I spent the rest of the drive watching the scenery flash by. The plains are pretty boring from a landscape point of view. This was a far cry from the beauty of the cabin and the mountains.

My mind wandered all over the place which was unusual for me. After a couple of hours, I put that down to not being in control of what happened to me at least in the short term. I would have to accept that I would have to let others effectively mother me if I was going to get justice for my mom. I began to concentrate my thoughts on what I’d like to do when he and his son were locked away for the rest of their natural. It didn’t last long. The words that my mother had spoken many times came back to haunt me. Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched. I returned to thinking about the judge.

The long drive east finally forced me to admit that I missed the cabin even if I had only been there for a few days. There was something about it that had given me a chance to breathe and be the real me. No other place had done that to me before. I resolved to return to the area when all this was over and done with it if it was possible.

The image that I had in my mind of Duluth from the TV, was one of row upon row of huge grain silos and extensive railway yards.

Our car had overtaken a succession of freight trains on the line that ran parallel to the highway and the many tall concrete silos that filled the skyline ahead sort of told me that shipment of grain was big business in this part of the world. The TV image that I’d had of the place wasn’t that far wrong. For some reason, it reminded me of something mom used to say on the rare occasion that she received a decent tip from a customer, ‘Small wins come together to make a big one’.

Agent Turner drove us close to the city center, and then took a highway that ran along the north shore of Lake Superior to a place called 'Knife River', where she turned the car off the main road and headed inland.

After the agent consulted a map as well as the instructions that were on her phone a few times, she pulled the car up outside what appeared to be a solitary house that stood alone on a lot that seemed to be about twenty acres in size. A clapperboard garage stood off to one side and the rear of the house. Images of a modern ‘Little House on the Prairie’ came to my mind.

As we came to a stop, the front door opened. Two women came out with smiles on their faces. It appeared that this was the end of the line for me, at least for a while.

Less than five minutes later, Agent Turner drove off into the sunset. She’d done her job for the day.

---

Over a very welcome cup of tea, the two agents who were going to look after me introduced themselves. The lead agent, Amy Carter was very much the boss. She was a native of Wisconsin but even to her, Duluth was the armpit of the universe. Her co-worker, Sylvie Marshall hailed from the Maine coast but had been working in Phoenix for the past five years, and was not looking forward to winter in these latitudes.

“Winter? Are we to be here that long?”

Amy looked at Sylvie before speaking.
“Things are a bit fluid at the moment. We only got the call to come here in the early hours of the morning. I received a call from a deputy director in DC. Because of your fathers political contacts it was felt that keeping you safe needed to be done very much off the books. Normally, you would have had two or even three agents assigned to escort you here but it was stressed that the fewer people who knew about this operation the better.”

“That sort of echoed what Mr Gardiner of the DOD said when I spoke to him earlier.”

“He was on the call that assigned me here. I think that it was to indicate the seriousness of the assignment,” said Amy.

I began to feel a lot happier. The fact that only one agent was assigned to escort me from Spokane had concerned me for a while.

Amy continued, “Your father is scheduled to go on trial in November but your father’s legal team has already sued the Justice Department six different times. My boss said that at least two of them would probably end up in the Supreme Court. The gossip is that they had all the suits prepared in advance of the initial arrest because two of them were thrown out for basic cut and paste errors. My boss says that their clear tactic is to delay, delay and yet more delay. Two of the sixty charges against him relate to incidents that are close to five years ago.”

“Oh, the Statute of Limitations thing? They had to indict him now or it would be too late. I know from the legal texts that I have studied that it is a legal nightmare. The same crime can have a different limitation period in different states and again, different from federal laws.”

Amy nodded.
“Something like that but the legal people know what the other side is trying to do or that was what I read between the lines on the brief email that I received at 05:00 this morning."

I decided to change the subject.

“Ok, if we accept that I’m here for the duration how long that is, at some point I am going to have to give a deposition which will be given to the other side in discovery.”

“Are you a lawyer or something?” asked Sylvie.
“You seem very well versed in the procedures.”

I smiled,
“Or something. I spent many an hour reading legal texts as well as observing a few trials when I was living rough.”

“It must have been hard at times… you know being homeless?” said Sylvie.

“There were good times and bad times but I’m here now. When am I going to be deposed?”

“We don’t know. That as they say, is beyond our pay grade. I got a call a 05:00 this morning and told to get the next flight to O’Hare and here I am,” said Sylvie.

That confirmed my assumption that Amy was the boss lady here.

Amy smiled and said,
“I met Sylvie for the first time at Minneapolis St Paul airport and we flew here together, picked up a rental car and did some grocery shopping just to tide us over. We only arrived here a little over an hour ago. I checked in with the DOJ and I received an email from the people them giving me some more details of our assignment. One of us will have to go on a proper shopping trip either tomorrow or the next day. The email hinted very strongly that your deposition will not be next week or if I’m reading the runes correctly, even next month. The wheels of the Justice Department move at a snail’s pace even at the best of times.”

“I guess that one of both of you will need to report to the office that I'm here safe and sound. Then… I hate to say it but I'm rather hungry. I've only eaten a truck stop sandwich and a breakfast burger in the last 24 hours.”

