On her way home, Mariah made a fierce attempt to concentrate on the traffic. He was not serious. No way would he want her to move in and cramp his style with other women. She was angry at herself because she hadn’t thought of something flip to say. However, that he could even joke about them living together must mean that he didn’t see her as a freak, even though he knew she would never take him up on his offer. Right?
Men: if you gave them what they wanted, they weren’t interested. If you didn’t want them, it just made them to try harder. In either case, they still made you nuts.
Alone in the office he had created off the master bedroom, Jude Ciriatos’ cracked leather chair groaned as he leaned back, staring at a DVD clutched in his left hand. His third brandy, camouflaged in the normal wreckage of his desktop, was forgotten.
A lifetime of honesty and morality warred deep inside with a gut-wrenching fear of the future as he justified the theft. Threatened with financial disaster, he was convinced there was no other way to solve his problem. This disk looked ordinary, but was worth (he hoped) a quarter of a million dollars.
Closing his eyes, he grunted as a grimace twisted his face. For the umpteenth time he told himself that this DVD would have wound up in the hands of the media whether he sold it to them or someone else did. He further rationalized that Mariah Carpenter’s life had become a train wreck months before the Finding of Sophie Duval was documented, and it would only get worse.
While the DVD played, he had stolen glances at Mariah, admiring her calm demeanor as she sat with her hands folded in her lap breathing evenly. But the signs of stress were obvious to a professional interrogator; her upper teeth worrying her lower lip, an imperceptible shift, a deep breath held a second then let out in a sigh.
It was toward the end when he began formulating the plan to steal the DVD. The urge to repress it had been fleeting. That saddened him even more than the thought of the theft.
He was again impressed by her composure when the lights came on. When she caught and held his gaze for several seconds, he had squirmed and looked away. Was she able to read his mind and know what he planned? But her gaze shifted from his face with no outward change in her expression, and he figured he was safe.
Jude assumed it would be difficult, but not impossible, to steal the DVD. He also knew where to find the technology. He tamped down the anxiety that threatened to burst from within. He was a good strategist: he would come up with a foolproof plan.
And when Jude saw the DVD clutched in Osterman’s hands, he knew where it would be kept.
An image formed in his mind as he sat in the semi-darkness: his mother in the nursing home, his father clasping her hands as he watched her sicken before his eyes. The facility had taken most of their retirement savings before MediCal moved her to a cheaper one and started to pay for her care. His father begged him to find a more up-scale nursing home where she would receive the best of care, and Jude agreed. He, too, wanted the best for his mother. She was moved to a state-of-the art residential institution, but the difference between what MediCal paid and what this place charged was a thousand bucks a month. For six months, the additional payments had come from the stash his wife, Priscilla, had hoarded for an emergency.
Priscilla agreed without protest when he asked for the money. She loved his folks, too. Nevertheless, Jude knew she was as frightened as he about their future.
The stash was nearly gone. Jude’s stocks, purchased with the pittance he could afford, weren’t worth much. The mortgage payments on the house and raising three children kept their budget tight. He felt overwhelmed.
Later that day, Jude entered the security lab and found the first thing he needed: a recently-developed sealant in aerosol form which, when sprayed on the hands, would prevent agents from leaving their fingerprints on items they touched at crime scenes.
He sprayed both hands then tried to “borrow” several highly specialized tools from the lab. He was caught by the lab chief but, anticipating this, claimed a legitimate reason: he had never worked with the anti-intrusion devices and wanted to practice. The lab chief even showed him the fastest way to manipulate the settings. His instructions over, the chief headed back to office. After glancing around, Jude pocketed the devices he felt he would need.
There would be no reason for the lab chief to remember his visit when the theft of the DVD was discovered. First, need to know: the lab chief would have no knowledge of the disk. Second, many agents used his lab to practice on the latest field equipment. The chief was used to being asked for his assistance.
As he left, Jude sighed with relief. Still, he prayed that the lab chief would not connect the dots if word leaked out about the theft.
Luck was still with him. Exiting the elevator on the floor where Craig Osterman’s office was located, he ran into the gentleman in the hallway. When Jude casually asked where he was off to, Osterman growled something about “taking a dump.” He knew he had little time; Osterman would not be gone for more than a few minutes.
