SHE ATE at a dependable vegan restaurant around the corner from her apartment, and while waiting for the mock duck she ran through messages, then called her mother and listened to her day. A pharmacy visit, a minor scuffle with her insurer over medication preapproval, and lunch with Derek, the widower who had been courting her for years now. It was good to listen to her mother’s life. It helped distract her from what her own life had become—rising early, chasing that television for therapy, hiding her pain in the office. Back in DC, before attacking Owen Jakes, and before the stranger with the .357, her days had been unpredictable. Upon waking she couldn’t be sure in which city she would sleep that night, and the hours in between carried an urgency that she hadn’t known since.
And now she’d spent the day being reminded of that other life. She’d been asked to spill all of it and then promise to never speak it aloud again. Had she been wrong to blow up at them? Wrong to deny them their little signature? Maybe, but she wasn’t in the mood to judge herself just yet. Tomorrow, or the next day, she would go through it again and, most likely, call Headquarters to ask Johnson or Vale to please send that form for her to sign. She wanted to be as free of this as the Bureau did.
What troubled her more, though, was that a life reexamined is a source of mystery. She’d been tossed off the case without answers, and by voicing the questions today, they felt more pressing than they’d felt in eight months. Who had funded Martin Bishop before his magical disappearing act? Who killed him with that long-range sniper’s rifle? Why had Jakes pushed for deadly force in the end? And what, really, had Martin Bishop wanted to do with his band of followers?
Though the questions nagged at her, she knew from experience that every case ended with blank spaces. The Bureau was never all-knowing, and answers were never complete. What you did was paper over holes with a grand theory, finding ways to divert the eye from the flaws. That was what the report would do when it came out next week—decorate and deflect. Nothing new, yet the questions still wouldn’t leave her.
From her purse, she took out her bottle and popped another dihydrocodeine, then tipped the dreadlocked waiter generously. But instead of getting up to leave she went through her contacts and paused on FORDHAM, JANET. She hadn’t thought much about her until today, remembering her breathless updates on OSWALD. The last time they’d spoken over drinks they’d had a good rapport, both decompressing from the fiasco. Kevin’s had enough, Janet had said. He’s retired to the mountains outside Boulder. He wants to be a lumberjack.
She sometimes thought about Kevin Moore’s surrender to nature and wondered if she should’ve chosen a similar life, somewhere in upstate New York to be near her mother. But that wasn’t her, never had been. She’d worked too hard for too many years to give it up.
She scrolled on, passing names that brought on more memories, some good and some not, then paused on one that in this shrine to veganism brought on welcome carnivorous memories. She pressed CALL, and Ashley answered on the third ring. “Rachel? You in town?”
“Seattle. Just thinking about you. Got a minute?”
“I’ve got hours. DC traffic is no better than when you were here, and the protests aren’t helping. Don’t know when I’ll get home.”
“Still giving all your money to Fogo de Chão?”
“What else would I spend it on? The poor?”
She’d forgotten Ashley’s dry humor. “Mind if we talk work?”
“Have we ever talked about anything else, Rachel?”
It was a slight, but a fair one. She’d never really gotten to know Ashley, or any of her colleagues, during the Massive investigation. “How far did you ever get on Magellan Holdings?”
She heard the distant sound of honking; then Ashley said, “Beyond Laura Anderson? Not far. We followed the family tree, thinking she’d been chosen by a relative. No kids, only a few living relatives. There was a nephew we were looking at, but he didn’t fit our profiles.”
“So, nothing.”
“You worried about the report?” Ashley asked.
“It’s not mine to worry about anymore. Seattle, remember?”
Ashley laughed. “Can I join you?”
Rachel had a thought. “What about co-workers?”
“What?”
“Didn’t you say that Anderson worked for the UN for … what? Fifteen years?”
“Yeah, but…” Another car horn—it sounded like Ashley’s. “But why would the UN want to fund some US radicals? Has the West Coast turned you into a conspiracy head?”
“Just thinking aloud.”
“Well, I don’t think that’s the direction to go. But it sounds like you’re having trouble leaving it be.”
Rachel remembered those monitors in that chilly barn. Crack, crack, crack. “You’re not?”
“Erin Lynch keeps me busy. Drug lords. Want to shoot myself.”
“Take care of yourself, then.”
“You, too, Rachel. Keep fighting the good fight.”