The Shadow Priest

by D. C. Alexander

  "Needless to say, when I called headquarters about it, the shit hit the fan. The team was recalled three days later. Internal Security interviewed each of us the day we got back. They didn't even let us go home from Dulles Airport to take showers first. Ordered us to come straight in. At that point I figured I had to lay it all out—the incompetence, the ethical violations, the lot. The other two members of the team provided corroborating evidence on much of it. But in the end, he got off without so much as a letter of admonishment. In fact, soon thereafter, he was promoted. Now he's the agent-in-charge of the Miami field office. The rest of us were formally reprimanded based on trumped-up nonsense like 'going outside the chain of command in reporting issues,' as if we were supposed to report his ethical violations to him instead of to headquarters. And I was all but accused of being a racist."

  "What?" Pratt said. "You, a racist? That's almost funny."

  "How the hell did he come out of it unscathed?" Morrison asked.

  "The final decisions came from the political appointee level."

  "So?"

  "As fate would have it, he happened to be an Iraqi-American. Born and raised in Lubbock, Texas, and as American as Dick Clark, but never mind. Through no fault of his own, DCI made him into their poster child for post-9/11 cooperation between the Arab-American community and federal law enforcement. For obvious reasons, DCI wouldn't have wanted to mar the facade, which I'll admit was an important one to maintain."

  "And he could have played the minority card if they'd tried to remove him," Pratt said.

  "He never gave the slightest hint that he would have."

  "But management couldn't have known that he wouldn't."

  "I don't go there."

  "You wouldn't," Morrison said. "It's not in your programming. That's one of the reasons you're here and they're there, if you follow me."

  "All that matters is that political considerations trumped logic and ethics."

  "Say it ain't so," Morrison said.

  "What happened?" Pratt asked.

  "This is conjecture, but I'm guessing that the deputy attorney general for DCI, a political appointee, weighed all the evidence we gave him. At the end of the day, doing what was right constituted a greater risk to his own continued, untroubled promotion than did siding with an incompetent agent who also happened to be a liar and thief. So he took the safe path."

  "Couldn't Sheffield protect you?"

  "He went to bat for me. But it was at the political level. Above his station."

  "So then what?"

  "About a week later, I was recalled from the field to be informed of the results of the inquiry, and to be told I was being denied an annual promotion that was due me. The personnel director, an incompetent buffoon if there ever was one, said he couldn't, in good conscience, let my promotion paperwork go through given my proclivity to insubordinate behavior and possible racist attitudes."

  "You've got to be shitting me," Morrison said. "Bastards."

  "That's what I thought. A few days later, I was told I was being redeployed to Durango."

  "Redeployed being a polite euphemism for banished and ostracized."

  "Exactly. At that point, I was ready to hire a lawyer. But Sheffield told me to roll with it. He said Personnel was threatening to 'out me' as a racist if I tried to resist."

  "That's absurd," Pratt said. "On what grounds?"

  "It was never made clear to me. But it hardly matters. Sheffield said I should just go to Durango and bide my time because political appointees came and went. We'd no doubt have a new deputy AG and new personnel director before long, this would all be forgotten, and then he would see me returned to Camelot with all the fanfare due me."

  "Laurels on your head, rose petals at your feet," Morrison said.

  "But you quit and went to work for MWA."

  Arkin nodded. "A month after we moved here, Sheffield died. I suppose you could say that my hope for redemption died with him. I flew to Arlington for his funeral, saluted as the Marine Corps honor guard fired their volleys, buried his empty coffin, and handed in my resignation. Finito."

  They sat quietly for a moment. Then Pratt asked, "Do you believe the rumors that Sheffield killed himself?"

  Arkin paused before answering. "No. They found his Mercedes convertible underwater in the mouth of Little Hunting Creek, off the George Washington Parkway down near Mount Vernon. He probably had a heart attack or stroke, went off the road, and then the current carried his body on down the Potomac."

