by Gene Riehl
I began my routine search for his tell as Lisa did the credential thing and introduced the two of us to him. Reverend Johnson’s smile stayed in place—no mean feat considering what his memories of earlier American justice and the FBI must have been—but I wasn’t surprised. Preachers learn to smile early in the game, to keep on smiling even though they know better. His voice was thin but still had plenty of strength.
“How may I help you folks?”
“We’re trying to run down some information on Sarah Kendall,” Lisa told him. “The young man at the county clerk’s office told us she’d been married in this church. That you yourself had performed the ceremony.”
His smile disappeared for an instant before coming back even stronger, but he was too slow to keep me from noticing. One more time and I’d own him. He fiddled with the hearing aid in his right ear.
“That’s better,” he said. “Now what was that again?”
Lisa repeated it.
“Sarah Kendall,” he said, his words slow. “Yes. Yes, I believe I did marry her and her husband. Sarah was a member of my church for more than forty years, God bless her, right up to the day the Lord took her home.” He smiled again. “Why don’t you folks come into my office. We’ll be more comfortable there.”
I glanced over his shoulder at the raised pulpit, then back up the rows of plain wooden pews to the open front doors, and through them to the bucar outside. Talking to the preacher out there in Lisa’s Pontiac would have been just fine with me, but wherever his office turned out to be it was better than where we were at the moment. Standing next to that pulpit that I couldn’t even stand to look at.
“That’s very kind of you,” Lisa said. “Perhaps you could lead the way.”
He did so, Lisa right behind, me hanging back. The varnish smell was just as strong as it had been at the courthouse, but more authentically churchy here. We passed the pulpit and I tried to ignore it, but it was too late. My stomach clenched hard enough to stop me in my tracks. A series of images flashed through my mind before I could stop them. Images I’d never been able to forget … or forgive.
Sally Ann Hampton had been every bit as precocious as I was, another teenager filled with raging hormones and just as much curiosity, but Pastor Monk hadn’t seen it that way at all. In his book the wages of sin was death, and that’s what he tried to do to me when he caught the two of us behind the pulpit. Until the janitor showed up and pulled him off, long after Sally Ann had buckled up her bra and beat it out of there.
Now just the sight of a pulpit was enough to bring it all back, and most especially what had happened at services the very same night. The hideous humiliation of Pastor Monk’s public condemnation, the vilification that had banished Sally Ann and her family from the congregation, followed by his scathing denunciation of his own wife and my mother as the Jezebel who’d allowed her son to become a fornicator. Finally, horribly, his order to the congregation to shun my mother for her sin, the order that took from her the only thing in the world she cared about, that reduced her life to misery and inevitably to the suicide that Good Old Dad took as the ultimate sign of her unworthiness.
Rage has no sense of time and space, I’ve been told by one shrink or another since that night, and looking at Reverend Johnson’s pulpit almost thirty years later, the feelings were still strong enough to make me sweat. I shook my head in an effort to dislodge the pain, then hurried to catch up with Lisa and Reverend Johnson.
“Like I said,” the preacher began, once we were seated before the unadorned wooden desk inside his tiny office, “I knew Sarah very well.” He glanced out the door in the direction of the organ. “Matter of fact, she played that very organ until she was too sick to come to church anymore.” He shook his head. “I work on it every week, but it’s never sounded the same since she passed.”
“How about her niece?” Lisa asked. “Brenda Thompson. You must have known her, too.”
His smile went out completely. He turned from Lisa, stared at the ceiling. “Brenda Thompson,” he mumbled. “Sarah’s niece, you say.”
He looked back down but still not directly at either of us. Fiddled with his hearing aid again, cleared his throat, then massaged the entire front of his neck and spoke quietly into the top of his desk.
“I thought I knew all of Sarah’s people, but I never met any Brenda Thompson.” Now he did look at Lisa. “Should I have?”
“Not at all, sir,” she said. “But what about church records? Would you have something to refresh your memory?”
A soft chuckle. “Records? Lord, no. Everybody knows everybody down here. Don’t spend a whole lotta time on records.”
