Disclaimer: Anyone you recognize, I don't own. Anyone you don't, I do. :-D
Appreciation: Many thanks to Zubeneschamali ("Z") for beta-reading.
Summary: A mere two months after the Janus List disaster, the unthinkable happens. The team, still dealing with the repercussions of Colby Granger's treason, has to soldier on - straight into a case that will push everyone to their limit.
CANTA Y NO LLORES
Prologue: No me queda ninguna esperanza
Don Eppes shivered. It was always so ridiculously cold in these places. Oh well, that was the "130 rule" for you. It was Don's secret air conditioning theory: the indoor and outdoor temperatures had to add up to 130. He figured the idea had to have some merit, especially here in sunny Southern California where summertime either meant cloudy mornings and awesome beach weather or scorching dry heat that made you wake up with chapped lips and a headache, wishing you didn't have to work. And since it was a strength-sapping, brain-frying 113 degrees out here in the Mojave Desert, it would naturally be an equally miserable 17 degrees inside. At least it felt like 17 degrees. Brrr.
Don closed his eyes and tried to focus. He had to stop thinking like Charlie. He had a job to do right now, and he had to do it professionally and calmly.
He rubbed his hands together a few times and jammed them into the pockets of his jeans. Fellow agents Megan Reeves, David Sinclair, and Liz Warner were lined up next to him like they were waiting to see the principal after misbehaving on the school yard. There wasn't anything in the slate-gray tiled room to distract anybody, so they gave in to their internal jitters and began to fidget. Megan stared straight ahead at the large window (its blue curtain drawn) and zipped up her jacket. A muscle kept ticking away in David's jaw, which was enough of a body language cue that Megan hadn't said a word to him since they got here. And Liz, standing right next to Don, crossed her arms and looked a bit bored. It was clear from her straight back and steely gaze that she was only here for moral support, and equally clear who she was supporting.
The intercom startled them all.
"Ladies and gentlemen, are you ready?"
Don steeled himself and pressed the button on the wall, since he was nearest. "Go ahead," he said.
Megan widened her stance just a little. David looked up. The curtain opened. An elderly man in blue scrubs, his snowy-white military haircut and reading glasses sparkling in the harsh light, shuffled into view leading a tarp-covered gurney. He parked it gently in front of the window and wandered over to the left side of the glass, where he pressed the button again.
"Come closer, if you would," he said gently, and watched Don comply. "Thank you."
Without preamble, the elderly medical examiner walked over to the head of the gurney and peeled back the tarp. Don got a good look – a better look than he wanted to, certainly. He stared down at the floor and sighed through his nose. A moment later he felt Liz gently grip his arm and pull him back. Don watched as Megan and David walked up to the window together. Neither of their expressions changed, but Megan reached out blindly and grabbed David's hand. It seemed that each was trying to outdo the other for gripping power.
The corpse was waxy and bluish, the familiar California tan obliterated by the fluorescent lights. Someone had closed those warm hazel eyes. A ragged Y-incision marred a once impressive set of pectorals, and it had been stitched shut with thick black thread. The one saving grace, if there was any to be found, was that he still looked like himself. It hadn't been long since the incident – Don had gotten the call at nine this morning about the riot the night before. He'd done all the appropriate things like alerting his colleagues and informing Charlie, and the shrunken FBI team (plus Liz) had immediately set out in Don's SUV for the high desert.
Don looked at his team. They all found his eyes and nodded. The medical examiner looked at him expectantly through the glass and clicked on the intercom.
"Agent? Do you have a positive ID?"
Don pressed the buzzer.
"Yes sir," he said sadly. "That man is former Special Agent Colby Granger of the Federal Bureau of Investigation."
This whole damn thing had been a painful mess from the get-go.
About six weeks earlier when Colby Granger had been court-martialed, his confinement had been a choice between a USMC brig in Long Beach or the RCF at Edwards Air Force Base, way out in the Antelope Valley. The court chose Edwards. The regional confinement facility on the base played host to numerous military criminals who were either serving time or biding time on their way to other less joyful places, such as the U.S. Disciplinary Barracks in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Like Dwayne Carter.
Dwayne had been sentenced to death for espionage but while he'd appealed repeatedly, he'd only managed to delay the inevitable. He had a one-way ticket to the Sunflower State on August 3rd and a bedroom with iron bars was waiting for him in the basement level of The Castle. Eventually there would be a tango with potassium chloride, but that was many months away. Possibly years, if he kept up the appeals process.
Colby was to be transferred on the same plane. His espionage had begun while he was still a soldier, so the military had gone after him all guns blazing; they court-martialed him and sought the death penalty. In accordance with the UCMJ Colby had a trial in front of judge and jury and was instructed to plead not guilty, even though his facial expression at the time – that hangdog look he'd perfected in Don's office – said he would much rather plead the opposite. But he did as instructed and the trial began.
