“Well, like I said, I’m hoping you all can help me. See, the evidence in this case is interesting. It’s the evidence collected at your home earlier this morning that brought us here to your town, and you three to the police station.” He stopped talking and turned his attention to the brown file on the desk in front of him, and the room fell silent.
I sat there waiting for him to continue. I looked at Val and then at the other two agents. The Smiths were making themselves busy reading similar brown files.
Valerie said, “So, are you going to share the information or are we just going to sit here and watch you guys read?”
Porter continued reading without responding to Valerie’s comment, and then said without looking up, “Mr. Granger, is there any reason you or your wife can think of that would precipitate the kidnapping of your daughter?”
“I thought this was about the evidence,” I said, “but I’ll answer your question. No, I cannot think of a reason.”
“I can’t think of one either,” Valerie said, playing it straight.
Agent Porter snapped the file closed. He looked up from the desk, fixing us both with his deep-set dark eyes and smiling that fake smile again.
“Interesting. Given your background, Ron, can I call you Ron?” He didn’t wait for an answer from me; he just plowed ahead. “I would think you might have a plethora of reasons at your disposal. And given your family business, Mrs. Granger,” he turned his attention to Val and continued, “INESCO has been operating under government contracts since the late 1960s. I would think you, too, might have any number of reasons why your daughter might be the target of kidnappers.”
He stopped talking for a moment. He laced his fingers together in front of him on top of the brown file folder and leaned forward on his forearms before he continued.
“Neither of you can think of any reason why Leecy, your sixteen-year-old daughter – and, I understand, soon to be a freshman at Yale; that’s impressive – might be kidnapped. I find that more interesting than the so-called evidence we were called here to examine.”
Agent Porter pushed himself away from the table and stood. As he did, Agent Travis Smith placed the cardboard file box removed from our house earlier on the desk.
Agent Porter pushed his chair under the desk and leaned against the wall behind him in a dismal effort of nonchalance.
“Here’s the evidence we have so far,” he said, and as he spoke, Agent Travis removed each item. “One smartphone, one pry bar, one piece of white paper with diagram, two .38 caliber revolvers with serial numbers filed off. That’s your evidence Grangers, except the smartphone is a smartphone in appearance only and the diagram leads whoever is in possession of it directly to the bedroom of your daughter. We’ll know more when we return the evidence to the crime lab in Atlanta, but the smartphone only performs one function as far as we can tell.” He paused for effect and shifted his position against the wall before continuing.
“It deactivates alarm systems. Once the device is turned on, it searches for any alarm in its immediate vicinity. Its search radius is no more than forty feet. Once the device locks onto an alarm system, the user only has to press the deactivate button and the job is done. If not for this one piece of evidence, I could dismiss all the others as just your standard home invasion tools and an attempted burglary gone wrong. The intruders just got the wrong room kind of thing.” He stopped and retook his seat as the ever-ready Agent Travis replaced the evidence and removed the box from the table before Porter continued.
“Our preliminary research on all things, Granger, indicates the purchase of a home safe in 2009. I will assume that the said safe is located in a room adjacent to your daughter’s?”
“Yes it is,” Val said, “but how do you know that?”
Porter continued to ignore her.
“If the crime was a home invasion and not an attempted kidnapping, then there must be something the two men were after. They just got bad information regarding the location of the safe. Simple, really. But if this is an attempt to kidnap your daughter, and I’m not convinced it is, there has to be a reason for that also.” Agent Porter stared at each of us as though the weight of his statement would cause us to divulge the reason, but instead of spilling the beans as he expected, we just returned his stare.
“Okay,” he said, “then let’s look for a reason.” He reopened the file he’d been reading when we entered the room.
“Ron Granger, no middle name or initial. Born May 1st, 1967, in Greenville, South Carolina. Ron, you were raised by your Irish grandfather and your grandfather’s half-brother.The file reads that your great uncle was a full-blooded Apache Indian. Were you raised by these two men?”
“I was,” I said.
“Was your great uncle an Apache Indian?”
“No, he was not.”
“Really? The government got something wrong? That’s been known to happen. I’ll come back to that later. Let’s see, the file also states that Ron Granger graduated from Valdosta High School in Valdosta, Georgia, in 1985, and enlisted in the Army under the GI bill,” he paused, looking at me, and then said, “If I run across any other inaccuracies, please stop me so I can correct the file, okay?”
I said nothing.
“You were honorably discharged from the service at the rank of Sergeant in 1990. I’m reading from your Army file now,” he offered. “I’m paraphrasing now. The US Army says that you were of unlimited potential. You performed off the charts on all physical and mental tests, and looking at you now, I can see that even at forty-six years old, you are in excellent physical condition. When you were discharged, your height and weight were listed at six feet and 200 pounds. I can see that hasn’t changed much. A little gray in those sandy blonde locks of yours, and the green eyes to match. Yes, I’d say you’re pretty much the same as your Army file described you upon discharge.”
