Last Chance to Die

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Vail snorted. “It was supposed to be, but unfortunately we don’t seem to be a good fit.”

“You know what Nietzsche said—‘Woman was God’s second blunder.’”

“Is that a shot at me or at Kate?”

Bursaw took a scholarly tone. “Philosophy is not a discipline of answers but one of contemplation.”

“Great, things aren’t surreal enough around here. Now I’ve got a black guy quoting Hitler’s favorite philosopher.”

“Whether it’s working or not, that’s still a good-looking woman,” Bursaw said.

“She is that,” Vail said. “But enough about my blundering celibacy. What’s the story on the missing employee?”

“Her name is Sundra Boston. She’s an intelligence analyst at headquarters, or at least she was. I didn’t know her. She disappeared about three months before I was transferred back here. I’ve got this cousin, Eden. Nice gal, but she married a loser. Actually, ‘drunk’ would be a more accurate description. They got a couple of kids, and he’s always going off on these drinking binges, leaving her with nothing to get by on. Anyway, she met Sundra at church, and they became friends. My cousin may have made a couple of bad choices in her life, but she’s not a complainer. When her husband takes off, she sucks it up and doesn’t say anything to anyone. I suppose it’s as much out of embarrassment as anything else. She said that somehow Sundra always seemed to know when she was going through those times, and she would show up unannounced at Eden’s with a carload of groceries. She’d been doing it for over a year. When I got back here, Eden pulled me aside at a family get-together and asked me if I could find out what happened to her. She thought Sundra had been transferred to some secret assignment or something.

“So I checked indices and found that we had a case on her disappearance, and that it was being handled on my squad. I’d been back in D.C. less than two weeks, knew nothing about the case, and I hadn’t caught on to my supervisor yet. So I went in and asked him about it.” Bursaw shook his head and took a long pull on his beer. “Steve, this guy is everything that is wrong with the new Bureau. He actually grew up in Beverly Hills—that’s right, my brother, 90210—and couldn’t get through an hour of the day without performing some affectation. He calls the bad guys ‘thugs’ and ‘hoodlums.’ When I asked him about Sundra, he gave me the rundown and told me that the investigation was at a standstill. Then he cocks his head to the side in thought and says, ‘You know, she’s an African-American, too. You could probably find her, because these people would talk to you.’ And you think the leadership was bad when you were in. Then he reassigns the case to me as if he had just had some sort of movie-of-the-week life-altering epiphany.”

“I take it you haven’t had any luck getting those African-Americans to tell you where she is?”

Bursaw grinned. “Don’t start,” he said. “So I pull the file and find out that very little had been done after the first thirty days. I made up my mind right there to jump on it with both feet.”

“Not to belittle your altruism, but what does she look like?”

“You’re right, she is good-looking. Which doesn’t hurt. But I figure with what she did for my cousin, she must be a good person and deserves to have someone searching for her for real.”

“A Bureau employee disappears and no one is making it a priority?”

“At first they did have the full-court press on it, but when they found that she was in major debt … well, like you always said, they prefer the theory that requires the least amount of work. So they decided that she probably just took off for parts unknown and changed her name or got married or both so she could wipe the slate clean.”

“Define ‘major debt.’”

“Almost fifty K on credit cards alone.”

“Isn’t it hard to run up a bill that big without enjoying some of society’s moral taboos?”

“You don’t spend much money, do you, Steve? Even though you won’t read it in the file, I think that’s what they thought,” Bursaw said. “It wasn’t drugs. She’d just had a physical and been screened. And all her phone records and credit-card receipts have been checked, so it’s unlikely that she had a gambling problem. But she did like nice things. She’d recently bought a house and had a nice car. From what I’ve been told, she always dressed much better than the rest of us government humps. With that kind of taste, fifty thousand isn’t such a big leap.”

“So they’re trying to put it to sleep, and you’re going to make them pay for it by embarrassing them with their ineptness.”

“I would like nothing better, but I’m not sure anyone will notice.”

