Second Hand Susan

It was a hard decision, but I'd sworn to uphold the law and I'd never broken that oath.

"Then tell me where she is so I can arrest her. I can't just drop the case because you've made up a story about a woman who was conveniently killed in a traffic accident."

Mark didn't smile when he spoke. If he had, I'd have punched him in the face.

"I can't tell you where she is because even though I'm her handler, I don't know. We never know where she is or what she's doing. My orders are to intercept any inquiries relating to her and change things so she's no longer involved, so that's what I do. From time to time, she calls me to give me information I might need, but she never uses the same phone number. The Director probably knows about where she is because he's the only one who can contact her, but I doubt he'd tell you.

"My personal opinion is Susan's his ace in the hole when a bad guy needs to go down but we can't find a legal way to do it. That's just an opinion, and I'll deny ever saying it if you should call me on it, just like I'll deny ever saying anything else I've told you."

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Two days before I retired, I did the hardest thing I'd ever done throughout my career. Everything Mark said about the accident victim's prints was true. Walt sent in the full set of prints from the accident victim and they came back as belonging to Sally Ketterman. The rap sheet was twenty pages of investigations into murders of pimps and men known to associate with prostitutes who had all died the same way as Alfred. There were no arrests because there was never enough evidence up until the accident.

Inside the woman's truck, the tech's found Alfred's clothes and one used condom. DNA from both matched Alfred's just like Mark said it would.

I wrote all that up in my report and took it to the Captain to sign. He congratulated me on a job well done. I knew better, but I also knew enough not to tell him about my conversation with Mark. Mark left me after saying sometimes it was better not to question things that were good for the country even if that meant I didn't like it. He'd also said the FBI wouldn't look favorably on someone who didn't follow their lead. I took that for the advice it was.

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After my retirement party, I put my car on a trailer behind the moving truck I'd rented and drove up into the mountains of East Tennessee. My little cabin there was cozy and sat in the middle of fifty acres beside a trout stream. I wanted to spend the rest of my life away from everything I'd lived with over the years, and that little cabin and the birds in the trees and deer that grazed in the meadow behind the cabin in the morning were perfect for doing that. I'd bought the place when I made detective, and the mortgage was paid off.

Two months after that, it was getting chilly at night, so I had a fire going in the fireplace. I'd just put two more split logs on the fire when there was a knock on my door. My watch said it was nine, and nobody would be up there at that time of night to make a social call. I got my nine mil from the holster on the table and walked over to the door as the person knocked again.

When I opened the door, there stood Veronica with her smile on her face.

"Hi, Jerry. Are you going to ask me in or do I have to stand out here and freeze?"

"I don't know. Are you here to kill me like you did Alfred?"

"No, Jerry. I came here to explain some things. Can I come in?"

Over coffee, she told me a lot of things, and I started to understand her. I didn't like it, but I was starting to understand.

"When Daddy was killed, I knew they'd never catch the guy. The cops in Houston were looking in the wrong place. They were looking at the guy who tried to buy Daddy out. The guy did try to do that, but he didn't have Daddy killed. It was one of the union bosses from the company that trucked Daddy's oil to the refinery. He wanted a percentage instead of a flat fee. If they'd listened to me, they'd have known that, but they thought I was just a kid and they knew better. I decided since they weren't doing anything, I would.

"I'm smart, Jerry, really smart, and I can change my appearance from plain and dumpy to what you saw that night in that bar. It took me six months, but I found out who killed Daddy and I made him pay. When the FBI figured it out, I didn't want to deny it. I was proud of myself for doing it and I was ready to accept whatever they were going to do to me.

"I didn't know it then, but the Director of the FBI had been looking for a special person for a long time, and one of the agents interrogating me secretly reported directly to him. I found that out when I talked with the Director. He told me he could use someone with my intelligence and skills and would let me go if I agreed to be that person.

"Well, I didn't want to go to prison, so I asked him to explain what he meant. I think Mark told you indirectly what that was. Mark didn't know for sure and still doesn't, but he figured it out. He's been protecting me ever since by changing files that needed to be changed and by talking detectives like you into changing their reports.

"So, I made love to a contract killer that night?"

"No, Jerry, you made love to Susan Winslow. I hope you still like her, even if it's just a little. I met you there to figure out if you were getting close to me, but once I got to know you a little better, I decided I really liked you. I know Mark told you about my thing for older men. I've felt that way since Daddy was killed. I don't know why, but it's the way I am.

"The morning afterwards, I decided I wanted to keep seeing you, but that would have been awkward since you were trying to find me. I hope you can understand why after you talked with Mark. I really do want to keep seeing you...all the time."

