Sylvie

Resuming her place in the large executive chair, Sarah pointed to one of the chairs that Ellie was standing between. “Have a seat, Agent.”  She sighed, “You are aware that this country has laws forbidding what you did.  You even swore to uphold those laws.”  She looked at one of her laptop screens briefly. “When this all blew up, I took a few minutes to look into why a young and driven agent such as yourself would do such a boneheaded move.”  She turned the laptop around and showed Ellie the picture she had pulled up.

Feeling the strength escaping her body, Ellie was relieved when she sat down and then came face to face with an enlargement of the picture on her kitchen countertop. “My girlfriend..um..fiancé, I should say.”  Ellie paused and looked down at her silver engagement band. “Angelie Kino.”  Taking the time to pull her leather satchel from across her chest, Ellie pulled out the evidence bag with her girlfriend’s dog tags and placed it on Sarah’s desk. “I was the one that found them, discarded close to some abandoned mine.”

Pinching the bridge of her nose and shaking her head, Sarah grumbled, “What a disaster, Agent Miller.  I suppose you got the tags with the drone too?  If memory serves me, then the privacy wall goes all the way to that mine entrance, which is sealed with a steel plate.”  She looked at her defiant agent, “Assuming you didn’t try to break into that as well?”

“No Ma’am.”  Ellie quickly acknowledged. “You have everything.”  She waited a few uneasy silent minutes while her new boss typed on another laptop, “I, Ma’am..If I may, what now?”

Finishing the small amount of typing on her desktop, Sarah sent the email she’d finished and then answered Ellie. “There is a small measure of luck.”  She held up one finger, “First, I managed to save your job and keep you out of prison.”  She popped up another finger, “Two.  I take the illegally gained evidence you have obtained and hand it over to Miss Tatum.  Somehow she’s made an arrangement already with the government to not sue in trade for this…junk.”

“But…”  Ellie choked lightly and tried to reach for the dog tags, “These are a personal nature..”

Tucking a few strands of her red hair behind her ear, Sarah glared at her agent. “You should have thought of that before you broke no less than a dozen privacy laws and then paraded them in front of a call that was being video cast of an illegal interview.”  Sarah popped her third finger up, “You have a new desk across from me, and a stack of folders.  Consider you on permanent desk duty here and in the substation in Suffolk.”  Sarah handed Agent Miller her service weapon. “You can have this back now.”

Meticulously placing the firearm back in her holster, Ellie then looked to her new boss again. “So what’s in the folders?  I don’t even know the division I am part of now.”

“There’s more.”  The Deputy Director leaned back in her chair. “You are under my direct supervision for no less than ninety days, and in that time if there are any..let’s just call them anomalies, then you will be terminated.”  She whispered, “More likely stuck in an old missile silo and forgotten about.”  Sarah opened a drawer to her desk and handed Ellie another badge. “You are part of Behavioral Sciences now.  We are less action and more research.  Your next ninety days will be following up on the stacks of interviews with inmates and using the questionnaires within those folders.”

Taking a moment to flatten out the wrinkles in her suit, Ellie stood up and put her arms behind her back. “Ma’am, with your permission, I will go and get started.  Thank you for the opportunity.”

Giving Agent Miller a single nod, Deputy Director Powell pointed across from her office. “340-B.  I will send you the address for the Suffolk substation in a few minutes.”  She raised one thin red-brown eyebrow, “Welcome to the team, Agent Miller. Dismissed.”

Exiting the office, Ellie heard a few more typing strokes and could have sworn she heard the officer say the name ‘Jeremy’ under her breath as she closed the door behind her.

-Demoted and nearly tossed into a black government pit.  Nice move.-

Pressing her new badge to the little access panel, Ellie breathed a sigh of relief when the light turned green and the door unlocked.  She stepped into her small office and shook her head in disbelief.  Walls covered in what she guessed to be lead based gray paint, brown carpet that bubbled up from the floor and a basic pine desk that looked as though it would fall apart if anything more were placed on it.

-I might as well be in prison.-

Ellie told herself and looked at the locked door and the small windows that reminisced of being behind a set of iron bars.  Shaking her head and thinking and picturing a small cot and toilet on the other side of the office, Agent Miller pulled out her small rolling chair and sat down.  Springs popped and the hydraulic level released then dumped Ellie squarely on her butt. “Fuck.”  She yelled and kicked the broken seat across the room, where it banged against the heavy glass outlining the door. “Unbelievable.”  Picking herself up from the floor, Ellie pulled the chair out of her office-cell and into the hallway.  Exploring for a couple minutes, she managed to drag a metal and plastic stacking chair into her office and finally settled down long enough to look at the junk cluttering her desk.   

Like Ellie was promised, the center of her desk had no less than two stacks of old manila folders that had scribbled names of various jails and penitentiaries that encompassed the area.  Left of one stack was an old metallic push button phone with a line of buttons that occasionally blinked a pale yellow.  Frustrated, she picked up the phone and then slammed it back on her desk making a small indentation. “I could kill someone with this stupid thing.”  Ellie griped aloud and then looked to her right.  A flat screen monitor with an accompanying keyboard and mouse gave her the only connection into the modern age, other than her own iPhone.

Lost in absent-minded thought while the lights on her phone blinked, Agent Miller wasted what she thought was the better part of thirty minutes before she picked up the first old yellow folder and blew off the light film of dust.  Glancing at the name on the folder, Ellie stared at the name ‘Lineage’ on a white sticker for a few seconds and then out of curiosity glanced at a few more folders that all had normal names such as ‘Smith, Walker, and Evans’ before once again looking at the folder in her hand.

-It’s an anagram of Angelie.-

Smiling to herself for getting the silly puzzle so quickly, she first tore the sticker away and opened the folder to find a long piece of yellow legal paper with a message scrawled hastily on the page.

‘Agent Miller,
Tuck this folder into your leather satchel and go to the abandoned twelve screen cineplex a few miles from here.  Time is tight.  Consider renovations in your search.

Be patient.  If you are still alone at 1300 hours, then return to the office.  Destroy this letter before leaving.’

Afraid to set off any alarms, Agent Miller tore up the note and then stuffed the remains in her jacket pocket with the intent to get to another location before setting the contents on fire.  Tossing the folder into her bag as instructed, Ellie smiled and darted out of her office-cell and headed for the place mentioned in the letter.