Abandoned: A Thriller (8 page)

She belches, once, long and loud. She smacks her lips and resumes her drooling.

He skitters backward on his hands and feet, trying to put distance between himself and the horror of it. He falls onto his back in the grass and finds himself staring up at the sky, which is blue, and the sun, which has broken from the clouds. It’s shaping up to be a beautiful day in Southern California.

He flips onto his hands and knees and begins to vomit into the over-green grass.

Weekend or not, the FBI is a beehive. I ride up on the elevator to AD Jones’s office with three other people. They all stare openly at the dress. Nobody cracks a smile. I guess they realize it might not be all that funny. There are only so many reasons for an FBI agent to get ripped away from a wedding, after all.

I think about the woman as the numbers climb toward my destination. The look of terror in her eyes has stuck with me. It was such a desperate expression. I shake my head to clear it and focus on why AD Jones would have called me here with such urgency. He’s not the type to make up emergencies.

He’s been my shepherd, my teacher. He saw something in me from the start and fostered it. That’s his way. He’s one of those rare things in the FBI executive strata: someone more interested in results than in politics.

The
ding
tells me we’ve arrived. I take a deep breath and head out into the hallway. I make a right turn and see Shirley, his longtime receptionist. She’s about ten years older than I am and is a short, professional woman with twinkling green eyes that belie her stern outward demeanor.

“How was the wedding?” she asks, not missing a beat.

“It was great. Right up to the point when the car pulled up and dumped the screaming woman out onto the parking lot.”

She gives me an uncertain smile and a shrug, as if to say,
What can you do?

“So who’s in there, Shirley?”

The smile grows sour. “Director Rathbun.”

My eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “Really? Do you know why?”

“Not a clue. Good luck, though.”

I glance down at the dress again and sigh. “Oh, well,” I mutter.

“Knock ’em dead,” Shirley says, her eyes twinkling more than I like. She, apparently, sees plenty of humor in the situation.

I go to the door of the office, take a deep breath, and open it. I enter and see both AD Jones and Director Rathbun standing. They don’t look like they’ve been talking. They look like they’ve been waiting. Off to the right I see another figure I recognize. Rachael Hinson. She’s blonde and stands about five feet five. Her face is a blank sheet of paper, her eyes, watchful. She holds a BlackBerry and wears a Bluetooth earpiece and is murmuring to herself quietly as she speaks to someone on the phone. Hinson is Director Rathbun’s assistant, or hatchet woman as I think of her. She’s the go-to gal, the one who knows where the bodies are buried, because she did the burying.

Samuel Rathbun sees me and cranks up the wattage, smiling his trademark politician’s smile and holding out his hand for me to shake. I glance at AD Jones, whose eyes slit briefly in a go-with-the-flow gesture. I return Rathbun’s smile and shake his hand. Firm, of course, but not too firm.

“Thanks for coming, Smoky,” he says. “I know you were busy.” He smiles again, crinkling his eyes and indicating my dress, the picture of good humor.

“I live to serve, sir,” I chirp, earning a look of warning from the AD.

“Glad to hear it,” Rathbun replies, either not getting the sarcasm or choosing to ignore it. “Let’s all take a seat.”

AD Jones sits down behind his desk. Director Rathbun and I sit down in the chairs in front of the desk, angled slightly to face each other. Hinson remains in the background, murmuring to herself in the shadows.

I take stock of the Director of the FBI. I can’t help it. He’s a political animal, but he’s still the boss of bosses, so he inspires a little bit of
awe. Samuel Rathbun is in his early fifties. He’s got dark hair, cut Bureau-short (but stylish) with just the right amount of salt and pepper left in. He’s handsome enough for his type. Not honest enough for me, but I’d guess the Hinsons of the world find him desirable. He’s reputed to be ruthless but fair, although the fair will get tossed aside if needed to save his own ass. I don’t really hold this against him. He exists on another playing field, answering to the president and the attorney general and the like. He keeps us funded. I imagine that requires a unique mind-set.

