Old Bones - Douglas Preston Page 0,14

surrounded by so many people with the power of arrest.

And then it was over. She was issued her duty weapon—a Glock 19M with four fifteen-round magazines equipped with orange followers, along with several boxes of Winchester PDX1 +P 124-grain hollow points—and she was off to her new life.

Little did she know at the time that her “new life” would consist of reporting every morning at eight thirty to 4200 Luecking Park Avenue NE—the Albuquerque, New Mexico, field office—for administrative duties. She’d met Supervisory Special Agent Hale Morwood, the advisor who would manage the first part of Swanson’s two-year probationary period. He was the mentor who would “ghost” her, show her the ropes, rate her…and, it seemed, rein in her expectations.

Now she’d spent three months reviewing cold cases and working with the PIO on public relations outreach to the community. Occasionally, for a change of pace, she’d get to accompany Tech Ops…as they put up new pole cams.

This was not what she’d expected. Surely not all new Quantico graduates spent their probationary periods like this. She couldn’t imagine getting a worse detail—until Morwood took her to visit the resident agency at Farmington, up by the Colorado border. If Albuquerque was the ugly, dusty ass end of nowhere, then Farmington was the inflamed boil on that ass. If she ever ended up in a satellite office like that, she just might rob a few banks herself.

She could hear a low hubbub of conversation from Conference Room B, where her young confrères were chatting over lunch. But Swanson wasn’t hungry. She was eyeing Morwood’s office. The door was closed, and the wall of glass beside it was, as usual, obscured by beige vinyl blinds, lowered to floor level. Morwood was on a conference call: the weekly status meeting for Operations. She glanced at her watch: it should be over anytime now. She took a deep breath. And then, as anticipated, the door opened and Morwood emerged, shrugging into the jacket of his dark blue suit. She watched out of the corner of her eye as he disappeared into the maze of cubicles. He was short, in his late forties, a little overweight with a thinning crown of red hair. When she’d first seen him, Swanson had thought he looked more like a train conductor than an FBI supervisor. But that was before she’d had the chance to observe him over a couple of months: the way he kept his own counsel, the sly intelligence that glittered in the sleepy brown eyes.

Now Morwood had re-emerged from the cube farm and was coming back, fresh cup of coffee in one hand. Still sticking to schedule. That meant he wouldn’t get called into another meeting for fifteen minutes. Taking another deep breath and composing herself, Swanson picked up the folder, rose from her desk, and exited her cubicle.

Morwood was seating himself back at his desk, stirring Splenda into his coffee. Seeing Swanson approach, he nodded. “Good afternoon, Swanson.”

“Afternoon, sir. Do you have a minute?”

Morwood nodded toward one of two identical chairs placed against the glass wall. “Please.”

Swanson sat, file on her lap. Something about the detached way Morwood observed her always made her slightly uncomfortable, as if her hair was askew or she’d put her blouse on inside out and the label was showing. Too many years of torn jeans and nearly identical black T-shirts, no doubt. She resisted the impulse to smooth her skirt.

“I’ve finished reviewing the I-25 robberies, sir,” she said.

Morwood took a sip of coffee. “Anything to report?”

Swanson hesitated. She didn’t want to appear ineffectual, but on the other hand she didn’t want to go on having cold cases dumped on her. “No significant developments. I re-interviewed the tellers and bank employees to make sure nothing had changed in their recollections. I went over the surveillance footage. Even running it through our latest recognition software produced no useful results. Using image enhancement I was able to identify the brand of one of the perp’s cowboy hats. It was a manufacturer common to Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona that recently went out of business. Their records proved useless.”

“Any new robberies that fit the MO?”

“No, sir. I checked into that carefully, both north and south of the border. Plenty of bank robberies, but none with more than a single-point match.”

“I see. Well, good job, Swanson. You’ll send me your report?”

“Just completing it now.”

Morwood nodded, began to speak, then reached into his pocket and snatched out a handkerchief in time to cover a series of sharp,