"How am I supposed to do that if you keep on doing what you've done? I can't turn a blind eye to that even if it's good for the country. I'm not a cop anymore, but I still believe in the law."

She smiled.

"That's the other thing I came up here to tell you. Alfred had to pay for what he did to Julia. I had to wait until he got out of prison, but he was the last. I quit as soon as Mark told me you'd closed Freddy's murder case. I'm done with that and done with the FBI. I'm just Susan now, not Veronica or Judy or Michelle or any of the other women I've been before."

I shook my head.

"They'll find you and make you keep doing it."

She laughed.

"No, they won't even look for me. How do you think it would look if my lawyer gave the court and the press proof of what the Director of the FBI did and the things he told me to do? He probably would be in prison, don't you think?"

"Yes, but how would you do that? They'd just change the records to fit what they want."

"Yes, they'd do that, but I'm smart enough to have figured that out from the first day. I never told anybody, even the Director, where I lived. That was part of our agreement and I moved around a lot so they'd never be able to find me. I know they tried, but they never did. They gave me a special cell phone that was his only way to contact me and I recorded every conversation we had.

"I have him recorded telling me such and such a person needed to disappear or to have an accident of some sort. I have him recorded congratulating me on completing the job. I have him telling me how much they deposited in my Swiss bank account. I have a lot of money, by the way. They were very generous. I figure a court would be very interested in that bank account and could trace where the money came from since I'd help them.

"They won't need to come looking for me anyway. They have another woman now. She's a former CIA agent who went off the deep end after her partner was killed by terrorists. You'll probably read about what she's doing one of these days because she's a little sloppy. You'd think they'd pick some woman who's not nutty as a fruitcake, but I guess they don't care as long a she gets the job done."

"They might ask her to make sure you can't do that, just like they asked you to take care of their other problems."

"No, they won't do that either. When I quit, I made sure to tell them my lawyer had all the recordings in a safe place. The Director called him and confirmed he had the recordings and my written notes. I also told him there were lawyers in fifteen other states with the same information. If I don't call each of them once a month, they all have instructions to send copies of everything to the press. They also talk to each other every month, so if one happens to have an accident of some sort, the rest will all send their information to the press."

I looked at her smile. It was another different smile. This one looked like she was begging me to say what she wanted. I found myself wanting that too, but I was still a little leary.

"Susan...is that what I should call you now?"

"Yes."

"How many were there?"

"Do you really want to know that? Does it make a difference?"

"I don't know. It's just that I've never met a woman who was a contract ki...a woman like you before. I don't even know if I should trust you after what you did."

"Jerry, I'm just a woman who did what she had to do at the time. I'm not crazy like you're probably thinking. No crazy woman could do what I've done without getting caught. I'm not her anymore. I'm just a woman who wants to stay with you if you'll let me. I can't help you trust me if you won't let me stay. Will you let me at least spend the night so I don't have to walk back down the mountain in the dark?"

"You walked up here? It's ten miles from town."

Her old smile came back.

"Yes, but I had a good reason. I wanted to be with you and I didn't want anybody to be able to identify my car. I took the bus and it doesn't come up here."

"Susan, I'm thirty years older than you are."

"No, just nineteen. I'm forty six. It's the makeup and all the hours in a gym that make me look younger, but I don't care about age anyway. Well, I do care, but it's a good caring. Can I stay?"

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Susan spent that night with me, and I couldn't make myself tell her to leave the next morning. After a week, I didn't want her to leave. After a month, I couldn't imagine not having her there.

It wasn't the sex, though that was really great. It was her -- how she thought and how she wanted to please me and how she relaxed into the life I'd chosen to live. I didn't have a TV and Susan didn't care. I didn't go to town except for once a month for groceries. Susan said she'd rather stay in our cabin anyway. All that winter, I'd build up the fire in the fireplace and we'd cuddle on the couch and watch the fire die while listening to some soft music.

I know that sounds a little weird for a man as old as I am to cuddle with such a young woman, but Susan made it seem natural. That's part of her doing I guess. She's making me feel young again. I know I do feel younger than when I retired. It's a mental thing but it translates into the physical too. We started taking walks the second day she was there and in a month I'd lost ten pounds and felt better than I had in years.

Susan once said I was getting her "second hand" because the FBI had already screwed her for all those years. I just laughed and said she was getting me second hand too because people had screwed with me the whole time I was a cop. I guess we're just two second hand people who found each other and gave each other a new start.

Sometimes, second hand can be better than brand new. You know what you're getting and you know it's held up even though it's been used. That's more than most people ever get. It's more than either of us ever hoped for.