Hashimi just smelled wrong. Sometimes you can’t put that on paper. We’d never have gotten a search warrant based on the Greenville case. There was plenty of cause with the credit card fraud case. The problem was the bureau could take a year before knocking in his door and following that lead.

I had to nudge things a little . . .

It was simple enough. Miller was sending a group of cases to his supervisor to be expedited. Hashimi wasn’t on that list. All it took was a hastily written note that looked a lot like Miller’s handwriting, but no actual signature (so I couldn’t be accused of outright forgery), taped to the file. How it ended up on a desk in the supervisor’s locked office is beside the point. The supervisor’s secretary only saw Miller go in and out . . .

When they got the search warrant on Hashimi’s house they found IDs and documents tying him to the murders. Miller got the credit for the catch. I was just happy they got him.

No one has ever asked me this before. Ailes is the first one to realize I suspected Hashimi of being the killer in the Greenville case. When they busted him, I kept my mouth shut and congratulated Miller when he got his commendation.

Ailes is waiting for me to respond. I say nothing.

“I see . . .” he replies.

What does he see? That I went around my supervisor? Miller never told anyone I’d gone around him. He never mentioned it to me either. He knows that file came from somewhere. He suspects who, but doesn’t want to admit it.

Ailes drops the matter. “Why do you think you are here, Agent Blackwood?”

I don’t understand the question. “The dispatcher asked me to meet you here.”

He looks at my hoodie and jeans. “Didn’t expect to get called in on a Saturday?”

“No, sir. I did not,” I reply.

“Any idea why you’re here?”

I think about the magazine. The only obvious physical piece of evidence in the entire building. It’s embarrassing, but it’s not the kind of thing to cause this much fuss. Is it? Maybe the Miller thing blew up. “I’m not sure I know.”

His eyes squint for a moment, then he remembers his glasses. The glasses seem like a prop he uses to stretch moments of time and make me keep talking. He can tell I’m not giving anything up. “What have you heard about what goes on here?”

“Just the rumors. That you and your number crunchers are mining through personnel files to find leaks.”

Ailes nods his head. “That’s a minor thing. More of an assist we’re doing for internal affairs.” He points toward the bullpen visible through the window. “Most of what we do here is quite boring. Even more so than the kind of forensic accounting you’ve been doing. Jennifer out there is finding ways to reduce the number of boxes on an expense report by half. Terribly dull. But exciting at the same time. If she can find a way to save twenty percent of the time each agent spends filling out forms, then that’s the equivalent of adding eight hundred agents into the field by freeing up their time from bureaucratic bullshit.”