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Probation
(Another Rookie Story)
by F.A. Behrend

Rated - PG 13 - comments welcome to fabram@kc.rr.com

            It was still early as she approached the old station house.  The neighborhood was quiet and she was glad to see there were only a few cars parked on the street.  It looked like on one else had arrived for work yet and she was relieved.  She just wanted to go in, quietly, go to her desk and do her job.  The last few months had been a roller coaster of emotion for her, and now all she wanted was a sense of order in her world.   

            First there had been 9/11, and in the aftermath of that tragedy she felt that she needed to do something that would give purpose to her life.  Ultimately, she had left her position in New York and joined the FBI.  The training had been intense and her first few weeks on the job had been a continuous struggle to fit in and find her place.  Now, she felt that she had earned her stripes and she was ready to make a real contribution. 

            She parked and got out of the car.  The air was mild.  She took a deep breath and smiled, recalling her nervousness, and her embarrassment, the very first time she had laid eyes on this building.  She shook her head and fished the crutches out of the back seat.  Could it really be just a few short months ago, she thought with wonder.  And now she was sporting a thick bandage on her leg, the result of a stray ricochet from a gun battle in which she had actually saved someone’s life.  Please God nobody would make a fuss, she prayed as she limped awkwardly towards the door, .

            She got the door open and poked her head in.  Absolutely quiet.  Nobody around.  Good, she thought as she thumped across the big open room to her desk, now I can just get on with it.  She propped her crutches against the desk and was reaching for her coffee cup, the one with the fuzzy kittens on it, when something hit her from behind.  Oh no! she thought, not again!  Her hand closed over the cup and she was bringing it around to knock her assailant out when she was turned over, very gently, and found herself staring into a pair of laughing blue eyes.  “Jake!  You idiot!  You scared the crap out of me!” 

            “I just wanted to thank you for saving my life,” he said, and kissed her soundly on the lips.

            She blushed furiously and propped herself up on the desk.  The rest of the team came out of the store room, carrying a cake with a blazing sparkler on top and singing “for she’s a jolly good fellow.”

            “Oh my God!  Will you guys give it a rest!?”  She struggled to her feet while they all applauded.  “If you’ll remember, I actually missed the shot...”

            Frank came forward and deposited the cake on her desk and said,  “the important thing to remember is that you took the shot.  It was all the distraction Jake needed to run for cover.”  He blew out the sparkler and then bent over and helped her pick up the crutches.  Alex produced plates, Cody produced an enormous knife and the cake was cut and distributed.

            She sat on the edge of her desk and watched them.  They were laughing and joking, as if engaging in running gun battles was an everyday occurrence, and for this unit, and these people, it was.  Hardly a day went by went someone in this room didn’t put their life on the line.  Now I know what that feels like, she thought, now I feel like I belong here.

            As soon as the cake was finished, they scattered back to their desks and phones, all, that is, except Frank.

            She hopped down from the desk and limped to her chair while he picked up the plastic forks and paper napkins.  “How are you?” he asked.

            “Fine,” she answered as she straightened the mess on her desk.

            “No,” he said, “I mean, really, how are you?”

            “Really.  I’m fine.  I’ve been talking to the department shrink and she says I’m cleared for duty.”

            “Any nightmares?”

            “No.”

            He raised an eyebrow, “really?”

            “Well, there were at first.  It’s better now.”  She paused.  “I think I was really terrified at first, I mean, when I first got here.  I never for all the world expected they would post me to an undercover unit.  I thought the Bureau would stick me in with the forensic accountants and I would spend my time going after people who didn’t pay their taxes.  I couldn’t imagine what...getting shot at would really feel like.”  She smiled at him.  “Now I know I can survive it.”

            “Good, but you’ll be on a desk for a while until you’re completely healed,” and then it was his turn to pause.  “I have a favor I’d like to ask.”

            “Sure, anything.”

            He reached over to the desk next to hers and picked up a disorderly stack of folders.  He put it down in front of her and said, somewhat sheepishly, “I’m not a numbers guy and it’s getting time to do the annual budget...help...please.”

            She took the stack with a laugh and opened the top folder, “right up my alley, this is...this is a mess!  Frank Donovan, I’m ashamed of you!  This looks like the dog’s dinner!”  She shook her head, “OK, what am I looking at and when do you need it done?”

            “Those are receipts for our expenses so far this year, and I’d like it by Friday, if that’s possible?”

            “It’s more than possible,” she said as she flipped through the folders, and sneezed at the dust they were generating, “I’ll get right on it.”

            “Thanks,” he said, “now you’re saving my life.”  He turned to go back to his office, stopped and turned around.  “Cary?”

            “Yes?”  she looked up at him.

            “It’s good to have you back   That was a good job.”

            “Thanks,” she said with a smile, and she opened the first folder and got to work.

