The corporate aviation field in Dallas Fort Worth was one mile from the main airport, housed in a low-slung tan building with a curved overhang reminiscent of airline terminals from the 1960s.
A woman from the rental car company dropped us off, and we made our way inside a glass waiting room. Out the window, a Gulfstream was parked on the tarmac, the alphanumeric string G-650 on the jet’s wing.
Traveling by private jet is not protocol at the FBI, unless you’re at the director or deputy director level. But Cassie and I had to be in New Mexico by dawn, and it was already 1:33 a.m. No commercial flight would get us there on time.
“So this is how the other half lives, huh?” Cassie said, staring out at the jet. “Pretty Gucci. I could get used to it.”
My lips formed a slight smile. “Try not to,” I said. “I haven’t been on a plane like this in years.”
A man in his twenties popped his head into the room. He was tall and underweight, his skin the color of overmilked coffee.
“Mr. Camden?” he said. “Ms. Pardo?” He wore a black suit with a pressed white shirt. “I’m Travis, your cabin attendant.” He took our bags. “We’ll be in the air in fifteen minutes. You’re welcome to board now, and we’ll keep the lights low. You can catch some shut-eye.”
Cassie and I followed him outside, heading up the steps to the jet. The new Gulfstreams could do Mach 0.85 and came with fully functioning executive kitchens. “Fly and fry” was the headline I’d seen in an advertisement.
Inside were six reclining seats with fold-up tables between them. Beyond that, a lounge area with a couch. On a side table was a bucket with an open bottle of white wine, fresh fruit, and four bottled waters.
Cassie inspected the fruit, and I grabbed two waters.
“Is it just us?” she asked.
When Travis nodded, she grabbed the whole fruit plate. Dropped into the aisle across from me, her eyes moving around the tan interior of the small craft.
I was older than Cassie by several years, and in my first few at the Bureau, we had regularly traveled this way. That was before Congress heard of it, and the practice was moved to urgent use and higher-ups only.
“First time on a small plane?” I asked.
Cassie nodded, her dark eyes big.
I avoided relationships, even friendships, with other agents. But Cassie was different. “It’s a short flight,” I said. “I wouldn’t worry.”
Cassie just made a chuffing noise and flipped open her laptop.
“It’s interesting you mention flight time, Gardner,” she said, tying back her long brown hair, “since that’s the main cause of the misnomer about air travel being so safe.”
I turned to face her. In terms of analysis, Cassie Pardo is the closest at PAR to my own skill set, except her point of view is slanted more toward numbers. By trade, she is a mathematician.
“Car fatality rates,” she explained, “are measured per one hundred million miles traveled, while air fatalities are measured per hours of flight time. But no one wants to compare the two. I’m not sure if you’ve studied this, Gardner?”
I had done no reading on the subject, but Cassie kept talking, at ninety miles an hour.
“See, if you take an average speed of fifty miles an hour,” she said, “you’ll find that car travel translates to 1.1 deaths per two million hours. Compare that to flight time and you see a different picture.”
“A bad picture?”
“It’s not bad if you’re flying commercial.” She shrugged. “But limit your flights to small planes like this? You’ll find that private air travel is nineteen times more dangerous than the family sedan.”
Travis came down the aisle as she finished. “Cocktail?” he offered.
“Two.” I put up my fingers.
Thoughts about Tignon and Fisher filled my head, but I needed rest if I was expected to be productive in three hours. I took a blanket off one of the seats and folded it behind my head.
“Are you gonna sleep?” Cassie asked.
Travis brought us two Glenlivets, and I took a strong pull on mine, hoping the alcohol would push my fatigue over the edge.
“Absolutely,” I said.
I pushed my seat back until it lay flat. The leather smelled of bleach and tanning agents. I estimated the jet at less than six months old.
Closing my eyes, I began counting in my head to accelerate REM sleep.
Prime numbers.
2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13, 17, 19, 23, 29, 31, 37 …
A bump woke me up. From the digital display on the seatback in front of me, an hour and forty minutes had passed, and we were eight miles south of Roswell.
“Snack?” Travis asked. He held up a plate with watermelon slices, each speared with a sprig of mint.
