Chapter Nine #2
“I can finally sleep as late as I want, but I’m still wide awake at five-thirty.” Jude offered her cheek for a kiss. “Thanks for seeing me.”
His eyes went to the small Band-Aid at her temple, but he didn’t press for an explanation. “Always a pleasure.”
“You’ve added to your collection.” She glanced at the dozens of photographs on his walls, recognizing Samuel standing beside several past US presidents and various celebrities who’d played FBI profilers in movies and TV shows. “The job suits you.”
Samuel said, “Would’ve suited you better.”
Jude laughed. Her office walls in San Francisco had been covered in photographs of the victims whose bodies she’d worked to return to their families. “My personnel file has sixty dress code violations and two suspensions for swearing at a superior.”
“Fuck ’em.” He waved her toward the seating area in the corner. “Heard from Seth Alexander that you helped him on a case a few months back in southwest Georgia. That’s a long way from Cali.”
This was why Jude had gotten on the plane. There were nearly 14,000 special agents in the FBI, but if you knew one, you knew them all. Especially if you worked in the building where every single agent had trained since 1972.
Jude said, “My father died. I went back to Georgia to bury him.”
He tilted his head to the side. “Our first date, you told me both your parents were dead.”
“They are now. My mother passed away last week.”
Jude sat down on the couch. She angled her body slightly away from him, a textbook example of someone who had somesthing to hide. Samuel had devoted his career to profiling. If Jude was going to get any information out of him, she had to make him feel like he was getting something out of her.
“I’m sorry for your loss.” Samuel leaned his hands on the back of the chair. “Anything else you didn’t tell me?”
“I have an older brother, Tommy. He’s a retired schoolteacher. Emmy is younger. She’s the sheriff of Clifton County now that my father is gone.”
He raised an eyebrow in surprise. “How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”
“Almost forty years. Emmy was a baby when I left. She barely knew me.”
“Middle child. That explains a lot.” He walked around the chair and sat down. “You and I were together how long? And you never mentioned a brother and sister?”
She’d never mentioned a lot. “I also had a younger brother named Henry. We were Irish twins. Fourteen months between us. He drowned in the Flint River when he was sixteen. After that, it was hard to stay. And then the more I stayed away, the harder it was to go back.”
“Ah,” he said, as if he’d figured her out. “What changed?”
“Retirement.” She turned her body toward him to indicate she was finally opening up. “You know what this job can take from you. I spent my career helping families heal from losing a child. I thought it was time to do that with my own family.”
“Henry’s not the only child they lost, right?”
Jude wondered if this was what Emmy had meant by psycholo-gist babble bullshit. She could see how it was irritating. “What did Seth say when you asked him why I was coming to see you?”
He laughed. “A little small talk to bridge the awkwardness. A few personal revelations to pull me onside. Now we get to the point.”
Jude smiled. Then she waited.
Samuel studied her for a moment. “What do you think Seth told me?”
Jude took her phone out of her purse. Scrolled to one of the photos she’d taken in Allison Vickery’s dining room. It showed an image of a man standing by a lamp-post in downtown North Falls. Sherry Robertson had said he looked like an insurance salesman.
Jude had thought he looked like a newly minted special agent with the FBI.
She asked Samuel, “Recognize him?”
He barely glanced at the photo before his eyes went back to Jude. “What do you see?”
“The suit jacket is so new he didn’t have time to remove the tack threads holding down the flaps on the pockets.
The waist-band’s stiff. His shirt is still creased from being folded in the package.
His suntan stops a quarter inch below his hairline, which is what happens when you train outdoors for twenty weeks, then get a haircut before your big first assignment.
His sunglasses are available in the gift shop downstairs.
And not to go too Hannibal Lecter on you, Clarice, but the shoes are a dead giveaway.
Most men who buy a new suit will go with a classic oxford, but your guy’s wearing a black leather derby with open lacing and the eyelet facings stitched on top of the vamp instead of under so they’re more comfortable.
Just like the shoes you’re wearing now. Just like the shoes all your guys wear. ”
He looked down at his derbies, which were favored by the young agents caught up in Samuel’s cult of personality. “My guys?”
“You always like to send them into the field before you let them play in your sandbox.”
“Do I?”
