Authors: Andrew Mayne
A
SSISTANT
D
IRECTOR
B
REYER
sits behind his desk and has me go through the entire sequence of events that led to my conclusion. After I'd drunk two cups of coffee and showered, I wrote what I thought was a reasonably cogent email to him and Ailes.
Breyer replied by asking me to meet him in his office on a Saturday. I still haven't heard from Ailes and that has me really concerned. Usually he has my back on these kinds of things. I guess this is part of the growing-up process.
Breyer is wearing a polo shirt, which makes the meeting seem a little more casual. But that's a deception. I'm here alone with the most ridiculous allegation of my career.
“The pope?” asks Breyer. There's no humor in his voice. No trace of sarcasm.
“Yes.”
“There are only two audible words on the entire tape from this man and you think he's the pope?” He asks me this as if he's a father questioning me, his teenage daughter, about the dent in the family car.
Do men see these power relationships in the same way? Do other women? I put that question on the side burner.
“Yes . . .”
He sits back and folds his arms. “Could you run through how you arrived at this conclusion again?”
I make sure to detail this point by point. I don't even have to look at my notes. I had to prove this to myself first, and I'm the most skeptical person I know. “Travel records show he was in the area at the time the audio recording was made.”
“What records?”
“I have access to the SABRE database from that period.”
“You have access?” He sounds suspicious, and rightfully so.
“An informant has access.”
He raises an eyebrow. “Is this person an official informant?”
“No.”
“How do you know this database is even real?” replies Breyer.
“I don't, but I trust the man who provided me with the information. He was the one that helped find the Alsops' foster child, Marty Rodriguez.”
“And how did you come to find this person?”
Oh boy. I didn't want to go there. At least Breyer knows about Damian. I don't have to explain that again. Once was embarrassing enough. “The individual known as Damian Knight contacted me.”
Breyer looks straight at me. “You've been in contact with Mr. Knight?”
“Yes. He still contacts me. I've logged every call. You can check with the unit tasked with tracking him down.”
Ailes has taught me to do things so by the book that it's too heavy for them to throw it at me.
Breyer pauses for a moment to process all the information. “So, Blackwood, let me understand this. A man we believe may be a felon, with a demonstrated pattern of psychotic behavior, puts you in touch with another man, whom you refuse to name and has dubious access to restricted information, and that man says the pope may be guilty of manslaughter?”
“No. I drew my own conclusions.”
“Put yourself on my side of the desk. How does this sound?”
“Ridiculous. Utterly absurd. But we have the audiotape.”
“Yes. I had the lab run a comparison first thing this morning.”
“And?”
“It shows a sixty-three percent match to the pope's vocal pattern.”
“Isn't that enough?”
“No. If you compare the voice sample to our linguistics database, it matches over twelve thousand recorded voices. It could just as well be a false positive.”
“We can check, right? He's older now.”
“We can make inquiries into the pope's whereabouts in 1985, but that's going to raise some questions. The Vatican has no reason to tell us. Especially if our reasons for inquiring are because we think the pope is guilty of manslaughter.”
“Wait? We're not going to do anything?” My voice rises a little too much.
“I can make an inquiry through diplomatic channels. That will take time and sensitivity. The more urgency we put on the question, the more suspicious they'll be.”
“We may not have time . . .”
“Why do you say that?”
“Everyone else on the tape is dead.”
“Nobody else on that tape gets driven around in a bulletproof popemobile. I think his eminence is safe.”
He's not getting it. I was up all night doing my homework. “Pope John Paul II got shot by a rumored KGB operative, stabbed by an angry priest, and then almost blown up in the Philippines by Al-Qaeda. It's the most dangerous head-of-state position there is. Safe is not a word I'd use.”
“I get that. But assuming for the moment he is on the tape, what can we do? You still haven't given me a suspect.”
“X-20. There's a connection. Every step of the way, they're involved.”
