Chapter Fifteen
“What the hell happened to you?”Milton asked as Jesse took a seat at his desk. “Was it some weird sex thing?”
Jesse slung his messenger bag off his shoulder and logged into his computer. Answering Milton’s question lead to a sticky line of information. Admitting he’d illegally done a search for a case the FBI was no longer investigating wasn’t in his best interest. Outright lying and saying it was a sex thing would lead to all kinds of speculation about his personal life. Being gay was enough of a struggle some days. Gay and kinky with the federal government breathing down his neck was far more than Jesse could handle that morning. Possibly any morning.
“Accident with the strap on my bag,” Jesse lied. Strange how the words came out of him easily when he stopped trying to think about them. First, he’d lied to Bryce about not having any evidence on him, and now he’d lied to his partner.
“Sure,” Milton said, his tone expressing that he believed the opposite.
Jesse reached for the notepad in his bag, but came across the two journals he had stowed away instead. He pulled them out. One was Ephraim’s, an older leather-bound volume that he’d brought along to read in case he found nothing at Lawson’s place. The other was Lawson’s thin black book. He set them down on his desk and opened Lawson’s to a page toward the end.
A chill went over him. That other place, the one where the tentacle creatures lived, came to mind. Jesse could read a few languages, but Lawson’s journal wasn’t in anything he recognized. The longer he stared at the strange markings, the more they seemed to have a kind of slither to them. The language probably wasn’t native to Earth.
He opened a web browser. If he could figure out whether Lawson had invented the language or used a pre-constructed one, that might buy him some favor once he fessed up to Bryce that he’d stolen the damn thing in the first place.
ASAC Hadler opened the door to his office. As soon as he saw Jesse, he motioned for him to come into his office. That was not the face of a man who wanted to congratulate an agent and give him a new case. He was pissed.
Shit. Jesse logged off his computer and headed for Hadler’s office.
Hadler was an older man, probably only a few years past Milton. Though he’d softened around the edges since his youth, he still looked as if he could chase a perp down if necessary.
Hadler took his seat behind his desk and waited until Jesse closed the door. “I had an interesting phone call. Apparently, an agent was searching Stan Lawson’s apartment, which is strange since we don’t have Stan Lawson in custody, nor do we have an arrest warrant for him. We certainly don’t have a search warrant, and we’d never send a single agent on such an investigation.”
Jesse held still. Maybe if he didn’t draw attention to himself, Hadler would say a few more words and then get on with his morning.
But then Hadler didn’t have anyone else to focus on in that moment and Jesse had run out of luck the second he rolled out of bed. Hadler levelled his angry glare on Jesse. Double shit. Jesse was in deep trouble.
“Do you want to explain what you were doing illegally searching a residence?” Hadler asked.
“Not really, sir,” Jesse replied.
“Try that again.”
Doing his best to lay on a thick ‘I’m just an innocent rascal’ charm, Jesse argued, “Lawson didn’t make the complaint. He couldn’t have. Neither did a defense attorney or an AUSA, so how seriously do you need to consider the information you got from this phone call?”
Hadler did not look impressed with Jesse’s continued deflections.
Triple shit. Jesse was out of luck. He needed to come clean. “I wanted to check Lawson’s apartment for signs of cult activity or stolen goods. The Valless statue has to be somewhere and I think Lawson was behind the theft.”
“We’ve added the statue to the registry. Until it shows up, that’s the extent of our involvement. As for scouring Lawson’s apartment, you broke the law,” Hadler said.
“Sir, I—”
“However,” Hadler cut in. “Since this is your first run-in with our local DoD friends, it’s been left up to me to decide how to handle this situation. You’re lucky no one’s pressing charges. Why don’t you take a few vacation days? Make it two weeks. Get some rest. Finish moving in.”
Their local DoD friends. Hadler had to mean the DWO. Whether he knew exactly who he was covering for or not, he was part of the cover-up machine.
But that didn’t bother Jesse nearly as much as his boss getting a phone call in the first place. Despite Bryce’s platitudes, he must have called his boss, who then called Jesse’s boss.
The asshole.
Jesse swallowed down his rage. Screaming at his boss wouldn’t change his situation. But he couldn’t just let the case go. Especially not when he finally had a link to Crowley Construction.
That was an argument Hadler wouldn’t want to hear. He had the demeanor of a superior who had spoken and considered the issue closed. If Jesse pushed, Hadler would file formal reprimands, and that would damage his career.
However, if Jesse was “on vacation” and discreetly researched his neighborhood, Hadler wouldn’t have a reason to get pissed at him. Jesse would just have to stay under the DWO’s radar. “It would be nice to get the cardboard smell out of my place.”
“That’s the spirit,” Hadler said. “I’ll push the paperwork through, make sure you get paid.”
