Joel Goldman - Shakedown

“Troy didn’t waste any time telling you, did he?”

“Troy understands our mission. I’m not certain you do.”

I wasn’t moving but the ground beneath me was. “I’ll see a doctor, today if I can find one. In the meantime, I’ve got five dead bodies and I’ve got to get back to work.”

Yates sat in the chair Colby had used, his voice quiet but unyielding.

“This isn’t about you, Jack. You’re a good agent, one of the best we’ve got. Go find out what’s wrong. Do what you have to do. Take all the time you need. We’ll handle this case.”

I looked at him. His eyes were steady and calm. His mouth closed. There was no give. No room for debate.

“You’re right. I should have told you.”

“Would have come out the same way. You know that. I’ll need your gun and your credentials.”

“I’m on sick leave. Why are you treating me like I’m under investigation?”

“You’re not under investigation.”

“Then why do you want my credentials and my gun?”

“Don’t make this harder than it is, Jack.”

“Then make it easy. Let me do my job.”

“That’s the point, Jack. Right now you can’t do your job and we don’t know why. Until we do, I need your badge and your gun. Talk to Anita in HR on your way out. She’s got some disability forms for you to sign.”

“So that’s it. You think I’m having a breakdown, that I can’t be trusted?”

I let the time pass waiting for Yates to answer. When he didn’t, I pulled my gun from the holster on my hip, put it in his outstretched palm along with my ID and badge, and made my way to the door, turning back toward him.

“Who’s got my squad now? Troy?”

Yates didn’t hesitate. “He’ll do a good job.”

The only doctor I’d seen in the six years I’d been in Kansas City was the one the Bureau used for our annual physical. Nice guy. Soft touch when he checked my prostate but not much personality.

No matter what they said about physician-patient privilege, I wasn’t taking a chance with someone on the FBI’s payroll. I needed a doctor who could tell me what was wrong, fix it, and get me back to work, and I didn’t want someone who might have the same fit of self-serving conscience that had put me on the shelf and Troy Clark in charge of my squad.

Joy had a doctor for each limb, organ, and hemisphere of the brain, enough to start her own hospital. None of them were able to save the part of her that died with Kevin. I didn’t have any more confidence in them than she did.

The rest of my close friends, the ones I would normally confide in, were people that worked for the Bureau. That world had always been enough for me. Now I was on the outside looking in.

That left Kate Scranton. I was always careful when I denied Joy’s accusations that I was having an affair with Kate, repeating that there was nothing going on. I couldn’t tell her that Kate had touched my heart in a way I never thought would happen again. It didn’t matter that I had never acted on my feelings and that I only suspected that Kate felt the same way. Feeling the way I did was betrayal enough.

I had reconciled myself to the way things were with Joy, accepting it as penance for having let her and Kevin down. When she left me, I realized that we had both served out our sentences.

Kate had just returned from a lengthy jury trial in which former executives of an energy company were accused of looting it and misleading investors, resulting in a bankruptcy that had wiped out thousands of jobs and retirement accounts and billions in shareholder equity. I hadn’t seen her since Joy moved out, though we’d talked on the phone while Kate was away. She knew about Joy but not about my shaking, unless she could feel it over the phone.

I met her a year ago when she was working with a lawyer defending a pharmacist who was accused of dealing in black-market painkillers. The case hinged on the credibility of the government’s informer. I sat through the whole trial not just because it was my case but because of her.

At first, I told myself it was because she was so good at what she did. She scanned everyone in the courtroom like her eyes were bar-code readers, whispering advice to the defense attorney about jurors and witnesses. A case I thought was airtight unraveled before my eyes, collapsing completely when our star witness was caught lying on the stand. Everyone in the courtroom was watching the witness stammer and stutter. I couldn’t take my eyes off Kate, her satisfied smile saying gotcha .

She had an angular face and lithe body with long ebony hair, fair skin, and blue eyes. She was tall, like me, smarter than me; her smiles came more easily than mine.

It was at that moment that she got me, though I didn’t tell her when I asked her to lunch the week after the trial, saying only that I wanted to learn more about what she did. I’d never been unfaithful to Joy and had never thought I could be until I met Kate.

We ate at D’Bronx Deli on Thirty-ninth Street, gorging on their special pizza that had more than everything on it. We ran through the mutual background check. I told her about Wendy and Colby Hudson. Kate’s reaction hit home.

“And you wish they weren’t seeing each other.”

“What can I say?”

“You didn’t have to say anything. Your face did all the talking.”

Kate was forty-one, divorced from her husband, Alan, after a fifteen-year marriage she described as a war of attrition. The one thing they agreed on was each other’s talent. They were both psychologists. Alan conducted mock-jury trials, using the results to craft questionnaires for the real jurors. She knew of no one better. Congratulating themselves on being mature adults, they agreed that their business relationship as jury consultants would survive their divorce. Her father, Dr. Henry Scranton, had started the firm and she and Alan were his partners. Alan, Kate said, had regretted the divorce the moment the ink was dry on the decree, but she knew it was the right decision.

Her thirteen-year-old son, Brian, split time between his parents. Her sister, Patty, was the poster child for happily married soccer moms, always nagging Kate to quit her job, patch things up with Alan, and provide their son a more stable home. Her father agreed on everything except quitting her job.

“How do you do it?” I asked her.

“Do what?”

“Get it so right in the courtroom.”

“It’s how my father raised me.”

“Not good enough.”

Kate shoved the leftover scraps of olives, pepperoni, anchovies, and onions into a small mound, scooped them into her mouth, chewing and then smiling.

“My father is an expert in the Facial Action Coding System,” she explained.

“I was absent that day in school.”

“It’s a catalog of over three thousand facial expressions people make every day. A psychologist, Paul Ekman, developed the system. The majority of our facial expressions are involuntary. They?ash by in milliseconds, too fast for most people to even see them. But they are there. You can videotape someone and break down their expressions frame by frame.”

“I thought the eyes were the windows into the soul.”

“Very romantic, but the eyes are cloudy windows at best. Facial expressions can reveal whether someone is cheating on their spouse or their taxes or whether their heart is filled with mercy or murder, if you can put their expressions in the right context.”

We debated whether that was true, matching our experiences. I told her about Kevin. She eased back in her chair.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she explained. “You didn’t know what to look for.”

“That’s not an excuse. My job is to know what to look for.”