Agent Out

by Francine Pascal

  “Kim,” Will said, stopping in his tracks and turning back toward him, his fist already raised to knock on Malloy’s door. “Anything we need to get straight? Before we go in there?”

  Kim narrowed his eyes. “I don’t think so.”

  And what do you mean by that, Mr. Taylor?

  Will nodded tersely, rapping loudly on the door.

  “Come,” Agent Malloy’s harsh voice barked out from inside the office. Hearing it, Kim could feel his gut tightening with apprehension.

  Here goes, he thought as Will turned the knob on the high-security metal lock plate and they strode into the chief’s office.

  CATCH THAT KILLER

  Will’s first impression was how tired Malloy looked. He was seated behind his smooth, empty desk, the bright sunlight gleaming on the edges of his high-backed leather chair, his hands folded neatly on the leather desk blotter in front of him. Will could see the redness in his eyes, the rawness of his drawn face.

  It’s cold in here, Will noticed. He’d noticed the same thing the last time he was here. For some reason, the chief seemed to thrive in a dry, frigid office air-conditioned to within an inch of his life. He and Kim stepped to the front of the desk and stood side by side at parade rest, waiting for Malloy to say something.

  He let them wait. The leather chair squeaked as Malloy leaned back, flicking his dark eyes back and forth between the two young trainees. As usual, it was utterly impossible to guess what he was thinking.

  “You can sit if you’d like,” Malloy began. He sounded tired, too, Will realized. The chief’s computer was running, but the afternoon sun gleamed on its screen, rendering it unreadable from this side of the desk. He and Kim remained standing. “Taylor,” Malloy went on. He was rubbing his eyes with fatigue. “First things first. Progress report on the lollipop case.”

  “The lollipop case—yes, sir,” Will began, clearing his throat. It was a bad beginning, but he couldn’t help it. The problem was that he had almost nothing to report. All he was thinking about were Gaia’s piercing eyes and her soft, shimmering hair. “I can’t report any progress beyond the written statement I submitted at 1430 hours yesterday. We’re still wailing for lab results, as I reported in writing. Beyond that, I’m afraid the case has hit a dead end, sir.”

  Malloy nodded. He didn’t look mad—but you could never tell. It was like trying to predict which number a roulette wheel would land on.

  “Kim Lau,” Malloy went on, turning to face Kim. He hooked a thumb at his computer monitor—Will still couldn’t see what was on it. “Agent Bishop and I have been looking over your course data, and in particular your performance in the Hogan’s Alley exercise. You really did quite well—I didn’t have a chance to focus on your individual performance before.”

  “Thank you, sir,” Kim said. To Will’s ears, he sounded surprised.

  “I’m sure your friend Taylor has followed the rules and hasn’t told you anything about the murder investigation he’s working,” Malloy observed dryly. “But assuming you can speculate about the case, do you think your particular insights might be of help in this matter?”

  “Yes, sir. Absolutely, sir,” Kim said fervently. Will wanted to make a shushing gesture—Kim was so excited, he seemed like he was about to grin from ear to ear. Will knew how badly Kim wanted to put his formidable skills to use on a real case. Not just for personal advancement—they all wanted that—but as an intellectual exercise, to find out if his methods and techniques would work outside of the classroom, out in the real world.

  Malloy abruptly reached into a desk drawer and produced a small object that he slung across the table at Kim. As Kim picked it up, Will saw that it was an active duty badge—exactly the kind Will had been given days before. Kim took an avid look at the laminated card and then slipped it into his pocket. Glancing sideways, Will saw that Kim couldn’t quite contain the triumphant smile that played across the corners of his mouth.

  “You’re hereby promoted to full active duty,” Malloy told Kim. “I want you and your partner Agent Taylor here to do whatever you can to catch the serial killer before he strikes again.”

  “Yes, sir,” Kim repeated happily.

  So now we’re partnered up, Will thought. He wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He hated to admit it, but the idea made him nervous. What if Kim performed so well on the case that he actually caught the killer on his own? Will had worked too hard just to let Kim come in and figure out the whole thing by himself.

