Jess' phone-call had been to a buddy of his back at HQ in New York, and by the time another short night had passed with lots of work chasing leads and only a few hours of sleep, the buddy delivered with a whole passel full of critical intel.
Gilman had searched a dozen national databases for information on a man named Michael Venutti, a local Buffalo business man. He ran some sort of home renovation business, and his shop/office/place looked like a cross between an office and an actual house, the way the interior was decorated. Venutti himself was a well-put together man in a fancy suit with a confident polished mien.
"I don't think I have ever met an actual FBI agent before," was one of the first things out of his mouth, after Kateri, Clinton, Barnes, and Jess appeared at his work mid-morning about as soon as they could expect him to be in the office.
Five days and no end in sight yet to this hunt, Kateri mused to herself, as Venutti led the four agents to his office.
"You don't want to make it a habit," replied Jess.
Is getting a visit from your friendly neighborhood FBI agent ever a good thing?
"So, what's this about?" Mr. Venutti asked.
His office was in a wide-open area adjacent to a fancy kitchen display area with so many types of wood paneling and marble countertops and the like it was almost astonishing. The ever practical Kateri found the idea of spending a huge amount of money renovating her kitchen to be laughably ridiculous. Who cares what my kitchen looks like? I'm using it to cook, not to hold dinner parties in. As long as it is functional, that's good enough for me.
"Mr. Venutti, have you ever met or talked to this man?" Barnes asked, as Jess extended a tablet with Gilman's mug on it. "His name is Thomas Gilman. Maybe you know him as Oscar Perez?"
Kateri perched on a nearby table next to her partner and took the chance to study Venutti while the others talked. Jess handed over the tablet, and Venutti studied it for only a couple of seconds, before handing the tablet back with a shake of his head. "No, I don't know him."
"Mr. Gilman is an Immigrations and Customs Officer. He's suspected of killing his wife and two children," Barnes added.
"That's why I don't follow the news: too depressing," was Mr. Venutti's only reply to that revelation, as he glanced down and then all around the room.
Now Kateri was a little suspicious. Venutti's body language and mannerisms were just plain off. His casualness seemed somewhat forced, and he had no reaction to the revelation that Gilman had murdered his own family, which was extremely atypical.
Venutti took a seat. "So what does this have to do with me?"
Forcing yourself not to react can be just as big a tell as reacting sometimes.
"Gilman searched a dozen national databases for information about YOU," Clinton inserted, emphasis on the last word.
"Why would he be interested in me?" Venutti almost pulled off the genuinely puzzled act.
That's what we want to know!
"Maybe you hired undocumented workers and brought them into the country?" Barnes proposed.
"No, no way," Venutti countered, "I run a straight business."
While this had been going on, Jess had taken to staring at one of the bookcases behind Venutti's desk. It looked like it was a photo that had caught his interest, but of what Kateri couldn't see. She was a little too far away.
"You can't think of any reason why Gilman has you in his radar?" Clinton pressed.
"No," Venutti shook his head, starting to rise. "Look, I've got a lot of work to do, so…"
Now Jess made his final play. "That's a nice-looking family you've got there," so that's what the pic was of, "Mind taking one last look at Gilman. He might have had dark hair or glasses…" Jess finished fiddling with the tablet and then held it up in front of Venutti.
The angle was wrong for Kateri, on Clinton's left, to see what was on the screen, but by Venutti's wince, she could guess, even before Jess 'apologized' for 'accidentally' showing a picture of Gilman's wife. Kateri had looked over every crime scene photo and every shred of info just like all the team members, and I'm not going to forget those photos for a long time, especially the ones of the kids. Those poor things. She almost wanted to rub her own throat on reflex. But Venutti … the only reason I didn't puke was because I've seen worse before. He only winced, and now he's acting all nervous. Same song, second verse with the pictures of the kids. This time Venutti's reaction was a little stronger, though. Still suspicious.
"That's enough. You need to leave," Venutti insisted, sitting back down. "I'm done."
"I didn't mean to upset you," Jess replied, after a long moment just staring at Venutti. Really?
The four agents filed toward the door.
"You didn't break him, but you sure skeeved him," Barnes said in a low tone.
"He wasn't repulsed," Jess replied. "He was scared. He knows Gilman."
The next task for the team, now that they had established that there was a connection between Gilman and Venutti, was to figure out what that connection was exactly. Aside from breaks for lunch and dinner as well as multiple coffee breaks, the team spent the rest of the morning and all afternoon and then all evening in their hotel room, chasing down everything that could be found about Venutti and regoing over all of Gilman's fake IDs.
Kateri felt somewhat useless as the day dragged on. Most of the day's work was proving to be computer work, for which she was no help whatsoever. She could manage her own laptop just fine, but the wonders that Hana especially did were beyond her. Chasing down leads on foot, she could do if something came up, but her contacts were useless for this type of case.
