Authors: Keith Yocum
“Judy, I need you to do two things for me.”
She just looked at him, her mind whirring with confusing thoughts and images.
“Judy?”
“Yes?”
“Are you listening?”
“Yes.”
“I need you to tap into any database you have that can tell us where this fellow Voorster is staying here in Australia. I hope he’s still here. Can you do that?”
She nodded.
“And lastly—and you’re free to go home afterward—can I have Phillip’s mobile number?”
Judy frowned, started to speak, frowned again, and put down her drink.
“I’m trying to catch up with you, Dennis, but I’m having trouble. Maybe I’ll never catch up to you. But Phillip?”
“I just need his mobile number.”
“He has two mobile numbers: one for work, one for personal use.”
“Excellent. I can get his numbers through other channels, but it would take a while. Please write them down.” He pushed the yellow pad and pencil to her.
She picked up the pencil and wrote out two phone numbers.
“Great,” he said. “You can go now.”
She pushed the pad back to him and stared at the two numbers.
“I’m hungry,” she said.
“I can order something,” he said.
“Where are my pajamas?” she said.
“You should go home,” Dennis said. “You looked completely exhausted.”
“You’re an odd one, Dennis Cunningham.”
“I guess.”
“I would like something to eat,” she said. “And I want my pajamas. And don’t give me any more of your shit.”
Dennis gave her the same T-shirt she wore the night before, and she changed out of her clothes in the bathroom while he called room service for a salad and two more drinks.
She came out with her folded clothes, wearing only a white cotton T-shirt and her underwear.
While they waited for room service, Dennis felt the warmth of self-satisfaction spread over him. The unexpected joy of his fledgling relationship with Judy, combined with the fact that he was too preoccupied to be depressed, buoyed him immensely.
Judy had piled her jewelry together on the dresser, carefully laying out her thin gold necklace next to her earrings.
She ambled over to the bed, sat down, crossed her legs, and stretched the T-shirt edges over her knees so that it created a tentlike effect.
“I’m not going to ask you why you want Phillip’s phone numbers, and I’m not going to ask you about this bloody monstrous map and classroom notes. But Dennis, you didn’t really explain why you came back to Australia nor how you got that long, thin scab at the corner of your right eye. Looks like someone scratched you. I gather you think Garder is back here?”
There was a knock at the door, and Dennis took the tray from the food runner and paid in cash. He brought the salad and utensils to Judy on the bed and put her fresh glass of wine on the bedside table. She took the plastic wrap off the salad and attacked it.
After several bites, she said, “So?”
“So what?”
“Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
“Are you going to answer every question with another question?”
“Am I?”
Judy grabbed a piece of lettuce off the plate and threw it at Dennis.
He laughed, picked up the lettuce, and put it in the bin.
“I found Garder in Europe: in Switzerland, actually. It’s a long story. I had him in front of me and was holding him at gunpoint, but he got away.”
“That’s how you got the scratch?”
He nodded.
“So you think he’s back here now?”
“No. In fact I’m pretty certain he’s not here. He’d be stupid to be here, and while I think he’s lots of things, stupid is not one of them.”
“I don’t follow you,” she said, chewing slowly. “I’m missing something. You’re chasing a fellow, and you’ve traveled all the way to Australia to find him, but you’re pretty certain that he’s not here. So you’re not really chasing the fellow.”
“Correct. My boss thinks I’m chasing Garder, but I’m no longer chasing him.”
Judy put down her fork on the edge of the white porcelain salad dish and placed the dish on the bed.
“I need a drink,” she said, turning behind her to get the glass of wine off the bedside table. “You’re making me dizzy. So are you going to tell me what you’re doing, or do I have to ask a thousand bloody questions?”
Dennis frowned. “OK. Here goes. Just do me a favor. Don’t judge me or say I’m crazy or being self-destructive. OK? That’s my therapist’s job.”
“Mmm,” she said slowly.
Dennis told her of his strange discussion with Garder in the hotel room, about the young agent’s claim that he’d discovered something very wrong going on in Western Australia and his attempts to shine a public light on the project. Judy asked him several questions, intrigued with Dennis’s narrative.
