All That Mattered, Ch. 11

Scotty’s eyes widened as Nancy got to work. “Are you, uh, is it okay that you’re doing that?”

She moved the lock pick around, trying to catch hold of the fourth pin. “It’s fine.”

“But you’re picking the lock. That’s breaking in, isn’t it?”

“I have permission. Now do you mind? I’m trying to —” the pick finally caught. “— work here.”

For what might have been the tenth time, Nancy chided herself for not checking to see what his security clearance actually was. They’d come here, to Jonathan Stone’s apartment building, after another dinner when she’d had a better time than expected. It had been closed and sealed, with police tape over the front door.

The fifth pin, thankfully, caught on her first try and she was able to raise the tumblers and open the lock. Good, she thought; she was running out of excuses to explain why she was opening the lock. She hadn’t thought to ask Francine about a key. Another oversight.

Scotty followed her through the door, whistling softly when she turned on the overhead lights. “Someone really messed this place up.”

“Yeah.” She’d seen disarray after law enforcement searches before, but something about this particular jumble of belongings and broken items was different. But she couldn’t figure out exactly what was off, so she surveyed the damage closely in the hopes that there would be an item that focused her vague feeling.

Behind her, Scotty had bent down and picked up a glass that was on the floor.

“Put that down,” she told him, possibly a bit sharper than she needed to. “And don’t touch anything else.”

He did as he was told. “I’m surprised this one’s not broken, too.”

That was what was off. Too many things were broken. While law enforcement officers weren’t known for their care when it came to searches, they also weren’t usually intentionally destructive. But answering machines usually didn’t crack and send components everywhere as a result of a careless slip. Plates didn’t shatter from the center to the rim unless they were dropped that way, and based on the way these plates looked, they had been. And no law enforcement officer anywhere would ever have left a half-open box of darts lying in the middle of the living room floor.

“What do you think happened?” asked Scotty quietly.

“I’m not sure,” she answered, though her mind was already working through it. There wasn’t any dark-colored fingerprinting dust present. It didn’t look like any electronics had been removed. Through the door, she could see papers all over the desk. There was no residue from tape or markers anywhere.

No. This hadn’t been a law enforcement search.

Especially given that the counters between the kitchen and the living room were empty. Law enforcement officers would have used those for storing items or taking pictures, and anything that usually stayed on the counters likely would still be there.

“Um. Ah. Nancy.”

“Hmm?”

Scotty motioned toward one of the end tables. There was a piece of paper sticking out from underneath a lamp that lay on its side. “Shouldn’t that have been knocked off?”

“Yeah,” she said slowly. “It should have.”

“I mean, it could have caught while it was coming down, and coincidentally gotten tangled up. Or maybe it’s attached to the lamp cord or something. Given how fast I’ll bet they were going, it could have been anything. Anything at all. Right?”

She had made her way over to the end table and was examining it. “Do you have a handkerchief?”

“Sure. Of course.” His hands shook as he gave it to her.

Nancy looked up. “Hey. It’s all right. This is part of what I do for the Agen — for IFF. I go in, I look at things, and I draw conclusions.”

“Yeah, I, I — I’m sure it is. That a producer would want their staff to do, I mean. ’Cause that can be just…anything, right? And this would help with — I don’t know. Better realism. Yes?”

Using the handkerchief, she gently tugged the paper free. It turned out to be a business card: Ansar Cleaners. Supporting you since 1967.

She frowned at it. “Huh. I thought Francine usually took her cleaning over to Dietrich’s. Wouldn’t Jonathan use the same service?”

“I don’t know.” Scotty’s voice was thin and high. “Maybe they’re his housekeepers or something.”

“No, they both use Private Party for that.” She folded the handkerchief around the business card and slipped it into her pocket. Then she looked around again. “You see anything else unusual?”

“Besides the fact that this place is trashed and there was police tape outside? Really, Nancy, this feels like we could end up in a lot of trouble. I — we should get out of here. Why are we doing this in the first place?”

“Because I’m curious about something. This apartment belonged to someone Francine knew.” I hope that wasn’t giving away too much. “The other night when I went by, it looked like there was a party going on, so I wondered what it might be.” She carefully detached a piece of stray police tape and pocketed that too; she’d want to see which, if any, local law enforcement agencies used that kind.

“Well, ah, now we’ve found out, and — please?” His skin was so pale it was nearly white.

“All right,” she relented. “I didn’t want to do more than take a look anyway. And I’ve seen enough.”

“I’ve seen too much.”

She guided him out the door and back into the hallway, careful to re-lock the door. “Look. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how it would look to you.” She hesitated, then went on. “I’d just thought it might be…odd, but in one of those interesting or fascinating ways. Not like that. I won’t suggest anything like this again.” And she wouldn’t. At least, not unless and until she’d confirmed it was all right to explain enough to address his concerns.

---

Billy wasn’t sure whether he should be concerned or relieved when Francine knocked on his office door at precisely 8:00 a.m. He settled for mildly satisfied; at least he could get the worst part of the day over with up front.