            It took nearly all day to sort the scrap heap of paperwork into some kind of order.  Not a numbers guy, my foot, she thought, it looks like he just threw receipts and expense reports into folders.  First she sorted the receipts by vendor, putting the expense reports in a separate pile.  Then she sorted the stacks by date and went to her computer.  She set up a spreadsheet and began to rapidly input the raw data.  She checked each piece of paper as it was entered and classified it by account, adding the account number to the spreadsheet as she went.  Jake brought her a sandwich from the deli for lunch, but she kept at the task for the rest of the day, satisfied to be doing something mundane and familiar.

            Late in the afternoon she had the information ready to begin the analysis when Monica stopped by her desk.  Monica was the profiler assigned to their unit, and although Cary had not had much contact with her, she had a great deal of respect for her skills and dedication.

            “How’s it going?” she asked with a smile

            “Great,” Cary answered,  “desk duty until I’m declared fit again.  Frank’s got me working on budget analysis.”  She gestured at the stacks of paper around her.

            “Really?  He usually lets me take care of that for him.  He’s not a numbers guy.”

            Cary laughed, “you got that right!  I’ve never seen such a mess!   It’s taken me all day just to sort it out.”

            “Well, since I’m more familiar with how this usually goes, why don’t you let me take it from here?”  Monica reached for the first stack of files.

            “That’s fine with me.  Let me show you what I’ve done so far.”  She reviewed her work with Monica and then told her, “I’ve got it all on a spreadsheet,  let me copy it to a disk so you don’t have to go through all this again, then it’s all yours.”  She made the computer disk and was in the process of helping Monica stack and move the files when Frank stuck his head out of his office.

            “Monica?”

            “Yes?”  she looked up at the second level where Frank was leaning over the railing.

            “I need that information of the serial rapist first thing in the morning.”  He saw what the two women were doing and said, “let Cary take care of the budget.  You’ve got more important things to do.”  He turned on his heal and went back to his desk.

            Cary put the files down.  “Looks like I’m still stuck with this,” she said with a shrug.

            “I guess so,” said Monica, glancing around at the stacks of paperwork and fingering the folders.  She picked up the computer disk, “but I’ll take a look at this anyway.  It won’t take but a few minutes.  You don’t need to bother with it anymore.”

            “But Frank said...”

            “Don’t worry about Frank.  And don’t worry about this anymore.  It’s as good as done.  I’ve been through this so many times I could do it in my sleep.  And Frank doesn’t need to know.”  She gave Cary a conspiratorial wink and then went up the stairs to her own office.

            When she came in the next morning, she saw that her desk had been cleaned up.  All the files that she had left there the previous evening had been taken away and were nowhere to be seen.  She got her coffee and was just coming out of the kitchen when Frank arrived.  “Good morning,” she said, “could I talk to you for a minute?”

            “Sure, what is it?”  He filled his cup from the pot of fresh brew.

            “I don’t want to get in the middle of someone else’s ‘territory’, but Monica seemed a little upset yesterday when she found out I was working on the budget.”

            He held up his hand, “allocation of resources,” he said, “pure and simple.  You’ve got an accounting background, so you can handle the budget.  I need Monica working up profiles on a number of major cases.  That’s her field and that’s what I want her doing.  She’s helped with the budget in the past simply because there wasn’t anyone else to do it.”  He paused and then said, with some degree of resignation, “I can talk to her if you’d like.”

            “No.  I’ll handle it.  You’ve got more important things to do than to referee a territorial pissing match between two of your people.  I’ll get the files back and take care of it.”

            “Get the files back?”

            “Yes.  I left everything on my desk last night and now the files are gone.  I just assumed she took them to her office.”

            Frank fished out his keys and handed them to her.  “This one is Monica’s.  Go get what you need.  If she gives you any problem about it...”

            Cary took the key and said, very firmly,  “I’ll handle it.”

            Frank smiled and sipped his coffee, “good.  That’s just what I wanted to hear.”  He paused, “anything else?” he asked.

            “No,” she said and limped back towards her desk.

            “How’s the leg?”

            “Fine.  One more session at rehab, and one more with the shrink.  I should be back to full duty status in about a week.”

            “Good,” he said with a smile, “we need you.”

            She retrieved the files, stuffed the box under her desk next to her feet, and then turned on the computer.  When she tried to pull up the spreadsheet she had created she was not able to find it.  Odd, she thought, I know I saved it, now where did I save it?  She looked through the computer’s directories for a few minutes, and just as she was about to get the back-up disk out of her drawer, Monica came in.  She dashed straight up the stairs to her office without a word, and then came straight back out again when she discovered that the box of files was gone.  “Cary?” she called from over the railing, “have you seen those files I got from you yesterday?”

            “Yes,” she answered, “I wanted to talk to you about that...”

            Monica was angry.  Her dark eyes snapped and she had a determined set to her chin.  She stalked down the stairs and faced Cary across the desk, “you get those files and take them straight back to my office.  You do not have the experience to be dealing with them.  I don’t want you interfering with this again.  Is that clear?”