“You haven’t changed much, Luke.”

Bursaw smiled slowly. “As if I have to explain the joys of belittling management to you. The good news is that I’m not getting any pressure to solve it. The bad news is, there’s something wrong with it that I can’t figure out.”

“Wrong how?”

“Okay, let’s assume she took off to get out from under that debt. The search-warrant inventory at her house showed that she left everything there, and I mean everything. She had a fairly new laptop computer. It was still there. Seven-hundred-dollar shoes that hadn’t been worn. And for me, maybe the toughest thing to explain, her designer suitcases were still there. The price tags still on them.”

“Have you called the locals to see if there’ve been any other incidents of women missing under similar circumstances?”

“Some sort of serial thing, yeah, I thought of that, but you know what a mess that can start. I do have some feelers out, though.”

“When did you last check her credit cards?” Vail said.

“I look at them once a week. Nary a blip anywhere.” Bursaw took another sip of his beer. “I’d like you to look at it.”

“What is it that you think I can do? I didn’t go to an Ivy League school.”

“I don’t know, maybe I’m on tilt with this. Maybe I’m trying too hard to show the world how smart I am or, more likely, what a moron my supervisor is. I don’t know. You were always good at finding things no one else could. Maybe take a look at the file. See if I’m missing anything.”

“Right now my days are pretty full.”

Bursaw gave him an easy grin. “How are your nights?”

“With everything I’ve got going on, I would have to be a blithering idiot to say yes.”

Bursaw drained his beer. “Then let’s go take a look at the file.”

IT WAS A LITTLE AFTER NINE when Kate got to the off-site the next morning. She was surprised when she heard the shower going. Evidently Vail had slept in. She made a pot of coffee and, when it was ready, poured herself a cup. In the observation room, she started reviewing the information Vail had pinned to the wall. A few minutes later, he walked out of the kitchen and held up his cup. “Thanks.”

“You and Luke reminiscing over too many beers last night?”

“Actually we were at WFO until about four a.m. reviewing the case file on his missing analyst.”

“I thought you didn’t like this work.”

“I like the work just fine. In fact, it’s the reason I dislike the people who keep getting in the way of it.”

“That sounds more like a rationalization than a defense, Vail.”

“Of all the times Luke helped me in Detroit—and some of them were pretty touch and go—the guy never once asked me for a favor. Until last night.”

“Sorry. It’s just that I would have thought you had enough to do.”

“I guess that’s when you find out if someone is truly worth your friendship.”

“Were you able to help him?”

“I gave him a few suggestions. I’m not sure he needed them. He’s not the guy I’d want after me,” Vail said. “You ready to watch that disc? Or did you peek last night, Katie?”

“No.” She took it out of her briefcase. “But I was a little surprised you trusted me with it.”

“It wasn’t me trusting you that was the problem—it was me trusting me if I held on to it.”

She laughed cynically. “Oh, honesty. Is that your latest tactic to deceive me?”

“I figured if anything would keep you off balance, it would be telling the truth. Apparently that’s not going to work either.”

She set the disc in the DVD player. On the monitor screen, they recognized the meeting room at the Denton safe house. It was followed by a couple of seconds of static and then by someone holding a hand-printed sign in front of the camera. On it were written the date, the time, and the name Charles Dennis Pollock. “That should eliminate any guesswork about who’s starring in this little production.”

Another few seconds of static were followed by two men sitting in the room. Pollock, recognizable from his security-background photo, was unknowingly facing the camera. He opened a briefcase that was on the floor next to him and handed a sheaf of papers to the other man. In turn, the man, who carefully never let any of his face be exposed, handed Pollock three bundles of bills and then in heavily accented English demanded, more than requested, that it be counted. While Pollock obliged, the handler deliberately held up the documents he had received and slowly paged through them so they could be captured on video. Several had classified stamped across them. Pollock then placed the money in his briefcase. A brief discussion ensued about what other material Pollock could provide. The screen again went to static. Vail fast-forwarded it until the end. There was nothing else on it.