And he loved every damn bit of it.

He entered the big room where the agents sat at their desks. In a police station it would have been called a Squad Room, but here it was simply known as the bull pen. It was surprisingly empty today, because of course Howdy Duty had drawn primarily on New Orleans agents to staff the big stalk in Arkansas. Nick went to his desk, took his key out and opened it.

On a normal day, this was when he’d take off his pistol and put it in the upper-right drawer. Today he had no pistol.

Instead, he opened the big central drawer. So little to show. A few files from cases he’d vetted for others, a few pencils, a few notepads. That was it. It was so empty.

Ahead of him, tacked on the burlap of the cubicle wall, was a picture of Myra, taken five years ago. It was an extreme close-up and she was smiling in the sunlight. You couldn’t see her disability. She looked like a bright, pretty young woman who had her whole life ahead of her.

On the desk itself was the Annotated Federal Code and the huge green Federal Bureau of Investigation Regulations and Procedures, plus assorted carbonized forms for reporting incidents, for logging investigative reports, for filing for warrants, and a small pile of pink message slips, which, riffled through quickly, revealed nothing at all worth noting.

“Nick?”

He looked up. It was a guy named Fred Sandford, another special agent. Nick didn’t know him well; he hadn’t made the trip to Arkansas.

“Hi ya, Fred.”

“Hey, just wanted to say, was real sorry to hear how it went down out there for you. I’m sure there was nothing you could do.”

“I just did my best,” he said, “and it didn’t quite pan out.”

“Wanted to tell you, my brother is a police chief in Red River, Idaho. You always were a good detective, Nick. I could give him a call. Maybe he’s looking for someone.”

“Ah, thanks. I’m not sure at this point I’m going to stick with law enforcement. Too much hassle for too little satisfaction and too little money.”

“Sure. Got you. If you change your mind – ”

“I appreciate it, Fred, really I do. I’m thinking about going back to school, getting my master’s, and maybe taking up teaching. Something nice and quiet.”

“Sure, whatever you say.”

With that, he was alone again. He took the picture off the wall, retrieved his abortive LANZMAN file, hoping that one last scan might reveal a pattern where nothing else had. But it was another big zero. The reason why that poor guy was whacked in that motel room near the airport so horribly all that time ago would remain completely unknown, RamDyne or no RamDyne. Somebody else got away with it. Too bad. You were trying to reach me, and somebody put a big finger on you with about a million bucks worth of electronic gear, and it’s just going to fall through the cracks, like seventy-one percent of the crimes in this country, and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it.

Hap’s secretary, an officious woman named Doris Drabney, came by next. There was no sympathy in her eyes or face, but then there was no sanctimony either. There was simply nothing. “You’ve got some paperwork to sign,” she said.

In spite of himself, Nick was slightly frightened by her.

“You mean about the, um – ”

“The suspension, yes. Please stop by my desk on the way out.” And she turned and left.

Nick watched her march off. There was something rigid and jointless in the way she moved. She was one of those people who’d just let the Bureau sink into her life until it filled her whole personality. Until it became her personality. She was a lifer in the worst possible way, so gone in the life no other was even possible.

Well, he thought, that won’t happen to me. God knows what will, but that won’t.

And suddenly he was out of things to do.

He looked down at his meager cardboard box of belongings. Then he looked around for a friend, a colleague, someone to embrace or to give him a look or to signify that he was still loved, or, hell, that he was still alive. But everywhere in the office the other agents seemed preoccupied. A kind of hush had fallen over them.

Yeah, sure, I get it, he thought.

He went to find Doris Drabney, sitting stiffly at her desk.

“Yes, yes, you’ve got, let’s see, you’ve got to sign this and this and…oh, yes, this.”

Numbly he signed the forms. One had to do with his Government Credit Union account, one had to do with his GEICO insurance policy, which would cease to be in effect thirty days from today, and one required a formal acknowledgment that he was being placed on indefinite leave without pay pending a meeting of the review board in re his case blah blah blah.

“Is that it?”

“That’s it. You’ll be notified of the hearing.”

I’m history, he thought.

“And your last paycheck is being held until you return the pistol.”

“What?”

“Nick, that Smith & Wesson Model 1076 you lost during the incident of the speech. That was government property. Remember, you filed a lost-line-of-duty item report. And it was turned down? I sent the response to you in Arkansas. You’re being billed for the pistol. It’s four hundred fifty-five dollars.”

He just looked at her.

It’s probably an ingot mulched in with Bob Swagger’s bones, he thought. Or somewhere in a soggy swamp, or in some ocean somewhere, wherever Bob had been before he died.

He turned to leave.

“Oh, and you’re supposed to see Sally Ellion in Records, too.”

Ach! Sally! She was a slight, pretty, very Southern girl with what people all called “personality”; she’d had a hundred boyfriends in her time, and was always dumping one for another and then the new one. He’d always liked her somehow, even if she scared him a little bit. What on earth could she want now?

“What for?”

“I haven’t the slightest.”

So, it came down to this last thing. He went to find the young woman, who of course was on break, and had to wait for half an hour feeling stupid and preposterous until she came back from the cafeteria. At last she hove into sight, beaming pep, with a small roll in her shoulders as she walked. She’d probably had a date every night in her life, Nick thought; her Saturday nights were one long festival. She probably dated quarterbacks and shortstops. Looking at her, he sank a bit deeper into his depression.

“Hi, uh, Sally, uh, someone said – ”

“Nick, hi! Did I keep you waiting? Gosh, I’m sorry. Those fingerprint techs; they just wouldn’t let me get out of the cafeteria.”

Great. He’d been hung up here like a fish on a line, Howard’s newest trophy, for the office to admire, while those lazy clowns were trying to make time with Sal.

“Well, anyway,” she went on. “I have this thing for you. It just came in today. Where have you been? I called out to Arkansas yesterday and they said you’d gone, but you didn’t check in last night.”

“Uh, I sort of awarded myself a night off. You know, a little R and R, for a job well done.”

“Shhhhh,” she said. “Don’t say that out loud. Someone might hear you and not realize you were joking.”

“I’m beyond hurt at this point. Anyway, what’s up, I really have to – ”

“Well, it’s only partially official. I wanted to say something to you. I just wanted to tell you how much I admired what you did with your wife. How you stuck with her. I think that’s neat. Not many men would have done such a thing.”

“Oh,” said Nick, taken aback. “Oh, well, it seemed like the kind of thing you sort of had to do, that’s all. You know, I don’t like to quit on things. I like to stick with them. That’s all. Stubborn. Stupid, but stubborn, just like a mule.”

She laughed.

“Well,” she said, “that’s neat. Not many like that. Lots of people just quit on you.”

“Ummm,” Nick grunted, having run into a conversational brick wall and splatted against it. “Yeah. Ummm.”