Robin Burcell - Face of a Killer

“Why?”

“Because this morning when she called, I told her not to call again. Every year around the anniversary, she’d get drunk and call to apologize about the explosion that injured your father, and then his murder. I guess this time… I just wanted to move on.”

Her mother looked at her, tried to smile, failed. She reached out, brushed a bit of something from Sydney’s cheek, dirt, grass, who knows, and said, “Call your aunt and uncle. Watch Angela.”

“I will.”

She kissed Sydney, walked over to the EMTs as they put Jake on the gurney. Efficient. Just another body to them.

The next thing Sydney knew, they were wheeling Jake toward the ambulance, her mother walking beside them, holding Jake’s hand. Sydney looked down at him, still as death on that gurney, and all Sydney could whisper was “I’m sorry, Jake,” over and over as she walked on the other side. Just as they were getting ready to lift him into the ambulance, he opened his eyes, looked at her. “Syd…” His voice was quiet. Sydney leaned over, not sure what to say, what to do.

“If Angie… grows up to be a goddamned cop… I want… want her… to be… like you.”

Sydney squeezed his hand, and he looked at the EMT and said, “How

… fast… can you drive this thing?”

Two days later, Sydney picked up a file folder containing her Jane Doe sketch. The tentative ID was verified, and they now had a name to put on her headstone. Delia Jones. The forensic odontologist had positively identified her killer from a reconstruction of the bite made from the broken teeth of the purse snatcher Carillo had arrested a few nights ago. “You’ll turn this in for me?” she asked Carillo, handing the file folder to him.

“Yeah, sure.” He was quiet, watching her place the last few odds and ends in the box on her desk. “You could fight this transfer. Wasn’t that the plan?”

“It was. Until the moment I saw Gnoble with a gun to my sister’s head. Maybe even before that moment. I don’t ever want to put my family through that again. I’m not sure I could go through that again.”

“Just when I was getting used to working with you.” “You’ll find another naive agent to torture, Carillo.” “Not like you. I mean, look at what you’ve done. The

Democrats would roll out the red carpet for you anywhere you went in this state. You single-handedly took out their candidate’s biggest contender for senator.”

“Funny,” she said, throwing him a dark look. “But I’ve made up my mind.”

“But Quantico?”

“Why not?”

“Because nothing happens there. You’re walking down hallways filled with recruits and marines and cops. It’s evidence and paperwork and teaching. Boring.”

“After the past week I’ve had,” she said, “boring sounds perfect.”

“Yeah, yeah. But just remember. Once you come to the dark side, Pollyanna, it’s hard to go back.”

Doc Schermer walked up, eyed the boxes on her desk, then gave an overly bright smile as he stuck out his hand. “Good working with you, Fitzpatrick.”

“You, too, Doc,” she said, shaking his hand. “And keep Carillo in line.”

“Always. So, what’s the good word on Wheeler? He out, yet?”

“Soon,” she said. “Apparently there’s a lot of red tape to clear up a man wrongly accused.”

And Carillo said, “Especially when they can’t publicly release ninety percent of what Gnoble was involved in that led up to that false accusation. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out in the press.”

“Won’t it,” Schermer said. “You think they’ll go public on Mrs. Gnoble’s involvement?”

“They might,” Sydney replied. “Only because Prescott managed to tape a few of their conversations, particularly one very incriminating statement in which she said that once Wheeler was executed, the only thing standing between her and becoming first lady was my repressed memories.”

“And Becky Lynn?” Schermer asked Sydney.

“I have a feeling she’s going to make a deal.”

“A deal?” Carillo said. “I’ll bet she asks for witness protection and a new identity. She was sitting on millions upon millions of missing BICTT funds that the Black Network wouldn’t hesitate to kill over.”

“Okay,” Schermer said. “I’m a little confused. If she had the money in the offshore accounts all this time, then why’d Gnoble kill your father?”

“To cover for the black op, the one where Wheeler’s father was killed and mine was injured. That was how they acquired the BICTT funds. Not only wasn’t it sanctioned, the government didn’t even know about it. Gnoble was after the money, plain and simple.”

“Your father, too?”

“You mean was he in it for the money? I’d like to think he didn’t know it wasn’t a government op. But I do know he felt guilty enough to try to make it up to Wheeler for the loss of his father. The only problem was that Gnoble couldn’t risk moving any of that money, beause of the paper trial he was worried would follow.”

Carillo nodded in agreement. “Something that had less to do with his political career, and more to do with BICTT’s Black Network, who had taken lives for less.”

He was right about that, she thought. It was that same paper trail that the CIA wasn’t willing to divulge to the American public, citing national security issues, as they were either still hunting down BICTT’s Black Network, or they were covering for their own involvement in using the bank. Hence the hush-hush about the real story. For now, Sydney could live with that. She knew the truth, and in a sense some form of justice had been done. For Wheeler at least. She still had questions about her father’s involvement, still wondered how the man she’d known and loved could have been involved in something so wrong. Perhaps one day she might come to understand him, learn to accept he wasn’t the man she thought he was. For now, she was going to have to accept her mother’s mantra, tell herself it was time to move on-no matter how much it hurt. She had her mother, and sister, and Jake, she thought, looking from Schermer to Carillo, then at the boxes on her now empty desk. “I think that’s everything. Any last words of wisdom?”

“Actually,” Carillo said, lifting one of the boxes to help her carry it down to her car, “I was hoping for some from you, since you know Dixon so well. He’s, uh, not going to keep watching me close, is he? I can’t even turn around without him wondering what the hell I’m doing.”

“He’ll get over it. He’s probably more upset about you having corrupted me than anything else,” she said with a smile. “And even if he’s not happy with you, his boss is.”

“Only because he got to go on live TV, stand next to the governor, and state that the FBI was instrumental in solving the twenty-year-old wrongful conviction of Johnnie Wheeler, who was falsely accused of murder.”

Which of course got the governor good exposure, because he got to overturn a conviction with lots of fanfare, and the trickle-down effect was noticeable-until it came to a screeching halt at Dixon’s desk.

If it didn’t get him to Tahiti any faster, he wasn’t impressed.

She looked around, grabbed her briefcase and the smaller box left on the desktop. “Ready when you are.” She’d already said her good-byes to Dixon and Lettie. Now all she needed to do was go home, finish packing her things there.

When they got to the elevator, Carillo asked, “How’s your mom taking all this?”

“I think she’s finally finding peace.”

“You finding any?”

“Only if I don’t think about it too much,” she said, reminding herself what her mother had told her, that her father had loved her, and she should just remember him before that time. “Jake gets out of the hospital tomorrow,” she said, changing the subject somewhat. “Angie keeps asking when she can take a photo of his scar, so she can brag about it to her little friend whose daddy works for the sheriff’s office. She’s one up on him, you know. His dad’s never been shot.”