Stinger

by Nancy Kress

  “Melanie,” a male voice called, to vigorous knocking on the door. “Melanie, you there?”

  Cavanaugh. Melanie watched a tiny version of him on the TV screen, one of twenty men filing into Donohue’s home, while the anchorman did a voice-over and a larger Cavanaugh banged on her door. Well, in a few minutes he would go away.

  “—carrying boxes of items to the FBI labs in Washington for thorough analysis—”

  “Melanie? Melanie Anderson?”

  Why didn’t he go away? She didn’t want to see anybody or talk to anybody, and if she did, it wouldn’t be him.

  “—case agent Gerald L. Dunbar had this one pithy comment—” Dunbar, in a dark suit beside a dark car. He looked even more solemn than Farlow. He said stiffly, “I’m convinced we have the man we’re looking for.”

  “Melanie! Open up!”

  She walked to the door, unlocked and unchained it, opened it. “What? Don’t you realize that when someone doesn’t come to the door maybe it’s because they don’t want to come to the door?”

  “Yes,” Cavanaugh said, unembarrassed. For some reason, a dog trailed him. He held out a sheet of paper. “This was in my e-mail just now when I got home from work. It’s an internal memo for the CDC team, copied to USAMRIID and the Health Service and the Bureau. What’s it all about, Melanie?” He handed her the paper.

  THE CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL REGRETS TO ANNOUNCE THAT DR. MELANIE ANDERSON WILL BE LEAVING THE MALARIA READING TEAM IN SOUTHERN MARYLAND DUE TO PRESSING FAMILY CIRCUMSTANCES. HER WORK ON THIS EPIDEMIC HAS BEEN INVALUABLE, AND THE CDC WISHES TO COMMEND HER FOR HER MANY IMPORTANT CONTRIBUTIONS. DR. ANDERSON WILL BE RETURNING TO WORK AT THE SPECIAL PATHOGENS BRANCH OF THE CDC IN ATLANTA SOMETIME NEXT MONTH.

  She held the paper, saying nothing, staring bleakly at the heading. The e-mail transmission time was 2:14 P.M. Farlow must have prepared the press statement even before he bailed her out of the police station.

  “Melanie, are you all right?”

  She said tonelessly, “Oh, yes, of course I’m all right. I assaulted a teenage kid. I got fired off the most important project of my career. Your precious Bureau is doing a cover-up of attempted genocide. But of course I’m all right.”

  “Assault?” Cavanaugh said. “Fired?”

  “Please leave.” She tried to shut the door on him. He shoved past her into the room. The dog followed, wagging its tail.

  “Melanie, just tell me what happened. Please.”

  “Why should I? It has nothing to do with you. You guys ‘got the man-we’re looking for.’ And none—”

  “No, we don’t,” Cavanaugh said, but she was trying to finish her own sentence.

  “—of you care that what’s going on here isn’t the result of one hate-filled nut. There’s a group behind it, and their goal is no less than African-American genocide.”

  He said, “It’s not really genocide.”

  “What?”

  He explained to her. “This isn’t really ‘genocide.’ That word means killing total populations. Only twelve percent of African Americans carry sickle-cell trait, so even in a worst-case scenario, only twelve percent could be killed. That doesn’t qualify as actual ‘genocide,’ even in intent.”

  Melanie stared at him. “Not genocide? I suppose you think Dachau and Auschwitz weren’t genocide either, because some Jews escaped them?”

  “No,” he said patiently. “You don’t understand. That was different because—”

  “It’s you who don’t understand! Not a fucking thing!” Suddenly her numbness shattered. All her rage, her hurt, her frustration rose in her throat and vomited itself out on this one person who was challenging all of it. “No, you sure the hell don’t understand. And you know why you don’t understand a fucking thing? ’Cause you’re white!

  “You don’t understand what it’s like to visit a house for an epidemiological interview where a healthy four-year-old child has just died. Four years old, beloved of his grandma and his mother and his sobbing older sister … and murdered! That’s genocide—of a whole family’s future, all the black children that murdered black child might have had. And their children.

