CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Mary Jennings was sitting in a small room with bare walls. The only furniture was a table with a chair on either side. A video camera hung from a bracket high in one corner. A one-way mirror was built into one wall so that agents standing in the next room could watch the action.
She appeared to be about thirty years old and wore her light brown hair in a French twist. She was dressed in a navy business suit, white blouse, and low-heeled pumps. She sat alone at the table, her nervousness showing in her body movements. She crossed and uncrossed her arms, then her legs. She looked around the room, obviously uncomfortable, nervous, concerned. I watched her for a few minutes through the one-way mirror. At first glance there was no resemblance to J.D. Duncan. She was not as tall as J.D. and carried a little more weight, but when I looked closely at her face, I could see how some makeup and a dark wig could transform her enough to fool the bank security camera. And me, as it happened.
I walked into the room, shut the door, and stood quietly, staring at the woman at the table. She looked at me and finally said, “What is this all about?”
“Ms. Jennings, my name is Matthew Royal. You do realize that you’re in a Drug Enforcement Administration facility, don’t you?”
“Yes, but I don’t know why.”
“We’re looking at drug charges as well as some very nasty national security matters.”
“I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”
“Let’s start with the name J. D. Duncan, a bank in Sarasota, and a monthly withdrawal.”
She opened her mouth as if to say something, thought better of it, and shut up. She took a deep breath and said, “I want a lawyer.”
“It doesn’t work that way, Ms. Jennings. You can’t have a lawyer.”
“I know my rights.”
“Those rights are suspended during national security investigations.” I was lying, but I didn’t think she’d know that.
She paled, blinked rapidly, sat back in her chair. “National security?”
“Yes. You’re in a lot of trouble here, and your best bet is to come clean with us and tell me everything you know.”
“Who is ‘us’?” She wasn’t going down easy. A smart woman. “Let’s start with the fact that federal security agencies are involved and I’m working with them. That’s all you need to know.”
She seemed to deflate, the fight going out of her. “There’s nothing to tell. I was hired to do an acting job and I did it.”
“Tell me about it.”
“I got a phone call from a man who identified himself only as ‘Gem-stone.’ He told me that he needed an actress to pose as somebody else and cash some checks in a bank in Sarasota.”
“Didn’t you think that might be illegal?”
“I raised that issue. He said it was okay, that the money was his, but that he couldn’t get to it because an ex-wife was hounding him for back alimony.”
“What were you supposed to do?”
“He sent me a picture of a woman named J. D. Duncan. Said it was his sister and she was helping him dodge the ex-wife. The problem was that the sister lived in Idaho, and he needed somebody to cash the checks at the bank in Sarasota.”
“That sounds pretty thin,” I said. “I know, but he was going to pay me five hundred dollars for each trip to Sarasota. I couldn’t pass it up.”
“Why the disguise?”
“Gemstone said that his ex-wife had a lot of friends in law enforcement and could possibly get hold of security tapes from the banks. He wanted me to look as much like his sister as possible.”
“You know that this makes no sense at all.”
“I know. But at the time it seemed like an easy way to make a few bucks.”
“What did you do with the cash?”
“I took out five hundred dollars and mailed the rest to Gemstone at a post office box in Tampa.”
“Did you have any other contact with Gemstone?”
“He’d call every month and tell me to go to the bank. That was all. A total of three or four calls.”
“Did he ever tell you why the money was in a bank in Sarasota?”
“No.”
“And you never asked?”
“No. What’s going to happen to me?”
“I’m going to turn you over to the Sarasota police. Let them work out the charges.”
She teared up. “I’ll lose my job with the county.”
“Yes, but you got five hundred bucks for each run to Sarasota.”
“That’s not fair.”
“Neither is what you tried to do to an outstanding police officer.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.”
I got up and left the room, leaving a small-time actress to contemplate her immediate future. I felt no sympathy for her at all. She’d given no thought to what grief she may have caused someone while she earned her five hundred bucks. I hoped they put her away for a while. A little prison time might give her a new outlook on how to use her talents.
“That wasn’t very productive,” I said to Jock as we stood outside the interrogation room.
“I don’t think she was a part of anything bigger than what she thought was a small-time scam,” he said.
“I agree.”
“I thought it interesting that the man she dealt with identified himself as ‘Gemstone.’”
“I caught that. The CIA guys in Operation Thanatos were all named after gemstones. What I don’t understand is why they went to all this trouble to implicate J.D.?”
Jock shrugged. “It was probably part of the misdirection and maybe a safety valve in the event that J.D. started closing in on them. They could always implicate her in their scheme and discredit her investigation. The checks started coming in her name about the time she began her investigation.”
“Maybe you can get something out of Nigella,” I said.”