The Big Bad Wolf

AT A LITTLE PAST ELEVEN, I was on my way down to Quantico. Even after my "final" in Baltimore, I still had a class on "Stress Management and Law Enforcement." I already knew the operative statistic: FBI agents were five times more likely to kill themselves than to be killed in the line of duty. A Billy Collins poem was floating through my brain as I drove: "Another Reason Why I Don't Keep a Gun in the House." Nice concept, good poem, bad omen. The cell rang and I heard the voice of Tony Woods from the director's office. There had been a change of plans. Woods gave me orders from the director to go straight to Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. A plane was waiting for me. Jesus! I was on another case already; I'd been ordered to skip school again. Things were happening faster than even I had expected, and I wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing. "Does Senior Agent Nooney know that I'm the director's one-man flying squad?" I asked Woods. Tell me that he does. I don't need more trouble down at Quantico. "We'll let him know posthaste where you're going," Woods promised. "I'll take care of it personally. Go to Atlanta, and keep us posted on what you find down there. You'll be briefed on the plane. It's a kidnapping case." But that was all Tony Woods would tell me on the phone. For the most part, the Bureau flies out of Reagan Washington National. I boarded a Cessna Citation Ultra, tan, with no identifying markings. The Cessna sat eight, but I was the only passenger. "You must be important," the pilot said before we took off. "I'm not important. Believe me, I'm nobody." The pilot just laughed. "Buckle up, then, nobody." It was perfectly clear that a call from the director's office had preceded me. Here I was, being treated like a senior agent. The director's troubleshooter? Another agent jumped aboard just before we took off. He sat down across the aisle from me and introduced himself as Wyatt Walsh, from D.C. Was he part of the director's "flying team" too? Maybe my partner? "What happened in Atlanta?" I asked. "What's so important, or unimportant, that it requires our services?" "Nobody told you?" He seemed surprised that I didn't know the details. "I got a call from the director's office less than half an hour ago. I was told to come here. They said I'd be briefed on the plane." Walsh slapped two volumes of case notes on my lap. "There's been a kidnapping in the Buckhead section of Atlanta. Woman in her thirties. White woman, well-to-do. She's the wife of a judge, which makes it federal. More important, she isn't the first."