“All right, I grant you all of what you just told me, but I still don’t understand what you’re doing back in WA? Dennis, am I daft? You’re leaving something out.”
“I’m back here to discover what Garder stumbled upon in the first place,” he said. “If he found it, then I should be able to find it. Then I’ll decide what to do afterward.”
Judy slowly turned and looked at the map on the wall, and then turned back to look at Dennis. He took a sip of the Macallan he’d been nursing. She stood up and walked over to the table and sat in the chair facing him.
“Mmm,” she said, eyeing him.
“You promised not to judge me.”
“I have a headache,” she said. “Do you have any aspirin?”
“I’ll get you some.”
“Then can we go to bed?” she said. “You’re exhausting to be around.”
They did not make love that evening. Judy curled herself into a ball around one of the large decorative pillows and fell sound asleep. Looking at his watch on the bedside table, he did a quick calculation, picked up his cell phone, and moved to the table. He opened a small black leather notebook, found a phone number, and dialed it.
“Hey, Joey, it’s Dennis,” he said. “Yeah, Dennis the Menace.”
Dennis went back and forth with Joey for several minutes, exchanging gossip on which personnel were being transferred where. Judy woke at one point and took Dennis’s pillow to cover her head.
Dennis finally got to the point of the call. Would Joey do a favor for Dennis and run an activity report on two phone numbers? Dennis warned that the numbers were Australian personal mobile numbers and he gave the dates of coverage he needed. He hung up, turned off the lights, and gently recovered his pillow from Judy. She turned, threw an arm around Dennis’s chest and sighed; he was not sure whether she was awake or dreaming.
***
She said almost nothing to him while driving west on the Stirling Highway, toward the Indian Ocean and the setting sun.
They had spent the day apart; Judy had worked until early evening, and Dennis had busied himself with his map and sticky notes. When they finally connected, she seemed distant and curt. He could not tell whether she was angry or just tired, but he insisted they see each other that evening to review his notes on her problem.
“Let’s get you out of Perth,” she said, driving away from the city.
“What are we having for dinner?”
“Fish and chips,” she said. “In Swanbourne: near the water. You like fish?”
“Yes,” he said. “Don’t love it, but if it means you’ll sit down and look at these phone records, then I’ll eat fish.”
She did not answer his challenge. After another ten minutes of silence, Dennis—who was no stranger to awkward silences—became restless.
“Are you pissed off about something?” he said.
“I’m not sure.”
“How can you not be sure?”
“I’m just trying to figure you out,” she said. “Simon is due back late next week, and I need to act. And I would have already acted, but you have convinced me not to disclose anything to the AFP. And I can’t figure out whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing.”
“I don’t blame you for not trusting me. We hardly know each other, but if you don’t believe I can help you, then perhaps you should contact the AFP. I wouldn’t blame you.”
She drove on for another minute in silence.
“Is there something I should know about you?” she asked. “I mean are you suffering from some kind of psychological problem that I should know about? You told me that you’re seeing a psychiatrist.”
“I’m seeing a psychologist, not a psychiatrist,” he said.
“What’s the difference?”
“One gives meds, the other does talk therapy. I need talk, not meds.”
“Is it because of your wife’s death? Was that it?”
“Yes,” he said, turning away and looking at the gas stations and small strip malls whizzing by.
“I’m sure it must have been awful to lose your wife,” she said. “But are you seeing the psychologist because of your work or anything like that?”
“No: just my wife.”
“I’m sorry. You must have loved her deeply.”
“I think it was more guilt than love.”
“Guilt? What do you have to be guilty about?”
“It’s a little complicated.”
“Everything’s complicated with you. Go ahead, try me,” Judy pressed.
Dennis stared out the side window.
Judy was determined not to speak to save Dennis discomfort; she desperately needed to find out more about this man. She found him both thrilling and strange, but good
strange or bad strange?
They drove on for another minute, and Dennis suddenly started talking as if he were halfway through a story.
