She noticed a disappointing trend too. The FBI information had dwindled. As soon as the shooting had stopped on July 20 two years ago and order had been restored, the FBI had begun to assert its jurisdiction. Weldonville Penitentiary was a federal facility. The murdered guards and support staff had been federal employees. Escape was a federal crime. Anyone who had not been caught in the first twenty-four hours had probably crossed a state line or two.

Leah had asked for the favor of exceptional information sharing. She had pointed out that the crimes committed in the city limits of Weldonville—murder, rape, arson, grand larceny, auto theft, weapons charges—were also violations of Colorado laws. At the time of this discussion Leah had been standing on Main Street, where there had been a decisive and ferocious battle that no federal officer had even arrived in time to witness. Bodies were still being removed from the corner of Main and Constitution because there were too few ambulances to reinforce the single coroner’s van, and bodies had to be transported to other towns to await autopsies.

The agreement had been largely unspoken. The terms had seemed to be that Leah and city officials would not point out on national television that if a federal prison failed, the local citizens and their police were on their own. In return, the FBI would be uncharacteristically open and cooperative with the Weldonville officials. They would provide prompt updates on whatever they learned about the escaped inmates. At the time, nobody had known that there would be a federal grant to Weldonville to rebuild its public safety program. The FBI may not have suggested it, but they certainly hadn’t blocked it either.

The first year had brought a flood of information that had come from criminal investigations, trials, prisoner records, and the crime scene reports from the Weldonville prison break. They were massive and detailed, including DNA profiles, fingerprints, and photographs. But now that the second year had passed, there was very little new information about any of the men. What Leah was reading was mainly about the six men she had killed, and most of the information was misinterpreted.