Ren read through them. Impressive. Jean had clearly developed a way of interviewing children that elicited a lot more information than a traumatized child would normally volunteer.
‘I guess it is just one of many files Jean was working on,’ said Gressett.
Subtle.
‘Besides,’ he said, ‘it wasn’t exactly occupying her time any time recently. The latest incident was in October last year – that much I do know, because it was at Hallowe’en.’
Ren nodded. ‘Had Jean any leads?’
‘Just lists of known sex offenders and no evidence to link them to anything.’ He shrugged.
‘They are real clever in the children they choose and how they cover their tracks …’
Gressett nodded and went back to his computer.
No editorializing with Tiny Gressett.
Ren pulled another slim pile of print-outs from the back of Jean’s desk.
What the hell?
At the same time, she tipped over the mug of coffee Gressett had left on her desk.
‘Shit.’ She shouted louder than she wanted to. She jumped to her feet, scooping up a phone charger before it got wet. She found some napkins in Jean’s drawer and slapped them down on the desk. ‘Oops,’ she said, looking over at Gressett’s impassive face. She wrapped the phone charger in a napkin and put it in a dry corner. ‘Did Jean use a Motorola?’
‘Yes,’ said Gressett.
Ren sat quietly staring down at the print-outs, dabbing at pools of coffee where she noticed them. She had been too late to stop the coffee soaking into the edges of most of the files.
‘Gressett, sorry to bother you again, but do you know what Jean was doing with these print-outs on Domenica Val Pando?’
He paused. ‘I have no idea.’
I’m fucking here to go through Jean’s things to help the investigation, you dickhead.
‘I mean,’ said Ren, ‘I don’t even know why –’
‘That is some woman, Domenica Val Pando,’ said Gressett, sitting up. ‘Seven shades of crazy.’ He reached out his hand. ‘Give me a look at those.’
Why don’t you come get them yourself? Ren got up and handed them over to him.
‘Domenica Bin Killin,’ he said.
Not funny.
‘Now, this is where there is no justice in the world,’ said Gressett. ‘You have Domenica Val Pando, an amoral, psychopathic – female! – spends years holed up in New Mexico, killing and maiming and drug-running and all the rest of it, sending other people to kill and maim and … avoids arrest. And now, she’s probably lying on some beach somewhere in Aruba. And then you have Jean Transom, a wonderful person, a helpful person, an excellent agent … and she’s the one who …’ He hit the back of his hand off the pages. ‘It was a damn shame she didn’t get finished off back then.’
For a moment, Ren thought he was talking about Jean. ‘Oh. Val Pando …’
‘For one of the most successful undercover jobs the FBI ever worked on …’ said Gressett. He shook his head. ‘Todd Austerval started Gary Dettling’s Undercover Program, but he didn’t make the grade. He said that on day one Dettling scared the living daylights out of the trainees with the Val Pando case. He held it up as the gold standard of undercover work: one agent, under deep cover with Val Pando for a whole year, absolutely undetected. And still, still, after all that, it was screwed up at the end. So that was the big lesson from Gary Dettling at the start of the course – this is what you should aspire to. And here’s how it can go wrong. Do you know how it went wrong in the end?’
A man would never ask another man a question like that. The I-know-something-you-don’t-know tone.
‘It would be very interesting to hear your take on that,’ said Ren.
‘Agent safety,’ said Gressett. ‘That was it. Pull one agent out instead of bringing a whole organized crime operation down. And that is Bureau policy. That’s what has to be done.’
‘Yup,’ said Ren. ‘It sucks that the Bureau can’t recruit suicide agents.’
‘I don’t mean that,’ said Gressett. ‘It’s just … it all seemed like a waste.’
Don’t even think of criticizing Gary Dettling to me. ‘Agent safety is what it is,’ said Ren. ‘The same reason SAR doesn’t always go back up mountains to recover bodies. You just can’t risk lives like that.’
‘To a point, to a point,’ said Gressett.
‘To what point?’ said Ren. As you sit here in your comfortable out-of-the-firing-line office.
Gressett was obviously not used to having his opinions questioned. Todd was either too dumb or too used to tuning him out.
‘Well, to the point that you achieve your goal,’ said Gressett.
‘Tell that to a dead agent’s wife and family,’ said Ren. ‘Todd is a lucky man he didn’t make the grade.’
Gressett opened his mouth and closed it again. Todd stood in the doorway, sweating, straight from the gym.
Shit.
He pulled headphones out of his ears.
‘Hey,’ he said. ‘Hey, Ren. I’m just …’ he gestured out the door. ‘Let me go take a shower.’
Gressett was smiling a smile that told Ren she was on her own and that he was glad there was a little black mark against her funny little name.
None of the drawers threw up anything interesting. None of the undersides had anything taped to them, there were no secret compartments, there was no note saying: If you are reading this, then you know I am dead. There was nothing other than what Ren would have expected from the contradiction that was Jean Transom. A private, open book.
* * *
Jean had lived in a two-bedroom ranch house in Rifle, a town of six thousand, twenty-seven miles west of Glenwood Springs, where the cost of living was not so high. Ren wanted to visit the house alone so she could go through it in silence, without a backing track of shouting, wisecracks or sports scores.
Jean’s was a house of neat rows. In the living room: DVDs, CDs, candles, cushions. In the kitchen: mugs, ceramics, spice jars. In the bedroom: bears, dolls, pillows, books. In the bathroom: soap, supermarket shampoo, conditioner and moisturizer.
Ren stood in Jean’s lavender-and-white bedroom, quaint and warm, even without the lamps and candles that looked as though they burned every night. On the shelf above the bed, there were romance novels, perfectly preserved Care Bears, a Strawberry Shortcake doll and a Cabbage Patch Kid. Ren couldn’t resist taking it down. After all these years, you’re still creepy. Ren had the Garbage Pail Kids – collectible cards with grotesque drawings: interpretations of Cabbage Patch Kids with missing teeth, eyes, limbs and green slime spewing from their noses and mouths.
Ren went to the chest of drawers under the window. She pulled out the top one. It had a handful of pastel cotton multi-pack panties. Ren smiled. One of her friends called them darkroom panties; things would only develop if the lights were out. Every woman had a couple, but they didn’t make up their entire underwear collection. The next drawer down