Suzie’s House 158: Hairy Considerations

The day before a meet always made Drew nervous. Up until a couple of years ago, the cases he handled involved sexual predators. He would pretend to be a sweet, teenage girl, set up a meet, then turn up as the clean cut FBI agent he really was.

This was different.

He stood in front of his bathroom mirror and rubbed the stubble on his chin, then fingered the four inches of hair hanging down over his forehead. Would it be enough? He’d started growing his hair as soon as he learned his next case would involve drugs, but it didn’t grow very fast.

He still remembered one of his first cases, before he was accepted into the Internet Traffic and Analysis Division. In the middle of negotiations one of the suspects grabbed Drew’s hair, and yanked off his extensions. The look on the man’s face as he stared at the pony tail of fake hair, rubber band and all, would have been comical if not for all the guns that appeared seconds later.

Thinking fast, Drew shouted, “Hey!” at the man. “Give that back!” He’d snatched the fake hair back and grumbled about what his sister would say when she found out what happened to her beauty-school assignment.

They hadn’t shot him, but they wouldn’t deal with him either and the case had to be turned over to another agent.

The ugly thought crossed his mind that turning this case over to someone else in ITA Division had it’s appeal, but he squashed it quickly. What was the point of having left Suzie in the first place if he wasn’t willing to do his job to the best of his abilities?

So, really, having opened the car door of a murder in progress while looking for his potential snitch on Lover’s Lane was not a subconscious desire to sabotage himself. Right? He would do this legitimately. He would perform his job to the best of his abilities while maintaining pressure on his direct superior to effect a transfer to Wisconsin.

It could take years. Even then it would most likely be to the Milwaukee office, not to anything in Madison. Could he get Suzie uprooted from that house she loved so much, not to mention all her friends, and moved to Milwaukee? If he could uproot her from Madison, maybe he could uproot her from Wisconsin?

He thought about Suzie settling in here in Albuquerque, trading in her Chicken Cordon Blue for enchilada sauce. He couldn’t see it. She belonged in that old Victorian, not here in the dry heat and dust.

Which brought him back to how, exactly, he could do his job in such a way as to get himself transferred faster. Angering his superiors wouldn’t do it. Right? Bureaucrats could be vindictive, and deny his request out of sheer spite.

But there were times when people got what they wanted in the bureau when they didn’t deserve it. Accidents and happens chance made it more reasonable to put them where they wanted to be. Such as being removed for a case by having your cover blown through no fault of your own.

Drew mentally walked through that night again.

He had been in the RamirezRule chatroom for a few days, making himself look like a potential customer with talk of peyote trips he’d been on, and missing the Grateful Dead concerts of old, a couple of local raves he’d where he’d held up the wall, and having just come into some money. He claimed he was looking for something special. Maybe the “Chinese Shit”, which was rumored to come from Mexico.

In that time he’d come to know some of the personalities. He’d already dismissed a number of regulars as dilatants. He knew for sure at least two small time dealers. In fact, the local boys – or rather, the local boy and girl on the case – had already identified several of the players through non-internet related sources before he arrived. It was their discovery of the chatroom that brought him into the case. Checking into the other internet activity of the chatroom regulars had uncovered one man in particular who could make a good snitch.

He seemed to know a lot about the petty dealers, and something about the elusive boss who never made an appearance in real life or on the net. He came across as disgruntled – someone the boss had wronged. He was the only connection Drew had been able to find that would do more than scoop up a bunch of petty criminals.

Why the man wanted Drew to meet him on Lover’s Lane – the unofficial name of a road that twisted through the flat lands between Albuquerque and the hills of Santa Fe National Forest – remained a mystery. He was supposed to be in a VW camper van covered in stickers. Only after Drew drove the length of the road twice did he notice the van parked in an area off the road once used for a concert.

No way drew was going to take his sedan off road. He parked, then started walking. While cutting between two cars, he overheard something odd. On one side the car was rocking and the woman in it screaming theatrically, like someone who wanted to show an ex-lover how happy she was with a new man. On the other, a woman gasped, then moaned the way someone does who doesn’t want anyone to overhear.

It was Lover’s Lane. That kind of thing should be expected. He should have simply passed through and gone to his meet. Instead, something about the sound, and the hand on the glass, gave Drew a funny feeling.

Bulletins all over the office warned agent to be on the look out for the lover’s lane slayer. The man had been killing his dates in their own cars on lover’s lane, then leaving them there to be found. In the course of a year, he’d done it a dozen times, and still hadn’t been caught.

On impulse, Drew had opened the door to one car, then when he found only a pair of naked lovers, he’d opened the door to the other car, the one with the cheep diva that had fallen strangely silent.

Why? It wasn’t the sort of carelessness Drew was prone toward. He’d been right the second time, but why did he open any door at all? Why do it in such a showy way that it would look like he was begging to have his cover blown?

Solving a high-profile crime like the serial killer would be a fast yet honorable way off the case. Who could object when he flew back to Wisconsin to await his next assignment?

Except his cover hadn’t been blown. He’d hit the guy over the head on reflex, knocking him out, then called in for backup. By the time the killer was hauled away, Drew was well out of it, but the van was long gone.

It wasn’t like him, but he’d still gotten the job done, and was still on the job, and still had to be the best FBI agent he could be, right? This was him. This was his identity. Andrew Banks, FBI agent. It was all he’d ever wanted to be.

The thing was, staring into the eyes of the man in the mirror, he didn’t much look like himself now. He didn’t much feel like himself either. Then what was the point of being here? What exactly was he trying to prove?

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