by A B Whelan
“Yes, sir.”
“You have a bachelor’s in criminal justice and one in forensic science.”
“Yes, sir.”
“You are a US citizen and have a valid driver’s license.”
“Yes, and yes.”
“All right, so let’s get to the most important question because we already know that you are more than qualified to work for the Bureau. Agent Brestler briefed us on your magnificent work at the San Diego PD. I read the report. Your informant who overdosed on Fentanyl-laced cocaine led J-CODE to make over sixty arrests. The FBI, the DEA, and the US Postal Inspector Police had been working together for over eight months to shut down this Darknet drug-mailing ring, and they sure could use a break. Oh, man, getting the address from a manila envelope from the trash? A magnificent work, detective. You will fit right in here at the Bureau.”
“Thank you, sir. You make my involvement sound more significant than it was, but I appreciate the acknowledgment.”
He offers me a don’t-be-so-modest look, then intertwines his fingers. “So, the only question that remains is this. If my knowledge is correct, you will start with the Cybercrime Unit. However, it is possible that you will be required to travel outside of your area, sometimes even for a longer period as well. Would that cause any problem with your private life? With your plans for starting a family?”
I wonder if they ask the same question to male applicants as well. Suddenly I feel hot, and I squirm in my chair. “I’m not married, sir.”
“I’m aware of that. See, it says, single here. I’m merely asking this as a friend. See, my father was an FBI agent; we barely saw him growing up. Luckily my mother was there to look after my brother and me, but could you imagine if she was an agent as well?”
I don’t answer that because it sounded like a rhetorical question. “Well, yes, I’d like to have children eventually, but it’s not in my plans right now.”
“Well, the window is closing on you; I mean, you are nearing forty. But don’t worry, we have great programs for mothers here at the Bureau.”
“It’s great to hear, sir. Thank you. But as I said, you don’t have to worry about that now. I’m looking forward to working with the FBI. Cybercrime is my specialty. I’m very focused on catching the criminals who hide behind technology, sir.”
Agent Rose slams my file shut and claps his hands. “Alrighty, then. You still need to complete a week-long physical training in Quantico and do a few tests. Basic urine and blood tests and a physical, but I don’t expect any delay there.” He pushes the chair back with his thighs as he stands up and extends his hand to me. “Welcome to the FBI, Special Agent Vicky Collins.”
I loved the sound of my new title. Special Agent Vicky Collins. I repeat it in my head as I drive home.
The haunting emptiness of our small house welcomes me. I call Doug to tell him about my interview. He answers his phone, but only to inform me that he can’t talk right now. He is having lunch with Ethan from the office.
I hang up and sink deeper into the cushion of the sofa. I can picture Doug perched on a high bar stool at one of San Diego’s hip places, taking pictures of his food, of his company, of himself. He will touch up the photos with various apps, smoothing out his skin, reshaping his eyebrows and face. Then he will post the best ones to Instagram with a lengthy caption for his 32,637, and counting, followers who live to see what he had for lunch and to acquire a new piece of his wisdom.
A text comes in: We will be here for another hour if you want to join us. It’s your day. Let’s celebrate.
No, thank you. I’ve been subjected enough to eating by myself in my boyfriend’s company. Since his success as a realtor agent came from his increased social-media presence, Doug lives to record every moment of his life. The clothes he wears, the places he visits, the things he does are for the single purpose of being #Instaworthy.
No, having kids with Doug is not in my plans. Sometimes I wonder why I’m even with him. I guess he is my comfort animal to whom I like to snug up when I feel lonely.
No need to celebrate. No biggie. See you later, I text back.
I make a sandwich and gobble it down at the breakfast nook. Then I pack my stuff for my trip to Quantico.
