“I’m fine,” she said. “No State cops are asking me out for a drink.”

Around this tiny convoy, the mild and pleasant streets of the Kansas city passed, and Bob for some reason kept his scan running hard, his concentration cranked up to eleven. Of course he had no firearm, so what good would it have done if he’d spotted anything anyway?

“Okay?” asked Nick. “We’ll catch him after testimony. He’ll have thought about it. He’ll see what being a stand-up guy will cost him and he’ll come home to us.”

“Hope you’re right,” said Bob, eyes catching on the sudden spurt of a Dodge Charger, but it signaled, then turned left, as it passed the Marshals’ vehicle.

“He’s a kid,” said Chandler. “Behind the bravado, he’s scared and fragile. Plus, he misses his mom. He’ll see the light.”

The courthouse was a New Deal monolith, all vertical lines and right angles, art moderne by way of a let’s-build-shit-to-get-the-economy-going zeitgeist. It was built to withstand tornados and angry peasants with pitchforks and torches. The Marshals’ SUV pulled through the gate, obediently opened by a guard, eased into the lot, and pulled up to the curb, which accessed the six broad stairs, which, in turn, accessed the double-wide brass doors. Two more Marshals stood at the doorway, like sentinels. So much drama.

Nick parked in a precleared nearby space, and the cop car closed the gap on the SUV, nudging up to it, fender to fender.

As he exited, Bob scanned for threat. Nothing, no movement, no parked cars on the street, no suspicious traffic on 4th Street. Just America: trees, sunlight, a bit of a breeze, a few folks across the street, meandering their way through errands and visits, nobody paying any attention to anybody’s business but their own. Swagger did notice one tall structure on the horizon, the dome of a church or some kind of sacred structure, off to the northwest, three hundred or so yards away. He marked it, but it was too far for his eyes to pick out details. It occurred to him that he should have had binoculars, but he also should have had a pistol, earphones, and a link to the ’Net, body armor and more comfortable shoes, and been twenty years younger.

The FBI folks reached the SUV, which had remained closed until they got there. Now the front door opened, a large man in a blazer emerged, miced and phoned up, Sig bulging over his right kidney, regulation-issue crew cut, and, like Bob, did his own threat scan. Satisfied, he nodded, and the back door opened.