by A K August
UGH!
I can't believe I'm going to paint his house. I should pour the paint over his bed.
No, I was doing this for me.
Painting helped clear my mind and I needed to clear my mind.
I pushed everything to the center of the room so I'd have access to the walls and prepped the space with plastic on the floors, dusting for any particles that might get stuck under the paint and taped off the receptacles and trim. I got to work painting the edges first; it's more time-consuming and tedious than using a roller, but you could get a good coat around the edge in one pass, then the room starts to come together by the time you have the roller in your hand. This was my favorite moment, having one wall complete. I like to stand back and admire my color choice, comparing to the old wall color, often talking to myself about what a great job I was doing. Rarely was there anyone else to tell me so.
Everything was going as planned after the first wall. The afternoon sun hit, and the reflected shade of lemon Starburst enveloped me. Excitement gripped as I moved on to the second wall, spying a box pushed in the corner when I was half done. It looked like it had been under the bed and had a layer of dust on the top. I set my roller down and vacuumed up the dust so it wouldn't float around in the room and start sticking to my newly painted walls. I pushed the box from the wall noticing the label said 'pictures.'
I try not to be nosy, but I know I am. I can't help it. It's one of the reasons I went into journalism. I don't like not knowing, having questions I can't answer, problems to fix, and being told not to touch them. Goes against my nature. So when a box of pictures from Anthony's past is sitting in front of me, the seal already broken on the top, I didn't think Anthony would be upset if I looked. It's not like I'm going through his bank statement or old love letters.
The box mostly contains loose photos, some wrapped in a rubber band, or stuffed in the sleeve you get from the developer with the negatives. Others were framed. I'm aware of my paint drying behind me, so I don't have time to review the box properly, but I flip through some of the framed photos, stopping by one, a group of guys wearing military fatigues. I see a much younger Anthony standing with his arms crossed, the guy next to him wearing a shit-eating grin and draping his arm over Anthony's shoulders. I freeze when I recognize the guy. He's also much younger than the last time I saw him, but I'd know him anywhere. It's Scott Dwyer. My stomach clenched as a wave of nausea hit, and I breathe through the impulse to vomit. I had been holding out hope that I was wrong, that I'd find something to explain what I heard, to clear Anthony, but I was just proving my theory.
Anthony looked much younger in the picture, as did Dwyer, a sparkle in their eyes, conviction of their beliefs, pride in the purpose and actions. Precisely as I thought Anthony would appear. What scared me was how innocent Dwyer looked, not a cold-blooded killer. And what is it I always hear from Veterans? The guys you serve with, they are your brothers. They'll do anything for you, and you'll do anything for them.
I look at others in the photo with Anthony and Dwyer, but they don't seem familiar. I take a picture with my phone and set the photo aside, now more interested in the box than my painting project. Another group photo of Anthony catches my eye. This time Anthony is smiling with the rest of the group, a mix of men and women, one in particular, bumping shoulders with Anthony is Mark Tennyson, CEO of Criterion and my boss.
This wasn't just about Anthony protecting or working with Dwyer, Anthony was the key, the link to Tennyson. Just how deep was he in? Annie was still in the house, not interested in painting. She stayed at the computer, compiling a cover sheet explaining all the information we'd found, how it was linked, and what conclusions or theories we were forming. I ran downstairs with both photos.
"Annie!" I shouted. "Look!" I handed her the photos as I airdropped the digital pictures and took to my computer to start a search matching the people in the pictures. The picture showed eight men in fatigues in a non-descript desert environment. Focusing on one face at a time, we got lucky about an hour later, coming across a social media post with a similar photo, the same eight men, different day, slightly different backdrop. Eight men are tagged in the post, and Annie notes the names.
