Stephen Hunter - I, Sniper

“Score one for Jodie,” said Martin.

“Come on, Bob, you can’t call her that. It’s Starling.”

“You guys,” she said, and then she went silent as His Eminence walked by.

The director knocked on the door of Nick’s office and opened when he got the “Yo,” from inside. He left the door open, presumably so the troops could hear and get the word before Nick himself put it out. He was known to be a guy very clever in managerial skills.

“Nick, hey, don’t get up.”

Nick, half rising, sat back down.

“Yes sir. Can I have someone get some coffee?”

“I heard your coffee down here sucked. I much prefer Organized Crime’s coffee. Now that’s coffee.”

“Yes, Mr. Director.”

“Nick, talk to me.” He hadn’t bothered to sit, which indicated in bureaucratic language that this was a quick chat type visit, a buck-up-the-troops initiative, rather than a serious policy discussion.

“I’m just passing by, I don’t want to be one of those asshole micromanagers, you know the type, but do we have an arrival time yet on your consultant?”

“Sir, I’ve told him over and over that time is not on our side. But he’s a cautious, deliberate guy. That’s how he’s stayed alive all these years.”

“I’m getting all kinds of crap on this one. I think the New York Times is working for Tom Constable, as well as his lobbyist and that congressman. I’m hearing from Chicago and New York, and I know Cleveland will be on me soon. They all want action and we’ve got people literally living downstairs in Public Information.”

“I see ’em every morning.”

“Okay, what I’m thinking, is there some kind of interim report we could put out? Something we haven’t given out before. Maybe it could be confirmed that we’ve matched Hitchcock’s movements to the shootings? We have, haven’t we?”

“That part’s real solid.”

“It doesn’t commit us, but it makes us look good. Leak it to the Times . Got anyone here who could make a creditable leaker?”

Nick stood, looked beyond the director’s shoulder.

“Starling, come here, will you?”

The young woman got up instantly, came in.

“Sorry. I shouldn’t have called you that, Agent Chandler. Have you met the director? Sir, this is Special Agent Jean Chandler, whom I’ve appointed our case monitor. She’s very good, works like a dog.”

“Starling, eh? I get it. Well, I hope you’re as good as Starling, Starling.”

“So do I, sir,” said Starling, for whom the original Starling was a complete goddess and the primary reason she’d decided on the Bureau for a career.

“I think I know your dad. Arizona? Great cop.”

“He’s the best.”

“Starling, I’m sorry, Agent Chandler.”

“I’m used to it, Mr. Director.”

“Anyhow, any experience with the press?”

“My father and brothers were not disposed to share things with the press.”

“Well, that’s sound principle, most of the time. But sometimes it buys us some time if we can feed the dogs a little something so they fight among themselves and leave us alone for a bit. Hmm, I’m wondering if-”

The phone rang.

“Go ahead, Nick, answer it, this can wait.”

“Yes sir.”

Nick snatched the phone up, glad for the interruption. He knew that having a thing with the press was tricky; you could never outsmart them, and Starling, even if she was working under the director’s guidance, could get tagged as a snitch, never trusted, and it might hurt her career. He didn’t wish that on anybody so young, so bright, so hardworking.

“Memphis.”

“Swagger. I think I’ve got a little something. Should I come over? I don’t know how you want to play it.”

“My idea is, I’d bring the upper management of the investigative team over, plus some of the forensic and ATF loaners. Is that okay? You can talk to the group.”

“Sure, in for a penny, in for a pound.”

“And since he’s here, I might bring the director along.”

“Why not?” said Bob.

“Tell me you have good news.”

“I have news,” Bob said, “and it’s up to you whether it’s good or bad.”

“That doesn’t sound promising.”

“Your people did a great job. Amazing, really, in the time. They only got one little thing wrong.”

“And that is?”

“They got the wrong guy.”

He stood at the head of a table with his notes written on a yellow legal pad. Immediately to his right, some very pretty young woman had her own pad, presumably to take what he said down. The others in the room were the executive special agents of the Task Force Sniper investigation, two loaners from ATF, a Bureau ballistics lab guy, one or two junior analysts, an Ohio detective, a Chicago detective, a New York State Police detective, also loaners to represent local interests, Nick as the task force commander, and the director, who had allegedly “been in the area” and wandered in. All basked in the dead institutional light of the overhead fluorescent, which turned them a kind of pale gray-green.

They knew. It was a sullen crew, hostile, not furious but disappointed and ready to fight. No smiles, no eye contact, nothing but sluggish body language, whispers with attitude launching them too loudly into colleagues’ ears, a whole “We’re not impressed” vibration throbbing in the room.

“Folks,” said Nick when the shifting and shuffling and whispering had settled down, “as I’ve told all of you, I wanted to get an outsider’s opinion on our findings, and I asked Mr. Swagger here because he’s a former marine sniper himself. I’m sure he’ll admit that he began with the honest bias to come to a different finding, to exonerate a fellow marine, but I knew that if we convinced him, we were doing pretty good. I guess we haven’t. But I also know that he is the most experienced shooter I’ve ever met, an authentically honorable and dependable man, and I believe he has a certain kind of, uh, ‘gift’ for seeing into shooting dynamics. Not that he’s a court-approved firearms expert, but he’s just got some extra gene for seeing things that other people don’t see. So let’s listen to what he has to say. Bob, why don’t you get started?”

“I should add,” said the director, “and excuse me Nick, I don’t mean to take over your task force, but last year as a consultant to Nick in Tennessee, Mr. Swagger performed with heroic distinction in an undercover capacity. He’s earned the right to muss a few feathers around here, so I expect complete professional respect from everybody. I will be very disappointed if this turns into a yelling match.”

“I won’t do no yelling, I promise,” said Bob. “I can tell there’s disappointment here. I’m not here to criticize or to suggest somebody missed something. I don’t want nobody’s career hurt. I don’t want nothing but the truth. You can also tell from the way I mix them verbs and subjects up, I’m not particularly well educated, and I apologize for that also. If I try to sound like I am, I will just sound even dumber, so generally I won’t make no attempt to speak ‘smart,’ like you’d expect. If I lapse into it and my verbs and subjects start agreeing, give me a kick in the butt.”

That brought a laugh, a respite, however brief, in the hostility.

“But it don’t matter how I talk. I’m here to bring experience none of you has, which is as a sniper, a man who’s taken lives in the field and who’s spent too much time thinking about this sort of thing. So let me thank you in advance for your attention, and let me sum up and put cards on the table. Yeah, I’m here to tell you you’re wrong and that Carl Hitchcock didn’t do nothing. He spent the last week of his life, I’m guessing, in a drug-induced coma, and right away you say, ‘How come there’s no drugs in his bloodstream?’ and the reason is, the drug they used was bourbon. There was plenty of that in there. He was an alcoholic and he was pickled forcefully via an arm drip-okay, I don’t know the medicine, maybe it was just pure alcohol-after he was kidnapped. By who? I can’t give you no name. But when I’m done you’ll have a pretty good picture of who the guy is, where he is, and what it’ll take to catch him. So shall we start?”