            “It’s perfectly clear,” Cary replied reasonably, “but Frank told me this morning that he wants me to take care of it...”

            “I don’t care what Frank said, I want those files back!”

            Cary felt the box under the desk with the toe of her shoe.  “I’m sorry, Monica.  Frank told me he wants me to do this and until he tells me otherwise, I will do it.  But I understand that you’ve been through these records before and so if I have any questions, I’ll be sure to come to you first.  Would that be OK with you?”

            Cary’s tone and her manner were so reasonable that Monica had no choice but to agree.  “Very well,” she said, “but you come to me with your reports.  I’ll probably spend more time straightening them out than I would have if I had simply done them myself in the first place.”  With that she turned and went back up the stairs to her office.

            Cary sat at her desk, both hands in front of her, flat on the blotter.  As soon as Monica’s door closed she let out a giant breath.  What the hell was that all about, she wondered, there has to be something more going on here than simply scrapping over territory.  She thought for a minute and got up to get a cup of coffee.  Monica had obviously moved the files from her desk last night after she left, and maybe she had removed the spreadsheet from the computer as well. 

            She went back to her desk and began to look.  After several minutes of searching through directories and drives, she got up and went to Cody’s desk.  “Could I bother you for a minute?” she asked.

            “Sure, what was that all about anyway?” he asked, nodding in the direction of Monica’s door.

            “I have no idea.  Somehow I have managed to step on some toes.  Now I just have to figure out what I did and apologize for it.”  She laughed, trying to make light of it.  “I was wondering if you could help me with my computer.  I lost a file and I don’t want to spend another whole day re-creating it.”

            Cody got up and lead the way to her desk.  He sat down and flexed his fingers over the keyboard, “in the computer world, my dear,” he said, “nothing is ever lost.  What was the file name?”  She gave it to him.  “And where do you think you put it?”  She told him.  His fingers flew over the keys and after a few minutes he said, “there it is,” and pointed to the screen.  “That’s funny,” he frowned, “somebody tried to delete it.” 

            She shook her head when he looked at her, “not me.  Is there any way you can track when that happened and who did it?”

            “Sure,”  he said, but he looked a little uncomfortable.  After a few more minutes of tapping keys he said, “found it.  About 6:30 last night.  Did you leave your computer on when you left the building?”

            “No.  I shut everything down and went home about 6 PM.”  But Monica was still here, she thought.

            He looked again and said, “it was Monica’s log-in code that was used when the deletion happened.  Does that help?”

            “Of course!  That’s it!  We were both working on that file yesterday.  It was late last night and I bet she just wanted to get out of here and go home.  She just pushed the wrong button.  Thanks Cody, I owe you one.”  She shooed him away from her desk.  When she sat down her hands were shaking slightly.  Why on earth would Monica want to delete the information she had compiled, she thought, why indeed?  Then she set to work, calling up the spreadsheet and sorting the information it contained.

            When Frank arrived she waved at him but continued to bend over her keyboard.  “Hey,” she said, “have you got budget figures from last year?  And maybe the year before?  I’d like to compare them with what we’ve got so far for this year.”

            “Sure,” he said, “I’ll pull up the reports and e-mail them to you.”

            “Thanks,” she said, and continued her work.  Within just a few minutes the e-mail arrived.  She opened it, scanned through the account records it contained, and then sat back.  She was filled with a growing sense of concern and she had no idea what to do about it.

            I must have put the wrong account number on something, she thought, that’s it.  She went back through the box full of records that were sitting under her feet.  She double checked each entry, but she could find no errors.  She looked up at the clock.  It was almost noon.  She decided to go out, get something to eat and then take a fresh look at the problem after lunch. 

            After lunch, even with a hot roast beef sandwich resting comfortably in her stomach and a leisurely walk from the deli to clear her head, the problem was still there.  The account which listed travel expenditures was way out of balance.  Those expenses were over four times greater that the expenses for the same period from the year before, and the vast majority of them had Monica’s name on the reports.  She looked at the details of those expense reports and then picked up the phone and made a call.

            She sat on the information for the rest of the week.  She checked figures and she verified the information on the reports that had generated those figures.  She stalled both Monica and Frank when they had asked for her results.  Now it was late on Sunday and she sat in her car in the parking lot outside Frank’s building.  His car was in it’s slot and the lights were on in his apartment.  A thick folder sat next to her on the car seat and she drummed her fingers on the steering wheel, uncertain what to do.  Now I know what Caesar felt like standing ankle deep in the Rubicon, she thought.  I can simply file the report and let it go, or I can go ring his doorbell and...change everything.  She took a deep breath, swallowed hard and pick up her cell phone.

            “Hello?”  His voice was deep and calm.

            “Hi,” she said, “I’m really sorry to bother you at home...do you have a minute?”

            “Sure,” he said, laughing, “I was just sitting here reading.  What do you need?”

