Caffrey Flashback

Chapter 7: Making Connections

New York City, White Collar Division. Thursday morning. February 19, 2004.

For the second morning in a row, Peter looked down from his office to see Neal arrive moments before the day's briefing was supposed to start. And he wore a fedora again, dropping the hat and coat at his desk before rushing upstairs to the conference room.

At the end of the briefing, Peter dismissed everyone not working on the Adler case. Closing the door, Peter turned to face Tricia, Jones and Neal. "What did your cousin say, Neal?"

Neal looked up blankly. "Hmm?"

Peter stopped on his way back to the conference table. "What did Henry say when you asked him to bring his grandfather's sailboat to New York?"

"Oh." Neal looked into his coffee cup for a moment, and then met Peter's eyes again. It was rare to see him looking embarrassed. "I didn't get to talk to him. You want me to call him now?"

Peter saw his surprise mirrored on the faces of Tricia and Jones. Neal might still have a lot to learn about working at the FBI, but he never dropped the ball on a case. "Anything wrong?" Peter asked, feigning nonchalance as he took a seat.

Neal hesitated. With uncharacteristic uncertainty he said, "June's daughters and their families were over last night. I got distracted."

An unpleasant thought ran through Peter's mind. Is this how Neal behaves when he tries to lie to his father figure? But he simply said, "Fine. Go ahead and give Henry a call. We should find out if we need to line up another option for surveillance on the Enscombe estate. Jones, get your laptop. I know it's a longshot since we just sent the message to Highbury late yesterday afternoon, but I want us monitoring the Nick Halden email account for a response."

With Neal and Jones both out of the room, Peter turned his attention to Tricia. "If I had to guess what would make Neal behave this oddly, I'd say it's his ex-girlfriend. She was a low priority to the Bureau and dropped off our radar after we recovered what she stole on New Year's Eve. But she's clearly a player in this case, and could make things difficult for us if she's manipulating Neal. Would you look into Kate, see where she's living, what she's been up to? I think it's time to pay more attention to her."

"I'm on it," Tricia promised. She went down to her desk to start her research. Jones returned with his laptop, and was signing into the Halden email account when Neal returned.

He shrugged as he stepped back into the room. "I got voice mail. Henry's probably working a case. He usually gets back to me within a few hours."

Before Peter could respond, Jones said, "We got a bite!" Peter and Neal both moved to look at the computer screen.

"They responded first thing in the morning," Peter noted as Jones opened the email. It invited Nick Halden to stop by the Highbury Manhattan location at 11:30am to talk to a consultant and to stay for lunch.

"That's barely enough time to get the van in place. I can make some calls, get the surveillance equipment reserved to monitor Neal," Jones offered.

Peter hated to lose momentum on a case, but he had to ask, "Are you up to this, Neal?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"You tell me. You've been distracted all morning. We can't afford to have this case go sideways on us. If you need time to get your head back in the game, then let's tell Highbury to reschedule."

Neal shook his head. "I'm fine. I can do this," he said with the eagerness Peter expected to hear when the kid had a chance to go undercover.

Maybe he'd overreacted. Neal would tell him if something was wrong, wouldn't he? "Make those calls, Jones."