  “Now, Taylor,” Agent Malloy went on in his gravelly voice, leaning forward on the desk and staring keenly at Will. “Here’s how we’re going to work this. Right now, you’re going to open your mouth and tell me everything you know about Gaia Moore’s whereabouts and actions.”

  Will was already shaking his head. “I’m sorry, sir. I don’t know, sir.”

  “Think before you speak,” Malloy went on, tapping his fingers on the desk. His voice was low and dangerous. “You have no idea how important this is—how much pressure I and this whole division of the bureau are under because of that damn girl. Twelve hours ago she left this facility, and as far as I know, you were the last person she saw. It’s inconceivable for me that you don’t have some inkling of where she went.”

  “I don’t, sir,” Will insisted, staring straight back into the chief’s eyes. It wasn’t hard to keep up the staring contest because what he was saying was the truth. He had no idea where Gaia was. They were supposed to meet for dinner, but she’d never shown up. “I’m sorry, but it’s true. She refused to tell me anything about her plans.”

  Because she saw this coming, he realized. And she didn’t trust me to keep my mouth shut.

  Malloy didn’t blink as he returned Will’s stare. Then finally he leaned back in his chair, nodding sadly. “All right,” he told them both. “Back to work on this case. And Will, if I find out you’ve withheld evidence about Agent Moore, I swear I’ll make you wish you never even heard of the FBI.”

  “I understand, sir,” Will said tightly.

  “And if either of you receive any kind of contact from Moore, I want you reporting it straight to me. Is that clear?”

  They both told him that it was.

  “Dismissed. Catch that killer,” Malloy said briskly. He had already turned his attention back to his computer screen.

  Will and Kim glanced at each other and then turned in unison to leave. Will could read Kim’s face easily. He was absolutely thrilled to be working the lollipop case. Will wished he felt the same way.

  Damn it, Gaia, Will thought helplessly as they walked through the freezing office air away from Malloy’s desk. Where are you?

  the bloodstained luggage she’d never seen

  BARE AND FEATURELESS AND EMPTY

  Gaia wasn’t exactly sure where she was—the outlying townships and suburbs that surrounded this part of Baltimore all seemed to fade together into interlinking networks of residential streets, highways that led through crowded commercial areas with parking lots, gas stations, and small, lurid shopping malls. She had been very tired of driving already before this strange journey with the man who called himself Winston Marsh, who was pointing at the intersections and telling her where to go. Marsh kept glancing behind them, as if he knew they were being followed and was making only a halfhearted attempt to prevent it.

  This is where he wanted to talk? Gaia thought. I wonder why?

  They were in a small town park, in one of the nameless checkerboard townships that surrounded Baltimore’s industrial outskirts. Gaia’s car was parked in the street, barely in view of the stone-and-wood park bench they sat on. The overcast sky had darkened as this strange afternoon wore on, and now a mild wind was whispering through the dark treetops that surrounded them. There was nothing else in the park except a few other scattered benches, some of which had lost their wooden slats and were just strange-looking, L-shaped cement foundations. A tall white bandstand stood in the center of the park, surrounded by thinning grass. The bandstand’s festive white pa
int was peeling. Its six-sided floor was bare and featureless and empty.

  They were alone except for three other people. An elderly man in a dark raincoat leaned on a cane, a hundred yards away. The man sat peacefully, tossing bread crumbs from a paper bag down onto the cracked asphalt, where a sea of dirty-looking pigeons waded around, cooing audibly. A mother sat at another spot in the other direction, past the bandstand, reading a magazine while her toddler played in a sandbox a few feet away. They were far enough away that their faces were just white blurs.

  Gaia and Marsh sat side by side on a worn-out park bench, surrounded by clumps of weeds and a discarded Mountain Dew can that had faded nearly white. It was colder now, and Marsh had turned the collar of his suit jacket up against the wind.

