Nobody told her Linus was waiting for her. She saw him in the lobby, wearing a suit without a necktie, as though he had dressed quickly and half for work, not sure what to do. He looked up from his phone and jumped to his feet when she approached, and she held him and broke down a little. She had no idea they had called him.
She had met Linus Ayers in law school in Boston, where he was from. They dated until graduation, broke up, and within a year were living together. It was love but it also made great financial sense for two young attorneys, one drawing a government salary from the FBI, the other a second-year lawyer in a white-shoe firm across the river in Manhattan.
“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.
He rubbed her back reassuringly, still holding her. “They called me. I thought something happened to you—you were hurt.”
She shook her head and buried her face one more time in his shoulder.
“It’s bad,” she said.
“You need a lawyer,” said Linus.
She pulled back a bit to swipe away her tears and look at him, his fair brown skin and concerned eyes. “I have a lawyer,” she said. “You.”
He almost smiled.
They walked out an unmarked door on River Street, past a television reporter scrolling through her phone with her earpiece dangling from her blouse collar between broadcasts, unnoticed. The rain had cleared out the humidity overnight, cooling the air. Odessa leaned on Linus on the short walk to Newark Penn Station, where they caught a PATH train one stop into Harrison. They didn’t speak much. Odessa didn’t remember much of their short journey. Exhaustion was starting to hit her now.
She thought she might feel relief upon closing their apartment door on the world outside, but it didn’t happen. Linus asked if she wanted to eat anything, but she sure didn’t. She climbed into bed with her clothes on, something she had done once before in her adult life, when she had the flu.
She was in a dark funk. Linus set a glass of water on the nightstand for her. She heard him fumbling with something on the dresser, then realized he was unplugging the coaxial cable from the television. He didn’t want her to watch.
But she had her phone and charger still. She looked up the news and watched as much as she could bear. Cameras were outside Leppo’s house, recording Walt’s wife weeping as she loaded their kids into the car and drove away.
Linus came in to check on her and discovered her on her phone. He made her promise to unplug and sleep. She nodded, but then he remained sitting on the edge of the bed. He wanted to talk. Or rather: He wanted to listen.
She told him an abbreviated version of what happened. One thing she shared with him that she’d neglected to tell the FBI: She said she thought she saw something flee Leppo’s dying body. She told him this to gauge his reaction, to test out how bizarre this sounded. He didn’t give her much facially, but after a few moments of silent consideration, he told her that he thought she should speak with someone else, in addition to a lawyer. He meant a therapist.
Her spirit sank. She wanted this to make sense. “I saw it,” she said. “I smelled it.”
“Saw what, though?” he said. “A heat mirage, you said?”
“Not quite that. But like that. A ripple. Something.”
“I think you were—understandably—distraught, and your senses played a trick on you.”
“I know it’s funky,” she said. “It’s really hard to explain.”
“What did they say about it?”
“I didn’t tell them.”
Linus’s eyes widened a bit. Then he nodded. “Maybe you should keep it that way, going ahead.” He was assessing it as a lawyer should. “There’s nothing factually wrong with omitting it.”
“What could have happened to Walt?” she said.
Linus had nothing for her there. “It’s all so crazy. Nothing makes sense right now.”
Odessa’s phone rang. She sat up, but Linus looked before she could.
“Your mother,” he said.
Odessa sank back down. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t,” he said, pulling her charger plug from the wall and standing. “Sleep.”
She nodded. He left.
Later in the day, the twenty-four-hour news channels were obsessively tracking the “last flight” of Cary Peters, patched together from cell phone footage, eyewitness reports, bullet holes, and FAA reports. Odessa watched the coverage on her laptop, a cold mug of tea on the table next to her.
Peters had killed five people: two men at Teterboro, and three family members in Montclair. Odessa paid close attention to the man whose Jeep was carjacked at the golf course parking lot. His description of Peters’s cold facial expression and distant eyes—attributed to the head wound Peters suffered upon crash landing on the golf course—matched exactly the look she had seen in Walt Leppo’s face.
Peters was said to have been shot and killed by law enforcement, and an FBI agent had been killed in the exchange. As of yet, they did not have the complete story. But Odessa knew it was only a matter of time.
The news was trying to make sense of Peters’s killing spree just as Odessa was. Financial pressure, family strife, professional ruin. His life was a shambles, no question. But his actions went beyond. He was not a violent man, and there was nothing in his past that hinted at such a frenzy of viciousness.
Same for Leppo. Odessa kept going over their dinner together. It could not have been less remarkable. And the drive to Montclair: Leppo being Leppo, playing a hunch, at the top of his game. Entering the house that night: the veteran agent taking the lead. Odessa getting waylaid by her discovery of the mother’s corpse. She wished she had a clear memory of the noises upstairs.
Was there a struggle? Why hadn’t Leppo fired his Glock? How did he wind up with the carving knife Peters had taken from the kitchen?
Her cell rang. It was Claremont. They were sending a car. They wanted her back in for another interview.
Linus said, “Let me get you a lawyer.”
Odessa said, “I can’t afford a lawyer.”
Linus said, “You can’t afford not to.”
She showered and dressed and went in for an interview accompanied by a Bureau lawyer. Dessa’s interview was video recorded, and she got through it without becoming emotional. She was not asked about the condition of Walt Leppo’s body after he fell. She signed some forms after the lawyer reviewed them, and was informed she could expect an interview with the Office of Professional Responsibility, which was the FBI’s internal affairs unit, within the next few days.
She thought they were going to ask for her badge and credentials. They already had her gun. She was officially reassigned to desk duty during the OPR investigation—standard procedure. She asked how long she could expect the investigation to take.
“A matter of weeks. Or longer.”
The way the supervisory agent said “or longer” convinced her she was going to be fired. Of course, it would come at the end of a prolonged investigation wherein small, inconsequential violations of procedure would be cited as cause. But the real reason would be that she had shot and killed a fellow agent—no matter the circumstances—and couldn’t expect anyone else to ride with her ever again.