Thomas Perry: The Butcher's Boy

She read it through a second time. February 28. That was tomorrow morning. And now it was already two thirty. She looked at the timer readout on the transcript—it had only come in at 2:15, which meant 5:15 Washington time. That would be fifteen minutes after most of the people in the Washington office had gone home for the night. At least it wasn’t just Elizabeth. It looked as though they were pulling out everybody still on detached service in Las Vegas. So they weren’t necessarily calling her home to fire her. They were giving up on the operation.

She picked up the telephone and made a reservation on the next flight, then packed up her reports and her notebooks. For a moment she thought of leaving without saying anything to anyone, but it seemed too crude somehow. She walked down the hall to the Bureau chief’s office.

He said, “I heard you were leaving.”

Elizabeth said, “Yes, it just came in over the wire.”

He tapped a pencil on his desk and cleared his throat. “I suppose congratulations are in order.”

Elizabeth shifted in her chair and crossed her legs so the heavy reports wouldn’t slide off her lap. “Not that I know of,” she said.

He stared down at his desk and said nothing at first, but she could see he was angry.

“Have it your way. But just let me say one thing off the record. If you people would be a little less secretive things would be a lot easier for everybody.”

“I know,” said Elizabeth. “I’ve been wanting to tell you too, off the record, that I was against taking Palermo to Carson City. It was orders and I tried to follow them and I lost Palermo. If it’s any consolation, I think when I get back to Washington the first thing they’ll do is—”

“Damn it,” he said quietly. “I’m not talking about Palermo. That was two or three days ago. I’m talking about now. Do you think we’re idiots?”

Elizabeth said, “Of course not. What are you talking about?”

“Your whole team gets jerked back to Washington on a priority call, and then twenty minutes later, as an afterthought, they send us this message.” He tossed it on the desk and Elizabeth leaned forward to pick it up.

She read it aloud. “Re: Edgar R. Fieldston. Disposition: Take no further action.” She said, “So what? They know he’s not here.”

Now he was almost shouting. “So the case is closed and you’re all on your way home. And nobody has the decency to tell us what in the hell’s going on. Either we’re in on it or we’re not.”

“How can it be closed?” Elizabeth said. “We don’t know any more than we did a week ago, or at least I don’t. And you saw every report I filed since I got here.”

He sat in silence for a moment, then stared at her. Very slowly, his expression changed. He said, “All right. Maybe I was wrong.” He looked as though he wished he hadn’t spoken to her. He added, “If I was wrong I apologize.”

Elizabeth stood up, cradling the reports in her arms. “I’m sorry about Palermo. But honestly, that’s the only thing we didn’t cooperate about.”

He looked a little sad, and more than a little embarrassed. He said, “I guess there’s something else I should show you. Or maybe I shouldn’t, I don’t know. But a few minutes ago, when I asked our own headquarters what was going on, this came back.” He handed her another transcript.

Re: Edgar R. Fieldston, F.G.E., and related matters: Effective immediately, second copy all reports to: Department of Justice, United States v. Carlo Balacontano Trial Team, Attention Padgett .

Elizabeth felt as though she’d been slapped. She looked at him, and saw he was now staring down at the desk. She said, “They arrested Balacontano? I didn’t know.”

He said, “I believe you didn’t. I’m sorry.”

She said again, “They didn’t tell me.”

THE DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE OFFICE BUILDING seemed quiet and cavernous at seven in the morning. The floors gleamed and sounds echoed and died among the out-of-date light fixtures along the high ceilings of the corridor. Post offices and museums had seemed this way to Elizabeth when she was a child. Even the smell seemed the same, a mixture of floorwax and dust and disinfectant and old paper; a substantial, official, governmental smell.

She walked into the empty office and over to her desk. It looked the way she’d known it would. When the accumulation of daily activity reports had grown too bulky for her desk they’d begun making a neat stack of them on the floor beside it. In a day or two somebody was going to have a lot of work to do.

She had only been there for fifteen minutes when she heard the first footsteps in the hallway, the purposeful clopping of male leather-soled shoes resonating in the emptiness of the building. In a moment she realized it was two men. And then one of them spoke and she recognized the voice. Padgett. “Just let me get a cup of coffee and—” He came through the door and stopped. He said, “Elizabeth! Terrific. Glad to have you back.” He started to pour himself some coffee. It was then that the second man appeared. It was Martin Connors. He said, “Good morning, Miss Waring.” Then he frowned slightly. “I’d like to talk to you for a moment, if you don’t mind.”

“No,” said Elizabeth and stood up. He was already walking down the corridor toward his office. Elizabeth had to trot to catch up.

Behind her she heard Padgett say, “I’ll bring you a cup, Martin.” Then he added, “You too, Elizabeth?”

She didn’t bother to answer. They walked in silence. He unlocked the door to his office and ceremoniously stepped aside to let her pass, then pulled a chair away from the wall for her. There was something about his manner that made her uncomfortable. It wasn’t that he had the gestures of his own generation, but those of the generation before.

He sat down behind his desk, pursed his lips, and folded his hands. “I’m glad you’re here early, because I want you to be ready to help with this thing.”

Elizabeth thought, I’m not fired.

He leaned forward and said, “You’re the one who is most familiar with the case, and that makes it doubly important that you be here when it gets to the trial stage.”

Elizabeth thought again, I’m not fired. Then she thought, most familiar? She said, “What about John?”

He said, “John?”

“Yes, John.”

“You don’t know?” Then he shook his head, and stared at his desk for a moment. “John Brayer is dead.” He looked up at her again and said, “I’m sorry, I thought you knew. Stupid of me.”

Elizabeth felt tears clouding her vision. She said, “When? How?”

Connors shook his head again. “Don’t waste your tears on Mr. Brayer,” he said. It was an order. “He was our informer and his friends decided he was too great a risk. It was in Las Vegas, shortly after the … the Palermo incident. He was found in the desert somewhere outside Las Vegas. It took quite some time to identify him.”

“But nobody told me,” she said. “Why didn’t anybody tell me?” She was weeping now. Brayer was dead, and she’d been there, thinking—what? It was too wrong, there were so many things to remember. But she realized Connors had said something else too. Brayer the leak? She said, “John wasn’t the leak. What are you talking about?”

Connors became the formal superior again. He spoke very slowly, as though he expected to say it once and never have to say it again. “When you and I spoke on your telephone we set certain wheels in motion. We both knew that. The result was that you and I both got an unpleasant surprise. The man who was killed was our John Brayer. So that’s that. After he was killed we found he had a large amount of money in his home. Almost two hundred thousand dollars to be exact. And after that we received other evidence, which proves that John Brayer was the informer.” He formed his hands into fists. “When I think of the things he must have told them—”