It was quarter till five and Osterman’s office was down a dead-end corridor. It took him forty-nine seconds to coerce the code from the anti-intrusion mechanism on Osterman’s office door using the radio frequency listening device he had taken from the lab.
Just as Jude was about to enter, he heard voices down a cross aisle. Sweat erupted from his pores, and he froze. When the pair turned down another aisle, he exhaled convulsively.
Once inside, he went straight for the desk, hoping it was the most logical place Osterman would keep the Carpenter DVD. On the bottom left-hand drawer, he found a remote keyless entry lock with an encryption algorithm. It was a new technology used by many on the managerial staff. Jude applied the second tool he took from the lab: an ultra-sophisticated, destabilizing vibration device to sense and align the tumblers.
After a long two minutes, the drawer clicked open. Rummaging through the papers, he found the DVD. Jude shook his head; so much for hiding it in plain sight.
As he removed a blank disk from his jacket pocket to replace the Carpenter one, the phone rang. Nearly dropping the disk, his heart beat loudly against his chest. After the usual four rings and Osterman’s greeting, he heard the Bureau Chief’s voice say, “I’ll be down to see you in about five minutes.”
Jude stuffed the Carpenter disk into the same pocket the blank had come from, stuck the blank under the mound of papers, and activated the sequence that would secure the lock. It slid smoothly back into place, the infiltration undetectable.
He opened the office door half an inch: no one was in sight. Hands shaking, he reactivated the locking device on Osterman’s door and fled to his cubicle where he removed the DVD from his jacket pocket and stuffed it into a bag designed to eliminate static electricity. After slipping it into his briefcase, he grabbed his suit jacket and strolled out of the FBI building with the rest of the five-o’clockers. His conscience and accelerated heart rate made him feel slightly nauseated.
Priscilla was in the kitchen was Jude arrived. He immediately disappeared into his study and never re-emerged. She knew something was seriously wrong: he always greeted her and the kids before doing anything else.
Entering his office without waiting for an invitation, Priscilla became alarmed. The lights were off; her husband sat in the shadows cast by the streetlight that filtered through the gauze curtains. She sat in the guest chair and waited for him to speak, her unease exacerbated by the small amount of brandy she noticed in the bottle.
Jude held up the DVD. “Behold, the solution to our problems,” he said. “Thirteen years of clean law enforcement wiped out by a three-minute robbery. I’m now on the same level as the thugs I put away.”
Then he told her what was on it. Shocked, Priscilla stared at him and the DVD. She was aware of the Findings through newspaper accounts; however, what he told her was beyond belief. With words slurred and boozy, Jude tried to make her understand why he took the disk. He became defensive when she started to protest. Priscilla cut him off and left: she needed to get dinner on the table.
It was a tense, joyless meal that night. Jude and Priscilla ate in silence while the kids looked anxiously from one parent to the other.
After dinner, Priscilla put the children to bed early then spent several hours with her husband attempting to find an alternate solution. They discussed the merits of her working but, in the end, his argument won out. With three children under the age of six, any money she made would just cover day care expenses and not solve a thing. She broached the subject of a second mortgage; he had already checked into it. They just didn’t have the money to pay for it.
“How can you destroy this woman’s life for money? And what happens if you’re caught?” Priscilla said. “You’ll be fired and disgraced, and more than likely jailed! What will happen to your folks then, not to mention me and the kids?”
“Believe me, Pris, I took every precaution. Besides it’s not like we’re going to start spending money like crazy. With my record, they’re not even going to look in my direction.” Jude took her in his arms, his murmured words more to reassure himself than her. Still, she worried for him. She knew he prided himself on being an honest lawman, going from years of police work to this more prestigious career in the Bureau.
He did his homework, he told her in a broken voice. He had called NBC from a throw-away cell phone, offering the DVD to Tom Brokaw, a man he greatly admired and felt could be trusted to treat this information with professionalism and dignity. At least if he had to contribute to ruining Mariah Carpenter’s life, he would not turn her over to some sleazy tabloid show. And the money they offered pending verification of authenticity was more than he hoped for; enough to take care of his mother’s needs for as long as she lived, plus start college funds for the kids.
Sometimes life just deals you a shitty hand, Jude thought, the words no consolation.