Robbery, Homicide, Arson, Vehicular

I only had a vague idea where the police station was in Fredericksburg, so we did some driving around town for a few minutes before I was onto its trail.

I didn't really have a plan for what I was going to say. The police would wonder why my house had burned down and why someone had called 911 saying men with guns had stormed it just prior. Were it not for that 911 call I could just say I wasn't home, or that I left some stress-release candles burning next to the drapes while I was scraping the safety labels off of all my aerosol cans with a knife and cooking bacon in my bedroom with a portable stove, using wood shavings for that hickory flavor. Without that 911 call, it was just another house burning down in the middle of the night. Instead, it was a whole conspiracy that I didn't have the capacity to lie my way out of. This is all peripheral to the fact that my car was found bisecting a guy with a dead cop in his trunk seven days ago.

"What exactly did you say when you called 911?" I asked Amy as I parked in the lot of the station, a rather modern-looking building made of tan stone blocks and metal accents. It looked more like a mall food court than a police station, and the architecture reminded me of my high school. Maybe they were designed by the same guy.
"Last night?" she responded, not seeming to appreciate the slight curvature of the roof line or the amount of natural light that would come from the glass atrium on the eastern side of the building.
"In my closet."
"I don't know, why?"
"Because depending on what you said, I might have to go into there and tell some nice police officers that some guys burned my house down to hide the evidence of their failed attempt to kidnap or kill some teenagers because of, or as a product of, the fact that I had my DNA screwed around with as an embryo and have been secretly trained as a soldier every day in school in some black-ops experiment run by the Marine Corps and designed by my dead father, who may have been killed for trying to sell those designs to foreign governments."
"Let me think..." she said, pursing her lips and rolling her eyes slightly upwards.
"Did you say who you were, at least?"
"N--no," she said.
"What did you say?"
"I gave them your address, which I didn't really remember because I've never sent you a letter so I just said the brownish house about nine houses down on your street, and said to send the police."
"You-- you didn't say anything about guys with guns?"
"I didn't know about any guys with guns. You started watching that video of yourself on your computer, then you stopped talking, darted out of your room, then came back and stuffed me in your closet and handed me your illegally-purchased handgun and told me to call the police. This was all before I heard shooting downstairs and you came and jumped out your window."
"So all you said was to send the police to my house?"
"Yes. They asked for my name but I hung up."
"Oh."
"Is that good?"
"Yes it is."

I put my hand on my door's handle and started to open the door. Amy did the same with hers, but stopped and looked back at me. "Am I coming in?" she asked.

I thought about it, and decided it was probably best if she did. I tried to remember everything that happened that night so I could put together a reasonable story. Amy had called 911 from my cell phone, so that number would be on record, so I couldn't exactly say the call was from a neighbor who noticed the house was on fire. We'd gone out to eat just before and I'd used my debit card to pay so there'd be that as proof that I was out of the house. But why would I call 911 from my phone if I had nothing to do with the fire?

"We were driving back to my place and from outside we saw people breaking into my house, so we parked and you called 911 from my phone while we watched from across the street, or something."
"And why didn't I give my name or say what was going on?"
"Because... you were scared, and trying to make the call quick because you didn't want any of the guys to hear you."
"And why didn't you make the call?"
"Because... I'd left the car and was going to sneak around to the back of my house to see what they were doing, and I gave you my phone and said to use it."
"And why didn't I use my phone?"
"Because... yours had died."
"And why didn't we go right to the police?"
"Because... we're stupid teenagers? We went to your place."
"That doesn't make any sense. Anybody would go to the police if their house was being broken into."
"I don't know, maybe we were all kinds of high and didn't want to go to the police until we'd come down."
"That's dumb."
"Then what? Stupid teenagers? We were going to wait at your place until the cops came but we both fell asleep and didn't wake up until a few hours ago."
"Right. Fell asleep. Because of all the drugs."
I sighed.

