The Freelancer – Chapter 71

Wednesday, October 8

“You have to pull it together,” Collin said to me after I told him about what happened with Jenna.

“I know; it’s just harder than I thought it would be to be around her.”

Collin walked over to the coffee machine and poured two more cups of coffee.  We were in one of the larger rooms at FBI headquarters.  I’d been here since five o’clock this morning looking over flight manifests for every flight out of DFW that Sunday.  By the time Collin joined me at 10 I scarcely made a dent.  The process was made more difficult by having no idea what I was looking for.

I accepted the cup that Collin handed me and said, “She’s even got her sister fooled, you know.”

He slammed his fists down on the table.  “Stop it!  Sooner or later everyone gets played.  I know this is my fault for pushing you to get involved with her, but you’ve got to look at this in a more positive light.”

“Positive? How?”

“You’re in a rare position.  She doesn’t know you’re onto her.  If you stay as close to her as you’ve been, it’ll be difficult for her to make a move without you knowing about it.  I know it sucks, but you’ve got to continue things with her exactly as you did before you found her out.  That’s the edge we’ve got right now.”

I knew he was right.  Too bad that knowledge didn’t stop the twisting in my gut.  It was a pain I hadn’t felt since Melissa left.

“Mr. McShae,” a timid voice said from the door.

Collin glanced up.  “Yeah, Petey.”

“He’s in room A, sir,” he said before exiting.

“New intern?”

Collin shook his head.  “First day.  What are you gonna do?”  He stood and tapped me on the shoulder with a file.  “Come on.  I’ve got something in room A that will cheer you up.”

“What’s that?” I grabbed my coffee.

“I had the guy Blackstone got expelled brought in.  He’s got quite a story.”

“When did you have time to talk to him?”

Collin paused at the door to room A.  “What did you think I was doing this morning? Sleeping in?”

“Oh, come on!  I’ve got to talk to another one of you guys?” the man seated at the table yelled once we walked into the room.

To be in school with Jenna and Blackstone, he had to be in his late twenties, but the years had not been kind to our witness.  His light brown hair was thinning in all the usual places and his face had enough lines to fill a road map.  Though he was reclining in his chair with his feet perched up on the table, it was obvious he had a beer gut.  I was hard pressed to ever picture this guy as an athlete.

Of course, if someone asked me twenty-four hours earlier, I would have been hard pressed to picture Jenna as anything other than what she appeared to be.

“Cool it, Eddie, or you aren’t leaving here any time soon,” Collin said, knocking his feet off the table.  “This is Special Agent Caldwell.  He’s running this investigation and I suggest you play nice.”

I was impressed.  I’d never seen Collin interact with a witness.  His years with the Dallas P.D. must have taught him something after all.  It was also nice to have my authority recognized.

Not that I cared about much at this point.

“Fine, I’ll tell you what you want to know, but only because I want to see y’all throw the book at that piece of shit.  Where do you want me to start?”

“The beginning would be nice,” I said dryly.

“Fine.  I first met him during my junior year.  I could tell right away he was a total loser.  I got stuck with him as a lab partner, but he was a real science geek and it was all good.  We gave him hell all year, you know, stuffing him in trash cans and shit.  There was this one time we locked him in his locker and left him there during football practice.  It rocked.”

“Get to the point,” I ordered.

“Yeah, I’m getting there.”  He cleared his throat.  “Anyway, after the locker thing, his grandma complained and the coach got onto us.  He made it clear that we had to consider him untouchable, so we dropped it for the rest of the year.  Okay, senior year comes.”  Eddie put his fingers out like he was framing a scene.  “Picture it.  Varsity, babes, glory, you know.  That insect of a sophomore wasn’t even on the radar as far as I was concerned.  Then it happened.

“Coach said I had to bring my history grades up and I got this tasty treat of a tutor, Jenna something.  Damn, she was fine!  She was a couple grades behind, but I thought she’d make for a nice roll in the hay.”

The muscle in my jaw tensed.  Despite what I knew, I wanted to deck the guy.  Collin must have picked up on it because he said, “Speed it up.”

“Whatever.  She didn’t go for the Edster; stupid bitch.  Then, next thing I know, I’ve got Chad in my face about it.  Dude tried to punch me over it, so I knocked his ass up against the wall.  Then, the day before I’m supposed to start in the big Homecoming game, coach calls me into his office.  His grandma called again, ‘cept I didn’t do what she said I did.  He comes back to school with two black eyes, a busted lip, and a broken arm.  He was fine when I left him.”

“Can you tell us about the animals?” I asked.  I was getting a little bored with his self-important rambling.

“Okay, but you need to know something first.  Some of the younger guys on the team were pissed at him after that.  We lost ‘cause of it.  They got the lame idea to bust out all the windows to his house.  They didn’t know anyone was home when they did it.  The old lady had a heart attack ‘cause of it.  She was fine, but Chad blamed me.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“He walked up to me in the parking lot and told me I’d suffer for it.  Two weeks later, someone breaks into this animal shelter that the coach’s wife ran.  Ten cats and dogs got butchered.  I got expelled for it and spent some time in Juvie.  They thought I was pissed at the coach for kicking me off the team.”

“And you didn’t do it,” I confirmed.

“Hell no, I love dogs.  Cats are alright, I guess.  Look, a whole bunch of my stuff was planted there to make it look like I did it.  I may be a lot of things, but I ain’t a killer, not even of animals.  I lost everything: scholarships, babes, you name it because I made a pass at some girl he was stuck on.  He came to visit me in Juvie and he told me exactly how he did it, not that anyone ever believed me.  He fed them some load of crap about how he came to be a good Christian and forgive me.”

I turned to Collin and nodded towards the door.  Without a word we stood and left the room.  Once the door was shut, I turned to him and shook my head.

“Is this guy reliable?” I asked.

“No, but I believe him.  I did some checking around before I had him picked up and he’s been singing that same song since he got out.  His life is shit compared to what it could have been, but he’s reformed.”

I nodded.  “Okay.  Get this information to a profiler and see what they think.”

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