The Bubble Gum Thief

by Jeff Miller

  PART II

  THE WHO

  CHAPTER 19

  March 15—Arlington, Virginia

  Dagny must have screamed, because Mrs. McDougal ran into the room. Everything else was a blur. The Professor seemed to know who Mike was, though she had never mentioned him by name. Mrs. McDougal handed her a glass of water, but she dropped it, unable to grip anything, just trembling, shaking. She felt dizzy and nauseated. Her stomach cramped. A chill settled upon the room, and she shivered. They covered her with a blanket and turned up the heat. It was still too cold.

  Her thoughts began to run together and pile upon each other. She thought mostly of Mike’s arms squeezing her—of how safe she felt with him, and how she’d never feel safe again. She thought about the way he kissed her neck. A silly joke he told her at the zoo. The smile he flashed to the children they’d passed on the street. Reading the paper in bed. Ice-skating on the Mall. The way he drove so cautiously. Two months of memories that would have to last a lifetime. Fifty years that would never happen. Children who would never be born.

  The things they’d never had hurt more than the things they’d never have again. They’d never known summer or fall together, nor spring either, really. She had never seen him in swim trunks. They had never walked on the beach, gone to a Nationals game, or watched the fireworks on the Fourth of July. They’d never shared a Christmas, not even a birthday—his was March 23, hers was April 12. She’d never met Mike’s mother, an industrious woman who ran a bed-and-breakfast on Cape Cod. They had planned to visit in June. Mike had never met her mother either. They had planned to visit for Passover. Dagny had been dreading the trip and was ashamed of herself for that now.

  She was also ashamed by the one thought that kept crowding out the rest: Why was Mike with his ex-fiancée?

  “Dagny?”

  She opened her eyes. The Professor was standing over her.

  “Dagny, some men have come. Are you able to speak to them?”

  She glanced at the clock on the Professor’s desk. It was four thirty. An hour had slipped away. When she opened her mouth, her throat was dry. “Yes,” she managed.

  The Professor walked out of the room and came back with two men. The older one was a Caucasian with a buzz cut and a thin mustache. His tie was fastened in a big, loose knot, and he introduced himself as a detective from DC Homicide. The younger one was an African-American in his late twenties. He wore cufflinks and a broad, nervous smile. Although he was with the FBI’s DC field office, Dagny couldn’t remember his name. Under different circumstances, she’d have known it instantly.

  Before they asked a single question, a thought flashed through her mind. “J. C. Adams,” she muttered. She jumped from the couch and ran to her computer on the Professor’s desk. Dagny typed her own name into Google and clicked the fourth link. There, in The Washington Post Style section, among a hodgepodge of pictures of Washington’s elite, was a photograph of her and Mike at the National Gallery. That’s how he knew, Dagny thought.

  “Agent Gray?” The detective walked over to Dagny. “What about J. C. Adams? You mean the football player?”

  “I told him I was dating an artist. He must have googled me. That’s how he knew about Mike. And the bank robbery—he had an inside track on that, too.” She spoke her thoughts as quickly as they came. “He did a security proposal for the bank, so he must have known how everything worked. The camera, and the baseball, and the double drawers. And the makeup the bank robber wore—Adams makes films. He’d know how to do that. Plus, he hasn’t worked all year. He just came into all that money.”

  The detective put his hand on Dagny’s shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze. “Agent Gray, there’s a lot of stuff you just said, and it could be pretty important, so I’m going to ask you to slow it down just a bit, if you don’t mind.”

  Dagny took a deep breath and started from the beginning. She told them about her relationship with Mike, and his relationship with Candice. She described her investigation of the bank robbery in Cincinnati, and her discussions with Officer Perez in Chula Vista. And she described her interactions with J. C. Adams and gave them Adams’s cell phone number. She recounted all of this in a clear, measured tone, anticipating their questions, elaborating where required, and suspending her emotions, as she’d long been trained to do.

  When she finished her narrative, she peppered them with questions. Was there video of the killing? Just some grainy footage from a nearby bank. What about the card? In Whitman’s purse, probably placed during the book signing. They hadn’t watched the video from inside the bookstore yet. Any chase by foot? The murder wasn’t discovered for a while; they were still canvasing, but he probably got away. Eyewitnesses? So far, none. One guy thought he saw someone running down by the canal, but people ran there all the time.

  “Did he suffer?”

  The young agent folded his hands and stared down at the floor. “At this point, it’s really hard to—”

  “No, Agent Gray,” the detective interrupted. “He died very quickly.”

  “Oh.” The detective was probably just telling her what she wanted to hear, but she was willing to believe it.

  The two men thanked her for the information, expressed their condolences, and left. Dagny collapsed on the couch. Agent Maxwell, Dagny remembered. The young guy’s name was Terrance Maxwell. She pulled her knees tightly toward her chest. The room felt as if it were spinning. Mrs. McDougal came in and handed her another glass of water. This time, Dagny clutched it for dear life—she would not drop it. It took every ounce of concentration she could muster, but it did not drop.

  The Professor sat across from her and turned his pipe over in his fingers. “It wasn’t because of you, Dagny.”