"Unless he's got mob or gang connections we don't know about," Kateri had quipped to her partner before lunch, "I'm not going to be a lot of help except as a second pair of eyes." She had promptly appointed herself as food and coffee fetcher just for something to do.
By evening, copious amounts of work had been done, and there was not a lot to show for it.
"I time travelled Venutti all the way back to East Buffalo High School," declared Hana, shortly after Kateri had returned from the latest run for coffee about two hours after dinner. I feel like I'm back in college. Caffeine and sugar. Jess was making himself another cup of disgustingly sweet tea. My teeth are going to rot just looking at that stuff!
"There is no intersection with Gilman," Hana continued, summarizing her research from the day. "No work history. No clubs. No church."
"Great. Back to square #1," said Kateri from one of the two small beds on which she had been resting until someone needed her to do something.
"How is anyone fooled by these? These guys don't even look related to Gilman?" Kenny posed, his expression and tone full of puzzlement. The pictures of Gilman's fake IDs were covering his screen.
Kateri got up from the bed, nearly running into the boss who had finished making his tea, and went to the table to look over Kenny's shoulder. He was right. None of the men in the actual ID photos looked related to Gilman in any way, shape, or form by any stretch of one's over-active imagination. Face shape, facial hair, eye color, hair color, hair style, age … or even ethnicity for crying out loud, they all varied widely from person to person and were in no way identical to Gilman's. Even the rare similarities to Gillman were stretching it.
"People like to be nice. They don't like to ask about pictures on IDs," explained Hana, though Kenny didn't look convinced.
"Maybe…," Kateri drawled with a grimace, "but still… These differences go so far beyond people being polite over the fact that DMV is perennially unable to take a half-decent photograph."
Kenny snorted a laugh, but before anyone could say anything else about the monstrosities that were DMV photographs, the sound of a bird's screech cut through the room. Kateri flinched in surprise, and Barnes, who had been sitting on the other bed, looked up from her laptop with a "The h*** was that?"
"Tali sent me a video of her feeding a falcon at her grandparent's farm," Jess explained.
"Let me see?" asked Barnes.
The phone was handed over to make the rounds among Barnes, Hana, and Kateri in turn. Barnes' answer was a very motherly one. Hana's reply was typical Hana, "That thing looks like it's going to rip her face off. If you want to get her a pet bird, you should try a parakeet."
"It's not a pet. It's a wild animal. Ran into a high rise about 3 weeks ago. We're going to release it once it's healthy."
Ah, it's that bird. Kateri had heard a story or two about that bird from Clinton a week or two before.
"Well, on that note," said Kenny, closing his laptop once he and Kateri had seen the picture and grabbing his jacket, "I'm going to make a run for some hot wings. Figured they gotta be good here, you know, Buffalo."
The look on Clinton's face went from fond, when Jess had been talking about Tali and falconry, to amusement at Kenny's statement.
"I just fed you like two hours ago!" squawked Kateri, who had just sat back down on the far bed.
How are you still hungry?
Kenny spun on one heel. "I'm a growing boy," he teased with a smile, "Any takers?"
Barnes shook her head, but Kateri climbed back to her feet, grabbing her own jacket, "I'll come with. Not," she added as Kenny's grin widened into a smirk, "for the food. Just for the fresh air."
Kateri would have had no idea where to start looking for hot wings beside a fast food pizza place, and she would not have imagined that that was what he was looking for. Kenny, however, seemed to know where to go, so she was content to sit back and let him drive.
Kenny found some place that sold good hot wings not too far from the hotel, and after he had bought what he wanted, they sat in the back of the jeep, the trunk up, while he ate.
"So," Kenny asked, once he had started into his evening snack, "how are you, Kat? You seem better than the other day?"
Kateri, who was sitting with her back against the side of the Jeep, left leg hanging off the back, shifted positions, while she thought about the answer. Somethin' pokin' me. "You mean after me being a bitch on Sunday?"
"You said it, not me," replied Kenny around a mouthful of chicken.
Kateri chuckled. "Yeah, I did. … I'm better. Hana's call woke me up from the first hour of sleep that I had since Friday night, and I was not feeling well either…"
"And that would make any of us grumpy," Kenny finished for her, patting her knee with the back of one hand. "You get borrowed again? You're not the type to stay up all night without a good reason."
"Yeaahhh, I got borrowed again," she growled. "It didn't go well." Not in the slightest.
Kenny paused for a second, finishing demolishing a chicken wing while he picked his next words carefully. All of her other teammates knew something or other about the work she did for her old unit, knew the restrictions she was under when it came to talking about that work, and had gotten quite good at asking the right questions in the right way.
"Didn't go well as in whatever you were doing was unsuccessful, someone got hurt, or both?"
"Door number 3," Kateri replied, "And before you ask, it was me who got hurt. I have already been fussed at and fussed over, and Clinton and I are going to talk to the boss after this case is over about getting these side trips nixed."
