“So… should we be interviewing the arresting officers as well? Finding out what they noticed?”

“It’s an idea.” A good one. It would make what they’re doing make sense. “Would Cooper let us expand the study?”

“I have a feeling Cooper is already dodging low-flying shit just trying to keep this unit running,” Bell admits.

“Well, if he’s already in the glue, he hasn’t got anything to lose, right?”

Bell grins. “I guess you’d have to ask him that.”

“Then let’s ask.”

“Okay. Let’s ask.” Bell waits a beat. “Cooper will probably be fine with expanding the study, so long as we keep the receipts.”

Emma side-eyes him, snorts.

They pull the Dodge into the Quantico parking lot at nine that evening, and Emma feels pummeled after the drive. She and Bell trudge their weary way toward the buildings, splitting off at the doors to Jefferson—Bell’s dormitory is in the next wing along. They shake hands before they separate, like they’re business partners.

Emma leans against the wall of the elevator as it travels up, only straightening when two male trainees get in on the floor before her own.

Her room is warm inside, the air stagnant. She lurches into the shower, stuffing Bell’s T-shirt into her laundry hamper. While she’s washing, his idea to interview the cops who arrested kids like McMurtry strikes her again. It’s a good idea. After she gets out, towels off, and puts on the terry cloth robe she brought from home, she sits on top of the comforter on her bed with the McMurtry file.

The idea plucks at her. She checks the time—twenty-one thirty—and figures it’s worth a shot. She calls Cooper at the office number on his card.

“Agent Cooper? It’s Emma Lewis. We just got back from Beckley.”

“Was there a problem?”

“No problem.” She’s not sure how to start, plunges in anyway. “Bell and I were talking in the car on the way back. We were thinking it might be useful to expand the study. We were hoping to talk to the arresting officers for each—”

“Miss Lewis?”

“Yes?”

“You were asked to interview the subject, complete a report, and hand that report in at oh nine hundred on Sunday. I’d like you to do that. Just that, and nothing more.”

He hangs up. She stares at the bleating receiver in her hand.

“Well, fuck you very much, Special Agent Cooper,” she mutters.

She’ll have to tell Bell that she didn’t even get to the part about keeping the receipts.

CHAPTER SIX

After leaving Jefferson, Travis Bell is halfway to his room when he realizes he still has the interview questionnaire pages in his satchel.

He doesn’t know if they’re important. Emma’s words come back to him: Maybe it even feeds into something they need to know about Pennsylvania. Does he take the McMurtry questionnaire back to his dorm? The question stumps him for a moment and his brain is tired, so he falls back on the most reliable method he knows for figuring out problems, which is to consider what his father would say.