“Waiting and ready. I replaced the bad projector. Tell him to see me upstairs right away.” She doesn’t mention Benton by name. “I’ve this really cool new search engine to show him.”
She’s found more incriminating information about Ed Granby. No matter what he’s calculating, he’s not calculating this, but he’s calculating something and we need to be careful.
Most of all we need to be cunning and smart.
“Will do,” I reply.
I end the call and place my phone in my lap, looking out my window at the dark night, passing Minute Man Park, a foggy emptiness now with vague silhouettes of statues and the bowed wooden footbridge the killer fled across this morning. Through the shapes of trees the distant lights of Double S seem to flicker as we move along the deserted street.
“What you’re implying would be illegal wiretapping,” Benton says.
“I don’t recall implying anything.” He’s going to stick up for them, it occurs to me sadly, a deeply aggravated sadness that creates a space between us whenever I feel it.
“I know the way you talk, Kay.”
“And you know why I would worry, Benton.”
I’m not sure he’ll ever believe how bad it’s gotten and I feel what I’ve felt before, dismally and outrageously it gnaws at my soul. Benton idealizes the Bureau he began with in his early optimistic life when he started out a street agent, working his way up to his eventual zenith as the chief of what was then the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico.
I understand his dilemma. Even Lucy does. For him to accept what the FBI and the Department of Justice that owns it are now capable of would be like my believing that when I do an autopsy it’s nothing more than a callous science project on a par with dissecting a frog.
“Whatever they can justify they will, whether it’s secretly intruding upon everyday people or journalists or even a medical examiner, and it’s not new, just worse.” It’s a truth I repeat all too often these days. “Once that gate has opened it’s a hell of a lot easier for someone like Granby to step legally out of bounds with impunity.”
“There’s no probable cause for him to spy on us. I don’t want you getting paranoid.”
“Don’t be so damn decent, Benton, because he’s not. He can violate whatever he wants and what recourse do we have? We sue the government?”
“We need to stay calm.”
“I’m quite calm, I couldn’t be calmer, and I know the cases out there and so do you, and for every one of them we hear about there are countless others we don’t. You know it better than I do. It’s your damn agency, Benton. You know what goes on. The DOJ, the FBI, decides to spy without a court order and who’s going to stop them?”
“Granby’s not the FBI I know. He’s not the FBI either of us know.”
“The FBI we used to know, yes. That’s for damn sure.” I don’t say it unkindly or with the vehemence I feel because it will only make Benton more defensive.
I don’t use the phrase police state that’s on the tip of my tongue because what neither of us need right now when we’re stressed and tired is to turn on each other. Benton and I have had our fights about the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, each of us taking different sides, and during normal times we have a peaceful understanding.
But now isn’t a normal time and it’s inevitable he’s going to have to take down his boss Ed Granby. It has to be Benton who does it and he knows it and is principled enough to regret it would come to this and the problem is he’ll insist on doing it discreetly and with dignity. That will never work, considering the snake we’re dealing with. Lucy and I need to find a way to help Benton be a little shrewder and less honorable and it’s coming to me.
“The Bureau’s far from perfect but what the hell isn’t?” Benton doesn’t look at me as he drives. “He’ll get what he deserves.”
“I intend to make sure of that.” I have an idea that’s beginning to form.
“This isn’t your battle.” He downshifts and the throaty rumble of engine drops an octave as he slows at an intersection surrounded by dense trees.
“Your office wants us to turn over Double S’s server,” I pass along what Lucy just implied. “And I’m willing to do so tonight but Granby needs to sign for it. Otherwise I’ll make sure the process is mired down and the FBI won’t get it for days. I doubt they’ll raid the CFC.”
“Of course not.” Benton glances over at me and I sense his resolve, which is tainted by the deep disappointment he feels. “What you’re suggesting is a good idea. He needs to show up in person.”
My phone glows brightly in my lap as if waiting for what I’ll do next and I know what it is. Witnesses, I think. Ones who aren’t law enforcement but are well connected to people who are powerful, lawyers who don’t give a damn about the Feds and consider them fodder as a matter of fact. Lucy’s partner used to be FBI and now is a prominent environmentalist attorney, and then there’s Carin Hegel, who’s friends with the governor and the attorney general, to name a few.
Benton turns left onto Lowell Road, rolling slowly through a pedestrian crossing, and the two-lane road crosses a dark ribbon of river, moving us back toward the center of town, where we’ll pick up Main Street and then the turnpike. I place my hand on his arm and feel the small muscles move as he moves the titanium shifter in its leather boot. Then I get Lucy on the phone again.
“If you could let the party that contacted you know we’re happy to cooperate fully as long as the chain of evidence is intact in a way that satisfies all of my protocols,” I tell her, “meaning I will personally receipt it to the head of their division, otherwise the process will be encumbered and slow. They can pick up this evidence as late as midnight because I’m headed in now. And on a different subject, I’d like Sock brought to the office right away.”
My niece is silent as she tries to figure it out.
“As skittish as he is and with a killer on the loose, I’ve decided the office is the safest place for all of us until the FBI finds who they’re looking for or gives us reassurance he’s no longer in the area,” I say for the benefit of whoever might be monitoring my call.
Maybe no one is but I’m going to act as if it’s true.
“No problem,” Lucy replies. “I’ll pass on the messages and we’ll take it to the next level.”
“That’s exactly what I have in mind. I don’t think there’s a choice in light of the circumstances.”
“I’ll get it worked out. I’ll have some food brought in.” She’ll have Janet and Carin Hegel do it, and she’ll make it clear that if the FBI wants the server, then Ed Granby will have to show up at the CFC and get it from me personally.
“I have stew and a nice minestrone in the freezer. And lasagna and a Bolognese sauce that turned out very well.” I try to think what else. “And bring a can of Sock’s food, his pills, and also one of his beds.”
41
I’m alone inside the PIT, where I’m known for my sardonic, cutting quips, because to resort to such extreme technology is to admit how utterly and completely it has failed us.
It’s moments like this when I’m keenly aware that if the world wasn’t flawed and people weren’t limited, I wouldn’t need a Progressive Immersion Theater equipped with multi-touch tables, tactile interfaces, projection mapping, and data tunnels to discover what bad or sad thing resulted in tragedies that might be better understood but not undone.
As my father used to say when he was dying and could no longer get out of bed or eat on his own, If my wish was my reality, Kay, I’d be sitting in the backyard in the sun, peeling an orange. The dead Dr. Schoenberg wished he could stop his dead patient Sakura Yamagata from wishing she could fly to Paris on wings she didn’t have and the dead Gail Shipton wished to break through what had blocked her since she was too young to be blocked, but given a choice none of them wished to be drug-addicted, dishonest, weak, depressed, and no longer here.