            “I’ve got something I need to talk to you about, and I didn’t want to do it at the office.”

            “Well, OK, we could meet somewhere...”

            “Actually I’m out in your parking lot right now.  Is it OK if I come up?” 

            She saw one of the curtains in his apartment window twitch aside and he said, “of course.”

            She rang the bell and when he looked through the peephole he saw her standing in the hall, clutching a folder to her chest.  She was pacing in front of his door, back and forth, nervous as a cat.  What goes on here, he thought.

            She jumped slightly when the door came open.  “Oh,” she said, “I’m really sorry about this.  I hate bothering you at home.  I know time ‘off’ is important...”

            “Quit rambling and come on in,” he said, standing back to let her pass.

            He had some soft jazz on the radio, there was an open book laying on the couch and the table held a nearly empty glass with melting ice cubes.  “Can I get you a drink?” he asked.

            “No, thanks.”  She stood next to the couch, then she sat, then she stood again.

            He sat down, closed up the book and gestured to the other end of the couch, “sit down.  Tell me what’s on your mind.”

            She sat, still holding on to the folder she had carried in.  “Last week you asked me to compile a report on the budget.  I finished it...and I found something...odd.”

            “What is it?”

            She put the folder down on the table and took out a sheet of paper.  There were bar graphs on the page.  He leaned closer to look at it.  “What is this?” he asked.

            “I know you said you’re not a numbers guy, so I did up graphs, sometimes it’s easier to see that way.  This is a graph of one single account, travel expenditures.”  She pointed to the lines on the page.  “This one is for year before last, this is last year’s figure, and this last line is for this year, so far.”

            He raised an eyebrow, “this indicates that travel expenses are up...what...four times...over last year?”

            She nodded, “and the year’s not over.”

            “I don’t see your problem.  Of course this team travels.  We go where the job takes us, and airline tickets cost more...”

            “There’s more,” she said, stopping him.  “All, and I mean all, of the increase in expenses traces back to one person.”

            “Who?”  He looked puzzled.

            “Monica,” she said quietly.

            He shook his head, “I still don’t see the problem.  She’s been going to a lot of seminars this year.  I know, I’ve signed off on the paperwork.  Profiling is a very inexact craft, and anything she can learn can only help us.”

            “That’s what I thought too, at first.”

            “At first?”  He watched her closely.  There were dark circles under her eyes and definite signs of strain around her mouth.  She held her hands clasped tightly together in her lap.  “let me get you a drink,” he said, “you look like you could use it.”

            He brought her the glass and she took it and sipped.  The strong liquor warmed a track down her throat and she felt herself relax just a little.

            She continued.  “I noticed something about her expense reports, so I made a few calls.”

            “To whom?”

            “To the hotels where the seminars were held.”

            “And?”

            She took another sip and said, “there were no seminars.”

            He was quiet for a long minute.  A change had come over his face.  He had been smiling when he opened the door, and now the smile had disappeared.  The soft light in the room etched his face in hard planes of dark and light.  “Tell me.  Everything.”

            She nodded and began.  “On the travel reports I saw, I noticed that there were several seminars listed in Atlantic City, St. Louis and Las Vegas.  I called the hotels in those cities.  There were no seminars in those hotels on those dates.  So I checked with the Visitor’s Bureaus in each of those places.  I thought maybe the seminar was held in a different location, other than the hotel.”

            “And?”  His voice was hard.

            She shook her head, “no seminars.  So Monica must have had a different reason for traveling to those places.”

            “What kind of reason?”

            “All those cities have legal gambling.”

            “Oh come off it,” he said, suddenly standing.  Now he was angry.  “You’re implying she falsified reports...”

            “But she did falsify her reports.  She was not attending seminars in those cities on those dates.”

            “Nonsense!”  he exploded.  “I talked to her when she came back!  She gave me summaries of what the seminars covered!”

            She picked up the folder from the table and took out another page.  “This is a summary of the seminars that she has attended over the past five years.  These are the subjects that were covered and the presenters who gave the talks.  The last two listed, Dr. Evans and Dr. Talbot, died two years ago.  Monica’s reports indicate that she attended seminars with both of them, one in January and one in March of this year.  She’s been duplicating her notes and resubmitting them.”

            He took the page from her hand and sat down abruptly.  She handed him her drink, he took a long pull at it and handed it back.  She drained it and sat back on the couch with her eyes closed.

            He shook his head and said, “all this tells me is that she’s been submitting false reports...”

            “There’s more,” she said, without opening her eyes.  She couldn’t look at him, couldn’t face him.

            “What.”  His voice was flat, without emotion.

            “I pulled her bank records.”

            “You what?!”

            “I pulled her bank records, “ she repeated quietly.

            “And how in the name of God did you manage that without a warrant?!”  He was shouting and he had risen to stand over her.

            She shrugged, “I had a badge and I did a little bullying.”

