City of Shadows

Chapter 53

9 October 2001, Harcourt, Ohio

‘That’s the girl,’ said Sheriff Marge McDormand. ‘The waitress. Her name’s Kaydee-Lee Williams.’

Cooper caught a glimpse of her through the diner’s broad glass window, dotted with fading yellow cardboard stars with handwritten assurances on them: ‘All Day Breakfast — we’ll fill you up like a truck!’, ‘Freshly Brewed Coffee — unlimited refills!’

They crossed Harcourt’s main street, quiet at this hour. Cooper put a hand on the door.

‘Go easy on her,’ said Marge. She glanced at the other agent — ‘ Agent Mallard… like the duck,’ he’d joked as he’d presented his ID — and the young woman with Agent Cooper. She’d not offered to show any kind of ID. Not even given a name. She had an icy face, the calm, lifeless look of a serial killer if truth be told.

‘Just go easy on Kaydee-Lee,’ said Marge. ‘She’s no troublemaker. She’s certainly no terrorist.’

Cooper nodded and smiled politely. ‘Thank you for your assistance, Sheriff, we’ll take it from here. Mallard?’

‘Sir?’

‘See the sheriff back to her car.’

‘Yes, sir.’

Cooper pushed the door of the diner open and Faith followed him inside.

The doorbell dinged as the door swung shut. It was quiet inside. Empty except for the waitress watching a small TV set sitting on the end of the counter. Cooper walked up the aisle between check-cloth tables. He watched Mallard leading the sheriff back to her squad car and getting in the front with her. He noted the sheriff watching things intently from there.

Let her watch. He smiled. Cooper had authority enough to shut her up, to lock the whole town down behind an impenetrable ring of road blocks if need be.

The waitress finally responded to the sound of their approach and turned from the television to offer Cooper a warm, friendly smile. ‘Help you guys?’ She noticed Faith behind him. ‘Table for two?’

Cooper pulled out his badge and flipped the wallet open with one smooth flick of his wrist. He loved doing that; he felt like Captain Kirk flipping open a communicator. One of the many little perks of the job. ‘FBI. I’d like to have a talk with you, Kaydee-Lee.’

She looked at his ID. Her eyes widened. ‘Did you just say FBI? Like on the TV?’

‘I’m Agent Cooper,’ he replied and stepped to one side. ‘And this is Agent Faith. We just want to ask you some questions.’

‘Am I… am I in trouble? Have I — ’

Cooper shook his head. ‘No… not at all. The sheriff says you’re a good girl.’ He grabbed a stool and perched on it. ‘And, you know, I’m inclined to believe her. I just wondered if you could help us out with something?’

Kaydee-Lee’s face relaxed a little. ‘Uh… OK, I’ll try.’

Cooper pulled a sheet of printer paper out of his pocket. The image on the face-down glossy side had been a nightmare to obtain. He’d had the devil of a time extracting it from that futuristic touch-screen mobile phone they’d recovered in that bridge archway in New York. He’d ended up having to draft some tech-heads from the Bureau’s research division to open the phone up and extract the solid-state data-storage chip. Of course they’d first tried one of the data cables supplied with the single pre-release ‘iPod’ that Apple had begrudgingly released to them. It appeared to have the same connector, and, given this device from the future was manufactured by the very same company, Cooper had been hoping they were going to be able to access its data storage.

But that would have been too easy, wouldn’t it? The futuristic mobile phone was using a different data-communication protocol.

The next step — something of a last resort — was pulling the damned thing to pieces and getting their hands on the data-storage chips inside. At which point, before they completely destroyed the thing, one of the Bureau nerds suggested simply getting the image up on the device’s screen… and just photographing the screen.

Obvious really.

Cooper turned the photograph over on the counter. ‘You’ve been talking to this guy recently.’

Kaydee-Lee leaned forward and scrutinized the image more closely. Her breath caught involuntarily. ‘Errr… not sure… I…’

‘It’s best to just be straight up and honest with us, Kaydee-Lee,’ he said. ‘This is serious stuff.’

Her cheeks turned a mottled pink. ‘OK… he’s been in here for coffee a coupla times. That’s all.’

‘And you’ve been talking, haven’t you?’

‘Sure… he’s kinda friendly, I guess.’ She looked up at him. ‘What’s this about?’

‘Terrorism, Kaydee-Lee. The worst kind of terrorism.’

She laughed. More a strangled giggle. ‘Oh no… not him. No.’ She bit her lip and shook her head until her face straightened. Nerves.

‘No, he’s not a terrorist.’ She looked at the TV. Fox News was showing images of cranes pulling apart the mound of debris. ‘Hang on… is this anything to do with that?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say.’ Cooper paused. Enough of a pause to be sure she understood that, yes, it actually was very much to do with that. ‘All I can tell you is that we need you to be one hundred per cent honest with us. To be a good, patriotic American citizen and tell us what you can about this young man.’

