Chapter 24: Whipsaw

JJ and Caleb were sitting on a plush couch in a well appointed antechamber. JJ was tapping a thick folder into one of her palms impatiently. Caleb held his briefcase on his knees, and tapped the case with one finger. His finger tap was synchronized with the sound of JJ's folder tapping her hand. They were waiting to see the same person, but for completely different reasons.

The folder JJ held contained the required forms, in triplicate, to file a harassment charge. Inclusion of medical documentation of observations during a classified operation, required the forms to be witnessed and signed by her Commanding Officer. In JJ's case, that was the Commanding General of the Arizona National Guard.

Caleb's briefcase contained the case file of a high dollar welfare fraud investigation involving millions of dollars. According to the case file, his lead informant had been shot in Central Phoenix, and his girlfriend was kidnapped. A 'resident' had noted the military license number of the vehicle involved in the incident, and even gave a credible description of the gunman. Of course, the case file was a complete fabrication. Caleb was pretty sure that General Branch wouldn't want to challenge any of the 'witnesses.'

The license number was traced to the Arizona National Guard, according to the file. Guard records indicated that the vehicle in question was one of several that had been signed out by Master Sergeant Denison, a member of General Robert Branch's retinue. The description the witness provided of the shooter was remarkably similar to Master Sergeant Denison, too.

The Commanding General agreed to set up a meeting, in his office. The key attendees for the meeting were the CG, Lieutenant General Frank Key, and his Adjutant, plus Caleb, General Branch, and Master Sergeant Denison. The CG added Captain Janus to the guest list because General Branch was in the middle of her charges, too.

"We might as well dump everything in the same pot and see what comes out," General Key had grumbled. "I have better things to do than play nursemaid to some general with a history of working with the CIA."

Caleb was particularly nervous. This meeting needed to get started, and soon. He had a surprise visitor for the meeting, but the visitor wouldn't be as effective if he didn't arrive in the middle of the meeting.

The door to the hallway opened, and Caleb's heart was in his throat. General Branch walked in, and Caleb almost sighed aloud in relief.

General Branch stopped when he saw the two seated on the couch, and scowled. There would not be a repeat of the previous evening. He was in full dress uniform this time. He was in charge this time.

"What are you two doing here?" General Branch demanded.

JJ stood before saying, "Good afternoon, General Branch," in her best military protocol. "As I explained last night, sir. If I didn't get some satisfactory answers, I would be filing a report this morning. I did as I said I would. I'll be in the meeting to answer any questions that pertain to my affidavits."

"You would file a harassment charge against me?" General Branch asked incredulously.

This was all he needed. Robert had slept less than two hours the night before, due to trying to get a handle on the mess Dick had caused. He still didn't have a handle on it, and didn't have a clue about how to get a handle on the situation. He didn't even know what had happened to create the situation yet! Receiving a direct order to report to the local CG only added to the confusion, and increased his sense of foreboding. The order contained the correct protocols, and Robert knew that he couldn't ignore them.

'Brigadier General Robert Branch and Master Sergeant Richard Denison are requested and required to appear before Lieutenant General Frank Key at fourteen hundred.'

General Branch had sent out similar orders to get key command group leaders together to solve a serious SNAFU, but he had never received one. Robert discovered that the orders made him very uncomfortable. There was a small problem in the orders. Requiring his Master Sergeant to be at the meeting stretched Robert's nerves to the breaking point. Dick was dead, and Robert couldn't even point to a dead body as a reason for the Master Sergeant's noncompliance. Robert had finished filling the hole in the desert that held his body about three this morning.

Robert had wracked his brains, trying to think of a way to get the body into a coroner's hands that wouldn't implicate him in some way. Of more concern was his being exposed to some unforeseen danger, if he turned the body in. The only option, in his mind, was to get rid of the body. And now he needed it.

"Sir, I told you that I would file the paperwork last night!" JJ said, trying to match the General's tone of disbelief. "Didn't you believe me?"

"I ... I ... I..." General Branch stammered, completely flabbergasted that, in the middle of everything else, he was being charged with sexual harassment. 'If it weren't so infuriating, it would be funny, ' he thought to himself in amazement.

General Branch glared at Caleb and demanded, "What are you doing here? Unless you're her lawyer, there is no reason for you to be in this farce."

"My being here doesn't have anything to do with Captain Janus," Caleb protested. "I was as surprised to see her here as she was to see me!"

"Then why are you here?" General Branch demanded angrily, and getting more confused.

"On a DES case," Caleb spat right back. "I'm an investigator at DES! Remember?"

