LITMIR.BIZ

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consider his answer. He still used Paxil, but sporadically, only when he felt himself slipping. He had been getting sample boxes of tablets from a relative. They hadn’t been on a pharmacy record for years. Matt had advised him to deny using them except for one brief period long ago.

      “I went through a hard time when I hurt my arm and lost my scholarship. But I only took it for about a year. There were lots of side effects,” Layne claimed.

      “What happened to your arm?” Edward asked.

      “I tore an elbow ligament playing long-toss.”

      Edward’s face lit up as he read from his paperwork. “You were a major league draft choice?”

      Layne anticipated being annoyed, despite the tension.

      “Yeah.”

      “What team?”

      “The Cardinals.”

      Layne thought, Now he’s gonna say, why didn’t you go?

      “Why didn’t you go?” Edward asked.

      “Because I was a draft-and-follow. I was supposed to be drafted again the next year and be offered a signing bonus, but it didn’t work out.” Layne looked away as he spoke, and scratched his cheek.

      He toiled to think of a distraction to lead Edward away from that time period if he persisted; he didn’t want him finding out about what happened between him and one of his coaches. Layne interrupted the pause and rushed to deflect any further inquiry. “Do you like baseball?”

      “Yeah, I’m a Yankees fan,” Edward replied, as he looked up from the questionnaire. He didn’t seem to interpret Layne’s intent.

      “Oh, the Dark Side,” Layne said.

      “What?” Edward said, confused.

      “Oh . . . nothing, it’s just something baseball people say. It’s a joke.” Layne backed off and took a moment to observe Edward while he reacquired his place in his paperwork. He had appeared almost lost when he arrived, and he was repeatedly losing his place within his list of questions. Multitasking between the SF-86 and other documents made him look like he might be approaching senility.

      “What is your relationship with Fabiola Estrada? Is she a roommate or a girlfriend? You can just tell me she’s a roommate if you want, it’s a lot more work if you say she’s your girlfriend,” Edward said.

      Layne tried not to let his eyes show it while he stalled to think. Why would he offer me a lay-up like this? Laziness? Edward knew how to tempt him. To deny a principle relationship would most likely reduce the background investigation by several months. Fabiola being a foreigner was probably a mountain of paperwork. But maybe her status had just now swayed him to set a trap that would eliminate the case completely? Judging by Edward’s fatigued body language, Layne was ninety-percent sure he was being sincere.

      Edward leaned back and slouched slightly while his writing hand awaited a response. Layne opened his mouth to state that she was merely a temporary roommate, then Matt’s southern drawl stopped his lips from moving at the last moment. I warned him not to lie about anything that wasn’t a deal breaker. It was too dangerous to gamble with.

      “She’s my girlfriend right now. She’s here on a work visa from Argentina,” Layne said reluctantly.

      “She is?” Edward seemed surprised by the last part.

      Layne was convinced that Edward’s behavior was genuine. He was definitely much less adept than Layne had expected—maybe even easy to manipulate.

      “She’s from the same city as Che Guevara, but she doesn’t like to talk about it. I guess it’s different down there than the way it is here with the t-shirts and stuff,” Layne added.

      Edward looked perplexed.

      “And she lives in these apartments here?” he asked.

      “She lives in that building right over there,” Layne answered, pointing toward her building through a large window to his left.” She gets a free apartment; it’s one of her benefits for being the apartment manager.

      Edward glanced at him with an aggravated eye, and sighed. “This is gonna be a pain in the butt. I’m going to have to see her passport and her visa.”

      Layne reminded himself to keep his guard up while Edward jotted something down. He looked up from his paperwork and glared sharply into Layne’s eyes.

      “You stated that you tried marijuana three times in college. Have you used any other illicit drugs?”

      Layne braced himself and forged his best poker face. He tried to appear matter of fact, but his eyes broke contact with Edward’s. He dreaded hearing the word steroids and hoped Edward wouldn’t go there. “No, I just tried marijuana three times when I was at fraternity parties in Missouri, but I didn’t like it.”

      “Nothing else, though?” Edward wasn’t releasing his stare as he waited for something to write down.

      “No, just marijuana. It made me view myself, my life, from an outside perspective. It made me panic,” Layne said.

      Edward looked suspicious. “Okay, I’ll put down that you tried it and didn’t like it because you felt bad about it; guilty?”

      “Yes, I did feel guilty. If my dad knew, he would be really disappointed.” Layne stared at a different picture on the wall for a moment while he pondered the percentage of truth in his statement.

      “How many drinks would you say you have in a week?” Edward asked, resuming the stare, but with less intensity.

      Layne forced himself to maintain eye contact with him and hoped Edward couldn’t tell he was putting forth effort to do so. “I have three or four drinks a week. Unless there’s a social situation or something special going on, then I will have two or three more.”

      “So, seven drinks a week?” Edward asked, his pen waiting.

      “Six or seven on average, seven at the most,” Layne claimed.

      “Any DUIs?” Edward asked, looking at his pad now.

      “No.”

      Edward wrote quietly while Layne crossed his fingers beneath the desk, hoping he would move on to the next subject.

      “You said here that you speak Spanish. Cómo aprendiste Español?” Edward wanted to know how he learned Spanish.

      “Yo viví en México y asistí a una escuela allí,” Layne said eloquently. He had practiced this phrase repeatedly while chatting with Mexicans about his life and schooling in their country.

      “Where in Mexico?” Edward asked, eyebrows raised.

      “La Paz, I was there for almost four months.”

      “What were you doing in Mexico?” Edward asked.

      “I was studying abroad,” Layne said.

      Edward shook his head. “I’m gonna need to see your passport later on then.” He sounded deflated, as if he had pulled the shortest straw of all the investigators. He found his place in his paperwork and continued. “Why did you put Tucson Sector as your first choice of stations to work?”

      Layne hadn’t anticipated this question. Why does he care? Matt had asked him the same thing, and when Layne told him Arizona, Matt said, “What? That’s the worst place on the border.”

      He felt Edward waiting for an answer while he imagined the desert. “Um, my parents took me to Tucson when I was twelve for Spring Training. I didn’t know there were palm trees in Arizona until then. I have wanted to live there ever since.”

      Edward gave him another bemused look.

      Stop elaborating, Layne told himself. If you can’t think of anything to say just be quiet.

      “Have you been to any other countries besides Mexico?”

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