I stared at him. No records? Good thing Pastor Monk wasn’t here. Wouldn’t he have something to say about that?
Lisa glanced at me and I nodded that I’d heard enough, seen enough. Lisa thanked him for his time. We shook hands, and he showed us out to the front doors, closed them behind us. Before we could get to the car I could hear the insistent hammering of a single note from the organ. In the car Lisa started the engine, but turned to me before putting it into gear.
“Well? What do you think? He telling the truth?”
“You tell me.”
“He’s lying about not knowing Brenda Thompson. Kept his body angled away from us, his eyes anywhere but on mine. Then the throat rubbing. Like he was trying to squeeze the words up his neck to get them out of his mouth.”
I nodded. Good girl, I would have said in a less-militant era. Maybe it was time to start taking her to the card rooms with me.
“Where now, boss?” she wanted to know. “Where do we go to find out why he’s lying?”
“The hospital. Got to be one around here someplace.”
“What about release forms? The only release we’ve got is signed Brenda Thompson. If the reverend doesn’t even admit knowing her, why would we think Thompson would use her own name if she ended up at the hospital?”
“Never hurts to ask.”
“May not hurt to eat half a dozen doughnuts either, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good way to use your time.”
“I have a cunning plan.”
She stared at me. “It sure as hell better be.”
TWELVE
I’d lied.
I didn’t have a cunning plan for storming the hospital. I didn’t even have a mediocre one, so I went with what I did have. FBI credentials, and a brilliant and gorgeous partner. I kept Lisa in reserve, held out my credentials as the records nurse at Cobb County General Hospital approached from her side of the high counter.
A beautiful young woman, her cinnamon skin glowed against the starched white of her uniform. Her thick black hair was pinned dancer’s style on the top of her head, and her effortless posture suggested the same formal training. She smiled and I found myself wishing I’d worn a nicer suit. A tag on her lapel identified her as Helena Evans.
She examined my identification. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
“We’re looking for anything you might have on a Brenda Thompson.” I gave her the judge’s date of birth, her social security number. “Any record to indicate she’s been a patient here at the hospital.”
“You have a release form, of course.”
I produced it from my briefcase, handed it over. “You can keep it if you need to. I have plenty.”
She examined the release form, looked up at me. “Brenda Thompson? Judge Brenda Thompson?” She pointed to the current issue of Time next to the computer on her desk, to the judge’s picture on the cover. “That Brenda Thompson?”
I nodded. “We’re just finishing up the background investigation. You’re one of our last stops.”
“Is she from around here? I don’t remember reading—”
“Just passed through, back in the early seventies.”
Helena Evans stared at us. “My God, you people are thorough.”
I gestured toward the computer on the desk behind her. “Would you mind checking?”
She smiled
, then turned away and typed on her keyboard. She looked at the screen and typed again, then looked at us and shook her head.
“Sorry, I don’t get anything on her.” She returned the release form. “Is there something else I can do?”
“There is, actually, but this is a bit unusual.” I smiled again but she was a bit less radiant all of a sudden. “If I wanted a printout of hospital admissions for a certain month in a certain year, would your database be able to provide one?”
She glanced at the computer, then turned back to me.
“I could do that, yes … but if you’re talking about thirty-some years ago, it wouldn’t be in the computer. I’d have to do some manual searching.” She paused. “I hope there’s no problem with Brenda Thompson, I really do. We’ve been waiting a long time for …” She smiled again. “But I won’t bore you with all that. What I’m trying to say is I wish her the best.”
“Just tying up loose ends. Touching all the bases.”
“I’ll be proud to do my part if it means she makes it through. All you have to do is clear it with our administrator, Mr. Faydeux. As soon as he gives me the okay, I’ll get right on it.”
She reached for her phone, spoke into it, hung up. Thirty seconds later the administrator showed up. A short heavy man, sixtyish, wearing a cheap suit and a cigarette-burned necktie. Spider veins in his thickened nose had burst to form a reddish-purple thatch that made it the star attraction on an otherwise nondescript face. He brushed a hand across skimpy hair the flat black color of a cheap barbecue, then stepped forward to offer a handful of yellow fingers. Lisa shook them first, had to tug a little to get her own back from him.
