“See, that’s what I can’t have,” said Nick. “If we assume we know, we fall into the trap of confirmation bias, where we only see what supports our interpretation because we want to be right. I purposely haven’t addressed the target issue yet, and I’m not ready to without hard evidence. Speculation is counterproductive. That’s the real reason I’m chasing you out, Janet. I don’t want you tearing down the weeks of professional discipline these guys have shown. That may be their best attribute: the ability to keep an open mind.”

“Janet,” said Chandler, “Nick’s right. We can’t go in all oriented to something. This is too important. That’s also why nobody on this team is political. We’re professional, we’re trying to solve a problem, that’s all it is.”

•   •   •

Like a guest star brought in for a flashy scene or two, she was indeed gone the next day, driven off by two junior agents to Salt Lake City and put on a late flight back to Baltimore. It really was the right decision, cruel as it may have seemed, because much had to be done and there wasn’t time to bring anybody new up to speed.

The various teams went to work. Nick spent a long, awkward time on the phone with the Director and an assistant attorney general, but somehow managed to survive. And, gradually, some sort of intelligence picture emerged.

Meanwhile, Swagger accompanied a crew of agents to the meadow where the drone pix showed that the shooting range was located. Fresh from the rain, it looked like Paradise Found—a sunny roll of lush land sparkling with droplets that had collected on the grass—a pure mile of open space. Above, of course, azure sky, clouds like melting vanilla, piercing late-summer sun, and, rimming all this glory, the Grand Tetons.

“He chained ’em here,” Swagger said, pointing to the four-by-four-inch post sunk in a wad of concrete and impervious to human influence, immobile even when subjected to the desperate energy of approaching death. The post bore grisly signs of struggle. It was smeared with the dark ochre of dried blood, and a few frags had blasted through the bound bodies and ripped shreds from its surface. One high miss left a perfect pucker drilled into the wood, at the bottom of which lay the expended and battered .338 bullet. Forensics would recover and analyze it.

“Mr. Swagger, we’ll also look for latent prints on this post. We’ll run chemical tests on the ground for blood, and if we find it, we can extract DNA.”

“That’s great,” he said. “You got corpse-sniffing dogs?”

“No, sir, but we have methane probes that are very efficient at locating buried cadavers, if we can just find some recently disturbed earth.”