Chapter 19 #2
And apparently, Javi discreetly slid his chair back as Benson propped a hip on the corner of his desk, now they were friends.
Benson, his cowlick more or less tamped down with gel, took a drink of his own coffee.
He swung his foot idly, the toe of his shoe brushing Javi’s trouser leg.
Javi braced his heel on the ground and inched back a little more.
“What is that even about?” Benson asked. “The guys say he always stays someplace like that. Is it to…you know?”
He gave Javi a knowing look and waggled his eyebrows.
Either he was very good at office politics, or he was playing tic-tac-toe while everyone else played chess.
It was hard to say. Javi definitely wasn’t going to engage in any sort of speculation around Kincaid that involved Benson’s suggestive eyebrows.
“Just for the mystique, I think,” he said vaguely. “What does he have you doing?”
Benson finished his coffee, set it down on a pile of printouts, and rubbed the back of his neck.
“Fowler’s internet history,” he said. “Mostly I’m just checking in with the techs, and they tell me they’ll let me know when they have something. Rinse and repeat. Apparently, he’s pretty good at hiding his digital footprint.”
“Makes sense,” Javi said. He gestured at the computer screen, currently on Fowler’s high school transcripts. “He was a smart kid. International academic camps instead of summer holidays, AP classes, and enough college credits that he could have graduated in two years, if he’d not dropped out.”
Benson shifted around to look at the screen.
“Sounds like me,” he said. “I mean, in my case, my mom bought my way into a lot of it…but it paid off. Here I am, a federal agent. How did someone who started off at the Model UN stay in a shithole town like Plenty, no offense.”
“I live here, I wasn’t born here.”
“I mean, it’s the ass-end of nowhere, and he’s kidnapping federal agents?”
“Good question,” Javi said. “His internet history would probably help.”
Benson got halfway through a nod of agreement before his brain caught up with him. He nodded his acknowledgement and grabbed the coffee cup as he slid off the desk.
“I’ll go bother the techs again.”
He walked away. Javi swung his chair back around to face the monitor and clicked from Fowler’s transcripts to his disciplinary record.
Half of the LA office of the FBI had been tasked with picking apart Fowler’s life.
The problem was that they thought they were looking for the right answer to the wrong question.
It wasn’t why he’d kidnapped a federal agent; it was how he’d found a federal informant in however-informal witness protection.
So far, nothing in Fowler’s background answered that question.
He’d been smart, but not to the level of cracking government databases.
Even if he was…Kincaid and Saul had played this old-school.
It might be impossible to create a new identity these days without a digital trail, but they’d kept everything off-book enough that the trail was nowhere anyone would expect.
Besides, Plenty might have its fair share of crime, but there was zero sign Fowler had ever been a team player.
He lived within his means, he was employed, and he didn’t have any significant connections.
Or even insignificant ones. Fowler had been put on a 72-hour hold twice, once as a teenager and once two years ago.
He’d also, embarrassingly enough, briefly been on an FBI watchlist after his involvement with the local farmers' protest against mortgage gouging last year. Nothing that really warranted Federal attention, it had only been in reaction to some larger rural workers’ rights groups amplifying the farmers’ complaints.
Javi paused. He toggled between tabs as he checked the details.
According to Gardner’s lie, he’d cut Fowler loose out of sympathy when his sister had explained her brother’s mania was a result of resentment over the bank foreclosing on him.
There was no foreclosure. Fowler’s last recorded address had been one of the fruit farms on the outskirts of town. It was a co-op care farm that helped psychiatric patients transition back into everyday life and earn a living.
Fowler’s sister had signed him in.
So…
Javi stopped himself and leaned back. He tapped the pen absently against the edge of the desk as he tried to decide if what he had was enough to finish that thought. If he did, he’d not be able to keep it to himself. Like it or not, he’d need to read Kincaid in.
“Shit,” he muttered as he came to a conclusion.
He pushed himself back from the desk and stood up in one smooth motion. The chair went rattling over the room to bang against a grimy white wall, while Javi went to find Kincaid.
“It’s not connected to anything,” Kincaid confided in Javi.
He was sitting on the table with the end of a pencil in his mouth as he stared through the one-way glass at Fowler.
The man was conscious now, but still propped up on the makeshift stretcher as he thumbed a red call button desperately.
“You’d think our sovereign citizen in there would appreciate us not interfering in his medical care, but apparently conviction and a partially degloved forearm do not mix well. ”
Javi was briefly distracted from what he’d been about to say as he looked at Fowler.
He didn’t have much sympathy for the man—he could still feel the pulpy, alien give at the back of Joel’s head as he lowered her to the ground—but the extent of the damage gave him pause.
Fowler was greasy-pale and beaded with sweat, the fingers that stuck out of the end of the tube of gauze and tape swollen and lividly colored.
It was strange to think that damage was done by a dog he let sit on his couch.
“Maybe I should make her eggs more,” he muttered.
Kincaid stopped mid-chew, incisors dug into the wood of the pencil, and gave Javi a puzzled look.
“What?”
“I…nothing,” Javi said. “Can I have a minute?”
Kincaid raised both eyebrows at that. He glanced at his watch, shrugged, and swiveled around to face Javi, one leg hitched up onto the table under him.
“OK,” he said. “Don’t waste it.”
“Is Deputy Gardner in your pocket?”
Kincaid mugged confusion and patted at his hips and chest with both hands. “Not right now,” he said. “Unless I left him in my jacket?”
“I know he’s IA.”
Kincaid rolled his eyes and spat the nub of the pencil out. “Well, if you ‘know’,” he said. “Why ask?”
He wasn’t Cloister.
Javi took a deep breath and let it out. He’d gotten used to having a straightforward sounding board that didn’t treat every conversation like a competition. Cloister didn’t play games. Kincaid did, even when it wasn’t in his best interests.
“It’s rumored he’s IA,” Javi corrected himself.