Chapter 18 #2
Luke met us in the lobby of the detention center in Alexandria. The facility had an observation room attached to the interview room, with a one-way window between them. Emma and Luke would watch from there. I’d be at the table, with the FBI agent assigned to the case.
Brad started to talk before the agent asked his first question.
“My uncle Tony was a Marine who served in Vietnam. He came home with a shrapnel injury that kept him from working and what they used to call shell shock.”
The rest of the story he told was one I’d heard too many times from too many families.
Tony had been close to Brad’s mother when he first got back. He’d lived with the family for a while when Brad was young. Brad remembered Tony teaching him to throw a football in the backyard. He remembered the good version of his uncle.
The drinking came first, then the nightmares. Tony would disappear for weeks, come back thinner and harder to reach, stay for a month, and leave again. Brad’s mother never locked the door. If he showed up, she wanted him to be able to get in.
She filed Tony’s disability claim for him because he couldn’t manage the paperwork himself. The VA lost it. She refiled. They lost it again. She filed a third time.
By then, Tony had stopped coming home. Brad’s mother drove around on weekends, looking for him. She’d bring him food and clean clothes, and he’d take them, and she’d drive away, and the following week, she’d do it again.
Brad had watched all of it. His mother fighting for a man who couldn’t fight for himself, against a system that kept losing the one piece of paper that would have changed his life.
Tony froze to death under the Memorial Bridge overpass one February. The VA approved his claim the following month.
“I stood next to my mother at the county morgue when she identified his body, because she said she couldn’t do it alone. I’d just turned eighteen.”
I didn’t say anything, because if I opened my mouth, I’d have told Brad Sullivan that I understood more than he’d ever know.
Five years in the disbursement division had shown Brad where the money went. Millions had been flowing to NGOs that padded executive salaries while veterans slept in shelters and died on waitlists. He’d met Marlene at a support group for families of veterans who’d been failed by the VA.
Her husband, George, was a Marine who’d suffered a traumatic brain injury from an IED in Iraq.
He needed regular neurological monitoring because the injury could cause delayed bleeding in the brain.
The VA lost his referrals to a specialist three times and kept rescheduling his appointments.
He had a brain hemorrhage at home one morning and died before the ambulance arrived.
He’d been waiting four months for the appointment that would have caught it.
They weren’t lovers. They were two people bonded by grief and the shared conviction that the system was broken beyond what any legitimate reform could fix.
Brad had the access, and Marlene had the expertise.
Together, they’d redirected close to ten million dollars from organizations that were wasting it, to organizations that were helping veterans run shelters, staff clinics, and provide legal aid.
“The money was going to organizations that weren’t helping a single veteran. We sent it to ones that were.”
“Tell me about Emma’s brakes,” I said.
His eyes scrunched. “Brakes? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Someone tampered with them. That’s what caused her accident.”
He shook his head. “I swear I know nothing about that. The break-in and the device in the kitchen were meant to scare her into stopping her investigation. I never meant for her to be hurt. Never.”
His shock was genuine.
He told us about the spyware next. He’d installed it on Emma’s phone after he realized she was pulling disbursement records, so he was aware when she began receiving outside help.
When I walked out at the end of the interview, Emma was in the hallway outside the observation room, waiting for me. Neither of us spoke until the agent said they were ready to question Marlene.
“I’ll be right here when you’re finished,” she said to me.
The agent’s approach was different with Marlene than it had been with Brad. He started with the timeline. When did she meet Brad? How long had they been working together? What was her role? She answered each question without offering more than what was asked.
Next, the agent asked who carried out the break-in at Emma’s townhouse, who planted the device, and who’d initiated the drone surveillance.
When she responded that she’d done all of it, the muscles near her mouth tightened. She was lying.
“And the brakes?” I asked. “You did that too?”
The confusion on her face was genuine. She had no idea what I was talking about.
I walked out of that room knowing Marlene was protecting whoever had broken into Emma’s townhouse, built the device, and flown the drone. She’d take the full weight of that before she’d give up a name.
The brake lines were something else entirely. Whoever had cut them acted alone. Brad didn’t know about it. Marlene didn’t know about it. The person who had tried to kill Emma was still out there, and neither of the people sitting in this facility could tell me who it was.
Emma was quiet on the drive home. She had her elbow on the armrest, her chin in her hand, and she didn’t speak until we were past the Bay Bridge.
“My father almost didn’t make it,” she said.
“The counselor had a cancellation. That’s the only reason he survived.
One canceled appointment, and my mother driving him twice a week for eight months.
” She turned to me. “Tony and George didn’t get counselors.
The difference between my father being alive long enough to see me graduate from law school and Tony freezing to death under a bridge was one woman with an opening in her schedule. ”
I didn’t say anything because she wasn’t done.
“Brad watched his mother try to save her brother for years, and the system threw his paperwork away three times. Marlene lost her husband because the VA couldn’t get him to a specialist before a preventable complication killed him.
They were wrong to do what they did. They committed federal crimes, and people were hurt.
I was hurt.” She was looking at the road now.
“I also understand why they did it, and I don’t know what to do about it. ”
“You don’t have to do anything today.”
“The arraignment is tomorrow morning.”
“I know.”
“I want to be there.”
I’d expected that. She’d refused to watch them get walked out in handcuffs this morning because she felt responsible for them. Now, she wanted to sit in a courtroom and watch them face a judge because Tony and George and her father were her responsibility too. None of it was about Emma.
“Then, we’ll go.”
She put her hand on my leg and left it there for the rest of the drive.
We ate dinner without talking about the case. She showered while I cleaned up. When she came out in my sweatshirt and sat on the sofa, with her legs tucked under her, I sat beside her and she leaned into me.
“Coleman.”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you for being in that room today.”
I put my arm around her and pulled her closer. She didn’t know what Brad’s story had done to me, and I wasn’t ready to tell her. Not tonight.
The arraignment was scheduled for ten, and the courthouse where it would be held was three blocks from Treasury. When we arrived, I parked in the lot behind the building.
Brenna met us inside. She and Emma spoke near the courtroom entrance while I checked in with Atticus and Luke, who were positioned near the back of the room.
Emma reached into her bag, then turned to me. “I left my phone in the car. Give me the key, and I’ll be right back.”
She had her hand out. The arrests were made. Brad and Marlene were in custody. The threat was over. She took the key before I’d finished deciding and headed for the exit.
I turned to Atticus and tried to focus on what he was saying. Ten seconds passed. Fifteen.
Except in the back of my mind, a reel played. Marlene was protecting someone she loved. Neither she nor Brad knew about the brake lines. There was a third person.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I said.
“What’s up?” Atticus asked.
“Emma.” He and Luke were behind me when I ran through the doors and out to the lot. A dark sedan was accelerating toward the far exit. The tires screeched when it turned onto the street.
I sprinted to my SUV. The driver’s door was open, and Emma’s bag was on the ground beside it.
She was in that car.