  “I retired from the FBI a couple of years ago,” Marsh began in his rich, raspy voice. “And since then I’ve been working as a detective. I do fairly routine stuff just to keep my hand in—skip traces, woman checking if her husband’s cheating on her, occasionally a missing person case.”

  I don’t need your life’s story, Gaia thought impatiently. She was picturing Catherine tied up in the back of a car, pounding her fists against the metal trunk lid as she was moved to another secret location for whatever mysterious reason. By now she’d be pale, hungry, and exhausted. Too tired to fight back. Gaia couldn’t tolerate the vision. She bit down hard and tried to shake it off.

  “That’s how this started. A week ago a man named Sanders came to see me.” Marsh gazed at the dismal park surroundings as he spoke. “Early fifties, graying, soft-spoken—a professional or academic type, I thought immediately: a nice guy but frightened. Out of his mind with fear, actually. He told me he’s got a twenty-year-old daughter, raised her alone, the girl went off to join the FBI. Now she’s disappeared—vanished into thin air—and he can’t get anywhere with the bureau.”

  “What do you mean?” Gaia frowned. “Won’t they tell him—”

  “Oh, they’re not going to say a word,” Marsh said confidently, “because the girl is dead, at least according to the current FBI thinking. That part’s quite clear: when Sanders told me what he was going through—all his frantic phone calls to Quantico, when they wouldn’t answer his questions—I immediately thought, ‘Dead trainee.’ This is how they would handle it if they were reasonably sure she was dead.”

  The duffel bag, Gaia thought suddenly. The image flashed into her mind again of the bloodstained luggage she’d never seen. She remembered Malloy’s insistence that she forget about looking any deeper into it—that the FBI was ready to drop the whole matter for good.

  “There are procedures for informing family members of deaths in the line of duty,” Marsh explained. “I remember from my time in the bureau. It’s something I know much more about than I’d like to—I’ve had to do it way too many times. But the point is, the FBI has to allow a reasonable amount of time before declaring a missing agent ‘presumed deceased,’ even if they’ve privately closed the case. And you have to understand that the bureau wouldn’t take that step lightly. They must be nearly certain of whatever evidence they’ve got. Pretty much a guarantee that you’re not going to find anything new—you’d better get ready for bad news.”

  Closed the case, Gaia thought angrily. They’re just going to sit and wait and do nothing until it’s time to say she’s dead. “You didn’t tell that to Catherine’s father,” Gaia said. “Did you?”

  “Of course not. I told him I’d look into it.”

  “Why?”

  Gaia was watching the old man feeding the pigeons as she listened.

  “See, I’ve got this little problem. I think the girl’s alive,” Marsh said calmly. “I’m not sure why; there’s really no evidence that shows it, and the trail just gets colder by the minute. But there’s something wrong with the story. Bright girl, shy but well adjusted, looks pretty in the graduation photo I saw. Decided she wanted to join the FBI; the father was against it. Afraid of exactly this sort of thing. He didn’t want his daughter placing herself in harm’s way—he just had this terrible feeling that one day he’d get the phone call, the one every parent dreads. But during her training?” Marsh squinted critically. “The day after she called him on the phone to make vacation plans, and suddenly they can’t find any trace of her? That’s extremely unusual, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Gaia said forcefully. That’s what I’ve been saying all along—that’s why I’m here. “So what happened? Where is she? What was she doing in that basement?”

  “My guess is that she’s been abducted,” Marsh said. “The facts don’t lead us there, though. The duffel bag doesn’t tie in until you acknowledge that she could have been going somewhere, traveling on her own, when it happened. I talked to the Virginia police. Someone named Parker—local sheriff who knows the girl in question—apparently worked with her. He asked around on his own if anyone saw her going anywhere; he’s sent me notes on some eyewitness sightings.”

  “Sightings in Quantico?” The wind had picked up, blowing Gaia’s hair around her head—she impatiently reached up to brush it away. “When? Who saw her? Where was she going?”

