The next class took place outdoors. We were all dressed in sport jackets, but with padded throat and face protectors for a “practical” at Hogans Alley. The exercise involved three cars in hot pursuit of a fourth. Sirens blared and echoed. Loudspeakers barked commands: “Stop! Pull over! Come out of the car with your hands up.” Our ammo, Simunition, consisted of cartridges with pink-paint-infused tips.

It was five o’clock by the time we finished the exercise. I showered and dressed, and as I was leaving the training building to go over to the dining hall building, where I had a cubicle, I saw SSA Nooney. He motioned for me to come over. What if I don’t want to?

“You headed back to D.C.?” he asked.

I nodded and bit down on my tongue. “In a while. I have some reports to read first. The abduction in Atlanta.”

“Big stuff. I’m impressed. The rest of your classmates spend their nights here. Some of them think it helps build camaraderie. I think so too. Are you an agent of change?”

I shook my head, then tried a smile on Nooney. Didn’t work.

“I was told from the start that I could go home nights. That isn’t possible for most of the others.”

Then Nooney began to push hard, trying to stir up old anger.

“I heard you had some problems with your chief of detectives in D.C. too,” he said.

“Everybody had problems with Chief of Detectives Pittman,” I said.

Nooney’s eyes appeared glazed. It was obvious he didn’t see it that way. “Just about everybody has problems with me too. Doesn’t mean I’m wrong about the importance of building a team here. I’m not wrong, Cross.”

I resisted saying anything more. Nooney was coming down on me again. Why? I had attended the classes I could make; I still had work to do on White Girl. Like it or not, I was part of the case. And this wasn’t another practical—it was real. It was important.

“I have to get my work done,” I finally said. Then I walked away from Nooney. I was pretty sure I’d made my first enemy in the FBI. An important one too. No sense starting small.

Chapter 21

Chapter 21

MAYBE IT WAS GUILT churned up by my confrontation with Gordon Nooney that made me work late in my cube on the lower level of the dining hall building where Behavioral Science had its offices. The low ceilings, bad fluorescent lighting, and cinder-block walls kind of made me feel as if I were back at my precinct. But the depth of the back files and research available to FBI agents was astonishing. The Bureau’s resources were better than anything I’d ever seen in the D.C. police department.