Cody McFadyen: The Darker Side

Here are two men that would be hard to live with, I think. Not because they're bad men, but because they'd operate on the assumption you knew they cared, and that would have to be enough. Love, but no flowers.

Director Rathbun turns to me, again.

"I'll get right to it, Agent Barrett. You're here because I was asked to bring you by someone I'm not prepared to say no to."

I glance at AD Jones, remembering his comment about how the Director had "dropped a name."

"Can I ask who?"

"Soon." He nods at the body. "Tell me what you see."

I turn to the body and force myself to focus.

"Young woman, in her early twenties. Possible victim of homicide."

"What makes you say homicide?"

I indicate a series of bruises on her left upper arm.

"The bruises are red-purple, which means they're very recent. See the outlines? Those bruises were caused by a hand. You have to grip someone pretty hard to cause bruising as defined as that. She's cool to the touch, meaning she's been dead at least twelve hours, probably more like twenty with the visible bruising. Rigor hasn't left the body, meaning she's been dead less than thirty-six." I shrug. "She's young, and someone grabbed her arm hard enough to bruise it not long before she died. Suspicious." I give him a wry smile. "Oh yeah, and I'm here, which means she probably didn't die of natural causes."

"Good eyes, as expected," he says. "And you're correct. She was murdered. On a commercial airliner as it headed from Texas to Virginia. No one knew she was dead until after the plane was empty and the flight attendant tried to rouse her."

I stare at him, certain he's pulling my leg.

"Murder at thirty thousand feet? Is that a joke, sir?"

"No."

"How do we know she was murdered?"

"The nature of how she was found made it clear. But I want you to see it all fresh, with no preconceptions."

I turn back to the body, truly intrigued now.

"When did this happen?"

"Her body was discovered twenty hours ago."

"Do we have a cause of death yet?"

"The autopsy hasn't been done." He glances at his watch. "In fact, we're waiting for the ME now. He's probably held up signing nondisclosure forms."

This oddity brings me back to my original question, and I ask it again. "Why me, sir? More appropriately-why you? What is it about this woman that warrants direct involvement from the Director of the FBI?"

"I'm about to tell you. But first, I want you to see something. Humor me."

Like I have a choice.

He goes over to the body and lifts the sheet away from her chest. He holds it up.

"Take a look," he says.

AD Jones and I move to the head of the table so we are looking down her body from top to bottom. I see small breasts with brown nipples, a flat stomach. My gaze travels down her young form, arriving at her pubic area with impunity, one of the many indignities of the dead. And there I stop, shocked.

"She has a penis," I blurt out.

AD Jones says nothing.

Director Rathbun lets the sheet fall back. He does this with gentle care, an almost fatherly gesture.

"This is Lisa Reid, Smoky. Does that name mean anything to you?"

I frown, trying to make the connection. I can only find one that accounts for the Director's presence here.

"As in Texas congressman Dillon Reid?"

"That's right. Lisa was born Dexter Reid. Mrs. Reid asked for you specifically. She's familiar with your-ah-story."

I'm amused at his discomfort, but I hide it.

Three years ago, my team and I were hunting a serial killer, a true psycho by the name of Joseph Sands. We were very close to catching him when he broke into my home one night. He tied me to a bed and raped me again and again. He used a hunting knife on the left side of my face, carving himself into me, stealing my beauty and leaving me with a permanent relief map of pain.

The scarring starts at my hairline in the middle of my forehead. It goes straight down to between my eyebrows, and then it rockets off to the left, an almost perfect ninety degree angle. I have no left eyebrow; the scar has replaced it. The puckered road continues, across my temple, arcing in a lazy loop-de-loop down my cheek. It rips over toward my nose, crosses the bridge of it just barely, and then turns back, slicing in a diagonal across my left nostril and zooming one final time past my jawline, down my neck, ending at my collarbone. There is another scar, straight and perfect, that goes from under the middle of my left eye down to the corner of my mouth. This was a gift from another psychotic; he forced me to cut myself while he watched and smiled.

Those are just the scars that are visible. Below the neckline of whatever blouse I happen to be wearing, there are others. Made by Sands's knife blade and the cherry-end of a burning cigar. I lost my face that night, but that was the least of what Sands stole from me. He was a hungry thief, and he only ate the precious things. I had a husband, a beautiful man named Matt. Sands tied him to a chair and made him witness my rape and torture. Then Sands forced me to watch while he tortured and murdered my Matt. We screamed together and then Matt was gone. It was the last thing we ever shared.

There was one final theft, the worst of all. My ten-year-old daughter, Alexa. I'd managed to get free and had come after Sands with my gun. He yanked Alexa up as I pulled the trigger and the bullet meant for him killed her instead. I filled Sands up with the remaining bullets in the gun and reloaded, screaming, to do it all again. I would have kept firing until the end of the world if they'd let me. I spent six months after that night teetering on the knife-edge of suicide, wrapped in insanity and despair. I wanted to die, and I might have, but I was saved because someone else died first. My best friend from high school, Annie King, was murdered by a madman for no other reason than he wanted me to hunt him. He raped Annie with abandon and gutted her with a fisherman's skill. When he was done, he tied Annie's ten-year-old daughter, Bonnie, to Annie's corpse. Bonnie was there for three days before she was discovered. Three days cheek to cheek with her hollowed-out mother. I gave the madman his wish. I hunted him down and killed him without a twinge of guilt. By the time it was all over, I just didn't feel like dying anymore.

Annie left Bonnie to me, as it turned out. It should have been a doomed relationship; I was a rickety mess, Bonnie was mute as a result of the horrors she'd witnessed. But fate is funny sometimes. Curses can blossom into blessings. Apart, we were broken; together, Bonnie and I helped each other to heal. Bonnie began speaking again two years ago, and I'm happy to be alive, something, at one time, I thought would never happen.

I have learned to accept my disfigurement. I've never considered myself beautiful, really, but I used to be pretty. I am short, with curly, dark hair down to my shoulders. I have what my husband used to call

"bite-sized boobs," along with a butt that's bigger than I'd like but which seems to have its own appeal. I had always been comfortable in my own skin, at peace with the physical hand dealt me. Sands's work had made me cringe every time I looked into the mirror. I had kept my hair brushed forward after the attack, using it to obscure my face. Now I keep it tied back in a ponytail and tight against my head, daring the world to look and not giving-as my dad used to say-a "good God damn" if they don't like it.

All of this-my "ah-story" as the Director had put it-had appeared in various papers, and it had given me a grisly celebrity with people both good and bad.

It had also established a ceiling for me at the FBI. There was a time when I was being considered for the Assistant Director's job. Not anymore. My scars gave me a good face for a hunter, or even a teacher of hunters (I'd been offered a teaching position at Quantico, which I'd turned down), but as far as being the administrative face of the FBI?