"What does DES have to do with the National Guard?" General Branch pressed.

"Somebody killed the key person in a case that I've been working on for three years," Caleb growled. "We were supposed to wrap it up this week. Over twenty million in welfare fraud, and now the whole case is dead unless I can find his girlfriend."

"Okay. Okay. You have a case that didn't turn out the way you hoped. I get it," General Branch barked. "Why are you here?"

"Because the clues to the men that killed my case led me to the National Guard," Caleb snarled right back.

"Caleb, General Key's aide just stood to go to the door to call us in," Al announced calmly in Caleb's head.

"Perfect," Caleb replied. "Just enough time to have General Branch thoroughly rattled when we go in there."

"My inside guy was shot down like a dog, and left in the street. His girlfriend, the only other one that may have the information we need, was kidnapped," Caleb continued, as he stood. "I have less than twelve hours to find her, General, before this case is truly, and finally, screwed. A neighbor saw what happened, and saw the man that shot my guy. He wrote down the license plate number, a government plate. According to the national guard, Master Sergeant Denison signed for that vehicle. The neighbor's description of the shooter sounded very much like your Master Sergeant. If my case blows up, every detail about the case will blow up with it. That includes you and your Master Sergeant and every bit of it will be headline news!"

Caleb had been advancing, step by step, throughout his tirade, until he was nearly nose to nose with the General when he figuratively spat out the last 'headline news.' The door swung open to the inner sanctum as the General placed a hand in the center of Caleb's chest and shoved, hard.

"Got you," Caleb and Al said in unison.

Caleb knew that the only way to touch General Branch was if the General initiated the action. He really needed to touch the General. Caleb could read the General's surface thoughts with the signature JJ had passed to him. Touching him was the only way to get access to his deeper memories, to know everything the General had done since the evening before. Caleb wasn't surprised by the cold-blooded efficiency of the man.

General Branch had used the two basket cases, Slimy One and Two according to Kim, to get the body in the van and to the desert. The two men even dug the hole for the body. The hole was a good deal deeper than it would have been if the General hadn't been standing on the edge of the hole ordering them to dig deeper.

Robert knew they were basket cases. A few questions was all that it took to convince him that something was seriously wrong with the two men. They vaguely remembered a guy getting shot, and snatching a girl. They even remembered raping the girl, until she died when the Master Sergeant got too excited. They only remembered some bright lights after that, and then the General woke them up.

When they finished digging the hole, General Branch shot both men, then dumped Dick's body on top of them. He hadn't realized how much work filling a hole with dirt could be.

General Branch still hadn't found out anything about the kidnapped girl, or her boy friend. His nerves had been winding tighter and tighter, waiting for the other shoe to drop, since leaving the unmarked grave in the desert. It looked like the other shoe had just hit the floor, and it was a big one.

Caleb needed all the deeper memories for his plan, but the touch also allowed him to fill the General with feelings of dread. If being able to wrap the General's nerves tighter was the whipped-cream on the dessert, General Key's Adjutant seeing a General in uniform violently shove a civilian was the cherry on top.

Caleb could probably be accused of hamming it up at that point. He stumbled backward, tripped over an end table, breaking it, and fell on the couch.

"What the hell is going on?" the Adjutant snapped.

"He didn't want me to be here," Caleb replied as he bounced back to his feet. "I explained why I was staying," he said angrily. "He didn't like it."

"Everyone, in the office, now," the Adjutant barked. He looked at a female Sergeant sitting behind a desk and ordered, "Write down exactly what happened in this room. When you're finished, clean this mess up."

"Yes, Sir," the Sergeant snapped in the proper military fashion.

"General," the Adjutant said with a curt nod, "After you."

General Branch marched past the Adjutant, nearly quivering with rage. The Adjutant followed him in, with JJ and Caleb following the adjutant.

The Adjutant gestured toward one of two chairs on one side of an open semi-circle in front of General Key's desk for General Branch. Caleb and JJ sat in the two chairs on the other side of the semi-circle.

"I intend to get to the bottom of this cluster ... um ... this mess," General Key amended, growling from behind his desk, after glancing at Captain Janus.

General Branch opened his own briefcase, and extracted a document that he passed to General Key.

While General Key was perusing the document, General Branch said, "You don't have authority over me, Sir. You are not in my chain of command. I answer only to the Pentagon, and the White House, and that document is all the authorization I need to walk out of here."

"The general has already threatened to lock me up, and make me disappear," Caleb said. "A trusted member of the press already has my story. If I do disappear, the story will be in tomorrow morning's paper."