I have no complaints about my own brief brushes with him. He’s been pretty straightforward, and he, too, seems results-oriented. He used to be a cop before joining the FBI and, like the AD, worked his way up the ranks. He has my grudging, if cautious, respect.

“I’ll get right to the point, Smoky,” he says.

“I appreciate that, sir.”

“We’re going to be forming a national strike team tasked with solving serial murders, child murders, and abductions, stuff like that. I want you to head it up.”

I stare at him, nonplussed. Of all the things I could have expected hearing when I walked into this office, this is the last I would have conjured.

“Say that again, sir?”

He smiles at my surprise. It’s a more genuine smile than the earlier ones. I guess he understands. He relaxes, settling back into his chair. “Post 9/11, the whole mandate of the FBI has been shifting. We’re being asked to focus our attention on terrorism, and that’s where the majority of our budget is heading. There’s a lot of pressure to force locals to solve their own serial crimes and to reduce the FBI duties to simple areas: profiling, CODIS, ViCAP. Support activities as opposed to active investigation.”

CODIS is the Combined DNA Index System. ViCAP is the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. Both are FBI-maintained and-administered databases that exist for the collation of evidence. CODIS indexes DNA evidence collected in the investigation of violent crimes throughout the country. ViCAP houses all the specific details of violent crimes, the hows and wheres and whats. Both are searchable and invaluable, but neither requires FBI involvement on the ground.

“The idea being floated,” he continues, “and it’s a serious one, gaining
steam, is to eliminate your function in all field offices. I’m talking about every state. The personnel would be retasked to antiterrorism, and the weight of investigation would be left to the locals.”

“With all due respect, sir, that’s complete bullshit.” I can’t help the profanity. I’m stunned and outraged. “Local cops, by and large, are very good at what they do. Or they at least have someone who is. But it’s been proven, time and time again, that FBI assistance can be crucial to the apprehension of serial offenders. That isn’t a statistic that can be credibly disputed. If they dismantle the network, we’ll be cutting our effectiveness. Strike team or no strike team.” I shake my head once, furious. “It’ll take longer to catch the killers, and people will die as a result, sir.”

He raises his hands in surrender. “I know. I happen to agree with you.” His face grows serious, and I get the idea that he does agree with me, and deeply. “Listen, I’m not saying it will come to pass. What I’m saying is, there are people—uninformed people—who’d like it to. They’re making noise about duplication of activities, reassessment of priorities. They have opponents, of course, but …” He shakes his head. “There are a lot of them, and they’re in positions of influence.”

“Why now?” I press. “Not to downplay it, but quite a few years have passed since 9/11.” A little sarcasm leaks into my voice. “Besides, I thought Homeland Security was supposed to be the solution to all our problems.”

“Bureaucracies are slow and politicians are careful, Smoky. No one wants another 9/11, and not as much time has passed as you seem to think. Pearl Harbor influenced politics and policy for quite a while. Not to mention, the plans to wind things down in Iraq have quite a few demanding beef-ups in other areas.”

“Have to replace that preemption with something,” I mutter.

He gives me a look of warning. I try to look suitably chastised. “I don’t have certainty on how it’s going to shake out. That’s why I want to create a strike team. Call it hedging our bets. If the idiots win, the strike team will be there, and I’ll have made it an indispensable feature.”

“So even if they get rid of my position in the field offices,” I say, understanding, “they won’t be able to touch the team.”

“That’s right.”

“And you want me to run it? Why?”

He pauses for a moment. He seems reluctant to say what he’s going to say next. “Because you’re the best, Smoky. Statistically. Believe me, I looked. There are some other agents out there who are very, very good at doing what you do, but you’re the best we have.” He gives me a wan smile. “You win the title. Not to mention that you have a great story. The national media will eat it up. Female agent, lost her family to the job, soldiers on, and is the best at what she does. Sorry to be crass about it, but you can’t buy that kind of public relations. Even the face will work in our favor.”

