It was well past lunch time when a timid knock on the door of the Q-Bureau announced the arrival of Agnes Snow. Smiling gently, Lee invited her in and stepped back to allow Ragmop and Leatherneck to push in heavily loaded dolly lifts.
"Thanks guys." Lee said, dismissing them. Knowing how skittish the little librarian was, Lee closed the door but didn't lock it. Poor Agnes was looking from him to Aaron and was flustered to the point of panic. Looking at the Special Agent, Lee supposed that the two of them were perhaps a bit more alpha male than she was used to dealing with. "Aaron, this is Agnes our archivist. Agnes, this Aaron who works for the FBI."
"Hello Agnes." Aaron's tone was much softer than usual. Obviously, he'd picked up on Lee's cues. There was something to be said for working with a profiler, Lee supposed.
"H-h-hello." Seeing her start to wring her hands, Lee quickly tried to focus her attention on the matter at hand. The last thing he needed was for Agnes to desolve in a fit of tears.
"Agnes, why don't you tell us what you found?"
"Amanda was right, sir. The numbers did point to boxes. I went myself to collect them so I didn't need to do a traceable request. The clearance pass you gave me worked perfectly."
"Great. Have you looked in the boxes?"
"Yes, the folders in the boxes are what's listed in the inventory, but the content of those files isn't what it should be." Opening one of the boxes, Agnes pulled one of the folders and opened it, plucking out a bunch of passports. When she offered them to Lee, Aaron, reached into his pocket and pulled out latex gloves. Pulling them on, he quickly flipped through the passports.
"Eight children from seven countries." He sighed, holding one up for Lee to see the identification page. At Lee's bemused look, Aaron smiled. "I guess forensic evidence isn't as much of an issue with you guys, but there'll probably be finger prints on these documents. We can use them to trace back who was likely to have some knowledge of what was going on. Agnes, we'll need your fingerprints and the two men who brought the boxes over. We'll need to eliminate all of your prints from those we found."
"Agnes, you said that requests for these files could be traced?"
"Yes." Seeing her alarm, Lee hurried to calm her.
"You did the right thing, Agnes, but could you find out who has requested access to these files please?"
"How far back?"
"As far as you can." Unusually, she didn't immediately run away to do her appointed task, instead, she seemed to stiffen before asking her next question.
"Would you like me to pull up the request history for each person that asked for these files? That may lead you to find other boxes that weren't on Amanda's original list."
"That would be brilliant, Agnes. Will you need help? I can assign some help from analysis if it will help."
"Oh, that would be nice Mr. Stetson. But they won't be able to help with getting the records. They can maybe look through what I find and see if there's anything else we should look for?"
"That's brilliant, Mrs. Snow." Aaron praised.
"It's miss." Agness corrected shyly. "But thank you. It isn't very often that we get to do something so exciting!" Lee bit his lip. If searching for records through a computer screen was exciting for Agnes, she'd be surprised to see what a field agent's life was like!
Satisfied that the conversation was over, she hurried out the door while Lee called down to analysis for two people to go help Agnes. Aaron reached for the phone on Amanda's desk and quickly arranged for the Washington field office to pick up the boxes and deliver them to the forensics lab.
"I'll go with them and make sure we preserve chain of evidence. As soon as they have enough information for a warrant, I'll call you and let you know."
"Okay, but hold off going to a judge until we've exhausted every clue. I think that Agnes will report back in a few hours and if we can implicate anyone else, I want to make sure they get caught in the net at the same time."
"Sure thing. Where will you be?"
"The White House. I need to update the president on what's going on and I want to check on Amanda. Knowing my wife, she's probably running the place by now. Message relay here will be able to patch you through.
After Aaron had departed with the boxes, Lee headed down to Beaman's office. A few years ago, he would have been oblivious to the instructor's emotional stakes, but thanks to Amanda, he now knew that Ephraim cared a lot for Francine. He'd be worried by her disappearance and Lee figured it was part of his job as new Section Chief to make sure the guy was okay. Maybe if he gave him the task of figuring out how the nurse at the hospital was connected, it would keep him from worrying too much.
Seeing that his office door was closed, Lee turned away and almost tripped over Agent Malone, one of the new agents who had a few classes in common with Amanda. "Have you seen Beaman?" He asked.
"Uh, yeah. He's in his office." Frowning, Lee walked over and knocked. This close, he could hear Ephraim's voice as he spoke on the phone but couldn't quite make out what he was saying. A moment later, Beaman opened the door looking equal parts nervous and annoyed. When he realised who it was he seemed to tense even more.