“No,” I said. I glanced over. Cassie was out cold, her highball glass empty. Her right hand lay across the smooth skin of her neck, her fingers touching an ornate beaded necklace.
Travis informed me we would be descending into Las Cruces in fifteen minutes and left a business card on the open seat beside me.
I checked my cell. Frank hadn’t sent the update he’d promised. This was par for the course for the boss. When anyone complained about it, the answer was always the same. Bias avoidance.
“Y’all understand the power of bias, right?” Frank would say. He was from Austin and had worked eleven years as a profiler. “Lotta sorts of biases, people. Innate. Learned. Systemic. Prejudiced.”
This logic was why most case files he emailed simply came with the words “give this a gander” in the subject line.
The jet shimmied through an air pocket, and Cassie stirred.
“We’re landing?” she murmured.
I nodded.
As the plane hit the small runway in stride. I got out my phone and texted Frank.
Still on to meet?
His response came back fast, listing the address of a café twenty miles away.
A half hour later, our Uber slowed next to a handicapped spot in front of Dino’s All-Nighter. The sun was cresting the horizon, but the New Mexico desert was cold. Forty-three degrees at 4:42 a.m.
As I got out of the car, I scanned the diner. Frank Roberts sat at a booth near a window, his head buried in a file. Frank is six foot one, and every day he wears a suit, always with a vest. He’s Black with short-cropped hair, and he glanced up as we entered. Frank was old-school. Yellow legal pads. Pens that clicked. Both of which were on the table in front of him.
“Welcome to beautiful New Mexico,” he said.
“Morning, boss,” Cassie replied.
Even at five in the morning, Frank didn’t have a curl out of place. Since I’d first met him, the same went for his physique. Not too slender. Not too muscular. I’d call him perfect, but that title is taken by his wife, who is five years younger than Frank and a former Miss North Carolina.
We slid into the booth across from him. The diner was lit by weak fluorescent lights and smelled like coffee grinds and pie crust.
“Cassie, you look chipper,” Frank said. Turning to me, he hesitated. “Gardner, you look slightly above average.”
I caught my reflection in the window. My brown hair was tufty and stuck up in places, and my eyes were bloodshot. Frank’s description was accurate.
I stared at the boss. Too many unanswered questions, too early in an investigation.
“So what are we doing here?” I asked. “Shouldn’t there be a local Marriott full of agents from the Albuquerque office, raring to go?”
“Or local PD,” Cassie added, “working the scene first?”
A waitress swung by and refilled Frank’s coffee. She lifted the pot at us.
“Yes, puh-lease,” Cassie said, getting a mugful. I shook my head.
Frank waited for the woman to walk away, and I noticed a knife scar, six centimeters long, cresting the back of her neck.
“Well,” Frank said, “y’all haven’t been to the crime scene yet, but I think it’s fair to say that it’s above the pay grade of the local PD.”
So the FBI had been invited in by Rawlings Police.
“Why PAR?” Cassie asked. “The powers that be don’t think dead murderers rank high enough to put a real team on this?”
Frank’s head tilted to one side. “I might take offense to that ‘real team’ business, Cassie. There’s still people who think that PAR contains four of the best ten minds at the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”
This back-and-forth was fun for Frank, who was full of Texas wit and loved to talk. For me, it was time spent inefficiently. I had to lead the case.
“Has Gardner caught you up on Tignon?” Frank asked Cassie.
“I caught myself up,” she replied, producing the manila folder.
Frank tapped a similar folder in his open briefcase. “I was just reviewing it,” he said. “Reading about this witness who went fishing with Ross Tignon two days after the last murder.” Frank turned to me. “Tignon bragged to this guy about hooking catfish with human liver?”
I nodded. “Those statements were overheard by the boat captain who hosted the fishing trip. Seven years ago, I drove overnight to speak to that witness. But by the time I got to Orange Beach, Alabama, he had disappeared.”
“The boat captain didn’t know his name?” Cassie asked.
“Nope.”
“And you and Saul thought what back then?” Frank said, referring to me and my old partner. “That Tignon disappeared the guy?”
“That was our working theory,” I said. “Tignon was already our prime suspect in three murders, and each victim was missing a liver.”
