Authors: Keith Yocum
Roby looked at Dennis, and for the first time a faint smile crossed his face like a thin, passing cirrus cloud. “You never met Geoff, did you?”
“No, can’t say I did.”
“He is a very interesting guy. Just a real stand-up person. Full of life and interests. One of the most amazing people I ever met. Very positive all the time. And nice. He was just drawn to different things, but not so much that you’d think it was strange or weird. He was one of a kind. And . . .”—Roby bit the inside of his cheek distractedly—“I still can’t believe he’s gone. It’s totally screwed up.”
“Well, there must have been something that Geoff didn’t like,” Dennis said, “something that pissed him off. Stuff like that.”
Roby smiled again. “Just bullshit.”
“Excuse me?”
“Bullshit. He hated bullshit; he had a pretty low threshold for people who were full of it or pulling a fast one. He was kind of an idealist in that regard.”
“OK, so where is he now?”
“I don’t know. Everyone’s asked me that. I think something terrible happened to him, and it makes me sick to my stomach.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Just a hunch. And why are you here? And those other two guys a couple of weeks back?”
“Did you know what Geoff did here? Did he ever talk about his work or his assignments at the consulate?”
“I know this is going to sound strange, but I really had no idea what he did. He worked directly for the CG and seemed to travel a lot around the state. But no, I don’t think he ever told me what he did directly, just that he did special work for the CG. But he loved getting out of the office, I know that. He thought Western Australia was one of the coolest places on Earth.”
Dennis looked at the clock radio. Its blue luminescent numbers showed 1:22 a.m. Sitting on the edge of his bed in a T-shirt and boxer shorts, he watched the numbers change and waited.
It might have been the flicker of another minute gone by, or the accumulation of fatigue, but he suddenly reached for his reading glasses, opened a small notebook, and keyed in a phone number on his Agency-issued cell phone.
After several rings a woman answered the phone.
Dennis paused slightly and then said, “Beth?”
“Dad?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Hey, how are you?” she said.
“Fine. And you?”
“Things are fine, thanks. How are you feeling?”
“I’m fine,” he said. “I’m back at work and all fixed up.”
“That’s great,” she said. “You had me worried there for a while.”
And just as he expected—and dreaded—an uneasy silence fell like warm rain, coating everything in dullness.
“How’s the job? And Nathan?”
“The job’s OK. And Nathan got a raise, so that helps things out a little.”
“Nathan still work for the university?”
“No, Dad, he hasn’t worked for the school in two years. I told you about it before.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said, panicking. This was how all the conversations went with his daughter.
He could hear her sigh, the exhale skittering past the mouthpiece. He had scripted out a conversation to help him get past the awkwardness, but he floundered.
“How’s work for you?” she asked, breaking the silence.
“It’s fine,” he murmured. “Just peachy keen.”
“You know I still don’t know what you do,” she said, almost as an afterthought. “Don’t you think that’s kind of weird?”
“I’ve told you many, many times, Beth,” he said. “I work for the government.”
“Yes, but what part of the government?” she pried. “Is it the Department of Agriculture? The FBI? The SEC? For a man who maybe was home for fifty percent of my childhood, you sure did a lot of traveling for the government. And then to leave Mom and me alone for so much time, well, you kind of notice things like that, Dad . . . But I don’t know why I’m bringing that up now. That’s water under the bridge.”
Dennis tried to concentrate on the clock’s luminescent numbers.
“Well, Nathan thinks you’re a spy, but I told him even a spy must go home from time to time. He reads too many spy novels, you know.”
“I’m not a spy,” Dennis said.
“Yes, I know. I tried to guess what you did when I was a kid, but Mom said not to worry about it. Remember I sat down with you when I was in seventh grade and read off a list of facts that I had pieced together about what you did? Do you remember what I guessed you did?”
“Vaguely,” he said.
“I thought you were in the Secret Service. You know, protecting the president. It seemed pretty glamorous. Well, I don’t really care who you work for, and I don’t know why it was such a big deal to me back then, or even now.” She sighed again.
“I work for the CIA,” he said.
There was a pause.
“The CIA?” she said.
“Yes.”
