Chapter 24
Two brown-headed FBI agents hunched at the round pine table, grunting and smiling as they dug into their piles of homemade macaroni and cheese and fried chicken. Life back at the compound resumed like we'd never left, with me cooking meals for the team to avoid being in my room, Sam and Vilet arguing over case strategies and reasons why Sam shouldn't attempt homicide again, and Mallory throwing knives between shifts to ward off boredom.
Fortunately, Vilet had converted Sam's suspension to something resembling a teenager's grounding. Grounded from field work, Sam was to process paperwork on site full time. His mood could not have been more bitter, but at least he could make headway on our case.
I stared at the agents eating, free to come and go as they pleased. Average height, thick builds, dour faces. Lately agents all looked the same to me: detached carbon copies. Mimicking them on film would be a snap, just like we'd made broad-shouldered Malone dress up like the bouncer who'd dragged Sam out of Mo's the night of our abduction; tall Phillip passed for Stone in an overcoat from afar; and Little Joey stood in for Tiffany's date. Tiffany, Sam, Max and the Land Cruiser played themselves.
The hardest part was reenacting the scene where Stone held me down on the back of his black sedan (in this case, an old black Cutlass the bartender loaned us). Even Sam said I'd gone too far by insisting we tape that moment and barred Phillip from getting near me. But I explained that two seconds of film showing Tiffany stepping out the back door, date in tow, to witness me and Phillip in the background was the kind of gotcha journalism that would hit Stone right between the eyes.
To prepare for my role, I'd borrowed a black skirt from Tiffany's suitcase, given Mallory strict orders not to let Sam in sight, slung back a couple shots of vodka, and then laid on my stomach on the car trunk as Phillip leered over me. Piece of cake. If cake were spiked with shards of glass.
Still, filming was risky. Mallory detained Sam inside the bar, so he didn't see Phillip on my back and go into a homicidal rage. Phillip wasn't particularly comfortable acting out such violence. And I could barely stem my PTSD attack and killing Phillip myself. Even Max wanted a piece of him, barking the whole time from the truck. Luckily, our film didn't include sound.
The key difference between the original scene and the fake was that after we'd finished taping, I got to hug Sam and Max, and then drown my PTSD shakes with a half-dozen more vodka shots. Which gave a whole new meaning to the film command "fade to black."
Upon our return to the compound, Vilet had seethed over our tardiness, assuaged only by Sam's news that we'd revisited the crime scene, at my insistence, and had miraculously found a witness, the same Little Miss Redhead from my testimony. My "bravery" earned me a pass on being stupid-babbling-drunk, hence Sam had done all the bullshitting. My "cleverness" in creating the film...well, that earned me new deference from Vilet. Suddenly, my testimony was golden, and Sam had been instructed to amass evidence to recreate my version of that night to a T.
"There's pie," I told the agents sitting before me. "So save room in those gullets of yours."
They paused only slightly and then continued eating without acknowledging me.
"There's always room for pie," Sam said, swerving behind me to pinch my bottom.