            He flung the folder full of papers across the room, “I cannot even begin to count the number of rules you’ve broken, the number of procedures you’ve violated by doing that, much less the personal insult to Monica for so grossly invading her privacy and putting her professional reputation at risk!  What on earth were you thinking, or were you even thinking at all!?”

            She let him rage, let the storm of his anger sweep over her.  At last she said, “I was hoping...I wanted...to find something, anything, that would explain all this.  I wanted to just toss it all out.  I wanted to find out I was wrong.”

            “And?”  He stood over her with his hands on his hips, breathing hard.

            “And I don’t think I’m wrong.  Her bank records indicate that she’s swimming in debt.  I think she has a gambling problem.”

            “Fine,” he said. “Wonderful.  Terrific.”  He moved around the room, picking up the paperwork and tossing it back on the table.  She remained absolutely still and when he sat back down, his hands full of papers, she stood up.  He didn’t look at her, he just kept staring at the folder and shaking his head.  There was a soft thud on the table in front of him and when he looked, he saw a small leather case.  He picked it up and opened it.  It was her badge.  He handed it back to her.  “I don’t want your damned badge.”  His voice was calm, his anger spent.

            “You will.”  Her voice shook slightly.

            He didn’t look up.  He just sat, his eyes squeezed shut and he pinched the bridge of his nose.  “Why?”  There was a new edge to his voice.

            “I tapped her phones and bugged her apartment.”

            He still had the badge in his hand.  He rose and tossed it across the room and it hit the wall with a resounding thump.  “You WHAT!?”

            “I tapped her phones.”

            He stepped close to her and towered over her, his fists balled in rage, “is there no end to your idiocy?”  He spoke quietly, between clenched teeth.

            She stood her ground and faced him.  “When I looked over her bank statements I saw some strange looking deposits.”

            “Deposits?  So?  Maybe she won for a change.”

            She shook her head.  “I don’t think so.  All the deposits were for amounts just under $10,000, just under the radar.  And they all occurred within 24 hours of a failed operation in this unit.”

            “No,” he said, shaking his head,  “pure coincidence.”

            “That’s why I tapped her phones.  I wanted to make sure.  I wanted to find out if someone was coercing her into giving up information about our operations.”

            “And?”  He held his breath, not really wanting to know the answer.

            “And this.”  She took a small micro cassette tape out of her pocket and handed it to him.

            He didn’t take it, he just said, “tell me.”

            “This came from her home phone.  There’s a voice on this tape thanking her for ‘past services.’  I know,” she held up her hand, “ that could be anything from professional counciling to some donation to charity.  But the voice goes on to tell her that there will be another deposit ready for her to pick up...if she can get security access codes for someplace called the Camden Depot.  The voice also asks about her mother’s health.”

            He sat down.  His face had suddenly gone pale.  “Camden Depot?”

            “Yes.  I don’t know what that is.”

            “Camden Depot is a munitions store for the Navy and the Marines.  They’ve got everything from small arms ammunition to RPG’s to shoulder mounted lazer guided missiles.”

            “Jesus Christ.  And someone is blackmailing Monica with her gambling markers and her mother’s life to get them inside.”

            He nodded and they were both quiet for several long minutes.  At last he said, “That explains why she was so upset when I asked you to do the budget.  If she had done it as usual, she could have simply buried all this.  I would never have known the difference.”

            “It also explains why she deleted files from my computer and why she wanted to keep control of all the hard copy records.  Anything she couldn’t change she could simply lose.  What happens now?”

            “First,” he turned to her, “you are on probation.  From this minute you do not even breathe without clearing it with me first.  Is that understood?”

            “Yes, sir.”

            “And second, we shut her down.”  He sat with his head in his hands.

            Cary sat down on the couch.  “How do we do that?”  He didn’t answer, so she asked, quietly, “how long have you known Monica?”

            “She was with the unit before I came into it.  She was a terrific help to me, getting to know the other team members, turning the unit into a cohesive force.  We all had a hard time trusting each other at first, and we lost some people.  Monica helped us all get past that.  I just can’t believe...”

            “She’s being blackmailed.  Remember that.  Her mother is in a nursing home and they, whoever ‘they’ are, threatened her.  If she had a gambling problem that’s one thing, but the leeches who are using that against her, that’s who we should be after.  So...how do we do that?”

            He got up and began to pace the room.  He picked her badge up from where it lay and tossed it back to her.  She looked at him and asked, “would you rather that I’d taken that account discrepancy directly to Internal Affairs?”  He didn’t answer.  “I couldn’t even bring it to you until I knew for sure how far up it went and how bad it was.”

            “What do you mean you couldn’t bring it to me?”  He was angry again.

            “You signed off on all her expense reports.  How was I supposed to know you weren’t in on it too?”

            “Thanks for the vote of confidence,” he snapped.  He paused and shook his head, “no.  In your place I probably would have done exactly the same thing.  I’m not angry with you...I’m just...angry.”

