Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

“Changed my mind,” she said, flipping through the mail. “Why are you here?”

“Like I said, I just wanted to see how you’re doing. And to talk.”

“I’m fine.” She dumped the bills on the kitchen counter, threw the political fliers in the trash, and was left with one card from her aunt, and a large manila envelope with no return address, just a postmark from Houston, Texas. Her aunt always sent a card this time of year, saying she was thinking of Sydney and her father. Sydney put it aside, eyed the manila envelope, and tried to think who she knew in Texas.

“That doesn’t have a return address,” Scotty said.

“I see that.” She slid a finger beneath the flap.

“You’re just going to open it?”

Curious, she stopped, looked at him. “You’ve been working political corruption a little too long. It’s not a letter bomb. Relax.” She ripped open the envelope, slid out a few sheets secured with a paper clip. The top sheet was folded binder paper, a bit yellowed from age, and she removed the paper clip, unfolded the sheet. Inside was a deposit slip, the blank sort you filled out when you didn’t have a preprinted one of your own. She didn’t recognize the bank, Houston Commerce Title and Trust. The note scrawled on the front read simply:

For Cisco’s Kid. Send the money to this address.

She stared in incomprehension at the address listed, even as her brain told her she knew who had written that note, where the address belonged. “What the…”

“Sydney-”

“This has to be from my father. Cisco’s Kid is the name of a boat he and his friends owned, and the address written on here belonged to the pizza parlor he owned.”

“Can I see it?”

She ignored him, sat on the couch, wondering why someone would send this to her. An envelope had been clipped behind it, and she looked at it, figured it was probably the one the letter had originally been sent in. It was postmarked Santa Arleta, twenty years ago, and addressed to William McKnight in Houston, Texas. He was one of her father’s old army friends, which somewhat explained the last item: an old photo of her father standing near several other men.

At first she thought it was from her father’s army days, because she recognized a very young-looking Donovan Gnoble, regulation haircut, sharp-pressed uniform, an obscene number of medals on his chest, a senator in the making, waiting only for the brilliant idea to grow a goatee and bring his Southern charm to California politics. Her father stood on one side of Gnoble, McKnight on the other. Two men in the photo she didn’t know, the blond man standing next to McKnight, and the black man crouching down in front of her father, flashing what looked like some sort of gang sign.

Judging from the longer hair her father and McKnight wore, it had to have been taken after her father’s discharge from the service. As far as she knew, her father and McKnight had both done their four years, then got out. Not that her father had actually left the service completely. He went on to work for the army as a civilian, taking photographs for promotional material, recruitment posters, and the like.

It hit her then. The explanation. Someone sent this as sort of a remembrance of her father, just like her aunt always sent a card on the anniversary. Maybe these men were part of her father’s photography crew… Or they all went to college together, since they appeared to be wearing college rings, with red stones, each one of them. That had to be it. With the exception of Gnoble, none of the men wore any sort of legitimate uniform other than black fatigues that merely hinted of military wear-not a bit of U.S. Army insignia on anything. Her father and McKnight were holding what appeared to be black plastic helmets, and she had the absurd thought they were about to hit the paintball courts, only she wasn’t sure it was even a sport back then.

“I don’t understand,” she said, flipping the picture over to see if it was marked in any way, a date, something. There was nothing. “Why would someone send this to me and not put a name on it?”

Scotty gave it a quick glance. “I’d just ignore it. Who knows?”

Something about his voice, the way he said to ignore it, made her look up. He couldn’t even maintain eye contact, and she recalled how he’d grabbed the mail on his way up, not even hesitating when there were two other mailboxes besides hers. The names were actually on the tops of the boxes, which, when filled with mail, you couldn’t even read. Almost as if he knew right where to look, when he’d never been to her apartment before. “Do you know something about this?”

“Not exactly.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“It, uh, might be related to a background that Jeff Hatcher was doing on McKnight. I mean, you’re going to hear what happened anyway.”

Special Agent Hatcher was Scotty’s hero and mentor, primarily because Hatcher worked closely with all the political bigwigs, handling the sensitive backgrounds for security clearance on political appointments, which was where Scotty wanted to be, thinking it would take him straight to the top. The closest he got was working political corruption, something that didn’t endear him to any politicians.

“A background for what, exactly?” she asked.

“My understanding is that McKnight’s name was submitted as a nominee for political appointment. They wanted us to start the background before the announcement was even made, to avoid months of delays in the appointment. Administrator for Federal Procurement Policy.”

She wasn’t one to keep up on political appointments or positions, but that one she remembered, because of a fairly recent investigation and arrest of one of the past administrators for lying and obstructing a criminal investigation into a Republican lobbyist who was also arrested due to nefarious dealings with the federal government. And because of that past, anyone appointed by the president to be the czar of spending for the entire federal government’s budget was bound to be placed under the microscope. “I take it he failed the background?”

“You know damned well some of this stuff is classified.”

“Then tell me what you can talk about.”

He seemed to wrestle with the decision to mention anything, then finally, “Nothing gets out of this room, Sydney. Nothing.”

“I’m listening.”

And still he hesitated.

She stood, pointed to the door. “If you’re not going to talk, Scotty, then I’ll damned well ask around until I find someone who will.”

He ran his fingers through his hair, and she knew he was torn. Duty came first, the world be damned.

“Scotty…”

“Okay, okay,” he said, glancing at the photo. “Everything was going fine until Hatcher contacted this guy’s soon-tobe-ex-wife, Becky Lynn McKnight.”

Another name she hadn’t heard in years, except the vague recollection of her mother being upset about the woman moving back to the Bay Area after separating from McKnight. Becky Lynn had worked for Sydney’s father, up until his death. “Becky Lynn? What does she have to do with this?”

“I take it you remember her?”

What she remembered about her was her mother’s comment at her father’s funeral on seeing Becky Lynn. Something about seeing who she dug her greedy claws into next. “Barely. I was just a kid…”

“Her name was flagged by OC.”

“Organized crime?”

“She’s a woman living well above her means, beyond even the checks McKnight had been sending her since their separation. I can’t go into specifics, but as soon as Hatcher saw that, he knew this wasn’t going to be a simple background.” Sydney glanced at the photo, trying to figure out where it all was leading. “What does any of this have to do with why someone would send this to me?”