The Breaking Point: A Body Farm Novel (9 page)

“Do I look like I give a damn?” snapped Prescott. “It was our operation. Our call. Janus got a good agent killed two weeks ago—”

“You don’t know that,” interrupted the other man. “Your agent was in way over his head, playing three guys off against each other. I don’t think Janus fingered him. I think your guy just fucked up.”

“Janus got one of our agents killed,” insisted Prescott. “And when one of ours gets killed, we don’t just stand by and—how’d you put it? ‘Let things play out’? We come down like the wrath of God. Maybe that’s the reason we don’t lose as many agents as you guys do.”

My mouth was still full, but I had stopped chewing and started sweating. I didn’t know who Prescott meant by
you guys,
or by
he,
and I had no earthly idea who “Goose Man” was. The one thing I understood with perfect clarity was that I’d stumbled into the pissing contest Prescott had mentioned earlier. And it sounded like a doozy.

Still slouching in the booth, I vacillated: On the one hand, I wanted them to leave immediately; on the other, I wanted them to keep arguing—
from the beginning, guys!
—so I could figure out what they were talking about. Across the room, I noticed the waitress clearing a table; she glanced in my direction, and I felt a jolt of panic. If she came over now—offering a refill of juice, or asking why I wasn’t eating—she’d blow my cover.
Not now, not now,
I telegraphed her, carefully avoiding eye contact.

“You sanctimonious sonofabitch,” the stranger was rasping. In my mind’s eye, he was fat and sweaty, his words struggling to burrow out from within a mountain of flesh. “You wanna know why we lose more agents than the Bureau? I’ll
tell you why. It’s because you guys are going after pussies—embezzlers and secret sellers and kiddie-porn perverts.
Pussies.
Meanwhile, we’re out there waging
war
. With the worst motherfuckers on the planet.”

“Are you?” Prescott’s voice dripped with sarcasm. I couldn’t tell if he was questioning the badness of the enemy, or the totality of the war effort.

“Damn right we are. And we’re doing it with a fraction of the money and manpower you necktie-and-cufflink office boys get.”

“You’re breaking my heart,” Prescott sneered. “Poor, pitiful you. Now if you’re through whining, I’ve got work to do before we climb that mountain tomorrow and pick up the pieces of this operation.” He walked away, his heels pummeling the tile.

“Prick,” muttered the other man. I heard him turn and trail Prescott out of the IHOP. As his footsteps neared the front door, I risked raising up to take a look. I got a fleeting glimpse of a man who was short and fat, his hair a graying, greasy shade of red. From behind, at least, he looked as repulsive as he sounded.

I looked down at my plate. The now soggy waffle was surrounded by a moat of cold egg yolk, and the strips of bacon gleamed dully through a varnish of congealed grease. I pushed the plate away, my appetite killed by disgust. Or was it by fear? As I pulled out my wallet for the reckoning with IHOP, I couldn’t help wondering what other reckonings awaited, and what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

I STEPPED OUT INTO THE NIGHT—STILL WARM, BUT
not unpleasant. Eighty-five degrees in the sauna-dry foothills east of San Diego was a different animal from eighty-five degrees
in the steam bath that was East Tennessee. It wasn’t that I didn’t sweat here, I’d noticed; it was that the sweat evaporated almost instantly, cooling the body a bit without drenching the clothes entirely.

“How was your dinner?” The voice came from the darkness behind me.

“
Crap,
” I exclaimed, jumping with surprise. Again I recognized the voice as Prescott’s, and I turned toward it. He was leaning against the IHOP’s wall, waiting for me. “You scared the bejesus out of me.”

I expected him to say that he didn’t mean to; instead, he repeated, “How was dinner?”

“Kinda meager,” I said. “I ordered a lot, but I only ate one bite. It was a
big
bite—my mouth was too full to say anything when I heard you behind me—but I’m not sure it’s gonna tide me over till breakfast.” I looked at him more frankly now, embarrassed to have been caught, but relieved not to be keeping secrets. “You knew I was there the whole time?”

“Just about.”

“How? I didn’t think you guys could me see over the back of the booth.”

“Couldn’t,” he said. “I noticed your reflection in the window. Hickock never did.”

“Hickock’s the pissed-off guy?”

