Agency

“Melanie! Melanie!” I heard someone yelling outside, pounding on the front door. I opened it to find my brother-in-law, Marco, with my husband, Jake, hurrying down the sidewalk.
                “What is it?” I asked, stepping aside to let them in.
                “You need to see this,” Jake said grimly, turning the news on. The 6 o’clock news was just coming on. I didn’t see anything unusual until it was almost over, when the news flickered out and four people dressed in black and wearing masks appeared.
                “Dear citizens of the United States,” one began mockingly and with a smirk. “Your president is dead and has been for a few days.” He said, pausing to let it sink in. “How do I know this you may be asking. Well, I’m glad you asked. You see, we killed him and it is as simple as that,” he said, gesturing at the four of them. He lost the smirk as he continued. “The government you thought you trusted is playing you for fools. The system is corrupted and we are here to cleanse it. Now, I shall return you back to your usual programming.” Before it cut out, I caught a glimpse at one of their wrists where the sleeve had come up. On the inside there was a tattoo of a symbol. I was able to jot it down while also taking note of the background. It was a plain brick wall with water dripping down onto the ground. The news came back on with the people trying to regain their composure.
                “Do you think what they said is true? That the president is really dead?” Marco asked.
                “I don’t know,” I replied, worried. “I’m going to make a few phone calls.” I said as I got up and headed towards the kitchen. I walked back into the living room a half hour later to find only Jake sitting on the couch, studying the symbol I drew. “Where’s Marco?” I asked, sitting down next to him.
                “He went home. Morgana called saying she was almost there.” My twin sister had gone on a business trip and was finally coming back today.  “What’s this?” he asked holding up the drawing.
                “I saw it before the news came back on. It was tattooed on one of their wrists.” He handed the piece of paper back to me. “Did you notice the wall they were standing in front of?” I asked him.
                “It seemed damp, like it was underground almost.”
                “My thoughts exactly,” I told him.
                “Did your phone calls turn up anything?”
                “The president is dead. The vice president has been covering for him the last few days. The FBI wants us to come in and help them with this case,” I said.
                “When do they want us?”
                “The sooner, the better they said.”
                The leader of the investigating FBI team greeted us a couple hours later at the office, introducing himself as Agent Emerson.  “I’m assuming you saw this afternoon’s news,” he said as he shook our hands.
                “Yeah, how did the news station get hacked? Are the technical analysts tracing the hackers?” I asked.
                “There is nothing for us to trace. They completely covered their tracks,” he replied, leading us into the conference room, where the rest of the team was waiting.
                “I might have something that could help,” I said, sitting down in one of the chairs at the long table.
                “What is it?” a team member asked. I slid the paper forward so they could see the design.
                “I saw this tattooed on one of the killer’s wrist before the news was cut back in. Does anyone recognize it? Maybe on a past case?” I questioned, as the paper was passed around the table so the six of them could see it.
                “It doesn’t look familiar,” one of the team members, Katimila, said. “Have you tried finding the tattoo parlor it came from?”
                “No,” Jake said. “Not yet. We haven’t had the time.”
                “Before anything is decided yet, we still need to go to the White House to see the crime scene,” Povenlin said.
                “Jake can stay here and do a follow up on the tattoo and Melanie; you come with us to the White House,” said Emerson, the team leader. “Is that okay with you guys?” We both shrugged.
                “Fine by us,” I told him, pushing in my recently vacated chair. We loaded into a black SUV and drove to the White House. Two members of the team, Sulvane and J.J., stayed behind with Jake to analyze the tattoo. The Secret Service met us at the end of the driveway. We were searched along with the car before being allowed onto the grounds. “Where was he killed at?” I asked Emerson as we walked into the White House.
                “The Green Room,” he said. “Hopefully they didn’t clean it up and there is still evidence there for us to look at.” As we entered the Green Room, it was obvious it had been cleaned. I swept my gaze across it trying to find anything unusual or out of place, but found nothing that couldn’t have been done by the people that cleaned the room. After everything was scoured for evidence, we turned off the lights and used a UV light to find traces of blood left behind. There were two spots on opposite sides of the room. One was where the president’s body was laying and the other was on the curtain. Samples were collected of each and nothing more was found so we headed back to have the samples tested and to check to see how Jake, Sulvane, and J.J. were doing. The technicians at the lab took the samples and prepared them for electrophoresis. I found the three of them at different computers, looking at case files and tattoo parlors, trying to find a match.
