It wasn’t much, but it was something.
Chapter Five
Wednesday, December 30, 2020
Although everyone was on official holiday throughthe first of the year, Brantley wasn’t surprised that Governor Greenwood had summoned him to his office at the capitol building.
Nor was he surprised the governor had requested he come alone.
And he seriously doubted he would be surprised by the topic of the conversation they were going to have once he got there.
As it was, he’d been putting the governor off for days. Not because he’d been overloaded, more so because he was dragging his feet. He’d started by insisting Monday wasn’t good for him. The governor then requested Tuesday, which Brantley also shot down. However, when Governor Greenwood’s assistant had simply continued to the next day, offering every hour on the hour from morning to evening, Brantley knew the meeting was inevitable.
The very reason he was walking through the mostly empty capitol building on this chilly Wednesday afternoon.
Unlike normal business hours, there was no one to greet him when he stepped into the ostentatious outer office with its wine-red carpet and dark wood everything. Rhonda, the governor’s persistent assistant, was usually perched behind that little desk, headset on, a smile on her face. Today her spot was empty, and if she was lucky, she was spending some quality time with her family.
Exactly where the governor should be, Brantley thought when he stopped at the partially closed door to the governor’s inner sanctum.
Before he could lift his hand to knock, he was called inside by a grumbling voice.
“Governor,” he greeted when he pushed open the door.
Brantley wouldn’t go so far as to call Governor Gerard Greenwood an imposing figure. He wasn’t a big man, nor did he have one of those bulldog faces that prevented people from wanting to argue with him. His hair was still thick, although the once inky black had taken on quite a bit of gray over the years, and with his high cheekbones, perfectly straight nose, and well-groomed eyebrows, Gerard was what some considered classically handsome. He stood less than six feet tall, which meant Brantley had a good five or six inches on him, but that didn’t seem to faze the man in the least.
“Thank you for coming, Brantley.” Governor Greenwood motioned toward the leather armchair across from his desk. “Have a seat, please.”
Brantley would’ve preferred to stand, but he knew when to pick his battles, so he eased into the chair.
“Relax,” the governor said. “You look like you’re gearing up for a firing squad.”
“I thought that was the reason I was here,” he answered snidely.
Gerard cocked an eyebrow. “Don’t make me the bad guy here.”
“If the shoe fits…”
Some would likely say he was pushing it with his rude comments directed at the man who was the chief executive of Texas and the commander-in-chief of the state’s military, not to mention his boss, but Brantley didn’t give a shit.
He had a bone to pick with the man, and to him it felt personal. Governor Greenwood had been the one to approachhimback in September, offering to fund a task force dedicated to finding missing people. And now the governor wanted to eliminate their team, as though they hadn’t accomplished a damn thing during the three months they’d been working their asses off. Hell, they had found a woman who’d gone missing as a teenager and been held captive for a solid decade. In the process, they’d rescued the governor’s daughter when she’d been kidnapped in an effort to hide that crime. After that, they had single-handedly unearthed a serial killer who’d been wearing a detective’s shield. A feat not even the FBI had been able to do up to that point.
As far as Brantley was concerned, they deserved a little bit of credit for what they’d done. They damn sure didn’t deserve to get the axe.
“Brantley, I know you’re upset, and I can’t say I blame you. The team’s been doing good work. You should be proud of that. Unfortunately, it’s the same work that a number of agencies are currently involved in.”
So he’d heard … in that email.
“What I don’t understand is why you’re not fightin’ this, Governor,” Brantley countered. “We have proof of our value, not just supposition or projection. We’ve made a difference with the cases we’ve solved in just a short time. One in particular that had been sittin’ in cold storage for a decade.”
“Youhavemade a difference,” Governor Greenwood agreed. “That’s not up for debate. The pushback comes from the financial impact.”
“They believe the money should be allocated to the law enforcement agencies,” Brantley said, repeating what Greenwood had told him in the email. “Question is, if you’d given them the additional funding in the past three months, would they have solved the cases we did?”
“I don’t think that’s something that can be determined in hindsight.”
“Actually, it can. Take the Dallas case. There were a number of cold-case victims attached to that one. We didn’t just find the one you called us in to find. You had a serial killer in your ranks.”
Governor Greenwood’s expression remained solemn. “The fact that it involved serial murders made it the FBI’s jurisdiction. We weren’t sitting on those cases. They weren’t ours to handle any longer.”
