by Rex Fuller
“And we will be able to install them at the NSA?”
“Of course, and many other places as well. We should also be able to gain unbounded profits from selling them to selected customers.”
“I will be very interested to mark the progress of this work.”
“I shall keep you informed.”
“Send my compliments to our personnel at Long Beach.”
“I shall.”
6
EIGHTEEN MONTHS AFTER THE ACT.
Kelly’s secretary saw the partner coming. Knowing he was not yet close enough for his eyes to see her do it, she keyed the intercom and whispered.
“Kelly, Abe’s coming.”
“Thanks, Jannie. It’ll be fine.”
He sidled up to Jannie’s desk outside Kelly’s office and spoke in a low voice to her.
“Any progress?”
She lied. “Some. See for yourself.”
He rapped on the door frame. “Kelly, got a minute?”
“Of course, for you my old friend, come on in.”
Abe Kramer, the eminence grise of the firm, ambled in and eased into the sofa farthest from the desk. He had started his practice of law in the 50’s specializing in radio, and had grown with the times into television, telecommunications, and the internet. Abe Kramer had mid-wifed AOL, and served on the board at Apple.
“Old as in ‘long-standing,’ I presume?”
Kelly smiled.
“Well, there’s something I haven’t seen in a while.”
Abe’s remark was a touch too jovial and the smile faded.
“Yeah, I suppose so. What’s on your mind, Abe?”
“Let me be brutally honest. I came to see if you are putting yourself back together any better than when I came last month.”
“Abe, I know I owe you some explaining. It’s about time I gave it, if you want to hear it.”
“Absolutely.”
“Shut the door, would you? I can say things to you the passers-by shouldn’t hear.”
He closed the door and sat down in front of the desk.
“We’ve been partners for long enough, Abe, that I really would like to let you know how it’s going with me. If you’re ready, it could take a while…”
“Fire away.”
Kelly leaned back in a show of casualness. “I’ve learned something in this. You know when someone says that ‘words can’t describe the loss they feel?’ Like the old song says, ‘it ain’t necessarily so.’ Words can describe it because almost anyone can comprehend what the loss of a loved one, someone truly loved, means. Loss of loved ones is dreadfully commonplace. No one gets out of here alive. Somebody’s loved one dies every minute. They know what it is like. It’s just not true that they can’t grasp it. What is true is that before it happened to them, they could not explain it to you. They did not comprehend it before.”
Abe nodded, understanding.
“But it’s more than that with what I lost in Tom. ‘Loved’ doesn’t say enough. Not even ‘lover’ or ‘husband.’ I was so, so, lucky to find him. A true life-mate. Someone who fills and fulfills you. Someone who inspires and satisfies you and makes you better than you knew you could be. The two of you blend, ferment and become a purer essence. The best of it is that you know it, and that you both do. You hope never to go back to the old you and there is no reason that you will. Both of you feel the same, always new, joy.
“He said it perfectly in a little note he wrote and left on the kitchen counter. Here it is. I look at it often.”
Kelly handed a post-it note to Abe. He read it in silence.
“Us. Dogs of passion yelp and gambol
in fields of play. Then, hungering, we
hunt, seize, and prey. Sated, we rest in
savored ways. But more, our spirits
fledge, and bolder, fly. Our souls merge.
Leavened, we soar.”
Abe let his hands drop to his lap, and looked up.
“That is a mate, Abe.
“Losing that mate marbles you. Like glass still too hot plunged into cold water, crazing cracks vein throughout your whole being, into every part of you.
“In the everyday, what do you cook when the reason you cooked is gone? When do you do the chores that he did, when the reason he did them was for you? What do you pay attention to that he did, when it was meant for you? What to ‘do,’ when ‘why’ isn’t there?”
She paused and Abe could tell she was not finished. A long minute stretched out before she started again.
“It mars your spirit. You think if you fight your way up out of despair, when will another blow strike? When will you come out the other side? When you do, will it be worth that fight? Was it all a mask, a way to hide the real, that without him everything means so little?
“I learned other things too. I didn’t know that losing a mate wreaks unbearable pain upon you. I didn’t know before that it is a physical pain. I assumed it was some thought or emotion that comes and goes. Instead, it is what depressed people describe as inescapable, actual physical pain, an ache so deep and enveloping that it becomes you. There is no stint. Inside you is a permanent acid rain burning everything.
“Before, I thought ‘crying all of your tears’ was just an expression. You really do run out of tears. I didn’t know that your eyes can stay reddened for days. I didn’t know I would think about passing it off as allergies.”
Abe fought off the urge to smile, remembering just how she looked when she claimed “pollen.”
“I didn’t know what ‘throwing yourself into your work’ meant. That you do just that. You throw yourself over there, and the real you, over here, what is going on inside, stands and watches the other you try to use work as a distraction, thinking that if you do enough of it, somehow it might draw you in. It doesn’t. The pain is stronger. It works you. It works you to exhaustion.