"Is that a threat, Mr. Connor?" General Key growled, as if it were the only tone of voice he possessed.

"Not at all, Sir," Caleb replied. "It's just a statement of fact, for General Branch's benefit, and has nothing to do with the case that I'm here for. He needs to know that I will not hide just because he barks at me."

"I also found a tracker on my rental car, yesterday," Caleb continued. "It was too sophisticated for the other scum that I'm after, so I am assuming that it belonged to the General, but I don't have proof. If I did, I would bring charges against him. In my line of work, being tracked is dangerous to me and my informants. That may have led to the death of my informant last night. The complaint has already been filed about the incident. As the highest local military authority, you can expect to see it in about a week, Sir."

"This just keeps getting better and better," General Key muttered. He looked at General Branch, threw the paper on the desk like a piece of trash, and growled, "You can file a protest through the proper chain of command when we're through. Until then, you will cooperate voluntarily, or you will cooperate in chains. Is that clear enough for you?"

At General Branch's curt, furious, nod, General Key asked, "Where's your dog robber? That Master Sergeant that follows you around?"

"I don't know," General Branch answered stiffly. "I talked to him late yesterday afternoon, but I haven't talked to him since."

"Does that mean your cell phone records won't show contact between you and the Master Sergeant since yesterday afternoon?" Caleb asked.

"Mr. Connor," General Key boomed.

Okay, the General did have another tone of voice.

"I will conduct this fact-finding investigation! Is that clear?" General Key demanded. He didn't wait for Caleb to answer before turning to General Branch and asked, "What will your cell phone records show as the last time you talked to your dog robber?"

"Um ... Maybe last night," General Branch admitted, clearly nervous about the admission.

Caleb had taken out his case file and began flipping through pages.

"Sir," Caleb said politely, when he got to the page he was looking for, "The 911 call was logged at 8:42 PM. The exact time the General received a call could be significant. I can get the call information with a subpoena, but that means I would have to go to court and lay all this out for a judge. That would also mean the press might get access to it. I'm trying not to expose the Army to embarrassment, but I won't protect the Army at the expense of my case."

"Why would the time be significant, Mr. Connor?" General Key asked.

"If there was communication between the two, prior to the 911 call, it could be as innocent as the General giving the Master Sergeant the night off," Caleb explained slowly, as if organizing his thoughts as he went. "Communication after the 911 call could have the same innocent purpose, but the Master Sergeant's demeanor on the phone could be significant. If there was communication before and after the 911 call, it would seem to indicate evolving operations with status updates coming in."

"You said you have twelve hours to wrap up your case," General Key mused. "Can you get a subpoena that fast?"

"I can have a subpoena in two hours," Caleb assured the General. "I would need to justify that type of rush, and would be viewed as derelict if I didn't keep General Branch, and his phone, under observation while waiting the two hours. I would need to call the county or state to have the general picked up during the subpoena process."

"I guess that means that we don't have a choice but to resolve as many questions as possible, immediately," General Key growled, glaring at General Branch. Abruptly he thrust out his hand and demanded, "Let me see your phone, Sir."

"The information on this phone is classified," General Branch declared, clutching at the phone on his belt, and beginning to sweat.

"I have the clearance ... and, at this moment, I have the need to know," General Key declared ominously, his hand still outstretched. "Are we back to 'voluntary or in chains, ' General?" General Key asked in a much quieter, and deadly tone of voice.

Woodenly, with jerky movements, General Branch pulled his cell phone from his belt. He handed it to General Key before surreptitiously wiping the sweat from his forehead. He didn't notice JJ's self-congratulatory nod of satisfaction at seeing the General sweat.

"Thank you, Amy," JJ said in her mind. "Simple sweat is such an innocuous thing. But it can make you look, and feel, so guilty."

General Key's phone pinged. He looked at his desk phone for a moment before picking up the handset. He listened for a moment, his eyes growing larger, before curtly saying, "Send him in."

General Key stood and walked around the desk to meet whoever was coming through the door. It was an action that was notably different than the reception given to the people sitting in front of his desk.

"Senator McGowan," General Key said in greeting, holding out his hand. "It's good to see you again, Sir."

"Oh, boy! Now it's going to get good," Caleb nearly chortled, in his mind in excitement, to JJ.

"Good to see you again, too, General," Senator Scott (Scotty) McGowan said gruffly, shaking the General's hand. "I appreciate you letting me interrupt your meeting. I think you know that I wouldn't ask for the interruption if I didn't think it was important. I still owe you one," the Senator said, clasping the General's hand and looking him steadily in the eyes.