3
The cyber division holds meetings every morning where agents discuss key points and fresh leads in developing cases. We also share information about new technologies to help us penetrate the Darknet and pioneer forensic approaches to tie perpetrators to victims. Criminals take advantage of the continually evolving Darknet and turn most of our investigations into a never-ending game of cat and mouse. The FBI and local law enforcement work together to unravel underground organized rings dealing in child prostitution, sex trafficking, and illicit drugs. Success is hard to come by, but the Bureau manages to catch many mice. Yet for every scumbag arrested, ten new ones take his place. This was a job that had no end and brought no glory. From my new colleagues, I learned quickly to learn to live with frustration. I couldn’t save Susie, but I was determined to help other children in need.
By the end of my third week at the Bureau, my enthusiasm has begun to ebb. I’ve caught myself plummeting toward depression from the soul-draining work of searching for missing children online or watching videos of abused young girls and boys being traded by pedophiles.
At the end of the day, I arrive home emotionally drained and physically and mentally exhausted. Scattered around our front yard, palm trees are swaying in the warm summer breeze. I lean back in my seat and turn to look at the empty driveway without Doug’s car. Reluctant to spend another night on the couch watching Forensic Files alone, I roll down the windows and turn on my vape. The rush of menthol constricts blood vessels in my brain, and I lean back to enjoy the rush. I put on my AirPods and listen to hardcore punk-rock music on Pandora, transporting myself back to college.
Night has fallen upon me when a set of headlights bathe my car in their bright glow. I toss the vape into the compartment between the two front seats, roll up the windows, and step out of my car to meet Doug.
“Did you just get home?” he asks, loosening his tie as he approaches me.
“Yeah, it was a long day,” I lie, although I don’t know why. I’m a grown woman. I don’t need my boyfriend’s permission to smoke. “You were out late,” I remark, checking the time on my Fitbit, to shift the focus of the conversation away from me.
“Yeah, I had meetings all afternoon with clients. Later, I grabbed dinner and a few drinks with Ethan. We had to go over our program for the Expo in Irvine this weekend.” As he kisses my forehead, I get a whiff of sweet perfume. My jaws clench.
I follow him inside, where I set the Panda’s Express takeout on the kitchen counter.
Doug sees the bags and rubs his stomach. “I’m stuffed, baby. Could you put mine in the fridge?”
“You’ve been very busy lately working such long hours. I guess business is good?”
He props himself up on the barstool, face lit up, eyes shining. “It’s unbelievable, babe. My Instagram followers hit 35,000 yesterday, and two more agents joined my team this week. Team Doug now has forty-two agents,” he gushes, opening a bottle of expensive scotch for his glass with perfectly square ice cubes and a personalized coaster with his picture and realtor information.
“That’s fantastic, honey. I’m very proud of you,” I say, listening to the buzz of the microwave heating up my dinner.
Doug spends the next ten to fifteen minutes taking pictures of his evening nightcap, then the same amount of time composing a post to accompany his image.
When I reenter the kitchen, showered and in my bathrobe, he looks at me dumbfounded, checking the time.
“Wow, that was fast, babe.” He slips his phone in his pocket and stands up. “I’m gonna rinse off too.”
I put away the bottle of scotch and drop the ice into the sink. What a poser!
It takes Doug another hour to come to bed.
“Maybe we could go on that camping trip you’ve been
talking about,” I tell him.
He is clearly amused by something he sees on his phone. “I won’t have a free weekend for a while. Ethan and I are taking our presentation on the road. Almost every weekend we’ll be in a new state. Most of our events are already sold out,” he informs me while speed-typing on the screen.
“Oh, all right. Maybe some other time then, huh?” Less than a year ago, the boys were traveling to be in the audience of presentations given by millionaire realtors. Doug’s business barely survived the first five years; he hardly had any listings and spent heavily on educating himself about the trade. If not for my cop’s salary to support him and his partner, Ethan, who Doug met in class while getting his realtor license, through the hard times, he would have had to find a stable paying job. I didn’t expect a thank you, but a little bit of gratitude would be nice now he is a success.