She nodded. ‘OK… he’s called Liam, I know that much.’

‘Liam O’Connor,’ said Faith. ‘We already know this.’

‘And he’s from Ireland,’ added Kaydee-Lee.

‘Tell me, Kaydee-Lee… is he alone? Or perhaps with some others?’

Her hesitation gave her away. She was holding something back. ‘Come on, Kaydee-Lee, we need to know about this young man. Lives… a lot of innocent lives could be at stake.’

‘Lives?’ Her face was flushed fully crimson now. ‘Seriously?’

Cooper decided to buy a little of her trust. ‘I’ll level with you, Kaydee-Lee. What I’m about to tell you is top secret and goes no further, do you understand?’ She nodded.

‘We have reason to believe this Liam is part of a terror cell that was based in New York and quite possibly involved in some way with what happened there in September. Do you understand? Perhaps they were part of a planning team, or coordinators or a back-up team. We don’t know precisely what their involvement was yet.’

‘But… but… he… doesn’t look like one of them.’

Them. By that she meant an Arab. A Muslim.

‘We have enemies that come in all shapes and sizes these days, I’m afraid.’ Cooper recalled a rather colourful turn of phrase he’d heard President Bush use during a press conference the other day. ‘There’s an axis of evil out there, Kaydee-Lee, a coalition of bad groups all working together to topple our country: the Taliban, Al Qaeda, Iran, Iraq, China, North Korea. Even the IRA. Bad guys, Kaydee-Lee, all of them. Hell, we’ve even got our own American citizens working against us… White Supremacists, Nation of Islam, Anti-capitalists, Anarch-’

‘Did you just say IRA?’ She swallowed anxiously. ‘IRA? That’s those Irish ones, isn’t it?’

‘That’s right.’ Cooper nodded slowly. ‘That’s exactly right. So… he may have been using you, Kaydee-Lee.’

A tear began to well up in one eye, then spilled down her cheek. ‘I thought he was being friendly.’ Her mouth began to quiver. ‘I… I thought he, you know, actually liked me.’

Cooper reached for a napkin further along the counter and passed it to her.

‘It’s possible he was using you, Kaydee-Lee. Using you to get some local information.’ Cooper reached for her hand and guided the napkin to mop up some mascara that had smudged.

‘And listen…’ His voice softened. ‘Maybe he also liked you, Kaydee-Lee. He may be a terrorist, but that doesn’t stop him being human, right?’

She dabbed at her eyes miserably, nodded. She sniffed, her chin dimpled and her bottom lip curled as she tried to stifle a sob. ‘But I really like… liked him. He wasn’t like the others that come in. Truckers, creepy old men… always trying to hit on you an’ stuff. He’s, like,’ she corrected herself, ‘he was, like, a… well, a real gentleman.’

‘That is men for you. They are all the same,’ said Faith without a hint of warmth or empathy in her voice. Cooper turned to look at her. Where the heck did she get that from? She was a robot, wasn’t she? Not some agony aunt. He figured she must have picked it up from some daytime TV show. Oprah or something.

Kaydee-Lee whispered pathetically, ‘Everyone ends up using me.’

‘Kaydee-Lee.’ Cooper held her hand. She didn’t flinch at that. It was vaguely comforting to have someone reach out for her, even if he did look like some kind of pale-skinned lizard wearing a Men in Black suit.

‘Kaydee-Lee… we need to know a little bit more about Liam. Was it just him? Were there others? Can you tell me?’

She dabbed at her eyes, wiped her nose dry, straightened her shoulders and did her best to put on a calm, totally-in-control face, just like the scary-looking FBI lady over the counter from her. She wondered what it would be like to be like her, so incredibly ice-cool. Kaydee-Lee could only imagine how wonderful it would be to be just like this agent lady: elegant, confident, disciplined, ruthless. She bet no one ever used her.

‘Miss?’

The woman stirred. ‘Yes?’

‘Is it, like, really hard to become an FBI agent? Could someone, you know, someone like me ever become one? Could I end up like you?’ she asked hopefully.

The woman exchanged a glance with her partner. It looked like he was giving her permission to go ahead and answer the question. Her grey eyes disappeared for a moment behind flickering eyelids, then finally she answered. ‘No. That is extremely unlikely.’

That figures. Kaydee-Lee sighed. I’ll be a waitress till the day I die.

Cooper looked like he was getting impatient. ‘Kaydee-Lee? Were there others? Can you tell me?’

She nodded. ‘Oh yeah, I can tell you. There were others all right. They wanted a place to go an’ hide up. They said they wanted somewhere quiet and private.’ She raised two pairs of fingers and air-quoted. ‘Somewhere where they could go and do their stupid science experiments.’