For Your Eyes Only

by Sandra Antonelli

  “Grab hold, of the belt, sir. Grab hold and we’ll pull you up.”

  Whimpering and yipping, hand quaking, Farley took hold of the length of leather with his right hand and then shouted, “No! No! No!”

  John lurched, his elbow slammed into her shoulder and Willa tumbled forward, crashing onto Farley below. He fell back onto the floor of the ice-glazed pit. The breath whooshed from his lungs. Hers too. For the second time that day, the wind was knocked out of her. As she gasped, she heard John bellow, “What the fuck is it with fork-wielding assholes?”

  While Farley coughed, and spluttered the same way she did, Willa scrambled to her feet and looked up to the top of the trap in time to catch a glimpse of a stainless steel object protruding from John’s left arm. Gasping, terrified, frantic, she tried to find a toehold, a root, something that wasn’t layered with ice to grab on to and scale the slippery walls of the pit. Unable to scream, helpless, Willa came out of her skin, heart in her mouth.

  Scuffling and grunting blended with cursing above. There was a squeal of pain, a muffled whump, and metal clattered against stone.

  Fists slapped against flesh. Profanities were snarled.

  Farley choked and hacked.

  “I said, stay the fuck down!” John shouted.

  Then there was a sharp yelp of pain and a scream that died abruptly.

  Despite the futility, Willa tried to grip the glassy wall with her fingertips, as if she’d gained the comic book superpowers of Wolverine’s claws. The breath returned to her lungs. “John!” her cry was hoarse.

  Hiccupping, Farley rose to stand beside her and look up. He started to cry. His whole body shook. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” his breath hitched and he reached out for her with his giant bear-like arms.

  “Oh, hell no.” Willa lunged forward, shoved him against the slippery wall, and clambered up his body. He let out a shriek when her foot scraped against the stick embedded in his chin, but she didn’t care. She’d reached the top of the trap and hauled herself to her feet.

  Farley began to wail, the ghostly noise reverberated off the walls around the deer trap. Gordon was nose-down on the flat crossing, his left hand cuffed to his right ankle, the little finger on his right hand twisted out at an odd angle. He was out cold, his cheek on a small patch of old snow. And John was nowhere to be seen.

  Willa spun around, looking in every direction, at the cliff face, up the stone stairs, back towards the houses at the start of the trail, across the top of the mesa and, finally, at the rocky dropoff into Barrancas Canyon. “Oh, God. Oh, God,” she murmured, stumbling forward a few steps. “John!” she shouted. “John!”

  “Over here.” A voice rasped. The top of a head bobbed up. His palm smacked against flat tuff, seeking purchase, dried yellow grass slipping through scraped fingers. “I’m over here.”

  Reality shifted. Willa heard the clang-clang of the Melbourne tram, the ‘up and atom, Chuck’ that had been Miles’ last words, and the collective gasp from the Australian teenage boys behind her on the platform as she threw herself flat across the rocks and grabbed John’s hand. She wrapped her fingers around a grazed wrist and shouted, “Don’t let go! Don’t let go!”

  He didn’t. He locked his fingers around her wrist, squeezed back, and laughed. He actually laughed. “Willa,” he said and sniff-sniff-sniffed. “I’m standing on a big, flat rock.”

  She stared at him for a moment in disbelief and then her brain disengaged from the past and reconnected with the present. There was no tram, no sweaty boys with nasal Aussie accents—only rocks and a darkening sky and eyes that were nothing like Miles’. The tension in her body slackened, relief flooded every pore and blood cell and neuron in her body. Her head sank down to stone for a second or two and the erratic beat of her heart began to slow. “What the hell are you doing over here?”

  “Retrieving my gun. Blood’s slippery, and I dropped it in the scuffle I had with dickweed. I had to kick it over the edge when he tried to grab it when I handcuffed his ass. Yes, I am aware his current position is not standard.”

  Willa raised her head. “And you broke his finger. That’s a habit with you, isn’t it?”

  ”The fucker forked me. I thought it hurt like hell the first time. You watch, he’ll probably try and sue me for it too.” John made a face. “Look, I’m sorry I pushed you in with Farley.”

  “You pushed me?”

