Marcia Talley - This Enemy Town

“But how is Hart getting away with it? Isn’t there oversight of government contracts anymore?” I remembered my days working at Whitworth and Sullivan, where we kept an archive of all the “blue cover” reports published by the United States Government Accountability Office, the government agency chartered by Congress to track down instances of waste, fraud, and abuse within the government. Congress commissioned some fifteen hundred GAO reports a year, holding up for ridicule such government expenses as $1,118 spent on plastic caps for stool legs or $2,548 for a pair of duckbill pliers. “GAO even looks into things like standards for bottled water,” I ranted. “Surely they must have some idea of what’s going on with the Raytheons and Halliburtons of the world.”

“You would think,” Chris said. “But when the U.S. is at war, all bets are off.”

“But if Jennifer knew about it and you know about it, surely someone else does, too?”

“Jennifer talked big,” Chris explained, “but she never shared any of her evidence with me.”

“What about watchdog groups and FOIA?” I continued. “Surely contractors are required to respond to Freedom of Information Act requests.”

“They are and they aren’t,” she said. “Contractors can claim that specific financial data falls under the heading of a trade secret and that making it public would give their competitors unfair advantage. There’s often months and months of legal wrangling before a report finally arrives, and when it does, the cost figures have often been redacted.”

“Good grief.”

“Jen hinted that Hart had always been very clever about keeping his activities under the radar, but she claimed she finally had the goods on the guy and was going to blow the whistle. After separating him from a chunk of his money first, I’m afraid. Seeing all those unaccounted-for millions pass over her desk every day, the temptation must have been enormous.”

“But I still don’t understand. Knowing all this, how come you didn’t turn Admiral Hart in?”

“I loved her.”

Three simple, one-syllable words that explained everything.

“I hated her methods,” Chris continued after a moment of silence, “but I couldn’t stop loving her. I thought I’d talked her around at last. Forget the money, I told her, turn the son of a bitch in.”

“But now that Jennifer’s gone?”

“You must think I’m some sort of monster, sitting on information like this, but I’m not. I don’t have a speck of proof, and working in Personnel, there’s really no way I’d have access to it. But just so you don’t think I’m totally beyond redemption, I can tell you that I made a few phone calls to Arianna Huffington’s office, and to the Center for Public Integrity. They have much better connections than I do.”

“I wouldn’t trust Hart any farther than I could throw him,” I snorted, “which, considering his size, isn’t very far!”

Chris started. “How do you know Hart?”

“His son is a midshipman. The kid has a role in the Glee Club musical, and I was working with his wife helping to build sets. Hart came to the Academy several times, to see his son perform in Sweeney Todd , or so I thought. But Jennifer always seemed to be hanging around at the time. Eventually I put two and two together.”

“I see.” Chris sighed. “Do they still do the musicals in Mahan Hall?”

“Yup.”

“I remember Mahan,” she commented wistfully. “Lots of nooks and crannies where a mid can hide out, far from the prying eyes of Mother B.”

Mother B-Mother Bancroft-was the midshipman equivalent of Big Brother.

“Or two mids,” I amended.

She grinned. “That, too.”

“That’s probably why Jennifer arranged to meet Hart there. Anyplace else, even in downtown Annapolis, they were very likely to be noticed.” I paused, staring at the reflection of the overhead light shimmering on the surface of my coffee.

“Did Jen actually get money from the admiral?” I asked. “Do you know?”

“No.” A look of absolute misery stole across her face. “Hart found out about us, you see.”

“I see.” Jennifer and the admiral had reached a stalemate.

Chris twirled her empty coffee cup around on the tabletop. “Jen enjoyed playing with fire, but this was the first time she got burned.”

As I watched the cup go round and round, for the first time in weeks I thought I could see light at the end of the tunnel. “Chris, will you tell my lawyer what you just told me?”

To my surprise, she smiled mischievously. “I’ve not been quite honest with you, either, Hannah. Your lawyer came to see me late last week. Everything you know, he knows.”

Even though I wanted to snatch him bald-headed for not sharing this bit of critical information with me, my rating of Murray went up several notches. “But how did he find you?”

Chris shrugged. “Maybe he learned that I’d already been contacted by NCIS and the Navy I.G.?”

“Oh.” What a blockhead I was! Here I thought I’d been on the bleeding edge, but the foot soldiers for both the prosecution and the defense had gone charging ahead, leaving me to wander in the darkened woods, picking up bread crumbs.

Chris stood and lifted her coat off the back of the chair. “I’ve got to go, but if it means anything, I want you to know that I don’t hold you responsible for Jennifer’s death.”

“Thank you. It means a lot.”

“Call me again, any time.” She slipped a business card out of her wallet and handed the card to me. “Good luck, Mrs. Ives. I’ll be praying for you.”

I watched through the window as the back ofChris’s dark blue coat disappeared west down Ninth Street. I fumed a bit, too, wondering why Murray hadn’t mentioned Chris Donovan yesterday, why he pretended that all the information Jack Turley told us about Chris was news to him. And if he’d interviewed the woman, he had to know that he was a she . Murray, I decided, was sometimes a class-A jerk.

As I mined for foam at the bottom of my cup with a plastic spoon, I amused myself by dreaming up punishments for an attorney who withheld critical information from a client, information that could have prevented her from making a proper fool of herself by pretending to be her own daughter. A New Yorker cartoon came to mind, a dominatrix, with a lawyer groveling at her feet:

– So, worm, shall I tie you up in litigation?

– Yes, please, and make it lengthy and expensive.

I smiled. Maybe I should listen to Paul and let the professionals handle this.

I decided a brisk walk might clear my head, so before heading back to the Metro, I called Paul on my cell phone, leaving a message that I’d be home around six and that if he didn’t want to wait for supper, there was leftover Chinese food in the fridge.

Just the mention of the Chinese food made my stomach rumble. Except for the coffee and crumbs of chocolate chip cookie I’d shared with Chris, I hadn’t had anything to eat since dinner the night before. I needed a snack to fortify me for the long ride home, but one that wasn’t fifty percent sugar. I was already so wired, another cookie might send me into orbit. I tossed my paper cup into the trash and went out the door to forage.

Perched on a doughnut-shaped planter in front of the coffee shop, the concrete chilling my buns, I looked around me and decided that the Virginia Square/GMU Metro stop was a misnomer. As far as I could tell, no square existed, and the GMU of the title turned out to be only a small branch of George Mason University in Fairfax, farther to the west. I hadn’t remembered seeing any restaurants in the vicinity, so I bopped back into Starbucks to quiz the barista who was cleaning off the milk foamer with a damp rag.