As soon as we reached our cruising altitude and I had exchanged a few pleasantries with the robust man sitting next to me, I began to go through the dossiers I had been given. When I’m on assignment, I normally like to start with the file on my alias and move on to the Target File; however, Banks had piqued my curiosity. The first file I went for was the one on Monroe.
She was twenty-seven and never married. Her childhood appeared normal enough, according to the file. Monroe’s parents were married up until their deaths in a church fire ten years ago. Michael Monroe was a partner in one of the country’s premier law firms. It appeared that Elizabeth Monroe never worked outside of the home. I assumed she stayed home to take care of her two daughters, Jenna and Elaine, for as long as she felt they needed her before undertaking charity work for her church.
This was boring stuff so far. Maybe Banks was losing her edge if this didn’t add up for her.
To help hold my attention, I removed Monroe’s picture from the file. The photo was grainy, almost like we’d pulled it from a supermarket surveillance camera. Wait. She was in front of the dairy case. Apparently, we had taken it from the supermarket. I studied her for a minute before replacing it. She wasn’t anything special, but I wouldn’t run screaming from her if I saw her. She was too plain.
Not my type.
Alright, time to go back to the stats. After the death of her parents, Jenna had moved in with her older sister and her husband to finish out her final semester of high school. Despite the tragedy, she finished second in her class and received a full scholarship to Harvard. I was impressed. After all of this, she graduated at the top of her class at Harvard Law. She began a job at a major Boston law firm before graduation as a law clerk, but she never took the Bar.
Here we go, I thought with a sense of satisfaction. This is finally going to get interesting.
Two years ago, she blows off the Bar and moves back to Dallas. She didn’t even bother to put in her two weeks; she called one morning and said she was moving home. She stayed with Trista Sand for six months before both women moved to condos in North Dallas. Both were paid for in cash.
Eighteen months ago, her first book had been published and she had been on the Best Seller’s List ever since. It seemed like a real waste of talent to me. This woman is obviously intelligent, but what does she do? Instead of helping put criminals behind bars, she spends her time writing books for children about cats.
I could see why she confused Banks. Her life most certainly did not add up. Law gets in your blood like a drug and takes control of you. You don’t devote years of your life to it just to wake up one morning and say, ‘Gee, I think I’ll throw my career out the window and write crap for kids.’ It just doesn’t happen.
With the exception of that one mystery, Jenna Monroe seemed about as interesting as mud. I moved on to my alias file.
I was a consultant for Innovative Management Consulting, based out of D.C. I would have no assumed name. I would work from home, which happened to be across the hall from Monroe. Blah, blah, blah. It was always the same cover and I was sick of it.
I wanted to be transferred to the Financial Crimes Unit; they always got the good cover stories and the exciting cases. Being an agent under Banks – no pun intended – held no mystery for me anymore. My caseload was mundane at best. This assignment had to be one of two things. It was either a test to see if I could handle playing with the big boys, or it would turn out to be some kind of a hoax that would end up causing more paperwork than fieldwork.
“Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This is your captain speaking. It seems that we have some severe weather ahead. Everyone should return all carry-ons to the overhead compartments. We should be arriving at DFW within the hour. Due to the turbulence, I’m going to ask everyone to please remain seated and to keep your seatbelts fastened for the duration of the flight. Thank you.”
Just great. Now that the person seated next to me had to put up his laptop, I knew that I would have to put up the dossiers and make small talk. I hate small talk.
© 2009, Sydney Katt. All rights reserved. Unauthorized use of content will result in dragon attacks.
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