“I should’ve grabbed that jacket,” Bell muses. “Won’t Raymond be—”

“No. Nothing’s confirmed about it being the Butcher yet.”

“Lord, teach me to split hairs like an FBI agent.”

The car has front and rear bench seats. Emma holds the panic bar when Cooper guns it out of the bay doors and into the light. Bell protects his head as Cooper takes the last traffic hump at speed.

“Buckle up.” Cooper speaks over his shoulder. “Mr. Bell, I hope that’s coffee I’m smelling.”

“Watch out, it’s hot.” Bell unloads three polystyrene cups with lids from the bag he’s been balancing so carefully.

“I knew I did the right thing, taking you on.”

“Eat,” Bell commands as he presses a packaged sandwich into Emma’s hands.

It’s cream cheese, but she’s still grateful. She leans forward in her seat. “We need to find out where the letter was mailed. And how Simon’s supposed to reply.”

“That’s something you’ll need to ask him when you speak with him,” Cooper says.

“He’ll say he was never lying,” Emma points out. “That we just never asked the right questions.”

“No, I don’t expect the incarcerated sociopathic narcissist to actually admit that he lied.” Cooper’s glance in the rearview is dry. “Think of a strategy to use with him.”

Cooper switches on the flashers and the siren on occasion, so the ride to Washington goes fast. Emma has a stressful moment at FBI headquarters security check-in, when she thinks she’s left her ID lanyard in her room at Jefferson. She tastes Cooper’s irritation for a shameful moment before she finds the lanyard in the pocket of the jacket she still has tied around her waist.

The feeling in the elevator, on the way to the lab, is different from the last time they visited: She and Bell aren’t out-in-the-cold trainees anymore, they’re part of the team. Emma reminds herself that Cooper has exacting standards. She sincerely hopes she’s able to meet them.

When they breach the doors, Carlos Dixon is in his court trousers and shirt and tie, with a lab coat thrown over the top. “I got back ten minutes ago. Gerry has it, but you’ll be damn lucky. And that onionskin paper is bad news.”

“Is he in the examining room?”

“Yeah, he’s got the laser on it. The garbage got dumped at the solid waste place off Capitol Street Southeast—the team’s there now. But if there are other letters, they might have already been incinerated.”

Cooper swerves quickly through the common room and its stacks of containers, Emma and Bell chasing after. Gerry Westfall is in the Latent Prints examining room, looking unhappy.

“The envelope is dirty as hell, and this letter paper is almost as bad as Kleenex.” Westfall settles the letter into the document case next to its envelope and strips off his gloves. “I got perspiration smudges, maybe off a wrist. Nothing else but smooth prints from the surgical gloves he’s using, like off the chains and the other surfaces in Berryville. I’d like to fume it, but I’d better give it to Linda first before I stain it. Glenn’s already taken a few bits.”