Murder of Innocence: (Murder Is Forever: Volume 5) by James Patterson

Author:James Patterson [Patterson, James]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: True Crime, Murder, General
ISBN: 9781473579873
Google: ljnQDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2020-11-12T23:53:07.474747+00:00

CHAPTER 4

THE FBI OFFICE IN Pikeville, Kentucky, consists of a single small room in the federal courthouse building. There are two desks, each with its own filing cabinet, and a single window looking out over the town. The brick walls are adorned with maps of the three states that converge on the tri-corner area—road maps, topographic maps, and detailed city maps of all the small municipalities hidden in the Appalachian hills. There’s a small table, a fax machine, a paper shredder, and a coffeemaker.

Mark sits in a square of sunlight at one of the desks waiting for a call back from his supervisor at the Covington office.

The other desk sits empty.

When Mark arrived in Pikeville, the other agent, Jack Cornell, was just days away from transferring to Lexington. He took Mark to lunch at one of the few restaurants in town and gave him a quick rundown of the territory and a warning about what Mark had gotten himself into.

“You’re a Yankee in the mountains of Appalachia,” he said. “This place will chew you up and spit you out if you ain’t careful.”

Cornell was concerned about Mark being solo and not having a proper mentor. He said that Mark would be better off in a bigger office, with more agents around to show him the ropes. Apparently, whoever assigned Mark to this office thought he’d been a Connecticut state trooper before joining the FBI, someone with ample law enforcement experience. But that wasn’t the case—Mark was a rookie fresh out of the FBI Academy who’d previously worked only as a clerk for the FBI, not an agent.

But once the mistake was discovered, the Bureau didn’t want to pull Mark out. And Mark didn’t want to go. He was ready, he assured Cornell.

“You ever have any questions about anything,” Jack Cornell said, “you call up to Covington and ask, you hear me? You’re not out here on your own.”

Mark promised, and he’d kept that promise. He was in regular communication with his superiors. He wanted to make a name for himself in Pikeville; he didn’t want to cut any corners or do anything wrong.

The phone rings—the call Mark has been waiting for. Mark tells Supervisory Special Agent Trent Cavanagh that he’d like to pay a new informant. “She claims she had a relative who was an informant who never got paid,” he says. “I’d like to give her some good-faith money to show that this is for real.”

Mark asks for five hundred dollars, nervous that his supervisor will balk at the amount.

“Why so little?” Cavanagh says.

“Um, well, she hasn’t done anything yet,” Mark says, surprised.

“Listen,” Cavanagh says, “we’ve got deep pockets when it comes to paying informants. There’s money at your disposal, understand?”

When Mark hangs up the phone, he’s relieved.

He’s also excited to share the news with Susan. He’d meant what he said to Kathy last night about how Susan might have done something with her life if she’d been born into different circumstances. Maybe the FBI can help her get out of a bad position and make some improvements in her living situation.

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