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SAC Donnelly: Why didn’t you consider removing yourself from the investigation?
SA Cartwright: Why? Because she was a stuck-up little Benson girl?
SAC Donnelly: Based on your history with the victim’s family.
SA Cartwright: I don’t have to like them to do my job.
SAC Donnelly: You know how this looks, right?
SA Cartwright: I don’t give a fuck how it looks. The guidelines are I shouldn’t be on the case if I’m related to them. I’m not. End of story.
These days, answers like that certainly wouldn’t fly. Uncle Jack definitely shouldn’t have been on the Benson case with that attitude. He couldn’t even hide his disdain for the family when talking to the SAC. He’d been an idiot about it.
The verdict was pretty clear. Uncle Jack shouldn’t have been on the case in the first place, and then he screwed the pooch by shooting the kidnapper. The SAC had been right about the optics—they sucked, and so did Uncle Jack’s judgment.
The separate review of the conduct of the case had also made it clear that Uncle Jack should never have confronted the kidnapper at the ransom pickup. Standard protocol was to follow, or to track the money, but never to confront the suspect. Even rookie agents knew that.
I rechecked the street before dialing the person I had to have a very hard conversation with.
* * *
Kelly
After Adam droppedme off at the Natural History building, I found out Hal and Len were the two guards manning the x-ray. Hal introduced me to the other two handling the metal detector and hand wand. I took my station behind them and settled in the chair for a very long and boring day. The air conditioning blowing down on us made me glad I’d brought the extra shirt, but I hadn’t anticipated the hard plastic chair and regretted not bringing a pillow to sit on.
Almost everybody coming in to perform the inventory failed on their first pass through the metal detector, and they weren’t happy about being told to remove belts, jewelry, watches, and the like to get through the device. It was one of those TSA microwave scanners where you held your arms up and the radar or whatever it was looked through your clothes.
“Why do you guys have to set this thing even higher than they do at the airport?” the tenth unhappy camper asked.
“Just doing what they tell us,” was the answer, same as the previous nine times. Security had been given a script, and they were following it.
“Why such a tough screening on the way in?” I asked Hal softly.
“To get them used to it, so they don’t bitch on the way out.”
I shrugged. My only job was to see that they didn’t skip anyone.
Anything that looked odd in the x-ray caused them to use a plastic stick to move things around in the bag to see the offending item. Both guards had to tell me what they found, and they had to agree.
Whoever had come up with these procedures after losing the moon rock last year had done a thorough job. Nothing was getting out past us.
One of the metal detector guards logged the digital cameras he passed out to everyone for the pictures they were to take during the inventory.
Yolanda arrived shortly after we opened the doors, still hard at work on the display for her new exhibit.
“Will you be ready?” I asked.
“Have to be. It opens Tuesday morning.”
She disappeared inside, and I settled back into the monotony of watching the guys. I should have brought an energy drink or two.
* * *
Adam
Dad answeredon the second ring. “Hi, Adam, your mother tells me you have a girl for us to meet.”
This wasn’t the conversation I wanted. “She’s mistaken. I have something else to ask you.”