  “Yeah. But I didn’t do it because I was angry. I’m not vengeful. I don’t do that vindictive shit. I excel at jealous, envious prick, but I don’t do vindictive. You were about to get a fork in the neck. And it was the safest place for you if there’d been any shooting. And if there’d been shooting, I’d be even more pissed off than I am now.”

  Pissed off was okay with Willa. Pissed off was better than dead. She could live with John’s anger. Keeping hold of his wrist, she helped him ease up the rocks to the flat space.

  A sheen of sweat and dark pain sat upon his face. His left arm hung limp. Blood dripped from the tips of his fingers to dot the smooth tuff he stood upon. “See?” he said with the slightest grin, “I told you I was going to ruin my suit, just like you ruined yours.”

  She dragged the dishtowel stained with peanut butter, jelly, and blood from her pocket and tied it around his wound. He watched her as she secured the makeshift bandage. Blood speckled across the toes of her vivid pink shoes. His faint smiled faded and John’s face petrified into an expression as cold as the stone they stood upon.

  In the last two hours, there’d been handcuffs and arrests. In the last two hours there’d been hospital trips, tetanus shots and stitches—she’d had three, John’s puncture wound got eleven—and Oscar returning to town. In the last two hours, John had changed his clothes, but he still wore the same flinty expression as when she’d tied a dirty kitchen towel around his arm. He hadn’t said a word to her since then, hadn’t glanced in her direction, not even when they’d questioned Farley.

  “It’s gettin’ mighty cold out there again, people, and snow’s forecast for later tonight. Enlighten me before it starts fallin’.” SAC Oscar sat back in his chair and crossed an ankle over one knee. The overhead fluorescent light gleamed off his bald skull. He looked at Willa, eyebrows raised in expectation.

  She made the introductions, starting with Captain De Silva and Officer Binney, and ending with Officer Ishimaru and John, who gave a slight nod, his expression as unwavering as marble. Her voice had a breathy quality to it when she began to speak, “Thanks for joining us, and thank you again for your cooperation and the cooperation of your fine police officers, Captain.” Willa swallowed and rubbed her tired eyes for a moment. “Excuse my weariness. I’ll let Agent Adams do the honors. Jerry?”

  “Boo-yah,” Adams muttered and brushed potato chip crumbs from his chest. “The two boys, Grafton and Buck, are thieves and home-chemistry-set meth-makers. The Grafton woman rented her house to her brother and the other junior drug badass wannabe. Her boyfriend, Jae-Sun ‘Sunny’ Carl, now deceased, was employed as a nurse by Donald Farley, the interim director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Farley had the security clearance to access documents and information he said he’d found interesting and wanted to read.” He glanced at Willa.

  She nodded her approval, but added, “I’d started looking for a pattern to the information, but the only pattern I found was one of variability. Nothing was connected. Please go on, Jerry.”

  With another grin, Adams ventured forth, clearly enjoying himself. “Over the course of a few days, Farley copied various items to flash drives and loaded them on his laptop. After he read them, he forgot about them and the flash drives, which he’d stored with a few bucks in a little change purse inside a pocket of the laptop case. A few months later, he asked Sunny Carl to load some old family photos on the laptop and make Christmas cards using a Photoshop program. Farley was happy with the result.” Adams held up a copy of a Christmas card.

  Red-faced Donald Farley was an Elf. Gordon appeared as a bearded Nutcr
acker, while Benny Ivers was a tiny, skinny Santa.

  “Sunny liked the cards and wanted to do something similar. Farley lent him the laptop. Sunny took it to his girlfriend’s house, the one she later rented to her brother, Rory, the drug badass wannabe. The couple spent an evening with Rory, having dinner and putting Santa hats on photos of Sunny’s aunt’s cat.” Adams held up another photo.

  “That’s Truly Scrumptious,” Willa said, and the men in the room snickered. “I don’t mean the photo’s adorable, I mean, the cat is named Truly Scrumptious.”

  “Pussy Galore would have been a better name,” Kinsale muttered.

  Mitchell grinned at a memory. “My first dog was named Goldfinger.”

  “A Golden Lab?” Captain De Silva’s head cocked with interest.

  Dokowski nodded. “Labs have a sweet temperament.”

  “No, no. Goldfinger was a Chihuahua.”

  Binney chuckled. “A Chihuahua, now there’s a real dog for boys.”

