Daughters and Sons by Tom Fowler

Author:Tom Fowler [Fowler, Tom]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Fowler Writes
Published: 2019-05-03T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

I rewarded myself for my hard work in the morning with a homemade omelet. I would have rewarded Gloria, too, but she left for a tennis lesson. I downed my mug of coffee and took a shower before my meeting with Agent Hess. To enhance my chances of making a good impression, I shaved off the scraggly stubble I’d accrued over the last two or three days. I thought about wearing a suit but opted for a nice pair of khakis and a Polo.

When I arrived, Hess sat in a meeting. I busied myself watching the news in the waiting room. I trusted their coffee machine about as far as I could flick it with a finger. If the BPD brewed dreadful coffee, I figured the FBI’s to be one step away from being declared toxic by the CDC. I used the hot water to make a cup of tea. Watching my water darken to a nice brown proved more exciting than the news, which consisted of two people yelling at each other despite the large overlap in their opinions. How did people watch this every day?

A moment after I finished my tea, Agent Hess fetched me from the waiting room. “Ready when you are,” he said. I followed him into his office and sat in the same uncomfortable guest chair as last time. “Rich told me you’ve been banging away at this, so I figured it might be worth a second look. What do you have?”

I dropped the manila envelope on his desk. It landed with an impressive thud. “It’s a lot from the BPD’s case file, plus some notes I made of interviews I’ve done, all the online stuff the BPD found, and some IRC information on people with handles similar to Rondel.”

“Similar how?”

“My girlfriend got me to watch The Fellowship of the Ring with her.” Hess gave me a funny look. “I’ve seen it a bunch of times,” I clarified. Keeping my geek cred mattered. “I wanted to work on my sister’s case file, but I figured a break from it couldn’t hurt. Anyway, we got to the scene when Arwen brings Frodo to Rivendell, and they meet Elrond.”

“Rondel,” said Hess with a nod.

“I didn’t see it sooner. It might not have made a difference considering thirteen years have passed, but I still wish I’d recognized it. I anagrammed the character names from the series and then tried to find anyone using those handles. You have the results of several hours of work.”

Hess lifted the folder and tested its weight. “Rich told me I’m better off not asking you too many questions about how you gather your intel.”

“I think it would be better for both of us,” I said.

“Here’s the deal,” Hess said, going into full agent mode. “We don’t take shortcuts at the FBI. We work with US attorneys and federal judges, and they make sure we cross every T and dot every fucking I. I’ll look at what you have here, and I’ll do my best to spin it into something I can act on.

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