  "They said he was despondent over the death of his wife."

  "He was."

  "But you don't think—"

  "No."

  Pratt let it go.

  FOURTEEN

  "Arkin," he said, answering his office phone.

  "It's me," Pratt said. "I got the Priest file."

  "Great."

  "I'd like to show you something in it."

  "I'd really rather not."

  "I know. I'm sorry. I just really need your advice on something."

  A minute later, Arkin walked through the doorway of Pratt's basement office. A thin, pastel green file folder of the type always used by DCI's Central Records Unit lay open on Pratt's desk.

  "Where's the rest of it?"

  "This is it."

  "What?"

  "Yeah. And take a look at this," Pratt said, pointing to something in the file.

  The tab was labeled with the proper case number: 03-125A-MCE. But the file contained only one sheet of paper. At the top of the sheet, in all capital letters of large point size, just as in the electronic file in the INDIGO database, were the words "CLOSED FILE--ALL INQUIRIES TO DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS." There was nothing aside from the case number to even indicate that it was the Priest file.

  "What the hell?"

  "You tell me."

  "Did you guys open some sort of ultra-secure, separate records room for the really sensitive cases or something?"

  "Not that I know of. Maybe they just decided to start purging the hard copies of old files."

  "No. They can't. Not for a certain number of years, anyway. Not unless they changed the classified records retention rules government-wide, which you and I would have heard about."

  "Maybe there are other files for this case that the Central Records guys didn't see."

  "Maybe."

  "How big was this file when you worked the case?"

  "Big. At least seven full file folders, and several boxes of hard evidence down in the vault. Bank records. Parish account books. Bryant's high school yearbooks. And fragments of bullets."

  "So what's the deal?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well, I hate to ask, but can you help me? I feel like I've been badgering those Central Records guys every other day for two weeks now. I don't want to burn any bridges."

  "No, you sure don't." Arkin thought for a moment. "Okay. Let me make a couple of phone calls."

  *****

  Back in his own office, Arkin sat at his desk, leaning forward and propping his forehead on the heels of his hands, his mind a jumble of thoughts and emotions. Was this a simple mistake by the records unit? No. If one of the many files had been left out, then maybe. But this was far too big an error for them to miss. So had the Priest file been purged? It was looking that way. But why? And did Hannah look worse this morning, or was it just his imagination? And why on Earth had that dishonest, incompetent creep been put in charge of his Indonesia security team? How did he ever get hired in the first place? How could anyone with a drop of honest blood in their bodies have sided with him after he lost the laptop and then lied about it?

  His heart pounding, he stood up, took a deep breath, clapped his hands together, then left the building for a walk along the river in the cool, crisp autumn air.

  He walked and walked, breathing deeply, trying to bring discipline to his mind. But his thoughts remained in shadow, focused on his wife's decline, reflecting on his fall from grace within DCI, on Sheffield's death, thinking back to the Pri
est case and all that it implied. Hearing distant shouts, he turned to see, on a riverside playfield in the floodplain below the walking path, two teams in a game of flag football. His eyes followed a receiver sprinting down the far edge of the field until they came upon a lone player standing still on the sideline watching the action. An extra. Arkin was too far away to see his face. But he was sure of the expression it bore. And all at once, as Arkin's gaze drifted to the hills beyond the playfield, he was back in any one of the several hometowns of his childhood, standing idle on the sideline of any of their playfields. The late-blooming "ethnic" kid in the WASP neighborhood. Newly arrived after yet another surprise relocation for the sake of his father's insatiable desire to move up to neighborhoods that were supposed to confer ever-higher status. The undersized, underdeveloped outsider and oddball. Forgotten, marginalized, and left on the sideline to ponder his inadequacy.

  From there, his memory inexplicably jumped to his father's federal court chambers. Arkin had just graduated from law school, with honors, and his father, sitting in a massive leather chair and still wearing his black judicial robe more than an hour after adjourning court, had mentioned that he was having his will updated by the trusts and estates section of his former law firm in Manhattan.

