Merit Badge Murder by Leslie Langtry Page B

pyromaniacs.
    He gave me a strange look that faded into a smile. Then he saw the curtains. The curtains that were actually Dora the Explorer bed sheets. The curtains with two, long, smeary handprints on them. It looked like I had killed somebody who was filthy and they died, clinging to the sheets as they slid to the floor.
    "Sorry!" I said again. "I…um…have a roommate. She's very dirty." I added. What the hell? I was making it worse.
    "Um…okay?" He looked confused.
    "Like Pigpen…from the Charlie Brown cartoons?" I added. "She must've wiped her hands on the curtains."
    Rex looked at me for a moment like I was completely insane. To be completely fair, I was starting to wonder that myself.
    "Tea? A glass of wine? Shot of vodka?" I said out loud as I mentally went through the drinks I had on hand. Then I realized I'd just offered the man shots.
    I said nothing more. It was my only defense, really.
    "No thanks," the future love of my life said very slowly as if he was trying to figure out if he should run. "I'm actually on duty."
    "Oh. Right," I said, wondering why I'd just tried to bribe a cop with booze. Was that a thing? I wasn't sure. It had worked on the Eastern Europeans I'd spied on, and some of them drank antifreeze for a buzz. Not here so much, I guessed.
    "I just had a few more questions. About Ahmed Maloof and Carlos the Armadillo."
    Great. Just when things were getting romantic.
    "I'm sorry." I faked my most sincere voice. "I can't really help other than what I've already told you."
    Rex nodded. "I know you said that. It's just that something is bothering me about you."
    "Me?" My eyes grew wide, and my mouth dropped open. That did not sound good.
    "Yes. You see, I've been trying to research you. And I'm not coming up with anything."
    I waved him off. "Oh that. Well, I don't really have a presence online. No Facebook, Twitter, none of that stuff."
    He shook his head. "It's not just that—I can't find anything about you. No birth certificate…no record of where you've lived, where you went to school, nothing. It's like you don't exist."
    I must've been staring because he added, "Well, I mean, you do exist, obviously. You're sitting right here. But on paper there is no evidence of a Merry Wrath. Nothing."
    My skin itched, and my arms and legs grew cold. This wasn't good. I'd been a non-person many times in my life, with many different aliases and backstories. They had a whole wing at Langley that just answered calls about our backstories, pretending to be the companies we worked for, etc. I didn't have that anymore. No one had even offered. Not even the Federal Witness Protection Program. I'd developed this persona—Merrygold Wrath, on my own. Which meant I had to figure this out and back it up on my own. Which sucked.
    I frowned. "I don't know how that's possible…" My eyes went up to the left, a sign I knew implied that I was wrestling with what I thought was impossible. If I'd gone to the right, it alerted people that I was accessing the right side…the creative side, the lying part of my brain. Any FBI agent or CIA agent would know that, and so, I assumed, would a detective.
    "I grew up here. How could you not find any record of that?" I asked while my brain furiously worked on a solution.
    Rex shook his head, "I don't know. I thought maybe you could explain it." He looked at me with eyes that challenged me with go ahead smart girl—make something up.
    "You met my cousin, Riley, last time you were here," I challenged.
    "Just because you say he's your cousin doesn't mean anything," Rex answered. "Besides, he looked more like a Fed to me."
    I suppressed a laugh. Riley would hate that Rex thought he looked like FBI. He hated the FBI. It was beyond the usual intergovernmental agency mutual loathing. The Feds once blew Riley's cover in a sting operation. He was stuck with an incontinent chimpanzee for four weeks as a result.
    "Why wouldn't his testimony work?" I asked.
    "Because he's just a cousin. And I