We divide up the search, and fear starts to build. Five of the eight guys, including Dwyer, had worked with Criterion after their military discharge, and three were now dead. Their deaths were within a couple of months of each other and seemed isolated accidents, but considering that Dwyer had already killed at least one person, it seemed too much to be a coincidence. I had a bad feeling like spiders were slowly crawling up my back. I want to shake it off and run, but I don't know if they are poisonous; one wrong move and a spider could bite me.
Like if I accidentally recorded murder and gave a copy to the FBI.
"So five of the platoon had retired from the military and gone to work for Criterion. Anthony makes six. It looks like the other two are still in the military. One is deployed, according to his wife, somewhere in Afghanistan. The other had been promoted and worked out of the Pentagon, per his brother's social media account. He's very proud of his hero brother now working at the Pentagon." Sarcasm drips from Annie's mouth as she quotes the brother's remarks and I stifle a laugh.
Even in the middle of this crisis, discovering the people after me, have possibly killed several times, and are into some nasty shit, Annie can make me laugh.
Anthony could make me laugh at a time like this too.
My heart constricts. I'm torn. I should be angry, livid with Anthony. Keeping information from me, possibly even conspiring with the bad guys, I didn't know to what extent, but his network of friends was too closely tied for Anthony to be entirely out of that loop.
I pause. No, it can't be.
Anthony mentioned a mole in the FBI. Maybe he was the mole. As my brain processed the idea, my heart rejected it. I checked the time—three o'clock. Annie and I had been at this most of the day and had a working theory. One that put Anthony square in the center, whether as a pawn or as a principal player, I needed to figure out what was going on, and Anthony was unlikely to give me the answers.
If I asked about Dwyer and Tennyson, would he kill me?
Even with Anthony's lying and the evidence that was piling up against him, until this moment, until I asked the question, I hadn't ever thought I was in danger staying in his house with him.
I had the illusion that Anthony was just in over his head and he loved me; we'd solve this together, we were partners. I wanted to believe it. It's what kept me chained to the house even as doubt crept in. He'd be home after work, and we'd talk through everything. There'd be a reasonable explanation, an apology for lying, make-up sex, and then we'd move forward.
But the seed of doubt had grown like a magic bean, sprouting a sign that said I was a fool, I needed to run. Because, if I was wrong, then Anthony and I weren't real. My life could be over. Even if Anthony cared for me and couldn't pull the trigger, he could hand me over to Dwyer. I could be a sitting duck in this house.
"Annie, we have to organize all of this and make a copy, then get out of here. We have two hours to get moving before Anthony comes home."
"Where are you going to go? The first place he'll look is my place." Annie worried even as she finished typing up her summary.
"Don't know yet, I'm working on it."
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ANTHONY
I wake up to a buzzing in my ears. My head feels like it was run over by a car then pumped back up, only to be run over again. I don't remember drinking that much, but a slight shift of my eyes lands on the empty bourbon bottle. Ugh! I groan. That bottle was mostly full last night.
The buzzing continues, and I stick fingers in my ears to trying to clear the fog, but that doesn't seem to help. By the third time, I realize it's not in my ears but under my pillow. My phone.
I answer groggily.
Topher sounds like he's yelling, but it's more likely just a sensitively to everything in my condition. "Got a ping on her
phone. Texting you the address."
I'm awake instantly. "Where?"
"Cleveland Park."
"On my way."
I splash water on my face and brush my teeth if only to make sure I don't reek of alcohol when I see Katie. I'm in the car and navigating to Rock Creek Parkway when I get Topher's text a few minutes later. I push the address to my map and plot a route—ten minutes to destination.
GPS ends at a restaurant just off Connecticut Avenue. I park and exit my vehicle cautiously, taking a moment to examine my surroundings. It's a quiet Wednesday morning, lots of vehicle traffic, and pedestrians walking south toward the metro stop by the zoo or west to the international school. The diner in front of me has large picture windows allowing me to see everybody in the restaurant. I didn't see Katie, but her phone was inside. I had to go in.