"Can I come in?" Lee asked. When Ephraim nodded and returned to his desk, Lee followed and closed the door behind himself. Watching the younger man, Lee considered what could possibly have him so edgy. Beaman didn't have a wife or kids, and there'd been no sign that his involvement in the investigation had made him the target of any deterrence efforts. They hadn't even had a chance to send him and Francine back to the Harris law offices before Francine had done a runner. Francine! Lee bit back a groan and locked the door to ensure they wouldn't be overheard. Tapping his ear and gesturing around the small office, in the Agency signal for a bug sweep, he waited for Ephraim to indicate if there'd been one done recently.
"An hour ago, and I haven't left the room since." He said quietly.
"Do you know where Francine and Mabel are?" Lee whispered. There was a telling pause before Ephraim nodded. "She went to your place." Lee sighed, knowing that it was the last place anyone would look. Unfortunately, if anyone did, there was virtually no security in place. "Look, you need more security than you can provide alone."
"I can hardly do worse than you did." Ephraim retorted bitterly. "Or is it just that when your family's safe, nothing else matters?"
"What?" Lee blinked. He'd never heard that particular tone from the resident nerd but it was unmistakable. Beaman was mad at him. "What did I do?"
"You didn't give Francine or Mabel a thought when you took your sons away from the house, did you?"
"Ephraim, I'd just had a very close friend murdered in our kitchen less than twenty-four hours after the people we're chasing made a play for the boys. Amanda was in the hospital and Francine can take care of herself."
"Oh yeah? So can Amanda but I've never seen you just leave her on her own to face trouble. Francine could have been the target. For that matter, so could Mabel! They need to be protected too, Scarecrow."
"You're right." Lee sighed. In retrospect, he hadn't spent as much time as he should have making sure that Francine was safe too. He was just so used to thinking of Francine as capable that he hadn't really considered the possibility that the murder was merely a way of luring his friend out of hiding. "Look I'll arrange for all three of you to hide out at the Cumberland."
"Last time you used the Cumberland Francine got shot!" Lee winced. Beaman was right about that too.
"We've improved the protocols. When we were there, the only lit spaces were the rooms we in. It was the first time we'd used the old girl as a safe-house. That made it easier for an outside approach. Now, we'll have a few of the suites lit up and plenty of rooms unlocked. If someone tries, you just move to one of those and lock the door behind you. There's no way anyone can search through every suite of that hotel without security noticing."
"Alright, I'll go get Francine and Mabel and head straight there."
"I'll make sure that security is expecting you." Lee said.
"What if Melrose doesn't approve it?"
"Don't need him to. I'm the new sector chief, remember?" As some of the tension seemed to leave Ephraim, Lee guessed that was his first success as chief. "I'll make the arrangements, don't sweat it."
"That's not why you came down."
"I was with Billy when you called this morning. I just wanted to see if you were okay. I know how you feel about Francine."
"There's nothing between us."
"Not yet." Lee agreed, surprising Ephraim. "I'd say the fact that she ran to you when she needed help is pretty telling."
"She had no where else to go."
"I don't believe that for a minute, and I don't think you should either. Francine's pretty resourceful." It was the right thing to say. "Don't let her in-control-of-everything attitude fool you, Ephraim. Francine needs to be loved just like everyone else does."
"She's out of my league."
"Maybe. Or maybe, you're out of hers."
"Oh come on!"
"Let me ask you this: do you think I was out of Amanda's league?"
"I don't know."
"Really? I think if you'd asked most people around here in the early days, they'd have thought that I was way out of Amanda's league and Francine would have been saying it the loudest. For a while, I even believed it. But you know what? I was in love with Amanda for a very long time before I had the courage to do anything about it. I slowly came to realise that in many ways she was out of my league. She took like a duck to water with intelligence work but she still managed to be a parent, volunteer, partner, daughter, and friend. I also realised that if I blew my chance at making her mine, I'd have wasted my life. Francine came to you when she needed help, Ephraim. That's gotta mean something." The expression that flitted across Beaman's face was somewhere between desperate hope and utter confusion.
"Amanda's changed you." He finally said.
"Amanda's taught me how to be happy." Lee said simply. Suddenly both men felt uncomfortable with the overt sentimentality of the conversation and Lee unlocked the door. "I'll get it sorted." He promised, before heading back to his new office at a jog.
