FanStory.com - The Devil Fights Back

Recap of Chapter 3: We meet our third main character, Dr. Marie Schmidt, who is a violinist in the NY Philharmonic Orchestra. She is a snob, crude and impatient, and a thoroughly unlikable person. Following a section rehearsal, she returns to her upper west side apartment, where she receives a phone call from her estranged daughter, Julia. They haven’t seen or spoken to each other in 13 years following a falling-out they had when Julia was a college sophomore.

Julia is married to Brian Kendrick, who is Fran’s brother, and now has a nine-month-old baby who will be christened in two weeks. Julia extends an invitation to Marie to attend the christening and to try to mend their relationship. Marie is unsure if she will attend but asks Julia to text her her address in case she does.

Chapter 4

Fran

Sleep continued to elude me as I worried if I had the right guy in mind responsible for Dipraxa’s appearance on the streets. My boss, Lou, had told me to stay away from this investigation. I have great respect for him and usually follow his orders, but you don’t become a top agent without occasionally disobeying your boss. I’ve learned that it’s sometimes better to ask forgiveness than permission. Unless you’ve got a real by-the-book hardass for a boss, this can often work in your favor. Lou hasn’t come down too hard on me for this in the past because it usually has led to a break in a case.

So, when suspicion falls on me and it comes to a question of my integrity or that of my brother, I’m willing to disobey orders. Plus, I’m pretty sure I know how this release of Dipraxa to the general population might have happened. I think there’s a mole in the FBI, and I strongly suspect who it is.
Since so few knew about the decision to use Dipraxa to extract information from our captive, the most likely candidate would be from those assigned to the task force. I knew all of them from having worked various assignments with them over the years.

There were two other possible candidates who also knew about Dipraxa—the head of the Charlotte office forensics lab and a good friend of Brian’s who helped him develop the theory behind the drug. I would add them to the list of suspects if need be, but I had a much likelier candidate in mind to investigate first.

Kevin Glazer, who also worked out of the Charlotte field office and was on the task force with me, was my first choice. About a month after the successful completion of the Dipraxa op, my husband Mike and I were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary with a special night out at Ruth’s Chris Steak House in Charlotte. We had a table by the window in front, and I was glancing out the window when I saw Kevin exit from a Porsche 911 that he’d pulled into the valet drop-off area. He was wearing what looked like a very expensive tailored suit, and he escorted a beautiful young woman into the restaurant.

Kevin was a GS-13-level agent who probably made $80k a year. He was divorced and often complained about the alimony he had to pay. Plus, he had a kid in college. He wasn’t rich by any means, and what I observed was incongruous. The Porsche 911 is a $100k car. But maybe he had recently come into an inheritance. Or perhaps he had even borrowed the Porsche and the suit from a friend to impress the woman. I didn’t give it any further thought at the time, but a few days ago, while thinking about possible suspects, this event came back to me.

Kevin was smart enough not to drive the Porsche to work or wear his fancy suit, but five months later, I now had my suspicions about him. Plus, I never particularly liked him nor had much respect for him as an agent. He was sloppy and lazy. Not that that would make him guilty of passing classified secrets, but I couldn’t think of a more likely candidate on the task force than he.

Although I had some computer skills, I needed the help of an expert to confirm my suspicions. I certainly couldn’t ask anyone at my office for help, so I thought of a friend of mine, Patty Mattson, who I’d originally met at college. As it turns out, she is a real IT security consultant, like the kind I told Dana Padgett I was.

We see each other often, and she knows I’m an FBI agent. I remember well the conversation I had with her over lunch just a few days ago because it struck me what a loyal friend she is.

“Patty, I’m in trouble at work. I can’t tell you the details, but I’ve been suspended pending an investigation. I can’t just sit around, so I’m investigating on my own, although I’ve been forbidden to do so. I have a strong suspicion who’s responsible, but I need help proving it and clearing my name of any culpability.”

Patty is an attractive blonde, who is a southern belle type. Her looks and her strong yet endearing accent belie her extraordinary hacking skills. She’s certainly not the stereotypical image of a speed-typing, socially inept, computer geek you see in movies. She is deliberate and genteel and very sweet.

“Ah’m so sorry to hear about your troubles, sweetie. What can ah do to help you? You know ah will if ah can.”

“It’s nothing you haven’t done many times before, and with your skills, I’m sure you can do it anonymously. I don’t need you to hack into any secure government databases or anything like that; I just need someone’s private cell phone call log from their cellular company.”

“We’ll get this figured out. Don’t you worry. We’ll just go back to ma office after lunch and get you what you need.”

I was on edge, but we had a pleasant lunch together. Later, back at her office, I gave her the name Kevin Glazer, and she was able to produce the list I needed, complete with the names and addresses of the other parties, within 10 minutes. She’s incredible.

“Thank you so much, Patty. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this. You’re an amazing friend.”

“Oh, sweetie, bless your heart. This was nothing. Don’t trouble yourself about it. Ah just hope you find what you need from it to clear yourself. You let me know if you need anything else.”

That evening, just three nights ago, I found what I needed to confirm my suspicions. I was looking for an incoming call from a northern Virginia area code shortly after the conclusion of the task force. Sure enough, there was a call from a Brittany Edwards of Springfield, Virginia about two weeks later.

I looked Brittany up on social media and found out that she worked at the US Patent and Trademark Office, or the USPTO, whose central headquarters was in Alexandria, Virginia, just a short commute from Springfield, where Brittany lived. This is exactly what I was hoping to find because, from talking with my brother, I was positive the patent office was the only other reasonable entity that knew about Dipraxa.

Brian had originally filed a composition of matter patent with the USPTO for Dipraxa after his initial testing of it. This was before he had begun testing it on himself. Once he realized how harmful it was, he rescinded the patent, but that wouldn’t erase it from their database.

My guess is that Kevin Glazer figured out there might be a patent for it. He either already had a contact in the USPTO named Brittany Edwards, or he made her acquaintance with the intention of using her to get him a copy of the Dipraxa file. From the information I had given the task force, he knew the name of the drug and that my brother, Brian Kendrick, invented it. This much would enable Brittany to locate the patent file.

But Kevin made a serious mistake. He should have had Brittany call him on a burner phone instead of his regular phone, but he was far from the sharpest knife in the drawer, and he was sloppy, as I said before.

Then again, I might have been totally wrong about him. It wasn’t conclusive proof by any means. Britanny might have been an old friend or girlfriend who just happened to live near Alexandria, but my instincts told me no. The fact that she worked at the USPTO is what clinched it for me. It’s what I was hoping to find, but to prove that it wasn’t just confirmation bias, what I really needed was direct evidence of the crime.

I had a basic plan for tomorrow, but it would be risky, and I might not even find what I’d be looking for. The uncertainties behind the plan were what kept me awake, and I continued going over the details in my mind until I eventually drifted off.