Luring

Was she hopelessly out of her depth?

Was this a bad idea?

For one thing, she felt like a kid as she looked around at all the other seated recruits. Scarcely anyone here was her age. She sensed by the faces around her that almost everybody here already had at least that much experience under their belts, and some of them considerably more. Most were over the age of 23, and some looked like they were verging on the maximum recruitment age of 37.

She knew that they came from all kinds of backgrounds and work fields. Many had been police officers, and many others had served in the military. Others had worked as teachers, lawyers, scientists, business people, and at many other occupations at one time or another. But they all had one thing in common—a powerful commitment to spend the rest of their lives serving in law enforcement.

Only a few were here fresh out of the intern program. John Welch, who was sitting a couple of rows ahead of her, was one of them. Like Riley, he had been given a waiver to the rule that all recruits had to have at least three years of full-time law enforcement experience to enter the Academy.

Swanson finished his speech …

“I look forward to shaking the hands of those of you who make the grade here at Quantico. On that day, you’ll be sworn into service by FBI Director Bill Cormack himself. Good luck to all of you.”

Then he added with a stern chuckle, “And now—get to work!”

An instructor took Swanson’s place at the podium and began to call out the names of recruits—“NATs,” they were called, meaning “New Agents in Training.” As the NATs answered to their names, the instructor assigned them smaller groups that would be taking their classes together.

As she waited breathlessly for her name to be called, Riley remembered how tedious things had been when she’d gotten here yesterday. After she’d checked in, she’d stood in line after line, filled out forms, bought a uniform, and gotten her dorm room assignment.

Today was already turning out to be a lot different.

She felt a pang as she heard John Welch’s name called out for a group that she wasn’t chosen for. It might help, she thought, to have a friend close at hand to lean on and commiserate with during the tough weeks to come. On the other hand, she thought …

Maybe it’s just as well.

Given her somewhat confusing feelings about John, his presence might prove to be a distraction.

Riley was finally relieved, though, to find herself in the same group as Francine Dow, the roommate she’d been assigned yesterday. Frankie, as she preferred to be called, was older than Riley, perhaps almost 30—a high-spirited redhead whose ruddy features hinted that she’d already experienced a lot in life.

Riley and Frankie hadn’t gotten to know each other at all to speak of. They’d had time yesterday for little except getting unpacked and settled in their little dorm room together, and they’d gone their separate ways for breakfast.

Finally, Riley’s group of NATs was summoned together in the hallway by Agent Marty Glick, the group instructor. Glick looked like he was in his thirties. He was tall and had the muscular build of a football player, and he wore a serious, no-nonsense expression.

He said to the group …

“You’ve got a big day ahead. But before we get started, there’s something I want to show you.”

Glick led them into the main entrance lobby, an enormous room with an FBI seal in the middle of its marble floor an enormous bronze badge on one wall with a black band across it. Riley had passed through here when she’d arrived, and she knew that it was called the Hall of Honor. It was a solemn place where martyred FBI Agents were memorialized.

Glick led them to a wall with two displays of portraits and names. Between the displays was a framed plaque that read …

National Academy Graduates who were killed in the line of duty

as the direct result of an adversarial action

Small gasps passed through the group as they viewed the shrine. Glick didn’t say anything for a moment, just allowed the emotional impact of the display sink in.

Finally he said, almost in a whisper …

“Don’t let them down.”

As he led the group of NATs away to start their day’s activities, Riley glanced back over her shoulder at the portraits on the wall. She couldn’t help but wonder …

Will my picture be there someday?

Of course there was no way to know. All she knew for sure was that the coming days would bring challenges she’d never faced before in her life. She felt staggered by a new sense of responsibility toward those martyred agents.

I can’t let them down, she thought.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jake steered the hastily-borrowed vehicle along a web of gravel roads from Dighton toward the town of Hyland. Chief Messenger had loaned him the car so Jake could get on his way before the media helicopter landed.

He had no idea what to expect at Hyland, but he was grateful to have escaped the invaders. He hated being besieged by reporters pummeling him with questions he couldn’t answer. There was little the media relished more than sensational murders in bucolic, out-of-the-way places. The fact that the victim was a mayor’s wife surely made the story all the more irresistible to them.

He drove with his window open, enjoying the fresh country air. Messenger had marked up a map for him, and Jake was enjoying the slow tour of country roads. The man he was on his way to interview wasn’t going anywhere before he got there.

Of course the suspect in the Hyland jail might have nothing to do with either of the two murders. He’d been incarcerated at the time of the second victim’s death.

Not that that proves his innocence, Jake thought.

There was always a possibility that a team of two or more killers was at work. Hope Nelson could had been taken by a copycat imitating Alice Gibson’s murder.

Nothing like that would surprise Jake. He’d worked on stranger cases in his long career.

As Jake pulled into Hyland, the first thing he noticed was how little and sleepy the town looked—much smaller than Dighton, with its population of about a thousand. The sign he’d just passed indicated that only a couple of hundred people lived here.

Barely big enough to be incorporated, Jake thought.

The police station was just another storefront on the short business street. As he parked along the curb, Jake saw an obese uniformed man leaning against in the doorjamb, looking like he had nothing else to do.

Jake got out of the car. As he walked toward the station, he noticed that the big cop was staring at someone directly across the street. It was a man wearing a white medical jacket, standing there with his arms crossed. Jake got the odd impression that the two had been standing there staring at each other silently for quite a long time.

What’s this all about? he wondered.

He walked up to the uniformed man in the doorway and showed him his badge. The man introduced himself as Sheriff David Tallhamer. He was chewing on a wad of tobacco.

He said to Jake in a bored tone, “Come on in, let me introduce you to our house guest—Phil Cardin’s his name.”

As Tallhamer led the way inside, Jake glanced back and saw that the white-coated man wasn’t budging from his spot.

Once in the station, Tallhamer introduced Jake to a deputy who was sitting with his feet up on a desk reading a newspaper. The deputy nodded at Jake and kept right on reading his paper.

The little office seemed saturated with a weird feeling of ennui. If Jake hadn’t known it already, he wouldn’t have guessed that these two jaded cops had been dealing with a grisly murder case.

Tallhamer led Jake through a door in the back of the office that led into the jail. The jail was comprised of just two cells facing each other across a narrow corridor. Both cells were occupied at the moment.

In one cell, a man in a rather threadbare business suit lay on his cot snoring loudly. In the opposite, a sullen-looking man wearing jeans and a t-shirt was sitting on his bunk.