Т Паркер - Swift Vengeance

I got another cup of coffee and sat upstairs in my office, checked my messages. Fielded a worried call from Tammy Bellamy, who had received a text about a gray cat seen walking along Stage Coach Road, not far from the high school. Less than half an hour ago. Tammy asked if I could please go find the cat, and, if it was Oxley, “save” him. I explained that I could not. But I felt the need to apologize and did. Hung up feeling like a heartless son of a bitch.

I did have my reasons. I was just a few hours from my noon rendezvous with Joan Taucher in the Horton Plaza parking lot and our planned journey to Los Angeles. Where we would interview two adult children of slain Doctors Without Borders physician Ibrahim Azmeh. Dr. Ibrahim Azmeh, accidentally blown into eternity by Lindsey’s Headhunters.

No sooner had I forgotten my heartlessness than my friend at the San Diego Sheriff’s Department called with news of the 4Runner’s license plate check. The plate had last belonged to a vehicle totaled in a collision, and had likely ended up in a scrap yard. Salvage operators were required by law to return currently registered plates, but... I thanked him and told him I owed him one.

I sat awhile, contemplating through my western window the pond, the long drive leading down to the gate, the rain-greened hills. Possibly the same flock of starlings that had flown up when Rasha Samara drove past now came back to land around the same puddle.

I saw the black Ford Expedition turn off the road and stop outside my gate. Saw its exhaust lifting slowly in the still cool morning, and a hand reach for the keypad.

I answered the intercom but said nothing.

“Mr. Ford? This is Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. We need just a few minutes of your time. Now.”

My good mood was being shot to hell. First by Rasha Samara, then by Tammy Bellamy, and now by the FBI.

“Badge, please,” I said. “Hold it up to the camera by the speaker button.”

He did, sighing. My security video streams into my house with a one-second delay but is state-of-the-art compared to Kenny Bryce’s.

The gate rolled open and the Expedition surged onto my property in a way that could only be federal. Feds surge. They always surge. Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins didn’t need no stinking badge.

In the sun-dappled barnyard: four suits, three hastily flashed FBI badges, one handshake from Directing Special Agent Darrel Blevins. Tight faces for concealing thoughts, loose coats for concealing guns, polished dress shoes flecked with moisture from the dewy grass, young agent Mike Lark trying to shake the droplets off. Patrick O’Hora was white and built, Darnell Smith black and trim.

“We need to talk to you about your relationship with FBI Special Agent Joan Taucher,” said Blevins.

“I’m innocent,” I said. “And I have an appointment soon.”

“Thank you for making time for us on short notice, Mr. Ford.” Blevins smiled. All implants, perfect and white. He had downy white hair and a fissured face. “We’ll be as brief as possible.”

We sat beneath the palapa, where Rasha Samara had fired me a little more than one hour ago. Blevins removed a small digital recorder from his briefcase, set the briefcase on the ground and the recorder on the table between us. He clicked it on, ran a quick test, then stated the time, date, and players. Asked each of us to confirm when he spoke our names.

Dale Clevenger rolled up the drive, parked his van in front of casita two, finally home from his night of filming. He waved at me, pulled one of his drones from the van, and went inside his home. In a charged silence, all four agents stared at him and his camera-armed aircraft.

“Who’s that and what’s with the drone?” asked Blevins.

I explained.

“You rent those cottages?”

Explained again. Liz and Dick sat on Liz’s porch, apparently arguing, both dressed for tennis, gear bags at their feet, cups of coffee steaming. Dick looked our way with exaggerated nonchalance.

I was hoping I could hustle this thing along. “What can I say about Joan Taucher that you don’t know already?” I asked.

“Well, let’s see,” said Blevins. “Did you have a personal relationship with her in 2010 and 2011, when you were part of the San Diego JTTF?”

“Not personal, no,” I said.

“Tell me what you did for JTTF,” said Blevins.

I filled him in on my duties, sure he already knew.

“Was Joan a good superior?” asked Blevins.

“All business.”

“What do you mean by ‘all business’?” asked Mike Lark. He was young, square-jawed, boyish.

“No, Mike,” said Blevins. “No.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Where were we?” Blevins asked, turning back with another flash of his flawless substitute teeth. I wondered what had destroyed the originals.

“All business,” I said.

“Did she ever bend the rules or overstep her boundaries?” asked Blevins.

“Taucher was scrupulous. We had lunch a few times. I remember her counting out the pennies and nickels for her exact portion of the bill.”

Blevins nodded. “How would you describe Agent Taucher’s attitude toward her job? Her attitude toward terror?”

“Loved her job. Hated terror.”

“Did you ever hear her referred to as Joan Wayne?” Blevins asked.

“Everyone called her Joan Wayne.”

“Ever see her in an MMA cage bout?”

“No. I saw pictures of her in her fighting gear.”

“The online stuff that got her so pissed off?”

I nodded. “She wasn’t happy about that.”

“Did Joan ever share information with you?” asked Blevins.

From his poor attempt at sounding off-hand, I knew Blevins was finally getting to his real point.

I had to think about that for a moment. To the FBI, information is the Holy Grail, and despite post-9/11 “changes,” sharing intel outside the Bureau can be a mortal sin.

“Share information?” I asked. “Isn’t that what everybody does at the JTTF?” I’m sure they heard the sarcasm.

Blevins stared down at his recorder as if expecting it to say something. When it didn’t, he picked it up, seemed to examine it, then set it back down.

“Let’s bring this narrative up to date,” he said. “Five days ago you brought us the Lindsey Rakes threat. You bypassed the San Diego agent-in-charge and went right to the FBI Special Agent Joan Taucher. I understand that. You had worked with her before. You had a relationship. A business relationship. On Monday, according to Joan, she agreed not to interview Lindsey Rakes personally. This because of some legal entanglements regarding the custody of Lindsey’s son. Correct?”

It was up to me to separate what Joan had told Blevins from what Blevins was claiming she’d told him. I drummed my fingertips on the old wooden table, gave Blevins my weigh-in stare. “Yes.”

“Again from Joan,” said Blevins. “She admitted that we, the Bureau, were looking at one Rasha Samara as a person of interest in the financing of terror.”

“She didn’t use the words financing or terror ,” I said. “She said you were looking at him and that was all.”

“Oh,” he said curtly. “Not quite the story we got.”

“You might run it by her again,” I said.

“Don’t try to negotiate with me,” Blevins snapped. “We do not negotiate. Now — again according to Joan — that same day she told you about Samara, she also suggested you do some background on one Hector O. Padilla. This because he had been behaving oddly at a San Diego mosque and was a regular customer at World Pizza in Ocean Beach — the alleged return address on Caliphornia’s threat letter to Lindsey.”