Alien in the House

Chapter 52



AS SOON AS WE were out of sight, Jeff took us to the fast hyperspeed. Even though there were people on the stairs, they didn’t see us, and Jeff ensured we never touched them.

It was a little confusing to find Jeff’s office, but hyperspeed made things go faster. Irene was right—he had a window and a nice view and newer furniture.

“It’s going to take us a while to find Santiago’s office,” Jeff said. “This place is huge.”

“Nope.” I pulled out my phone and dialed.

“Hello?” Stryker sounded tired, but conscious. Good.

“Eddy! Nice to see you’re up and about.”

“Like we had a choice? What’s going on, Kitty?”

“Need you to give me the names and, more importantly, office numbers for every dead representative that Vance had you identify last night. And, unfortunately, you need to add in Representative Juvonic.”

“Someone else died?”

“Just died. Show some respect for the dead and get me his office number so we can go through it for clues.”

“Okay. Most of them are in one building, but not all.”

“I hope it’s Rayburn House because that’s where we are.”

“Yeah, it is. It won’t take long; Raj already had us compiling this list. Just need to determine office numbers.”

“I need Santiago’s office number first.”

“Thirty-ten.”

“You rock, Eddy. Text the rest to me and Jeff, okay? Oh and make sure, once you do that, that we get a full listing of what committees each dead rep was on. And make that snappy, I think it’s relevant.”

“Oh, yes, ma’am.” Stryker’s sarcasm knob was definitely hitting nine.

“That’s the spirit!”

“You want the update from Gaultier?”

“Sure. Have they found anything yet?”

“Yes, they’ve found Eugene Montgomery’s workspace. Not a lot there, but Henry downloaded everything on Montgomery’s laptop over to us. The laptop’s Gaultier property so we can’t remove it without making a scene.”

“Okay, did they find papers?”

“Yeah, about a briefcase’s worth. Raj has them. Henry’s using the laptop to hack into the rest of the Gaultier system, but he’s hitting blocks that the laptop can’t get around. They need to get to the main servers, and that’ll take a little time.”

“Well, at least they’re moving forward. Keep me updated.”

“Absolutely, madam.” Stryker had turned the sarcasm up to eleven. “Is there anything else I, your humble servant, can do for you?”

“Dude, I’m going to remember to hurt you when I get back.”

“I’ll risk it.”

“Alfred never talks this way to Batman.”

“I’m not Alfred and you’re not Batman. I can talk however I want to Wolverine with Boobs.”

“Oh, you did not go there, bub. Never forget, I’m the best there is at what I do.”

“Now that’s true. Just don’t ask me what I think you do best.”

“Remember that what I do isn’t nice.”

“Despite wanting to make a joke that would make you blush and me snicker, I’m going to stop now, because I think Chuck has my cell phone tapped and if I say anything else he’ll make my head explode.”

“Or Jeff’ll crush your skull with his bare hands.”

“Same difference.”

Comics jokes only Hacker International, Chuckie, Reader, or a few others would get done with, we hung up. Texts from Stryker started coming in almost immediately.

“Should we get moving?” Jeff asked. “Or should I go home and crush the squatter’s head with my bare hands?”

“No, we still need him. We should get going . . . wait. Hey, one of reps who was killed had this office before. Stryker sent the info over based on timeline of death, most recent first. The rep who was in here died a few months ago.”

“Why haven’t they put anyone else in here?”

“No idea, maybe their replacement hasn’t been elected yet. But let’s see if there’s anything worth spotting.”

An A-C using hyperspeed can search an entire house in less than five minutes. So searching one smallish set of rooms didn’t take Jeff long. He even lifted any furniture that wasn’t bolted down.

While he was busy, sent a text to Stryker, asking him to verify which reps had been replaced and which hadn’t, and also to see if replacement reps were given the same offices as their dead predecessor or not.

Jeff put a small pile of papers on the desk. “This is it.”

“Not a lot to go on.” We dug through it. Most of it was trash. Anything with writing or print on it we saved. “Can’t tell if any of this means anything yet.” Jeff put the few pieces of paper we were saving into his coat pocket. “Wait, let’s see if there’s an envelope or something we can put all that in.”

“There is.” He went to the filing cabinet and pulled out a box of legal envelopes while I checked the desk for a pen. “Should we take these along?” he asked as he transferred the papers in his pocket into an envelope.

Took the envelope from him and marked it with the office number. “Yeah, grab a dozen, that should be plenty.”

“I have them, so let’s see what we can find elsewhere.”

“This floor or Santiago’s office?”

“How long do we have before we have to go back downstairs?”

“You’re asking me? I’m not the super-empath. But I can pretend to be sick for hours if necessary. All I have to do is think about when I was pregnant with Jamie. I can pull those memories back easily.”

“Don’t remind me. And, I’ve checked, everyone’s still dealing with the drama, so I don’t think we’re missed yet. In which case, let’s do this floor and work down.”

Counting Jeff’s office and with the unfortunate addition of Juvonic, we had twelve offices to check out here in Rayburn House. Per Stryker’s texts, there were four to check in the Cannon House, and five in the Longworth House.