“And now?” Frank asked.
“Now I suspect this witness was more than just Tignon’s fourth victim,” I said.
“He was the body in the fire?” Cassie said.
I nodded. “Tignon must have abducted him after the fishing trip. Drove his body back to Florida. Burned him up.”
“So where does that leave us?” Frank asked.
I laid my phone down, spinning it so the picture of Ross Tignon’s chest faced Frank. I explained about the 5–0 baseball score—something I hadn’t yet shared with Cassie.
“This information about Tignon’s alibi and the baseball game,” I said. “It was never released to the public.”
Frank took this in. “So even if someone knew that Tignon fooled us with that body in the fire—”
“Only the FBI and local police knew about his alibi and that score,” Cassie finished.
“Exactly,” I said. “So how did someone know to carve five to zero on Tignon’s chest all these years later?”
“Only two options there,” Frank said. “Tignon told someone. Or our killer’s law enforcement. Has access to the same files we do.”
I had been considering this theory since my mother noticed the mark was a dash. “But why now?” I asked. “Tignon got away years ago.”
“That—I dunno.” Frank shrugged.
I thought about the number I didn’t recognize on the text chain from last night. “Who’s the 760 area code?”
“New guy,” Frank said.
Strange. PAR hadn’t added an employee in eighteen months.
“Last Tuesday’s staff meeting,” Cassie said, “you said there was a budget freeze.”
“Got unfrozen,” Frank said. “This new kid requested PAR. Requested to work for you, Gardner. When’s the last time you trained someone?”
Never, I thought.
“Straight out of Quantico?” I asked.
“Number one in his class,” Frank said. “He’s here with Shooter. They’re headed to meet us right now.”
Joanne “Shooter” Harris had grown up in Alaska, hunting from a young age. She’d been part of an Olympic shooting team before she became an agent, competing in both the twenty-five-meter pistol and the fifty-meter rifle. Then, five years ago, when she was with the ATF, she grew frustrated with their lack of funding. In the decades following 9/11, Congress had funded double- and triple-digit increases for every branch of law enforcement except Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Supporting them was tantamount to taking a side in the gun control debate.
So what did Joanne Harris do? She used her fast-draw skills to write F-U-C-K-C-O-N-G-R-E-S-S across a series of targets at a federal gun range, each letter in perfectly formed letters made from bullet holes.
Unfortunately for her, a senator from Massachusetts was visiting the range that day.
This was the start of a career slide that would land her, like me, in PAR. All of us had a story like this, something a new kid straight out of the Academy would not. But logistically it made sense to add someone. A team member had retired in October, causing Frank to be paired with Shooter for the last two months, rather than overseeing the group.
“They’re in New Mexico?” Cassie asked. “This new kid and Shooter?”
Frank glanced at his watch. A Shinola Canfield with a blue dial and a stainless steel band. “As we speak.”
“So I guess we’ll just have to wait a bit longer,” I said, “on whatever you’re holding back. Why PAR was assigned.”
Frank took a swig of his coffee. “I guess you will.”
I examined the boss. Some people see the withholding of information as betrayal, but to me, it is simply part of Frank’s style. He wants his agents to experience things fresh. Draw their own conclusions.
Plus, he was never unkind. Never raised his voice. And he never treated the personality traits that made me different as anything other than a positive for PAR. He also never cursed, other than the word “bullshit.” Some say that was why Frank hadn’t been promoted more. There were those at the FBI who didn’t trust a man who didn’t curse.
Then again, statistically speaking, it could’ve been because he was Black.
“Have you been to the house where Fisher was found?” Cassie asked.
“I have,” Frank said. “I was standing in the kitchen, making my initial assessment. Then I stopped. Our team lead sent a text. Told me to get out.”
That was my text. The note I’d sent to seal the place up, even from “our own people.”
“What’s Fisher look like?” Cassie asked.
“You tell me when you see him.”
Classic Frank.
“Forced entry?” I asked.
“Nope.”
So Fisher let the person in. Maybe even knew them.
“How far away is this place?” I asked.
“Ten miles,” Frank said. “It’s a rental house, by the way. Owned by Fisher’s younger brother, Kenny. The brother stopped renting it a few months ago, knowing Barry was coming out of Otero Prison.”
