The Narrows

floor of the John Lawrence Bailey Building in Las Vegas. The room was windowless and poorly ventilated. A photograph of Bailey, an agent killed during a bank robbery twenty years earlier, looked upon the proceedings.
    The agents in attendance sat at tables lined in rows, facing the front of the room. At the front was Randal Alpert and a two-way television that was connected by phone and camera to a squad room in Quantico, Virginia. On the screen was Agent Brasilia Doran, waiting to provide her report. Rachel was at the second row of tables, sitting off by herself. She knew her place here and outwardly tried to show it.
    Alpert convened the meeting by graciously introducing those present. Rachel thought that this was a nicety allowed for her but soon realized that not everyone in attendance in person or by audiovisual hookup knew everyone else.
    Alpert first identified Doran, also known as Brass, on the line from Quantico, where she was handling the collating of information and acting as liaison to the national lab. He then asked each person seated in the room to identify themselves and their specialty or position. First was Cherie Dei, who said she was the case agent. Next to her was her partner, Tom Zigo. Next was John Cates, a representative agent from the local FO and the only nonwhite person in attendance.
    The next four people were from the science side and Rachel had seen and met two of them at the site the day before. They included a forensic anthropologist named Greta Coxe, who was in charge of the excavations, two medical examiners named Harvey Richards- and Douglas Sundeen, and a crime scene specialist named Mary Pond. Ed Gunning, another agent from Behavioral Sciences in Quantico, brought the introductions around to Rachel, who was last.
    "Agent Rachel Walling," she said. " Rapid City field office. Formerly with Behavioral. I have some… familiarity with a case like this."
    "Okay, thanks, Rachel," Alpert said quickly, as though he thought Rachel was going to mention Robert Backus by name.
    This told Rachel that there were people in the room who had not been informed of the major fact of the case. She guessed that would be Cates, the token agent from the FO. She wondered if some of the science team, or all of it, was in the dark as well.
    "Let's start with the science side," Alpert continued. "First of all, Brass? Anything from out there?"
    "Not on science. I think your crime scene people have all of that. Hello, Rachel. Long time."
    "Hello, Brass," Rachel said quietly. "Too long."
    She looked at the screen and their eyes met. Rachel realized that it had probably been eight years since she had actually seen Doran. She looked weary, her mouth and eyes drawn down, her hair short in a cut that suggested she didn't spend much time with it. She was an empath, Rachel knew, and the years were taking their toll.
    "You look good," Doran said. "I guess all that fresh air and open country agrees with you."
    Alpert stepped in and saved Rachel from delivering a false compliment in return.
    "Greta, Harvey, who wants to go first?" he asked, stepping all over the electronic reunion.
    "I guess I will since everything starts with the dig," Greta Coxe said. "As of seven p.m. yesterday we have fully excavated eight bodies and they are at Neilis. This afternoon when we get back there, we will begin with number nine. What we saw with the first excavations is holding true with the latter. The plastic bags in each incidence and the-"
    "Greta, we have a tape going here," Alpert interrupted. "Let's be fully descriptive. As if speaking to an uninformed audience. Don't hold back."
    Except when it comes to mentioning Robert Backus, Rachel thought.
    "Okay, sure," Coxe said. "Um, all eight bodies excavated and exhumed so far have been fully clothed. Decomposition is extensive. Hands and feet bound by tape. All have plastic bags over the head, which in turn have been taped around the neck. There is no variation on this methodology, even between victims one and two. Which is unusual."
    Late the day before Rachel had seen the photos. She had gone back into the command RV and looked at the wall of photos. It seemed clear to her that the men had all been suffocated. The plastic bags had not been clear plastic but even in their opaqueness she could see the features of the faces and the mouths wide open and searching for air that wasn't going to come. They reminded her of photos of wartime atrocities, disinterred bodies from mass graves in