  “But we don’t even need to take it to that level, Agent Cavanaugh. No, we don’t. You don’t understand a fucking thing at a much more daily level. You don’t understand how a black woman gets tailed by a security guard the minute she walks into a pricey store because the assumption is that of course she’s a shoplifter. You don’t understand how a black man crossing a street, minding his own business, of course causes all the car door locks to click for half a block in either direction. You don’t understand that black people riding in a Lincoln Continental get stopped by the cops twice every mile because the cops just naturally think they’re drug dealers. It doesn’t matter if they’re dressed for church on a Sunday with their kids in the backseat; they get stopped, anyway. You ever get stopped because you were riding in a Lincoln Continental, Agent Cavanaugh? I don’t think so.”

  She moved so close to him that her spittle landed on his tie. He tried to move away, but she went right with him. “You don’t understand why a black woman with a medical degree from Yale has to wear a suit just to check into a hotel because otherwise they’ll assume she’s either a hooker or one of the maids. You don’t understand how that same black woman, even in her suit, is looked at and talked to in the hotel bar by all the nice out-of-town white businessmen with a little too much to drink. ‘Hey, brown sugar.’ ‘Nice ass, baby.’ ‘How much for one hour, sweetheart?’ You don’t understand how that same woman feels knowing that everyone in the seminar she’s teaching is coolly appraising her and thinking, ‘Did she really get here on merit, or is it all affirmative action?’ You can’t understand anything, Cavanaugh! And on top of what you don’t understand ’cause you’re white are all the things you don’t understand ’cause you’re a goddamn FBI agent!”

  “Calm down, Melanie.”

  “Don’t tell me what to do! Do you know what your J. Edgar Hoover did to African Americans? He targeted them in the sixties for special surveillance, smear campaigns, harassment of leaders like Martin Luther King. He used agents to deliberately set civil rights groups against each other, until even a Senate investigating committee concluded that the FBI—and I quote—was ‘fomenting violence and unrest’!”

  “Hoover’s dead,” Cavanaugh said. “He died in 1970, remember? The Bureau’s different now. The—”

  “Oh, right! That’s why in the nineties your black agents had to band together and threaten lawsuit before the FBI would agree to promote some of them to supervisor positions! Or didn’t they teach you about that at Quantico? No, they fucking sure didn’t! How you can stand there and say … and say …”

  She was crying now, which was worse than yelling. She hated it. She put her hands over her face to hide the tears from him, but she couldn’t stop sobbing, couldn’t get words past her throat to tell him to get the hell out, couldn’t go on being a member of the CDC team. …

  He was patting her shoulder, fumbling in his pocket for a tissue. She took it and swiped at her eyes, but more stupid fucking tears came to replace the ones she’d wiped away. She couldn’t stop crying and now the tissue was soaked through.

  His arms went around her.

  Instantly she froze. And he must have been encouraged by her sudden quiet, because he lifted her chin and kissed her.

  She tore herself free. “You bastard. Get out.”

  He looked bewildered. “I only—”

  “I know what you only.” She barely recognized her own voice, thick and quiet and deadly. “You only thought your simple ass saw a way in, right? She’s crying, she’s vulnerable, pat her a little, kiss her a little, and you’re halfway to the bedroom and a little black nookie to brag about to the other agents, right? You make me sick. Get out.”

  “No, I—”

  “Get out. Before I scream rape and report you to your tight-assed supervisor, Special Agent Got-Our-Man Dunbar. And if you ever dare touch me
again … I don’t do white men, you got that, cop? I wouldn’t let one of you hold my hand!”

  “I—”

  “GET OUT!”

  He went. The dog, whom Melanie had completely forgotten, trotted out with him. Melanie bolted and chained the door and then stood leaning against it, panting as if she’d just had a fistfight. Stupid bastard, opportunistic pussy-chaser, fucking white cop.

  You’re losing it, girl.

  Slowly she slid to the floor, suddenly seeing the whole awful scene with Cavanaugh from the outside, as if she were watching it on TV, one more newscast in the malaria reading plague. Her tears stopped. For a long time she just sat there, motionless, trying to understand what was happening to her, trying to get a grip.

  A long time.

  Eventually she pulled herself up off the floor and reached for the phone.