  "You know, I could update your will for you. You don't have to hand over thousands of dollars to some random lawyer in your old firm. I'd do it for nothing, with a level of conscientiousness you're only likely to find amongst family."

  "You think you could handle it?" his father had said dubiously, shaking his head as he asked.

  "Why not?"

  "I'm not some Ford assembly line worker with a crude proletariat pension. You think you'd have any clue how to treat all the different assets in my estate?" he'd asked rhetorically. "No, I think I'll stick with the professionals, thank you very much."

  As he was crossing the footbridge over the Animas and into town, the land all around seemed to darken. It was far too early for sunset, so Arkin at first thought it was his overactive imagination playing tricks on him again, seeming to add shadow to his vision to reflect his mood. But then he heard a deep rumble of thunder, and, turning to face the west, saw the leading edge of a tall, black storm cell just cresting the mountains, approaching town. Damn.

  Gauging the speed of the clouds, he guessed he had about four minutes before the downpour hit. He was, as usual, in a dark wool suit. But he had no coat or umbrella as it had, until then, been a clear and sunny day. He turned around and headed for the office at a trot. Along the way, he passed the usual mix of walkers, runners, and bicyclers. Even a woman on rollerblades being pulled along by her tethered Great Dane. They all moved with an apparent urgency, no doubt mindful of the imminent need to seek shelter from the storm. As he neared the office building, he passed a man walking in the opposite direction, dressed in common khaki pants and an un-tucked flannel button-down shirt. But it was the man's beautiful brown suede oxfords that caught Arkin's shoe lover eye. They looked to be of high-quality. Yet curiously, the man wasn't making for shelter, but seemed headed for the open and exposed river trail. He was going to ruin a fine pair of shoes, Arkin thought. Senseless.

  A lightning strike on the mountainside above drew Arkin's attention back to his journey. When he was 200 yards shy of the office building, the sky opened up, unleashing a deluge over top of his head. Damn. He ran for it. Nevertheless, by the time he reached the front door, he was soaked. Damn it. He stripped off his wet jacket and tie as he climbed the stairs to his floor and strode into his office. Realizing he was suddenly cold, he started a new pot of hot Rwandan coffee before collapsing into his chair. He took a handkerchief from a desk drawer and wiped the rain from his face. Though it was barely after four o'clock, the land outside was so dark in the shadow of the storm cell that it could have been mistaken for dusk.

  Arkin closed his eyes, his mind somewhat calmed by his exertion, but still troubled. The feeling reminded him of his last days in D.C., when so many things seemed to be going against him. He remembered it feeling as though he were caught in some sort of dark and terrible whirlwind created and fed by an almost unbelievable chain of events. Random events. Events and consequences that all seemed to defy logic. None of it in his control.

  The smell of coffee brewing brought him back to the present. He opened his eyes, unlocked a file drawer with a small key, and pulled the drawer all the way out until the very last file in the far back of it was accessible. From this, he drew out an unmarked file folder and laid it on his desk. A flash of lightning accompanied a simultaneous flickering of his office lights. A thunder clap. Another flash of lightning and the electricity went out. All was dim. Arkin let his eyes adjust, then flipped the file open. There, in a grainy old 5x7 black-and-white print copied from Lucricia Burris, was the Priest. He stood in the center of a group of people, a good six inches taller than anyone else, in full habit, looking grim. His hair and beard grown long and disheveled. Another lightning flash surged and faded, briefly illuminating the photo. And in the flash, Arkin focused on Bryant's eyes. Those crazy fanatic's eyes.

  So much of what had gone wrong in Arkin's life seemed to happen when he was working the Priest case. What strange fortune. He returned the photo to its storage place and slammed the file drawer home. He lifted the receiver of his phone and dialed a number he hadn't dialed in several years.

  "Killick."

  "Hello, Tom."

