Lisa Unger - Sliver Of Truth

“I figured you for a driver, not a passenger,” I said, nodding toward the sedan.

“I’m not allowed to drive the government cars for a while,” he said with a smile that told me he thought a lot of himself. “I’ve totaled three cars in seven months. I’ve got to pass an evasive driving course. Till then, shotgun.”

For some reason, I found myself comparing him to Jake. There was a kind of arrogance (or maybe it was just confidence) to him that contrasted with Jake’s kind humility. He lacked Jake’s essential sweetness but also the rage Jake held at his center. Jake was physically exquisite, not just handsome or sexy but truly beautiful to behold. Agent Grace…well, there was a hardness to him, a lack of artistry. If Jake was marble, he was granite. But in the curve of his lips, the lids of his eyes, there was an animal sexuality that made me nervous, like you would feel in the cage of a tiger that you’d been assured was as gentle as a lamb. Agent Grace made me miss Jake, the safety I felt in his arms.

I decided I didn’t like Agent Dylan Grace at all. I might have even hated him a little.

“Good night, Detective,” I said, just to be annoying.

“I’m a federal agent, Ms. Jones.”

“Oh, right. Sorry.”

I was shutting (slamming) the door on him when he stopped it (hard) with his hand.

“Can I come in? We need to talk.”

“In my experience, federal agents are like vampires: Once you’ve invited them in, they’re very hard to get rid of. Next thing you know, they’ve got their teeth in your neck.”

He smiled at this and I saw a flash of boyishness there. It softened him a bit. Then he ruined it by saying, “I don’t want to take you in again, Ms. Jones. It’s late. But I will.”

I didn’t want him to take me in again, either. I was way too tired. I considered my options, then stood aside and let him walk through the door. He let me pass and then followed me into the elevator. We rode to the fifth floor in silence, eyes on the glowing green buttons above as they marked our passage upward. It was so quiet I could hear him breathing. We were so close I could smell his aftershave.

“Nice building,” he said as we stepped into the hallway. “Prewar?”

I nodded as we came to a stop at my door. I unlocked it and we stepped inside.

“Your boyfriend home?”

I turned to look at him as I shifted off my jacket and dropped my bag on the floor.

“What do you want, Agent Grace?” I asked, anger in my chest, tears gathering in my eyes. I felt invaded and helpless against it. He was trampling on every boundary I had, and it was infuriating me. When I’m mad, I cry. I hate that about myself, but I don’t seem to be able to change it no matter how hard I try. “I mean, seriously,” I said, my voice breaking. “You’re playing with me, right? What do you want?”

He got that horrified look on his face that a certain type of man gets when he thinks a woman is going to cry. He lifted his palms.

“Okay,” he said. “Take it easy.” He spoke carefully, as if he were talking a jumper in off a ledge. He glanced around the room; I’m not sure what he was looking for.

“Don’t you get it?” I asked him. “I don’t know anything.”

“Okay,” he said again, pulling out a chair at the table and motioning me to sit. I sat and put my head in my hands, noticing that Jake’s file was still on the table where I’d left it. I’m not sure why, but I had expected it to be gone when I came home. Agent Grace sat across from me and I slid the file toward him. Mercifully, my tears retreated soon after and I was spared the humiliation of weeping in front of this stranger who’d forced his way into my life and my home.

“What’s this?” he asked.

“Jake gave it to me,” I said, looking up to show him I wasn’t crying. “The article on top-that’s how I knew about Nick Smiley, why I went to Detroit. I couldn’t make any sense out of the rest of it.”

He was quiet for a minute as he shuffled through the pages, then he closed the file with a little laugh.

“Your boy has got an ax to grind, huh?”

I nodded.

“You think he wants a job with the FBI?”

I glared at him. “Something in there has meaning to you?”

He took out the New York Times clippings and turned them toward me. “What do these articles all have in common?”

I glanced through them again and nothing popped. I shrugged and looked up at him. He had been watching me as I looked through them and didn’t take his eyes away. There was a strange expression on his face. He reached across and pointed to the byline. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it. What writer reads an article but doesn’t look at the byline? They were all written by the same person: Myra Lyall. The name rang a bell but I couldn’t quite say why.

“Who is she?”

“She’s a career crime writer, short-listed for the Pulitzer twice. Most recently she wrote for the Times.”

“‘Wrote,’ past tense?”

“She and her husband, a photographer, went missing about two weeks ago.”

I flashed on the news story I kept seeing on television and in the papers. Still, I had the feeling I’d heard the name somewhere else.

He went on. “Friends showed up for dinner; Myra and her husband, Allen, weren’t there. After a day of trying to reach them, the police were called. There was a pool of blood on the floor in the apartment, no sign of the couple. The table was set for dinner, a roast in the oven, pots on the stove.”

I started to hear that noise I get in my right ear when I’m really stressed out. “What was she working on?” I asked.

“We don’t know. Both her laptop and her box at work had been wiped clean. Even the Times server had been cleared of all her e-mail exchanges.”

I thought about this. I wasn’t sure what to make of it.

Finally I asked, “So this is your case? This missing couple?”

He nodded.

“What does it have to do with me?”

“The last story Myra Lyall published was about three Project Rescue babies, how each had been affected by what happened to them. It was a feature for the Magazine, something softer than her usual investigative pieces.”

I remembered now where I’d last heard her name.

“What does this have to do with me?” I asked again, though it was clearer now.

“She had your name and number in a notebook. According to what she’d written there, she’d tried to call you three times for comment but you never returned her calls.”

“The only people I enjoy speaking to less than FBI agents are reporters.”

He gave a little laugh. “Aren’t you a reporter?”

I bristled at this. “I’m a writer,” I said haughtily. “A feature writer. It’s not the same thing.”

“Whatever you say,” he answered.

It wasn’t the same thing. Not at all. But I wasn’t going to get into it with this bozo. Subtleties and nuances were lost on people like Agent Grace.

“So you said they’ve been missing two weeks?” I asked.

He looked at his watch. “Two weeks, three days, and approximately ten hours, according to the time line we created.”

“But those pictures-my pictures-some of them were taken months ago.”

He nodded, looked down at the table. I got it then.

“The FBI has been watching me?”

“For over a year, yes.”

“Why?”

He took the ME’s report out of the file. “There are inconsistencies in this report. Time of death is about ten hours off, according to our experts.” He pointed to something Jake had circled. “This body weighed a hundred and eighty-six pounds. But you know Max was a much bigger man than that-must have been over two-fifty.”

I looked at the document in front of me. “Okay. So this was a small-town medical examiner. He made some mistakes. It happens all the time. What did he say when you interviewed him?”