                “How is it going?” I asked them, looking over Jake’s shoulder.
                “So far there is nothing in any case file, but we think we found a tattoo parlor that specializes in symbols like this. We were just about to call you to check it out,” Sulvane said.
                “Jake and I can go. Call us when you get the DNA results,” I said.
                “Will do,” he said, turning back to the computer screen. We took one of the unmarked cars and drove to the address an hour away.
                A bell rang, announcing our arrival to the artist behind the counter. “Can I help you with something?” he asked.
                “I was wondering if you recognize this tattoo,” I said, placing the paper on the counter and showing him my badge.
                “Yeah, some group or organization or something always brings in three or four at a time to get this on their wrist,” he replied, putting the template for it on the counter.
                “Do you have names?” Jake asked.
                “Do you want all of the names or just the recent ones?”
                “All, probably. When was the last bunch in here?” I asked.
                “A couple weeks ago, I think.” He printed out a list of names and the dates they were in. we thanked him and drove back to the FBI headquarters. It was dark when we arrived and we found the team in the lab, getting the DNA results.
                “The one sample matched the president’s DNA, but the other sample didn’t, so that must be from one of the unsubs,” the technician was saying.
                “We can run the unsub’s DNA in our data base and see if we get a hit,” Katimila said as we left.
                “I’ll go over this list and eliminate the ones I know couldn’t have done it,” I said. When I finished going through the list and crossing off names, it was 2:00 in the morning and the computer was still searching for a match. “No luck yet?” I asked J.J. She shook her head. I walked over to Jake where he was doing the same thing only at a different computer. “What about you?”
                “Nothing,” he said. “How did you do?”
                “I manage to get the list down to 50, but I was going to run each name through the computer to see if anything comes up. Want to take half? J.J. can watch the computer if anything comes up,” I said and J.J. nodded in agreement.
                “Sure, it’s better than sitting here doing nothing.” We began searching each name for something to come up. I was almost done with the list when a match appeared on the screen, Luigi Roaz. But what I found out about him confirmed my theory. I continued through the list and got the three remaining unsubs: Minnie Sojohnn, Luna Rosughorbac, and Howie Sawter. They all had the two things in common.
                “I got four,” I told Jake, getting up to tell Emerson and the rest of the team.
                It was late morning when we arrived at the White House. We talked to the head of the Secret Service and he called for the people we asked for over the radio and as soon as they saw us, they took off running. We chased them until we trapped them on a rooftop of a nearby building. Unfortunately as we cornered them they leapt to the closest rooftop. Having no choice, we jumped as well.  I hit the ground and managed to roll up onto my feet to resume the chase. One of them tripped and Povenlin was able to catch him and put him in handcuffs. Two more were caught but as we went for the third one, he threw himself off the roof and we watched in horror as he sped towards the pavement four stories down. The three remaining were taken to the nearest police station where they were questioned. The three were Minnie, Luna, and Howie; Luigi had thrown himself off the roof when he saw that his partners had been compromised. “Who were you working for?” I asked Minnie. She was silent for a while before answering.
                “The Agency,” she said, reluctantly.
                “What’s the Agency?” I asked her.
                “A secret group in the government.”
                “Were the four of you in it? That’s what the tattoos are for, aren’t they?”
                “Yes.” I was quiet for a moment as I organized my thoughts.
                “That will be all,” I said. I talk to the other two before they were led away to a holding cell. Emerson and his team were standing with Jake in the lobby. They thanked us and we drove home.
                “How did you figure it out?” Jake asked me. “That list of names was a lot longer than 50 to begin with.”
                “I simply eliminated all the recent ones and all of the really old ones.  The tattoo I saw was a little faded and it definitely wasn’t done recently. By the time I finished that, there were 50 left,” I told him.
                “But how did you pinpoint those four?”
                “Those were the only four that were in the Secret Service. The White House is too heavily guarded for someone on the outside to break into, let alone get close to the president. So I figured that they must be in the Secret Service.”
                “And now we have an entire department of assassins to find,” he said.
                “Yep, the Agency must be brought down.”