“I just want a job where I only have to lick stamps and there’s someone there to tell me which side to lick.”
Nicole Rivard wore a sly smile after saying this to her high school principal five years earlier. Now she had her ideal job at Miller Press in Clarksville, New Hampshire. It was repetitive custodial work, but she liked always knowing what was required. Up to that particular day she had done everything just right. Unfortunately, her first error would be a fatal one.
Nicole Rivard had used her dumbed-down job goal to quiet half the Canaan High School faculty. They had been on her case for refusing to apply to colleges. There was certain brilliance to her declaration. Nicole knew this news would spread rapidly and abruptly stop all further questions.
She hadn’t dared tell her teachers she was in love, ready to marry, and would never consider leaving her family and the North Country. Although Nicole’s first love didn’t work out, she was now engaged to a logger named Danny Beauregard.
This mid-June Friday afternoon Nicole was finishing her janitorial work cheerfully by cleaning the last two ground floor offices. The first belonged to Tom Walton, the president of Miller Press. Tom lived upstairs in this building which had once been a mansion. Nicole liked Walton and although she had permission to leave early, she felt that Tom’s office should be left neat and clean. When she finished, only Ron Desmond’s office remained. She disliked Desmond, but her professional pride kicked in and Walton’s cat followed her into the corner office.
She played with the cat as she tidied up the room. Mauser loved the extra attention and decided to chase the dust rag as Nicole cleaned the top of Desmond’s large walnut desk. When Mauser saw the moving rag, he suddenly leaped from the floor to the desktop and didn’t take into account the silver three ring notebook overhanging the edge. Mauser panicked as he and the notebook slid backward. The frightened cat compensated by trying to scratch a purchase on some brochures at the edge of the desk. Unfortunately, they were only held down by a glass of water. Although this strategy worked for half a second, the cat, brochures, glass, and water soon joined the notebook in the wastebasket below.
Nicole was worried that Mauser might be hurt and Desmond’s paperwork ruined. After making sure the cat had lost no more than his dignity, she picked up the notebook. Only the last few bound pages were wet. She didn’t notice the small booklet of a few dozen stapled pages that had slipped away into the basket.
Nicole needed to dry the wet pages and neaten the desk so she took the notebook to a table down the hall and spread the wet pages to dry. She noted in passing the cross section of a yacht on one page and an odd circular emblem on the notebook’s plastic cover. She was not one to let curiosity further delay getting home so she quickly returned to Desmond’s office to dry and straighten his desk. She recovered a few dry brochures without noticing the wet booklet nested in a bed of scrap paper. After emptying the basket, she lugged her trash bag to the dumpster outside.
Before leaving for home she remembered the notebook. Two pages were still damp so she left them to dry resolving to reassemble the notebook early on Monday before Desmond arrived. She scanned the office and when satisfied grabbed her backpack.
A half-hour later Desmond returned to his office and placed his Westley Richards rifle on its wall rack between the mounted heads of an impala and a gazelle. He was a bit later than he intended but was still in an excellent mood. Desmond, a handsome man, entered rooms with an aura of command. He was six feet three and weighed two hundred well proportioned pounds. His deep voice and perfect posture enhanced his ability to lead or intimidate as circumstances required.
Desmond was pleased with his clean office, but quite surprised. The three ring sales binder that should have been on his desk was missing. The Rivard girl had probably moved it while cleaning. This sparked a twitch of uncertainty. He had also been using a similar but secret notebook that afternoon. He was confident that he had locked the correct notebook in his safe before leaving, but he had to make sure. After turning the combination and opening the heavy door, he turned in panic with the sales notebook in hand.
He and Tom Walton had dismissed workers early to show their appreciation for an excellent work week. The sales binder had been on his desk when he pulled the almost identical notebook from the safe. He had opened the confidential binder and removed the small stapled booklet. He chuckled as he read its title which was J.R. Beattie’s stupid mantra: If the end is near, you can profit from fear.
Then when he was about to leave, he slipped the booklet back into the binder and straightened the mess on his side table, but after returning to his desk he locked the wrong notebook in the safe. Then he had grabbed his rifle and left to take his ATV to shoot with the militia boys at their new firing range at the far back of the property. He didn’t realize he had left behind a clue to his organization’s darker side.
“This is a freaking disaster.” Desmond muttered to himself when he returned to his office. He stood next to Nicole’s table in a panic. He’d just lost the schedule for the money laundering scheme he and his partners had spent months developing. Gone also was the plan for the greatest religious hoax in fifty years. He was the only person on site authorized to see any of this. Even Tom Walton knew nothing of these phantom plans. If this document leaked to authorities, he would face Federal conspiracy and sedition charges, assuming he lived that long. His partners in this enterprise didn’t believe in forgiveness.
Desmond who was the local militia commander grabbed his phone. There could be an innocent explanation, but there was too much risk in doing nothing. He chose Greg Delp, his most intelligent lieutenant to pick up Nicole’s trail. Within minutes, Delp’s truck screeched to a stop outside his office window. Delp could sense Desmond’s fury as he explained what had happened.
“Our only safe assumption,” said Desmond, “is that the girl’s an FBI mole. If so, she’ll pass the booklet to her handlers. We’ve got to prevent this.”
Desmond gave Delp instructions for finding and following Nicole while considering another problem: the report contained secrets that even Delp shouldn’t know. There was no good solution to that so he ordered Delp to report back immediately when he found the booklet.
Picking up a fresh trail away from work on a Friday afternoon might be impossible in Miami or Los Angeles. However, it was possible in a county with a few thousand people and a limited network of roads. Delp raced down the Miller Press Drive to check three stores and a post office before staking out Nicole’s home.
As Delp drove away, Desmond considered the next possibility: that Rivard wasn’t a mole. She could have picked up the plan by mistake. Either way, she would look at it. Even a dullard like Nicole would call the cops if she read more than a few pages, but if she hadn’t read it already, he doubted she would on a summer evening. No matter how she had obtained these pages, there was no clean way to retrieve them. There was only one dependable and permanent solution.
Suddenly Desmond thought of the right method. He recalled hearing Nicole talk about her plans for fishing Saturday morning. Suddenly he imagined the perfect accident and only one other person would have to know about it. The required dirty work would be the ideal loyalty test for his second in command, John Ford.