He turned a couple of pages in the file and began reading. “You enrolled at the University of Georgia and completed both your undergrad and graduate degree in Business by the Fall of 1996, at which time one of your former Army Commanding Officers – a Nicholas Hyder – recommended you for employment at the CIA. Tell me about your time with the CIA, Ron. Let’s talk about the years between 1996 and 2003. What did you do before you went to work for the family business at INESCO?”
It was a bit unsettling to have my life laid out in front of me like that, just facts, devoid of all nuance and emotion. I looked from my wife to my daughter, and noticed both had downcast eyes. Valerie was looking at the floor in hopes her life wouldn’t be laid bare in front of our daughter as mine had. Leecy was also looking at the floor, but the microprocessor that was her brain was working at the speed of light. I was hoping she wasn’t mad at me for keeping secrets from her.
“You seem to have all the answers; why don’t you tell me?” I said.
Porter closed my file and folded his hands together on top of it like a fourth grader when his test was completed. “First, tell me about your Great Uncle John. Is that right? I mean that’s his name, right? The Indian?”
“He has nothing to do with the reason you’re here.”
“Oh, I know. I’m just curious. It’s not every day I read a file of a man of half Irish, half Native American descent.”
“There’s nothing to tell that you can’t read for yourself. My grandfather was Irish. My uncle was a full-blooded American Indian. They shared a father. That’s it.”
“Oh, come on, Ron. Where’s the harm in telling me what tribe your uncle came from?”
There was no harm in telling him; I just didn’t like nosey people. I thought about how the information could be used against me and decided it was okay to share.
“Great Uncle John wasn’t Apache; he was Comanche.”
“Thank you. I’ll bet you have some great stories from your childhood. Must have been interesting being raised by half brothers that were so different from each other. That brings me to my next question: wha
t happened to your parents?”
I was prepared for that question. I’d been asked that by better interrogators than Agent Porter and had never revealed anything about my parents to anyone other than my wife. I wasn’t about to answer Agent Porter’s question, and judging from the look on his face, he knew it.
“No comment.”
He continued by changing the subject. “Your time with the CIA is classified till 2035. If we want to figure out why an attempt was made to kidnap Leecy, I’m going to need you to share that classified information.”
“As you well know, or should, I can’t break the seal of confidentiality without fear of imprisonment. I’m allowed to say that I don’t think anything I may or may not have been involved with between the years of 1996 and 2003 has anything to do with what happened at our home. You can always get on the phone and call someone at Langley with the proper clearance level to read the classified file for you,” I said, and then added, “but the FBI has no clearance at Langley, so that won’t work either. Sorry, I guess you’ll just have to take my word for it.”
“Since 2003, you’ve been part of your wife’s family company. So, you two work together. What do you do at INESCO, Ron?”
“You already know from my file; it’s sales.”
“Come on now, Ron; you’re being modest. You’re an executive with the company, isn’t that right?”
“A fancy title signifying nothing. I sell the products INESCO makes in the rubber division.”
Agent Porter smiled and then moved on by turning his attention elsewhere.
“Valerie Cathleen Granger, born June 22nd, 1969, right here in Park City, Georgia.” He glanced at his watch before continuing and then smiled that smile again.
“Let me be the first to wish you an early happy forty-fifth birthday.” He didn’t stop for a reply; he just kept reading. “I see from your Georgia driver’s license that you’re listed as five feet, seven inches, with brown hair and brown eyes, and you weigh 127 pounds.” He paused to verify the information. “You graduated from the local high school here in Park City in 1985. You went on to complete both your undergraduate degree from Yale and Masters Degree in Business from Wharton in four years.” He paused as if this was his first time reading that sentence. “Like mother like daughter, academically and in almost every other way. Is Wharton in your future too?” he asked, looking at Leecy, but she didn’t answer.
He continued. “I just have to say wow. I see where you get your brains, young lady. You graduated high school at sixteen, just like Mom, and now you’re on your way to Yale, just like your mother. That’s an impressive academic record, and it looks like you’re well on your way to filling Mom’s shoes.” He turned back to Valerie. “You came back to Park City after you finished your education. You went to work for the family business, and by all accounts saved the then-struggling INESCO from financial ruin. You spearheaded the company’s resurgence as a government-funded research giant while branching out into other fields, which have ensured the company’s stability and continued growth.” He stopped reading and looked at Valerie, smiling that bullshit smile of his. “You managed to do one hell of a lot since 1989, and I understand you’ve been part-time since the birth of your daughter in 1997?”
“Actually,” Valerie said. “I’ve been part-time since 1996, but I didn’t save the company by myself. My brothers, David and Isaac, along with my father, Reuben, are responsible for INESCO’s resurgence and success.”
“You’re too modest, Valerie. We have files on everyone concerned with this case, and that includes your brothers and father. Unless we missed something, and I don’t think we did, you, my dear, are the brains behind the company,” Agent Porter said. “And you don’t think that might have played a role in the attempt to kidnap your daughter?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Interesting. I say that because isn’t it true that you’re awaiting word on several proposals you’ve made to the Department of Defense and NASA?”