After a few minutes we had our story straight, making sure we were synchronized on every made-up detail so we couldn't be separated and made to contradict each other. We went into the police station, stopping at the front desk and saying my house had unfortunately burned down and I believed my mother was inside the station somewhere. I was directed to the second floor, and so to the second floor I went. The sign by the stairwell door on the second floor said "Investigation: Robbery, Homicide, Arson, Vehicular" and I paused, noting that in the past few days I'd dabbled in a bit of each. I couldn't think of any robbery per-se, though, so I awarded ten points to my own scruples. Bank fraud must be on the third floor.

When I pulled the heavy metal door open I remembered stealing that kid's passport in the Vienna airport and took back those ten points.

The floor wasn't the bustling, open floor of littered desks and furious investigation and stale coffee I somewhat expected. Instead, it looked like I was in an office building, standing in the midst of a hallway flanked on both sides by rows of office doors and wide windows. Amy and I wandered the halls until though one of the windows I saw my mom sitting inside a large conference room, sitting at a long, wooden table with her back to the window. Across from her was sitting, in the same plain black suit I'd seen him wear a few days ago, Special Agent Bremer. He was talking to my mom from his seat, his left hand idly spinning an empty Styrofoam coffee cup on the surface of the table.

"Who's that?" Amy asked, peering into the window along with me. "He doesn't have a badge."
"It's on his belt," I said.
"So he's a cop."
"No, he's FBI."
"One of the guys who talked to you before?"
I nodded in the affirmative.
"What would he be doing here?"
"No idea," I said.

Then, into view strolled Special Agent Rubino, walking and talking into a cell phone. He was pacing the room and had stopped behind Bremer when he glanced up at me through the window, acknowledged recognition, and waved me into the room.

I shrugged, took in a breath, and pulled the wooden door to the conference room open and waited for the bullets to start flying at me. When my mother saw me she got up and darted toward me, hugging me and asking if I was alright. I couldn't remember the last time I was so embarrassed. I realized that the last time I'd seen her, the biggest concern I had was a fight at school and an unwillingness to return. With her out visiting my aunt and leaving me alone, I'd gotten used to the slight amount of freedom and having to fend for myself. With her back, I feared I might slip back into being a kid again. Maybe, I pondered, if that happened all of this madness would go away again. Maybe all the death and guns and lies were all just teenage home-alone antics I'd "gotten myself into" and, with at least one parent around again, I'd take my scolding and have everything sorted out by grown-ups.

Just maybe.

I noticed that there were no police officers in the room. Just two FBI agents, two Bakers, and one confused girl trying to decide her place in all of this.

I sat down at the table across from where Bremer sat, and Amy sat a few seats over, I suppose to suggest her disconnection. She was only really there to back up my story to the police.

"How was Vienna?" Bremer asked with a grin once I'd sat down.
I opened my mouth slightly and darted my eyes in my mom's direction.
"She knows," Bremer said.
Rubino, having just finished his phone conversation, said, "We just told her everything."

I looked over at my mom, noticed the redness in her eyes and the tears drying on her face.

I looked back at Bremer. Rubino was sitting down next to him.
"And what does 'everything' include? Because I'm not exactly crystal-clear on everything myself," I said.
Rubino glanced at Amy, then back at me. "Looks like you've answered that question at least," he said.
Bah, more question talk. "Which question?" I asked, very near losing my patience. I wondered how easy it would be to flip this table over.
"How to tell if a girl likes you. I thought you were joking at the time."

I glanced at Amy, grinning and shaking her head, her face leading into her hand propped up on the table.
"I was joking," I said, "but I really need you to tell me what's going on here. I've had a very tedious week and haven't gotten much in the way of answers."
"She'll have to step out," Rubino said, indicating Amy.
"What? She already knows everything here," I said.
"It's adorable that you think that," he said, "but she'll still have to be outside the room for this."

