On a sunny midsummer morning in Flagstaff, Arizona, Mary Malone was riding her bicycle from her home off Humphreys Street to her office in the USFWS building on Santa Fe Boulevard.
The only bright side of being chained to her desk was getting to ride her Raleigh bike on the back streets of Flag. When she was working down in the Little Colorado, she rarely got home before dark, and she didn’t like riding around Flag on her bike at night.
The weather in High Country was delightful, even when summer temps around most of Arizona were in the triple digits. Flagstaff sat at an elevation of nearly 7,000 feet, so it rarely got above eighty degrees.
Stopping at a traffic light, Mary looked skyward and saw big cumulus clouds climbing majestically from the south. It looked like the summer monsoon rains were starting to roll in. Right on time.
None of it was enough to lighten Mary’s gloom. Her scientific equipment was destroyed. She was office-bound. And at all hours of the day and night, she was getting harassing calls—some quite threatening. She had contacted Verizon for a new, unlisted number. But that was made public the very next day. So she was now living without a phone. She couldn’t talk to her friends and family. It was like living alone on a desert island in the middle of a city.
A few years back, Mary had started a blog about her work in the Little Colorado, studying the endangered fish she was trying to protect. Her goal was to make science more accessible to the average person, so the layman might care more about the local animals whose existence was threatened. Her first blog post covered the little-known fact that the humpback chub was only found in the Colorado River, and no place else on earth. Mary enjoyed a limited following—she only had a few hundred followers—but she loved sharing her stories about her ecology work. Some folks seemed to really like what she had to say.
Now that was over. The blog had been inundated with a stream of messages, saying vicious things and accusing her of being everything from a liar who falsified her data to a whore who had slept with all of her bosses and half the town of Flagstaff. They had even attacked her sister who lived in Boulder and her mother and father, who were retired and lived in Naples, Florida.
Whoever was after her—and she had no idea who that might be—had done the same thing to her Facebook, Messenger, Twitter, and Instagram accounts, forcing her to shut down her blog and all of her social media accounts. In the course of a week, her life had been turned on its ear, and she had no idea why.
Mary locked her bike to the back fence in the USFWS parking lot and then headed for the front door. She fished around inside her small daypack for her laminated ID card and inserted it into the small keycode register box attached to the outside wall of the building. Normally there would be a click and the front door would open. This time, nothing happened. After three attempts, it was clear that her security badge no longer worked.
“What next?” groaned Mary as she rang the buzzer for assistance.
The security guard, Joe Martin, stood on the inside of the door, looking at her like she was a total stranger. That was weird. They had known one another for years and Joe was normally the friendliest guy in the office. But not today.
Joe said nothing and avoided eye contact with Mary as he looked at his clipboard.
“Good morning, Joe,” said Mary. “I guess there’s something wrong with the magnetic strip on my badge.”
Joe started to say something and then thought better. Instead, he unlocked the door and held it open for Mary to pass through.
Mary didn’t know what to make of Joe’s cold behavior. “You okay, Joe?” I hope nothing’s wrong with you or your family.”
Joe shook his head. “You need to come with me to the personnel office. Right away.”
Joe was giving off so bad a vibe that Mary remembered that government agencies liked to do their firing on Fridays. Many people were not there, and the weekend provided a two-day buffer before the rest of the employees realized their colleague was gone. Mary trembled with apprehension as Joe escorted her silently down the empty hallway to the Human Resources Department.
Even after they arrived at HR, Joe led the way. Clearly, he had been instructed to make sure Mary went to see the personnel director and didn’t wander off. The fact that Joe wasn’t talking about his garden, his grandkids, or anything else, was really all that needed to be said. Even though Mary had no idea why, she knew she was in hot water.
Joe guided Mary to the HR conference room where the head of the department, a skinny, silver-haired, bureaucratic worm in his late fifties named Doug Smith, was sitting at a long desk reviewing her service jacket.
Smith flashed a smarmy grin. “Thank you, Mr. Martin, that will be all for now.” He motioned for Mary to have a seat.
Smith got right to it without any fanfare. “Ms. Malone, after careful review, and in light of the recent loss of all of the expensive field equipment that you carelessly allowed to be compromised, we have decided that your services are no longer needed here at the Fish & Wildlife Service. Your termination is effective immediately.”
Smith handed her a form letter from the director of the Flagstaff office, notifying her that her position had been eliminated.
Mary was in shock. What could she do? What could she say?
“My equipment was intentionally destroyed by someone trying to shut down my study. What was I supposed to do, camp out there every night? I mean, nothing like this has ever happened in all the years I have been studying the Little Colorado. You surely must be aware of all this. The Navajo Police and even the FBI are looking into the matter. How can you blame me for an act of vandalism on a weekend when I wasn’t supposed to be working?”
“You are well within your rights to file a grievance, Ms. Malone, if you feel you have been treated unfairly. But in the meantime, you need to sign your termination papers and go to your office and clean out your desk. IT has already locked down your computer account”.
“But what about my research?” Mary asked.
“That data is the property of the Service and will be handled by the appropriate staff in due time. It is no longer your concern.”
Mary wanted to scream. All her work was going to be handed off to people who had never set foot in the Little Colorado, people who didn’t care whether the humpback chub lived or died.
“But I’m the only person who can make sense of all that data,” protested Mary. “And my notes haven’t been organized. It’s just a big jumble of random data sets that wouldn’t mean anything to someone who hadn’t been a part of the study.”
Smith gave her an unctuous smile. “Have no fear, Ms. Malone. We have talented people working for the Service. I’m sure they will know what to do with your material.”
Mary had never made a backup file of the five years of research on her office computer. A computer that she could no longer access. Essentially, she had nothing.
“But you can’t!” she pleaded. “That’s my life’s work.”
Smith shook his head. “I think that’s enough of the melodrama, Ms. Malone. You have until noon to pack your personal effects before you are escorted from the building. That only gives you a few hours, my dear, so you best get cracking.”
Mary didn’t know what else to say, and it was clear it wouldn’t matter. So she signed her termination letter as she fought back tears.
Smith stood up slowly. “If there are no more questions, I would like to thank you for your service, and wish you good luck in your future endeavors.”
Mary walked back to her office in a trance. No one was there. Everyone telecommuted on Fridays. The two people who shared the area where she worked were in the field. Mary was utterly alone.
She packed her things and then sat at her empty desk and cried.
How could this happen to her? Who was trying to destroy her life? And why?
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