“Priestley Faydeux,” he said, in an accent with more bayou in it than Brookston. “What can ah do for you folks?”
I decided to use Lisa on him, nudged her with my arm to get her started.
“We need something from your records,” she said. “I’m hoping you can help us.”
He smiled with teeth only slightly less yellow than his fingers. “Of course, ma’am, anything you want just ask.”
She repeated what I’d asked Helena Evans in the records room.
His smile turned false. “Would you want to see the records themselves?”
“If we could.”
“But you don’t have any release forms.”
“I’m afraid we don’t.”
“What about a court order, then? We can work with a court order just as well.”
“No court order either.”
“Can’t help you, then. Our legal people have been very specific about releasing information without proper authority.”
I noticed his good-old-boy accent had disappeared.
“I can understand that in a criminal case,” Lisa said, “but this isn’t a criminal matter. The only thing we’re here for is to help Brenda Thompson get on the Supreme Court.”
“I’m sure you think that’s a very good reason to overlook our rules, but Brenda what’s-her-name will just have to make it on her own like everybody else.”
Helena Evans interrupted, her voice sharp. “Look, Priestley, surely we can make an exception this time. We wouldn’t be hurting anybody. All we’d be doing is helping a deserving woman, a deserving black wo—”
“That’s enough, Ms. Evans,” Faydeux told her. “Your job is to file these records, not decide who does or doesn’t get to look at them.”
“But you’re being unreasonable,” Evans said. “Nobody’s ever going to know. What possible reason would you have to—”
Faydeux stepped toward her. “Not another word! You’re on thin ice around here as it is. Don’t make me go to the board with another complaint.”
Helena Evans grew taller, appeared so ready to go after her boss I found myself leaning forward to stop her. But she turned away, rage evident in the hard set of her shoulders as she strode back to her desk and sat down. She refused to look in our direction, but I was sure she was still listening.
“I wish you could be a little more flexible,” I told Faydeux, “but I can’t order you to break the law. Agent Sands and I will be around for a while. If we come up with a court order we’ll call you.”
The administrator harruumphed, clearly ready for us to get the hell out of his kingdom. We didn’t bother shaking hands this time, but on the way past Helena Evans’s desk, I paused.
“Thank you so much, Ms. Evans,” I told her. “We understand your good wishes for Judge Thompson. Be assured we will pass them on to her personally.” I paused. “We can only hope this won’t delay the process long enough to harm her chances.”
Outside, I opened the driver’s side door for Lisa, then went around and climbed into the passenger seat. She turned to me before starting the engine.
“You really think that worked … that she’ll call us?”
“Depends how much she hates Priestley Faydeux.”
“Then get ready to answer the phone. I couldn’t even stand to shake his hand. She’s gotta despise him.”
“She wouldn’t be the first woman to bite her tongue just to keep her job.”
“Or the first man,” Lisa was quick to say, although she didn’t have to. I can name dozens of us who do that every day. As a matter of fact, the bureau’s filled with bitten tongues.
“I’ll bet you dinner she calls,” Lisa said.
“And drinks?”
“Dessert even, if you’re man enough to eat it.”
I grinned, then accepted the wager before she could change her mind about it. Helena Evans might or might not call, but either way I couldn’t lose. Either way Lisa was mine for the evening.
She fired up the engine, started to back out of the parking space, then stopped and looked at me for instructions. I checked the dashboard clock. A few minutes past eleven. Maybe what I wanted was food, a good solid cheeseburger to jump-start my brain. I remembered passing what looked like a decent place to eat when we’d driven into town.
“There’s a place on Main, Lisa, back on the way out of town. Looked like a decent motel, got to have a café. Take us there. We’ll talk about it over lunch.”
She pulled the shift lever into reverse, backed out and headed for the street. “We spending the night?”
“Might as well. We need to figure out where we’re going with this.” I grinned. “When Nurse Evans calls, who knows where it’ll lead?”
