"And what I'm not interested in at the moment is your using me to profile my niece."
"Kay" -his voice softened"-I don't want this to be true any more than you do. I'm the one who recommended her to ERF. I'm the one who's been working on our hiring her after she graduates from UVA. Do you think I'm feeling very good?"
"There must be some other way this could have happened." He slowly shook his head.
"Even if someone had discovered Lucy's PIN, they still couldn't have gotten in because the biometric system would also require a scan of her actual finger."
"Then she wanted to be caught," I replied.
"Lucy more than anyone would know that if she went into classified automated files, she would leave log-in and log-out times, activity logs, and other tracks."
"I agree. She would know this better than anyone. And that's why I'm more interested in possible motive. In other words, what was she trying to prove? Who was she trying to hurt?"
"Benton," I said.
"What will happen?"
"OPR will conduct an official investigation," he answered, referring to the Bureau's Office of Professional Responsibility, which was the equivalent of a police department's Internal Affairs.
"If she's guilty?"
"It depends on whether we can prove she stole anything. If she did, she's committed a felony."
"And if she didn't?"
"Again, it depends on what OPR finds. But I think it's safe to say that at the very least Lucy has violated our security codes and no longer has a future with the FBI," he said. My mouth was so dry I almost couldn't talk.
"She will be devastated." Wesley's eyes were shadowed by fatigue and disappointment. I knew how much he liked my niece.
"In the meantime," he went on in the same flat tone he used when reviewing cases, "she can't stay at Quantico. She's already been told to pack her things. Maybe she can stay in Richmond with you until our investigation is concluded."
"Of course, but you know I won't be there all the time."
"We're not placing her under house arrest, Kay," he said, and his eyes got warmer for an instant. Very briefly I caught a glimpse of what stirred silently in his cool, dark waters. He got up.
"I'll drive her to Richmond tonight." I got up, too.
"I hope you're all right," he said, and I knew what he meant, and I knew I could not think about that now.
"Thank you," I replied, and impulses fired crazily between neurons, as if a fierce battle were being fought in my mind. Lucy was stripping her bed when I found her in her room not much later, and she turned her back to me when I walked in.
"What can I help you with?" I asked. She stuffed sheets into a pillowcase.
"Nothing," she said.
"I've got it under control." Her quarters were plainly furnished with institutional twin beds, desks, and chairs of oak veneer. By Yuppie apartment standards, the rooms in Washington dormitory were dreary, but if viewed as barracks they weren't half bad. I wondered where Lucy's suite mates and roommate were and if they had any idea what had happened.
"If you'll just check the wardrobe to make sure I've gotten everything," Lucy said.
"It's the one on the right. And check the drawers."
"Everything is empty unless the coat hangers are yours. These nice padded ones."
"They're Mother's."
"Then I assume you want them."
"Nope. Leave them for the next idiot who ends up in this pit."
"Lucy," I said, "it's not the Bureau's fault."
"It's not fair." She knelt on her suitcase to fasten the clasps.
"Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?"
"Legally, you are innocent until proven guilty. But until this breach of security is sorted out, you can't blame the Academy for not wanting you to continue working in classified areas. Besides, you haven't been arrested. You've simply been asked to go on leave for a while. " She turned to face me, her eyes exhausted and red.
"For a while means forever." As I questioned her closely in the car, she vacillated from pitiful tears to volatile flares that scorched everything within reach. Then she fell asleep, and I knew nothing more than I had before. As a cold rain began to fall, I turned on fog lamps and followed the trail of bright red taillights streaking the blacktop ahead. At unwelcome intervals rain and clouds gathered densely in dips and turns, making it almost impossible to see. But instead of pulling over and waiting for the weather to pass, I shifted to a lower gear and drove on in my machine of hurled walnut, soft leather, and steel.
I still wasn't certain why I had bought my charcoal Mercedes 500E, except that after Mark died, it had seemed important to drive something new. It might have been the memories, for we had loved and fought with each other desperately in my previous car. Or perhaps it was simply that life got harder as I got older and I needed more power to get by.
I heard Lucy stir as I turned into Windsor Farms, the old Richmond neighborhood where I lived amid stately Georgian and Tudor homes not far from the banks of the James. My headlights caught tiny reflectors on ankles of an unfamiliar boy riding a bicycle just ahead, and I passed a couple I did not recognize who were holding hands and walking their dog. Gum trees had dropped another load of prickly seeds over my yard, several rolled newspapers were on the porch, and the super cans were still parked by the street. It did not require long absences for me to feel like an outsider and for my house to look like no one was home. While Lucy carried in luggage, I started the gas logs in the living room and put on a pot of Darjeeling tea. For a while I sat alone in front of the fire, listening to the sounds of my niece as she got settled, took a shower, and in general took her time. We were about to have a discussion that filled both of us with dread.
"Are you hungry?" I asked when I heard her walk in.
"No. Do you have any beer?"
I hesitated, then replied, "In the refrigerator in the bar."
I listened a little longer without turning around, because when I looked at Lucy I saw her the way I wanted her to be. Sipping tea, I mustered up the strength to face this frighteningly beautiful and brilliant woman with whom I shared snippets of genetic code. After all these years, it was time we met. She came to the fire and sat on the floor, leaning against the stone hearth as she drank Icehouse beer out of the bottle. She had helped herself to a boldly colorful warm-up suit I wore on the infrequent occasions when I played tennis these days, and her feet were bare, her wet hair combed back. I realized that if I didn't know her and she walked past, I would turn to look again, and this wasn't solely due to her fine figure and face. One sensed the facility with which Lucy spoke, walked, and in the smallest ways guided her body and her eyes. She made everything seem easy, which was partially why she did not have many friends.
"Lucy," I began, "help me understand."
"I've been fucked," she said, taking a swallow of beer.
"If that's true, then how?"
"What do you mean'if'?" She stared hard at me, her eyes filling with tears.
"How can you think for even a minute… Oh, shit. What's the point?" She looked away.
"I can't help you if you don't tell me the truth," I said, getting up as I decided that I wasn't hungry, either. I went to the bar and poured Scotch over crushed ice.
"Let's start with the facts," I suggested as I returned to my chair.
"We know someone entered ERF at around three a.m. on this past Tuesday. We know your PIN was used and your thumb was scanned. It is further documented by the system that this person-again, who has your PIN and print-went into numerous files. The log-out time was at precisely four thirty-eight A. M. "
"I've been set up and sabotaged," Lucy said.
"Where were you while all this was going on?"
"I was asleep." She angrily gulped down the rest of her beer and got up for another one. I sipped my Scotch slowly because it was not possible to drink a Dewar's Mist fast.
"It has been alleged that there have been nights when your bed was empty," I quietly said.