The Clouds Roll Away (3 page)

My first instinct when I saw her office door was closed was to walk away, heart skipping with joy. But my second instinct made me ask her secretary, Claudia, how long before Her Highness was available—not in those exact words. Claudia picked up the phone and told Phaup I was here. After eight minutes I picked up a magazine from the coffee table in the reception area. A publication for retired agents. People who started another life after the Bureau. I read it twice.

Thirty-six minutes later, Victoria Phaup granted me an audience.

She was a stocky woman with short brown hair threaded with gray. She must have been pretty at one time, but twelve years of clawing her way through Bureau management had compressed her small features into a persistent expression of defensiveness, her eyes like fractured gray pebbles. Thin mouth locked, loaded for counterattack. And her office smelled like dry ice.

“I appreciate your sending the e-mail this morning, Raleigh.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Taking no chances, I notified Phaup after speaking to RPM on the phone. My e-mail gave the time and place and that I was leaving to check it out. Baby-agent stuff.

But hey, I was home.

“Perhaps you've learned something from your transfer,” she said.

I nodded. One thing I'd learned was to keep my mouth shut.

According to office gossip, Phaup had been a rising star in the Bureau until she sent an e-mail to the wrong recipient—in fact, to the supervisor she criticized. Since then, she had rotated among field offices, a path she clearly hoped I would experience too. When she landed in Richmond five years ago, it put her within physical striking distance of D.C., and while I was away, she was named head of the Richmond field office.

I never doubted that my career—or its death—was part of her campaign to return to headquarters.

Her desk grew paper in accreting layers, and she reached into one of the stalagmites, extracting a manila folder. She read to herself, then said, “Update on the cross burning.”

Speaking to the top of her head, I described my interview with Rapland's celebrity owner and explained my collection of forensic evidence. I said that right now the only leads were his suspicions, which included the preservation society. “They've apparently filed petitions against him. They don't like his remodel. His other suspicion is . . . well, the county sheriff.”

She looked up. “You're surprised about the sheriff?”

“I've only met the sheriff once, but—”

I stopped.

I'd met the sheriff once, last summer, when I got myself into a compromising situation. By the mirthful expression on Phaup's face, she remembered it too. The compromising situation that precipitated my disciplinary transfer.

“I don't know the sheriff personally,” I said finally. “But it sounds like a long shot. I think the man was venting more than anything else.”

“Cross burnings do not happen in a vacuum, Raleigh. That county might be twenty miles from town but it's a century away from the rest of the world. It's much too small for any hate group to operate independently.” She closed the file. “You will report directly to me. I want updates, continually. I'll send the information to the hate crimes coordinator in D.C. And since this involves a celebrity, I've alerted media relations.” She didn't sound disappointed by the last part. Phaup relished the attention, provided we looked like good guys. “And open a file on the sheriff.”

“We're going after the sheriff?”

“‘Going after' is not the correct term,” she said.

“Ma'am, there are better places to begin—”

“And I don't want any dramatic permutations. Do you understand?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She rolled her right shoulder. I looked away, watching a string of cirrus clouds stretch a veil across the blue sky. Phaup could have been demoted for a misfired e-mail, but she also could've been banished to the hinterlands for adjusting her undergarments in public. The woman tugged, pulled, and shifted things like a third base coach at the bottom of the eighth.

“The hate crime is your priority,” she said, extracting the hand from her blouse. “But we're short on manpower. Holidays, vacations. The flu going around. Pollard Durant needs help on his task force. It would require three days a week, at least.”

Suddenly caught off guard, I hesitated. She was offering task force work—a plum assignment—after what we'd been through? It didn't seem possible. But then, maybe this was an olive branch.

Maybe, like me, she was trying. And maybe, just maybe, I'd been wrong about her.

“Thank you,” I said. “I'd be happy to work the task force.”

“No overtime. Headquarters isn't compensating for anything over fifty hours a week. But that shouldn't be a problem for you.”

I waited. “Because . . . ?”

“Because you're on phones.”

Phones. The dullest part of a task force.

I wasn't wrong about her.

She smiled. “All right, then. Off you go.”

Yes
, I thought, standing to leave.
Off I go
.

My new desk was tucked into a corner of the third floor, right next to the back stairwell. Four feet, three inches from the stairwell to be exact. Yes, I measured. To reach my chair, I had to duck under the heat vent, and when I sat down just before noon, I could hear an army marching down the stairwell to lunch, the voices echoing off the five-story cavern of concrete and steel.

My old desk had been a pleasant fire hazard of notes, memos, triplicate forms, and weeks of snacks stashed in the desk's bottom drawers. It had also been in the main squad on the second floor. Not only was the K-Car waiting, but Phaup put an entire floor between me and the rest of the squad. Reciting my chant about home, I pulled a bag of Fritos and a can of Coke—never, ever Pepsi—from my desk and consumed both while typing a letter to the forensics lab in D.C. Trained as a geologist, I came to the Bureau as a forensic technician in the mineralogy department. When my father was murdered, I went to Quantico, hoping to turn grief into something productive.

In the letter, I explained to the technician that the soil inside the paint can was evidence from a hate crime, an automatic expedite for the lab. I wanted to know what substance was used to light the fire and what minerals were in the lawn soil itself, in case it could be matched later to somebody's clothing or shoes. Ignoring the one-sided cell phone conversation echoing down the stairwell—“Hello? Are you there? Hello?”—I sent Phaup an e-mail offering a tedious blow-by-blow of my procedure. Ducking under the heat vent, I walked down to the second floor.

