Chris Jordan - Measure of Darkness

“I need to use the bathroom,” Milton says, quite suddenly in a sober voice. “Can I use the bathroom?”

“Of course. Down the hall, second door on the right.”

Jack waits until Milton has left the room. The smile drops from his face. “We’re bonding,” he explains. “Milton was being tortured, I rescued him, we escaped through the woods. I’ve been cheering him up. Letting him know it’s okay to pee your pants when you’re being threatened with brain death. He was really embarrassed, which is silly, don’t you think?”

“Very silly,” says Naomi. “Jack, listen to me carefully. Go to your room, shower and change and then report to the library for debriefing.”

At first the suggestion startles or rankles, but then he seems to settle back into the more familiar, coplike Jack. “Okay. Sure. Makes sense.”

He trudges away, suddenly exhausted.

“Adrenaline and shock,” Naomi offers by way of explanation. “They’ve been through something awful.”

“Jack did mention torture.”

“He did, didn’t he? Mrs. Beasley? A pitcher of iced tea, if you please. And sugar cookies. They’ll need energy.”

I head upstairs and prepare to receive the conquering heroes.

Sugar cookies. The obvious remedy for shock and torture, why didn’t I think of that?

Milton settles gingerly into a Windsor-style chair in the library, wincing. I pop up, offer the man a cushion, which he accepts gratefully.

“I’ll be fine,” he assures us. “Just bruising, nothing broken.”

“You were kicked?” Naomi asks.

“Not directly. It was more like-”

“Let him tell it from the beginning,” Jack suggests.

“Absolutely,” Naomi says. “Take your time, Mr. Bean.”

Milton’s eyes are so deep, they appear to have been pushed back into his head by heavy thumbs, but according to his account it’s exhaustion that has so altered his appearance, not physical torture. He tells us he was summoned from his workstation to an office where company owner Taylor Gatling briefly questioned him. And then a black hood was whipped over his head and he was lifted into the air and carried from the building.

“I presume down a back stairway. I’m quite sure I wasn’t taken out through the main door.”

“Hooding the face is psychological torture 101,” Naomi says. “Accomplishes two things: makes the suspect disoriented and instills fear.”

“It worked beautifully,” Milton says. “I was scared to death.”

“What was the nature of the interrogation?” Naomi says. “What kind of questions did they ask?”

“At first, when Mr. Gatling was present, they wanted to know if I was working for the Department of Defense or for the IRS. If you’re a Pentagon contractor, the contract often stipulates that the DOD can run a spot audit at any time, without giving notice.”

“Hmm,” says Naomi. “I find the fear of an IRS audit more telling. They must have something to hide.”

“You mean besides torturing accountants or kid finders?” I say.

“Yes, besides that,” Naomi says, not flinching. “Something financial.”

“They knew I had entered under false pretenses. I could have been arrested and prosecuted,” Milton says. “They went another route, one that could put them in legal jeopardy.”

“Will you be suing?” Naomi says. “Reporting this to the authorities and pushing for an arrest? Unlawful detention comes to mind, for starters. You certainly have cause.”

“Do I have to make up my mind on that right away?” Milton asks. “I’d rather wait until we’ve got Joey safe and sound.”

Naomi nods agreeably, and it’s obvious that’s the direction she’d prefer to go. “Just so you know the option remains open. Difficult as it might be to sustain in court, without corroboration.”

“I don’t know about that,” Jack snaps. “I’m the star witness. I saw three men carry a struggling, hooded figure out the back door of GSG world headquarters and hustle him into a nearby shed. I don’t care if Milton was trespassing, technically, or even if he was, technically, committing a felony by misrepresenting himself, that doesn’t excuse an unlawful detention.”

“We don’t know that the detention was unlawful, under the Patriot Act,” Naomi reminds him. “For all we know it might have been authorized by the Pentagon. But let’s put that argument aside for now. I’m more interested in exactly what form the questions took, once they had Mr. Bean in the shed.” She looks around, puzzled. “Where’s Dane? She should be here.”

“At the hospital,” I tell her. “Shane is having a lucid period and nobody knows how long it will last, so she decided he was top priority.”

Naomi nods quickly. “Quite right. Mr. Bean? Back to the shed. If you will excuse the turn of phrase.”

“They put me on a low stool and kept kicking it out from under me. That’s how I got bruised. Doesn’t sound so awful, me telling about it. More like a prank than torture. I guess you had to be there.”

“Who ran the interrogation? Was it Taylor Gatling himself?”

Milton shakes his head. “In his words he ‘turned me over to the professionals.’ I assume he left the building. He wasn’t there when the cavalry arrived, was he, Jack?”

“No, he was not.”

Milton describes, in a fairly dispassionate tone considering what he’s been through, being questioned by interrogators who remained behind a very bright light. Having satisfied themselves that he wasn’t working for either the DOD or the IRS, they soon established that he worked for Naomi Nantz.

“I’m not making excuses for myself, because by then I was ready to tell them anything they wanted to know. But they already knew about my arrangement here. They have this place under surveillance and they had an image of me entering the residence.”

“This is important,” Naomi says, pushing aside her glass of iced tea. “Exactly how was the question phrased?”

“In the form of true or false. ‘True or false, you were spying for Naomi Nantz.’”

Naomi turns to Jack. “You realize what this means? If they have us under surveillance that means they’ve already established our connection to Randall Shane, and undoubtedly had him under surveillance, leading, eventually, to us. That makes it approximately certain that Gatling’s organization abducted Randall Shane in the first place, which is why our investigation has attracted their interest. They have confirmed our hypothesis.”

Jack says, “It was confirmed for me the moment we made the connection between Gatling and the security guards.”

“I have a slightly higher standard,” Naomi says loftily, “but as usual your investigative instincts are well focused.”

Jack rolls his eyes and leans back with his arms folded across his chest. Hair still damp from the shower, but dressed, as we’ve all come to expect, immaculately.

“Oh!” says Milton, raising his hand like a kid in class. “Oh! I just remembered. They know about the program, Teddy. The one you had me install.”

Teddy looks crestfallen, and then a little scared.

Naomi reacts sharply. “They knew, or you revealed?”

“No, no. They knew all about it. They accused me of installing spy software. Said I was guilty of treason and could disappear down a black hole for the rest of my life. That’s when I told them about Joey. That we weren’t trying to steal secrets, we only wanted to find the missing child. I was eager to tell them. I told them everything I knew. Everything.”

“Milt, you didn’t do anything wrong,” Jack assures him. He again reaches out to pat the smaller man on the back, which is in itself unusual, because Jack’s not a back slapper, and from what I’ve observed, despite having mostly male friends, he goes out of his way to avoid physical contact with other men. On the other hand Milton looks way more than crestfallen and embarrassed. It’s as if something essential in him has been destroyed. Now that the adrenaline has had a chance to abate, it’s obvious that he’s been crushed by his recent experience.