Alex Barclay - Blood Runs Cold

‘You too.’

They both looked at each other as if they were thinking the same thing; the number of sentences in life that were assigned to bullshit.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

They walked a short hallway into the office. Gressett gestured around the room. ‘This is … was Jean’s desk right here.’

‘It’s terrible what happened to her, so unfair.’

‘What’s fair?’ said Gressett with an explosive snap.

Jesus Christ .

‘What’s fair?’ he said again. ‘Have you any idea? Do you know something none of the rest of us don’t?’

‘I’m … I just meant I’m sorry.’

Gressett paused and let out a breath. He pointed to the wall beside Jean’s desk. There were plaques, certificates and framed awards. Ren leaned in. She had most of them herself and a few others.

‘Very impressive,’ said Ren.

‘I’d take Jean Transom as my right-hand man any day of the week.’

Ren nodded and moved toward Jean’s seat. ‘I’m just going to have a look through her desk and files, see if there’s anything …’

‘Go ahead,’ said Gressett. His tone said you’re not going to find anything . ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

‘Thanks, that would be great.’

She sat down and pulled the files on the desktop toward her. They were a mix of cases: drugs, bank fraud and embezzlement, child abuse, one crime aboard an aircraft, domestic abuse, theft from interstate shipments, robbery, unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. There was a folder called ‘RUTH’. Inside were photocopies of child sexual assault files. There were eight files — each marked with colored, numbered tabs — twelve different girls and the abuse they had suffered. It spanned almost thirty years of offences, including indecent exposure, fondling, attempted abduction, and rape, carried out across Summit and Garfield Counties.

Ren casually started re-arranging the files in date order. She could see Gressett almost climbing over his desk to look at what she was doing.

‘Was Jean working this file alone?’ said Ren, holding it up. ‘The little girls and the perverts. These appear to be photocopies of original files whose numbers I’m guessing are the references here on these little tabs.’

Gressett came over from his desk and looked at the file. He leaned in and closed the cover. ‘RUTH — yes, I’ve seen this on Jean’s desk. She handled any of the child sexual abuse cases here in the RA.’ He opened it again. ‘These are all different girls.’

‘Yes,’ said Ren.

‘Oh,’ said Gressett. ‘I had assumed it was just one girl called Ruth Something.’

Ren went through the photocopies. ‘OK — there is one girl here called Ruth. But the file doesn’t have a tab on it. Actually, it seems to be the only one that doesn’t have a tab … or a photo … or a last name … or a location … or a date. So I’m wondering,’ said Ren, ‘what it’s doing here.’

‘Well, I can’t help you with any of that,’ said Gressett going back to his desk.

‘I guess Jean must have figured all these cases were linked.’

Gressett nodded. ‘I guess so.’

The two most recent assaults were on top of the pile and had happened within the previous twelve months. Ren cross-referenced the numbers and pulled out the files. The assaults — indecent exposure and attempted abduction — had originally been reported to Frisco PD and Silverthorne PD. Jean had then interviewed the little girls and typed up the transcripts.

Ren read through them. Impressive . Jean had clearly developed a way of interviewing children that elicited a lot more information than a traumatized child would normally volunteer.

‘I guess it is just one of many files Jean was working on,’ said Gressett.

Subtle .

‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t exactly occupying her time any time recently. The latest incident was in October last year — that much I do know, because it was at Hallowe’en.’

Ren nodded. ‘Had Jean any leads?’

‘Just lists of known sex offenders and no evidence to link them to anything.’ He shrugged.

‘They are real clever in the children they choose and how they cover their tracks …’

Gressett nodded and went back to his computer.

No editorializing with Tiny Gressett .

Ren pulled another slim pile of print-outs from the back of Jean’s desk.

What the hell?

At the same time, she tipped over the mug of coffee Gressett had left on her desk.

‘Shit.’ She shouted louder than she wanted to. She jumped to her feet, scooping up a phone charger before it got wet. She found some napkins in Jean’s drawer and slapped them down on the desk. ‘Oops,’ she said, looking over at Gressett’s impassive face. She wrapped the phone charger in a napkin and put it in a dry corner. ‘Did Jean use a Motorola?’

‘Yes,’ said Gressett.

Ren sat quietly staring down at the print-outs, dabbing at pools of coffee where she noticed them. She had been too late to stop the coffee soaking into the edges of most of the files.

‘Gressett, sorry to bother you again, but do you know what Jean was doing with these print-outs on Domenica Val Pando?’

He paused. ‘I have no idea.’

I’m fucking here to go through Jean’s things to help the investigation, you dickhead .

‘I mean,’ said Ren, ‘I don’t even know why — ’

‘That is some woman, Domenica Val Pando,’ said Gressett, sitting up. ‘Seven shades of crazy.’ He reached out his hand. ‘Give me a look at those.’

Why don’t you come get them yourself? Ren got up and handed them over to him.

‘Domenica Bin Killin,’ he said.

Not funny .

‘Now, this is where there is no justice in the world,’ said Gressett. ‘You have Domenica Val Pando, an amoral, psychopathic — female! — spends years holed up in New Mexico, killing and maiming and drug-running and all the rest of it, sending other people to kill and maim and … avoids arrest. And now, she’s probably lying on some beach somewhere in Aruba. And then you have Jean Transom, a wonderful person, a helpful person, an excellent agent … and she’s the one who …’ He hit the back of his hand off the pages. ‘It was a damn shame she didn’t get finished off back then.’

For a moment, Ren thought he was talking about Jean. ‘Oh. Val Pando …’

‘For one of the most successful undercover jobs the FBI ever worked on …’ said Gressett. He shook his head. ‘Todd Austerval started Gary Dettling’s Undercover Program, but he didn’t make the grade. He said that on day one Dettling scared the living daylights out of the trainees with the Val Pando case. He held it up as the gold standard of undercover work: one agent, under deep cover with Val Pando for a whole year, absolutely undetected. And still, still , after all that, it was screwed up at the end. So that was the big lesson from Gary Dettling at the start of the course — this is what you should aspire to. And here’s how it can go wrong. Do you know how it went wrong in the end?’

A man would never ask another man a question like that. The I-know-something-you-don’t-know tone .

‘It would be very interesting to hear your take on that,’ said Ren.

‘Agent safety,’ said Gressett. ‘That was it. Pull one agent out instead of bringing a whole organized crime operation down. And that is Bureau policy. That’s what has to be done.’

‘Yup,’ said Ren. ‘It sucks that the Bureau can’t recruit suicide agents.’

‘I don’t mean that,’ said Gressett. ‘It’s just … it all seemed like a waste.’