“Who? Why them?” He holds the fiasco in Tixato against me. I know he's not a stupid man, but that wasn't my fault!
“I don't know. Someone close to the boy.”
“The boy was an orphan. We pulled his records. No known father, his mother died shortly after he was born. There was no family or close friends. If there had been, he probably wouldn't have ended up in the foster-care system.”
“What about the tape? That's evidence of a crime.”
He waves his hands in the air. “It could be coincidental. Or, who's to say this didn't start with the sheriff?”
“What do you mean?”
“He was there at the exorcism. He heard the demon's name there and it stayed with him until he went insane.”
“He was drugged. We have the evidence.”
“Whether it was his idea or Deland's, they're both dead.”
“Maybe he's a victim? What if the sheriff wasn't in control of himself? Toxicology research says that hallucinogen could provoke extremely violent reactions. It wasn't his fault.”
“At this point, we're not going to prosecute him posthumously.”
“You know there's more here!” I insist, and immediately regret pushing my point so forcefully. Breyer has cut me some slack so far.
He shoves a finger at me. “Don't tell me what I know and don't know! You come in here with evidence but you can't tell me where, or who it came from. You imply a connection to one of the most powerful people in the world. Then you tell me he's going to be assassinated? Let alone what happened in Mexico.
“You've done good work. Although I think Ailes gives you too much leeway. You have solid intuitions some of the time. But at a certain point you have to realize when you're overreaching. We all want that career-making case. You had yours with the Warlock. It's time to consider the fact that the rest of your time
here is going to be filled with the same monotonous work we all have to deal with.”
“You think I'm making this up?” I try to keep my voice level. The words come out haltingly as I contain my anger.
“I didn't say that. I think you see a very, very tenuous connection and you're letting the enormity of it get away from you.”
I take a moment to try to calm down. “So now what?”
“I'm not going to ignore this. I'll forward the information on to our European liaisons.”
“It'll get buried.”
“What else can I tell them? You don't know who is behind this. What are they supposed to do? The FBI can't just call over there and say they think maybe somebody wants to harm the pope. They get those calls every day. We're the FBI. We need evidence. In absence of that, we need a suspect. You have neither.”
“I've said it already, X-20. One of the most powerful cartels in the world. They're behind this.”
“That's just a name. Who is behind them? Why would they care about the pope?”
“I don't know.” I know I should have had more before I sat down here. But I couldn't just sit on this!
“Exactly. You've done a dutiful job. I'll make sure you get the credit you deserve for the Hawkton case.”
I shake my head. Why can't people understand? “I don't want credit. I just want justice.”
“For who? The boy is dead. The pope is unreachable. You just want to be proven right.”
“That's not fair. There might be more victims . . .”
He doesn't waste time putting me in my place. “The case is closed as far as you're concerned. Furthermore, if I catch you leaking any of this to the press, your career here is over.”
On that threat, he ends our meeting by gesturing to the door.
I
MANAGE TO
make it to the bathroom before letting my face show my rage. It takes ten minutes of sitting in a stall with my eyes closed before I can go back into the hallway. I need to talk to someone who understands.
I call Ailes's office number. Gerald answers instead.
“Where's Ailes?” I ask.
“He's at the hospital.” His voice is somber.
“What? Is he okay?” I feel like I just got a blow to the stomach. The last leg under my chair just got kicked away.
“It's his wife. She's been going through some medical problems. I think there was a complication.”
His wife? I'm ashamed to admit that I had no idea Ailes was dealing with this.
He never complains when I pester him at all hours of the day and night. Little did I know he was dealing with other drama. I'd noticed he'd been a bit off, but I didn't stop to think what could be going on in his world. I was too distracted . . . or is it self-centered?
“Will she be okay?”
“I don't know. We sent some flowers.”
“Oh.”
“I put your name on the card.”
“Thanks.” The gesture makes me feel even more guilty. I realize I still don't even know why my grandfather had to go into the hospital.
