Chapter Fifteen #2
Jude felt a chill in the air when she trailed Emmy into the room.
This was more like the old library she remembered.
Painted cinder block walls. Carpet that smelled of damp.
Papers over-flowing from trays. Stuffed folders held together by thick rubber bands.
The only nod to modernity was an ancient IBM laptop with a pile of CD-ROMs beside it.
They were sandwiched between two large machines on a wooden table: one for reading microfilm and the other for microfiche.
The machines were designed to read the same type of storage—transparent film with nearly microscopic images of printed documents.
They used mirrors and magnification to make the tiny images legible to the human eye.
It was the internet before there was an internet, except much slower and more accurate.
Jude assumed that the films were stored in the floor-to-ceiling drawers that took up the entire back wall of the room.
There had to be more than one hundred in all.
The cabinets were at least thirty inches deep.
Each of the skinny drawers was roughly four inches tall by two feet wide.
Every single one had a number plate beside a cam lock with the distinctive, round keyhole.
Barbara explained. “Old Dr. Cod, the former library director, was worried about communist sympathizers accessing the town data.”
Jude remembered Old Dr. Cod in his youth. He’d sat behind his desk and stared at her legs every time she’d walked in.
“Jude?” Emmy pointed to the six key rings hanging from hooks by the door. There were multiple barrel keys for the locks. White labels were taped to each key, but the numbers were faded.
“Sorry it’s such a mess. Microfiche isn’t exactly popular with our clientele.
I think Allison was the only one back here this year.
” Barbara pointed to the labels on the drawers.
“City planning documents. Clifton County charters. Historical records. Deeds and titles. Journals. Newspapers. Magazines.”
Emmy asked, “How often did Allison come back?”
“A few hours at a time. Usually around lunch.”
“When was this?”
“Maybe two months ago? Then on Thursday she told me she had to check something real quick. I used my badge to take her back, but I didn’t see her leave.”
“Thursday?” Emmy repeated.
Two days before Allison was murdered.
“Yeah,” Barbara said. “Crazy, right?”
Emmy asked, “When you say she was in here for hours, do you mean over a few days? Weeks?”
“Maybe a couple of weeks? Never on the weekends. The readers act up, so I’d have to come back here sometimes and slap it on the side.”
Jude asked, “Which machine did she use?”
Barbara pointed to the microfiche reader. “You know how to work it?”
“Yes,” Jude said. “Do you have any idea what Allison was looking at?”
“No idea, but when she gave me her badge back, she told me she’d found what she needed.” Barbara looked at her watch. “Let me know if y’all need anything else.”
“Thank you.” Emmy caught the door as Barbara left. She took a small evidence bag from her vest pocket. Allison’s keychain was inside. She slipped the dimple key into the lock. The bolt engaged.
Jude tried some of the skinny wooden drawers. “They’re all locked.”
Emmy found the barrel key on Allison’s key chain. She dragged a chair to the first column of cabinets and started at the top, trying the key in each of the cam locks as she worked her way down.
Jude tried to narrow the search, checking the labels on the drawers. “We can rule out the county charter. All the current city planning documents would be online. So would deeds and titles. That leaves journals, newspapers and magazines.”
Emmy kept trying the locks. “Any Clifton County–specific magazines would be about automobile manufacturing, farming, or hunting. That leaves journals and newspapers.”
Jude stepped back as Emmy crossed to the cabinets at the other end.
The lock turned for the drawer marked newspapers. Emmy slid it open.
There were thousands of white cotton sleeves roughly the size of index cards. Each one held a single piece of film. Dividers kept them separate. Only one divider didn’t have any sleeves. Instead, there was a silver flip phone.
They both stared in disbelief.
“Jesus, Allison. What were you up to?” Emmy fished a glove out of her pocket. She opened the phone. Powered it up. She toggled through the memory. “There’s only one number. She called it four times.”
Jude put on her reading glasses. “Nine-two-oh is one of the area codes for Appleton, Wisconsin. There’s a tactical training facility just outside of town. I dated a guy at the ATF who taught there.”
“Allison was calling somebody at a tactical training facility?”
“No.” Jude was thinking of a detail from her conversation with Samuel Callaghan. “Dial the number.”
Emmy put the phone on speaker and rested it on the open drawer.
