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“Maybe you should sit down,” she suggested.
“You’re telling me to sit down in my own office?”
She threw her hands up. “Or don’t. Whatever, Brian. I don’t have the energy to play games with you right now.” She put her briefcase on the desk, opened it, and pulled out a file folder.
I looked at it. It was the automotive folder I had seen her looking at. At first, I wasn’t sure why she’d brought it to me.
And then I realized. “Why do you have this?” I asked her. “Did you take this out of the building?”
“Yes.”
“You’re not allowed to do that.”
“I only took it over to my office.”
“You removed a classified document.”
“Okay, we can talk about that if you want, you know I have clearance. But, Brian, you have bigger problems at the moment.”
“What are you talking about?”
She sighed. “If you know what’s in this folder, now is the time to be honest about it. I’m coming here today to you first as a courtesy. I didn’t have to come back at all.”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” I told her coldly. “But you’d better give me that folder now. I thought I could trust you to conduct your investigation with a modicum of professionalism.”
She just looked at me. “I think you and I both knowprofessionalismwent out the window a long time ago, Brian, and I can’t turn this folder over to you because it’s evidence now. I have to take possession of it on behalf of the FBI. And I’m going to have to take possession of many more documents as well.”
“Evidence of what?” I demanded.
“Do you not know? I promise, if you do, telling me is in your best interests.”
“I have no idea what you’re alluding to.”
In response, she opened the folder and pointed to a line about halfway down. “Look at this number.”
“Okay. And?”
“This is the total reported spending by the automotive department two years ago.”
“What’s your point?” I asked.
“The figures in the left-hand column don’t add up to the same total. There’s a sum missing.”
“Your math is wrong,” I blurted because that was the only plausible explanation.
“No, it’s not. I wish it were. You don’t know how much I wish that were the answer. I did the math more than once and got the same figures every time. The numbers show the Navy SEALs billed the American taxpayers for seventy thousand dollars than you spent the year before last.”
“Bullshit,” I closed the folder and pushed it back across the desk at her.
“Do the math for yourself, then.”
“I don’t need to. I knew something like this might happen from the moment you walked into my office that first day.
“You knew I was going to find this?”
“I knew you were going to findsomething. And if you couldn’t find anything, you’d make it up.”
She stared at me. “What the fuck? You think I would make up something like this?”