            “Well,” she said, “what happens next?”

            “We’ll have to put together an operation to find out who’s behind this.  I’ll start to make some calls.”

            They came to Frank’s apartment late on a Sunday afternoon, Alex, Jake and Cody, and now they stood around the living room, not meeting each other’s eyes.  Cary went into the kitchen to make coffee.  Her hand shook as she filled the pot.  Damn, she thought, it had taken so long for her to earn their trust, and now that trust was shattered and she had no one to blame but herself.  It didn’t matter that they all said they understood, that they would all have done the same thing.  She had done the unthinkable, the unforgivable.  She had investigated a fellow agent.  She had invaded the zone of privacy that they all so desperately needed,  and the respect that she had worked so hard to build was gone.  It was going to be a long night.

            She distributed the coffee mugs when she went back to the living room.  “I have an idea,” she said quietly.  They all looked at her without comment. “What about going to Monica directly?  Asking her straight out what’s going on?”

            “Can we take that risk?” Jake asked.

            “I don’t see why not,” Cary said, “she already knows I’ve got the files.  She’ll expect that I’ll find something.” 

            “But if she’s been tipping off someone about our operations we need to know who,” Frank interjected, “all we’ve got right now, all we’ve legally got, is some falsified travel records and a few coincidences.  Monica’s smart enough to know that if she stonewalls, we don’t have a thing we can prove.”

            “But she’s also smart enough to know that Internal Affairs won’t take these coincidences lightly.  What we have is enough to open an investigation.  That’s the last thing she’ll want.  If I take the right approach I might be able to get her to admit to the gambling problem.  After that it’s just a short step to get her to admit to being blackmailed, and then we can help her.  Then we can find out who’s behind this.”

            Frank nodded, “it makes sense,” he said.  Everyone was silent.  The atmosphere in the room was heavy, almost grim.  Someone they had trusted had broken that trust, put their lives at risk.  Cary could feel each of them drawing inward, remembering their conversations with Monica, looking back over their work with her, trying to recall a glance, a word, anything that might have tipped them off to her betrayal, and wondering how they had missed it.  Even when this was done, even with the best possible outcome, this unit was broken, their confidence in themselves and in each other gone, evaporated like mist in sunlight.  It would take a long time, a very long time indeed, to make them whole once more.

            “Monica?  This is Cary.  I’m sorry to call you at this time of night...”  When the conversation was over she hung up and turned to Frank.  “I’m meeting her at her apartment in half an hour.” 

            “I’m not sure I like giving her this kind of advance warning,” he said.

            “She doesn’t know I’ve told anyone.  Better to let her think I’m doing just what I told her I would do.  Better to let her think I’m just dropping off some harmless reports for her to review before I give them to you.”

            He nodded.  “We’ll be stationed outside her building.  You’ll be wearing a wire.”  They had discussed this, of course.  Cary was against it, but Frank wouldn’t let her go in without it.  He handed her the tiny devise.  It felt remarkably heavy in her hand.

            She stared at it and said, “is this really necessary?”

            “Yes.  If she refuses to cooperate it would be just your word against hers.  She could accuse you of falsifying the records.  This way you’re protected, and if anything goes wrong, we’ll be there to back you up.”

            “Do you really think there’s any way she could be violent?”

            “I don’t know what to believe,” he said, his voice soft, his face bleak.

            She looked at each of them, Jake, Alex and Cody.  They were all standing.  Jake, with his hands rammed into the back pockets of his jeans, was staring hard at the floor.  Alex had her arms wrapped tight around her body.  Her eyes were closed and her head was tipped back, her face pale and drawn.  Cody stood with his arms braced against the back of a chair, his knuckles white where he gripped the wooden frame, his jaw clenching and unclenching.  They would not look at her.  She had brought to light an ugly truth that none of them wanted to face.  And, of course, she was to blame.  If she hadn’t stumbled into this, they would all have continued in their ignorance, continued in their blissful unawareness of the danger they were in.  She watched them all as they tried, as best they could, to process what was happening, what was about to happen, and suddenly she was angry.

            She gripped the little recorder and stuffed it into her pocket.  “Look guys,” she said, “Monica made choices.  There were times, surely there must have been times when she could have made different choices, gone to Frank, or to one of you, and told you what was happening to her.  She didn’t.  She put her own needs, however misguided, however sick, above everything else.  She put you in danger, and if we’re right about this Camden Depot raid, then she’s about to put a lot of other people in the line of fire as well.  She’s made the choices, and in doing that, she has taken all the choices away from you, from us.  We have to do this.  Painful as it is, ugly as it is, this has to be done.  If there’s a God in heaven, we’ll get her out of whatever she’s into in one piece.”

            Frank reached out and put his hand on her shoulder.  “Nobody’s blaming you for this, Cary.  You just happened to be the unlucky one who kicked over the anthill.”

            Jake broke in, “Frank’s right, Cary.  We’ve all known Monica a long time.  We’re just having a hard time wrapping our arms around this.”