Amy looked over at me, I shrugged at her. She shrugged back, then got up and exited the room. My mom watched both sides of that exchange.

"You said you were in Quantico this morning," Bremer started, "we assume you were there to get Schumer to tell you. About the program, I mean."
"You know about the... program?" I asked.
"Well, yes. We always have."

I thought I felt my jaw twitch. "You knew, this whole time, and you didn't tell me? God, if you'd have told me about this last week I wouldn't have had to go through all of this!"
"We weren't sure that you didn't already know yourself," Bremer said. "We couldn't tell you about it if you didn't know, and we couldn't ask you if you knew without telling you. So, we just asked if you had any questions. We figured, if you knew or didn't, the fact that somebody tried to kill you last Saturday, or that you managed to kill him amazingly, might make you just a little curious."
"What do you mean you couldn't tell me if I didn't know? That would be the main reason to tell me, so I wouldn't have to go trekking across the globe and scaring the hell out of my pretend-principal to find out."
Rubino spoke up, "It's not exactly you can just go up to somebody unsolicited and tell them."
Then Bremer said, "And it was important for us to know how you found out yourself. If you'd already known, that meant that your father had to have told you before he died. If not, we needed you to track down the information from its source."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean," Bremer said slowly, "we needed to use you as a source to get the information for yourself so we can get the rest of the story."

"Still not making any sense," I said.
"We still don't know exactly what Schumer's did and we don't have enough evidence to take him down for it. We were planning on approaching you just before your birthday and telling you, hopefully get you to wear a wire or something for when he or one of his stooges tells you that he just has to say a few words and you'll wake up as a fully trained soldier or whatever lie he was going to tell. We wanted you to be able to find out naturally, so we could track the information organically until we had enough evidence."

I sat silently, contemplating. I still hadn't had any caffeine today so my brain was a little slow in processing all of this new information.

"Were you two the ones on my dad's case before he died? Is that how you knew him?" I said. Schumer said that the FBI was who found out that my dad was trying to sell secrets, and that it was an FBI sting operation that lead to his death.
"Yes, we were dealing with him. We were hoping he would get us enough information about the program to be any use for us, but he died before we had enough."
"Wait, what are you talking about? 'Be any use for you'? What do you care about the program itself? I thought it was enough that you had my dad trying to sneak out the information. Why would you care about the program itself?"
Bremer furrowed his brow. "I don't follow," he said.
"And neither do I," I replied.

"Alright, look," Rubino cut in, holding his palms up, "the relevant information here is that we need to know about what Schumer's little project and you're in the best position to help us do so."
"And with no motivation for me to do so---"
"Your motivation is that we and the entire Bureau are the only people holding the police back from locking you in a cell. We had to tell them that you're an asset to us last week when they had you for a dead cop and John Doe in Lorton, and today we had to tell them a similar lie when they wanted to know why neighbors heard shooting at your house and then watched out their windows as the place exploded."
"Exploded?"
"Since all of this may be our fault for not approaching this correctly and putting you in harm's way, we're keeping the heat off of you. When the Austrian government or Interpol or Europol call us up to ask us about whatever havoc you probably caused over there, we'll be holding them back too. All of this is still on the condition that you remain an asset, and continue to provide us with information about the program or whatever else we ask for." He shut up and folded his arms.
"I guess that means I play ball," I said through my clenched teeth.

Bremer and Rubino stood up in unison. "Good," Rubino said. "We'll leave you to deal with each other, and we'll take care of the police report on the fire so your insurance will cover it. One of us will call you in a few days when we need you."

The two walked to the door, which Rubino opened and walked through. Bremer followed, then stuck his head back in the room.

"Oh, I thought you should know," he started, "that Doe you left in Lorton. We tracked down his identity. Name's Carl Dingan, he had a file at the Bureau as a hitter and I guess we've been looking for him for a while now. So, nice work on that one."

"Glad to be of service," I said with a feigned smile as Bremer disappeared out the door.