Simple Simon Read Online Free Page A

decade before.
    And so he was here…again. With all the pieces of his life in place, finally. Staring out his office window into the mist that shrouded Lake Michigan, his heart beating beneath Anne’s note, Art Jefferson felt content, warm, and completely at home for the first time in his life.
    “Your place, huh?” Art said aloud as he swung back toward his desk and locked the file drawer. He’d accomplished all he was going to this Friday. He stood from his chair and was feeding several pieces of paper into the shredder when three taps sounded on his door. Bob Lomax came in behind the knock.
    “Got a minute?”
    Art let the last document ride into the shredder. It came out as paper spaghetti and fell into the burn bag. “Sure. I was just finishing up. What’s up?”
    The SAC approached and took a seat facing Art’s desk. He slid it close and laid a plain file folder on the desk. “Have a look.”
    Art sat and put his reading glasses on, then lifted the file’s cover. A face less its eyes stared up at him from an 8 by 10 glossy. “Jesus.”
    “Pretty, huh?” Lomax asked the A-SAC. “Recognize who it is?”
    Art’s eyes, narrow and troubled, came up from the photo. “I’m supposed to recognize this?”
    Lomax leaned back in the chair and scratched his scarred left cheek. He had a face more reminiscent of a boxer than a bureaucrat. “Think back. Before you transferred out west. Nineteen seventy-five or so.”
    Art looked back to the photo, and carefully through the others. He grimaced visibly and was very glad they were in black and white. “Sorry, Bob.”
    “Vince Chappell,” Lomax said, now rubbing his lower lip with a single finger. “Ring a bell?”
    It did. Art returned to the first photo, eyes plucked, lower lip cut away and hanging in a flap over the chin, exposing the teeth like some ghoulish Halloween mask. The tip of the nose was gone, leaving a bruised pyramid of flesh less its peak.
    In one picture the genitals were missing.
    “Is this Vinnie?” Art asked in a hollow voice.
    Lomax nodded. “He worked with us back then doing OC investigations.”
    Art closed the cover and dropped the file on his desk. The corners of several photos slid free. “My God.” He covered his mouth and reclined toward the window. “What…”
    “Remember when he left where he was going?”
    “CIA, wasn’t it?”
    “Right,” Lomax confirmed. “A week ago today he was killed in Japan, in an Agency house north of Tokyo. He apparently took a hooker there for some fun. It turns out she wasn’t a hooker.” The SAC reached across the desk and took the folder. He removed two typewritten pages from behind the photos. “This is from the Agency team that did a hush-hush on this. ‘ Victim was bound to the bed with buckled leather straps. There was evidence of damage to every pain/pressure point on the victim’s body, indicating an attempt (result unknown) at information extraction. ’ A nice way to say ‘torture’,” Lomax commented, moving to the next page. “Then this: ‘ Blood was evident throughout the room, and along a path leading to the shower in the adjoining bathroom. Numerous fingerprints, palmprints, and footprints (most in blood) were apparent and were collected for analysis. ’“ Lomax returned the report to its place in the file. “CIA sent the fingerprints to our lab in D.C. and got the results yesterday. The ‘hooker’ was some sick bitch named Keiko Kimura. Ever hear of her?” Art shook his head. “The CIA brief says she’s a former Japanese Red Army terrorist schooled at the finest establishments in North Korea, Libya, Iran, etcetera. A real pedigree type with a specialty in getting people to talk. In ninety-one she dropped from sight and reappeared last year doing freelance work for the money.”
    “Not enriched by the JRA ideology, eh?” Art observed. Revolution was not the path to success for most.
    “You got it,” Lomax agreed.
    Art gestured to the file. “So why do we