Jude went back to her phone, pinched her fingers on the screen to zoom in on the hastily scribbled X on the base of the lamp-post. Classic spy trade.
Both Allison and her FBI contact had used the same color chalk to signal when one of them wanted to meet up.
Jude had noted that the yellow was missing from the pack of Crayolas on the floor of Allison’s dining room.
It likely matched the residue that was caked into the crevices of the console in her Toyota RAV4.
She asked, “Well?”
Sam looked more closely at her screen. “This is a photograph of a photograph.”
“Accurate.”
He took the phone like he needed to see the photo again, but Jude knew he was buying himself some time.
He was trying to guess how much she knew, and how much he wanted to share.
Finally, he looked up. “Special Agent Reid Foley. Graduated last month. Assigned to Atlanta. Farm kid from Appleton, Wisconsin. Still a bit green, but he’s got potential. Now it’s your turn.”
“Allison Vickery was murdered in her home less than five hours ago.”
Samuel’s poker face cracked. His shocked expression told her the news hadn’t reached his desk yet.
She said, “The shooter escaped. Allison’s teenage daughter was shot in the head. Probably won’t make it, but the surgeons are trying.”
“Who’s your suspect?”
“You tell me. Allison Vickery was your informant, right?”
He didn’t answer the question. He placed Jude’s phone on the coffee table. “What about the photo of the photo?”
“Found in Allison’s papers. She was obviously tailing Foley, which means she didn’t trust him. The X that he chalked onto the lamp-post is a signal for a meet-up. Did she meet with him?”
He shook his head once. News of the murder had thrown him.
She said, “Allison was packing her bags when she was killed. She had enough cash to leave town and start over. Tens of thousands of dollars, all in hundreds. Either someone was paying her off or you were paying her to cooperate.”
He sat back in his chair. “Are you auditioning to be the Jessica Fletcher of North Falls?”
Jude hadn’t told him the name of the town, and Samuel didn’t make those sorts of slip-ups. “You clearly want to tell me more. It’s just us, Sam. Tell me more.”
He paused again, but only so his silence would set some boundaries. “The money wasn’t from us.”
“So it was early days?”
He nodded. “Two months ago, we got an anonymous email tipping us off to corruption inside a Clifton County law enforcement agency.”
“Did they specify which agency?”
“No,” he said. “The tipline on the website gets hundreds of these emails a week. High on conspiracy, low on facts. We sent back the usual response—what can you prove? A few weeks later, the whistleblower gives us her name and the offer of a Giglio.”
Jude felt the breath leave her lungs. Giglio referred to Giglio v United States, a Supreme Court case that required prosecutors to disclose information that might bring into question the credibility of one of their witnesses.
Police departments kept what were called Giglio lists of officers whose conduct was so questionable that they could never be called to testify.
For obvious reasons, most departments kept their lists buried in a deep, dark place.
If the name of a Giglio cop was leaked, every case he’d ever worked on could be called into question.
She asked, “What names were on the list?”
“She said she could give us eleven total, but she offered up one so we’d know she was serious.” He paused, as if it pained him to continue. “Gerald Clifton.”
Jude had guessed what the name would be, but it still took her a moment to recover. “I need a more accurate timeline. When did Allison make the offer?”
“Two weeks ago,” he said. “Four weeks after your father’s murder.”
“Okay.” Jude guessed Samuel’s poker face was better than she’d thought.
“Whoever intercepted the email from Allison did some digging before they responded. They found out that Gerald Clifton was my father. They reached out to you because of our personal relationship. You talked to Seth Alexander because he recently worked with me on a case in Georgia. You sent one of your protégés to handle Allison Vickery so you could control the flow of information.”
“You could also say I was looking out for you.”
“I’ve never needed looking after, and you’ve never worried about collateral damage.”
“We were together ten years. Is it so hard to believe I still care about you?”
“Not when you’ve been lying to me about what you know since I walked through that door.” She leaned her elbows on her knees. Looked him in the eye. “Why didn’t you come to me when the tip came in? What’s really going on?”
“You know your father’s reputation. He was a godlike figure in the state. One of the longest-serving sheriffs in the country. The people who went to his funeral are not people who like to be in proximity to scandals.”
“You mean like a United States senator with deep roots in the local law enforcement community?”