"It's about time," Kenny declared, a frown sweeping across his expressive face for a moment, "You're always off every time you come back."
"There is a reason I got recruited into Organized Crime. I liked that job once, liked bringing down the bad guys from the inside, but it's different from the undercover jobs we do on the team. Being someone else long-term, having to fit in with people like that, seeing the things that go down and not being able to react…" She shook her head. "Doing it long term does something to you, takes something from you, something you can't always get back. It ain't pretty, and I needed out." Kateri's voice was soft, almost haunted in a way.
"The greater good isn't always much of a consolation prize," Kenny agreed.
"Yeah, and after a while, being on your own without … backup or reliable backup, not knowing when you get to go home, just gets to be too much, and I needed out."
"We've had hunts go bad before," said Kenny, finishing his snack and setting the box away, "and one of us gets hurt, but it wasn't for lack of trying. And if you want anyone at your back, it's Clint. One of the best shots I've ever seen."
And a way with words. Kateri added to herself. Who needs entertainment when he switches into lawyer mode? He would be a menace to go up against in a courtroom!
"True enough. And that makes all the difference," agreed Kateri. "Do we need to get back?"
Kenny glanced at his watch and then shook his head, "We haven't been gone that long, and we weren't making progress anyway. A break'll be good, and if they need us, they can call. We can go back in a bit, unless you want to go back now?"
"I'm happy to just sit here," replied Kateri. "Fresh air's nice now that it's not quite so cold." It had warmed up some since they first came to Buffalo.
They sat in companionable silence for several minutes, before Kateri finally spoke again, "So, how are you? After your injury leave and all that?"
Kenny thought for a moment, "I'm better. It's good to be back. I nearly went stir-crazy multiple times, as you well know. I'm not the stay-home, do-nothin' type, and you don't really realize how much you need at least one fully workin' hand to do stuff with, until you don't have one."
Getting out of the way of that fridge had left Kenny with a broken arm and four broken fingers, and the broken fingers had not all been on the same hand. With cracked ribs on top of that, most normal activities had become extremely difficult, extremely painful, or impossible on his own.
"Being laid up at home gets mind-numbingly boring right quickly. It can make the most non-claustrophobic person think the walls are going to close in, and I say that as one who is claustrophobic."
Kenny snorted. "I think I would have gone insane without you all, bringing me food, doing movie nights, and all that, so thank you." He paused. "Tali even sent me a card." His face softened, and Kateri was sure that the card had pride of place somewhere in his apartment. The whole team was very fond of Tali. "How did you learn to cook like that, by the way? I swear, sometimes you threw everything but the kitchen sink in that pot, and whatever you were making still tasted good."
"We didn't always have a lot when I was growing up, and not all my foster parents could cook, so you learn what you can make with what's in the fridge or the cabinets and what you can get at the food bank. Also helps when you're in college so you don't end up living on ramen noodles." Kateri made a face at the mention of ramen noodles. She despised the things.
Kenny laughed and then glanced at his watch again. He paused and then asked carefully, "And how are you after December and all that?"
Ah, yes, that SNAFU. Her face twisted, as his question brought back memories.
The December mission, as it might be known to posterity, had been the final hunt before Kenny nearly got himself smushed. That month had been kind of a disaster, two hunts in a row going bad. In the second, Kenny had nearly gotten smushed. In the first, it had been Kateri who had been attacked, drugged, and locked in a situation that was any claustrophobic's nightmare.
"Well, I have finally stopped having my least favorite nightmare about being buried alive. That's a plus, and I no longer have to go see the camp counsellor. That's another plus."
"Progress," Kenny agreed. Between his injuries and her insomnia after that SNAFU of a mission, they had spent multiple long nights up watching movies to keep the demons at bay.
"And the others have stopped looking at me funny every time we have a small building or something to visit, clear, etc., and I am no longer required to be attached to somebody's hip, or so it felt." Kateri paused, thunked her head back against the car wall. "I hate feeling like the weak link just because of this stupid phobia."
"I feel that," replied Kenny, having had some of the same struggles before because of his anger management issues. "And it's not a stupid phobia, by the way. I'd probably be claustrophobic, too, if I had gone through what happened to you that day as a kid. It's not your fault, and it doesn't make you weak or the weak link of the team. In one way or the other, we all have our struggles."
Kateri gave a small, wry smile. "I know that intellectually…"
"You just have to keep telling yourself it. I know."
Silence drifted over them, and Kateri was happy just to enjoy the peace and quiet for a few more minutes before they had to return to the craziness of the case. Her friendship with Kenny had been slow to develop over the last three years, but they had become much closer over the last several months. Some things it was just easier to talk to Kenny about, since he faced some of the same struggles, though not for the same reasons.
Finally, Kenny glanced at his watch again. "We probably should start heading back now."