“Is the squad coming here?” Cassie asked. “Or are we meeting them at the house?”
The squad. Cassie had a knack for making us sound cool.
“Here,” Frank said. He threw down a twenty for his pie and coffee. Collected his two pads and three pens and dumped them into his ten-year-old briefcase.
The worn leather case was the one accessory that looked out of place with Frank’s perfect wardrobe. But the ten-year-old bullet hole in one side told the story of why he kept it. It had saved his life.
“Why aren’t you leading the investigation?” I asked.
“Because when that body was found yesterday in Texas,” Frank said, “the director of the FBI himself asked who that smart agent was who figured out Tignon was using girls’ livers as fish bait down near the Alabama border.”
Cassie put out a fist for me to bump. “Director of the FBI,” she said. “Hashtag goals.”
I kept my focus on Frank. “Director Banning doesn’t remember what happened after? With me and the Bureau?”
Frank pursed his lips, a dismissive look. And then he lied straight to my face. “Ancient history, Gardner.”
I nodded as if I believed him. But the Bureau wasn’t one of those workplaces that forgave and forgot.
Still, I didn’t want to focus on everything that had gone wrong back in 2013. I didn’t want to think of the reasons I wasn’t allowed to travel for the Bureau or interact with the public.
“Maybe the director’s forgetful,” Frank added. “I heard something about that. Remember y’all, a year ago November was his last month officially. Director Banning had retired. He was out of the bureau for a year. Private citizen.”
We knew the rest of the story. The deputy director under Banning was promoted, but within a few months this successor had a heart attack and died. So the president himself asked Banning to come back and help groom a new director—one the administration liked. A guy named Craig Poulton.
“This week marks the end of month six,” Frank said. “Everyone is waiting for Banning to retire again. In the meantime, Deputy Director Poulton doesn’t want anyone countermanding Banning’s orders.”
So bureaucracy was keeping the case with us. That, and no one cared about victims who were once killers.
“What about press?” Cassie asked. “HQ trusts us to handle that?”
“Well.” Frank lowered his voice. “Nobody knows who Ross Tignon is except us. Folks in Ashland knew him as Bob Breckenridge.”
“Sure,” I said. “But that was in Texas. Here in New Mexico with Fisher…”
Frank shook his head. The media hadn’t been notified of Barry Fisher’s death, he told us.
“What about Fisher’s brother?” I asked. “He’s not talking?”
“He’s not too keen on it being announced in the news,” Frank said. “Him as the brother of a serial killer and all.”
“He said that to you?”
“I dunno.” Frank smiled. “Maybe I suggested it to him. The conversation was fluid.”
“So no media on either case?” Cassie said.
“At least for a few days.”
Still, none of that answered the question of why I was leading the investigation. I wasn’t sure I believed Frank’s given reason. I scrutinized him. Frank had been passed over so many times for a promotion that I didn’t think he even cared about politics anymore.
The door to the diner jingled, and we looked over.
Joanne “Shooter” Harris was thirty-five with green eyes and a head of wavy strawberry blond hair. Out in the field, she’d tie it back in a ponytail, but at the moment it was loose at her shoulders. Tight black jeans, a white pullover, and the duffel bag slung over her shoulder rounded out her athletic look.
“Hey, gang,” she said. “Looks like somebody gave us a get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“What’s up, guns?” Cassie said.
“Just the facts,” Shooter replied, their usual back-and-forth introduction.
All eyes moved to the new guy, standing next to her. The kid could pass for nineteen as easily as twenty-six. He was five foot nine with a slender frame and an Italian look. Olive skin and an angular face with high cheekbones. His dark hair was spiked with product, and his suit was too expensive for his pay grade.
“Richie Brancato,” he introduced himself.
“Welcome aboard,” Cassie said, smiling.
And we were, in fact, a welcoming group. Small. Insular.
Unknown.
In that moment, I realized—no one had applied to work at PAR before. Ever.
I looked to Frank, but his eyes were firmly on the checkered floor, avoiding questions of why this kid was suddenly part of our team.
A snake pit. A border market full of thieves. There were so many less political places to work than the Federal Bureau of Investigation.