“Exhausted, you become dull. You have no energy for getting up in the morning, for getting dressed, talking to others, thinking, or doing of any kind.
“Little by little, the dullness actually rescues you. It borrows little purses of energy for you here and there. It lets you sleep a little. It lets you have some spark to get up and get dressed. Eventually, it lets you have a morning. Later still, you can have morning and afternoon. You find you can get through a day if you barricade yourself against it. Then you get good at tricking yourself into falling asleep.
“Slowly, your energy begins to build. You can actually pass yourself off as normal and you do not mind having to do it. Then you get strong enough to look and act completely normal. What others see is the functional equivalent of you. Inside, you are an actor playing the role of what is expected of you, nothing more. All seems hollow and a sham.”
Abe wondered if she though of him as a sham. He believed he had done better by her.
“When you get to that point, somehow your body knows you can now afford anger. It coils and writhes inside threatening momentary strikes. At first you fight and deny the anger. But you know it is right. It feels good, not hollow. It gives you a core. It becomes you.
“Slowly, oh so slowly, the real you replaces the anger, grain by grain, as if forming a fossil. At some point you begin to feel separate from the anger. It comes on and subsides. And you realize this is the way anger used to feel.”
This was too painful for her. Uncomfortable, Abe shifted his weight.
“Then you begin to hope that the real you can remember happiness and pleasure. Then sometimes you do. Sometimes you can even take guilty pleasure in remembering.
“Once in a while you start to think the pleasure does not have to be guilty. Then, only then, do you begin to believe you can be real. You can be you. You know it will take longer than it really should.
“But you know that when friends ask how you are, like you did just now, and you answer, ‘I’m okay,’ it is not just a lie to avoid burdening them. It is true in some not yet understood sense and someday may mean to you what it means to them.”
She stopped and looked at him hard. “That’s about where I am, Abe.”
Both were silent a long moment.
“Kelly, I just don’t know what to say.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling. I didn’t mean to unload…”
Abe felt like he read her diary, embarrassed to have looked so deeply.
“You didn’t…well you did, but in a good way. I think I’ve learned a lot too from what you said.”
Abe stood and walked silently out the door. He went to Don MacIntyre’s office, the partner next most senior after himself and Kelly, and stuck his head in. “Still about the same.”
“Abe, you know we can’t carry her forever.”
“Yeah, but which of us is going to need the same help next?”
7
ONE YEAR AND TEN MONTHS AFTER THE ACT.
Harlan and Kathy entered the office of Barkin & Bossleman in the Woodmen Tower in Omaha, Nebraska. The receptionist directed them to the secretary for Gabriel Bossleman, the now senior surviving member.
“Come right on in, Mr. and Mrs. Pierce, please. He’s expecting you.”
She showed them in to the cavernous corner office.
“Harlan! Kathy! It’s great to see you.”
Bossleman rounded his desk and administered a hearty handshake to them both, token of the political operative. Pictures of Gabe and Governor so-and-so and the five governors after that lined the mantle. Gabe had twisted the arm of the mayor in Weeping Water to send community leaders to a fund raiser in 1985. Whether he really remembered or kept perfect, voluminous notes on fund-raiser attendees was not actually known.
“It’s good to see you too, Gabe.”
“It was what ‘85 or ‘86? Gosh you haven’t changed.”
“Thanks, but we have changed…and we feel it.”
“I know. I really do. When they told me that a Lincoln lawyer referred you to us I immediately got involved and that’s when I called you. Sit…Please.” They all sat around a marble covered coffee table. “What can we get you?”
Both Pierces declined.
“Now, over these what, six months, we’ve had a chance to look at it in some depth…sure you wouldn’t like some coffee while we talk?”
“Not just now.”
“Okay. Let me give you the bottom line and then we’ll go from there. It’s this. Mike Carson was right. There is no real likelihood you would be able to bring a successful court case. There has been one change in the law since he talked to you. The Congress gave the intelligence community employees a very tiny exception to the prohibition against even going to Congress with inside agency information. Now they can go if they go through the agency Inspector General first, in this instance the Department of Defense IG. I’m sure you can imagine what good that is going to do. They legislated a whitewash. So it’s basically the same as before. Intelligence agency employees can’t even effectively complain to their Congressman.”
Both Harlan and Kathy frowned at all of this.
“There are two more things I want to tell you before you hit me with questions.
“One. The statute of limitations. You have a drop dead date for any case you want to bring of three years from when she died. We could file one for you here in Nebraska, probably using the constitutional tort theory. The statute of limitations that would apply here is two years. But the Maryland statute, if you sue there, is three years. However, if you wait that long, you may have already lost potential claims related to the psychological evaluation, because those acts occurred earlier than three years prior.”
Harlan broke in, “The time limit is one reason we’re here.”
“Understand. Now, two. Everything in Washington is political, even the Intelligence agencies. You need to get that perspective put on this. I have an old friend who is a lawyer there. He used to be the general counsel of the CIA. I’ve already talked to him. He will take a look at this if you want me to ask him. There may be something that can be done politically or through the Congress. If there is, he can tell you.”
