The Third Brother. Andrew Welsh-Huggins
activated my flashers, turned off the engine, and pulled out the keys. I pocketed them as I got out of the van. I walked back to the black Ford Explorer stopped behind me and gestured to the driver to roll down the window. I did that sideways stirring motion, as if using a spatula to scrape out batter from a mixing bowl. One of those anachronisms that everyone still understands, like saying tinfoil or calling a band’s latest release an album. After all, practically no cars have hand-cranked windows anymore. Kind of funny, if you think about it—
“There a problem?” the Explorer’s driver said. If he had eyes, you couldn’t tell through his mirrored aviators.
“Not really. Just that you need a buffer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Like a decoy. A car in between.” I took a step back and used my hands to illustrate. “It gives you cover but not so much you lose visual contact.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Could you just—”
“OK. How about this? Why don’t you cut the crap and explain why you’re following me?”
I HAVE TO GIVE the other guy credit. Or gal, as it turned out. Unlike the driver frowning at me from the front seat of the Explorer—who might as well have turned a siren on from the moment he followed me away from the school—I hadn’t spotted the second car at all, a fact I determined as it pulled up a moment later right on cue. Doors on both cars opened simultaneously and four people in dark suits surrounded me. I felt like the first customer on a slow day at a Brooks Brothers outlet.
I looked at the woman, whom I knew. I said, “I didn’t bring my bathing suit, in case this is the part where you waterboard me. But I am wearing Scooby-Doo underpants, if that counts for anything.”
“Don’t be an ass,” Cindy Morris said. “Sorry: more of an ass. What the hell happened to your eye?” She took off her own sunglasses. Her expression indicated she’d had one of those days just since breakfast. Her short, dark hair had come down with a mild case of snow flurries since the last time she’d flashed her FBI badge at me.
I gave her the cue-ball line, which earned me a look several degrees below Kelvin. “You have a funny way of asking me out to coffee,” I soldiered on. “Did you lose my number?”
“Maybe we could take this someplace less public,” said the driver of the Explorer I’d busted, standing next to Morris. Flushed from his lair, he stood tall and broad-shouldered. I was guessing two parts basketball, one part free weights, with a twist of jujitsu on the side. His stance suggested people usually took his etiquette suggestions.
“Good idea. How about Capitol Square, in front of the Dispatch office, downtown? There’s a decent bagel place next door. I’m buying.”
Morris looked up the street. A minivan had pulled to a stop behind the line of parked cars. The female driver eyed the vehicles and the five of us standing in the road. Morris nodded at another of the men in black, who happened to be black, and he stepped back and signaled for the woman to drive around.
“There’s a Wendy’s up the street,” Morris said.
“A local restaurant. Trendy of you,” I said. The fast-food chain was headquartered just up the highway in suburban Dublin. “I’d heard the bureau was very farm-to-table these days. Unfortunately, I’m comfortable right where I am. This traffic stop feels like my second home, without the patio. And I apologize for my slip of the tongue: it’s the CIA that waterboards, not you guys. You just psychoanalyze people to death. To repeat: why are you following me?”
“It really might be easier—”
“Actually, I think I can guess why. How about I tell you what I’ve been up to and save us both some time?”
“Listen, Hayes—”
“I started with a good breakfast, since that’s the most important meal of the day, as I’m sure they taught you at Quantico, where you probably grilled rabbits over bonfires. After that, I drove to Maple Ridge High School to meet with Helene Paulus, the principal, whose social security number I didn’t manage to snag but I’m thinking you already have that, plus all her pin numbers. We had a nice chat about the country’s opiate epidemic and cooperation and the fact that if Abdi Mohamed wasn’t a Boy Scout, he was the next closest thing and therefore a highly unlikely recruiting target for Islamic extremists. Unless they’ve started infiltrating Kroger checkout lines. From here I’m headed to the house of worship Abdi attended for some palavering with the elders there, although I’d wager my last Sacajawea dollar they won’t tell me much. After that, I fly to Istanbul to meet a guy named Ahmed parked in a black Mercedes under the third streetlamp down from the Hagia Sophia mosque. Hope to be back in time for Sunday dinner with my folks.” I stopped and pressed both forefingers against my temples in a thinking pose. “Oh, I also need to pick up kibble for the dog. OK. I think that about sums it up.”
Special agent Morris was not amused. The look on her face made my conversation with Helene Paulus seem downright convivial in comparison. Without breaking eye contact, she took out her cell phone, glanced for a fraction of a second at the screen, power-typed a message, and replaced it in her coat pocket. She trained her baby blues on me like a predator weighing which limb to tear off first.
“Listen carefully, Woody. We’re not screwing around here. You’re interfering with a national security investigation.”
I bristled at her use of my nickname. For a Feebee Morris was all right. But she wasn’t on the short list like my new best friend, Otto Mulligan. “I don’t go by Woody anymore. It might be more effective to throw in my middle name instead, the way my mom does. As for interfering? I’m not even at hindering—”
“By rights I could have you arrested. Questioning government witnesses on a terrorism case.”
“And I could have you slapped with a bar association complaint. Let’s see—harassing an officer of the court during the lawful conduct of his duties. How’s that for starters?”
She snorted. “Officer of the court? Give me a break.”
“I’m working for Freddy Cohen. Cohen is representing the family of Abdi Mohamed. Ipso facto, that makes me an extension of Cohen.”
“You’re working for Cohen?”
“Don’t tell me you didn’t know that. Or did your surveillance drone run out of petrol already?”
“You and Cohen. That’s amazing, I have to say, even for you. After what you—”
“Careful, Agent Morris.”
My tone caught the attention of the tall agent, who shifted his feet in a manner that suggested a flying tackle was a misplaced adjective away.
“I’d be sensitive about it too, I were you,” Morris said. “But the fact you’re working for Cohen doesn’t change anything. You’re still tramping around where you don’t belong. Per usual, I might add.”
“Now see, that’s where you’re wrong.”
“Oh?”
“The way I see it, you’re carrying out your duties as a law enforcement agent tasked with investigating federal crimes. I’m helping Freddy find a man presumed innocent under the U.S. Constitution. We’re really two peas in a pod, don’t you think?”
“I think I’d like to know what Helene Paulus told you.”
I thought about the names of the students in my pocket, and about the school counselor’s close relationship with Abdi. Her feeling, according to Paulus, that the suspicions against the boy were warranted. Surely Morris knew all that already. I said, “She told me Abdi’s hiding under her desk along with two of Osama bin Laden’s drivers and an Islamic State player to be named later. In other words, go ask her yourself.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I. But like I said, I’m under attorney-client