“
The
CIA?”
“Yes.”
“I thought you said you weren’t a spy? Jesus Christ, Dad!”
“Not everyone who works for the Agency is a spy, Beth.”
“Dad, I’m twenty-eight years old and you just tell me
now
that you work for the CIA? Why in God’s name would you hold that back for so long?”
“Agency rules, or the old rules, anyway. That’s all changed now.”
“Did Mom know?”
“She figured it out. But I didn’t tell her in so many words, and she knew better than to ask.”
Dennis had not planned to tell his daughter that he worked for the Agency, but given the circumstances and his morose state of mind, it just seemed the thing to do. Not that it was anyone’s business what he did, really.
“If you’re not a spy, what do you do for them?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
“Sorry, Dad,” she said. “After all these years I’m not letting you off the hook. So what do you do?”
“I’m an investigator.”
“What do you investigate?”
“Things.”
“Dad!” she shouted. “Stop being so obstinate.”
“Damn,” he muttered, squirming on the bed. “I investigate things that have gone wrong for the Agency. Beth, don’t ask me any more questions, please. I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
“Jesus,” she said. “Where are you now?”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“In a hotel room,” he said, a little confused.
“I mean where? In what country?”
“Why do you want to know that?”
“Just answer me, Dad.”
“I’m in Australia.”
“Good grief.”
There was a longer pause, and Dennis could hear himself breathing in the warm beige plastic mouthpiece.
“Dad, what time is it there right now?”
“One thirty-four a.m.”
“Have you been drinking?”
Dennis glanced at the nearly full bottle of Macallan.
“Not really.”
“Tell me the truth,” she said sternly. “Are you feeling all right? You had me really concerned after Mom died.”
“I’m much, much better, Beth. Really.”
“But you’re back at work. Is that such a good thing?”
“Of course it is. I’ve got nothing else going on in my life except work. And you.”
Dennis was unaccustomed to spontaneous expressions of intimacy, so even this small acknowledgement about Beth’s importance in his life surprised and worried him at the same time.
“Dad, as hard as this is for me to say, you have to listen to me: we need to get on with the rest of our lives. Mom would expect that. You need to move forward. I’m glad you’re working again, but you have to make sure you keep your head in the right place, OK?”
“Sure. I’m doing fine.”
“The CIA!” she said suddenly, as if in the middle of another conversation. “I can’t believe it.”
“Um, try not to blurt it out from the rooftops, if you don’t mind, Beth,” he said.
“Don’t be silly. When are you going to call me again?”
“I’ll do it again soon,” he said.
“That would be nice,” she said. “I’d call you, but I don’t know how to get hold of you. And you don’t use an answering machine at home, even though I sent you one two months ago. Can you give me your phone number now?”
“It’s against the rules,” he said.
“Of course,” she said. There was a long pause.
“And I really need to be getting to bed,” he said.
“Bye, Dad. Um, thanks for calling.”
“Bye, Beth.”
Dennis tried to sleep, but he felt restless and strange, as if someone else were lurking in the room. He got up and drank another glass of water, urinated, and lay down again. It took him until 3:30 a.m. to finally fall asleep, and when he did, he dreamed of Martha. She was in a hospital with a serious illness, but he could not find out which room she was in. It was a dream of frustration and confusion; it was so upsetting that he woke up an hour later, tired and a little disoriented.
Judy bent over and looked at the hole in the wall. It was the size of a twenty-cent coin and surrounded by an extraordinarily small amount of blood splatter.
“Quite unusual, you’ll agree,” said Stanley Lynch, the medical examiner. “One bloody powerful round. Now follow me.”
Lynch, the legendary State medical examiner, took Judy and her partner, Daniel, into the dimly lit hallway of the old house.
“Here,” Lynch said, pointing the thin beam of light from his signature stainless-steel pen light.
Judy could see another hole, this one slightly larger than the entrance hole on the other side of the wall.
“My dear Judy,” Lynch said with relish, “we are far from done. Look here.” He turned around and positioned the light beam onto yet another hole, about the same size, directly across from the bullet hole they had just viewed.