I'm terrible at people.
I push them away, or ignore their problems. Someone only exists for me when they're in my sphere. That's the definition of selfishness. Then I find myself in a situation like this. No Ailes. What do I do?
But now?
I have to focus on the case.
Breyer was specific with me.
But maybe a little
too
specific.
“Can you meet me in our office?” I ask Gerald.
“I can be there in a couple hours.”
E
VEN WITHOUT A
suspect, I have to warn someone that the pope may be facing a serious threat. But if I call someone in any official capacity, Breyer will have my head. If lives are at stake, the moral thing might be to run to the media and tell them what I know, but I can't bring myself to do that. I'll be out of the FBI before the newsprint ink dries, and then I won't have access to any of the resources I need to find out who's behind this.
Blowing the whistle is useless if it doesn't save the lives you intended to.
My hands are tied. Breyer wasn't trying to be an officious jerk. He just doesn't sense the urgency of what I see. It's a string of tenuous connections. I feel as if I'm standing in the middle of a lake on a rock just below the surface, and I got here by hopping across rocks only I can see.
The pattern is obvious to me. Why isn't it to Breyer?
I think back to Ailes's conversation with me about finding two one-in-a-million events that are connected.
I believe the pope is in danger because I feel the Hawkton murders are an act of revenge. The audiotape gives me a motive. Deland is the accomplice I needed to make it possible. He's got demolitions experience and is obviously comfortable with building things. He'd be the perfect bomb maker, even of unusual ones given enough resources. Getting the bodies into the trees
wouldn't be a problem. He might have had some help from another X-20 operative. Maybe the one that killed him.
So I know someone is angry and why, but not who.
It would be easy if Deland was at the center of everything. But he seems like a puppet.
I keep trying to connect him to Hawkton before the recent events and there's nothing. He appears to have lived in a separate universe from the victims.
He was brought into all of this by a connection to X-20. It has to be someone in that gang driving the agenda.
I have to ask myself, though: What if the tape is a false lead? What if this isn't about Marty's death?
But I just can't see how that could be the case. Marty named the demon. Groom kept the tape all these years out of guilt. The medical examiner hid the body from Jessup for the same reason.
If they held onto a reminder from the event, I wonder if McKnight or the Alsops did as well? I'm sure Jessup would be too smart to hold on to anything that tied him to the murder. But maybe they did?
It probably wouldn't be something as obvious as a piece of physical evidence, like a body. In Groom's case, the tape was a way to punish himself. What I should be looking for are scars of the psyche, not buried weapons.
I take the Metro to clear my head before I drive back to Quantico to meet Gerald. Am I acting unreasonably?
I know my life and my mind aren't in the right place right now. I'm still getting over what happened months ago with the Warlock. Tixato is too recent for me to even process. This might be what shock is about. Every time I think about that night, the memory plays out in snapshots taken by a third party. I've disassociated. I've tried to keep rolling along. Truth is, I don't know which way is up.
As a street cop, you can find as much crime as you want. But
at the end of the day you have to go home and take a break. The older you get, the more you realize how important it is to learn when not to be a cop. The teenage girl walking briskly out of the drugstore with a guilty look on her face probably just stole something. If you're on duty, you have a responsibility to intervene. If you're not, do you still stop her under suspicion of shoplifting just so you can arrest her for stealing a pack of condoms so she doesn't get pregnant? It's a judgment call. You have to shut down that part from time to time. Danielle can do it. I'm still trying.
Everything becomes more complicated when you see how the world really works. As a detective, you know that nothing is ever simple. You read about a home invasion in the news, only to read the case report and find out it's one drug dealer ripping off another. You get called in to investigate a kidnapping and realize the crying parents have a suspicious amount of hydroponics equipment. Do you investigate that as well?
This case is like that. The easy thing is to just walk away. Breyer doesn't see any urgency. He also thinks the pope is safe. He gave me permission to move on. He ordered me to. I just can't. He doesn't see the shape of things.