            Alex shook her head, “what I can’t understand is...why her?  Of all the people who should have known better, Monica was the one who was best equipped to see something like this coming.  She’s a psychologist for God’s sake!”

            “And so we’re afraid,” said Frank quietly.  “If someone like Monica can stumble so badly, what about the rest of us?  How close are any of us to going over the edge and selling out?”

            Cary looked from one to the other, watching their faces.  “Not very close,” she said, “not very close at all.”  And she prayed she was right, because she was putting her life in their hands.

            She sat in her car in the parking lot outside Monica’s building.  She checked the wire.  “Flash lights twice if you can hear me.”  The headlights of the van parked across the street flashed twice and then went black.  “OK guys, here I go.”   They would be able to hear her, but she couldn’t hear them.  Frank thought that an earpiece would be spotted too easily.  She picked up the folder from the seat beside her, got out of her car and went into the building.

            She had decided to revert to her “rookie” behavior pattern.  Act nervous, pace, try to make Monica believe that she simply didn’t understand the figures she had seen in the reports.  Allow Monica to feel secure and superior and then slowly, very slowly, approach the subject of blackmail.  That was the plan.

            The door opened and Monica stood there, her expression one of bored indifference.  She reached for the folder Cary was holding, “just let me go over these before Frank sees them,” she said. 

            Cary brushed past her and went into the apartment.  “I’d really like to go over these with you,” she bubbled.  “You were right!  This was a lot more confusing than I thought it would be! I mean, I’ve done books for a long time, but I’ve never worked on a set of government reports, and I really appreciate your help.  I know it’s late, but I’ve got to turn these in pretty soon.  Frank’s been riding my butt about getting this done.”  She sat down on the couch in the living room and opened the folder.

            Monica followed her reluctantly into the room and sat across from her, fingers drumming on the arms of her chair, legs crossed and one foot jumping nervously.  “You know, I wasn’t expecting to make this a social call...”

            “Oh I know,” Cary interrupted, “but I just have a couple of questions.  I’m sure this is all really routine...”

            “Questions about what?”

            “Well,” Cary said uncertainly, chewing on her lip, “about the travel expenses.”

            “What about them?”  Monica’s tone was cold, distracted and bored, but when Cary looked up at her she saw intense interest in her eyes.

            Cary took the bar graph she had shown to Frank out of the folder.  “See,” she said, trying to sound as uncertain as possible, “those expenses are way up.”

            Monica took the sheet of paper, gave it a glance and tossed it back across the table to Cary.  “Nice graph,” was all she said.

            Cary decided to change her tone.  She had not expected to see this kind of hostility in Monica, so she decided to take a more direct approach.  “Can you explain it?”

            “I don’t have to.”

            “Most of those expenses are yours.”

            “And Frank signed off on every one of the trips I took.”

            “And when he signed off on them did he know they weren’t legitimate?”  She kept her voice quiet and steady, in spite of the fact that her heart was pounding.  Come on, Monica, she thought, talk to me, we can get you out of this.  She knew that everyone in the van downstairs was thinking exactly the same thing.

            “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  Monica’s foot had stopped jumping and she was gripping the arms of her chair,  her face had taken on an ashen pallor beneath her creamy brown skin.

            “I think you do.  Do you want to tell me about the gambling?”

            “What gambling?”

            “Knock it off, Monica.  Every city you hit this year has legalized gambling, and not one of the seminars you said you attended actually took place.  Talk to me.”

            The veneer of control that Monica had held so tightly around herself began to crack.  “You have no idea what you’re talking about,”  her voice was a harsh whisper, her eyes large and frightened.

            “Is it your mother?  You don’t want her to know about this?”  She gestured at the papers in front of her.  “She doesn’t have to.  We can fix this.  We can get help for this.  You just have to tell me everything.”

            She shook her head, “it’s too late,” she said.  “I’ve done things...I’m in too deep...”

            “Tell me how it started.”  If I can keep her talking, Cary thought, maybe I can get her to see past this despair she’s feeling.

            Monica shrugged.  “It was just fun at first.  I went with some friends to Atlantic City.  I played a little blackjack, some roulette.  I lost a little, but it was fun.  I went back a couple of times, just on weekends, and I lost more.  I kept trying to make it up, and pretty soon I was in so deep...”   She choked back a sob.  “My mother would be so ashamed,” she cried.  “She worked so hard to help me get through school, and now...”  She put her face in her hands, tears spilling down her cheeks.”

            Cary got up and went to the kitchen and found a glass.  She poured water at the sink and then spoke softly into the listening devise.  “I’m getting close guys.  I think she’ll tell me everything.”  She went back to the living room and gave the glass to Monica.  She knelt beside the chair, “you said you did ‘things.’  Tell me, what you did.”

            Monica shook her head, holding the glass with trembling hands, “I can’t...”