  “Mama? It’s Melanie. How are you? That’s good. Uh, Mama, I have a few days off, and I was just wondering … could I come home for the weekend? Just to sort of wander around the old places and just sort of … see you. And … everything. Would that be okay? Mama?”

  Cavanaugh made his way to his own room at the Weather Vane Motel, Abigail at his heels. And a lot of good Abigail had been while Melanie berated him. If she had thrown a frying pan at him, Abigail would probably just have tried to fetch it.

  He sat on the edge of the bed, shaking his head.

  He’d only been trying to comfort her.

  Really? Then why had he kissed her?

  Male instinct. Testosterone. Distraction from the afternoon’s misguided warrant search. Sexual deprivation. General cluelessness about women.

  Judy. Marcy. Melanie. Strike three and you’re way, way out. It’s not the heat, it’s the stupidity.

  The red light on his answering machine was blinking. Not the Bureau; they’d call him on his cell phone. Unless somebody wanted to talk to him without having to actually talk to him. Answering machines were good for that.

  “Robert, this is Special Agent in Charge Dunbar, returning your call.”

  Such formal wording—not a good sign. Well, so what. Dunbar the Human Metronome always sounded both formal and stiff. But all day today, it seemed to Cavanaugh, there’d also been something more.

  “I’d like to see you in my office tomorrow at seven-thirty A.M.” Pause. “That’s all.”

  Cavanaugh was left staring at the answering machine light now unblinking, an insectlike red dot on the machine’s trim black case.

  He didn’t sleep much. At 7:22 he walked into the Baltimore Field Office. Down the hall from Dunbar’s office stood a knot of agents, including Maloney from Division Five and Borelli from Headquarters. They all wore television-ready suits and carefully knotted ties, and Maloney carried a sheaf of paper.

  They were going to arrest Michael Sean Donohue, and Dunbar hadn’t included Cavanaugh.

  The agents stood carefully out of earshot of Dunbar’s office. Only one looked directly at Cavanaugh, and that one, even as he nodded, seemed embarrassed.

  So it was like that. Cavanaugh knew now what was coming. He just didn’t know why, or what he was going to do about it.

  “Sit down, Agent Cavanaugh,” Dunbar said. “We have something important to discuss. Did you, on or about June 21, interview a Mrs. Hattie Brown of Loveville, Saint Mary’s County, during the course of your duties on the malaria reading case?”

  Mrs. Hattie Brown. As soon as he heard the name, Cavanaugh saw her. A skinny, elderly black woman dressed in jeans and a faded cotton blouse, standing on her front porch in rural Maryland. A tough, likable old bird.

  “Yes. I interviewed Mrs. Brown about the Christian Crusade hate group.”

  “And did you reveal to her any information about the case that you were not authorized to disclose?”

  “I don’t remember discussing anything unauthorized.”

  “She does.” Dunbar opened the Baltimore Sun to page 3.

  FBI ADMITS MUCH OF ITS WORK ON

  MALARIA READING DONE FOR

  POLITICAL REASONS

  BY LIBBY TURNER

  As long as well over a month ago, some segments of the FBI had doubts that the Bureau’s Investigation of malaria reading was directed merely by law-enforcement or humanitarian objectives. A citizen interviewed by Special Agent Robert Cavanaugh, whose Resident Agency in Saint Mary’s City was the first to launch legal investigation of the epidemic, told the Sun that Cavanaugh had talked about much different motives. “They covering their ass,” was the way Mrs. Hattie Brown of Loveville reported the conversation to this reporter. However, Mrs. Brown insists that this colorful wording is not hers, but a direct quote from the agent himself.

  Mrs. Brown, along with several of her neighbors, was contacted about the Christian Crusade, a religious group that …

  “But you know what, son? People like Christian Crusade ain’t the ones making this plague. They too stupid. So why you wasting FBI time out here asking about ’em?”

  “Because my boss told me to.”

  She nodded again. “I see. FBI covering its ass?”

  “That’s about it.”

  “Ain’t it always the way. Be a whole lot of time saved in this world if people warn’t made to waste it covering their ass.”

  “I couldn’t agree more.”

  “Agent Cavanaugh?” Dunbar prompted.

  “Yes.”

  “Yes what?”

