Worth Dying For (9 page)

As of January 2008, the FBI Headquarters in Washington provided direction and support to fifty-six field offices, roughly four-hundred satellite offices—commonly referred to as resident agencies—four specialty field installations, and over fifty liaison offices—or Legal Attaches—throughout the world.
 

The security at Sigh-ock was super tight. When exiting the elevator, the first thing one sees is a huge vault door, similar to the kind found in a bank. To the right, and affixed to the wall, is a keypad that requires a security key fob code for entry.

On each side of the doors are two large, red signs informing visitors that they have now entered a high-security area. Outside the doors, all activity is monitored and recorded by several strategically placed cameras twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year.

Located directly inside the door and off to the right was a small galley kitchen with a microwave and coffee maker. She smiled as she thought about the first time she passed the room and saw the sign over the microwave that read, “Food and Drinks Prohibited.”

She thought back about her illustrious career with the FBI and how it all began around fifteen years ago. She never dreamed about being a cop, let alone an agent with the FBI, and for as long as she could remember, she had wanted to be a photographer.

That all changed the day she met Special Agent Laura Forrest. They had met some sixteen years ago while Rheyna was attending George Washington University. She had seen Laura from a distance off and on the entire time she was in school. Laura was the one who conducted the FBI recruiting drive every semester outside the main entrance to the college.

Secretly, she had thought Laura was too small and too attractive to be a FBI agent. She was sorry to admit that she had a stereotypical view of what an agent should look like, and Laura definitely was not it. Laura stood maybe five-feet-four inches tall with heels on. With blonde shoulder-length hair and green eyes, she was what Rheyna would classify as a sweet piece of eye candy.

Her so-called ‘gaydar’ had gone into overdrive from the first moment she had seen her. Laura had grinned at her like a Cheshire cat, a grin that said, “I know your secret, too.” Although they never spoke until the day she graduated, Rheyna had liked her immediately. After the ceremony, she was busy packing her things to leave campus for the last time, when Laura unexpectedly appeared at her dorm room with a recruiting pamphlet in her hand.

She introduced herself and asked Rheyna if she had ever given a thought to joining the FBI. Not one to mix words, Rheyna told her, “Thanks, but no thanks.”

What Laura said next surprised her: “What’s the matter, afraid you can’t hack it, don’t have what it takes? I guess my instincts were wrong about you.” Laura tossed the pamphlet on the bed and walked out of the room without another word, and that was all it took.

Laura had challenged her and she couldn’t resist. She told herself at the time that it was just the Taurus in her. She sat down on the bed, leafed through the brochure, and was pleasantly surprised to read that one of the FBI hiring policies included a clause that protected people based on sexual orientation.

Later that night, while sitting in her newly rented efficiency apartment, she logged onto the FBI website and downloaded an application. To her surprise, she was accepted two weeks later.
 

She had driven by the J. Edgar Hoover building a thousand times without giving it much thought, but on the day she was to report for duty, she stood outside the front entrance marveling at its sheer size. It was enormous and took up a full city block. The building itself was located at 935 Pennsylvania Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Street, with the front of the building facing Pennsylvania Avenue. The building raised seven stories at the front, with a huge overhang at the back that added four more floors.
 

Laura told her that the building had been designed this way in order to bypass a city ordinance that restricted the height on all new buildings facing Pennsylvania Avenue.

 
The main reason for this had to do with the major parades that periodically marched down the Avenue. It was a requirement for all new buildings to have open second floors in order to accommodate parade spectators. The exterior part of the building was most interesting and was constructed out of crude concrete slabs. At first glance, they appeared to be riddled with bullet holes. She learned later that the holes were not from bullets, but were actually part of the architecture, designed to give it character. Not only did they look like bullet holes, the building looked unfinished to her, and she was not alone in that thought.

She couldn’t recall how many times she had overheard a tourist taking the tour ask, “So, how much longer before the building’s completed?” It was a standing joke around HQ, seeing that the building was completed in 1974.

When she entered the building, the first person she saw was Special Agent Laura Forrest. She had been waiting for her and again, she had that shit-eating grin on her face. All Rheyna could do was smile back. After she signed in at the front desk, Laura laced her arm through Rheyna’s and took her on a tour of what would be her home for the next fifteen years.

The first area they entered was the visitors’ lobby. The room was nicely decorated in neutral color tones and like any lobby, it contained several lounge chairs, a sofa and a large table littered with brochures and pamphlets. To the right of the entrance doors was the obligatory guard’s desk where each visitor had to sign in. The wall nearest the entrance had a set of mirrors reaching from floor to ceiling and unbeknownst to visitors, a group of agents, along with security guards, sat on the other side, watching the lounge through two-way mirrors.

Sitting two floors down, directly in the middle of the building—and viewable from the lobby—was an open, outside courtyard with ivy-covered walls. All along the outside perimeter, gardens grew in the spring, producing the most vibrant flowers she had ever seen. Around the gardens, carefully laid pavers led to an enormous, flowing fountain located in the middle of the court, which was surrounded by wrought-iron benches. The benches were a nice touch and provided the ideal place to sit and collect one’s thoughts, a place to escape, to get away from all of the terrible things that went on inside the building.