The phone rang four times before it was answered. The man on the other end of the line was probably in a full-on panic. “Hello? Who is this?”
Jude recognized the flat, midwestern accent of a fresh new agent who’d been born in Appleton, Wisconsin. “Special Agent Foley, this is Dr. Jude Archer. I’m glad we have this opportunity to talk.”
There was dead silence on the line.
“Hello?” Jude had to admit she had missed making a man squirm. “Special Agent Foley?”
“Uh—yes, ma’am. I’m—I’m sorry, but this number—”
“Belongs to the burner phone that Allison Vickery used to communicate with you.”
Emmy’s head swiveled around.
“Uh—wow.” Foley had the good sense to laugh at himself. “Assistant Director Callaghan warned me you’d get the upper hand, but I didn’t know it would happen like this.”
Jude smiled. He was smart to acknowledge it. “You’ve obviously been told about Allison and her daughter.”
“Yes, ma’am. I was very sorry to hear it.”
He was still so new to the bureau that his remorse seemed genuine. Allison had likely been his first assignment. That kind of failure hit on every level.
She asked, “How well did you know Allison?”
“We talked on the phone four times. Met in person twice.”
Jude needed a spreadsheet to track all of Samuel’s lies. “What was she like?”
Reid hesitated. He’d been expecting her to press him for details about the conversations. “I felt bad for her, if I’m being honest. She was terrified. Worried about her daughter. Concerned about their safety. Wanting to get away.”
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. I assume her husband, but she had a lot going on in her life. I got the feeling a lot of things were weighing on her. Like, she couldn’t take much more.”
“What did Callaghan authorize you to tell me?”
He didn’t answer at first. She wondered if he was looking for a script Samuel had dictated. The man had always liked to control things.
Foley said, “Ma’am, I don’t think I’m built for this job.”
Jude hadn’t expected to be surprised by Reid Foley. Samuel’s acolytes tended to be cocksure true believers. She gave him time to make a decision. When you started out at the FBI, you were constantly being pulled toward different masters.
Foley said, “When I think back on what kind of agent I wanted to be when I got to Quantico, it was somebody like you. Not Callaghan.”
“I came up during very different times.” Jude knew not to push him. “And I’m at the end of my career. You’re at the beginning.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to talk me out of this.”
“I’m trying to make sure it’s your choice,” Jude said, because she knew better than a first-year agent that the FBI had an institutional memory going back to Hoover. “Don’t make the decision lightly.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Foley went silent again. “My dad was a beat cop. He was good police. Did the job the right way.”
Jude exchanged a nervy look with Emmy as they waited for him to continue.
“Allison was good police. At least until they forced her out. She gave me the names of eleven police officers she said were on a Giglio list.”
Jude saw Emmy raise her fist in triumph.
“The first name Allison proffered was your father. Allison arrested your sister’s ex buying a suspected schedule one substance from a known drug dealer.”
Emmy’s triumph drained quickly at the mention of Jonah. She turned away from Jude. Stacked the CD-ROMs on the table. Straightened the pencil. Angled the laptop.
“Allison went to process the evidence, but she couldn’t find it. She called her boss. He told her to drop it. Said that he flushed the drugs down the toilet. That Gerald Clifton asked him to make it go away as a personal favor.”
Emmy wiped dust off the laptop.
Jude said, “My father was her first proffer. I’m assuming he’d already been killed by the time you started looking into the accusation. You had to tell Allison that the agency doesn’t make cases against dead men. What did she do?”
“She told me the more she thought about it, the more she figured your dad didn’t ask Reggie to do anything. And the fact that Reggie had lied to her, and that he got rid of the drugs, meant he was a bad cop.”
Emmy opened the laptop. Booted it up.
“Allison was consulting for the Clayville PD. She had access to all their files. She started looking for inconsistencies. They were right out there in the open. Reggie and the drug squad were robbing drug dealers right under Allison’s nose.
Stealing their stash. She’d log ten grams in the arrest report, but only five grams would make it to the lab.
Or one of her guys would say a dealer had ten grand on him when it was actually twenty.
Reggie told her the cases fell apart. She went back and documented all of it—she had photographs, police reports, surveillance videos.
It was solid work. She had them dead to rights.
I sent everything up the chain. Thought it would be a slam dunk. ”
Jude winced. She knew where this was going. “But you were told that you couldn’t offer her witness protection.”