J. Bertrand - Nothing to Hide

She takes us through the open room pretty quick, like she doesn’t want us paying too much attention to the papers lying around. In back, there are several glass partition walls separating individual offices from the main area. She shoves open the one on the end, motioning us inside. The lights come on automatically, motion sensitive.

Bascombe sits in the available guest chair and I move to the corner. Bea grabs a rolling chair from outside and scoots it my way, then goes around the desk. In front of her, there’s an inch-thick stack of paper hidden inside a report cover. She drops it into a drawer, then edges her chair forward, clasping her hands in the empty space where the papers had been.

“Well,” she says. “Thanks for coming.”

Bascombe nods.

“You’re probably wondering what this is all about.”

Neither of us replies.

“Okay, let’s get the tough stuff out of the way first. As you can see, I’m not making you jump through any hoops. I could’ve made this hard, but that’s not my style. There aren’t any supervisors here to get in the way. No liaison officers or anything like that. I could’ve done this the usual way, but to be honest, I don’t think there’s time. I wanted to talk face-to-face, to lay all my cards out on the table. This seemed like the best way.”

She waits for a reply.

“Maybe you should start by putting us in the picture,” I say.

“All right.”

She opens another drawer, pauses, then shuts it. Then she rolls her chair to the side like she’s going to reach for something in the stack of files on her credenza. But she doesn’t.

“The thing is. . Let me go back a little. . ”

Under the fluorescent light, her face seems impossibly unlined, the skin taut as a child’s.

“Early yesterday morning,” she begins, “I got some unfortunate news. Your department submitted DNA samples to NCIC and they came back with a hit-”

“That’s news to us.”

She holds up her hand. “Bear with me. I delayed the results. I wasn’t sure what to do. What you have to realize is, the person you got a match for wasn’t dead.”

“I have a headless body in the morgue that begs to differ.”

“Yes, all right ,” she snaps, her hands clasping again. A vein appears in her smooth forehead. “I understand that. But at the time, I wasn’t aware that he was dead.” She takes a deep breath, lets it out. “I knew your victim, Detective March. He worked for me.”

“What?” Bascombe says. “You mean, here?”

“He wasn’t an FBI employee, Lieutenant. He was an asset. He was working undercover as part of this operation. The last contact we had with him was two weeks ago, and at that time everything was fine. So you can imagine my surprise when your test results popped up.”

“So you can identify my victim?” I ask.

The implications are electrifying. My John Doe not only has a name, but his death has a context. Under the circumstances, the FBI might be able to name not just the victim but his likely killer.

“I can identify him, yes.”

“Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?” Bascombe asks, creaking forward in his chair.

She responds with a pained smile. It dawns on me that Bea has more than a name to give. She knew this man. She felt responsible for him, at the very least. To her, this is more than just a case to solve.

“I’m sorry if I was a little blunt before,” I say. “I realize what a shock this must be. But you’re in a position to help. Not only can you identify the victim, but I’m guessing you might have a good idea what happened to him-and where. If we’re putting all our cards on the table, the fact is, we don’t have much to go on.”

“I figured as much,” she says. “There’s a problem, though, and that’s why you’re here. Like I said, I could identify him. . but I can’t.”

“You don’t really have a choice. You can’t obstruct a homicide investigation.”

“If I don’t,” she says, “then you’ll have another homicide on your hands.”

I start to answer, but Bascombe puts a hand on my arm. “Let her explain, March. Stop interrupting.”

Another deep breath. “Like I said, he was working undercover. It seems obvious that something went wrong, that somehow his cover was blown. If you release his identity to the media and start investigating his murder, then we’ll be confirming to the people who killed him that they were right.”

“Does that matter at this point?”

“It does,” she says. “He’s not the only person we have undercover. Someone had to vouch for him, and if his cover was blown, that someone is in a lot of danger.”

After a pause, Bascombe edges forward a bit more. “If they killed one, what makes you think the other isn’t already dead?”

“I know for a fact he isn’t. We’ve been in communication.”

“And he said he was in danger?”

“That’s why we’re here,” she says. “Let me spell it out. I can’t let you have an ID on your victim, because it would put the life of my last remaining asset in jeopardy.”

“So what are you asking me to do? Leave him in the freezer?”

She blinks. “I’m not asking more than that. You’re not going to like this, Detective, but I don’t see that you have any choice. Not unless you want to be responsible for a man’s death.”

“Go on.”

Bea’s hand goes back to the files, removing one from the top of the stack. She hands it across the desk to me. Inside, there’s a glossy photo of a Caucasian male in his mid-thirties, a curly-haired man with thick eyebrows and the hint of laugh lines on either side of the mouth. There are also photocopies of a Texas driver’s license, a CHL, and a U.S. passport. Behind a stapled stack of typed pages, there’s also a Federal Firearms License-an FFL, required for gun dealers.

The name on all the documentation is the same: BRANDON FORD.

“This is him?” I ask. “Brandon Ford.”

“It is as far as you’re concerned.”

Bascombe snatches the file. “Let me see that.” He flips through the pages quickly. “This is his cover, is that what you’re saying?”

“Correct.”

“What we’re looking for is a positive identification. This doesn’t do it. Brandon Ford doesn’t exist. We’re not in the business of investigating people who don’t exist.”

“Well, you are now.”

They stare each other down, the big lieutenant and the slender, slight FBI agent. Her eyes shine with-what? Anger? Determination? At least it’s obvious now why she didn’t bring in a bunch of supervisors and liaisons. She doesn’t have any institutional authority to assert. She knows what she’s doing is, at best, unorthodox, probably unethical, and possibly illegal. Not that things like this don’t happen. They just don’t happen officially. The only authority she can call on here is moral. Work with me or you’ll get somebody killed.

“It’s not that I don’t want to help you,” I begin.

“Detective, here’s what I want. You have to leave here determined to investigate the murder of Brandon Ford. He’s a licensed gun dealer, he’s underwater on his mortgage and in danger of foreclosure, he’s got an ex-wife and two kids who need support every month, and he’s desperate for cash. So desperate that he’d be happy to supply anyone who asks with any quantity of AK-47s they require. That’s who’s in your morgue, and that’s what you have to tell the media. When you do, the people responsible for. . Brandon’s death will second-guess themselves. They’ll think their suspicions were wrong.”

“With all due respect,” I say, “this man wasn’t just executed. He was tortured. Presumably they were trying to make him talk-”

“I’m aware of that.”