Intuition, in the blind sense, is a dirty word to me. If I can't explain things objectively, then I tend to think things aren't rooted in reality. Intuition can be another word for bias.
What's my bias?
My suspect, X-20, isn't some underfunded, fringe terrorist group. They've made their money, a lot of it, by openly defying the US and Mexican governments. They have entire regions in their pocket and were capable of sending a death squad, composed of an active army unit, to kill me. I think they're a formidable challenge, even for the pope.
My Metro train comes to a stop. I pull my coat tight around my body to shield against the wind and emerge a few blocks from my destination. I use the walk to prepare what I'm going
to say. This is awkward. I have no idea how it's done, other than what I've seen in movies.
Breyer was clear with me. But I don't think he realizes that I'm an escape artist. I'm always looking for ways out of impossible situations.
“
I
CAN SEE
you're new to this,” says the priest on the other side of the latticed screen.
The voice is friendly. “Avuncular” comes to mind. He reminds me of my Uncle Darius, to whom I could tell anything without judgment.
The booth is dark, but not in a frightening way. It feels like a secure closet you can hide inside. I can smell the oiled wood and an air freshener.
“Technically I'm not here to confess my sins, Father.”
“Are you Catholic?”
“Not even close,” I reply.
“There are easier ways to talk to a priest if you have questions.” I'm sure he gets more than a few curious tourists straying into here.
“I need a certain amount of legal immunity.”
“Oh boy, this will be interesting. Now I'm worried. Is this a matter for the authorities?” His manner becomes more serious. He's probably heard variations on this a few times.
“In a way.” I take my badge from my pocket and press it against the screen.
“If it's about the sacramental wine, I can explain,” he jokes.
He's smooth. I take note of how he turned this situation into a lighthearted moment. He'd be great in an interrogation room.
“I wish. Legally, what I say is between us?”
“Well, technically, I'd need to be your confessor.”
“My confessor?” I ask. I know a little bit from my law classes, but I want to hear his understanding of the legal definition.
“The person you go to to confess your sins. It's during the act of confession that the legal boundary is the clearest. You can't just tell a priest anything and expect the court to respect that as being between you and God. Otherwise, I suspect, mobsters would be in a rush to get ordained.”
“Oh. I get it. I have to make a genuine confession?”
“Yes. That's a start, I guess.”
I can tell he seems a little confused by my questions. I can't blame him. I'm not so sure either.
I need a sin to confess . . . Maybe I'll just go with something recent. “I had impure thoughts about a man I saw in the coffee shop this morning. Good enough?”
“Er, yes. I'll absolve you when you come up with something better. What's this really about?”
“Do you recognize me?”
“Your identity isn't supposed to be known to me.”
“How does that work in small towns? Never mind. My name is Jessica Blackwood. Sound familiar?”
“Yes, from the news. The FBI agent. What can I do for you?”
“You know I'm a credible person. Well, reasonably. I wouldn't be here if I had any other option. So I'm just going to come right out and say it. I believe a Mexican cartel, called X-20, is plotting to kill the pope.”
There's a long pause on the other side of the screen. “Well, that is quite . . . something. Why are you telling me this?”
“Because the evidence is thin and I've been told by my superiors that we need to go through proper channels. Unfortunately, I don't think they understand the seriousness or urgency of the matter. Time is very critical. Hours could make a difference.”
“Interesting.” He's taking me seriously, thank God. “Is this connected with his eminence's upcoming visit to Miami?”
“Possibly. I don't have any specific information yet. It's just important that the people who handle his security know this.”
“Why are you telling
me
this?”
“Because we both know this particular church is a phone call away from the Vatican. This is the top church in the country?”
“Not all would agree. But I get your point. I'll see what I can do.”
“I'm serious, Father.”
“I believe you. Trust me, I believe you are. Tell me again what I need to know.”