I stood inside the door for a few moments, looking more closely at the diner's layout. It was a throwback to the 1950s, the black and white checkerboard floor immaculately shone, highlighting the cherry red leather booths with mini jukeboxes. The edging was all chrome and competed with the floor for shine factor. Pictures of diner patrons adorned the walls going back almost seventy years. No way the furnishings were original, but the restaurant kept up the freshness from when it was new. I expected a roller-skating waitress to come spinning out of the kitchen, but a middle-aged woman approached me, her hair pulled up into a swinging ponytail, wearing a white button-down shirt, dark jeans, sneakers and a nametag that said "Hi! I'm Sharon. Welcome to Bleaker's!"
I figure I would not be the first to ask where her skates went, so I opted to keep my mouth shut.
"What can I get you?" Sharon asked.
"I'm looking for someone." I looked around, ready to describe Katie.
"Are you, Anthony?"
I turned to her in shock and she chuckled. "She said you might react that way. Hang on."
She disappeared to the back, returning less than thirty seconds later, carrying a large envelope with my name on it, which she handed to me.
I accepted the envelope, and Sharon walked away, correctly assuming I wasn't staying for the food.
I opened the envelope as I walked back to the car and peeked inside, revealing a stack of papers and a phone. I got in the car and turned it on to get the air flowing. Eight in the morning and already, the sun was baking my leather seats.
I dumped the package on the passenger seat and dialed Topher as I started going through the material. The phone was the burner I got Katie to use for emergencies and was powered on, how Topher was able to ping its location. The papers looked like internal communications with Criterion and customers, although the customer names were numbers. Probably needed a key from Criterion to match up.
"Whatcha got?" Topher wasn't much on greetings when in the middle of an operation.
"I got an envelope with a stack of Criterion correspondence, Katie's phone and a USB drive, presumably with digital copies of what's in the envelope. No Katie. Just left with my name on it. I'm coming to you with it."
"Copy." Topher hung up, and I headed south down Connecticut before jumping back on Rock Creek Parkway and over the bridge to Rosslyn, where Topher's team had set up an office for this operation.
I dumped the package on his conference table, and five pairs of hands grabbed sections, speed-reading the contents.
"Where'd you get this?" One of them asked.
"Not sure. Whoever gave it to me left me Katie's phone."
"DAMN!" The corner girl spun around in her chair and looked at me, everyone else stopping what they were doing.
"Did you read through everything that's here?" She asked.
"No. Didn't have time, figured it might be stuff you know anyway. Looked like internal corporate shit."
"It's not. There's a two-page summary here that ties the material together with a theory. The theory points to a triangle of principles working three angles: corporate manipulation hired muscle/hitman and FBI internal mole."
Topher stood by me like a mirror, our arms crossed, feet shoulder-distance apart, a slight scowl on his face. We nodded in sync before Topher spoke.
"The summary includes names?"
"Yeah. Mark Tennyson, Scott Dwyer, and Anthony Reece. Says you're the mole."
I felt my knees buckle. "What?"
"Yeah, some pretty damning stuff. Includes Senator Hart in the mix but with a caveat that they were unsure at the time of summary whether Hart had gotten involved first and then pulled you in or whether your history with Dwyer and Tennyson brought you in first, then blackmailed the Senator to help. They got art."
Pictures. The box in the guest room with some frames half out. When the girl pushed the photos across the table, I recognized them.
"This is why she left." I sank into the chair. I couldn't stop looking at the pictures that damned me in her eyes. I put myself in her place. She saw the picture, Dwyer's arm draped over me during our tour, looking like best buds. I would have recognized him in the surveillance video, yet I didn't tell her. The only reason that would be is if I were in on it. She spent the day finding more to hang me with before she felt the need to flee.
"Shit."
Topher sat down next to me. "These pictures came from my house. Katie must have seen them and assumed I was in with Mark and Scott; otherwise, I would have told her. We promised. Partners. No secrets. I broke the promise."
"So, Katie left this for you?"
