One Perfect Lie

by Lisa Scottoline

  Chris hurried up the sidewalk, his head down. The last thing he needed was another meet with Alek, especially one he had to drive to Philly for. Alek had set it for two o’clock, and Chris had barely had time to change after practice. It had been an awful morning, with the team distraught over Abe’s death.

  Chris hustled toward the massive sandstone-and-brick tower, rising seventeen stories and occupying the entire block of Second and Chestnut Streets, in the colonial section of the city. The building was on the National Register of Historic Places, though its history was undoubtedly irrelevant to the people outside, enjoying the last few puffs of their cigarettes.

  He reached the building and hustled up the steps, through the stainless-steel doors, and inside to the metal detector, while his eyes adjusted to the darkness. There were no windows in the entrance area, and the brass fixtures were vintage, shedding little light. He slid his wallet from his back pocket—not his Chris Brennan wallet with his fake driver’s license, but his real wallet with his true Curt Abbott ID, his true address in South Philly, and his heavy chrome badge, with a laminated card identifying him as a Special Agent in the Philadelphia Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, & Explosives, or ATF.

  Chris handed his open wallet to the guard, who scrutinized his ID and handed it back. He worked undercover, and he had to show his ID because he wasn’t at the office enough to be recognized by the security guards, especially on the weekends. He put his ID on the conveyor belt with his keys, walked through the metal detector, and collected his belongings; then entered the lobby. He experienced a sense of awe every time he crossed the dark marble floor, starting from twelve years ago, when he was first hired by ATF.

  The massive space was flanked by two carved staircases and topped by an ornate plasterwork rotunda that soared three stories high. At its apex shone a circle of daylight rimmed by an upper deck with a stainless-steel railing. To Chris, the history of the building mirrored the history of ATF, and he was proud to be an ATF agent, even though he had to report to Alek Ivanov, who acted like a gangster even though he was a Washington bureaucrat transferred to the Philadelphia office.

  Chris pressed the elevator button, uncomfortable to be in public as himself, as if he were wearing the wrong skin. He hated coming in while he was undercover. It wasn’t procedure, and he knew it wouldn’t have happened during any other operation, further evidence of the lack of support he was getting from Alek.

  The elevator arrived, and he stepped inside and pressed the button, his thoughts churning. As a child, he hadn’t known what he wanted to be when he grew up, but he wanted to help the underdog—maybe because he was the underdog, raised in so many different foster homes. He’d been drawn to law enforcement and after college, had chosen ATF, an underdog of an agency that lived in the shadow of the FBI. Chris’s favorite movie was The Untouchables about the legendary ATF agent Eliot Ness, and after a string of successful operations, he’d felt honored when everyone started calling him The Untouchable. But lately, the nickname bothered him, reminding him that he was literally untouchable, disconnected from people.

  He got off the elevator, took a right, and walked down a hallway that ended in a locked door, intentionally unmarked so that no member of the public would know it was ATF. For the same reason, ATF wasn’t listed on the directory downstairs and none of the security guards would confirm that ATF was even in this building, having been instructed not to do so. ATF’s Philadelphia Field Division employed two hundred people—Supervisors, Special Agents, Task Force Officers, Detectives, Certified Explosives Specialists, Fire Marshals, Intelligence Research Analysts, and many others, but none of their names was on the directory, either. Unsung didn’t begin to describe their status. Unknown was closer to the truth.

  Chris unlocked the door and let himself into the office, which was as quiet as expected on a Saturday afternoon. He went down a gray-carpeted hallway past walls of institutional yellow, unadorned with any artwork. The hallway led to a large room of gray cubicles that looked like an insurance office except for the Glock G22 or subcompact Glock G27, agency-issued weapons, hanging in a shoulder holster on the cubicle’s corner, evidence that an agent was in.

  Chris reached the conference room and opened the door to see Alek sitting at the head of the round table. The Rabbi was nowhere in evidence, though he was supposed to be here, too. “Hey, Alek.”

  “Curt, thanks for coming in.” Alek half-rose and extended a hand, which Chris shook, though he could barely bring himself to meet Alek’s small, dark eyes, set deep in a long face. His dark hair thinned in front, and a thin scar on his cheek looked like it was from a knife fight, but it was from a car accident at the mall.