“You might say that. Wild Bill. He was in the middle of his tirade when I spotted you. If I’d cut him off—if he’d known we had an audience—he’d’ve gone ballistic. At me and you both.” He shook his head. “No point in that.”

I nodded. “Well, thanks. Sorry I was sitting in the wrong place at the wrong time. Didn’t mean to put you in an awkward spot.”

“You didn’t. From what I hear, you’re one of the good
guys. Besides, Hickock and I should both know better. Talking business in public? I oughta rip myself a new one for that.”

I remembered old national-security posters I’d seen from the early 1940s. “Loose lips sink ships?”

“Sounds corny, but basically, yeah.” He nodded across the parking lot, to the black Suburban under a streetlight, its back window thick with dust. “Come on, I’ll give you a ride home.”

“Thanks, but I’d kinda like to walk.”

He frowned. “You carrying?”

“Carrying? You mean a gun?” He nodded, and I shook my head. “Heavens no. I’ve never owned one.”

“Let me give you a ride, then. This ain’t exactly the tourist district, Doc. You might get robbed; you might get
mistaken
for a robber. Either way, you wander around here after dark, you’re liable to get shot. Or stabbed. Or worse. Not good for either of us.”

“Since you put it that way,” I said, “thanks.”

In the privacy of the Suburban, I figured he’d tell me at least a bit about the raspy-voiced man, and about their argument, but he didn’t. Instead, during the brief drive, he asked about my research at the Body Farm, then quizzed me about a couple of prior cases I’d helped the Bureau with. It was obvious that he was redirecting the conversation away from the confrontation I had stumbled into. It was also, perhaps, a reminder that he had done his research, had read the Bureau’s file on me. It might even have been a subtle caution: If I wanted to keep working with the FBI, I should keep quiet about what I’d overheard tonight. As I thanked him for the lift and headed toward my room, I parsed the conversation—the things he’d said and the ones he hadn’t.
Loose lips sink ships,
I reminded myself.
And maybe crash careers.

THE TROUBLE WITH GRADUATE ASSISTANTS, I’D
noticed—well,
one
of the troubles—was their tendency to go gallivanting off every summer: for gainful employment, for adventurous travel, or for romance. My current assistant, Marty, was helping direct a student dig in Tuscany for three months, and judging by the letter and photos he’d sent in early June, he was getting both well paid and well laid. Not that I was envious.

What I
was,
though, was inconvenienced. I had a question that needed researching, but no time or tools to research it myself—and no helpful minion at my beck and call. So instead, despite the late hour, I called Kathleen.

It was only 8:45 in San Diego, but it was nearly midnight in Knoxville, and that meant Kathleen had probably been asleep for at least an hour. To my surprise, she answered on the second ring. Her voice sounded thick, but not sleepy.

“Hey,” I said, “is something wrong? Are you crying?”

“Oh, I am,” she sniffled, “but it’s just a movie I’m watching.” In the background, I heard voices and music. “Hang on, honey, let me pause it.” She laid the phone down with a rustle,
then the background noise quieted. “You know I don’t sleep worth a hoot when you’re gone,” she said, “so I stopped at Blockbuster on the way home.”

“I’m jealous. What’d you get?”

“One of those chick flicks you wouldn’t take me to.”

“
Silence of the Lambs
?”

“Ha. Not quite.
Shakespeare in Love
.”

“I take it back,” I said. “I’m not a bit jealous.”

“Actually, you’d really like the scene where he’s in bed with Gwyneth Paltrow.”

She knew me well. “Well then,” I said, “when I get home, we can rent it again and fast-forward to that part.”

“Hmmph.” She sniffed again, and in the brief pause that followed, I could practically hear the gears in her mind shifting. “Why aren’t
you
asleep?” Her voice was laser sharp now, and despite the two thousand miles between us, I could almost feel her eyes searching mine. “You called me to say good night two hours ago. What’s happened?”

“I don’t know.” I told her about my accidental, disturbing eavesdropping at the IHOP. “I wish I understood what’s going on,” I said. “Not that I need to know everything, but . . .”

“But what?”

“But it feels like there’s stuff here—players and politics and agendas—that I don’t understand, stuff that could affect the investigation.”

“Affect it how?”

