The Things We Bury - Part 1: In Anticipation of the End of the World [Completed]

Chapter 3: The Big Show (Part 3 of 5)

The room wasn't as packed in as the night before, but there were still enough bodies to make it uncomfortably warm.  Maxwell's brain was threatening to rebel and urging his hands to rip off his tie to get more air into his lungs.  He tightened the reins, so he wouldn't find himself clawing at the door to get out.  To keep from spiraling into a panic, he sat perfectly still. 

He examined the spot welds for the thousandth time.  The builders had hastily assembled the redesigned floor plan and rivets and sloppy welds showed where the new walls met the old.  Ordinary he would take the time to scrutinize the other people in the room, strip down their behavior and see if he could uncover the lies and weaknesses underneath, rooting out there secrets from body language and the occasional snippet of conversation.  But the personnel files in his office took all the fun out of that.

Last night, he had to order people to stay home.  Everyone wanted to be there for the big show, but he couldn't have everyone dead on their feet for the day shift.  Tonight he had to order people to come in.  No one except R.J seemed to want to be there.  No one wanted to sit around and watch nothing happen.

The vent directly above his chair gave Maxwell a supply of cool air that made this ordeal bearable.  It also created enough noise to block out most of the obnoxious sounds of Eric Paulson.  R.J. was right: they should have let the bastard stay home.  Without a slide of blood in front of him, he was a useless waste of space.  In another hour, he'd probably be snoring in his chair. 

Maxwell prayed Grierson and the DTAA was wrong and this girl would never change.  Let this be a total failure.  Shut it down.  Send him back into the field.  He wasn't built for this. 

But he knew the DTAA didn't get these things wrong.

They were too careful.  Even their method for putting Gracie on a leash had been foolproof.

She had been so smug when the R.J. and Horus left the office.

"And what exactly are you going to do to me?" she said.  "Force me to work for some ass in a bad suit in an underground stink hole."

Maxwell stood slowly, lifting himself out of his chair with his hands against the desk for leverage.  It was a display of long drawn out movement.  He circled around and sat on the front corner of the desk.  His knee hovered barely an inch from Gracie's thigh in a subtle invasion of her personal space.

"Have you looked at the FBI's Most Wanted list lately?  No?"  He kept his tone matter of fact like he was talking about the weather or a mildly interesting news story.  "There's a new addition.  A Dr. Barbara Gadaskinas."

Barbara frowned.  The ice blue of her eyes dropped twenty degrees.  He could almost imagine the air around them mist with crystallizing vapor.

Maxwell continued, "It seems that she escaped custody while on temporary release from prison.  She was helping Federal officers with an investigation and decided to use the opportunity to make a run for it.  Killed the State Trooper who was guarding her in the process.  Shame."  He shook his head as though what he was saying was true and the accused killer wasn't sitting in front of him.

"Is that supposed to frighten me?  What, are you going to do to me?  Tack on another life sentence?"

"Oh, did I forget to mention.  She killed this poor man in a Dallas area motel.  Do you know Texas at all?"

"Yeah, I know Texas: oil, beef, and the Alamo.  What are you getting at?"

"You know what else they have there, Angel?"  Maxwell dropped the charade.  He made sure his next words were taken as being absolutely serious.  "The death penalty." 

"We had a deal." 

Was that a glimmer of color rising to the surface of her face?  A touch of plum to brighten up the white and violet hues.

"We do.  So long as you work for us and obey our orders, that false identity of yours is bulletproof.  The second you don't..."  He shrugged and stood up.  "Well, I wouldn't get stopped for speeding if I were you."

"You son-of-a-bitch."

She wanted nothing more than to lunge at him and to wrap her fingers around his throat.  Perhaps she was even imagining what it would be like to dig her nails into his soft flesh, as she wrung the life out of him.

Maxwell turned his back to her and returned to his chair.

At least she wasn't arguing.  She could have asked about the Trooper or how they could link it to her.  If nothing else, she was smart enough to know they would cover those bases. 

The officer had died in the line of duty while backing up DTAA agents at a raid in Lubbock.  A little crime scene staging had prevented the covert operation from reaching the media and provided the perfect iron ball to shackle the good doctor to.  And as for evidence – hell – if need be, he'd testify as an eye witness.

She should also be smart enough to know that if she attacked him, it would be a direct road to a lethal injection.

He sat down.  Barbara Gracie looked like she was about to have a seizure.

"You may go," he said, before going back to work on the computer.  "Oh, and behave yourself."

She hadn't spoken to him since.  Maxwell didn't know how she managed it, but even as she sat with her back to him, she seemed to be glowering, sending out a wave of hate directly to him.

It was a quarter to midnight and still, LARS hadn't changed. 

He didn't look forward to another afternoon on the phone with government meteorologists arguing about the accuracy of their lunar cycle analysis.

So far the only pleasant moment of his day had been the meeting with Emily.  For once, someone had come to him with a solution before the problem had manifested itself.

She was right: it wouldn't take a genius to question the covers of any of them if there were no Aira products or pamphlets.  A casual visitor to one of the team's houses might think nothing of it, but anyone looking for something suspicious would be on it in an instant.  It was a smart catch.

Leave it to a career grifter — two steps ahead of all the other muttonheads here.  She was clever, perhaps too clever.  Of course, it was all just a smokescreen, so she could bring up her real agenda, but he couldn't fault her for that.  It's exactly what he would have done.

The speakers squawked to life as LARS let out a rasping cough.  Her body convulsed with each hacking bark.