“Yes with regard to the DOD, and that could be said at any given time, but no, we haven’t worked with NASA in thirty years. It’s our job to make proposals. We’re a research and development facility, Agent Porter. We currently have two dozen proposals in the pipeline at the DOD, and could have twice that number if they needed them. If we aren’t innovating old technologies or inventing new ones, we aren’t doing our job.”
“I see,” he said, and then followed up, “So you don’t think there could be a connection?”
“No, I don’t see how there could be a connection. Everything we do at INESCO with the DOD is done in secrecy. We submit our proposals under our alphanumeric prefix code, and then if the project goes, I assign our DOD numeric prefix code. A person would have to have both of those codes to identify an individual project. No, I don’t see a connection between what we do at INESCO and what happened at our home.”
“What if I were to tell you that the young man your husband injured was a former employee of your company?” Agent Porter asked.
Valerie laughed and said, “I recognized his face, and if I’m not mistaken, he was employed in our rubber division as an entry-level compounder. I’d have to look at his employee file to be 100% certain about that, but he had nothing to do with, and therefore no knowledge of, anything going on in R&D.”
Agent Porter stood up as his two silent cronies began packing up their files and other paperwork.
“One other thing I’d like to ask you, and that’s, how does a woman with no history of firearms training that we could find make a shot like the one that killed the intruder? I mean, even on my best day, under perfect conditions at the range at Quantico, I can’t hit the bull’s eye. But you, Mrs. Valerie Granger, shot a man who was twenty-seven feet away in partial light between the eyes. How’s that possible?”
“My dad taught me to shoot when I was a kid,” Valerie said.
“That’s your answer?” he asked. He stared down at Valerie for a little too long before going on.
“Okay. I see how it is. The conclusion we reached about thirty minutes after we arrived in Park City is that the unfortunate incident at your home was a home invasion by what turns out to be a couple of out of work ex-cons. The man that was killed was James Smotherman, recently paroled from the Federal Penitentiary in Atlanta. I’m sure with a few additional man-hours, the two men that entered your home illegally will be shown to have known each other in some capacity. Furthermore, I’m confident that the man in the hospital is Daniel Pickett, who targeted your home because of his having worked briefly as a low-level employee at INESCO. He most likely assumed there was cash or other valuables on hand. This incident was not an attempt to kidnap Leecy Granger, but they pay me to investigate, so I investigated. It was nice to meet you all, and I apologize if my line of questions ruffled any feathers. It’s my job to find the answers, and that’s not always a pleasant process to undertake.”
The Smith boys, as if on cue, stood and filed out of the room, with Agent Porter lagging behind.
“I’ll inform Chief Rawlings this case is closed and there’s no need for any further concern. Good day, Grangers.” He walked through the open door, but stopped as if something occurred to him, and turning, he came back into the room.
“One last thing,” he began, “when I started with the FBI in 2002, there were stories – more like rumors really – floating through the agency. I never gave the stories much credence till I read your file this morning, Ron. Do you want to know why?”
“Not really,” I said.
“Well, I’ll tell you; I think you will find it interesting. See, the stories I heard were about a Native American CIA agent operating in the Middle East and Europe in the mid 90s. The rumor was, this operator was the CIA’s best. He was so good, in fact, that he operated alone. I remember thinking that was ridiculous. I knew the CIA had kill teams, but no one believed there was this single guy out there somewhere. I didn’t believe it. I dismissed the rumors. That’s until
I read your file and immediately began to wonder if this was the guy. I mean why wouldn’t I think that? Now, add to the file what you did to Mr. Pickett with your bare hands and you know what I’m thinking? I’m thinking this is the guy. I’m thinking the rumors I’d heard all those years ago are actually true.” Agent Porter leaned in real close to me and asked, “Just between us, are you the guy?”
I sat there looking at the now empty table, listening to Agent Porter and running down my list of things I didn’t like about the Smith boys. Valerie was now standing, and I thought she might grab Leecy and leave, but she didn’t move a muscle. I wondered what Leecy was thinking. And then I stood and faced Agent Porter.
“I heard those rumors, too. Did you hear that this guy used some Indian war chant or something like that before he killed his target? That he did all his wet work with a knife and tomahawk?”
I let that hang there in the air for a moment. Then I laughed. “Those stories have been floating around for a long time. Long before I even started at the agency.” And then, leaning in close to Agent Porter’s ear I said, “But if I was that guy, I would be a real dangerous man, wouldn’t I?”
Agent Porter stopped himself from backing away from me. He covered his reaction well by shifting his weight from foot to foot, saying, “Yeah; it was just a crazy notion. You’re right; those stories are ridiculous. Just rumors. CIA legends. I just thought with your heritage you would find it interesting, that’s all. Good day again, Grangers.”
He turned and left the room, closing the door behind him. I looked from Valerie to Leecy and saw no sign of concern or worry about what Agent Porter and I had said to each other. That was a good thing, because I didn’t want to talk about it anymore, at least not in the police station.
“You guys ready to get out of here and get started with Val’s big birthday plans?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Yeah, but first you need to know there’s a problem with the FBI’s take on this home invasion,” Valerie said.
“What problem?” I asked.