Crandall had been a rookie when she met him-a first office agent, or FOA in the Bureau-speak. He was now in his second year, still at the GS-12 pay grade. The salary he was pulling down, even with overtime, wouldn’t go very far in a town like L.A.
“Rick, good to see you.” She thought about giving him a hug, decided against it because the receptionist was watching, and settled for a handshake instead. “How is everything with you?”
“Not bad.” His voice was flat, his manner distant.
“Still managing to impress your old man?” Ralston Crandall was a deputy director at Bureau headquarters in D.C.
“I guess,” he said tonelessly, not looking at her. “You can stow your suitcase behind the reception desk for now.”
He key-carded the door to a hallway and led her inside. She tried again to make conversation. “Well, your father should be impressed. L.A.’s a tough gig for a new recruit.”
“I’m not a new recruit anymore. I’ve been on the job nearly two years.”
“Right, of course. I didn’t mean…” Her apology trailed away. Crandall kept walking. She let the silence persist for a few seconds, then stopped him with a tug on his arm. “What’s the matter, Rick?”
“Nothing.” He pulled free of her grasp.
“I thought we were friends.”
“Yeah. I thought so, too.” He took a breath. “You want to know, Tess? You really want to know?”
Without waiting for an answer, he ducked into the break room, a kitchenette with a table and chairs, the air permanently infused with the aroma of coffee.
No one else was inside. Tess entered, and Crandall shut the door. He kept his voice low, but his eyes were fierce.
“Real good friends, that’s what we are, right? And friends don’t keep secrets, do they? They don’t lie. So I guess that’s why you told me all about Abby Hollister, right? Or should I say Abby Sinclair?”
Tess froze. For a moment she could think of nothing to say. Finally she asked the obvious question. “How do you know about that?”
“Because I saw her. I fucking saw her, in the flesh, alive. Not drowned in the storm tunnels.”
“I see.”
“You lied. You lied to everybody.”
“I never actually said she drowned. People made the assumption-”
“Don’t bullshit me. When we arrested Kolb, he said you two were working together. You denied it. But it was true, wasn’t it?”
Abby gave in. She hoped to God that Crandall wasn’t wearing a wire. “It was true.”
“You went outside the Bureau, hooked up with some private detective?”
“She’s not a PI. Not exactly.”
“What is she, then?”
“A security consultant.” Tess sat at the table. “You said you saw her. When?”
“Last night. Coming out of Andrea Lowry’s house.”
“You were surveilling the place?”
Crandall hesitated, then took a seat also. Some of the rage had gone out of him, but she still saw the deep hurt in his face. He had looked up to her, trusted her.
“We were surveilling Lowry’s vehicle, actually,” he said in a more subdued voice. “We mounted a GPS tracker on her car.”
Tess was familiar with the procedure. The global positioning system would log the vehicle’s movements, saving the information to a computer file.
“She parks in a carport,” Crandall went on, “so it was easy enough to get access to the vehicle. It was my job to download the data every twenty-four hours and see where she’s been. When I arrived last night to do the data dump, I saw a car parked outside the house. Later I ran the tags. The car belongs to your friend. She was visiting Andrea Lowry.”
“The car was registered under her real name?”
“Yes-assuming Sinclair is her real name. Why ask?”
“When she’s working undercover, she usually drives a car registered to an alias.”
“Maybe this time she got careless. I watched the house and saw her leave. That’s when I recognized her.”
Tess nodded. During the Rain Man case, Crandall had interviewed Abby at the field office. She was posing as an ordinary civilian, using the name Abby Hollister. It was Abby Hollister who was supposed to have died later, in the storm drains, though her body had never been found.
“Did she see you?” Tess asked quietly.
“No. I was hiding in the carport. But I got a good look.” He paused. When she said nothing, he added, “What the hell’s going on, Tess?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ll bet. You knew she didn’t drown.”
“I knew.”
“Did you help her arrange for her car to be found?” Abby’s Honda, registered in her Hollister ID, had turned up in the drainage system.
Tess shook her head. “It wasn’t arranged. It was… providential, I guess you’d say. It was just how things worked out.”
“So who is she, Tess?”
“You’d be better off not knowing.” She caught his mistrustful glance and added, “I mean that. Really. The less you know, the more deniability you retain.”
“Deniability? I saw her. I got her tag number. I’m already deeply into this thing.”
She hesitated, fearing to ask the next question. “Does anyone else know?”
“You mean, have I told Michaelson? Have I put it in my official report?” Crandall made a brief noise like a stifled laugh. “Do you think you’d be sitting here with me if I had? The ADIC would have had you in a detention cell by now.”
“That’s a slight exaggeration.”
“No, it isn’t. He’s been gunning for you for years. Ever since Mobius. You managed to piss him off. Frankly, you’ve managed to piss off most of the personnel in this office.”
“So no one knows?” She failed to keep the relief out of her voice.
“No one. I’m covering for you.”
“Thank you for your discretion.”
“For participating in the cover-up, you mean? Yeah, I’m real proud of myself.”
“It was a difficult situation, Rick. There were tradeoffs. Abby helped me, and I helped her. It was against procedure-”
“No shit.”
“-but it got the job done. We stopped Kolb.”
“And you took all the credit. Nice.”
“I didn’t care about the credit. I got out of town as soon as the case was closed. I didn’t exploit it.” She hated sounding defensive.
“How about Mobius? Did your secret friend help you on that one, too?”
“I didn’t know her then. She had nothing to do with Mobius.”
“And MEDEA? It can’t be a coincidence that you’re here today after she visited Andrea Lowry last night.”
“No, Rick. It’s not a coincidence.”
“Jesus.” Crandall looked away, disgusted. “You’re out of control, Tess. You’re off the reservation.”
“If it means anything, I never wanted it to go this far.”
“You know what? It doesn’t mean anything. Not to me.” Crandall stood up. “Come on. You’ve got a briefing with the case agent.”
“Not with Michaelson?”
Crandall shook his head. “He’s limiting his contact with you. Can’t say I blame him.”
That was a cheap shot. Tess didn’t respond. She followed Crandall out of the break room, aware that she had lost her only ally in the building. She was now officially alone in L.A.
Except for Abby, of course. And Abby was the exception that proved the rule.
13
Crandall led her to the squad room, where rows of desks sat nearly empty, only a few agents working the phones or reviewing notes on yellow legal pads. She saw one agent going over a stack of files in the brown and white folders used by all Bureau offices, with a few of the older tan folders from an earlier era. The tan ones presumably related to the original MEDEA investigation twenty years ago. On another desk she saw blue documents, color-coded to signify urgency.
She followed Crandall to the rear of the bullpen, where a secretary gave them permission to enter the office of the squad supervisor.
His name was Hauser, and Tess pegged him instantly as an ex-Marine. He was a tall, no-nonsense hard case with a gray crew cut, and he looked to be pushing the Bureau’s mandatory retirement age