Franklin said with a smile. ‘Too public. Have you maybe got somewhere a little more private? The case we’re working on is classified.’
‘Sure,’ Freeman said. Then he smiled and pointed to a row of solid doors with small windows in them set into the back wall. ‘I got just the thing for you.’
‘Cosy,’ Franklin said, the moment the door closed on the interview room.
‘You kinda asked for it.’ Shepherd surveyed the white, anonymous walls. It was soundproofed at least, so they could no longer hear the clamour of ringing phones. The only noise was the hum of the building’s air conditioning belting out dry heat and making the claustrophobic room even stuffier.
Shepherd stepped over to the metal table in the centre of the room and tried to pull the chair out from under it. It was bolted to the floor. The table was bolted down too. He sat down, slid the laptop from the case and fired it up.
‘Local law tend to regard us with the same sort of suspicion as criminals, so sticking us in here probably makes sense to them,’ Franklin said, doing a circuit of the room and reading the desperate graffiti scratched into the walls. ‘Freeman is probably spreading word round the building right now that we’re in here. The first tourists should be coming by in the next few minutes to gawp at us through the two-way mirror.’ He nodded at the side wall then sat down in the other chair and Shepherd felt a moment’s discomfort as it dawned on him that he had unwittingly sat in the ‘suspect’ seat.
‘Anything you want to confess before I start beating on you?’ Franklin said, reading his mind.
‘I confess that I could do with some more coffee,’ Shepherd said, studying the screen and clicking the menu to hook up to the station wi-fi.
The sound of phones burst in on them again as the door opened and a weasel-faced cop stepped into the room. ‘God damn,’ he said, staring straight at Franklin. ‘I thought it might be you. What the hell you doing back here? You anything to do with the ships and the mass migration?’
‘Hi,’ Shepherd said, getting up from his seat and shaking the man’s hand. ‘Joe Shepherd. You already seem to know Agent Franklin.’
‘Dan Jackson,’ the man said. ‘Yeah I know Franklin from way back.’
‘Why don’t you show me where the coffee is,’ Franklin said, moving to the door, clearly anxious to get the guy out of the room.
‘What do you mean “mass migration”?’ Shepherd butted in.
‘I mean everyone seems to have got it into their heads to hop in their cars and drive someplace. We got almost solid traffic heading into town. People from all over just packing their cars and heading for the city. We got people leaving too but that’s not so much of a problem. It’s the in-bound traffic that’s the headache. It’s blocked up all the main roads into the city and, what with the weather on top, we got a major headache and hardly any manpower to deal with it. I thought maybe that’s why you were here.’
‘’Fraid not,’ Franklin said, grabbing Jackson's shoulder and easing him towards the door.
‘How come you’re so short-staffed?’ Shepherd asked.
‘Beats me, half the squad didn’t show up this morning.’
‘And these no-shows,’ Shepherd persisted, ‘are they local guys?’
Jackson considered the question then shook his head. ‘No. As a matter of fact they’re all out of towners: all the local guys showed up.’
‘Listen, Dan,’ Franklin cut in, ‘why don’t you show me where you keep the coffee and I’ll tell you why we’re here.’ He turned to Shepherd. ‘See if Smith has managed to dig anything new out of the Kinderman files. I’ll be right back.’ Then he practically pushed Jackson out of the room.
Shepherd stood for a second, staring at the spot where they had both just stood, wondering about Franklin’s strange behaviour. Then the screen flickered, drawing his attention and he sat back down, his fingers drumming the keyboard as he typed in the ID and password Agent Smith had given him earlier. A directory loaded up on the screen, different icons representing all the various databases he now had access to. Any new information Smith had found would be archived in the ghost file, listed in the directory under a Pacman ghost icon – something Smith always maintained proved the FBI did have a sense of humour. He dragged the arrow over to it but did not click on it, his eyes