  “Yes, I said that to Mrs. Brown. But you have to understand the context. We—”

  “No, I don’t have to understand the context.” Dunbar rose behind his desk. “There’s nothing to understand. The revised Bureau regulations that all agents received a copy of, including you, are very clear on this. ‘Disclosure of unauthorized information is considered a serious exhibition of faulty judgment, which calls into question an agent’s ability and commitment. Such disclosures are grounds for investigation and disciplinary action.’”

  Cavanaugh’s stomach lurched. Dunbar had taken time before this meeting to memorize the exact wording. “Disciplinary action” at the FBI could range from a letter of reprimand all the way to dismissal, with a number of unpleasant options in between. Probation, transfer, demotion, suspension, request to resign …

  “In view of the serious circumstances surrounding the entire case, and the many explicit requests for confidentiality to all agents from the director himself,” Dunbar said, still standing behind his desk, “I am requesting the Office of Professional Responsibility to begin an investigation of your conduct. In the meantime, you are removed from the malaria reading case, and you are suspended without pay for a period of one month.”

  Suspended. Not dismissed, not even forced into a loss-of-effectiveness transfer. Suspended. That was bad enough, and so was the OPR investigation, but at least he was still an agent. For now.

  “Agent Cavanaugh, do you have anything to add?”

  “No, sir.”

  “Then if you’ll excuse me …” Dunbar came around his desk and walked past Cavanaugh. His gait was stiff, even for Dunbar.

  Cavanaugh waited until Dunbar and the arrest team had enough time to leave the building. He had no wish to see them pretend he didn’t exist. Nonetheless, he was more relieved than upset. Much more relieved. He was still an agent.

  Thank you, J. Edgar Hoover Christ.

  Neither gratitude nor relief lasted through the drive south from Baltimore.

  About twelve hundred agents were investigated every year by the OPR. Offenses ranged from misuse of Bureau cars for personal purposes (the most common offense) to espionage against the United States. Offenses also included lying to a grand jury, sex with informants, taking a cut of drug sales, and murder. And what had Cavanaugh done? Shared a small joke with a likable old woman. Not exactly treason.

  Of cases the OPR investigated, most resulted in some disciplinary action. But he was getting disciplinary action before the investigation. That was allowed, but not usual for offenses like casual unauthorized disclosure. Agents crabbed
all the time about the Bureau’s ass-covering, although you weren’t supposed to indulge in that with a citizen informant. Still … it wasn’t major.

  And another thing: OPR investigations averaged seven months from beginning to final administrative decision. It could take as much as a year. During all that time an agent was under suspicion within the Bureau itself. The outside world wouldn’t know, but other case agents would regard Cavanaugh as less than effective, working under a cloud.

  Plus, after this month of suspension—“beach time”—the malaria reading case would probably be over. The death rate had already dropped to almost nothing. The evidence against Donohue would have gone to a grand jury, and thus have been turned over by the FBI to the Department of Justice for prosecution. Out of his reach.

  A suspicion began to form in Cavanaugh’s mind.

  To give the suspicion a better growth medium, he pulled off the highway and parked in a mall. Turning off the engine, he sat and thought it through.

  He had been removed from the case for a minor offense. But, it was a very public offense, thanks to Libby Turner of the Sun, on a very public case.

  For the last week, Dunbar, the Human Metronome, had been acting uncharacteristically. Like a man under terrible strain. But, this case was a terrible strain. Look what it had done to CDC superepidemiologist Melanie Anderson; Dunbar wasn’t black, but he was the case agent for an enormity that had led to deaths, riots, vituperation, countervituperation, and relentless public pressure to get this thing solved.

  Dr. James Barlow, head of the CDC field team, was suddenly being promoted to Switzerland, well away from Washington. But, people got promoted all the time. Farlow had done a good job, and from what Cavanaugh had gathered, the World Health Organization post that Farlow was accepting was a plum.

  Dr. Melanie Anderson, the most outspoken of the CDC people, calling malaria reading “genocide,” had also been removed from the field team. But, Melanie had assaulted a kid in a Burger King. The assault had been all over the morning news, which Cavanaugh had listened to on his car radio. Assault was not the right public image for a CDC disease fighter. Even though the kid allegedly had a long history of causing trouble and pissing people off, assault was still illegal.