"Yeah. And she won't stop. She feels she only has part of the story. The pieces don't all fit yet. She'll keep digging; the only way out for her is through; she doesn't like to quit anything half done. "
Topher stood up and addressed the team. "Everyone read their section?" He got affirmatives and nods around the table. "Anything we don't already know?"
A young guy in a beanie spoke up. "She's got customer correspondence with numbered ID's. We don't have any of these numbers or know what the projects reference."
Across the table, another stocky guy in glasses reaches for the picture of my old platoon. "She's identified everybody in this picture and linked five of them to working at Criterion, three of which she references as having died mysteriously within months of each other."
Another girl with spiky red hair goes next. "We got a trail of money going from Criterion to Super PAC's to these customer numbers."
It was quiet for a moment. "Anything else?" Topher asks. Still quiet. "Okay, let's plug in this data to holes we have and see where that leads us."
Topher turns back to me. "You can hang out if you want, but it's gonna be boring here for a few hours while we get our heads wrapped around this. My focus will be trying to connect the customer numbers to names, so we can get a better picture of who's talking to whom. You should go to work, keep up the appearance and all."
After the hype of the morning, I felt deflated, my retreated hangover now returning with a vengeance. I hadn't had anything to eat or drink since I was rudely awakened, and I needed to be at the office in fifteen minutes if I didn't want to be late. I had a choice; I could be on time in yesterday's rumpled clothes, unshaven with bloodshot eyes, or I could be late and at least look presentable, even if I just a shell.
"We have a shower here," Topher answered for me.
KATIE
Claire opens the door when I knock. There's no surprise on her face, why should there be? I had to announce myself at the gate to get buzzed onto the property. I'm disappointed to lose the element of surprise, but while my showing up unannounced would have given me insight, I still get to ask my questions face to face and gauge how Claire reacts.
"Katie! How lovely to see you. Please come in."
She ushers me into a den-like room. I look around at the spacious area, shelves filled with books of all sizes, some hardbound, many paperbacks. A small writing desk is canted near the window, and four comfortable azure leather chairs frame the fireplace. Claire gestures to the chairs and pours me a glass of her lemonade as I sit. Taking the drink, I wait for Claire to pick up h
er glass and sit across from me before jumping in.
"How much do you know, Claire?"
She looks perplexed. "I'm not sure what you mean, Katie. Are you talking about you and Anthony? I could tell when you visited that he was more taken with you than you were with him. He tends to jump in without looking. It can be overwhelming. Just be honest, it goes a long way with him."
This was not at all how I wanted this conversation to go, and thinking about my relationship with Anthony was not something I wanted to do until I got answers. I had to adjust my questions.
"Is that how your relationship with the Senator has lasted?"
She smiled. "I suppose so."
"Does Anthony spend a lot of time with his uncle?"
"Not recently, but when he was growing up, Jackson and Anthony spent a lot of time at the farm during the summer."
"I see." I really didn't, but I couldn't get Anthony's face out of my head or heart; cooking together, worry etched as he smartly found excuses for me to use the smaller paring knife; snuggling on the sofa, protesting too much about watching a rom-com when I could tell he secretly loves them; yelling at him when he didn't want to clean the paintbrushes, him listening, washing them thoroughly, all while grinning at me like a fool. This was why you didn't get emotionally vested in a subject you were researching, made you a horrible interviewer.
"What's going on, Katie?" Claire reached across and grabbed my hand.
Tears fell down my face. "I don't know."
ANTHONY
I shouldn't have worried about being late to work. No one so much as glanced at me when I walked into the Hoover building at 9:45 a.m. Even Jeff absently said hello in the halls, not questioning that I'd just arrived and hadn't been to my desk. It didn't seem like the Headquarters of the FBI when I arrived. More like a geriatric rehabilitation center just after they served breakfast when patients were absorbed in eating their food, the workers relaxing in the lull in responsibilities, refill their coffees, gab at the water coolers, check social media.