“Come,” Lynch commanded. Judy and Daniel walked down the hall and followed the examiner as he entered a shoddy bedroom. Clothes were strewn on the floor, a laminate dresser was piled high with soiled socks and shirts, an armoire on the opposite wall had both doors open showing clothes hanging off hangers.
“Here,” Lynch said, pointing the pen light beam at another hole, this one at chest level. This hole was perhaps slightly larger than the entrance hole in the hallway. Walking around the bed with the histrionic flourish that was Lynch’s hallmark, the aging examiner pointed his light at a larger hole on the far wall of the bedroom.
“I’ll save you from walking outside,” he said, holding up a distorted piece of brownish-reddish metal in a plastic bag. “The round continued through the wall and finished its trajectory, quite exhausted, mind you, in the wall of the old outhouse out back. Quite extraordinary. Never seen a weapon do this before. Never, Judy. Ever.”
Judy looked at Daniel; they were both a little perplexed because Lynch was so rarely surprised by anything he saw at a crime scene. The sixty-eight-year-old examiner was beyond retirement age but had been kept on because of his irreplaceable knowledge of scenes of mayhem. He was, of course, quite taken with himself and loved to speak in dramatic flourishes, but investigators were happy to look beyond that to get at the nuances he brought to the business of explaining the mechanics of how humans kill each other.
Lynch retraced his steps out of the bedroom, down the hallway and back into the living room. When Judy and Daniel caught up with him, he clicked the pen light illuminating the opaque plastic sheet on the floor that covered the body of a young man.
“The round was fired from just inside the front door,” he said, shining the penlight onto the closed front door, “went through our young friend here, then through the living room wall here.” He focused the beam onto the original hole in the wall. “It went through the hallway, through the bedroom front wall, through the outer wall and continued to the charming little outhouse and lodged in an outer wall beam there. If the outhouse had not the good fortune of having supporting wood beams made of the finest West Australian jarrah, the round would undoubtedly have entered the street beyond, perhaps causing more mayhem.”
“Why would anyone use such a powerful weapon in close quarters?” Daniel asked.
“That is an excellent question,” Lynch said. “The weapon is undoubtedly some kind of assault rifle we have never seen before. The shooter must have known of the weapon’s prowess.”
“But Mr. Lynch,” Judy said slowly, “if the shooter were going to kill this man, he could have used any number of weapons to do so, with far less danger of hitting neighbors walking dogs or children playing in a yard. I don’t see why the shooter would risk so much collateral damage—”
“Unless,” Lynch interrupted, “there was someone else here to see the effect of this weapon.”
“Ah, of course,” Judy said, nodding.
“Of course,
what
?” Daniel said.
“I think we can assume that the killing was partly show,” Judy said. “Our friend here must have had guests who witnessed what happened. They’d certainly be aware of how preposterously dangerous the weapon was. It was a message, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Lynch?”
“That would be my reasoned judgment,” he said.
“Do we know who the deceased is?” Judy asked.
“Ethnic Chinese. There’s no identification.”
“Let’s see his face,” Daniel said.
Lynch pulled back the opaque plastic sheet.
“Hell,” Judy said.
Lynch and Daniel looked at her.
“I know that man,” Judy said. “Daniel, we arrested him two months ago in Fremantle. Don’t you remember?”
“You arrested him, Jude,” Daniel said. “Remember, I was on the other side of the warehouse when they came running out.”
“Yes, well, I arrested him then,” she said. “Felt sorry for the poor fellow. He had a terrible limp: ran him down without much trouble.”
“What was he arrested for?” Lynch asked.
“He was caught with a group of men who were stealing cars and shipping them to China,” Daniel said. “Don’t know what this one was doing out.”
“His lawyer got him out,” Judy said. “Remember? It was my ex, Phillip. I got pulled from the case.”
“Right,” Daniel said, nodding. “I remember now. Well, I hope Phillip got paid.”
Lynch and Daniel looked at Judy, then back at the dead man on the floor.
“Who owns the house?” Judy asked.
“It’s a rental,” Lynch said.
“Find anything?” she asked. “Drugs? Cash?”
“Darlene nearly urinated on the floor, she was so excited,” Lynch said.