John Gilstrap - At all costs

The senator just stared, his face forming a giant O.

“What’s he doing here?” Frankel demanded. He turned to Albricht. “What the hell kind of game do you think you’re playing?”

The senator shrugged, clearly befuddled yet mildly amused. “I have no idea. Agent Rivers?”

Irene eyed Jake cautiously, then suppressed a knowing smirk of her own. So Jake was going right to the top. “Not a clue,” she lied.

Eddie placed a beefy hand on Frankel’s shoulder. “Please take your seat, sir,” he said.

Frankel tried to shake the arm off, but it was like shedding steel. He sat. With a nod from Jake, Eddie backed out of the room, leaving the group alone to discuss whatever was on their minds. Jake pulled a chair around to the end of the table so he could face everyone at once.

“Thank you all for coming,” he said.

“Look, Donovan,” Frankel seethed. “I don’t know what you’re up to, but I’m not-”

“Relax, Peter,” Jake said easily. “I’m just here to turn myself in to Agent Rivers. I’m just not up to the chase anymore.”

Frankel fell silent, his mouth open, frozen in midsentence.

Jake smiled serenely at Irene. “But first, I thought I’d make my official statement.”

“I think not,” Frankel blustered. “This is neither the time nor the place-”

“Shut up, Peter,” Albricht commanded. “The man’s come a long way.”

“The hell I will!” Frankel boomed.

“It’s tough to have a big secret, isn’t it, Peter?” Jake taunted. “Especially when everyone’s about to hear it spilled.”

Frankel rose again from his chair. “Agent Rivers, keep an eye on this man while I-”

Jake rose, too, and shoved Frankel hard. He fell backward, his legs entangled in the chair, and ended up halfway under the table. “Sit down, Peter!”

Irene made a move to intervene but stopped herself. It just looked too good.

Frankel sputtered profanities as he pulled himself back into his chair. “Go ahead, Donovan. Just keep racking up the charges. We’ll have to clone your ass just to live long enough for early release. Rivers, you’re a witness.”

Irene sucked on a cheek. “At this point, sir, I’m not sure what I’ve seen.”

For the first time, Jake heard real equivocation in Irene’s voice, and he moved quickly to capitalize on it. “Does the name Wiggins mean anything to you, Peter?”

Frankel ignored him, but Jake didn’t miss the barely audible gasp from Albricht.

“C’mon, Peter,” Jake taunted. “Surely you must know him. I hear he goes by the name Clyde Dalton, too, if that rings a bell. He certainly knows you. I had a long chat with him just this morning, in fact. He said you guys go all the way back to Nam together.”

Frankel just stared at the table, his jaw locked.

“You guys worked SEAL team insertions back then, right? You drove the boat and he did the wet work.” Jake glanced over at Irene. “You might want to take notes, ma’am,” he urged. “This should all be verifiable stuff.”

Irene seemed momentarily stunned by the request, then embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of it herself. Frankel glared as she pulled her notebook out of the pocket of her suit jacket, then patted herself down in search of a pen. Albricht lent her one of his.

Jake went on. “Wiggins said that after the war, you guys sort of went your separate ways. You joined the good guys, while your buddy chose more interesting pursuits. Seems he became quite proficient at killing people.”

“Where’s this individual now?” Irene interrupted.

“He left the country,” Jake lied, staring the whole time at Frankel, who in turn stared at Irene with enough intensity to cut her in half. “Just pay attention. It’ll all come together for you in a minute.”

He nudged Frankel’s shoulder playfully. “How am I doing so far, Peter?” When Frankel didn’t respond, Jake laughed. “Yeah, I know. Scary, isn’t it? So anyway, let’s fast-forward to the eighties. Here you are, this Young Turk, moving through the ranks, making your mark on the Bureau, when along comes this case in Arkansas where an aging general named Albemarle is lured by the Iraqis into selling chemical weapons as a way to finance his only daughter’s medical bills.” Jake looked again to Irene. “You found some evidence on that, I assume?”

She nodded. She knew exactly where this was going.

“So here comes Peter Frankel, supercop,” Jake continued, “and you find yourself the perfect crime. Nobody but this Albemarle clown even knows about this stash of weapons in East Jesus, Arkansas. He’s making himself a fortune. So you offer him a deal. If he cuts you into the action, you’ll cut off your investigation.” Jake leaned forward, forearms on the table. “What was the split, Peter? Sixty-forty? Seventy-thirty? Knowing you, you had to be wringing him pretty hard.

“Well, logistically, you can’t sell all your weapons at once, right? People might notice the comings and goings. So you dribble them out, a piece at a time, for a shitload of money. If I did my math right, and if your pal Wiggins was telling the whole truth, I figure that this went on for a good six months. Maybe more. Then you get blindsided.” Jake feigned a gasp and clutched his chest. “Somebody finds your stash and reports it to the EPA! Well, what’s a body to do now? Overnight-literally-you’re out of business.”

Jake leaned away from the table again and made a show of tapping his temple. “Now, here I’ve got to do a little guessing, but my money says the good general got a serious case of the guilts and wanted to punch out. Pretty close?”

Frankel didn’t move.

“But you can’t let that happen. So you call up your old buddy Wiggins to stage a suicide. I mean, why not? The guy’s already dishonored, he’s lost a kid. He’s got plenty of cause to off himself. You leave a note, you pop him, and you move on. How simple can it get?”

As the story droned on, Jake watched with satisfaction as Frankel sank further into his chair. He could only hope that the son of a bitch was suffering.

“But you can’t just kill one, can you, Peter? I bet it’s hard as hell to know when to stop the killing. Just to be safe, you pop the old man’s wife, too, in case she knows something.”

From there on, Jake concluded, it was just a comedy of errors. “You had this grand plan to cover your tracks: Slip something into Tony Bernard’s food to give him the pukes, then frame him for your explosion. I can’t tell you how sorry I am that Carolyn and I screwed it up so badly for you.”

Hearing it all played out, with even greater detail, the whole thing still seemed wildly speculative to Irene. Grand conspiracies with mysterious disappearing witnesses made it all too convenient.

“The guy you had call me with your blackmail threats was named Wiggins, too, Peter,” Clayton said, leaning forward. “What kind of coincidence is that?”

“This is all bullshit,” Frankel blustered, and at that moment, from his expression alone, everyone saw just how close Jake’s theory had landed to the truth.

“Oh, my God!” Irene breathed. “What have you done?”

Frankel tried to look outraged; like he’d never heard anything so outrageous in his life. But the fear showed through, anyway. “I refuse to listen to any more of this.” He stood one more time.

This time when Jake rose to meet him, Frankel was ready, leveraging the edge of the table and using it to shove Jake backward over his chair. “Stay out of my way,” he growled as he prepared to launch a lethal kick to Jake’s head.

“Stop it!” Irene commanded. She lunged across the table to intervene, but a stunning backhand sent her staggering.

“You incompetent bitch…”