  “Where’s the Rabbi?”

  “He’ll be right back.” Alek sat down. “You know, that’s all you ever ask me. ‘Where’s the Rabbi?’ ‘Where’s the Rabbi?’”

  Suddenly the door opened and the Rabbi came in, holding his laptop. “Curt, so good to see you!” he said with a broad grin, showing teeth stained from excessive coffee. His real name was David Levitz, but everyone called him the Rabbi because he was the smartest agent in the Division.

  “Hey!” Chris gave the Rabbi a bear hug, almost lifting him off his feet, since the Rabbi was only five-foot-five and maybe 160 pounds. He was fiftysomething with frizzy gray hair, sharp, dark brown eyes behind thick, wire-rimmed bifocals, and his thin lips were bracketed by deep laugh lines, earned over the years.

  “Sorry I missed you last night,” the Rabbi said, which was code for Sorry I didn’t rescue you from Alek.

  “No worries,” Chris said, which meant, Can we shoot our boss and get away with it?

  “Let’s get started, lovebirds.” Alek gestured Chris into the seat opposite the Rabbi, rather than next to him, and it struck Chris that Alek was the Coach Hardwick of ATF. Technically, Aleksandr Ivanov was the Group Supervisor, or GS, of the Violent Crimes Task Force, and the Rabbi was Chris’s contact agent, to whom he reported when he worked undercover.

  “Okay, so Alek, why did you call me in?”

  “I’m pulling the plug.”

  “On my operation?” Chris wasn’t completely surprised. “There’s no reason to do that, Alek. I disagree—”

  “I went out there to meet you. Sleepy little town in the middle of nowhere. It’s nothing but a total waste of time, and now that some teacher offed himself last night, there’s a possibility of you being blown.”

  “I won’t be, and anyway, I’m not so sure it’s a suicide. The jury’s out for me, and it could be connected to the case.” Chris still couldn’t believe that Abe Yomes was really gone. He had liked Abe, and it had shocked him to the marrow to hear that he was dead, much less by his own hand. It was awful, and it sent up red flags in terms of the operation, which had been dubbed Operation Varsity Letter.

  “What facts do you base that on?”

  “His personality. It doesn’t make sense that he would commit suicide.”

  “You didn’t know him that well. You’ve been there two days.”

  “I get the guy. He’s a fun, upbeat guy. Connected to friends and students. They all loved him, they called him Mr. Y.” Chris flashed on the scene at practice this morning. The players had been so distraught when they heard the news. Raz had been dropped off by his mother, after he had obviously been crying. Coach Hardwick had made them practice anyway, but they played horribly and left crestfallen.

  “I don’t see the point.”

  “That’s because you never heard the justification for the operation. You were in D.C. when I got the authorization—”

  “I read the file. I’m completely up-to-date on your reports.”

  “It’s not the same thing, and besides, there’s no downside. It costs nothing. My rent is $450, and I buy my own clothes.”

  “Don’t forget we had to pay to place you in the school. The superintendent wanted four grand to send the teacher and her old man on a vacation.” Alek rolled his eyes. “Your tax dollars at work
.”

  “But still, it’s cheaper than a house or a boat, and the upside is great.”

  “You know what your problem is, Curt? Your premise is wrong.”

  “How? It’s cost–benefit. The typical budgetary analysis—”

  “No, your premise is that you’re the one who makes that analysis. But you’re not. I am. I’m shutting you down.”

  “You haven’t given it a chance. Let me break it down.” Chris commandeered the Rabbi’s laptop, logged into the network using his password to get beyond the ATF firewall, then found his private files. “Did you see the video? Did you even look at it?”

  “I read—”

  “It’ll take fifteen seconds. Watch.” Chris hit PLAY, and the video showed a shadowy image of a tall figure forcing open a door in a dark shed, then hurrying toward bags of ammonium nitrate fertilizer. The figure reached for one of the bags, and as he did so, he came closer to the camera. The man’s features were obscured by a ball cap, but it captured the lettering of his blue T-shirt, which read Musketeers Baseball.

