He removes the taillight mount and sets it on the bumper, and I’m aware of how isolated and vulnerable we are. If someone wanted to take us out it would already have happened. If Carrie wanted to kill us this very second she would. I’ve never really believed we could stop her. When we thought she’d died years ago we didn’t feel responsible or give ourselves the credit. We simply felt lucky. We felt blessed.

“Holy shit,” Marino says. “The bulb’s missing. And behind where it was screwed in is a decent-size wire routing hole that I’m guessing the arrow was shoved through. That would put it exactly where you found it on the floor inside the desk cabinet.”

“I’ve been driving around with a taillight out? Well that verifies that the truck couldn’t have been like this for very long.”

“Exactly. The question is when was the damage done? Because someone couldn’t have removed the screws, the bulb while the truck was parked on Lucy’s driveway. Unless the FBI did it.”

“Planting evidence, tampering with state and federal property? Let’s hope the FBI wouldn’t be that unethical or stupid.” I crouch on the shiny steel floor near the open cabinet where I found the arrow as I remember what Lucy said about Carrie’s obsession with invisibility technology.

I look around as if she’s ubiquitous and transparent like air, and the wind buffets the truck and rain thrums it in varying intensities. Beating then thrashing then pouring, and Marino is hunched against the weather while I’m spared for the moment. I shine the flashlight inside the cabinet, painting the intense beam over the routing hole, over stacks of cheap blue towels tied with string, the steel floor mirror bright in the light. I notice something else.

THE CLUMP OF dust is what people often refer to as a dust bunny or dust ball. It’s about the size of a martini olive, fluffy like lint from the dryer.

Another pair of clean gloves and I use the adhesive back of a Post-it to collect a sample that I’m sure will prove a treasure trove, a microscopic landfill of debris. Fibers, hairs, insect pieces and parts, and particulates that could be anything I imagine. But I’m certain the origin can’t be one of my CFC trucks. It can’t be the labs or the parking lot surrounded by its high black fence that’s supposed to be impossible to climb. Next I seal the dust bunny inside a plastic bag and it goes into the same locker where I placed the arrow and the metamaterial. I call my chief of staff.