To lessen the awkwardness of being ignored, I read for a while, then I switch off my bedside lamp and roll to my side to keep my eyes away from the light of his cellphone, shining onto his narcissistic face, as he responds to comments and counts his likes.
I don’t blame Doug for our slowly deteriorating relationship. If I had chosen to be a teacher or the like, then I might have been able to be a mother of two or three children by now, going to baseball games and dance recitals. But my fate was sealed at the age of six when my favorite cousin was kidnapped right under my nose.
I still remember that day like it was yesterday. My father has been working as a traveling salesman for a medical equipment manufacturing company as long as I can remember. When he was a young father, he was gone most of the days during the week, visiting hospitals as far as Northern California, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona. Every summer, he would take a three-week vacation, and we would spend it in a cabin with a private beach at Bass Lake, near Yosemite National Park, with three other families. My mother’s older sister, her husband, and their daughter, Susie, and my father’s two younger brothers. The youngest, Steven, was only seventeen at the time. The second youngest, Mike, was twenty-seven years old and had a new baby with his wife. We all got along very well.
The night of Susie’s disappearance, my father and his brothers were sitting around the fire by the lakeshore, playing cards and drinking. An otherwise mellow and hardworking man, who had dedicated his life to his family, my father could transform into a raging monster whenever he looked at the bottom of the bottle. My mother was no saint, but she always foresaw the trouble brewing on such occasions and would send us kids to our rooms. We would heatedly protest because staying up late on a warm summer night to play hide-and-seek was our favorite pastime.
Susie had asked me to go with her to her room, but I was too angry and frustrated about how the night turned out to be in a mood for company. I’d decided to sleep in my own bed and go to sleep as fast as possible, so I could wake up early to start the next day fishing off the dock.
Under the veil of the night, Susie was taken from her bed.
I heard nothing.
I saw nothing.
The local media and police shadowed us for the following week of our vacation. I remember the lights, the noise, the chaos. I didn’t understand what was happening. Why would someone take Susie?
My mother tried to shield us from the truth, so I grew up without knowing all the details about my cousin’s disappearance. When I joined the force, the first file I dug up and examined was Susie’s.
I learned that the local law enforcement and hundreds of volunteers had combed the nearby woods and divers searched the lake with no results for days. On the sixth day of her disappearance, hikers found Susie’s body in a shallow grave, covered with loose dirt and leaves. It was a hot and humid summer that year, and her body was already showing signs of advanced decomposing, making the investigators’ job that more difficult. The pictures taken at the crime scene still haunt me to this day.
There was a bite mark on her right shoulder. The forensic odontologist took dental impressions from my father and uncles. He matched the bite to Steven’s mold. My teenaged uncle was dragged away in cuffs, cameras flashing in his face.
Steven denied his involvement in Susie's kidnapping and murder. He loved her, he said, and would never dream of hurting her. There were no other DNA samples collected from her body for comparison.
My father hired a big-shot lawyer, who requested a second opinion on the bite mark. The evidence was sent to the East Coast to a highly esteemed video specialist, Dr. James Klein. He enhanced the image of the bruises left by someone’s teeth with revolutionary new software NASA had developed and discovered a small gap between two molars that may have been caused by a chipped tooth, ultimately excluding Steven as a suspect.
The investigation dragged on for over a year and a half. Although the perpetrator was never found, the media managed to ruin our family’s reputation. My friends no longer came over for sleepovers or playtime at our house. Our birthday parties and holidays were celebrated at home without any extended family. It was as if we had all lost faith in one another.
I would watch other kids with envy as they received hugs and gifts from relatives at school promotions or after soccer games, while my family never came. My heart grew callused after high school. I still wonder what direction my life might have taken if I only went with Susie to her room that night.
4
I enter the conference room with a cup of coffee in my hand. Some agents are already sitting around the table, their hot beverages steaming in front of them. The room smells like a cesspool of bad morning breath.