  “So?” Alek sighed theatrically.

  Chris hit STOP. “We know that ammonium nitrate fertilizer is the go-to ingredient for IEDs made by domestic terrorists and that its purchase, transport, and storage is strictly monitored by Homeland Security and it’s restricted to those with a permit, mostly farmers. The only other way to get it is theft.” Chris pointed to the screen. “This video was taken by Herb Vrasaya, one of the farmers in Central Valley, whose farm is located five miles from the high school. Mr. Vrasaya grows corn and he has a permit to buy and store the fertilizer. He installed the camera two weeks ago, because he thought rats were getting into the shed and he wanted to see how.”

  “I read that part.”

  “Mr. Vrasaya sent the video to our office, like a good citizen. ‘If you see something, say something,’ and he didn’t want his permitting jeopardized. I think this video is evidence of a bomb plot that has a connection to the baseball team at CVHS. The blue Musketeers T-shirt is issued to only the varsity players, the boys I coach. It’s a badge of honor. I’m inflitrating the team to identify this kid and learn why he’s stealing fertilizer. And it would be no problem at all for an underage kid to rent a box truck in Central Valley. All the locals know where to go, to a guy named Zeke. I went there myself to see how hard it would be to rent a truck and what the pitfalls would be. I met the guy. He always has them available, and there’s no paperwork.”

  The Rabbi interjected, “Remember that it’s April, Alek. April 19 is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing. Anybody trying to blow something up would be stockpiling fertilizer now. It takes a ton of fertilizer for a major explosion. That’s fifty bags. Bottom line, I agree with Curt. I’m backing him.”

  Alek threw up his hands. “Why? Because some kid has a T-shirt? He could’ve gotten it at Target. Curt, you said so in your own report, didn’t you?”

  “What I wrote in my report was that I talked to the manager at Target, and he told me that only the Booster moms buy T-shirts at Target. The store never sells any large or the extralarge, only the extrasmall and small.” Chris thought ahead to preempt Alek’s next objection. “And don’t think that the kid in the video wore the T-shirt to frame a member of the baseball team, because there’s no way they could’ve known about the security camera.”

  Alek scoffed. “But what kind of an idiot would wear a team uniform to steal something?”

  “Not an idiot, a kid. I’ve been a teacher for two days and I can tell you they do dumb stuff. Especially the boys. They don’t think anything through.”

  “Not that dumb. All it takes is one kid to buy the T-shirt or one mom to buy a larger size.”

  “Then assign another agent to follow up with Target. I can’t do it myself with my cover, and the video alone isn’t enough for probable cause. We can get the name, address, and credit card of everybody who bought a Musketeers T-shirt in the past five years. I think it was a newish one because the color stayed true.” Chris had washed four T-shirts thirty times to see when the color faded. The answer was, the twenty-third time.

  “We don’t have the agent to spare.”

  “I’m making progress. Like I told you, I’m in: I picked my guy, Jordan Larkin.”

  “Is that the name of your unwitting?” the Rabbi asked. An unwitting was the ATF term for an informant who was being pumped for information without knowing that he was part of an undercover operation.

  “Yes, and he’s perfect. It took me only two days to befriend him, that’s step one, and step two, I’ll cast my net wider to find who stole the fertilizer.” Chris hit REWIND, stopping the video when the shadowy image first entered the room. “The height of the doorway in the shed is eighty inches, and this figure is over six feet tall, between six-one and six-five. There are five boys on my varsity team who are over six feet tall. Three of them are the ones in my AP Government class, including my unwitting—Jordan Larkin, Raz Sematov, and Evan Kostis.” Chris kept talking, though Alek glanced at his watch. “Step two is to get to know the other two players who are over six feet tall, Trevor Kiefermann and Dylan McPhee. I’m investigating them and I know I’m going to get a break.”

  “When?” Alek snapped.

  “I have three days left until the nineteenth, if what they’re planning is an anniversary bombing. Give me three days.” Chris pointed again at the video. “In addition to which, the timing makes absolute sense for it to be a baseball player. A player leaving practice when it was over would arrive at Mr. Vrasaya’s farm, park his car, and run to the shed exactly when this happens, which is 6:20. I drove the distance myself. Then he still gets home in time, and nobody is the wiser, except for the fact that his trunk is filled with ammonium nitrate.”

