Page 94 of The Secrets We Hide
“From whom?”
“I don’t know. I assume her husband, but she had a lot going on in her life. I got the feeling a lot of things were weighing on her. Like, she couldn’t take much more.”
“What did Callaghan authorize you to tell me?”
He didn’t answer at first. She wondered if he was looking for a script Samuel had dictated. The man had always liked to control things.
Foley said, “Ma’am, I don’t think I’m built for this job.”
Jude hadn’t expected to be surprised by Reid Foley. Samuel’s acolytes tended to be cocksure true believers. She gave him time to make a decision. When you started out at the FBI, you were constantly being pulled toward different masters.
Foley said, “When I think back on what kind of agent I wanted to be when I got to Quantico, it was somebody like you. Not Callaghan.”
“I came up during very different times.” Jude knew not topush him. “And I’m at the end of my career. You’re at the beginning.”
“It sounds like you’re trying to talk me out of this.”
“I’m trying to make sure it’s your choice,” Jude said, because she knew better than a first-year agent that the FBI had an institutional memory going back to Hoover. “Don’t make the decision lightly.”
“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Foley went silent again. “My dad was a beat cop. He was good police. Did the job the right way.”
Jude exchanged a nervy look with Emmy as they waited for him to continue.
“Allison was good police. At least until they forced her out. She gave me the names of eleven police officers she said were on a Giglio list.”
Jude saw Emmy raise her fist in triumph.
“The first name Allison proffered was your father. Allison arrested your sister’s ex buying a suspected schedule one substance from a known drug dealer.”
Emmy’s triumph drained quickly at the mention of Jonah. She turned away from Jude. Stacked the CD-ROMs on the table. Straightened the pencil. Angled the laptop.
“Allison went to process the evidence, but she couldn’t find it. She called her boss. He told her to drop it. Said that he flushed the drugs down the toilet. That Gerald Clifton asked him to make it go away as a personal favor.”
Emmy wiped dust off the laptop.
Jude said, “My father was her first proffer. I’m assuming he’d already been killed by the time you started looking into the accusation. You had to tell Allison that the agency doesn’t make cases against dead men. What did she do?”
“She told me the more she thought about it, the more she figured your dad didn’t ask Reggie to do anything. And the fact that Reggie had lied to her, and that he got rid of the drugs, meant he was a bad cop.”
Emmy opened the laptop. Booted it up.
“Allison was consulting for the Clayville PD. She had access to all their files. She started looking for inconsistencies. Theywere right out there in the open. Reggie and the drug squad were robbing drug dealers right under Allison’s nose. Stealing their stash. She’d log ten grams in the arrest report, but only five grams would make it to the lab. Or one of her guys would say a dealer had ten grand on him when it was actually twenty. Reggie told her the cases fell apart. She went back and documented all of it—she had photographs, police reports, surveillance videos. It was solid work. She had them dead to rights. I sent everything up the chain. Thought it would be a slam dunk.”
Jude winced. She knew where this was going. “But you were told that you couldn’t offer her witness protection.”
“No, ma’am, I was not authorized to extend WitSec. If she was willing to testify, she would have to do it in open court. Plus, they wanted me to look into the original case against your sister’s ex.”
“Because?”
“Allison refused to name the man who sold the drugs to Jonah Lang.”
Emmy started to nod, as if that made sense. Only an insane person would try to drag the Rawleys into this.
Jude asked, “When did you find out that Allison wasn’t going into WitSec?”
“Thursday. I sent her a message through Discord to call me. She was understandably upset. I don’t blame her. I begged her to give me more time. I have friends in other agencies. I trained at Glynco with the Marshals. I wasn’t giving up.”
“What was Allison’s response?”
