Джеймс Паттерсон - Unsolved

“I didn’t say an excuse. I didn’t say that. And I’ll remind you to be cautious both in your judgments and in your tone.”

“My tone? I don’t work for you anymore, Bill. I came to help out on this investigation at your request. You asked me .”

Books draws back, letting his own words sink in.

“Okay, I get it now,” he continues. “I always thought it was a little odd that you’d have me investigate the leak when you thought the prime suspect was Emmy. I took it as the ultimate compliment that you had so much faith in my integrity that you thought I’d even bust my own fiancée if I believed she was the leaker.”

“That’s true. It’s completely—”

“Bullshit,” Books snaps. “You wanted an outsider, an outsider you could trust to keep your secrets. You knew I’d have to investigate everyone. You knew that might end up including Elizabeth. And you knew that if I looked into her, I’d see that she seemed to have an awful lot of cash on hand. Which would certainly make her look suspicious. If someone was going to find that out, you wanted it to be someone who doesn’t work at the Bureau. Someone you could trust to protect you. Someone who looked up to you as a mentor.”

“You’re…twisting this, Books.”

“You could have told me this straight off, Bill. You could have said, ‘Look, this is embarrassing, but I’m sleeping with Elizabeth, and I don’t want my wife seeing the credit card bills for hotel rooms and dinners and whatever else—but I’m too much of an old-school guy to let her pay, so I’m giving her cash while she puts all the expenses on her credit cards.’ Yeah, that would have been helpful information for me to have, Mr. Director.”

“I owe you an apology for not telling you,” says Moriarty. “You’re exactly right about that. I hoped it would never come to you investigating Elizabeth. I was certain— we were certain—Emmy was the leaker. Are you telling me she’s not?”

Books drops his head into his hands. Until about fifteen minutes ago, he was certain it was Elizabeth. He thought he was about to close the loop on the leak investigation, and maybe more. Instead, he’s back to square one.

“But Agent Bookman, I do not owe you or anyone else an apology for what I do with my personal life. I love Betsy dearly and I’ve been very, very good to her. She wants for nothing. She never will. You have no idea what it’s like to love someone who wants to love you back but can’t.”

With that, Books raises his head and looks over at his mentor. Actually, he thinks, I do know what that’s like.

He opens the door and leaves the town car.

117

I STARE at the computer screen, at the vehicle registration of the one car whose license plate was captured at all three bombing sites: the bank in Seymour, Connecticut, accused of racial discrimination in lending; the fast-food restaurant in Pinellas Park, Florida, its parent company accused of animal cruelty; the city hall in Blount County, Alabama, that wouldn’t marry same-sex couples.

A license plate that was scrubbed from the bulk data, deleted forever, so that when Rabbit organized and collated it, we’d never see it.

My phone buzzes. Books. I reach for the phone, but my hand is shaking so hard I don’t think I can lift it. The buzzing stops. My phone beeps a minute later with a voice mail. Without lifting the phone, I push the button to listen to the message.

“Emmy, it’s not Elizabeth Ashland. She’s not the mole.”

I know she isn’t.

“She’s having an affair with Director Moriarty. They’ve been meeting at the Payton Club. He’s been paying her cash so she can put everything on her credit cards and he can hide the bills from Betsy.”

My brain is telling me this is a wow moment, but I’m not wowed. I couldn’t care less about Elizabeth Ashland right now. Though this must be what she meant when she was talking about her complicated love life on the airplane.

Books isn’t done, but I get the point. I turn off the phone when Bonita Sexton comes rushing down the aisle. “Okay, what’s up?” she says. “What happened?”

“Hey, Rabbit.” I gesture to my computer. “Somebody hacked into the bulk data for the Citizen David investigation.”

“ What? Somebody messed with my data?”

I nod. “I re-created the file,” I tell her. “From the original data.”

“You did?” she says. “That’s my job.”

I throw up my hands. “Well, Rabbit, what can I say? I did it.” My eyes are blurry with tears.

“Well, okay, then. Let me run it for a compatibility anal—”

“I did that too,” I say. “See for yourself.” I nod toward the computer screen. She turns and looks at the license registration I pulled up.

“No,” she says.

I stand and leave my cubicle, not feeling my legs, moving as if I’m floating. I reach Rabbit’s cubicle and pick up the framed photographs, joined together, of her boys, Mason and Jordan. I hear her come up behind me.

“Jordan, I assume—it was when you were in New Haven visiting him,” I say. “Not that hard to drive over to Seymour and blow up that bank. Mason? In Tampa? Pinellas Park isn’t too far away. Plant a bomb at the fast-food restaurant and make the chain pay for being cruel to the chickens that are in its sandwiches.”

Rabbit doesn’t say anything. I can hear her heavy breathing, nothing more.

“The city hall in Alabama? That one would have been harder. But by then,” I say, turning to her, “you knew you were in charge of the data for the Citizen David investigation. You didn’t need to be careful anymore. You could just scrub yourself out of the data.”

Her eyes are cast down; her chest is heaving.

“What about Chicago?” I say. “Was that—”

“Chicago wasn’t me, and you know it,” she hisses. “I never killed a single person. I never would have. That’s why it made me…” She shakes her head.

“That’s why the Chicago bombing sickened you so much,” I finish. “Because someone was taking your crusade and bastardizing it, bombing people you genuinely care about.” I remember now how upset Rabbit was after Chicago, how personally she took it. I hadn’t realized how personal it was to her.

Rabbit lets out a big sigh. She’s relieved, probably, in a weird way. How this must have weighed on her.

“If you’re waiting for an apology,” she says, “you aren’t going to get one. Everyone I hit had it coming. Banks that deny loans to black and brown people? Screw them. Restaurant chains that torture animals? You actually feel bad for them? This country is going to hell, and somebody has to stand up for the little guy.”

“Did somebody have to leak information to Shaindy Eckstein at the Post ?” I ask.

That question knocks some of the air out of her.

“You needed a buffer, right?” I go on. “If Citizen David is always one step ahead of our investigation, someone will eventually suspect it’s an inside job. But leak to a reporter who tells the whole world, and the only thing people will suspect is that there’s a leaker. Nobody will think that someone within our own Bureau is Citizen freakin’ David himself. Or herself, apparently.”

Bonita breaks eye contact, stares at something in the middle distance. No tears have fallen, I notice. Her face is a stone wall. I didn’t realize how hardened she’d become. All the protest rallies she attended, all the volunteer work she did, weren’t enough. Her kids were grown up and she’d had a fulfilling career. It was time for her, I guess, to take bolder steps against what she was seeing happen to her country. And to gather a national following in the process.