Agent Brestler rushes in and scans his eyes over the group until they land on me. “Agent Collins, come with me,” he calls out to me in a somber yet somewhat excited tone.
My stomach shrinks. Did I do something wrong?
I make my way to the glass door and feel my colleagues’ eyes on me as I follow the man who first invited me to the FBI down the corridor and into his office.
Both chairs in front of Agent Brestler’s desk are occupied. A woman with smooth ebony skin sits in one of them. She looks younger than me and is dressed in an elegant navy-blue pantsuit. The other chair supports an overweight man in his late forties whose pale hair shows signs of balding as he leans on the backrest with both hands.
“This is Special Agent Collins who works with the cyber unit,” Brestler hurriedly introduces me as we make our way to his side of the desk.
“This is Special Agent Anaya Reed from our field office in Las Vegas. She is from the other side of the pond, but once we snatched her up at Berkley twelve years ago, she never looked back, right?” Brestler winks at the female agent. “And Special Agent Bob Henson from Salt Lake City,” he finishes up the introduction.
They both acknowledge me with a simple nod.
“Let me start by noting that everything we discuss here today is highly confidential,” announces Brestler, making a point of locking eyes with me. “The media cannot, I repeat, cannot get wind of this.”
I feel my entire body tense up. When was I ever suspected of leaking sensitive information to the media? Doug sometimes asks me about my work, but I only share bits and pieces with him about cases that really get to me. I’ve never gone into details or disclosed names and locations. Doug could find out more about recent cybercrimes with a simple Google search than with what I tell him.
All three of them look at me for confirmation.
“Yes, sir, I understand.”
Brestler pulls out a chair for me then takes his seat behind the desk. “Agent Reed, please proceed.”
The female agent leans forward on her chair and addresses me in a British accent. “Two days ago, with the phenomenal work of the Las Vegas forensic team and the local sheriff’s office, the FBI apprehended a man who we believe is responsible for the deaths of five young women in Las Vegas. The victims were sexually assaulted, strangled, then dumped naked in the back streets off the Strip. The same MO was used in all five murders, and we’ve been looking for almost two years for the seria
l killer with very little success. There wasn’t much evidence to go on, and despite our efforts to catch that Bearded Vulture, all five cases went cold.”
I catch Agent Henson rolling his eyes at the unusual name. Bearded Vulture?
“Then, we caught a break,” Reed continues. “The Las Vegas forensics team managed to isolate a partial fingerprint on the fourth victim’s body. They also found fibers that connected the victims. Well, I don’t want to go into details at this point, but with the new evidence and some luck, we arrested a suspect. A forty-two-year-old man named Gary Froelich. In his home, we found other vital trace evidence and an extensive collection of incriminating items. When presented with the overwhelming evidence, Froelich confessed to all the killings, except one. Froelich denies any involvement in the brutal death of the third victim, Sarah Duhamel. As you may imagine, his statement raised a few eyebrows with the Bureau.”
Agent Reed pauses to clear her throat and takes a sip of what appears to be hot tea with milk.
“Should I be taking notes?” I ask Brestler, but he tells me it’s not necessary.
“Everything that’s being disclosed here is in the files.” He points to a mountain of paperwork towering on his desk.
Agent Reed sets her steel glance at me. “So, what do you think, Agent Collins, why should we concern ourselves with the words of a serial killer?”
“I don’t know. Maybe there’s a copycat killer out there who sort of ‘piggybacks’ on other crimes?”
Agent Henson smiles as he gives a glance of satisfaction to Brestler.
“Exactly,” says Reed. “That was our conclusion. Someone is trying to pin a murder on a killer at large. We have recently gone over the evidence with a fresh set of eyes and looked into the timeline of the murders. It turns out that there were typically three to four months between Froelich’s homicides, but the third victim, the one Froelich insisted he had nothing to do with, happened only two weeks after the second murder. Sixteen days to be exact.”