  Willa glanced at John. He sat very still, eyes cool, a hand over his mouth, forefinger on the tip of his nose. Willa knocked on the table. “Children, if you don’t mind? The detective and I are a little worse for wear, and Oscar’s not here to talk about kitties and puppies. Jerry, please pick up where you left off.”

  After he flashed his smile at Office Binney, Adams went on. “At some point during that evening, Rory Grafton went through the laptop bag, looking for money. He took the change purse. The next day, Sunny took the laptop back to Farley and realized the change purse was gone. Farley didn’t think anything about losing the ten bucks he had in the bag and didn’t remember the memory sticks until after Rory Grafton’s busted, his sister’s arrested, and you local boys find the flash drives full of classified information. Which leads you to call us, which leads us to call Farley, which leads Farley to shit his pants when Sunny comes asking for money to bail his girlfriend out of jail. He tells his brother Gordon, they panic, and Jae Sun Carl is killed. A few days later, some kids find the body of an unidentified man. Detective Tilbrook began his investigation. We began ours. And here we are.”

  Oscar nodded.

  “Farley said he was going to own up to taking the documents and reading them on his Lab-issued laptop. He has the clearance to look at the information.” Willa dug her fingertips into her aching shoulders, massaging as she said, “He told me he was going to step forward and explain what had happened, explain the mistake, explain how he’d forgotten he’d left the flash drives in the laptop bag. Then he and Gordon got into an argument about it—’if you go to jail, who’s going to look after Dad, what will happen to Dad’—that sort of thing. When Sunny arrived asking for money, it led to another argument, which wound up with Sunny being bludgeoned with a terracotta flowerpot. Then it became ‘what do we do with the body?’”

  The hand came away from John’s mouth. “The answer to that was, toss Sunny into a canyon. While we don’t know yet whether it was the blow to the that head killed him or the fall, Sunny Carl was thrown from the top of Deer Trap Mesa, or from a spot somewhere along Navajo Road, before being dragged by animals to where his body was discovered. Farley said he’d show us where he started.” John stretched out his legs. His hand returned to cover his mouth.

  Kinsale leaned forward. “So which one of them killed Sunny?”

  “Farley says it was Gordon and Gordon says it was Farley.” Willa touched her stitches. “Going by the conversation they were having before Gordon hit me with a flowerpot and shoved me over a garden wall, I’d go with Gordon.”

  Fingers drumming on the tabletop, Oscar nodded. “Okay. Okay. Put it in the report and let’s move on with prosecution. Oh, what about Chandra?”

  “We’ll turn that over to the IRS.”

  “He’s not involved in the murder?”

  “No,” Willa said through a yawn.

  “Anything else?”

  Dokowski cleared his throat and shot an uncomfortable glance at Willa. “Well, there was something else I picked up this afternoon, before Tom called to have me have a closer look at Farley,” he said. “It concerns Brennan and classified data being insecure.”

  Dear God, here it was. Here it was. Willa rose from the table because it was either move or scream. Prison wouldn’t be so bad. It would only be for a few years, ten at the most, in minimum security or a work farm. Willa hoped it would be a farm. She enjoyed working outdoors.

  Dominic probably wouldn’t be as lucky. He’d get solitary confinement, like Wen Ho Lee.

  “Are you okay, Willa?” Mitchell said, his concern as genuine, as always.

  Willa stared at drops of John’s blood on her hot pink Converse. “I’m tired,” she said, lifting her gaze. “I’m very, very tired. My head hurts. Hell, my whole body hurts. I’ve had a long day and I’d really rather be in bed with that man right there,” she pointed to John, “than be here in this room with the rest of you. No offence to any of you and all your hard work, but I love him.” In spite of his cold rock veneer, she looked straight at him. “I’ve known you six days, and I love you, John.”

  “Aw, dammit,” Mitchell muttered.

  John’s face remained placid, but he held her gaze.

  “Oh, darlin’, yew need a vacation.”

  Hair fell into her face. Willa pushed it back behind her ears. Earlier, she’d noticed that washing away blood had also washed away more of the lavender hue. “No, Oscar. I need to retire. For good. I hate being undercover. I hate this job. I’m good at it, and I hate it, but let’s get back to Agent Dokowski.” She wandered near John and let her fingertips skim along his jaw.