  “What does he do with it then? Does he hand it off? Does he store it at his house?”

  “I don’t know but I’m gonna find out.”

  “One question, Curt,” the Rabbi interjected. “What about your unwitting, Larkin? Do you suspect him?”

  “No,” Chris answered. “Again, I’m going with my gut. Jordan Larkin doesn’t fit the profile for a domestic terrorist. He’s quiet, a rules follower, and a good kid.”

  Alek ignored them both. “I still don’t understand what the teacher had to do with it. Yomes, the one who committed suicide.”

  “Maybe Abe knew something. Maybe he saw something. Maybe he overheard something. He was a connected, inquisitive guy. It’s too coincidental otherwise.” Chris hadn’t yet found the connection, but he’d asked around at practice and determined that all five boys had Abe Yomes for Language Arts. “He was the one who asked me about Wyoming.”

  “So it was a lucky break he died.”

  “No, it wasn’t,” Chris shot back, cringing inwardly. He couldn’t think of Abe’s death that way, and before Abe had died, Chris had decided to immerse himself in Wyoming trivia, in order to answer Abe’s many questions.

  “It’s a suicide, no question, according to the locals. Yomes hung himself. His boyfriend told them he had a history of depression.”

  The Rabbi interjected, “Curt, I understand that Yomes was African-American and gay. Did you see any facts that would suggest the possibily of a hate crime? Any evidence of a neo-Nazi group? Are you seeing anything like that at the high school, or on the team?”

  “Not yet,” Chris answered, then turned back to Alek. “Let the locals think whatever they think. Yomes told me about his depression himself, but it sounded like it was in the past. I’m going to follow up.”

  “But Yomes has no connection to the baseball team, does he?”

  “Other than he taught my five guys? No, not that I know of, yet.” Chris had been wondering if there was some secret connection there, maybe one of the players was in the closet, but he didn’t have enough information on which to float a theory.

  “Curt, I’m unconvinced.” Alek shook his head. “We have bigger cases.”

  “The Oklahoma City bombing was the most deadly act of domestic te
rrorism in the country. It doesn’t get much bigger than that. In this political climate, with feelings against the government, it’s only a matter of time until it happens again.”

  “We’re not hearing anything. Nothing unusual, no chatter, no leads.”

  “That could mean they’re good at it. Or a small group. Or a loner. I’ve got my eye on a few kids on the team, who spoke against the goverment in one of my classes. I did an exercise to see who felt that way. I’m asking for three days. Three more days, until the anniversary on the nineteenth.”

  Alek frowned. “Curt, you’re killing me. You’ve made a name for yourself in the most dangerous operations. I can’t believe you want this one, with a bunch of high-school kids. It’s like Jump Street, for God’s sake!”

  “The hell it is,” Chris said, simmering.

  The Rabbi turned to Alek. “Let him see it through. We owe him that, don’t we? After Eleventh Street?”

  Alek kept frowning, but said nothing.

  Chris thought back to the Eleventh Street Operation, in which he’d gone undercover as a Kyle Rogan, a low-level cocaine dealer, infiltrating a gang of violent dealers near Wilmington, Delaware, believed to have connections to the Sinaloa cartel. Chris had been about to make a “buy-bust” in a run-down house on Eleventh Street, but the moment of truth had come when the drug dealers had insisted that Chris sample the product, which was one of the few things that the movies actually got correct—undercover ATF and FBI agents were typically asked to sample the product to prove they weren’t cops. In theory, it was otherwise illegal activity, or OIA, since the government had an acronym for everything. But refusing could endanger their lives. Chris had thought of another way out.

  No can do, Chris/Kyle had said to the three thugs sitting opposite him, behind the black duffel bag of bricks wrapped in plastic, which the bearded drug dealer had split open with a key.

  You won’t try some? Why?

  I can’t. No liquor, no drugs. I’m a Muslim.

  Who are you kidding? You’re white as a sheet. A Ku Klux Klan sheet. The bearded dude had burst into coarse laughter, and so had his cohorts.