  She just shook her head. Of course it was.

  “No,” he said. “Mike was just a bystander. She was the target.” The Professor unfolded a piece of paper he had in his pocket. “The detective gave it to me. It’s a flyer from the bookstore.” He handed it to Dagny. It announced that Candice Whitman would be signing copies at a release party for her new book—a collection of fake editorials about famous murders in literature. Apparently, she had applied her modern-day invective to the likes of Raskolnikov, John Jasper, and the unruly orangutan in “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” Her book’s ominous title was The Ides of March: Bringing Justice to the Murderers in Great Literature.

  “Today is March fifteenth. She was stabbed on steps, just like Caesar. The card was in her purse. These things suggest that Whitman was the target,” the Professor explained.

  Dagny handed the flyer back to the Professor. “That could just be a coincidence.”

  “Either the crime’s connection to you or Whitman’s release of this book is a coincidence. The murderer would have known of the book release long ago. He could have put this crime in play before the year began. If, on the other hand, you were the connection to this crime, then our murderer’s making it up as he goes and, given what we know already about the other crimes, that seems unlikely. I don’t think it’s J. C. Adams, and I don’t think it has anything to do with you.”

  It was no comfort.

  The Professor and his wife had begged her to stay, but she wanted to curl up on her own couch, in her own house. Climbing the steps to her porch, she knew it was a mistake. The house had become cluttered with memories of Mike, and being home just made her feel more alone. When she opened the screen door, a small package fell off the threshold. The return address read “Chula Vista.” It was the bullet that killed the dog. She opened the front door and tossed the package onto the kitchen counter, then walked upstairs, undressed, and climbed into the shower, where she fell to the floor and cried.

  CHAPTER 20

  March 16—Alexandria, Virginia

  Her cell phone vibrated across the top of the dresser. One more call would push it off the edge. The calls had come steadily through the evening, slowed some during the night, then picked up again in the morning. She hadn’t bothered to answer the phone, or
for that matter, get out of bed. She hadn’t slept much, either—maybe a minute here, another there. Mostly, she mourned.

  The next call sent her phone to the floor. She slid her right leg out from under the covers and planted it on the carpet. It took all the strength she could muster to pivot to the right, sit up, and plant her left foot on the floor. When she stood, she was surprised that her legs held firm. It didn’t feel any better to stand, but it didn’t feel any worse either.

  Dagny picked up the phone. The last incoming call began with a 513 area code. J. C. Adams, she thought. When she’d called him for a ride to the airport, her number had been saved to his phone. She scrolled through the list of missed calls. The fact that the thirty-four calls had come from only four people was a measure of her pathetic life. Julia, her mother, and the Professor had called numerous times. J. C. Adams had called twice.

  Dagny dialed her voice mail. Despite the many calls, Julia left just one message. She offered her condolences, promised to do anything she could to help, and invited Dagny to stay with her. Her mother left seven messages, each more panicked than the last. The Professor’s message was awkward and sweet. He told her to take whatever time she needed to “resolve” her emotions, and asked if there was anything he could do to help her during this “awful, awful period.”

  Adams’s message wasn’t sweet. “What the hell, Gray? I was just flirting with you. Jesus Christ! What’s your problem?”

  Dagny hung up the phone and set it back on the dresser, then changed into her running clothes and grabbed her iPod. It took her four attempts to tie her left shoe, another three for the right. She walked down the steps and opened the front door. Stepping outside, Dagny was blinded by afternoon sun. Mothers were pushing strollers along the sidewalks of Del Ray. An elderly man was fixing the shingles on his roof. Two kids were skateboarding down the street, doing spins and jumps off the curb. By running, she turned their world into a blur. The iPod drowned the thoughts in her head, and when that stopped working, she counted each thud of her feet as they hit the pavement. Three-ninety-four. Three-ninety-five. It almost cleared her mind.

  Her legs carried her along the Potomac into the District, and over the M Street Bridge into Georgetown. When she got to Mike’s house, it was cordoned off by crime-scene tape. She had been to hundreds of crime scenes. There was a key in her pocket that opened the door to this one, but she couldn’t use it.

  Two agents emerged from the house and walked over to a dark-blue sedan. Carl Milton and Dave Bourner—she’d worked with them before. Carl was pushing his thick fingers through his dark-brown hair and laughing, while Dave was nodding his head and taking drags off a cigarette butt. A robin landed on the top of the sedan, and the men turned toward it. The bird toddled around the car top in circles, like a drunken man stumbling out of a saloon. Carl stopped laughing, and Dave flicked the last bit of his cigarette to the ground and tilted his head, mesmerized by the robin. The bird danced on the roof of the sedan for three full minutes, and the agents watched in silence. Finally, the bird flew off, and Dave pulled out another cigarette.

  Dagny turned and ran. She didn’t count her footsteps or blare her iPod. Instead, she let herself hear the hum of traffic, the murmur of overlapping conversation, the deafening blasts of the planes leaving Reagan National, the rattle of the Metro cars rolling above on elevated rails. Everything before had seemed jumbled, but now all was clear. The rest of her life would be for grieving. Right now, there was work to do.

