Saint pressed her face to the window as her stomach dropped with the engines of the 720.
She had not flown before, politely declined drinks and did not fuss about the heavy smoke from a dozen cigarettes, the man beside seeming intent on fogging her view.
Mercifully she was in the air less than an hour before they taxied and she stepped down into Kansas City.
A car took her to the federal building, and inside she joined seventy-three agents and forty-three support personnel covering the Western District of Missouri and the entire state of Kansas. She cleared security, rode the elevator, and stepped into a rush of noise. People worked phones in small cubbies with gray felt walls like a view would be surplus to the task at hand.
A noticeboard showed faces, names, and crimes ranging from murder to drugs to jail breaks. Rewards ran into the millions. She thought of Nix, of Monta Clare PD, a nervous flip in her stomach as she was led into a glass-walled office.
She met with Himes, two decades older, with a title so long she lost it after executive. Plaques lined the wall, framed photos of him with various dignitaries she did not know. He ran a little history, from Eberstein to Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow. She wondered how many times he had told it, how many rookies had sat in her seat all wide eyed and burning ambition.
He homed in on the massacre in 1933, four lawmen dead at the hands of Adam Richetti and Charles Floyd as Frank Nash was being transferred back to Leavenworth prison. He moved on to Ollie Embry, tucked a napkin into his shirt and broke a bagel in two and offered her the smaller half.
She shook her head.
“Thing about this job, you consume when you can. You never know when you’ll be called out.”
“With all due respect, sir, I still don’t know what I’m doing here. You talk about being an agent, but I’m two years shy of your age requirement.”
“We can recruit from wherever—”
“So you’re offering me a job? I think you might’ve made a mistake. You see I’m a new—”
He set the bagel down, stood and dusted crumbs from his trousers. “We don’t make mistakes. It’s not a job…more like an assignment. And you can start—”
“You’re assuming I want it.”
He smiled at that. “I pulled your record. Quite some background. The Eli Aaron case. I saw the photograph.”
Saint knew the picture. It had run on the front of The Post. She stood there small before the flames of the Aaron house, her cheeks dark with soot. A few hours later she would find Patch and save his life.
“And you graduated valedictorian. Turned down the Ivy Leagues.”
“Is there anything you don’t know about me?”
“You’re married.”
“Yes.” She thought of Jimmy, how he had left the house before her, didn’t wish her luck because he didn’t want her to go.
Himes picked up the bagel again, bit it, a piece of lettuce hung from the corner of his mouth. “Most of us were at some point. You’re studying still. Correspondence course. Major in psychology with a minor in behavioral science.”
She had not told anyone but Jimmy that she was studying, and that was only because he found her papers.
“Why?” he said.
“For exactly that reason. I’m interested in why.”
“Nothing to do with a missing girl. Name of Grace.”
He tossed a file onto the desk, and she opened it, saw the body, or lack of it, just the bones.
“Found by the Tensleep Creek. Up by the Misty Moon Lake.”
“But—”
He turned the page for her. Her eyes scanned it and then settled on the photograph. She felt her blood cool as the air left her lungs.
The rosary beads.
“Angela Rossi. Can’t accurately date the death. One of yours though, right?”
Saint thought of Eli Aaron.
Himes wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “We can help you. And I think you’d make a good addition to the team.”
“Doing what exactly?”
He tossed another file onto the desk between them.
The lettering bold and black.
Bank Robbery
“I don’t understand,” she said. The first page. The picture was grainy. The man wore a ball cap and sunglasses.
“How much did he take?” she said.
“Couple thousand bucks.”
Himes handed her another three pages. “Six banks now. From Lawton to Austen to Kingsville. Almost got himself shot in the Merchants National.”
She flipped through interviews with tellers who all told the same story. He was calm and polite.
“Might not be the same guy,” she said, the locations so far apart.
“It is.”
“How?”
“He pulls the same gun.”
She frowned. “I’m sorry, but I’m still not making the connection here. Why you flew me out here when, all due respect, I’m green as they come. You’ve got people here, likely people that know something more than nothing about robbing banks. And—”
“He pulls a one-shot flintlock pistol,” Himes said, leaning back on his chair and watching her intently. “Likely a replica. Real unusual.”
Her breath quickened a little.
A pirate gun.