“I tried all the usual channels and came up with nothing. Like, nothing. So I tried to show some initiative and…” He trailed off lamely.

“Nick,” said Howard, a deep sadness coming over his bland face, “I’m very disappointed in you. Why didn’t you come to me with all this?”

“Well, Howard, actually, um, I did and you said – ”

“Nick, we have an open-and-shut case on Bob Lee Swagger. We have means, motive and opportunity. We have some circumstantial ballistics evidence. We have witnesses, including, I might add, yourself. Nick, what on earth are you doing? Whose side are you on?”

“Howard, there’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you about the ballistics. I’m wondering if it’s technically possible to – ”

“All right, Nick, this is how things fall apart. Junior agents running around on their own, not reporting to authority. Unauthorized leaks to the press. It’s the beginning of the end of Bureau discipline, which is the beginning of the end of the Bureau.”

“Howard, I – ”

“RamDyne, you’re right, is very connected. To our cousins in Langley, among half a dozen other secret agencies. They do a lot of things we can’t afford to do officially. Sometimes these things don’t look so good; sometimes they’re ambiguous; sometimes they do little bad things to prevent big bad things. Their secrets are very closely held. If you pick at them, or uncover something out of context, it can lead you exactly where you shouldn’t go, and cause all kinds of problems for all kinds of people. Do you understand that?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nick, you’re not supposed to see the big picture. Other people do that. You’re supposed to do the jobs we give and do them well. Let us connect the dots. You catch the crooks.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Nick, it pains me to do this. I’d thought perhaps after your screwups in the past, you’d turned over a new leaf, and I might have been tempted to forego your suspension. But you haven’t. I’m removing you from this detail. You’re to fly back to New Orleans immediately and begin your suspension. Sorry, it has to be this way. Some years ago you messed up. I thought you’d worked hard and overcome that mistake. But you keep messing up, Nick. You’re a loose cannon. You’re not a team player. You want too much, you want it too fast.”

Nick realized he’d just gotten blindsided. It hit him with a force he hadn’t felt since Myra died.

“All the way through, Nick, you insist on doing things your way. If you’d bumped Swagger up to the Alpha category, if you’d taken him prisoner, if – oh, Nick, you’ve done so poorly. We’ve tried so desperately to help you. And now you pull this on us.”

“I’m sorry, Howard,” blurted Nick, stunned. “I didn’t know it was so serious. I was trying to do a thorough job and I – ”

“Nick, that’s all I have for you. I want you – ”

“Nick?”

It was Hap Fencl leaning in.

“Excuse me, Howard,” he said, “but I have a woman on the line who swears she knows where Bob Swagger is, and insists on talking to Nick.”

“For Christ’s sake, Fencl,” blurted Howard, “she’s probably just another – ”

“She says he had an arm wound. We hadn’t released that information.”

There was a long pause.

Finally, disgustedly, Howard gestured to Nick to pick up the phone.

“It’s line fourteen,” said Hap.

“Nick Memphis, FBI, can I help you?”

“Mr. Memphis,” came the voice like a bad country-western song, though somehow theatrical and a bit phony, “Mr. Memphis, Bob Lee was with me and he was my man fer a time, but he’s gone now.”

“Who is this?” Nick said.

“This ain’t nobody,” she said. “But I seen your pitcher in the magazine and if you’re the johnny what’s got to catch Bob Lee, then git yourself ready, ’cause he’s a coming.”

“When?”

“He left here today. Should be there in three days of hard driving. He’s gone a little crazy, you know. I begged him not to go.”

“How do I – ”

“Because he said his dog’s name was Mike, not Pat, like it said in the newspapers.”

Another trap to weed out loony callers.

Nick took a deep breath, made a signal to Hap to indicate it was time to get going on the trace.

“He says he’s coming home to bury his dog,” said the woman. “Gonna bury his dog, don’t care who he’s got to kill to do it.”

“I – ”

“Don’t hurt him, Mr. Memphis. He ain’t hurt nobody.”

Then she hung up.

The secure phone rang.

Shreck looked up at the men in his office.

“Get out,” he said.

After they left, he picked it up.

“Shreck.”

“Hello, Raymond,” the old man’s voice sang. “How are you today?”

“Mr. Meachum, you don’t care how I am. What do you want?”

“I wanted you to be the first to hear the good news. I’ve heard from a friend that the Justice Department has just alerted the State Department to inform the Salvadorans that it has formally decided against reopening its inquiry into the Panther Battalion atrocity. The archbishop is gone, and there’s nobody to pay any attention to it at all.”

This did cheer Shreck.

“Well, that’s something.”

“Yes, it is. Of course General de Rujijo and his colleagues and peers will be delighted. Certain people in certain agencies in this town will breathe a good deal more easily. The past will be allowed to die; we can go on from here. It’s the first day of the rest of our lives. You’re to be congratulated once again, Colonel. You made the impossible happen. Extraordinary.”

“Thank you, Mr. Meachum.”

“Only that one loose end, and it’s a very tiny one.”

“We’re on it, Mr. Meachum.”

“Excellent,” said the old man. “I knew I could count on you.”

“Okay,” said Howard, “now I want snipers on those two buildings, do you see. Put them on duty at four A.M. tonight. I want them there all day tomorrow, even if he’s not supposed to be in till the day after. You can never tell.”

“Yes, Howard,” said Hap Fencl. “We’ll put ’em up there, good boys. Nick? He’s the best shot.”

“No. Not Nick. Nick stays with me. Do you hear that, Nick?”

“Yes, I hear it,” said Nick, still clinging to membership on the task force by his fingernails, his exile to New Orleans forestalled by the prospect of action.

They were standing in front of the new red-brick Polk County Health Complex, which contained the county morgue. The body of Mike the dog had been removed there and now rested inside.

It was a bright afternoon, and the green Ouachitas glared down at them. They were about a mile out of Blue Eye, just off of Route 270 where it neared 71 and turned into Mena. Traffic hummed down the road.

“And I want shotgun teams on standby. Say, four-man units, ready to go, secured in the installation.”

“Yes, Howard,” said Hap. “Uh, what load? Do you want them carrying double-ought buck or deer slugs?”

“Hmm,” said Howard.

“The boys like double-ought, because it doesn’t kick so much and you don’t have to make an exact shot placement. And, Howard, with those deer slugs, you got a.70 caliber chunk of lead moving at one thousand six hundred feet a second, and if you should happen to hit a civilian, Christ, the hoot from the newspapers.”

“He’s probably not going to be wearing body armor,” said Howard. “All right, go with the double-ought.”

“Howard, do you want to coordinate with the sheriff’s office?” Hap asked. “Old Tell’s getting pretty edgy as it is.”

“No, I don’t think so. This is our operation, this is a federal warrant, and we’ll serve it. We’ll alert the sheriff after we make the apprehension. Nick?”

“Yes, Howard,” said Nick, standing there disconsolately next to Howard in the small knot of agents just outside the lobby.

“Nick, I want you to stay at the command post to handle the communications. Or do you want to ship out today?”

“No, Howard, I’ll hang around until – ”