Чак Хоган: The Standoff

It is an open secret among members of the United States intelligence and law enforcement communities that the Federal Bureau of Investigation, maintains a private wing in a mental health facility on a sprawling estate in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

The Retreat, as it is referred to, survives each fiscal year of hard line budget negotiations due to a provision in the federal employees’ general health plan guaranteeing six months’ voluntary treatment for alcohol abuse and mental illness. Diagnosed employees are offered three alternatives: resignation, early retirement, or “compassionate leave.”

Special Agent John T. Banish had chosen compassionate leave. He was being discharged now, six months to the day after entering the Retreat. He was healthy again; that was what they told him. Alcoholism seemed to him the only disease that could be talked away.

He was seated in a metal folding chair, one of four arranged in a disjointed semicircle facing Dr. Juliet Reed, resident Chief of Psychiatry. The three other patients, all men younger than Banish, wore cotton hospital-issue blues. Banish wore a suit jacket and tie. His suitcase was set on the floor next to his chair. Dr. Reed wore her usual low heels and a long linen skirt. She was a strict professional but with an encouraging smile. Banish liked Dr. Reed. He just never wanted to see her again.

The rec room was otherwise empty at their regular morning session hour, a television flickering behind them through the wire cage covering its screen. The tile floor smelled of overnight antiseptic, and a wasp of some kind, prevalent in those parts, buzzed and tapped at the high, thickly paned windows, trying to get out.

Dr. Reed made a preliminary notation on her pad of paper, then began upbeat. “We all know that this is John’s last day with us,” she said.

No response from the others. The obvious was not wasted on these shapeless men. Banish could hear Dr. Reed’s wristwatch ticking.

“John is returning to the FBI with no interruption of service time, and will be reinstated at his previous pay grade. That should provide some encouragement to the rest of you, as I realize this has been a topic of concern—”

“He’s a pariah,” Nettles said matter-of-factly. “We all are.”

Dr. Reed scribbled another notation.

Nettles had been a forensics specialist in the Behavioral Sciences section. He hunted serial killers for a living. Something had happened to him during a particularly grisly case in Miami, but his senior position allowed him to opt out of the post case evaluation designed to flag trauma anomalies; two other agents with him who took the routine eval were fine. It had started, as it always did, with drinking. Then dogs in his neighborhood began disappearing under mysterious circumstances. Then a custodian found two mutilated Doberman pinscher carcasses in a Dumpster in the parking garage underneath the J. Edgar Hoover Building. There was even talk of sexual impropriety.

Dr. Reed said, “We have discussed this many times. There is no reason to expect that John or any one of you will not be allowed to reenter active service—”

“He’ll be exiled,” Rice said.

Dr. Reed stopped. She rested her arms across the notepad in her lap. “ ‘Exile’ is a strong word, Daniel.”

Rice uncrossed his arms. “Everybody in the Bureau knows exactly where we are and why we’re here. Who would want to place their life in these hands now?” Ashes trickled from the cigarette butt quivering between his fingers. The drugs made him sound exhausted. “Nothing will be said. Reassignment to a Group 4 Field Office, or a Resident Agency out in the Midwest somewhere — North Dakota, or Oregon, the fringe. Somewhere where they won’t hear the chains rattling.”

Rice had been working a bank robbery in Minneapolis. A young female teller had been implicated in the heist, suspected of providing her ex-con boyfriend with alarm and vault codes. Rice had made two key procedural mistakes. The first was that he fell in love with the teller. The second was that he conspired to shield her from prosecution by attempting to bring the boyfriend in single-handedly. The boyfriend got to the teller first. Her rape-murder broke Rice into jagged pieces.

Dr. Reed said, “We welcome separation. We welcome some relaxation of duty. No one expects John to jump right back into his role as a hostage negotiator.”

“Bullshit,” Nettles said, turning in his chair. “All bullshit. I participate here until I’m blue in the face. Everybody knows what I saw in that house in Miami — fine. Banish doesn’t say shit. We don’t know any more about what went on at the World Financial Center than what we read in the papers.”

Dr. Reed said, “No one here claims to be cured. No one here claims to be fully recovered. Your health plan allows for six months of in-patient psychiatric rehabilitation, and that is exactly what John has received. He will, however, be continuing with the writing therapy on his own, and AA meetings three times weekly.”

The sun was streaming into the room now. The overhead blowers came on and the ceiling rumbled, obliterating the ticking of Dr. Reed’s watch and the sound of the wasp tapping at the window. Banish, who had been sitting patiently like a man waiting for a train, looked up from his suitcase.

“What about my wife and daughter?” he said.

Dr. Reed turned more toward him. She said, “We’ve spoken at length about your obsession with them, John.”

“All my letters were returned,” he said. “You told me you would get in touch with them before my release.”

Dr. Reed nodded slightly, watching him. It was professional curiosity. “You do realize that the restraining order is still in effect.”

“I just want to know where they are,” he said. “I want to know that they’re all right.”

She studied him. Dr. Reed’s job was to be empathetic, to understand his experience without actually experiencing it herself. He watched her try. She was perhaps thirty-five years old. He was fifty-two. She was a licensed psychiatrist. He was a twenty-six-year veteran agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

He was relatively certain that she had never had to bargain for another person’s life. He was also reasonably confident that she had never been responsible for the safety of upward of one hundred law enforcement personnel placed under her command. But the one thing about which he was absolutely assured: she had not been with him that night at the World Financial Center.

“I’m sorry, John,” she told him. “They’re gone. They’ve moved out of New York. I spoke with your mother-in-law this morning. She said that if you try to contact them in any way, they will have you arrested.”

Banish stared, unable at first to focus. He wanted to shake his head, then did not bother. After a while his eyes found the glazed-tile floor.

“Then how the hell do I get out of here?” he said.

He felt walls going up. He felt the weight of all his days pushing him down. The wasp buzzed by him. He looked up and watched it fly across the room, and then the door opened and it was free.

The desk nurse walked in. “Excuse me, Dr. Reed,” she said. “There’s a woman here to see Agent Banish.”

Banish looked over at Dr. Reed and got to his feet. Dr. Reed, puzzled, rose more slowly, stooping to leave her notepad on the seat. Banish stood hopeful, not breathing.

The nurse held the door open and a young woman entered. She was small and thin, Caucasian, in her mid-twenties, with brown hair, blue eyes. Her face looked tired, as though she had been driving or thinking for a long time. She was dressed plainly except for a small, expensive brown leather handbag hanging off her shoulder.