She was dressed casually, with minimal makeup and her hair up in a ponytail — a far cry from her usual appearance whenever she was in the office. Even more uncharacteristically, she nodded and murmured when he waved her to a seat, not even looking up when he stood to close the blinds.

After sitting back down behind the desk, he stared at her for a long moment. She stared back.

“What am I going to do with you?” he finally asked.

At that, she sighed and closed her eyes. “Is this about me telling Zeta not to go in anywhere without backup?”

“No. I wasn’t even aware you’ve been in contact with her.” He gave her a significant look. “You haven’t been, right? Since you’re on suspension.”

“Of course not.” She didn’t even try to meet his eyes.

“Glad to hear it,” he told her, not fooled for a second. “Keep it that way.”

She shifted slightly. “So what is this about, Billy? The review board meeting’s not for another few days.”

“I’ve had a few phone calls about you —”

But anything more he might have said, or any other way he might have eased into it, was abruptly terminated by his door slamming open.

“What are you doing in here, Desmond?” Dr. Smyth’s tone was the coldest Billy had ever heard.

Her chin came up. “I was ordered to come in, sir. I naturally assumed —”

“That it was Melrose doing the ordering, which is why you’ve bothered to follow the directive? Why not follow his other orders, then? You’re being awfully picky about your insubordination.”

Billy could see Francine’s hands clenching in her lap. “I’ve just been asking a few questions.”

“A few questions?” countered Smyth. “Would you care to explain how ‘just a few questions’ had me on the carpet at 1600 Penn at six o’clock this morning? Oh yes,” he continued. “It’s gotten that high. When you’re probing at the edges of diplomatic security and immunity, that creates complaints. At very high levels.”

She folded her arms. “I wasn’t aware that Jonathan’s disappearance was that important. May I ask why?”

“You may not. You may listen and you may obey, and that is all, Desmond.” Billy had never heard Dr. Smyth be so direct. “You’re already on report, and given the debacle with Trojan Horse, you were on thin ice well before this. You will desist on this wild-goose chase. Am I clear?”

“No, sir,” said Francine firmly.

“What part didn’t you understand?”

She shot to her feet. “The part where you told me to stop looking for my fiancé who is missing after doing a courier job for the CIA!”

“Francine,” began Billy, worried where this was about to go.

“No, Billy.” She shook her head. “If there’s more to this story, then I deserve to know what it is.”

“On the contrary.” Smyth seemed to have recovered his aplomb. “Wild geese don’t come back once winter sets in, Desmond. Yours has already been plucked clean. That’s all there is to it.”

She paled.

Smyth kept right on going. “Don’t complicate matters by arguing over the feathers. There’s no value left in them.”

“That’s not —” her voice broke, but then steadied into something sharper. “You don’t get to talk about him that way. He’s not just useless scraps.”

“Francine,” began Billy again.

“No, Billy, I want to hear it!” She advanced forward, ignoring his hand on her arm. “What did you do? Who decided he was expendable?”

“That,” said Smyth, “is the sort of curiosity that wanders off the hunting grounds. Unprotected territory.” He took a long drag from his cigarette before blowing smoke in her direction. “The season’s over, Desmond. That’s why I had Melrose call you in. There’s nothing more you can accomplish.”

“You’re lying. You don’t know anything at all, do you?”

“I know when to stop wasting resources,” said Smyth in an arch tone.

Billy leaned closer, lowering his voice. “This isn’t the time, Francine. You’re not going to win.”

“Win? Since when has this been a game?” She jerked free. “Or is that what it’s always been? Just another exercise in resource management?” She slammed both palms down on Billy’s desk, knocking the speakerphone askew. “Another one of those damn chess pieces you’re so fond of! Relax, Billy. I’m not going to do anything. Here.”

Smyth went utterly still. “Is that a threat?”

“It’s whatever you decide it is.” She yanked the office door open. “Since you’ll do that anyway. There’s no need to tell me to get out. I’m leaving. I’m done.”

Silence followed her angry march through the bull pen to the hallway beyond.

Billy blew his breath out. “Did that get you what you wanted, Smyth? Because now it sounds like we’re down another agent.”

“They come and go.”

It was all he could do to keep from exploding. “With respect, sir, it’s the knight whose moves are least predictable, especially when he’s cornered. And Francine Desmond will never be anyone’s pawn.”

“Which is,” said Smyth, “why she’ll never be promoted to queen.” And with that last line, he, too, was gone.

---

By the time Douglas stepped into the bull pen that morning, whatever had gone down had already come to ground and gone quiet. The aftermath, though, was unmistakable: too-quiet voices, furtive looks, and knife’s-edge wariness.

He glanced around, taking it in, but the only thing he caught clearly was a name: Desmond.

Her? Again?

Dismissing the thought, he made his way toward the desk he’d been using. The manila folders lay neatly stacked, looking innocuous enough, but he’d been here well into the evening teasing out yet more patterns. Now that he and Stetson had a clearer sense of what they were looking for, the footprints left by the tampering seemed to be everywhere. It was becoming less a question of what was being targeted than of what wasn’t.