She rolled her eyes, then swung the bucar left out of the parking lot.
We hit six consecutive stoplights before coming to the Brookston Inn, an Old-South design with two white columns flanking the entrance to the lobby, wide-canopied pines towering over the café next door. A dysfunctional neon sign next to the street blinked “acancy … acancy … acancy.” Lisa pulled into the parking lot and I went into the lobby.
“Two rooms for tonight,” I told the teenager behind the desk. “Something quiet.”
“This is Brookston, Mister. It’s all quiet.”
I signed and paid. He gave me a pair of keys.
“There’s a double door between them,” he said, “but you can lock your side, okay?”
Good thing, I thought. You never could tell what Lisa might get up to, so far from home. I was still smiling at the idea when I got back to the car. Lisa wanted to know why.
“Just daydreaming.” I pointed toward the rear of the building. “Second floor, last two on the left.”
She parked near the stairs leading to the second deck. We walked upstairs, then along the outside passageway to her room. I handed her the key.
“I’ll be next door,” I told her, then glanced at my watch. “Lunch in ten minutes?”
She frowned. “A lady needs twenty. I’ll tap on your door.”
I left her as she was turning her door key, used mine on the room next door, then swung the door open and recoiled from an assault of Pine-Sol that pushed me half a step backward. I forged ahead, through the door and across the nylon carpet toward the single bed against the far wall, surveyed the skinny furniture, the dime-stor
e Civil War print above the bed. I shook my head. My career had taken me to a lot of small towns over the years, to any number of Motel 6’s, but this was most definitely my first Motel 3.
I used the bathroom, splashed water on my face, ran a hand through my hair, then did what everyone does in a motel room, turned on the television and clicked my way to CNN. The Dow was up, I saw, and the Nasdaq down, but I didn’t much care. I had no bet on either one. Another school shooting filled the screen, this one in Switzerland, of all places. I turned away from the TV and reached for the phone. I’d left Annie asleep back at the dome, but it was a good idea to check in with her again, just to make sure she wasn’t in even worse trouble this time. I called my home number, no answer. I called her veterinary office in Fredericksburg. She was there, her nurse told me, but busy with an animal. Did I want to hold? I didn’t, I told her, but I was relieved to hear that my doctor was once again on the wagon.
I hung up and turned back to the TV, aimed the clicker to jab the off button, but stopped when I caught the letters FBI superimposed below the serious network news face of Wolf Blitzer. His voice rolled somberly through the story.
“… came as a complete surprise to Capitol Hill,” he was saying. “Senator Randall’s opposition to the bureau’s controversial DCS 1000 program—formerly known as Carnivore—has been consistently vehement, and the FBI’s plans for enlarging the program with the addition of Magic Lantern has drawn her specific condemnation. Senator Randall’s Intelligence Oversight Committee has supported her position that the bureau’s latest update to the e-mail monitoring program represents nothing more than a death blow to the Fourth Amendment, and her astonishing change of heart this morning has Washington insiders buzzing. Our Catherine Crier has more.”
The picture changed to the familiar blond reporter, standing in front of the Hart Senate Office Building, but I’d seen and heard my fill of the ruckus surrounding the e-mail interception program, and this time I hit the clicker for good.
Most FBI agents are ambivalent about the DCS 1000 program, and I’m no exception. As an agent, I agree that the ability to monitor criminal e-mail is critical to the bureau’s mission, but as a citizen I share some of the current leeriness about the potential for abuse. Senator Jeannette Randall’s oversight committee was charged with making sure such abuse was headed off before it even got started. And the senator had been adamant—until this morning, if CNN was right—about what she called the terrible risk of Magic Lantern, and the slippery slope it represented. “Star Wars meets 1984,” Randall had labeled the new technology, but that was a bit hysterical for me. No matter what kind of program the bureau came up with, it would depend entirely on legitimate federal warrants before being utilized. Her argument badly underestimated the lengths to which America’s federal judges would go to make sure nothing Orwellian came to pass. No judge would allow the government to eavesdrop on computer keystrokes without one hell of a lot of probable cause.