“I usually asked Martha—my wife’s name was Martha—to pick me up from Reagan Airport or Dulles, depending on where I was coming from. This one time I was scheduled to stay in New York for one more night, but at the last moment the meeting was canceled, and I switched flights. But I forgot to call Martha, and when I got in it was eleven p.m., so I just took a cab. I called home while in the cab and no one answered.”
Judy leaned a little toward Dennis because he was talking very quietly. She pulled up to the small fish-and-chips shop and parked. The sun was sitting low on the horizon, and a cool Indian Ocean breeze whispered past the car. She wound down her window to let the air in.
“When I got home it was near midnight, and Martha wasn’t home. Her car wasn’t there, either. So I got a little worried and called her cell phone, and it just went to voicemail. After I hung up, Martha called me right back. She said she’d seen the call was from me. I asked her where she was, and she said she was with her girlfriend, Mary. She sounded a little tipsy, and I told her to take a cab or just stay over, but she insisted on driving and said she’d be home as fast as she could. I called her back a few minutes later to talk her out of it, but it went to voicemail.”
Judy heard the tension in his voice.
“About forty-five minutes later I got nervous because she should have been home by then. And that’s when I got the call: Maryland State Police. Martha had been in an accident. She had lost control doing eighty miles per hour on the Beltway and hit an abutment: killed instantly. Toxicology report later showed she was drunk.”
Judy reached over and put her hand on Dennis’s arm. “I’m very sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have asked you about this. Let’s go inside and get a bite to eat.”
Dennis did not move.
“She wasn’t with Mary that evening,” he said, staring at the silhouetted Norfolk pine trees bordering the street and the beach beyond. “She was having an affair with someone she worked with. Guy was divorced. It had been going on for a while. She hadn’t expected me home that evening, so she was going to spend the night with him.”
Judy felt like the air had been sucked out of the car, and she experienced a brief wave of dizziness. She dropped her hand off his arm and started to speak, then stopped.
“The guy she was having the affair with called me the next day and told me the whole thing. He was in tears, and he said he was originally not going to tell me, but then changed his mind. He thought I should know. Guess I’m glad he told me, sort of. Never occurred to me that she’d be having an affair. Afterward I just sort of got depressed, couldn’t get out of bed. Normal depressed stuff, I gather. Got a referral to see this psychologist. Hate the psychologist sometimes, but it seems to help. So there you have it.”
***
Dennis had barely touched his fish but seemed very interested in the chips. Judy tried to make small talk, but he appeared to have lost enthusiasm. In the past thirty minutes she had learned a great deal about her American friend, and she was now not sure it had been such a good idea to press him. She had felt the pain and self-doubt caused by a wayward spouse, but Dennis’s experience was far worse.
“Can I show you some phone records,” he said, in what she now recognized as the Working Dennis Voice.
“Yes, of course,” she said.
He pulled out several sheets of paper that had long rows of numbers.
“These are the records of Phillip’s mobile numbers, the two numbers you gave me,” Dennis said. “I’d like to see if you recognize any of the numbers that went in and out of those phones on these particular days.”
“Dennis, before I do that, I have to ask where you got this information. It’s not easy to get access to phone records in Australia. I mean, forget the fact that these numbers are my former husband’s— which I find disturbing enough—but these records are highly confidential, even for someone with my authority.”
“Why is it necessary that you know where this came from?” he asked. “Can’t you just look at it? I think we’re onto something here.”
“No, I won’t look at it until you tell me. I would feel more comfortable with the information if I knew it was authentic.”
“It is authentic. And I’m trying to help,” Dennis said.
Judy softened her voice, realizing he was agitated. “Yes, of course I know you’re trying to help, but I’m a law enforcement professional, Dennis. Surely you can see that? And I would be in serious trouble if I was party to hacking into Australian phone records.”
Dennis put down the papers. “These records came from US intelligence sources that I have access to.”
Judy put her hand on top of Dennis’s left hand as a way to soften her persistence.
“But where did they come from? I need to know.”