husband? Maybe you both know him since he works for Overland?" Marino says to Mclntyre.
"Well, I do know that Mitch used to talk to her boys. She has two young boys and sometimes they'd be out there fishing when Mitch was. He said he felt for them because their dad was never around. But I don't know anybody named Kiffin at the trucking company, and I do their books."
"Can you check that out?" Jay says.
"Maybe his last name's different from hers."
"Yeah."
She nods.
"You remember the last time Mitch went fishing out there?" Marino asks her.
"Right before all the snow," she replies. "It was pretty nice weather up until then."
"I noticed some change, a couple beer bottles and some cigars on the landing," I say. "Right by the fishing pole."
"You sure he hasn't been fishing out there since it snowed?" Marino picks up my thought.
The expression in her eyes makes it evident that she isn't sure. I wonder just how much she really knows about her undercover boyfriend.
"Any illegal shit going on at the motel that you and Mitch are aware of?" Marino asks her.
Mclntyre starts shaking her head. "He never mentioned anything about that. Nothing like that. His only connection to the place was fishing and being nice to the two boys, on occasion, if he saw them."
"Just if they happened up when he was fishing?" Marino keeps pushing. "Any reason to think Mitch might have ever wandered over to the house to say hi to them?"
She hesitates.
"Mitch a generous guy?"
"Oh yes," she says. "Very much so. He might have wandered over. I don't know. He really likes kids. Liked them." She tears up again and at the same time simmers.
"How did he identify himself to people around here? He say he was a truck driver? What did he say about you? You supposed to be a career woman? Now, you two weren't really boyfriend and girlfriend. That was just part of the front, right?" Marino is on to something. He is leaning forward, his arms braced on his knees, staring intensely at Jilison Mcln-tyre. When he gets like this, he fires questions so rapidly, people often don't have time to answer. Then they get confused and say something they regret. She does that this very moment.
"Hey, I'm not a fucking suspect," she snaps at him. "And our relationship, I don't know what you're getting at. It was professional. But you can't help being close to someone when you live in the same damn townhouse and act like you're involved, make people think you are."
"But you weren't involved," Marino says. "Or at least he wasn't with you. You guys were doing a job, right? Meaning, if he wanted to pay attention to a lonely woman with two nice little boys, he could do that." Marino leans back in his chair. The room is so silent, it seems to hum. "Problem is, Mitch shouldn't have done that. Dangerous, fucking stupid in light of his situation. He one of those types who had a hard time keeping his pants on?"
She doesn't answer him. Tears jump out.
"You know what, folks?" Marino scans the room. "It just might be that Mitch got tangled up in something that doesn't have a damn thing to do with your undercover operation here. Wrong place, wrong time. Caught something he sure as hell wasn't fishing for."
"You got any idea where Mitch was at three o'clock Wednesday afternoon, when Matos checked into the motel and the fire started?" Stanfield is putting the pieces together. "Was he here or out somewhere?"
"No, he wasn't here," she barely says, wiping her eyes with a tissue. "Gone. I don't know where."
Marino blows out in disgust. He doesn't need to say it. Undercover partners are supposed to keep track of each other, and if Agent Mclntyre didn't always know where Special Agent Barbosa was, then he was up to something that maybe wasn't germane to their investigation.
"I know you don't even want to think it, Jilison," Marino goes on in a milder tone, "but Mitch was tortured and murdered, okay? I mean, the guy was fucking scared to death.
Literally. Whatever someone was doing to him, it was so awful, he had a fucking heart attack. He wet his fucking pants. He was taken somewhere and strung up, gagged and then has a weirdo key put in his pocket, planted, what for? Why? He into anything we ought to know about, Jilison? He fishing for more than bass out there in that creek by the campground?"
Tears are rolling down Mclntryre's face. She wipes them away roughly with the tissue and sniffles loudly. "He liked drinking and women," she barely says. "Okay?"
"He ever go out at night, barhopping and that sort of thing?" Pruett asks her.
She nods. "It was part of his cover. You saw…" Her eyes jump to me. "You saw him. His dyed hair, the earring, all the rest. Mitch played the role of a sort of, well, wild party guy and he did like the women. He never pretended to be, uh, faithful to me, to his so-called girlfriend. It was part of his cover. But it was also him. Yeah. I worried about it, okay? But that was Mitch. He was a good agent. I don't think he did anything dishonest, if that's what you're asking. But he didn't tell me everything, either. If he got onto something going on at the campground, for example, he might have started poking around. He might have."
"Without letting you know," Marino confirms.
She nods again. "And I was out doing my thing, too. It's not like I was here every minute waiting for him. I was working in the office at Overland. Part-time, anyway. So we didn't always know what the other was up to every hour of every day."
"I'll tell you this much," Marino decides. "Mitch stumbled onto something. And I'm just wondering if he wasn't out at the motel around the time Matos showed up, and maybe whatever Matos was into, Mitch had the misfortune of being spotted in the area. Maybe it's just that simple. Somebody thinks he saw something, knew something, and next thing, he gets picked up and gets the treatment."
No one argues, Marino's theory, actually, is the only one so far that makes any sense.
"Which brings us back to what Matos was doing here to begin with," Pruett comments.
I look at Stanfield. He has wandered out of the conversation. His face is wan. He is a nervous wreck. His eyes drift to me and quickly move away. He wets his lips and coughs several times.
"Detective Stanfield," I feel compelled to say to him in front of everyone. "For God's sake, don't tell any of this to your brother-in-law." Anger sparks in his eyes. I have humiliated him and don't care. "Please," I add.
"You want to know the truth?" he angrily retorts. "I don't want nothing to do with any of this." He slowly draws himself to his feet and looks around the room, blinking, his eyes glazing over. "I don't know what this is all about, but I don't want no part_I mean, no part of it. You feds are in it already, up to your eyeballs, so you can just have it. I quit." He nods. "You heard me right, I quit."
Detective Stanfield, to our amazement, collapses. He falls so hard the room shakes. I spring up. Thank God, he is breathing. His pulse is running wild, but he is not in the grips of a cardiac arrest or anything life-threatening. He simply has fainted. I check his head to make sure he hasn't injured himself. He is all right He comes to. Marino and I help him to his feet and get him on the couch. I make him lie down and prop several pillows under his neck. Most of all, he is embarrassed, acutely so.
"Detective Stanfield, are you diabetic?" I ask. "Do you have a heart condition?"
"If you just got a Coke or something, that would be good," he says, weakly.
I get up and head into the kitchen. "Let me see what I can do," I say as if I live here. Inside the refrigerator, I get out orange juice. I find peanut butter in a cabinet and scoop out a big spoonful. It is while I am looking for paper towels that I notice a prescription bottle by the toaster oven. Mitch Barbosa's name is on the label. He was taking the antidepressant Prozac. When I return to the living room, I say something about this to Mclntyre and she tells us that Barbosa went on Prozac several months ago because he was suffering from anxiety and depression, which he blamed on the undercover assignment, on stress, she adds.