This was where she chose to eat her lunch on most days. She was amazed at the countless animals and birds that made their way in and milled around the flower gardens. They even had a groundhog for a mascot. She understood how the birds and groundhog got in, but to this day, she had no idea how all the others did, since the only way in was up or through the ground. She still tries to figure out where the tabby cat came from.

The colorful garden was very different from the bland colors inside the building. When entering a restricted area, one is slammed back to reality with the dreary décor. Every door is painted charcoal grey and every wall in the building is beige and bare. Not one wall has pictures hanging on them. The building’s size and odd design, combined with the fact that everything looked alike, made it too easy to get lost. In fact, employees who worked there for years still did.

After sixteen weeks of training, Rheyna was assigned to the Criminal Investigative Division located on the fifth floor. The CID was by far the largest of the divisions, with seven individual sections, and those sections were responsible for employing eighty percent of all FBI agents.

That division alone investigated approximately seventy-thousand cases per year. For Rheyna, this meant that she was not likely to get bored. Although she didn’t get to choose where her assignment would be, she had secretly hoped for Organized or Violent Crime. She was not surprised at all when she ended up spending the first three years of her career in the area, she wanted least—White Collar Crime. Fortunately, for her, the last twelve have been divided between Civil Rights, Counter-Terrorism, Drugs and Investigative Support, and less than forty-eight hours ago, she had been granted her wish: she was finally assigned to Organized Crime.

Chapter 5

Artie looked at the final disconnect notice for the water bill. He ripped it into little pieces and tossed it in the wastebasket. He turned his computer monitor around and started tapping on the keyboard. A light knock on his door caused him to stop.
 

“Come in,” he said, quickly switching off the monitor.

Edwards opened the door and poked his head in. “I saw your light on and wasn’t sure if you were still here.”

“Yeah, I’m just wrapping up a few things before I head home.”

“Okay, well, don’t be too late. We have a big day tomorrow.”

“Don’t I know it,” Artie said with a smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow, bright and early.”

“Good night, Artie,” Edwards said before pulling the door closed.

Artie turned the monitor back on and continued tapping the keys. He ripped off a piece of paper, jotted down the information from the screen, and shut his computer down. He crammed the paper in his pocket and took his coat off the door hook.

###

Cecil Titus looked up from his newspaper. “Hiya, Artie. What brings you down to my neck of the woods at this late hour?” Cecil managed to ask between bites of a salami sandwich.

“Hello, Cecil. I just have a few things to check out before I head on home.”

Cecil pressed the button to allow Artie behind the steel door separating the small lobby area from the evidence room. Artie slid his ID badge into the card reader, walked through the caged door, and shut it behind him. He pulled the door open that led to the evidence property warehouse.

“Let me know if you need any help!” Cecil yelled just before Artie disappeared between a set of wooden shelves used to hold the evidence bags and boxes.

Artie glanced at the numbers on the outside compartments and carefully navigated his way around the hordes of bicycles and other large items that littered the aisles. He scanned the metal ID tags at the top of each rack and turned down an aisle marked with the letters D through L. He stopped in front of several brown evidence bags and pulled the paper out of his pocket. He double-checked the numbers to verify that they matched. He reached into the pigeonhole and pulled out a brown bag. He glanced around and then nervously unrolled the lip of the bag and peered inside.

###

Cecil wadded up the wrapper, took aim, and lobbed the ball at the trashcan located several feet from his desk. “Ah, shit,” he said as the paper ball clipped the rim and skidded a few feet away. He picked it up, and dropped it in the can. He inserted his ID badge into the card reader, let himself though the caged door, and headed down the first aisle. He walked in a zigzag fashion, glancing up each aisle as he weaved in and out between the rows of shelving racks that looked more like a maze than an evidence room.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, spotting Artie at the end of the row. “I wanted to show you the picture of my new granddaughter, Chloe,” he said, pulling his wallet from his back pocket.

Artie quickly closed the bag and shoved it back into the cubbyhole. He turned and walked toward Cecil.

Cecil took the photo out of his wallet and handed it to Artie. “Isn’t she just the prettiest thing you ever seen?”

Artie glanced down at the small baby covered in pink. “Yes, Cecil, she is.”

Cecil beamed with pride, smiling from ear to ear. “I’m telling you, Artie, this one’s gonna be a real looker when she grows up.” Cecil took the photo back and carefully inserted it into his wallet. He winked at Artie. “Probably gonna have to beat ‘em off with a stick.”

“I think you may be right,” Artie said with a nervous laugh.

Cecil nodded toward the area where he saw Artie standing. “Did you find what you were looking for?” he asked.

“Oh, uh, yeah, uh, I just needed to see a document, that’s all.”

“So you don’t need to check anything out, then?”

Artie shook his head. They walked up the aisle and back through the caged door. Artie opened the door to the lobby. “It was nice to see you, Cecil.”

Cecil grinned and flopped back down in the chair behind his desk. “Come back and chat when you have a little more time.”