CHAPTER 27
PART 1
The corridors of the Agency, once upon a time, had been the arena of international espionage, highly classified secrets, and hush-hush conversations involving national security. But, as Federal agent Scarecrow turned down the hallway that led to Doctor Kelford's office, while carrying his sick wife, the once familiar site seemed as foreign to him as the normality of life in suburbia once had been.
People, unknown faces to his trained eyes, ambled in the hallways. Faces that he would not have recognized anyway, for their features were hidden behind protective surgical masks.
Those that he did identify, fellow coworkers that he'd seen on a daily basis for what seemed a lifetime, had a haunted look. Many of them even shied away while he continued onward, his mission becoming more urgent with each step that he took, with each cough that he felt come from Amanda.
The feeling in the atmosphere was morose, the air was tinged with the smell of antiseptic, all of it reminding him of the one place that he hated and feared the most. With each step towards the doctor's office, Lee began to acknowledge the fact that the Agency, as he had known it, no longer existed.
It was no longer the place that some of the nation's best agents called home. The certainty of the situation hit him, as he observed these unknown faces that obviously belonged to medical personnel now intermingling with Agency employees.
That's when Scarecrow knew.
The Agency had become an isolation facility, a locale where the innocent had gathered to be diagnosed and, hopefully, cured.
The building that had been designed and constructed under so much secrecy, with every little aspect compartmentalized to avoid detection, no longer resembled a pyramid hidden away beneath the DC streets.
It was no longer a governmental building that housed a powerhouse of counterintelligence minds and patriotic individuals who died in the name of their country.
The building as he knew her no longer existed. She had become, Lee Stetson feared, an underground tomb, filled with people who were simply waiting to die.
And, among those innocent individuals, might very well be the woman who meant everything in the world to him. The woman that he carried tenderly in his arms and for whom he, once again, found himself praying for.
PART 2
Nelson Weston exhaled loudly, then coughed as he squished his cigarette into the nearly overflowing ashtray that graced his cluttered desk. Then, he looked up at the apartment complex super, his eyes clearly showing his exasperation at the younger man.
"Well, if there's no answer, then just open the damn unit," he told the thin man who stood before him.
"But," the super began to stammer.
"Look, it's very simple Toby. There's water dripping down into Mrs. Doyle's apartment. It's obviously coming from somewhere. That somewhere is in the unit above her. How hard is that to figure out?"
"But, sir, I don't think that nice Miss Lowry would like me to just enter her apartment," Toby told his boss.
"That nice Miss Lowry is going to have to pay repair costs, large repair costs, if you don't go in there and find the leak. Now, I think she said she was going on vacation, which means she doesn't know there's a leak. So, you, Toby, need to go up there with a master key and go in and repair the leak."
Toby sighed reluctantly.
"Because if you don't, I think Mrs. Doyle will be very unhappy. And, if Mrs. Doyle is unhappy, she'll move elsewhere. And you know Mrs. Doyle," Nelson told the younger man as he stood up and walked over to the large filing cabinet in the corner of the complex's rental office.
"Mrs. Doyle will see to it that she communicates with every tenant in here and you know what will happen next, don't you Toby?"
"No," he stammered.
Nelson opened up the top door and pulled something out. He walked the few steps to where Toby still stood, shifting his weight nervously from one foot to the other. Then he thrust the master key towards the younger man.
"Here, now! Before Mrs. Doyle has half the tenants moving out right behind her."
"Yes, yes sir."
Toby took the master key and quickly made his exit out of the rental office.
There were days that he loved his job and then there were days that he very much disliked it. Today was one of those days. He didn't like to enter their tenant's units unless he was invited in. He didn't like making his way into their private homes, even though they were just tiny apartments. His Mama had taught him respect, if nothing else, and he respected the people that resided in the units of Sherwood Apartments.
Besides, he felt like he was breaking and entering and that was also something his Mama had taught him. You don't break the law.
He walked across the parking lot and made his way over to the quad unit that Miss Lowry lived in.
"She sure is a nice lady," he said as he walked up the stairs to her upper floor unit.
He knocked again, just to make sure that she really wasn't home.
"Boy, I do hope she's not in there. She might be taking a shower or something," he murmured as he placed the key into the lock and prayed that he wasn't invading into a delicate situation.
Toby swung open the door, his naïve innocence hoping that he didn't find Miss Lowry in a compromising situation of some sort.
A compromising situation was one thing. What he found was another.
Miss Lowry was sprawled out on the carpet near her living room couch, a broken glass and a cordless telephone not far from her outstretched hand.
Toby needn't have worried about embarrassing Miss Lowry.
A dead woman does not embarrass easily.