“In the summers, my father and I would go out to California for two weeks, and I would play with your grandmother, my double-first-cousin. I had a nanny in DC, but when I was older and started school, I’d take the bus down to the Department of Justice building every afternoon. Mr. Hoover wasn’t known for being fond of children, but my father was one of his key agents, and even Hoover had to respect his efforts at being a single parent. When I was fourteen, I was allowed to work after school in the fingerprint department. I’d examine and label cards of ink-stained whorls and ridges for classification and then match the records when crime-scene prints came to the department for identification.”

“Pre-computers,” Jesse said.

“The tools of the trade were a magnifying glass and a bright light. I was good at it. When I graduated, my father wanted me to go to college, but back then a woman’s best career options were teaching or nursing. I was fighting crime. I went to Mr. Hoover and told him I wanted a job. I was eighteen and knew my mind. No one knew the fingerprint department better than me. And I said if he ever needed a woman for field investigations, I was that woman.”

“What did he say?”

“He was amused. But he gave me a full-time job with fingerprints. Back then, I couldn’t be a special agent. Mr. Hoover didn’t allow women in the role. He said I could consider myself his special asset. As a consolation prize, my father paid for flying lessons as an outlet for what he called my overly adventurous spirit. After a while, I graduated to surveillance work, mainly playing the role of a young wife or older daughter paired with an appropriate male agent. Strictly assignments with minimal risks. But I leveraged that into full field agent training, claiming it would be of benefit so that if something unforeseen ever happened, I could at least defend myself. When Mr. Hoover died in 1972, the policy toward women changed, and I became a full-fledged FBI special agent.”

“And your father’s death?”

“That happened when a field operation went bad. An organized crime gang had moved into hijacking tractor-trailers. When they drove them across state lines, the FBI got involved. This was back in 1967. I was twenty and definitely barred from any mob-related cases. My father had an inside informant. Word was passed that a shipment would be jumped one night along one of the lonely stretches of West Virginia. The informant didn’t know exactly where, so my father decided to set up a roadblock just beyond the likely stretch of highway. They were ambushed. The gang knew precisely where they would be positioned and three cars came up behind them. Six agents died that night, including my father. One survived long enough to say what had happened.”

“Your father’s informant double-crossed him?”