Both of them laughed. That removed a lot of tension in the air. Food is a great way of breaking down barriers.

---

Over dinner, Amy outlined their plans for the immediate future or rather my immediate future.

"As I hinted at before, our regional director is well aware of the reach of your father. That's why the local field office knows nothing about us being here. Even the state FBI people are in the dark and our orders are only to involve them in an emergency. We have to get you ready to not only provide a deposition, but also to testify before a grand jury. One of the prosecutors at the DOJ will be sending me a lot of information that will help us in that work. Neither of us has been before a grand jury before so…”

“I get that but… I think that there is more? There is, isn’t there?”

“There is and a lot of the ‘more’ as you put it is not something that we are privy to at this time. What is first and foremost in our objectives is to make you not you if you get my meaning. All we have been told is that you have information that could be the final nail in your father’s coffin, the one that sends him to jail for the rest of his life. It stands to reason that he’ll do even more than he has already to stop you from even making a deposition let alone giving testimony at his trial whenever that happens. Our job is to stop him from stopping you.”

“I get that… So how do we go about this?”

“Sylvie is an expert at disguises and makeup. I am more into behavioral traits. Together our job is to make you not look like you and to blend in with the crowd as a woman. We believe that is what you want for the long term anyway. Is that assumption, correct?”

Without hesitation, I replied,
“It is. Ever since mom, came home early from work and found me doing my homework wearing one of her spare uniforms from the diner where she worked at the time, it has. We had a long heart to heart about it. She was reluctant to accept it at first but after a few months, she got behind me. My ultimate goal is to live as a woman with all the right IDs and everything."

“I’m puzzled about this information you have,” asked Sylvie.
“It is clear to me that you are a survivor. You would not have lasted so long if you weren’t but it is clear from how light you travel that you are not carrying it with you. The thing is that we don’t want to know about the information or where they are.”

I smiled but I wasn’t going to give up those particular crown jewels just yet.
“I agree with that. A lot of the information I have on my father I can’t talk about without implicating the both of you was obtained when I began tailing him. Who would suspect a school girl eh?”

The smiles that were on their faces disappeared in a flash.

“Who else knows about this?”

“No one living. My mom did obviously. She insisted that we wrote everything down. She would take that and mail it to someone she called her ‘insurance broker’. They still have it all or at least they did two years ago. I know that most of what I witnessed is out of time when it comes to prosecution, but it does show the sort of people my father was mixed up with and a pattern of behavior that is needed for a good RICO case. I carried on sending packets of information to the ‘insurance broker’ after she was murdered. I know that time limits do not apply to capital cases. The other person who knew about the general detail of what evidence that I had died suspiciously about a week ago. A few days later, an attempt was made on my life by my half-brother.”

“Are you sure that you aren’t a lawyer?” asked Sylvie.

"Me? No, and no offence if either of you is one, they are almost all money-grabbing scumbag lowlifes who could not do a hard day's work if it came up and slapped them in the face.”

Both of them laughed.
“Neither of us are lawyers and we do understand that point of view,” said Amy.

“I’ve never heard that way of describing lawyers. I must remember that,” said a grinning Sylvie.

I relaxed. I felt that I could trust these two women.

---

My education began in earnest the next day. Mornings were all around what would have been called ‘deportment’ in another age. Afternoons were about makeup and dressing. I hadn’t fully understood how the two go hand in hand. Makeup, clothes and accessories are all essential parts of how a woman presents herself to the outside world. Every evening, I’d present myself in an increasingly feminine way.

We had a lot of fun once I’d gotten over them seeing me naked. I began to understand that the new me had to come from within and that the clothes I wore were mere expressions of the woman inside me. My male clothes which might be useful in another time and place were packed away and the inner Tiffany in me was allowed to blossom for the first time since before my mother died. Some of my attempts at makeup were laughable. Thankfully, the internet came to the rescue and we procured cosmetics that were more suitable for my skin tone.

While this was going on, we all knew that we had to make the most of this phony war with my father, a sort of calm before the storm. That didn't stop us from having some fun mostly at my expense but I knew that they meant well so it didn't matter all that much as I was learning all sorts of things that could not be written down in a manual about being a woman.

What I did appreciate more than anything was having three meals a day, a nice bed to sleep in and a shower whenever I wanted one. Sylvie remarked that was not that dissimilar to what my father would be experiencing in his jail cell.

I laughed and pointed out the window at the waters of Lake Superior in the distance.
“I’d be willing to bet he does not have a view like that?”

Gradually, the inner woman in me came to the fore. Sylvie kept at it and gradually I developed my own style of makeup that was suitable for someone with my skin tone. A few hundred YouTube videos and overnight online order deliveries help us in the process. Amy worked on my deployment and voice. The latter was difficult but again, after watching numerous YouTube videos on altering the tone and pitch of my voice, it began to work.

---

The call to come to DC for a deposition came the Tuesday before Labor Day. It was not entirely unexpected as Amy had received a few ‘heads up’ emails in the middle of August. Then in the last week of August, UPS made a delivery to the house.

