David Dun Official Website - Chapter 1

Welcome to the website of David Dun, thriller author

CHAPTER 1, Part 2
The Beginning Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6

At first, the snow fell lightly. Jessie Mayfield found herself outside a three-chair beauty shop in a town where the men still went to the barber. Visiting Johnson City was a bizarre experience and a greatly needed distraction. Trying not to think about Frank Bilotti seemed to be the antidote of choice until she figured out some way that thinking about him could be constructive.

Claudie had tried to insist that she visit a local hair dresser, but Jessie wasn't in the mood. She had picked up the groceries for Claudie and her kids, all the way down to the Pop Tarts, and had only one stop left. A prescription for Claudie's shingles waited at the pharmacy, where she could also pick up some cold medicine for Claudie's first-born son, Bren.

The only pharmacy in Johnson City operated out of an old church. The steep-pitched slate roof, steeple, overhanging eaves, and lap siding gave the building a certain character. Something else about it made it poignant, but Jessie couldn't put her finger on it. Entering through the church's original set of double doors, Jessie saw shelves climbing all the walls, even reaching the point where the ceiling rose at an angle to form the steeple. Not short on merchandise, the place was packed with everything from portable toilets to hot water bottles.

"Can I help you?" a beautiful olive-skinned woman said. She looked part Native American, with soft, well-tended hair that dropped over her shoulders.

"Claudie Donahue has a prescription."

"You must be her sister from New York?"

"Word travels that fast?"

"Around here the trees have ears and the rocks talk."

Jessie's face broke a natural smile. It felt odd because her life was distinctly a frown.

In a corner next to the counter, a dark-haired boy was coloring. It required no imagination to suppose that his mother was tending the store. His eyelashes were long and distinctive. Designed for expansion, his blue overalls were rolled nicely at the ankles, his tiny Polo shirt bore stripes that handily complemented the denim. Mom worked on this kid.

Jessie wondered at his place in life: Other than waiting for his mother to finish work, which he did rather well, this child's only job was keeping the crayon in the coloring book. He had no conflicts pulling him in opposite directions, no tests looming on his horizon to determine if he would be judged fit or worthwhile. No conscious possibility of flunking life. That would come later. Jessie gave him a smile—her second of the day. She enjoyed the connection as their eyes met, and she silently wished him well.

As Jessie crossed the street to her Volvo, the snow hurled down in blinding torrents. The keys didn't fit in the car door lock at first—probably due to the overanxious shake in her hands—and it took a minute to make them work. She didn't want to drive back over the mountain in this snow, but she had to get back to Claudie. Besides, where else would she stay in this desolate county but at her sister's?

Jessie had never believed that circumstances controlled people unless people allowed them to. She now struggled to maintain that belief. Frank Bilotti would like nothing better than to put her mind in that vice called fear. The hearings at headquarters in Washington would begin quickly if she decided to bring charges. Then, either she would lose her job and be drummed out of the FBI in disgrace. Or, if the truth wriggled free from all the lies, three experienced agents who had served with distinction would lose their shields. In the latter case, more than a few of her colleagues would hate her, although she knew that her friends—and there were plenty of those—would stick by her. There was a third possibility: All four agents—including Jessie—would be fired and forfeit their good names forever.

Frank had been her mentor, her friend, and her colleague. Having mentored many in her own right, she held that relationship sacred, and her trust had been absolute. Frank had breached that trust in the cruelest possible way, and for no purpose other than saving his own professional life. If only it had been just ordinary, gut-wrenching, black-hole-in-your-life adultery, maybe Gail could have survived the traditional humbling. Frank's line might have begun something like: "The wife and I are seeing a counselor." But Jessie's best friend had fallen victim to Frank's demented needs and been publicly vilified.

Jessie's fingers tightened on the steering wheel. She needed to do something with her anger other than drive it down the road. God, if she got stuck while driving over Elk Horn Pass, she could freeze to death. That would be one way to rid her memory of Frank Bilotti. Maybe coming to stay with her sister in the mountains hadn't been a good idea. There was so much silence out here. So many open spaces. You couldn't really hide from your thoughts the way you could at Thanksgiving in New York, knocked around in the crowds like a billiard ball, jostling past the guys with Salvation Army suits on the corner. Instead, she now faced eighteen miles of death-defying driving in blinding snow.

