by D. F. Bailey
Eve felt her heart jump. Be careful, she told herself. “Like you said, he’s a mystery.”
“Mr. Finch?”
He shrugged, knowing he had to respond with the truth, even if it was deceptive. “Right now? I’ve no idea where he is.”
McClaugherty sat back in his chair and surveyed the folders on the table. “He seems to be the one who got away. But we’ve got a BOLO out on him. One day he might slip into our net.”
BOLO. Be On the Look Out. Eve smiled at that. “Yeah. Maybe he will.” She felt an urge to wrap up the meeting to avoid any more probing questions.
But Finch wasn’t satisfied. He decided to change direction. “What about Brodie’s military records. Were you able to track the serial murders back to Iraq in oh-four?”
“It’s like your reporting in The Post. The department of defense sealed the records related to Deacon Brodie’s participation in matters the DOD considers vital to national security.” McClaugherty hesitated. “It took some doing, but in the end the Army cooperated. Partially.”
“To a minor degree,” Wishart added. “Most of what we gathered from them was redacted. Fifty percent blacked out. In any case, that trail’s run cold. We got our hands on Jeremiah Rickets’s report following the chopper pilot’s murder. Same with the deaths of Rousseau and Cottrell. But nothing implicated Brodie in any crimes. As you know, Brodie put them up for posthumous battle awards.”
“I get all of that.” Finch leaned forward again. “But here’s what concerns me. Just after Rousseau and Cottrell died, Brodie transfers back to DC. One or two months later he’s discharged. A captain in Army Air Assault? Believe me, they’re a precious commodity. It looks like someone inside the brass ring knew the truth about him and eased him out.”
“That’s all locked up in the sealed file.” McClaugherty’s eyes revealed that all this was beyond his control. “Furthermore, he earned an honorable discharge.”
“Did you see his medical records? Something they could use to push him out the door. Maybe a psychiatric evaluation?”
McClaugherty glanced at Wishart with an expression that asked how much they should disclose. Wishart replied with a slight nod and continued, “Yes. But most of it was redacted, too.”
“Did you read the diagnosis?”
Another pause. Finch knew he was getting close.
“Yes. I saw the psychiatric diagnosis.” Her eyes narrowed, as if she needed a few seconds to recall the precise phrase. “Narcissistic sociopathic disorder.”
Three words. But there it was. Finch now clearly saw the hidden life of the man who’d tried to kill him. A man so consumed with his own self-importance that he destroyed everyone who failed to embrace his superiority.
“What about his IQ?”
“One fifty six.”
Finch glanced at Eve. “A Mensa man.”
“Over the top,” she replied.
“Thank you. We all know that says a lot,” Finch said and folded his hands together. He felt the relief that comes from having a nagging uncertainty finally resolved. “I’ve got one last question. That day in Ashland. How did Brodie find J.R. way out in the woods?”
“So here’s what we found,” McClaugherty said. “We checked all of Brodie’s digital communications. His company, BrassWing Media, is state of the art. Deep into the dark web. He assigned one of his employees to hack into everyone involved with this thing. Chernovski, Kinsella, J.R., Turino. And you.”
When Finch heard this he steepled his fingers against his lips. He recalled warning J.R. about the dangers of communicating via email. Or had he?
“There was one email that caught our attention,” McClaugherty said. “From Turino to Kinsella. In it, Turino claimed he’d talked to you about Deacon Brodie.”
“That’s a lie.”
“Maybe, but Brodie read that email. Turino told Kinsella you knew Brodie murdered fifteen men on that chopper. And you were going to break the story in The Post.”
“No, absolutely not.”
“Maybe not, but that’s how you became a target.”
“Before he drove up my driveway on Mayne Island, I never met or communicated with Turino. Never.”
“Yeah, well. Turino was known for stretching the truth.”
“Or just inventing it.” Finch took a moment to absorb the facts. The lies. The distorted reality that had consumed him. “So in Deacon Brodie’s mind, that email linked me to everyone else.”
“It looks that way. Then later J.R. emailed you the link to Tony Turino’s interview. A rookie move. For a vet working in security, turns out J.R. wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”
Finch felt his pulse quicken. “What are you saying?”