Suddenly I thought,
Shit, what if my phone is tapped?
A moment later I scolded myself,
Don’t be paranoid. Who the hell would want to tap your phone?
“I don’t
know,
Kath. That’s the frustrating thing—I don’t know enough to know what else I
need
to know. What is it Donald Rumsfeld calls this kind of thing?”

“God, don’t get me started on
Rumsfeld,
” she said. She had a point there—she despised the man, and the mere mention of his name sometimes set her off on a Rumsfeld rant. “But I believe ‘unknown unknowns’ is the gobbledygook term you’re thinking of.”

“That’s it,” I said. “I’m worried that the unknown unknowns here could affect this case in ways I can’t foresee or control. Distort it, undermine its objectivity or integrity. Here I am doing my thing, crawling around looking for teeth and bones. But I’ve got a bad feeling, like I’m wandering around in a minefield. One false step, and there goes a foot. Figuratively speaking. If I blow this case, Kathleen—the highest-profile case the Bureau has ever used me on? They’ll write me off, and for good.”

“Just do your best,” she said. “How many times have you worked with the FBI before this?”

“Four. No, five.”

“Any problems with them?”

“No. They’re the best. Of course.” I still felt fretful. “I wish Marty were around this summer. I’d get him to poke around a little.”

“Poke around how? In what?”

“I don’t
know,
” I repeated in reflexive frustration. She kept quiet—her way of making me think instead of just spouting off—and after a moment I added, “I’d see if he could find out who’s the FBI agent that got killed, and how, and why? Who’s the fat, raspy guy that claims to be fighting supervillains? And who’s this Goose Man character that the fat fellow’s so hot to take down?”

“And you think Marty could dig up answers to those questions?”

“I don’t . . .” I caught myself before repeating it, my mantra of mystification, once again. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”

“Marty’s great with a trowel, Bill. And he knows his osteology forward and backward. But his skill set is—how to put this nicely?—very specific. What you need is a detective. Or an investigative journalist.”

“A
journalist
? God, Kathleen, if I talked to a journalist about an open FBI case? It’d be my last case for them. Ever.”

“Probably,” she said. “Okay, how about a reference librarian?”

“What?”

“A reference librarian.”

“Are you serious—a librarian?”

“Sure, I’m serious,” she said. “Why not? They’re smart, they’re helpful, and they have dozens of databases at their fingertips. Remember when I was looking for stuff on child blindness and vitamin A deficiency? And nonprofits? I called the reference desk at Hodges”—the university’s main library—“and maybe two hours later, a librarian handed me a stack of articles I never would have found on my own. That’s how I first heard about Richard Janus and Airlift Relief.”

“That’s right,” I said. “I’d forgotten that.” I wasn’t sure that confiding in a librarian was a brilliant idea, but it trumped anything else I had at the moment. “You think somebody’s there now? It’s nearly midnight.”

“They’re open another five minutes,” she said. “Worth a try.”

“I don’t suppose you’ve got a UT directory there beside the remote and the Kleenex box?”

“Don’t need one,” she said, and I smiled as she recited the number from memory. Kathleen was smart and wise—sassy, too—and I loved her for those qualities. And more, many more.

THE PHONE RANG A DOZEN TIMES—I COUNTED THE
rings as I drummed my fingers. “Good
grief,
” I groused as I pulled the phone away from my ear and reached for the “end” button. “Doesn’t
anybody
work a full day anymore?”

As if in answer to my question, I suddenly heard a voice on the other end of the line. “Excuse me?” Then I heard a loud clatter, as if the phone had been dropped. A moment later a slightly breathless woman said, “Oops. Sorry about that. I had to vault the counter to get to the phone. Figured it must be important, as many times as it rang.”

I was taken aback by the woman’s breezy attitude. “Uh,” I faltered, “is this the reference desk?”

“Technically, no,” she said. “But I’m
standing
at the reference desk. Will that do?”

Was she mocking me? I didn’t have the luxury of exploring that question. “This is Dr. Bill Brockton, head of the Anthropology Department.”

“Yes?”

“I need some information. I’m afraid I can’t give you much to go on. But it’s important. And sensitive—it’s related to a criminal investigation—so I need you to keep it confidential.”

“Sounds intriguing,” she said. “What do you need to know, Dr. Brockton? And what can you tell me to point me in the right direction?”

“What I need to know, Ms. . . .
What
did you say your name is?”

