan disappeared, was my client a suspect?”
Ingrid looked down at the table before answering. “No. James Jones’s name never came up.”
McConnell approached the camera. She was about to throw a soft ball. “Agent Skyberg, I appreciate this will be painful for you, but can I ask you to please tell us about the night Megan was taken.”
“Sure.” This was what she had been anticipating. She had relived the darkest night of her life for so many therapists over the years that it was wrapped in titanium and stored in a box she had learned to open without triggering detonation. “Where would you like me to start?”
McConnell smiled. Please, not the head tilt again. “Why don’t you tell us something about Megan, the kind of girl she was.”
Ingrid nodded. “Of course.” She closed her eyes and an image on Megan’s smiling face surfaced. The deep brown eyes, the constellations of freckles, the look of surprise as she learned about everything from the commissary menu to the birds and the bees. She had been a girl who expected little and was consequently delighted by everything. “Megan was an exceptionally—and I really do mean exceptionally—kind girl. She had a capacity for
compassion and empathy beyond anyone I have ever met. She couldn’t pass a kid crying in the corridor or leave a bird with a broken wing to figure its own way back to its nest. If you stamped on a spider in her presence, she wouldn’t look at you for a week.” Ingrid needed another sip of water. She knew Kathleen was watching, and she wanted to be sure she said as little as possible to hurt her. “My father died when I was ten and Megan didn’t leave my side for three months. She honestly had to know that I was asleep before she could go to bed. It seems impossible from one so young, but she was a cross between a guardian angel and a St. Bernard.” Ingrid smiled at the memory. “I spent a lot of time at the Averys’s house that year. Kathleen became a second mom.” In fact, it had been Kathleen who showed Ingrid what a mom was really like: Svetlana had always been more of a distant aunt or a fairytale stepmother, either cruel or indulgent, but never loving. “Megan wasn’t just my best friend, she was the sister I never had.” Ingrid instantly knew Svetlana would take that as a criticism. She couldn’t retract it now. “We were incredibly close. We did everything together.”
“And so, one June night in 1995, you went to the carnival. Just the two of you?”
“June seventeen,” Ingrid said. The date her whole life changed. “Megan and I were the square kids in school. Our assignments were always delivered on time, we were never in trouble and I guess our parents trusted us to behave ourselves, so yes, we went to the carnival on our own. Kathleen, Megan’s mom, gave us a curfew of ten, which was a whole half hour later than our curfew the previous year. We were a little giddy at being so grown up we could stay out until ten.” The next words stalled in Ingrid’s throat, and she had to fight to get them out. “It was one of those balmy summer nights.” Ingrid had to blink back tears. “Sorry.”
“Take your time.” McConnell did her best Oprah impression.
“Anyway, we had a lovely evening, but then it got late. In our heads we knew we needed to leave by ten, but then we realized we needed to be home by ten and we’d left it too late.” The air had left Ingrid’s chest. This was so much harder than she had anticipated. The DoJ official sitting a few chairs away on the side of the conference table looked down at her hands, as if to give Ingrid some privacy. “So, we took a shortcut home from Baxter’s Fields and headed back through Simpson’s Cut. It’s a cycle route now, at least it was the last time I was home, but back then it was just a firebreak between the trees. The sort of path everyone used during the day, but it was a little spooky at night. The carnival meant there were lots of people around, so we thought we’d be safe.” Pressure constricted her sternum. It was hard to breathe.