His Last Wife

Leaf didn’t bother telling Val about all of this. Another thing civilians wouldn’t ever suspect about agents was how often these kinds of internal infractions occurred. An agent’s loyalty was to the department and the department alone. Not his comrades. Not his government. Not his country. Not his president. His mother, father, wife, son, or daughter. The department was where his truth began and ended and he could turn on any of the people beneath it and in the name of it at any time. Delgado getting him to talk was hardly a secret to share. It was the job.

The secret Leaf did tell Val was what he discovered when he decided Delgado’s digging would require his own.

“The FBI had been watching Kerry way before we started our case on Jamison. Had files on her, taps on her phones, video. Some surveillance even included my initial meetings with her,” Leaf said, informing Val of what his contact had discovered when he paid him to hack into Delgado’s computer, break into his office, and search his files. “I didn’t know we were being taped. I didn’t know there was a separate investigation going on.”

“An investigation? About Kerry? You have to be kidding me,” Val said, covering her mouth in surprise. “What’s in the file? Pictures of her having tea at Mary Mac’s?”

“It started with her mother. She hired a hit man.”

Val had lowered her hand, but there it was back up at her mouth again in surprise. “What?”

“Thirjane Jackson had contacted an undercover agent to have him kill Jamison. The Bureau has evidence to back this up and they were about to arrest her, but just before she was about to confirm a price and a date and time for the services to take place—the confirmation of intent we needed to make an arrest—she pulled out. Just like that. Stopped answering the agent’s calls,” Leaf explained as he mentally reviewed each of the copied files he’d been forwarded. “The agents thought they’d lost her. That she wasn’t going to go through with it. But they kept up surveillance. And then weeks later, she hooked up with another guy.” Leaf turned to Val. “And he didn’t work for us. He isn’t an agent. She hired him.”

“She had Jamison killed?” Val felt like she’d been dragged down a really long and dark tunnel and then suddenly thrust into daylight. On many drunken nights, Jamison had told her about how much Thirjane hated him. That she was the one who vowed his marriage to her daughter would never last. That she’d been the one to whisper in his ear during a dance at their wedding, “You’re her first husband.”

“Actually, no, Thirjane did not have Jamison killed,” Leaf said to Val. “Well, she thinks she did, but someone else got to it before her guy could. He’s a real screwball, this guy. Took her money and has her thinking he was the one who did it, but he wasn’t anywhere near the day of the incident.”

“How do you know that? How do they know that?”

“He was in jail. Got picked up for driving with a suspended license, of all things. We wanted to hold him, but by the time he posted his own bail, Jamison had already been thrown from that roof.”

“So you’re telling me Kerry’s mama thinks she had Jamison killed by some hit man, when he didn’t even do it? He didn’t finish the job?” Val laughed tensely at the absurdity and then sat in thoughts of Thirjane’s constant frown and perfectly manicured, wrinkled hands. “So how did Kerry end up in jail? Do they think she did it?”

“No way. From what I can see looking at her surveillance, Kerry hasn’t made a move indicating it was even possible.”

“Then how’d she end up behind bars?”

“Isn’t that the question we’re all asking?” Leaf looked out his rearview mirror and said softly, “Many ways of reading it. Many possibilities. None of which has to be that she’s guilty.”

“What?”

“It could be that they’re waiting for Thirjane to turn herself in to get Kerry off. Maybe she hired someone else who went under the radar.”

“For three months? They’ve been waiting for three months? Had this woman in jail that long? I mean, isn’t it obvious at this point that if Thirjane was involved, she’s not exactly about to give herself up for her daughter?” Val remembered how distant Thirjane had been about Kerry’s case. She’d hardly spoken to the attorney and refused to go speak with media outlets to plead for Kerry’s release, which was the lawyer’s first suggestion and what he believed worked.

“Then there’s the other possibility.” Leaf turned to Val. “That it’s a cover-up.”

“For what?”

“Well, that’s not exactly going to be in the file. That’s going to require more . . . information gathering. Could be Governor Cade. Could be a number of things. Jamison had his hands in many places. Some I knew about and some I didn’t. I’m realizing that now.”

A black car with black tinted windows rolled past slowly and Val and Leaf’s eyes were set on it until it was well up the street and stopped to let a woman and her dog out on the corner.

“Val, is there anything you noticed about Jamison’s actions before he died, any information you have that you haven’t shared with me or anyone else that you can think of?” Leaf asked. “And it could be anything. Something small that seemed odd, but could be explained away. Even something that’s come up since his death.”

Val scratched her temple and attempted to rub away tension gathering in her brow.

“You know how he was with me. You saw.” She looked away from Leaf. “Always held me out so far. He was so secretive. Always. I can’t say if those were the signs of a man hiding something. Or someone who just wasn’t in love.”

Had the situation been different and the lie Val wanted to believe about her marriage been true, Leaf might have reached over the console, grabbed her hand, and told her she was wrong—Jamison really did love her. But there could be none of that. There just wasn’t anything nice to say. No comforting words.

Leaf actually leaned away before he repeated, “It could be anything” and gave Val some time to think.

“Nothing,” Val said after a long while, where she rediscovered how little she’d really known about the man she’d loved so desperately. He’d let her in a little and then locked her all the way out, where she’d stand thirsting for any little bit of him until he saw fit to open the door again.

“Well, you can think about it some more and let me know,” Leaf said. “In the meantime, I’m going to start looking into some other things. I just figured that maybe you’d know something. None of us are as mysterious as we think. We always leave clues. It’s just a matter of paying attention. And I know you were. I know you—” He paused and patted Val on the shoulder awkwardly, but also earnestly. “I know you loved him,” he said.

Leaf drove Val back to her car as he explained his next steps and clued her in on why he’d had to speak to her. He sensed some fear or desperation in Delgado’s voice at lunch. That meant he didn’t have everything he needed, but needed to close in on something soon. Val’s name was mentioned in some of his notes. Delgado had been watching her. Leaf didn’t want her to get caught up in the dragnet when things went down. If she helped him, if he could get her on his team, maybe he could make something happen to keep everyone safe, to get Kerry off and burst the case wide open. Get all the angles out in the open. Find out who or what the big boogeyman was behind the thing. And all of this could be for a good cause. To save the world. Or save someone. He’d grown close to Kerry