  “Don’t get excited; it’s hardly positive identification. She might have stopped for gas on her way out of Quantico, heading north. I’ve got it all written down.” Gaia imagined this private detective on the phone to Gus Parker, a man with whom she and Catherine had worked side by side. “If you come with me, I’ll show you the evidence I’ve gathered.”

  “Come with you? Where?”

  “Just a place nearby,” Marsh said easily. “Someplace safe—where you can wash your face and drink a cup of coffee and we can have a calm, rational conversation about the whereabouts of Catherine Sanders.”

  “We’ve got to go back to that house,” Gaia argued. “Rossiter’s house. She was there.”

  “And that’s one place she’ll never be taken again,” Marsh snapped. “Full of cops waiting to arrest us. Come on—you’re not thinking clearly. You need to calm down.”

  “Don’t tell me to calm—”

  “We’re being watched,” Marsh interrupted in the same easy tone. It took Gaia a moment to register what he’d said.

  “The blond man?” Gaia said quietly. She was pretending not to look at the strange, motionless figure in the perfect suit and raincoat sitting on a bench at the far edge of the park. She spoke softly with her eyes fixed on the tips of her shoes. “He’s watching us?”

  “No, he’s just a businessman on his lunch break,” Marsh said sarcastically. “Silly me. Never mind.”

  Gaia realized that the woman with the toddler and the old man with the bread crumbs were gone. Gaia hadn’t seen their departure, but it had obviously happened. They were alone in the park with the strange man in sunglasses. The wind was gusting, blowing the dark trees that flanked the field.

  “Okay, but who is he?” Without looking over, Gaia tried to put together a mental image of the blond man in sunglasses. It was impossible; he was too typical looking and too far away. “Have you seen him before?”

  “Never,” Marsh said assuredly. “No idea who he is.”

  One more thing to worry about, Gaia thought. She could feel her shoulders sinking with fatigue and a growing hopelessness that she angrily shrugged off.

  “Okay, look: I just want to make one thing clear to you. I’ve got to find Catherine.” Gaia gazed intently into Marsh’s eyes. “Do you understand? I’ve got to. You may be the best detective in the world, but it’s still just a puzzle for you to solve. For me it’s a little more personal.”

  “I understand.”

  I hope you do, Gaia thought. Because I really wouldn’t like to find out you’re wasting my time. I wouldn’t like that at all.

  “We’d better leave,” Marsh said quietly. Glancing quickly over, Gaia saw that the man in the sunglasses had stood up. “When I tell you, we’ll stand up and head for the car.”

  Judging the distances, Gaia realized they could get there pretty fast—before the man
across the park reached them—but they’d have to start moving soon.

  “Now,” Marsh said suddenly, clapping Gaia on the shoulder. “Let’s move.”

  In unison, they rose to their feet and headed for the car, and behind them the man in the sunglasses kept watching. Gaia didn’t look to see if he was following.

  Kim

  People tend to make the same mistake about profilers that they do about psychiatrists. They assume that just because we diagnose other people’s neuroses and psychoses, we must have no neuroses and psychoses of our own. As if our study of the human mind should somehow qualify us as Zen masters or something. Well, of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth. I’ve got just as many neuroses as the next guy. The only difference is, I do my best to be aware of them and own up to them as often as possible. Today, for instance, I’ve been all over the map. Elated for an hour, then guilty for the next, and then elated again.

  Malloy has given me the opportunity of a lifetime here. An actual murder case—not hypothetical, not theoretical, not a practice run, not a game. The real deal. The moment I’ve been training for since my first criminology class in junior high. This is everything I’ve ever wanted.

  But then comes the guilt. I think about Catherine. My mind flashes through all the horrific crime scene pictures I’ve seen over the last few years. I know the common fate of a missing girl in this country. I know the statistics, and I know what the bodies look like once they’re found. I know it all too well. We have to see these kinds of images. We have to see them over and over again until we become immune—or at least until we claim we’re immune. But when I think about sweet and brilliant Catherine as just another one of those bodies …