Around one o’clock that afternoon, I got more bad news. The worst kind. A fashion designer named Audrey Meek had been abducted from the King of Prussia Mall in Pennsylvania. Her two young children had witnessed the kidnapping. That piece of information stunned me. The children had told the police that the abductors were a man and a woman.
I started to get ready to travel to Pennsylvania. I called Nana and she was supportive for a change. Then I got a message from Nooney’s office. I wasn’t going to Pennsylvania. I was expected at my classes that afternoon.
The decision had obviously come from the top, and I didn’t understand what was happening. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to.
Maybe all of this was a test?
Chapter Twenty-Eight
‘Do you know what they say about you, Dr Cross? That you’re close to psychic. Very imaginative. Maybe even gifted. You can think like a killer.’ Those were Monnie Donnelley’s words to me that very morning. If that was true, why had I been taken off the case?
I went to my classes in the afternoon but I was distracted, maybe angry. I suffered a little angst: what was I doing in the FBI? What was I becoming? I didn’t want to fight the system in Quantico, but I’d been put in an impossible position. The next morning I had to be ready for my classes again: Law; White Collar Crime; Civil Rights Violations; Firearms Practice and a practical exercise.
I was sure that I’d find the subject ‘Civil Rights Violations’ interesting, but a couple of missing women named Elizabeth Connelly and Audrey Meek were out there somewhere. Maybe one or both of them were still alive. Maybe I could help find them – if I was so goddamn gifted.
I was finishing breakfast with Nana and Rosie the cat at the kitchen table when I heard the morning paper plop on the front porch.
‘Sit. You eat. I’ll get it,’ I told Nana as I pushed my chair away from the table.
‘No argument from this corner,’ Nana said and sipped her tea with great little-old-lady aplomb. ‘I have to conserve myself, you know.’
‘Right.’
Nana was still cleaning every square inch of the house, inside and out, and cooking most of the meals. A couple of weeks ago I’d caught her hanging on to an extension ladder, cleaning out the gutters on the roof. ‘It’s not a problem,’ she hollered down to me. ‘My balance is excellent and I’m light as a parachute.’ Come again?
The Washington Post hadn’t actually reached the porch. It lay open halfway up the sidewalk. I didn’t even have to stoop down to read the front page.
‘Awhh hell,’ I said. ‘Damn it.’
This wasn’t good. It was awful, actually. I almost couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
The headline was a shocker: ABDUCTIONS OF TWO WOMEN MAY BE CONNECTED. Worst of all, the rest of the story contained very specific details that only a few people in the FBI knew. Unfortunately, I was one of them.
The story told about a couple – a man and woman – who had been seen at the most recent kidnapping in Pennsylvania was key. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. The eyewitness account given by Audrey Meek’s children was information that we didn’t want released to the press.
Somebody had leaked the story to the Post; somebody had also connected the dots for them. Other than maybe Bob Woodward, nobody at the newspaper could find it out by themselves. They weren’t that smart.
Who had leaked information to the Post?
Why?
It didn’t make sense. Was somebody trying to sabotage the murder investigation? Who?
Chapter Twenty-Nine
I didn’t walk Jannie and Damon to school that morning. I sat out on the sunporch with the cat and played the piano – Mozart, Brahms. I had the guilty thought that I should have gotten up earlier and helped out at St Anthony’s soup kitchen. I usually pitch in a couple of mornings a week, often on Sundays. My church.
Traffic was terrible that morning and the frustrating ride down to Quantico took me a little over an hour and twenty minutes. I imagined Senior Agent Nooney standing at the front gates, waiting impatiently for me to arrive. At least the ride gave me time to think over my current situation. I decided the best course of action, for now anyway, was to go to my classes. Keep my head down. If Director Burns wanted me on White Girl, he’d get word to me. If not, then fine.
That morning the class centered on what the Bureau called a ‘practical application exercise’. We had to investigate a ‘fictitious’ bank robbery, including interviews with victims and tellers. The instructor was another very competent SSA named Marilyn May.
About half an hour into the exercise, Agent May notified the class of a fictitious automobile accident about a mile from the bank. We proceeded as a group to Hogans Alley to investigate the accident, and to see if it had any connection to the bank robbery. I was being conscientious, but I’d been involved in actual investigations like this for the past dozen years, and it was hard for me to take it too seriously, especially since some of my classmates conducted interviews according to the instructional manual. I thought maybe they’d watched cop shows on television too often. Agent May seemed amused at times herself.
As I stood around the accident scene with a new buddy who had been a captain in the army before going into the Bureau, I heard my name spoken. I turned to see Nooney’s administrative assistant. ‘Senior Agent Nooney wants to see you in his office,’ he said.
Oh Christ, what now? This guy is nuts! I was thinking as I walked quickly to Administration. I hurried upstairs to where Nooney was waiting.
‘Shut the door, please,’ he said. He was seated behind a scarred oak desk, looking as if someone close to him had died.
I was getting hot under the collar. ‘I’m in the middle of an exercise.’
‘I know what you’re doing. I wrote the program and the schedule,’ he said. ‘I want to talk to you about the front page of today’s Washington Post,’ he went on. ‘You see it?’
‘I saw it.’
‘I spoke to your former chief of detectives this morning. He told me that you’ve used the Post before. He said you have friends there.’
I tried hard not to roll my eyes. ‘I used to have a good friend at the Post. He was murdered. I don’t have friends there anymore. Why would I leak information about the abductions? What would I gain?’
Nooney pointed a rigid finger my way. He raised his voice. ‘I know how you work. And I know what you’re after – you don’t want to be part of a team. Or to be controlled or influenced in any way. Well, it’s not going to happen that way. We don’t believe in golden boys, or special situations. We don’t think that you’re more imaginative or creative than anyone else in your class. So get back to your exercise, Dr Cross. And wise up.’
Without saying another word I left the office fuming. I returned to the fake accident scene which Agent Marilyn May soon neatly connected to the fake robbery that had been staged in Hogans Alley. Some program that Nooney had written. I could have done a better one in my sleep. And yeah, now I was mad. I just didn’t know whom I was supposed to be mad at. I didn’t know how to play this game.
But I wanted to win.
Chapter Thirty
Another purchase had been made – a large one.
That night, the Couple entered a bar called The Halyard, on the water in Newport, Rhode Island. The Halyard was different from most of the gay clubs in Newport’s so-called Pink District. There was the occasional glimpse of a bad-ass boot or spike-studded wristband, but most of the men who frequented the place sported tousled hairdos and boating dress, and the ever-popular Croakie-attached sunglasses.