McClaugherty’s lips formed a narrow frown, a look of scorn. “I’m saying, in a way, he brought this on himself.”
Finch flattened his palms on the table. “The hell he did. This is classic Bureau bullshit. Blame the victim. J.R. did nothing to cause any of this.” He waved a hand at the set of files. “Nothing!”
Eve rested her fingers on his forearm. The gesture allowed him to settle, and as his spine eased against the back of the chair, he remembered J.R.’s broad smile, the way his lips spread across his face knowing what luck he’d enjoyed in life. To be raised by his aunt. To survive Iraq. To love Teesha. Finch recalled his baritone voice, singing his crazy chant into the air loud and clear. “Black on a bruise.” Now it was gone. The long stream of luck run dry. Finch covered his eyes with his hands and forced himself to breathe through the pain.
Eve leaned forward and drew McClaugherty into her gaze. “Maybe you could pick up where you left off.”
McClaugherty nodded once and continued. “So Brodie’s guy tracked the thread to the IP address in the Ashland library. From there he learned that J.R.’s girlfriend, uh Tee —”
“Teesha,” Eve said.
“Right. Teesha rented the log cabin from the Ostermann family. She set up the rental agreement through email. Which included the address of the place.” McClaugherty stopped and ran a hand over his chin. It was an awkward pause suggesting there was more to the story. One that didn’t end well.
But Finch wanted all the details. “And then?”
McClaugherty studied him as if he needed to gauge some unknown dimension in Finch. “And then he tracked the last email you sent to J.R. You said you’d found Sinclair. That you were driving him up there to meet J.R. Some time around 10 p.m. you said.”
Finch nodded and glanced away. Ashland was roughly equidistant between San Francisco and Seattle. The moment he and Eve and Sinclair began their journey up to Ashland, Brodie drove down to J.R.’s hideout in the woods. Finch pressed his lips together in a tight seal and looked at Eve. He had signed their death warrant. J.R., Teesha and Sinclair — gone because of his mistakes.
“Just remember that it was J.R. who emailed you.” Eve paused to ensure he was listening to her. “He contacted you first.”
“But I was the one who emailed him about Sinclair.” Finch looked at his hands as if the guilt lay there, in the fingers that had typed a simple message to his friend: I have John Sinclair with me.
“No. It doesn’t work like that,” she said. Her voice was firm, unyielding. “It doesn’t work like that at all.”
“Oh, but it does,” he said, and curled his fingers into fists. Then he realized there was no one left to hit, no one to strike out against except himself. He unfurled his fingers and laid his hands flat on the table again. He raised his head and let his eyes sweep over the ceiling tiles. Just above him, half of one tile had broken away and exposed a nest of electrical wiring. Funny how the flaw revealed the hidden system that ran everything. The idea brought a question to his mind and he asked himself, so which are you — the flaw, or the system? Maybe both, he thought. Yeah, both.
“Don’t kid yourself,” he murmured as he turned back to Eve. “It worked exactly like that.”
“So, you know what to do,” she said, still feeling certain of herself. “You put
it in a box, Will. Then you bury it.”
He shifted his head away, unable to bear her penetrating gaze. One more box. He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes and had to wonder. Where would he find another box, and even if he did, could he find an empty place to bury it?
※ —— ※
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Open Chains
Copyright © D. F. Bailey 2019: Registration #1160865
ISBN: 978-1-9995405-4-8
Published by CatchwordPublishing.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, graphic, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner, except where permitted by law, or in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Open Chains is a work of fiction. The resemblance of any characters to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Names, characters, places, brands, media, situations, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Acknowledgements. I am extremely grateful to Lawrence Russell, Rick Gibbs, and Stephen Bett for reading an early version of Open Chains. Their insights, wisdom and advice were invaluable. I’m also indebted to my “review crew” — the team of copy editors who helped me polish the final draft of the novel: Cynthia Gould, Barbara Plum, Dave Henry, Dr. Robert F. Abbey, and Ed Baisden — DFB
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