The very official-looking package contained some ID for me in the name of Tiffany Miles. Seeing my name and photo on an Oregon State driving license was quite a shock as was my age. Officially, I was now twenty-one years old. A smile appeared on my face that lasted for well over a day. Both Amy and Sylvie noticed a positive change in me.

It also meant that playtime was over and I had to face the real world, the big, bad world.

I’d been out with Amy and Sylvie a few times but once the call to DC came, I went shopping without the direct company of either of them. They were there observing how I behaved. It wasn’t a test of my ability to shop but to act like other women and effectively blend in. We did that for two days and an ‘inquest’ into my trip took place over dinner each evening. If I had a report card, it would read mostly B+’s. Both of them felt pleased with their work which was all that I wanted from them after all, it is common knowledge that women are far more critical of other women in how they dress and act than men.

My next real test of the new me would come when we drove to the airport for a flight to Chicago. Amy and Sylvie were going to accompany me on the journey but from a distance until we got to DC. We considered it my passing out exam, but it served another purpose in that if someone was on their tail, we hoped that they’d not spot me because I looked a lot different to when I was last seen in public in Spokane. My hair was now a dark chestnut color and much longer. I’d learned to style it just like one of the anchors on the TV news.

The orders that Amy and Sylvie had received said that we had to be in DC the following Monday morning. I was surprised when they began to pack up the house on Friday afternoon.

“Aren’t we coming back here?” I asked.

“As far as I know, none of us are. We have to deliver you to the deposition and again, as far as I know, another team will take over from us at that point. I know from other cases like this, that a clean-up crew will be coming here on Monday. They will sanitize the place,” said Amy.

I felt as if I was going to be alone again. Although Sylvie was a lot older than Amy, I’d bonded with her more than Amy, who was a career agent and wanted to go places in the bureau. Sylvie was more laid back and happier to let things play out. Those differences made them an effective team in my eyes.

---

The three of us flew to DC on Sunday morning. Amy had to remind me as we queued to board the flight from O’Hare to Dulles that not every man was a threat to my very existence. Being around two strong women for so long had influenced me in more ways than I’d ever thought it would. A few words from her whispered in my ear calmed me down no end.

The flights went as well as can be expected. Once we’d arrived in DC, we met up again and took a cab to a hotel not that far from the FBI Academy at Quantico for the night. We had rooms reserved for the next three nights, but I knew that it would soon be make or break for me. I hoped that I hadn’t given the game away when I started looking at possible exits from the Hotel and into what public transport was nearby. I planned to get out of the city on a local bus and then start walking into the darkness should things go to hell. Then I came down to earth with a bit of a bang. None of the shoes that I had would last five days on the road and that applied even to the big-box store trainers that I’d worn for our journey to DC. I’d barely worn them in before the sole started to split.

---

[the next day]
“How do I look,” I asked Sylvie as I paraded myself before her just before we went to breakfast.
“Perfect, just as we discussed.”

I was feeling very underdressed. For the first time in weeks, I was not wearing any makeup or feminine clothes. We’d gone for the androgynous look. This was very much as I’d been dressed when I first met Amy and Sylvie.

Our plan was for my new and hopefully more sophisticated and feminine look to remain a secret for as long as possible. More than once, I wondered how I’d manage running for my life in heels. It was the stuff of SNL sketches.[1]

After a Taxi ride into the city, we met up with a DOJ lawyer who had been assigned to be my legal representative for the deposition. I took an immediate dislike to Lane Webster, when he said, “just answer yes or no. Do not give out information.”

I responded with,
“Isn’t the purpose of a deposition to get my side of the story down on the record and that it can and will be used if I am unavailable at trial?”

“Yes, but the less we give away to the other side at this time the better.”

“And if I get bumped off, my deposition becomes next to useless if it only contains the minimum of detail?”

“You sound as if you have studied law?”

I shook my head.
“The Cornell Law School website is very informative on the topic of depositions and especially their limitations when it comes to a trial.”

He ignored me and led me into the room where the deposition was to take place. A video camera and lights were already set up and waiting. It was almost like those old film noir movies where the cops gave the suspect the third degree. I tried to put those images out of my mind but it was hard when you were the one who was going to be in the spotlight.

I was about to sit down when the legal representatives of my father trooped in. There were five of them, all male and all wearing very expensive suits. There was an aura of money about them all but the last one of the five was a surprise. I recognized him in an instant even though it had been over six years since we’d last met. His refusal to catch my eyes told me that he knew that I’d recognized him right away.

He was one of a group of five men who had raped me when I was about twelve years old. It had happened in our home when my mom was away in Florida with my father. They were all cronies of my father and in my opinion, even more, crooked than him. I had the DNA evidence of what they did to me. I prayed that the evidence was still safe with the person who had looked after me in the summer holidays. I glared at him for a second and mentally said, ‘one of these days, you are going down’.

Seeing him was not a good omen for what lay ahead. I knew that I was in for a rough ride, because they probably knew a lot more about me than I could ever imagine.

My musing was cut short by Mr. Lane saying,
“If everyone could identify themselves to the record we can begin.”

[to be continued]

[1] SNL = Saturday Night Live. A US TV show of a more satirical nature.