Double-Blind: A Modern LITRPG

"Explain," I said, sharper than intended.

It was strange. I should have been thrilled, ecstatic, even. Instead, I felt oddly protective of Miles, irritated by the implication of corruption alone.

"Relax." Jackson rolled his eyes, misreading my reaction. "Dirty cops can be bought, bargained with. It's better than the alternative."

"How are you getting—where are you getting that?"

Jackson looked down at the pile, examining his conclusions with scrutiny. "Big picture shit. But it's all there in the career path. What we have, anyway. There's not a lot pre-FBI."

My curiosity won out. "I'm surprised he kept records here."

"He didn't." Jackson shook his head. "Probably does the smart thing and keeps official documentation off-site. What I have is training manuals, articles, shit he was reading, more than half of it dated. It helps that the guy is sentimental. Joe-schmo-blue emails thanking him for his help, he prints it out and sticks it in there." He pointed to a leather file holder, stuffed full of paper.

I picked it up, somehow still surprised at the heft. "Okay. Walk me through it."

"Right." Jackson stood, inclining his head towards the pile on the left. "A lot of feds—the action guys—start in a small field office. But not our boy. They jumped him in hot. Joined a drug unit covering the Fort Worth area in the early aughts. There's nothing that spells out what he was doing, exactly, but the bastard got promoted stupid quick for someone who already had a leg-up to begin with." Jackson paused, testing me. "You get what that means?"

"Undercover." I filled in, immediately frowning at the chronology. "But he'd arguably be under more scrutiny in that role. Drug tests, monitoring his bank accounts. If he came across as sketchy, there wouldn't have been a promotion. They would have just removed him from fieldwork and chained him to a desk." Not to mention, he was undercover when I met him. And judging from the beef he has with Roderick, probably before I met him.

"We're not there yet. Up to this point, I'm guessing it was all above board. The Fort Worth AIC sucked him off, slapped his ass, and sent him off with sterling commendation to a money laundering and domestic-terrorism unit. Which he must have hated, because despite being a comparatively cushy gig, he dipped."

I asked the natural question. "To where?"

Jackson spread his arms. "Good question. Unfortunately, that's where the bread crumbs stop. No correspondence of any kind, no accolades, no manuals. Spanning a period of almost two years." He stepped carefully through the mounds of paper and crouched down, almost obsessively following the trail. "Almost like he was fired. Only, a fired agent doesn't suddenly pop back up after a multi-year absence and suddenly find himself in the violent crime division, focusing on serial cases."

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"Shit." I looked over some of the paperwork, finding it more or less pointed to the same conclusions. "So that's... gotta be international, right? CIA?"

"Or NSA. Or some other extra-alphabet group, working overtime without oversight. It's anyone's guess." Jackson shrugged. "But the typical fed daydreams about joining the behavioral unit the way teenage boys fantasize about anything with a pulse. It's highly coveted, and even more competitive. The only way they'd stick him there so easily is if he pulled off a minor miracle, doing whatever he was doing."

"None of this points to corruption."

Jackson grinned. "Fed wonder kills it in Behavioral. Works his ass off. Heart of the party, this guy. Still getting plenty of blue fan mail, starts getting letters from the families of victims, too. Real tear jerkers. Absolute height of his career, plenty of successful years in front of him when most guys who make it that high are already thinking about retirement. And then, poof." He spread his fingers wide.

"Disappeared again?"

"Shorter. A year. Only this time there's no red carpet. Stuck him right back where he started. Drug unit. Out of Dallas this time."

"Still doesn't mean anything." I shook my head, then shook it again. "Could have been political. From the sound of it, he had nothing but wins. Constant success gets to a guy's ego, clouds his judgment. Makes it easy to forget you're just another cog in the machine. Rub an authority figure wrong, run your mouth instead of backing off, suddenly find yourself humbled and knocked down a peg. Happens all the time."

"Are you trying to get dirt on this guy or protect him?" Jackson stood, looking me over in disapproval. "Because I'm telling you, clear as day, something happened. And not a small something—they would have put him back in money laundering if it was borderline. Sending you all the way back where you started? That's an obvious go fuck yourself." He panned the documents, losing interest. "Gonna keep searching. If you're planning to read through these, keep them in order. Exactly as they are."

"Got it," I murmured.

What followed was a frustrating, ponderous search through a mountain of fed-filtered text and circuitous jargon. I was realizing from a paperwork and writing perspective, feds had far more in common with lawyers than cops. Police reports tended to be simple shorthand, stripped down accounts of complex encounters. That didn't necessarily make them accurate—it's far easier to ignore context and fabricate by omission when the aim is to be as reductive as possible—but at least they were legible. Feds, like lawyers and academics, seemed to enjoy employing as much needlessly specific, uncommon verbiage as they could fit in a paragraph.

Nothing I found directly contradicted Jackson's interpretation of events. To the point I was mentally preparing to accept it as a real possibility.

Then I found the tax documents.

Like practically everything else, they confirmed Miles was good at his job. He'd broken six figures in 2018, and every following year showed a reasonable but significant increase in pay. Until two years ago. He'd filed for the exact same amount two consecutive filings in a row. That alone wasn't terribly significant. Texas employers weren't exactly well-known for generous pay raises, and plenty of people went years seeing no fluctuation in their income. The only reason it stood out at all was the deviation from the established pattern. More interestingly, there was no drop in pay. ȐΑΝ∅ꞖĚṢ

If Jackson was right about Miles' swift fall from grace, and the bureau went out of their way to rub his nose in it, the numbers didn't track. They indicated something, a stall out or ongoing setback, but the corresponding reason was entirely different from the implied cataclysm.

It was small. But all the motivation I needed to keep searching.

And after twenty minutes, I found the needle in the haystack.

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