Hunting Season (70 page)

Farnsworth had had a lot of explaining to do to his bosses in Richmond and Washington, as well as to the aTF He stonewalled the latter, while trying to explain what one of his agents had been doing there at the arsenal that night, with a civilian in tow. There had been endless meetings and lots of report writing to do over the whole incident. Janet had had time to prep Lynn in the ER, so their story remained fairly consistent: They had gone out there to help Kreiss and ended up crashing the car. End of story, as far as they knew. Never saw Kreiss. Never saw anyone else. Never saw a firefight. Janet’s acid burns had come somehow from the hole into which they’d crashed the car. Didn’t know how they got out, or how they got back up to the street. Both of them had taken a shot to the head, hadn’t they? Everything after the crash was a blur. Didn’t remember calling the aTF, but must have. Knew they’d come, wasn’t sure the Bureau would.

That last had hurt Farnsworth’s feelings. No, never saw McGarand.

Billy Smith had been recalled to temporary duty in Washington the day after the incident. Janet had been prepared to pursue the theory that he had been an Agency plant all along, put in place to watch Kreiss. But he was gone, and Farnsworth had bigger fish to fry. Three days after the incident, all the hate mail from Washington had suddenly stopped. Word came down directly from the executive assistant director over Criminal Investigations that the incident was officially closed.

It had been as if a giant hand had simply wiped all the post incident counterops and turned out the lights on the whole affair. One day, she was in the hot seat; the next day, everyone was suddenly all smiles and happiness and the office was back to business as usual. All she could figure was that larger issues, and one in particular, had finally hit the fan at the senior-executive service level.

Lynn Kreiss was back in school, after Janet had explained to the university’s finance office why Lynn had been absent and, more important, why her tuition for that quarter ought not to be forfeited. The university’s finance office had been incredibly unsympathetic, and it wasn’t until Janet had threatened publicity that adult supervision was brought to bear. Lynn had agreed to go with Janet and Larry Talbot to one final meeting with the boys’ parents, which had been tense initially and then extremely emotional.

Now she was spending her weekends at her father’s cabin, waiting and watching for her father to appear out of the woods one night. Janet had been spending her weekends there, too, just to keep an eye on things and to get out of her town house. In the back of her mind, she knew she also wanted to be there when, if, he showed up again, but there had been no sign of Edwin Kreiss.

She had also been assigned to work out a case-closure report with the Montgomery County detectives on the matter of jared McGarand. She had written a Bureau memo outlining her theory that Jared McGarand’s death had probably been accidental, occurring during the course of a confrontation between Edwin Kreiss and the subject. She appended an evidentiary statement provided by Lynn Kreiss as to the sexual abuse and near rape she had endured while a captive at the hands of the subject. The county people, slaves to the same closure statistics that drove their federal cousins, said they would have to keep the case open, but they allowed informally as to how nobody was going to put a lot of man-hours on a creep like that anytime soon. Because she had named Edwin Kreiss in her report, the paperwork was whisked off to Washington and never seen again.

She had spent a great deal of time doing some soul-searching about staying in the Bureau. The Roanoke people might all have been told to forget that anything had happened, but, of course, a hell of a lot had happened.

The kicker came when Farnsworth put her in for a meritorious service award. The headquarters Professional Awards Division had come back disapproving the recommendation, citing an opinion from OPR that there

had been several clear instances where Special Agent Janet Carter had either disobeyed direct operational orders or departed from approved procedures, causing the loss of a Bureau vehicle in two different instances.

Farnsworth had loyally driven up to Richmond to raise hell about the disapproval, but when he returned, all he could say was that he had run into an absolute bureaucratic glacier. It apparently had nothing to do with Janet. It had everything to do with the fact that the Edwin Kreiss case was not only closed but positively entombed.

“Chernobylized,” the SAC in Richmond had said. Images of helicopters dumping concrete on the whole affair.

That was when Janet had made her decision to leave the Bureau. She could understand how the organization would want to pave over the Edwin Kreiss affair. She could not, however, forget what she had done out there in the arsenal. For that one instant, she had become an instinctive, rather than rational, human being. She could justify the shooting; she could not rationalize emptying the Sig, no matter how much she recited Bureau training about gunfights. She had looked Misty in the eye and emptied the Sig until her hands were on fire, and she would have come out of that car and strangled the woman if she’d been close enough. She could still remember the shock of triumph in her heart when she saw the look of surprise in Misty’s face, even as her bullets took that face apart. As far as she was concerned, she’d met the beast, and the beast had looked a lot like her. Once was enough.