The main squad room sat empty. For several moments I gazed at the gathered cubicles, the cartoons taped to partitions, the running gags and inside jokes, and suddenly I felt isolated and lonely, as if everyone had left for a party I wasn't invited to.

Giving my mood a swift kick, I rang the buzzer beside the Dutch door to Evidence Control.
Get over it
, I thought.
Get to
work
.

The top half of the Dutch door opened.

“You're back,” said Allene Caron.

She wore a yellow satin blouse that lay on her brown skin like filaments of polished brass. Picking up my paperwork, she raised her chin and ran her dark eyes over my request.

“Here to stay?” she asked, looking over the top of the document.

“That's the plan.”

She harrumphed and circled a section of my paperwork. Fifteen years ago, Allene started here as a clerk. She now ran Evidence Control and nothing could convince her that agents wrote competent paperwork. She tapped the red pen on my intake form.

“What day is it, Raleigh?”

“I'm guessing it's not the sixth.”

“Not in this world.”

“But I got December right.”

Raising an eyebrow, she corrected the date, December 7, then initialed the correction. She stamped her official seal and assigned a bar code to track the evidence through the FBI system. Just before closing the Dutch door, she threw me an expression that conveyed her suspicions concerning my survival.

“Be good, you hear?”

“I promise, I'll be good.”

Harrumphing again, she closed the door.

chapter four

T
he Title III surveillance operations—known as the T-III room—was stashed with the heating and cooling equipment behind a gray door on the third floor. With half of the ceiling's acoustic tiles missing, the place had a ghoulish jack-o'-lantern appearance. But it made it easier for the tech guys to run cables for routers and modems and phones and monitors.

On Wednesday afternoon I opened the gray door and heard the loud whooshing of air pumps. An almost chubby young man sat at a dinged-up stainless steel table, his back to the door. Bose earphones connected to the laptop, and when I tapped his shoulder he jumped, kicking a yellow Hardee's bucket, scattering gray chicken bones across the floor.

He pulled off the headset and smoothed down pale tufts of hair.

“Stan.” He shook my hand. “Stan Norton.”

“I'm Raleigh.”

“I know.”

“We've met?”

“No. But I came up from Savannah right after you . . . after you left for Seattle. Here, let me clean up this mess.”

Brushing the biscuit crumbs off the table into the Hardee's bucket, he picked up the greasy bones, placing the bucket near the garbage can where a delta formed of soggy tea bags, oxidized apple cores, wet coffee grounds, and paper napkins smeared with the primary-colored condiments. Although the room was kept cool for the electronic equipment, putrid odors filled the air. I sat down at the laptop.

In the once-upon-a-time I was only too happy to miss, we recorded conversations on magnetic tape. Because tapes can break or get damaged, agents kept a separate log for each phone line, marking date, time, and every single on-off moment. I'd seen illegible notes blotched with coffee and grease but since September 11, 2001, we recorded digitally in real time, down to a tenth of a second. The work was easier now, but more boring.

“Anything I should know before you leave?” I asked Stan.

“Things stay quiet until about 7 or 8 p.m.”

I was certain he wanted to say more, but the gray door flew open with a bang and a woman tumbled into the room calling out, “Halloo!”

She carried a large embroidered bag and headed for the table at a run, hoisting the bag up, letting it land with a thud. She laughed, a high shrill sound. “I cannot believe who they give driver's licenses to these days; is anyone testing these people? By God's grace alone I got here in one piece. You must be Raleigh. I'm late!”

I glanced at Stan. He shifted his eyes to his briefcase, which lay open on the table near the enormous bag. He began stuffing papers, clamping it shut without organizing any of it.

“Excuse me,” I said to the blustery woman. “You must have the wrong room. This is T-III surveillance.”

“Louise Jackson.” She stuck out her hand. “Only nobody calls me Louise. Except my brother. And he's got Alzheimer's so even he doesn't call me that anymore. My name's Beezus. My sister, may she rest in some kind of peace after what she did to me, she never could get Louise out of her cruel little mouth, and, well, you know nicknames. They stick like toad spit on a good dress.”

She cocked her head, looking at me carefully. “What do they call you—no, wait, let me guess. They call you . . . Leigh.”

“Raleigh. Just Raleigh.”

“Okay, ‘Just Raleigh.'” She swatted at my arm. “I brought us all kinds of goodies.”

From the embroidered bag she extracted two thermoses and a series of Tupperware containers, stacking them on the table like a small Eiffel Tower.

“Don't worry about keeping up your strength. I brought plenty of fuel for us both. I pickled these radishes last summer.” Suddenly she stopped, cocking her head again, like a dog hearing a silent whistle. “You know, before we get started, I better use the little girl's room.”

Beezus raced out of the room. I looked at Stan.

“Who is she?”

“Beezus Jackson. She's cleared for security, but I've only seen her organizing files and stuff for Phaup.”

Ah, the flashing red light. “Was she on phone surveillance before today, or is she a little gift just for me?”

“Um, well, it's a lot for one person.”

“Stan, you're working alone.”

“Yeah.” He stretched out the word, layering it with inflections. “But see, they don't make a lot of calls on my shift. The gang sleeps most of the day. I've got two hours of silence. Your shift's probably different.”

I took a deep breath. The stench from the trash gagged me. Or maybe the fact that Stan, a junior agent, only had to work two hours, alone.

“I'm on five hours, Stan.”

“Oh.”

Beezus blew back into the room. “Reporting for duty,” she said.