  "Nate?"

  "Es correcto."

  "Hey, you old pariah! How are you?"

  "Older. How's trade?"

  "Same old bullshit. You?"

  "Closing in on D.B. Cooper. How's the family?"

  "Grace is good. Starting to work part-time again now that the twins are in preschool. I still haven't built the garden shed she's been bugging me for since you lived here."

  "Still? You're worse than me."

  "I seriously doubt that. I remember you still having Christmas lights up on April Fool's Day. And you don't even celebrate Christmas."

  "Who doesn't like Christmas lights?"

  "How's Hannah?"

  "Okay at the moment. Pretty worn down by the chemo, but she's a tough cookie."

  "Give her our best."

  "Look, Tom, we are really overdue to catch up."

  "You're right about that."

  "But I'm actually calling you about a case."

  "A case? An MWA case?"

  "No. One of yours. I'm peripherally involved by virtue of the murder weapon."

  "Oh?"

  "Cortez, Colorado. Shooting of a high-profile lay minister. A firebrand."

  "I don't think I've been briefed on that one. But what can I do for you?"

  "Your man out here, Pratt, has been trying to get hold of an archived file that might help him in his investigation. He was running into the usual Central Records Unit indifference. When he finally got the file, it was empty."

  "Empty?"

  "All it has in it is a note directing all inquiries to the Director of Operations. That's you."

  "That's me."

  "So where are the case materials?"

  "Are you going to tell me what case you're talking about?"

  Arkin paused. "The Priest."

  "The Priest? Nate Arkin's holy grail? Are you shitting me?"

  "You've always had a gift for creative verbs."

  "Nate, seriously, what the hell does the Priest case have to do with a shooting in Cortez, Colorado?"

  "There are just some similarities I think your man should look at. If nothing else, it will give him some guidance on useful investigative techniques given that the cases are so similar. But why the special treatment, Tom?"

  "Special treatment?"

  "Why is the file empty? Why does it direct all inquiries to you?"

  "I have no idea. Maybe Roland put that in there before he died." Killick was quiet for a moment. "Look, Nate, I don't mean to be an asshole, but isn't this going a bit over the line for you? I mean, you looking through our files, and for a c
ase you aren't involved with anymore?"

  "Okay. As I said, I'm involved in the Cortez investigation by virtue of the murder weapon, a .50 caliber Serbian military sniper rifle. So everything is kosher. I'm not overstepping any boundaries."

  "Nate, you know perfectly well how—"

  "Look, I'm just trying to help your guy, Tom. Given my past involvement, I know that the Priest file would be a good thing for Pratt to look at. Believe me, it's the last thing in the world I want to reread."

  "Alright, alright. I just don't want you to get into trouble, that's all."

  "Hey, thanks for looking out for me, Tom."

  "Nate—"

  "I'll tell you what—you find the case file and send it to the kid, and I promise I won't even look at it. Scout's honor."

  "You were in the Boy Scouts?"

  "Fuck no."

  After an awkward silence, Killick promised to look into where the case materials had gone, and to see if he couldn't have them shipped to Pratt. He told Arkin he would personally oversee a search of the archives. From there, the conversation degenerated into forced talk of other things going on in their respective lives. When he finally rang off, Arkin realized that his hand and forearm ached from holding the telephone handset so tightly.

  *****

  Morrison threw Arkin's office door open.

  "Don't you ever knock?"

  "Worried I'll catch you waxing your ass crack? Come on, it's five o'clock somewhere. Are you up for—"

  "A pint. Yes."

  "Steamworks?"

  "Perfect."

  "Should we ask the Mormon?"

  "It would be the polite thing to do. Just give me five minutes to finish this guy off," Arkin said, gesturing to the chessboard on his screen.

  "Our tax dollars hard at work."

  "Go piss up a rope. I've been on the clock for 10 hours."

  "Some days you lose your charm faster than a buttermilk biscuit. Who's your opponent?"