“I didn’t,” she said cheerily. “Just call me Red.”

“Red? Is that a nickname?”

She laughed. “I would
hope
so!” Again I wondered if she was mocking me, though her tone sounded more amused than sarcastic.

“Look . . . Red,” I said. “This seems a little . . .
strange,
not to know who I’m talking to. Would you rather hand me off to somebody else?”

“Unfortunately, at the moment, I’m all you’ve got,” she said. “I don’t mean any disrespect, Dr. Brockton; please forgive me if it sounded that way. I’ve been stalked a couple times—seriously stalked—so I’m skittish about giving my name to men on the phone at midnight, even if they sound legit. The guy I still have nightmares about? He sounded every bit as legit as you, at first.”

“But—” I began, then stopped myself.
But what? You think if you argue, she’ll feel more at ease? Not bloody likely.
“Fair enough, Red,” I conceded. “Is that your hair color, or your politics?”

“Both,” she said. “Also the color of my checkbook balance. Maybe short for ‘Ready Reference,’ too. How can I help you, Dr. Brockton? The lights in the library go out in about three minutes, so tell me quick, if you can.”

I started with the thing that seemed strangest. “I need you to dig up whatever you can about someone called ‘Goose Man.’” The line was silent, and I wondered if the call had been dropped—or if she’d decided I was a crank and hung up. “Hello? Red? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” she said. “I was waiting for you to tell me more.”

“There is no ‘more.’ That’s it.”

“That’s all you’ve got—‘Goose Man’? You’re kidding, right?”

“No,” I snapped, feeling defensive. “I’m
not
kidding. I
told
you I couldn’t give you much to go on.”

She laughed again. “So you did. I see you’re a man of your word. But . . . can I ask a couple things, superquick? Just to make sure we’re on the same page here—the same virtually blank page? What put ‘Goose Man’ on your radar? How’d you hear about him? In what context?”

“I heard a cop—at least, I
think
he was a cop—mention him to another cop.”

“Was the second one also a maybe cop? Or was cop number two a for-sure cop?”

“A for-sure cop.”

“Knoxville cop?”

“No. Federal cop. Both feds, I think. One’s FBI. The other, I don’t know—maybe Homeland Security, maybe DEA, maybe Border Patrol. Hell, maybe even CIA.”

“Wowzer,” she said. “You don’t play in the minors, do you? Should you even be telling me this?”

“No,” I said. “Almost certainly not. But something’s going on that I don’t understand, and it’s making me nervous. I’d like to know who the other players are, and what teams they’re playing for.”

In the background, I heard a robotic-sounding announcement:
The library is now closed. Please exit now.
“Crap,” she muttered. “Oh well—in for a penny, in for a pound. Quick, what makes you think Fed Number Two might be CIA?”

“He said they were waging war with the worst badasses on the planet. Pardon the language.”

“Pardon it? I appreciate it. I hate it when people beat around the bush, all tactful and mealy-mouthed. Say what you mean, mean what you say—that’s my motto. One of ’em, anyhow. So . . . presumably the Goose Man is one of these badasses?”

“Presumably,” I said. “The FBI guy was getting reamed out. Apparently he scared the Goose Man away, just as Fed Number Two was about to reel him in.”

“
In
-ter-esting,” she said. “So the Goose Man is a pretty big fish. And he’s swimming around right here in the little ol’ pond of Knoxville?”

“Ah. No,” I said. “Sorry. In San Diego. I mean, I don’t know if San Diego’s where the Goose Man is swimming, but it’s where
I’m
swimming at the moment. Or treading water. And it’s where these guys were arguing.”

“I really have to go,” she said. “How do I reach you?” I gave her my number. “Got it. Let me give you mine.”

“I’ve already got it,” I pointed out. “I just dialed it.”

“I’m away from the desk most of the time,” she said. “Better to call me on my cell.” She rattled off the digits like machine-gun fire; I wrote hurriedly, hoping I was getting it right.

“Let me read that back to you.”

“I gotta go—I’m about to get locked in.”

“Last question,” I said. “What are your hours—do you work weeknights?”

“Call whenever,” she said. “I really,
really
gotta go.”

The line went dead, and I was left staring at the scrawled phone number of a woman who didn’t even trust me with her name.