            “You have to,” Cary said softly, “I have to know everything if we’re going to have any chance of fixing this.”  She waited.  For a long minute Monica just sat there, staring at the glass in her hands. 

            At last she heaved a long shuddering sigh.  “I betrayed you,” she said flatly, her voice without emotion, “I betrayed you all.”

            “How.”
            “A man, I’d never met him before, bought up my markers.  Told me I had to give him information...if I wanted my mother to live.”  Her face crumpled, her shoulders sagged and the glass slipped through her fingers to shatter on the floor.

            Cary wrapped her arms around the trembling woman, rocking her like a child.  “Do you know his name?”

            Monica nodded, “Hauptmann,” she said, choking back more tears, “Oscar Hauptman.”

            Out in the van, Frank listened and heard the name.  “Oh Christ,” he said softly.  “One of the biggest black market arms dealers on the planet.”

            In the apartment, Cary continued to hold Monica, soothing her, “we’ll take care of your mother,” she said, “nothing will happen to her.  She’ll be perfectly safe.”  She still needed to know about Camden Depot.  If there was to be a raid on it, she needed to find out if Monica knew when it would happen.  “What kind of information did Hauptmann want?  What was he after?”

            The shuddering had subsided, and Monica simply sat with her face in her hands.  “He wanted my access code.  He needed to generate transfer documents, documents that would allow him to move materials from some kind of depot.  I never asked what he was after.  I didn’t want to know.”

            “Do you know when this ‘transfer,’ whatever it was,  was to take place?”

            “Sunday,” she said, “on Monday he said he would transfer some funds into my account and all my markers would be satisfied.”  Suddenly she looked up, stricken, her eyes wide with alarm.  “Oh my God!  That’s today!  Tonight!”

            In the van, Frank made a quick call.  He had alerted the Depot to a possible raid, and now he confirmed it with the Commandant.  Many miles away, a company of Marines quietly took up their positions and waited.

            Now it was time, Cary thought, time to tell her that they had known about the gambling and the blackmail.  “Monica, everything will be all right.  Frank knows, and he’s going to make sure they’re caught.”

            “No!  My mother!  They’ll kill my mother!  You don’t know these people!  Lives mean nothing to them!”  She jumped up and made for the door.  “I’ve got to get to my mother!”

            “We’ve already moved her,” Cary said, and Monica stopped, stock still.

            “Moved her?”  Her face was blank, as though she hadn’t quite understood what Cary was saying.

            “Yes.  She’s safe.  No one can get to her.”

            “Where is she?  Can I see her?”

            “We took her out of the nursing home.  She’s in a hospital, under guard.  She’s perfectly fine.  We can go.  Right now.  We’ll go see your mother right now, then in the morning we’ll take a look at everything and see what we can do.”

            Monica nodded, and out in the van Frank took off his headphones and breathed a sigh of relief.  Cody looked at him and said, “Cary did a hell of a job, talking to her like that. I don’t think anybody could have handled it better.”

            Frank nodded and stepped out of the van into the cool night air.  They were just exiting the building, the two women together.  Cary had thrown her jacket around Monica’s shoulders and was leading her towards the van.  No one saw the dark figure that stepped out of the bushes next to the door.  There was a crunch of footsteps on gravel and both Cary and Monica turned around.  The figure was clad in black, a ski mask covering his face, and a deadly automatic leveled at Cary’s head.  Everything went into slow motion.  Monica was the first to react.  She screamed, “no!” and the sound echoed and re-echoed off the building’s walls.  She pushed Cary aside.  The bullet struck Monica  and spun her around and her blood spilled out, showering Cary like warm red rain.  Frank came at a dead run, firing as he moved and the killer went down, more blood showering down and covering the two women where they lay. 

            Cary heard her own voice, a scream tearing from her throat, “NO!”

Twenty Four Hours Later

            “The doctor thinks she’ll live.”  It was Frank’s voice, penetrating through the fog of her own shock.  They sat together in a gray little waiting room.  Old magazines and half filled cups of cold coffee littered the one small table in the room.

            “That’s good,” Cary said.

            “You did a good job.”

            She didn’t answer, just kept looking out the hospital window.  The parking lot below was nearly deserted, with just a few random pieces of trash blowing in a strong cold wind.  “I never thought it would be like this.  What will happen to her?”

            “An investigation, certainly.  We’ll need to see how much damage she did, how much information she leaked, which operations or agents she might have compromised.  After that, it’s anybody’s guess.  She’s probably out of the Bureau, out of police work entirely.”

            “Jail time?”

            “Probably not, especially if she cooperates.”

            “What about the Depot?”

            “We got everybody, the whole crew.”

            “That’s good.”  She leaned her head against the glass and let the tears come at last.

            He put a hand on her back and rubbed her neck, standing next to her, staring out the same window.  “You were right,” he said, “she made her own choices.  As for the rest...”

            “Yeh,” she said, straightening up and wiping her face, “shit happens.”

The End