Steve Martini - The Enemy Inside

Tory Graves appears to be in his mid-fifties. Beady little eyes but otherwise not bad looking. Tall, slender, disheveled, a wrinkled dress shirt that looks as if it’s been slept in for a couple of days. He wears a pair of wire-rim glasses propped on his forehead atop a full graying mop of hair that has the look of an overdue meeting with a set of shears.

He flops into the chair behind his desk that has the same cluttered appearance as the man, stacks of papers and books, a half-eaten apple on a napkin on the back corner nearest him. Looking at the frenetic soul seated there, I suspect this may be his lunch.

“I’m sorry,” he says. “I don’t mean to be rude. How is Alex? I have been meaning to call him. I just haven’t had the time. I hope he’s all right. Is he making out financially?”

Ives has been off payroll, on leave now for a month. Graves, for some reason, docked him immediately following his arrest. He didn’t fire him, but instead told him in a letter that had the scent of a lawyer’s hand on it that Alex was suspended without pay pending the disposition in his case.

“He’s all right,” I tell him. “Worried, of course, but he’s doing OK, at least for the moment.” I leave a little wiggle room, since “OK” in this case embraces hiding out in Mexico as insurance against being killed.

“How can I help you?”

There is no sense trying to dance around the pink gorilla sitting in the middle of his desk, so I go right to the furry beast. “I take it you knew that the victim in this case, the person killed in the accident with Alex, was Olinda Serna?”

“Emm.” He runs his hands through his hair, pulling it over the crown of his head. It immediately flops back over his ears the instant his hands leave it. “I’d heard that,” he says.

“And you know who she is?”

“I know she worked for a law firm here in Washington.”

“I believe you also know that she figures prominently in a major news story that your publication is currently working on.”

“Where did you hear that?” he asks.

“I don’t have time to play around,” I tell him.

“We may be on the trail of a hot story, but then we work on a lot of big stories,” he says.

“This one, I’m told, is a capper.”

“So?”

“So you don’t think it’s strange that Serna, who was being probed and poked in the journalistic sense by one of your reporters, ends up dead, killed in an automobile accident three thousand miles away on the other side of the country? In the middle of nowhere? And the car she collides with is being driven by that same reporter?”

He looks at me, turns his nose up, and glances up at the ceiling. You can tell from his expression that the thought has crossed his mind. “How much did Alex tell you?”

“Enough to know that this is no coincidence.”

“My first thought,” he says, “was perhaps that he was following her a little too closely. Then I saw the news reports that said he was drunk. Mind you, I never knew Alex to drink. And certainly not on the job,” he says. “You need to know that the Gravesite had absolutely no knowledge as to any history of prior alcohol or drug abuse on Alex’s part. If that’s what this is about, I’m going to have to end the conversation now. Because I’m going to want to bring in my lawyers.”

“What?”

“If Serna’s heirs are pushing Alex and looking for deep pockets behind him,” he says, “they’re barking up the wrong tree here.”

“What? You think I’m here looking for cover in a tort case? Some whacked-out theory of agency? That the Gravesite might be liable for monetary damages if Alex was on the job when he killed her?”

“You tell me,” he says.

“Furthest thing from my mind,” I tell him. Though I hadn’t thought about it until now, this could be another headache down the road. “That’s not what this is about. Alex wasn’t drinking at the time of the accident. At least he wasn’t drunk. The police report shows only a small amount of alcohol in his system. No more than one drink.”

“If that’s true, how did the accident happen? What does Alex say?”

“He was unconscious. He doesn’t remember anything.”

“You mean he has amnesia?”

“No. Not in any ordinary sense,” I tell him.

“What then?”

“We believe he was drugged. Driven out to the site by someone else and used to stage the accident.”

He gives me a look like I’m a man from Mars, smiles, and says, “Are you serious?”

I nod. “Very much.”

“You’re telling me Serna was murdered?”

“Looks like it. What’s more, we believe that two other people besides Serna have now been killed because one of them was unlucky enough to have been used to set up the accident. She knew too much, and for this reason we believe she was killed.”

“You are serious!” he says. The expression on his face is not so much one of shock as that of a prospector who’s found gold.

“I need to know what’s going on. What it is that you’re investigating, and how Serna fits into the picture.”

“Holy. . I always suspected they were hard-core,” he says, “but I never envisioned this.”

“Who?”

“What kind of evidence do you have?” He grabs a pencil and starts fishing on his desk for a fresh piece of paper. “Tell me,” he says. “Can you give me the names of these two other people? The ones who were killed? You do have evidence?” Our meeting is suddenly turning into my interview.

“We’re unable to prove the presence of drugs in Alex’s system. We think they used what are called roofies. .”

He stops his scribbling long enough to look up and say, “You mean the date rape drug.”

“That’s the one.”

He writes it down.

“It works its way out of your system very quickly and leaves you with no memory of what happened during the time you were under. None of this is for publication,” I tell him.

“Of course. Of course,” he says. “Have you told anybody else about this?” Graves wants an exclusive.

“Not yet. But I may be forced to tell a jury, and to do it sooner than I would like, given the sparse evidence we have. That’s why I’m here talking to you.”

“Ah, I see,” he says. “So you don’t have any hard evidence.” He puts the pencil down.

“Circumstantial only. I may not be able to prove any of this unless I can show a compelling reason why someone else might have wanted to kill Serna.”

“I’m not sure I can help you,” says Graves.

“You said these people are hard-core. Who are you talking about?”

He shakes his head. “There’s nothing I can tell you,” he says. “I’m sorry.”

“I know you’re working on a hot story. Alex told me so.”

“What exactly did he tell you? He didn’t give you any documents, did he, anything in writing?”

“No. But I know that Serna was involved. I know it has to do with offshore banking and private numbered accounts. I know it all started a few years ago with the campaign by the Treasury and the IRS to identify American taxpayers who were believed to be evading US taxes by hiding money in undisclosed foreign accounts. I know that some funny things started happening when Uncle Sam got too close to powerful people believed to hold some of these accounts. Perhaps some politicians?” I wrinkle an eyebrow and look at him, a human question mark.

“Alex has been talking out of school,” he says.

“Alex is in trouble,” I tell him.

“Still, you really don’t know anything,” says Graves.

“So enlighten me.”

He tilts his head, looks at me, a pained expression. “I wish I could.” Hands back in his hair. “I wish I could. I really do. But I can’t.”