Page 87 of The Fourth Option
One disadvantage of the neighborhood was that he had to deal with street parking, specifically a reserved parallel spot in front of the house. The lemony foam was still draining into the gutters by the truck as he approached with a computer bag slung over his shoulder. When he was a few feet from the vehicle, he checked his watch. He expected to do a lot of driving around the city and knew it would be tough to hit his step goal when stuck behind the wheel.
He opened the rear liftgate of his Bureau-issued Chevy Tahoe and removed his jacket, laying it down in back so it wouldn’t wrinkle. Thetruck’s rear cargo area was dominated by a three-foot-high TruckVault that created a raised, false floor beneath the carpet.
Every FBI special agent across the country carried tactical gear, often stored in their vehicles to minimize response time to a crime scene. Stanton had more gear than most because of his SWAT qualification. The back of the TruckVault was secured by a cipher lock that opened to reveal two long storage drawers: one held his raid windbreaker and vest with ceramic plates; the other contained his M4 and four loaded magazines.
The FBI New Orleans Field Office was eight miles from the Quarter, a drive that took him twenty minutes. He drove in silence to make sure he could hear the encrypted radio traffic.
As the sun clawed its way over the eastern edge of Lake Pontchartrain, Stanton flicked the windshield wipers. The humidity near the lake was so thick that it condensed in droplets on his air-conditioned windshield. He slowed to turn off Downman Road as Lakefront Airport came into view.
The terminal was in the distance, a faded Art Deco gem with bones of marble and steel, its elegance dulled by time and the damp swamp air that drifted off the shallow lake. Once the crown jewel of New Orleans aviation, it now resembled an abandoned movie lot.
A few years ago, he had talked Alma into watching all four seasons ofThe Untouchables, the Eliot Ness TV series starring Robert Stack, in which the legendary Prohibition-era FBI agent took down Al Capone. To Stanton, the airport looked like a set from the show. The only spoilers were the corporate jets sitting idle on the apron, their white skins catching the golden morning light.
He passed the airport and turned toward the Field Office a few blocks away. The building loomed behind a perimeter of vertical iron fencing, each bar rising like a spike from a medieval palisade.
Stanton slowed as he approached the gate, eyeing the security cameras and the reinforced concrete barriers. The place didn’t look like a federal office; it looked like a prison or a fortress. Maybe that was the point. He parked the SUV in the spot reserved with his name, worked his way through security, and navigated the hallways, saying his compulsory hellos before taking his position behind his desk. He had called ahead for Connor Staub’s case file. It was sitting on his desk.
STAUB, CONNOR. Male. Age 21. Deceased. Cause: Overdose.
He read through the NOPD report. Even though it described the tragic death of a young man, the initial field report was as impersonal as a traffic ticket, with checked boxes, a date and time, and a signature. A few pages down, Stanton saw the final report, typed, but essentially saying the same thing. Connor Staub was found in a 1993 Volkswagen Jetta in a vacant lot in the Ninth. DOA. Overdose. Heroin in the trunk.
Stanton leaned back, the springs in his antique oak desk chair clicking. He was picturing the scene. A cop sees a car. Shines a light in the window. Sees a dead kid. Doesn’t bother to call EMS but searches the trunk first.
That might make sense. The kid might have been blue, stiff as a board.
But what about the vehicle search? The officer just happens to pop open the trunk before another unit arrives?The report did not indicate that it was a canine unit. A dog could have smelled drugs in the trunk.
By the letter of the law, he didn’t need a warrant. It was a homicide and NOPD was seizing the vehicle. They would search it once impounded, though they usually got a warrant to remove one argument from the defense attorney’s playbook.
Stanton filed away the NOPD officer’s name: Officer Tim Rayne. The report was countersigned by his supervisor, Officer Otis Dupuis.
And that was it, until the kid’s mom was murdered along with four gangbangers in her Garden District home.
Stanton lifted the phone.
“Morning, J.J. You dig up anything on the Staub case?” he asked Agent Jennifer Jimenez.
“Yes, sir.”
“Bring it over, would you?”
Stanton hung up and swiveled behind the capacious desk, neatly arranged with a clean blotter, a Bureau cup with a dozen black government-issued Skilcraft ballpoints, and a brass desk badge Alma had given him when he was promoted: “JARRETT STANTON, ASAC.”
He checked his watch and shook his head. Less than a thousand steps. Not good. He swiveled to the display case behind him, a horizontal shadow box topped with glass, and with four metal feet, about the size of a coffee table.
Stanton stood up. The watch would buzz soon to tell him to do it anyway.
He looked through the glass at the sacred object, a hunk of parchment paper with faded ink, twenty-eight by twenty-four inches. In artful cursive script, the first paragraph read:
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Stanton knew it by heart but liked to read it at the start of every working day.
After the original Constitution was signed in 1787, the official printers of the new Congress, John Dunlap and David Claypoole, created five hundred copies for review by the delegates. Less reported were the additional copies the printers sold to citizens of Philadelphia for the next ten years.
Jarrett’s grandfather had purchased it at an estate sale in Buckhead, where it was assumed to be a handsome yet insignificant copy. It was later verified to be a surviving souvenir from around 1790. It wasn’t worth as much as any of those first five hundred, but it was still worth as much as Stanton’s house. If it wasn’t safe inside these four walls, the document wasn’t safe anywhere.
Two quick raps at the door broke his concentration. Stanton turned. “Come in.”