Harlan and Kathy glanced at each other. This news was strange.
“We have written this whole thing up in a memo that’s about twenty five pages long. Here’s the original…” Bossleman handed them an envelope thick with documents.
“And we attached a complete set of the police report and autopsy documents in case you don’t already have them. But again, Mike Carson is a good lawyer. He was right. We have good lawyers here. Everyone agrees that a legal case is a no-win, expensive proposition that we do not recommend you pursue.”
“Gabe, we were afraid you were going to say that.”
“I wish I could say something else. Believe me.”
Harlan and Kathy exchanged looks. They seemed not to need to vocalize what they were thinking. Harlan turned back to the lawyer.
“We appreciate your suggesting we have a Washington lawyer with inside contacts look at it. We’d like to pursue it.”
“Fair enough. Let me get him on the phone right now.”
Gabe fingered his Rolodex, which he still used because it had more numbers than he bothered to put in his electronic devices, pulled out a number, and dialed.
“Gabe Bossleman for Cord Anderson.”
“Cord, Gabe…”
“Yessir, I’m calling back on that same matter. I’m going to send you a copy of the memo we wrote for them. They do want to speak to you…”
“All right fine. Now, one favor. Don’t charge them anything unless you actually do something. We’re not. If you just talk to them I don’t want to hear you charged them an arm and a leg the way you do me…”
The lawyer laughed, then said, “Fair enough. I’ll have them call.”
He hung up and faced the Pierces. “Well, as you heard, he’ll take a look, which is more than you could get him to do on your own. I’m very sorry to be the bearer of bad news. But I’m sure you would want the real bottom line.”
“Gabe, we do appreciate it.”
“Now. Do you have any questions about this or anything at all?”
“Well I don’t think so. If you’d give our thanks to the folks here who worked on this…” Harlan hefted the envelope with the memo. “That will probably be all for us today.”
“Let me know how it turns out, or if there is anything I can do at all.”
“We’ll do it.”
Khalil Amar was the newest clerk in the Baltimore Police Department’s Central Repository. The police reports, all of them, eventually found their way here. Or were supposed to. It was an ocean of paper. Khalil handled requests for copies of reports.
When the request for the Pierce report came in from the lawyer in Omaha it took a while to find it. When he did, something did not make sense. He would ordinarily find evidence receipts attached as part of the report. This one had only one with an unreadable signature. So he kept a copy handy, just to see if it made some sense after he had been on the job a little longer.
The Omaha lawyer had called back and asked about the receipts. She had asked whether they were supposed to be in the file. At the time, he did not know. So he told her they were probably misfiled. That was absolutely true. He saw plenty of misfiled stuff.
But now, he was pretty sure there was something else wrong. This report did not even mention receipts. It did not mention any evidence collected at the scene. No hair. No fingernails. No fabric. No fingerprints. No fiber.
It said the officers looked at the areas where you would take those kinds of samples. It did not say they took any. That might be logical for a ninety year old deceased. But someone so young?
Khalil was not sure what, if anything, he was supposed to do. So he sent his copy to his supervisor with a sticky note.
“Boss,
No evidence receipts. No mention of samples in the report. Do I need to do anything?
-Khalil”
The air conditioning was not keeping up with July in Baltimore. In the police headquarters it rarely did.
The Orio
les weren’t providing any distraction either. Ever since they let all of those veterans go, Charles Johnson, B. J. Surhoff, Mike Bordick, Will Clark, Harold Baines, and Mike Timlin, they probably had no intention of seriously challenging the Yankees. Not that they would have challenged, but since they were already sub .500 again, with nearly the largest payroll in the history of professional sports, something had to change.
“Captain Yancey?”
“Yeah.”
“We need to talk.”
George Yancey, eighteen year veteran of the Baltimore Police Department, looked up and saw the pesky Internal Investigations people standing in front of his desk.
“What can I do for you Good Samaritans?”
“We would like to go to the interview room.”
“Look, if one of my guys’ checks bounced, the answer is no, I didn’t think it would happen.”
“We would like you to come with us now.”
…officious little…
“Oh, I’ll be delighted. Let’s go right on in.”
Yancey heaved his six foot, 240 pound, presence out from behind his desk and strolled toward the interview room.
…four hundred and sixteen active case files…11 homicide detectives to watch… plenty of my own distractions, wife, former wife, child support…these guys want to waste my time on some probably baseless complaint…
Yancey turned into the room, flipped on the light and took a seat.
…no sense wasting energy too…
“Captain, I’m Captain Rick Hoff and this is Detective Sheila Nelson.”
…maybe they are busy…? sending, out the captain…well if they wouldn’t waste so much time penny ante-ing…
“Yeah, I know who you are.”
“What do you remember about the Samantha Pierce case?”
“What case?”
“Samantha Pierce. Thirty eight year old female. Deceased. Found in bed in November, year before last.”
“Never heard of it.”
“‘Never heard of it’?”