  CHAPTER 21

  March 17—Arlington, Virginia

  “Media attention. A celebrity death. Political interest. Six crimes, spread across the country, it seems. I think it’s safe to say that this will be heavily manned.”

  “A wise man once said that we’d be better off with just a small handful of people on cases like this.”

  “You already convinced me, Dagny.” Traffic had come to an abrupt stop, and the Professor slammed on his brakes to avoid hitting the black Cadillac in front of them. He undid his seat belt, reached to the backseat for a stack of folders, and handed them to Dagny. “You might as well look at these now.”

  They were her classmates’ files. “Why?”

  “Because you need a partner, and I can’t run around like I used to.”

  “That’s why we’ll use the webcams.”

  “Not good enough. You have to partner with someone if I’m going to sell this thing.”

  “We could try to sell it with just me first...”

  The Professor sighed. “Dagny, I need you to have a partner. I want someone with you. It’s not negotiable.”

  Dagny thumbed through the files. Brent Davis was the logical choice. He was smart and confident, polished and professional. But Dagny didn’t want an equal—she wanted a body. If the Professor insisted that she have a partner, she was determined to pick the least intrusive partner she could. And that, she determined, was Opie.

  Special Agent Victor Walton Jr. was barely twenty-five years old. After three years at Deloitte & Touche, he’d signed up with the Bureau. Although he’d scored exceptionally well on each of the nine academic exams administered during the seventeen-week New Agent’s Training Unit course, he’d fared less admirably on the physical tests. He also failed to score above 40 percent on any of the three shotgun tests, even though new agents were required to exceed 80 percent on two of them. In the past, the Bureau had strictly enforced its training standards, but in recent years, it had relaxed its policies for specialized candidates. In the wake of Enron and WorldCom, the Bureau had a particular need for forensic accounting expertise, and Walton’s future assignments would likely involve calculators, not guns.

  Brent Davis would have been a partner; Walton would be a potted plant. She closed the files.

  “You’ve chosen?” The Professor changed lanes in front of the Holocaust Museum; the abrupt movement sent the files from Dagny’s lap to the floor.

  “Yes,” she replied, gathering the loose pages and returning them to their folders.

  The Professor issued a disapproving “hmmm.”

  After a few more reckless maneuvers, he turned down a ramp and headed under the concrete blight known as the J. Edgar Hoover Building. The DC field office, where Dagny worked, was only blocks away, but she’d been to headquarters only a few times, and had met the director just once, as part of a group accepting his congratulations after her class completed its training.

  The Professor took his reserved space underneath the building, as well as a good part of the space next to it. “Now listen to me, Dagny,” he said. “I was easy to play because I wanted to be played. The Director is not going to be easy. I’ll do the talking, but he will probably ask you questions. You have to hold it together. You can’t go in there like this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He reached up to her cheek and brushed away a tear. She hadn’t realized that she was crying. “Ready?”

  “Okay.”

  They flashed electronic badges at the security desk, then walked down several long stretches of hallway until they came to the Director’s waiting room. A receptionist offered them a seat. Twelve chairs lined opposite walls. The only one that was occupied was taken by a lanky man in a navy suit. His long, thin face was red and peeling with sunburn, and his dusty-brown hair was peppered with grey specks, cropped trim and neat. The man rose from his chair, grabbed the Professor’s hand, and whispered in his ear loud enough for Dagny to hear, “Fuck you.” The man pulled back from the Professor and flashed a smile, while still shaking the Professor’s hand. Then he broke free from the hold and grabbed Dagny’s hand with his right hand while clasping her arm with his left. “I’m Justin Fabee, Dagny. It’s nice to meet you. I wish it had been under other circumstances. I’ve very sorry about your loss.” He spoke in a soft Texas drawl.

  “Thank you.”

  “You both did a nice job at the start of the case. I’d like to commend you on that.” When he wasn’t cursing in the Professor’s ear, Fabee had a real di
gnity and charm. No wonder he had risen so quickly.

  The FBI had eighteen assistant directors. Three headed the field offices in New York City, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC. The rest headed divisions at FBI headquarters. Fabee was the head of the Criminal Investigative Division, which was one of the better assistant director positions, since other divisions included the IT Services Division, the Laboratory Division, and the Human Resources Division. Fabee was in his early forties, young for an Assistant Director in Charge. Only the director and four executive assistant directors were higher on the Bureau’s organizational chart.

  The Professor and Fabee took seats at opposite sides of the waiting room and simultaneously lowered their heads, silently rehearsing what they’d say to the Director. Dagny just tried to keep from falling apart. Clasping her hands, she stared down at the carpet, looking past its surface until it was a blur. She slowed her breathing, inhaling deeply, then exhaling slowly, and counting to four before reversing the flow. After a few minutes, she felt calm.

  She held that calm when the Director came. He was a short, stocky man with wire-rimmed glasses and a growing bald spot on the top of his head. A cartoonist would have drawn his face with nothing but circles. His forehead gleamed with perspiration. Although the Director was not the prototypical Hoover man, he was regarded as uncommonly fair-minded, and only moderately prone to political capitulation. That was about the best the Bureau could do.