She had no affinity for the mountains, hated bugs, and picnics of every kind, and didn't care for animals large enough that their leavings wouldn't fit in a sandwich bag. So why come to a place you hate? Simple. To help someone you love.

Claudie needed her, and that was a good reason to be here. Jessie hoped that she could deal with her own problems by helping someone else. Grady White, Frank's boss, had told her that it wasn't bad medicine to help others as long as you got around to yourself in the process.

In her own self-analysis, Jessie started out with one major vulnerability: She was frightened to death of failing at anything. She had spent her early years in upstate New York near the bend in the Willis River. At thirteen, she moved to the Bronx, having personally earned in record time all the merit badges that the Girl Scouts had to offer.

After that, it was a different matter: pimples, hormones, periods, boys, parents who didn't understand, down right ignorant brothers, tears, hysteria, clothes that didn't fit, fights about what to wear, and weird cravings for things she couldn't have—a list too long to remember. And the lost-animal home. Even as a child, it was her credo that she had to be tough and perfect. But something inside her was soft. It came out first with the animals. Incredibly determined, she had created a backyard menagerie of those particularly lucky creatures that fell into her hands before they met the ultimate sanction at the city animal shelter. To support her critters, she got a paper route. The animals went at age fifteen. She swore off loving animals as best she could, and at age sixteen, became a somewhat introspective girl who plunged headlong into the world of computers.

It was only with her MBA that she had a sort of social blossoming. Awkward at first, she learned how to reach out to people. Shortly after school, she wed. She thrived at her first job, at Delphi, a high-tech company where she soon headed the information technology division.

When Gail, her best friend since childhood, suffered an auto accident that broke multiple bones, almost ruined an eye, and generally made her a nervous, quivering person, Jessie gave up the better part of her "free" time to help her old friend. Just about that time, Jessie's husband, Norman, announced their breakup to their respective families.

Gail was the reason Jessie had joined the FBI. Gail had a job in the public relations department for the Bureau in Washington, D.C. Although Jessie was a computer whiz, was more or less happily buried in her work, and had lots of friends, she wanted to do something more creative. Gail, for her part, wanted Jessie for a roommate, now that Norman was history, so she convinced her to join the Bureau, effectively arguing that Jessie could specialize in computer crime—no street work—and match wits with the smartest crooks in the business. There was no end to the personal creativity she could bring to the task of hunting down virus disseminators, techno-terrorists, and other computer criminals.

Jessie surprised herself by going for it—the right thing at the right time, she guessed—turning down two promotion offers from Delphi. A lot of things about making the move were painful, including the sizable cut in pay and the interminable, but ultimately rewarding, training.

She rapidly formed many good relationships, chief among them the one with her boss, Frank Bilotti. She had known him for three years before he did the unthinkable.

Although Gail had been the initial victim, it was Jessie who was the witness on whom the entire case against Frank rested. Without what Jessie saw and heard, there would be no investigation of Frank Bilotti. What Frank did to Jessie was threaten her career, and what she held most dear, her reputation, in order to force her silence. What he really did was break her heart. Then it was a professional war.

Of course when the Bilotti thing blew up, Gail had pointed out that it was ludicrous for Jessie Mayfield to leave the dung heap of a bureaucratic mess for the dirt roads and insect-ridden, off-the-grid, back-country living of Wintoon County. This was not a Jessie Mayfield kind of place. There were no hot dog stands, Jewish delicatessens, sushi bars, or theatre districts—nothing but her sister Claudie.

When Frank found out that Jessie intended to bring him down, Jessie just purchased an airline ticket, found Gail a good shrink and an extra friend, then hugged her good-bye and said she'd be back in a month. Given the nature of the accusations (word of which had immediately filtered up and down the Bureau's ranks), and despite Frank's flat denials, counter-accusations, and old-boy buddies backing him up, the FBI would have given Jessie a six-month administrative leave of absence if she'd asked for it. As it was, she was taking a month. Until then, Frank could sweat.

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The Beginning | Part 2 Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6