“Yeah. It’s impossible,” I said.
Or was it? Two hours later, after the box had been sniffed by two dogs, a hand held chemical detection device, then finally x-rayed, the bomb squad technician walked out the front door of the bank and looked around until he saw me and Rosencrantz through the glass front of the coffee shop. He waved us over, but just as we crossed the street and were about to enter the building a black Crown Victoria slid to a stop behind us, it’s front tire bouncing off the curb. A young man who looked like he had just graduated from college got out of the car and approached the front entrance of the bank. He wore a dark blue suit under a light-weight tan trench coat and his hair looked as if had been cut just this morning. He walked over to where we were standing and identified himself as Agent Gibson with the FBI.
“Is one of you Detective Donatti?” he asked.
The relationship between Federal, State, and Local law enforcement is often portrayed on television or in fiction novels as strained, competitive, or tenuous at best. But in real life, particularly after the terrorist attacks of 9/11, there is an interdepartmental agency wide level of cooperation which works better than most people might imagine. But not always.
Rosencrantz looked at Agent Gibson, then said, “I think what you meant to say was ‘ Are one of you Detective Donatti?’ You see, grammatically speaking, when asking-”
I cut him off before he went any further. “I’m Detective Jones with the Indiana State Police. Donatti works for me. How may I help you?”
Agent Gibson peeled his eyes off of Rosencrantz and looked at me. “A request was put in for information earlier today regarding Murton Wheeler. It had Donatti’s name attached. Wheeler is part of an on-going federal investigation. We’d like to know why.”
“You’re federal agents and you’re asking us why Wheeler is part of an on-going federal investigation?” Rosencrantz said.
“No,” Agent Gibson said, a look of exasperation on his face. “We’d like to know why you’re looking for information on Wheeler.”
“That’s not what you said. You said-“
“Rosie, why don’t you wait by the box with the bomb tech?” I said. “I’ll be right there.”
“Sure thing, Jonesy,” he said. But before he walked away he turned and winked at Gibson then gave him a big smile and two thumbs up. “Keep up the great work, dude. I sleep better at night knowing you’re out there doing your job. I really do.”
After Rosencrantz walked away I looked at Agent Gibson and tried a little diplomacy. “I’ll be honest with you, Murton Wheeler was a boyhood friend of mine. We grew up together and even served in the first Gulf war with each other. It has been a number of years since we’ve seen each other until just last night. He walked into a bar I own, gave me a key to a safe deposit box inside this bank then disappeared out the back. In addition, two men I’d never seen before until that very same day were following him. I don’t know what else I can tell you. Why are you looking at him?”
“I didn’t say we were looking for him. I said he’s part of an ongoing investigation.”
“What exactly do you want with him then?”
“I’m afraid I’m not at liberty to say.”
So much for diplomacy. “Look, Agent Gibson, I’m in the middle of a murder investigation. The CEO of this financial institution was murdered yesterday, and we’ve had several other shootings which I now believe are somehow connected. Murton Wheeler ties in to it somehow. Anything you can give me would be a big help.”
“Murder is not a federal offense, Detective, so I’m afraid I can’t help you.”
“Have a nice day, then,” I said, and turned to walk away.
“We’re not done here, Detective,” Agent Gibson said.
“Yes we are,” I said without turning around. But after a few steps I stopped and this time I did turn around. “I don’t know what’s going on with Wheeler. We were friends for a long time before he dropped out of my life. But I’ll tell you this, Federal Agent or not, you better watch your back. Murton is not someone you want for an enemy. I can probably help you, if you’ll let me.” But it’s hard to get over on a Federal Agent and he had already lost interest in anything else I had to say, his back toward me as he climbed into his car. I don’t know if he heard me or not.
When I got back inside, Rosencrantz and the bomb tech were looking at the x-ray picture of the inside of the safe deposit box. “It’s either a folded piece of paper, or an envelope or two. Won’t be able to tell until we turn the key.” When neither Rosencrantz or myself said anything, the tech shrugged his shoulders, turned the key and opened the door. Inside the box were two letter sized envelopes, one with my name hand written on the front. The tech picked up the envelope, ran the scanner over it, rolled his eyes before handing it to me, then said, “You got a case number for my report?”
“I’ll send one over when I get back to the office,” I said.
“Good enough then. Tell that Jamaican who cooks for you I like my sauce extra hot, will you? Man, that’s some good shit. I’ll be in tonight for supper.”
After the bomb tech walked out I asked Rosencrantz why he was so hard on the FBI agent. “Aw, those guys just flat piss me off sometimes. They strut around like their shit doesn’t stink and every time you ask them for something they tell you they’re not at liberty to say, but what they’re really saying is we’re just small time, you know? Those kind of guys wouldn’t piss on you if you were on fire.”
“Anything else?”
“Yeah, maybe. I applied twice to be an agent. They turned me down both times. You think it might be my attitude?”
“I don’t see how that could be,” I said.
I saw the corner of his mouth turn upwards, then he said, “You going to open that?”
“Yeah, I guess so,” I said.
Murton Wheeler and I had grown up together playing in backyards and ball fields in a time and place when parents still let children walk to school by themselves and most people didn’t bother to lock their doors at night. It was a time when you looked back at the past and used it as a guide to a better and brighter future because of the people in your life and the good and decent things they accomplished, not just for themselves, but for one another. But we are, I sometimes think, of a generation whose goals and accomplishments seem to take precedent over our moral obligations to those in need or sometimes even the ones we love.
So as young men, still not old enough to drink an alcoholic beverage, when our country called on us to serve we did so without hesitation or question because it was what our fathers and their fathers before them did, all in the ultimate quest for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Except along the way, when you’re humping an eighty pound pack across the desert sand in one-hundred-twenty degree heat you might begin to question the history and reason of war, and maybe, if you are lucky enough to make it back home you might decide that it was all for a cause greater than you are capable of understanding. Then one day the sins of the fathers are passed on to their sons and middle eastern men with nothing more than box cutters fly airliners into buildings and no one’s life is ever the same again, and like it or not, if you want to sleep at night, you have to admit to yourself that in some way large or small, you are a participant in a game that never ends, the rules ever changing.
I opened the first envelope and saw that it contained a copy of a birth certificate for a female named Sidney Wells, Jr., born in May of 1987. I double checked the spelling of the first name, then the sex of the child. It was either a mistake, or the parents had opted to use the male spelling of the name Sidney for their daughter. The mother’s name was listed as Sara Wells. The line for the father’s name was blank. I had no idea what any of it meant. I put the birth certificate aside and opened the other envelope.