“Mr. Farnsworth will see you now, Special Agent Carter,” the secretary said, a triumphant look in her eyes. Janet came back to the present and stared at the secretary long enough to make her look away. Then she went into the RAs office. Ben Keenan was already there, and they both appeared to be in an expansive mood. Janet sat down.

“So I guess this is good-bye,” she said.

Farnsworth nodded. He had not attempted to talk her out of leaving the Bureau this time, which pretty much confirmed Janet’s own suspicions that, careerwise, she had become radioactive.

“Yes, I guess it is, Janet,” he said.

“I’m sorry it didn’t work out better, but I think you understand by now that, knowing what you know about the Edwin Kreiss case, any subsequent assignments would always be … uncomfortable? I guess that’s the right word. If it makes you feel any better, I’ll be following you out the door by year’s end.”

“They didn’t—” “Oh, no, but these kind of cases always create a certain amount of fallout.

If I go peacefully, the rest of the troops here get a second chance.”

“The rest of the troops here just did their jobs,” she said.

“Why should they suffer over the Kreiss affair?”

“You know the answer to that, Janet,” he said.

“Kreiss was a Bureau man. He embarrassed the outfit. This whole thing reminded everybody of an old rule.”

“What’s that?”

“Once a deal is made at the executive level, always clean up any loose ends. Kreiss was a loose end with consequences, and look what happened.”

“I would have thought that document would have made them somewhat more grateful,” she said.

“What document was that?” Farnsworth asked. His expression was one of bland disinterest.

Janet cocked her head.

“C’mon now,” she said.

“The document in AD Marchand’s archives. The smoking gun. Which proved—” “Never heard of it,” Farnsworth said, giving Keenan a questioning look. Keenan shook his head. He’d never heard of it, either.

“What!” she exclaimed.

“Nothing of the sort ever happened,” he repeated.

“The resignation of the deputy attorney general of the United States was simply a case of a senior political appointee resigning as the administration ended its own term of office. Nothing more.”

“And the recent retirement of Assistant Director Marchand and his senior deputy AD, and a certain red-faced PA … well, those were driven entirely by personal reasons,” Keenan said.

“Nothing more.”

“And the reappointment of our beloved director for another full term of office had been in the works for, oh, quite a long time,” Farnsworth said, folding his hands across his chest.

“Don’t you think so, Ben?”

“Oh, yes,” Keenan chimed in.

“Quite a long time indeed. Absolutely.

At least according to the attorney general of the United States, who publicly expressed her continuing full faith and confidence in him.”

“As did the president himself. Am I right, Ben?”

“He absolutely did,” Keenan said, beaming.

“Several times. And he loves his Bureau, too.”

“Oh, positively. He loves his Bureau. Just like the AG loves her Bureau.”

“They fucking better,” Keenan said. They looked at Janet with straight faces for a moment, and then they all laughed.

Janet shook her head. In a way, it was kind of comforting. The ultimate lock was in place. The big fish could afford to smile about

it. Small fry who might know something about the antecedents of such deals were, of course, an embarrassing annoyance. Any offer on said small fry’s part to fold her tents and disappear quietly into the desert night would be gratefully and expeditiously accepted, as evidenced by the recommendation Farnsworth sent over to the university. It had been glowing in the extreme, and, just for good measure, it had been warmly endorsed by the same official at the laboratory who had been the proximate cause of her original exile to the Roanoke office. Wonders never ceased.

Farnsworth was about to say something else, when the secretary buzzed in on the intercom.

“What?” Farnsworth asked.

“An urgent telex for you, sir. From the VHP?”

“Yeah, go ahead.”

The secretary read it over the intercom. It was plain from her tone of voice that she was upset. The Virginia Highway Patrol was reporting that they had found two partially mummified human heads impaled on stakes in the median of Interstate 81 outside of Christiansburg. They were requesting immediate FBI forensic assistance. They reported quite a commotion out on the interstate. Media interest was expected.

“Mummified human heads!” Keenan exclaimed.

“On stakes? Christ!”

Janet turned her face away to conceal the smile she was struggling to control.

“Close,” she murmured.

She wondered when he’d call. He probably wouldn’t. He’d come shambling down that hill behind the cabin. Maybe with Micah Wall and Whizbang.

“Hey, Special Agent,” he’d say.

“So where’s your bu-car?” She could just see it.