It went on too long, as these things often do. Colby spent much of it in the Mojave. Back in L.A. a storm of conjecture raged regarding his motives, during stolen moments at the office or over the occasional weekend poker game. Don surmised he was in it for the money. Charlie hesitantly agreed. David was mostly just pissed off about the whole thing, although when he came to a conclusion, it was generally in line with Don.
Megan, for the whole of the trial, was the only dissenter.
She kept insisting that Colby was innocent. Something about this was wrong. Don privately assumed she was doing it as a way of rationalizing her mistake, blaming herself for not seeing who Colby was, since as a profiler she "should have made that catch." (Her words.) He didn't believe for a second that Colby was innocent, and he had extreme faith in Megan's profiling skills. But since Megan held the opposite opinion right now, as well as a black belt in Krav Maga, he did his best to keep his mouth shut and give her some space.
"I reviewed those tapes of Colby in the interview room, Don. Something is off. He just … gave in. He accepted his fate and went away."
"Aw, Megan not this ag–"
"No, listen to me! It's the same kind of crap now! He's just … he's just taking this, like this is right, or acceptable, or that he deserves to die for planting a bug in somebody's couch."
Don did the usual: The lip-lick. The forehead knead. The "All right, you know what?"
"He sucks, Don."
"… Excuse me?"
"As a bad guy. He sucks. That's what it is. He's just no good at it! He's got this … I don't know, sincerity streak. Maybe it's the voice, or the way he holds himself, but he's just a miserable villain. I don't buy him as a spy."
"Megan, stop," Don said gently. "Look, I hate to remind you of this, but the mark of a really good spy is that you don't buy him as a spy. … He played you. He played all of us."
The jury agreed. On July 18th, two months to the day of Colby's arrest at the beach house, the trial concluded without much fanfare at three in the afternoon. The foreman stood, the judge read the verdict, and Colby Granger was sentenced to death. When asked if he would appeal, he just shook his head "no."
His position over the next week didn't waver. It actually got to the point where even David had tried to reason with him, without any success. After all, there was only so much the FBI agents could stand by and watch. He'd been their friend, spy or not, and past feelings were hard to let go of. Exhaustion was also probably hindering their judgment a little. The court-martial process had been taxing, what with the team being called into court to testify throughout the proceedings despite their heavy caseload. Charlie had even been called in to testify at one point.
Don could still recall his brother's choice of clothes for the occasion; that outfit was hard to forget. He'd come upon Charlie in the men's room at the courthouse right before his younger brother was set to testify. The clerk had told everyone to come in business attire. It was just the two of them, so Don had gawked freely at his sibling's interpretation of that instruction.
"What are you lookin' at?"
Charlie tended to favor the "I rolled out of bed and threw on whatever was nearby" look – his wacky t-shirt choices had evolved into something of an art form over the years – but this … this was impressive. Brown plaid coat with a red/yellow/green striped shirt. Dark grey patterned slacks and orange sneakers. Apparently Charlie's strategy for getting through his deposition unscathed was to blind the lawyers, as well as everyone else in the court room. And then Don remembered that aside from teaching and consulting, his little brother was knee-deep in some life-consuming math experiment at CalSci. This certainly explained (but hardly excused) his unshaven face, the bags under his eyes, and the wild unkempt mess of curls on his head. He looked like a crazy person.
Don told him so. Charlie, sleep-deprived and irritated, shoved him and called him a bossy jerk. So Don shoved Charlie back and told him he was cuckoo and colorblind and before they knew it they were having something of a wrestling match in front of the urinals and hurling insults at each other. It took them a few moments to mutually agree to step back, let go of each other's shirts, straighten their clothes out and gain some control.
And none of it had mattered in the end. Colby Granger was history. Finally, lethally, he'd just been in the wrong place at the wrong time, two days before he was set to transfer to Kansas to await his execution. A riot had broken out in the cafeteria last night and in the fracas somebody had shanked him in the chest with a sharpened piece of a lunch tray. According to the report, he'd bled out in the base hospital's ER. Dwayne Carter, ironically enough, was somewhere in this morgue too. He'd been shot in the face during the riot in the course of attacking a correctional officer.
Don released his grip on the buzzer. All was quiet for a moment while the curtain closed. Megan turned away from the others and David stared at the floor. The pop of the intercom made everybody jump. The elderly ME's voice crackled through one more time.
"I'm sorry to bother you folks again, but did he have any family? Anyone I can notify?"
Don pressed the button. "Not that we know of," he said.
It was true. Don had gone heavy on the threats when the team had cornered Colby in the interrogation room, but nobody had really done any digging. As far as any of them could tell, the only people who remotely qualified as Colby Granger's family were standing here in this room – betrayed, sad, tired … and cold.
This Spanish title is pronounced "No meh KEH-da neen-GOO-na ess-peh-RAHN-sa." It means, "There is no hope for me."