I stare at him. Part of me can’t believe that he’s saying what he’s saying. Part of me wants to slap his face, to tell him he can shove it, that the memory of Matt and Alexa aren’t toys for him to play with. But a certain tenseness in his posture, a kind of poised waiting, gives me pause.

“You’re testing me, aren’t you?” I ask. “Bringing up my family and my scars like that. You wanted to see if I’d lose it.”

He relaxes again. I notice that Hinson has stopped her murmuring and that those ever-calculating eyes are fixed on me.

“What I just said is the truth, Smoky. How I said it … that’s not my style. I can be a real prick—the job requires it—but I generally have a little more class than that.”

“But others won’t.”

“Correct.”

Now it’s my turn to relax, to lean back and consider. I turn to AD Jones, who has remained silent throughout. “What do you think, sir?”

He doesn’t respond for some time. He seems tired to me, tired in a new way that I haven’t seen before.

“I think the director is right,” he finally says. “You are the best. And his motives are clean.” He sighs. “Bad times are coming for some parts of the FBI, Smoky. Maybe this will all be averted, but I’m for saving what we can if they’re not. You should think about it.”

I turn back to the director. “I’m not saying yes yet. How would it work, if I did?”

“Once I get your agreement, I’ll go to the attorney general. He’s on our side.” He hesitates. “So is the President. He can’t afford to alienate the members of his own party pushing for this, not with an election year coming up, but he’s a good politician and the strike team gives him air cover. If the network is dismantled and retasked and a bunch of ten
year-old girls get killed because the locals were inept …” He shrugs. “The President can say he opposed it from the beginning and that he had the strike team formed to shore up the loss.”

“I’m talking about logistics, sir. I have a child, a fiancé. I have my team.”

“We could keep you based in Los Angeles for now. Other than getting your name in the news whenever possible, you won’t have any political interface. You’d start out directly under me.”

“And later?”

“No promises. Ideally you’ll end up centrally located at Quantico, but we’ll have to see.”

“And my team?”

“Oh, we’d uproot them with you. They’d form the strike team.” He nods at Rachael Hinson. “Rachael’s done a pretty intensive workup on what’s behind your success. It’s her opinion that your existing team is as vital as you are.”

“She’s right,” I say, looking at his number two with newfound respect.

“Functionally, your purview would be nationwide. Since we currently still have our network functioning, you’d be called out only on the most high-profile crimes. If the worst-case scenario comes to pass …” He shrugs again.

“We’ll be juggling murder across fifty states.”

His silence is my answer.

“What do you mean exactly by ‘getting my name in the news whenever possible’?”

“Well, there are two points to creating this team. The primary—and largest—one is pragmatic. If they dismantle your function within the field offices, we’ll still have a way to put boots on the ground. The second is to create goodwill and general awareness of how vital it is for the FBI to have such a team. We highlight your story and past successes. We do the same with future successes. Self-preservation of the team would be the first goal of that kind of PR. A hopeful third would be to lay a foundation for later reconstitution of the network.” He smiles, and for the first time it looks tired. A few less teeth are flashed. “Of course, as I said, perhaps we’ll be lucky and none of it will come to pass.”

“If it doesn’t? What happens to the strike team?”

“We’ll cross that bridge then.”

I sit back and consider everything. It’s too much to answer sitting here and now, of course, but the idea itself … It makes me look at the director with new eyes. Maybe there’s more than just a nice suit sitting across from me.

I run a hand through my hair. “How long do I have to give you an answer?”

“Twenty-four to forty-eight hours. Seventy-two on the outside.” I gape at him. “That’s nuts. All due respect, sir.” He nods again, looking tired again. Perhaps more irritated now. “You’re right. But it’s the way it is.”