He was already composing a progress report in his head when a familiar voice broke in.

“Holy cow. What happened?”

Nancy Zusterakos stood beside his desk.

“I beg your pardon?” he said.

She gestured around them. “Everyone’s whispering Francine’s name, but nobody will tell me why.”

“I don’t know either,” he replied. “She must have come in quite early, as by the time I arrived at half past eight, it was already like this. Why are you looking for her, anyway?”

Her hackles went up at once. “Who said I was? Maybe I’m just asking after my partner.”

“If that were the case,” he said mildly, “you’d have gone to Melrose instead of me.”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “All right. I came over here because I figured you, of all people, would be able to give me an unbiased view. Since you’ve not worked with Francine as long as most people in the bull pen.”

“I had gathered that was generally viewed as a liability, not an asset,” he remarked. “So far, I can’t say I’ve been terribly impressed by your partner’s professionalism, though few seem to share that opinion.”

“Mostly because it’s not true,” she explained.

“What would you call her recent behavior?”

Zusterakos flushed a little. “Unprofessional. But not at all normal. Especially not for her.”

He hadn’t heard anything like that before. “I had gotten the general impression she was a bit hard-nosed and, well…” he trailed off, trying to think how best to phrase it. “Difficult.”

“You mean bitchy.”

“That’s not quite the word I was looking for.”

“But it’s the word people use.” She shook her head. “She’s just a stickler for details and getting things right from the beginning. I mean, Stetson and — er, um, Scarecrow and Sunlight? Look at them. They have a better close rate, but their methods are sometimes questionable. They’ve blown a handful of cases because of that. But Francine insists on going by the book, and as far as I’m aware she’s only once lost a case on a technicality, at least since I’ve been here. That one turned out to be a frame job anyway. Smyth had to rescind both Scarecrow’s and her terminations.”

“Is that so?” That certainly put things in a different light. “What about her current methods?”

At that, Zusterakos sighed. “She’s compromised. And she knows that, even if she can’t bring herself to admit it yet. There was a long history between Jonathan and her, and they’d only recently managed to work their way through it.”

That explained rather more than he’d expected. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Yeah. I think it’s why Mr. Melrose is giving her so much room right now. I mean, he isn’t willing to compromise operations. But he could’ve thrown her in a holding cell instead of just relieving her of duty. Which is why I’m here anyway. I thought I might find her here since she’s not at her apartment, but…” she trailed off, suddenly looking as young as he’d heard she was. “I didn’t have any other ideas.”

“Have you tried Mr. and Mrs. Stetson?” he asked after a moment. “I understand your concern about their methods, but they’ve always struck me as the people she trusts the most. Or, at least, the ones she’s the most polite to, after Mr. Melrose.”

“Oh, they’re good people,” said Zusterakos quickly. “Just…not exactly the kind I’d have thought she would be closest to. Except you’re right. They are.”

“Even if they don’t know where she is, they might have ideas where she might go next.”

“Yeah,” she said, drawing the word out as though in thought. Then she nodded. “Yes. That’s true. I should head up there. Thank you, Mr. Trent.”

He held up a hand. “I’ve told you before, like everyone else here. Please, Miss Zusterakos, call me Douglas.”

“Thank you.” She offered him a shy smile. “And you know what? Why don’t you go ahead and start calling me Nancy, or even Zeta?” She paused. “You listened to me just now, instead of dismissing me, and I appreciate that.”

He returned her expression. “You’re quite welcome.”

---

The unwelcome thought just wouldn’t go away: if this truly was a wild-goose chase, then she was stepping well past reasonable caution and into active danger.

Francine closed her eyes and pushed the errant idea away once again. She’d already called and made the reservations using Dupont Circle Travel, just as he had. They’d even agreed to help her match Jonathan’s itinerary as closely as possible. Dupont Circle was a husband-and-wife operation; she’d spoken to the wife the first time, who’d come across very similar to the way she liked to think of herself. This time, she’d spoken with the husband, and he seemed much warmer, though she’d still felt a lingering vibe about something not quite being right.

But now wasn’t the time to worry about that.

She’d neatly arranged the first layer of clothing in her suitcase, putting the bag with her toiletries into the middle where the clothing would cushion the glass bottles. After a bit of thought, she put a couple of other things in there too. It was a lot easier to hide wigs and other disguises among “normal” items than it was to try and explain them. A second layer of clothes went on top — these were less sturdy than the first layer — and then she closed the bag and flipped the latches.

A glance at her watch told her she still had two hours to get to the airport. It wouldn’t do to be too early.

Rooting around her apartment, Francine spied the letter from Jonathan on top of her bureau and picked it up. She began to open the envelope but then stopped, considering.

Smyth was annoying and often clueless. But that didn’t translate to powerlessness, and he never issued ultimatums lightly. Francine closed her eyes and swore under her breath, once again wishing unwelcome thoughts away. But this time, her mind was right. She needed to keep all her wits about her, and reading the letter might do the opposite of that.

Instead, she slipped it into her purse. She’d read it later, when she was safely at her intended destination.