  He didn’t push her hand away. Something Willa figured was confusion or pity flickered behind his eyes. He shook his head with more pity—or maybe it was contempt. The muscles compressed along the line of his jaw. She didn’t want his pity, but she deserved his contempt.

  She heard Mitchell mutter, “Son of a bitch.”

  “Somethin’ yew wanna say Tom?”

  “No. I just noticed I’m too late for something. I’m out of time.”

  She was out of time too. Willa circled back to her seat, continuing where she’d left off. It was ‘make-it-up-as-you-go-along’ time. It was ‘fake-it-til-they-figure-out-you’re-full-of-shit-and-arrest-you-for-it’ time. She pulled on a mantle of faux confidence, pretended she was ballsy, like her sister and Hilary Clinton crossed with Barbara Stanwyck and Glenn Close. “You found a document from the mid-nineties, Agent Dokowski?”

  “Yeah,” Dokowski nodded.

  “I’ve seen it before.” Willa flicked her fingers in a dismissive gesture. “I already knew about it. It’s nothing.”

  “You knew about this already, Agent Heston?” Oscar rubbed the space beneath his nose as if he had a moustache, his face pinched.

  “Yes, sir. It was nothing then and it’s nothing now—beyond a something that I noted as a delay. So, unless you’ve come across something new, Lou … well, have you found something new that would warrant us bringing in Dominic Brennan for questioning?”

  John hadn’t been paying much attention until he’d heard ‘Dominic Brennan’ and ‘questioning’. He leaned forward, teeth clenched to stare at Willa. “Hang on, are we talking about the local hardware store owner?”

  “Brennan’s a PhD, an astrophysicist” Dokowski said.

  “No, he’s a quantum physicist,” Adams corrected. “And yeah, he’s the local hardware store owner and a one-time employee of the Lab.”

  “I know who he is,” John made a dismissive gesture. “He’s a valued member of the community an—”

  “Excuse me,’ Willa said. “I’m not interested in your opinion on this matter, Detective. This has nothing to do with your murder investigation, so perhaps you, Office Binney and the Captain would like to leave, go get a coffee or something. We’ll brief you later.”

  She crossed her arms and waited. The local law enforcement contingent was not pleased, and it took a moment before the Captain and Binney rose, collected their belongings and
headed out the exit. Head shaking, John lagged behind. The door closed before he reached it. It was clear he wanted to say something, clear that he was angry. Willa watched him move, his pace as slow as the hissing hinge on the door he pushed open. He stood there a moment, looking at everyone, looking at her, mouth grim, flat, eyes tight.

  “This does concern me,” he said, “and I really think—”

  “Thank you Detective. That’s all we need from you. In fact it’s inappropriate for you to be here. Dr Brennan’s wife is your cousin, which means you have a conflict of interest. So thank you.” Willa turned back to the team, ignoring him, shutting him out as he stood in the doorframe at the back of the room.

  Oscar drummed his fingers on the table. “Rather than something new, let’s talk about this something old that you never reported on … until now. Why am I only hearing about this ‘delay’ today?”

  The room was very quiet. Willa wondered if the funny noise in her head was the sound of sweat oozing from her pores. “I made a judgment call sixteen years ago, when I witnessed Brennan fail to return a document to the proper secure storage. It sat inside a locked briefcase, which never left my sight. The next morning it was returned to secure storage. I watched him return it. At the time, I didn’t consider the lapse in protocol to be noteworthy. It was nothing more than human error.”

  “What do you mean it never left your sight?” Oscar said, without looking at her, which was a clear indication of how unhappy he was with this revelation. “Why didn’t you report it sixteen years ago?”

  Willa leaned against the side of the table, as nonchalantly as she could, and gave a careless little shrug. “It was a result of an emergency situation involving his child. He put the document in his briefcase instead of secure storage. I drove him and the briefcase to his home. I removed the briefcase from my car. I put it in a visible location inside his house and the briefcase never moved. I made a notation in my logbook indicating that the timespan for document return was a little longer than usual. I didn’t consider it a threat to national security. This happened before 9/11. If it had occurred post 9/11, I would have reported it and we would have questioned Brennan about it at length. A former CIA director and a former Attorney General made similar mistakes, and they w—”