There was no way Jeff and I were going to get to check out the other locations today. And I knew time was of the essence. So, while Jeff searched the other two offices on the fourth floor, I contacted Tim.

He agreed that it sounded like a job for A-Cs, but we needed a human along to ensure that everything would be checked. I’d dealt with A-C versus human searching during Operation Confusion, and, as I reminded Tim, if we’d relied on the A-Cs to find and especially to interpret the clues he’d left me, Tim and a lot of others would be dead.

Duly convinced, Tim compromised and assigned Lorraine and Joe to Cannon and Claudia and Randy to Longworth. They each had two Field teams with them as well, and were advised to be on the lookout for people on roofs holding guns.

Scraps of papers that seemed to mean nothing put into envelopes worked great, but I found myself wishing we’d brought along a briefcase or bag, because there were more than scraps in some of the offices. I was carrying because Jeff was searching, and my arms were getting full.

We’d saved Reyes’ office for our last stop on the third floor. Not out of any meaningful reason, it was just the farthest from where we’d entered that floor from the fourth and we had five offices to check on this level. It was easy to spot, though—yellow police tape crisscrossed on the door stood out.

Once inside, I wondered if we’d been intelligent about not starting here first. Reyes had truly been living here, and that meant that there was stuff everywhere. On the plus side, there was also a briefcase, and it wasn’t locked.

Decided Reyes wouldn’t mind my borrowing it, especially since he’d wanted me to clean out his desk. I dumped our other findings in, taking the time to put the larger papers into bigger envelopes he had available and marking them. No one was going to accuse me of not paying attention to detail in regard to this hunt for a tiny needle in a really huge haystack.

Since Reyes had been specific in his last request, I did the desk while Jeff did everything else. “There’s not much here. Just some bills I think Santiago was reading.”

“Maybe what he bought has something to do with whatever’s going on,” Jeff said from inside the bathroom.

“No, not that kind of bill. Bills like those that go through Congress. Passages of laws and such. You know, the ‘light reading’ you’ll be getting to enjoy starting, I guess, today.” Reyes certainly had a lot of them in his desk drawer. Took them all, put them in the briefcase. Hoped he had another case somewhere—the bills took up a lot of space.

“Oh.” Jeff came out. “Kitty, I have no idea what I’m doing in this job. I don’t even know how long my term is supposed to be. I’m unfamiliar with the terminology. And I’ve already been told that lobbyists are going to be my best friends from here on in.”

“In normal times, which I know we are not living in, every representative is elected to a two-year term, and the elections are every even numbered year. This was supposed to be an election year, but due to all the many decrees, everyone’s held over, which is why Santiago had to go through a special election to get here. Congress officially starts the first week of January, so technically you could expect to get out of this job after the next election—you know, two years from now.”

“How do you know that?”

“Some from memory.” I held up a booklet I’d found. “Some from this: ‘A New Representative’s Guide to the House.’” Tossed it into the briefcase. “I’d assume you’ll get one, but we’ll take Santiago’s so you have it to read sooner as opposed to later. As for lobbyists, technically, we’ve been functioning as such since we took over the Diplomatic Corps, and while I don’t love and adore them, at least we know Guy Gadoire and Lillian Culver. It’s not much, but it’s a start.”

“Why are you so calm about all of this?”

I shrugged as I went back to digging through the desk. “I know you can handle anything, Jeff.”

He came over, pulled me to him, and gave me a deep kiss. “Thanks, baby,” he said softly as he pulled away. “I needed that.”

“Any time, as long as you thank me like you just did.”

We continued to toss Reyes’ office, but there wasn’t anything meaningful we could spot. I took his calendar and anything else that I felt I could get away with out of his desk. There’d be a problem if the police had already looked in here, but we’d cross that bridge when forced.

There wasn’t a lot of ornamentation in here, but there was a small stuffed animal, a bald eagle, in one of the drawers. It had a card tied to it: To Mister Reyes, the best man for the job, from everyone at Oasis of the Desert Middle School.

“What did Santiago do, before he was elected, do you know?”

“I think he was a teacher.”

Put the eagle into my purse so it wouldn’t get squished in the briefcase. While I did my best not to tear up, I searched for more personal things like that, but there weren’t any, at least not in the desk.

My phone beeped. “Len says we need to hurry up.” Replied back that I was still busy being sick and please stall.

We had to be cautious leaving Reyes’ office because we didn’t want to disturb the tape and therefore had a bigger risk of being seen. However, the halls weren’t really hopping, so we only had to wait for a couple people to get to their offices and then we were off and on to the second floor.

The three offices down here didn’t take too long. It was the same as the others—nothing much but trash left. Trash which I dutifully bagged and tagged and put into Reyes’ now bulging briefcase. At least it was soft-sided.

Reyes’ office had taken us the longest, fifteen minutes easily, so with the others, we’d been gone about thirty minutes.

We had only Juvonic’s office left to do, but as we reached it Bruno appeared before us, wings spread impressively. He didn’t make a sound, but his expression said to stop running, right now.