Coverage of the attack is on every channel. Reporters describing the action, dramatically waving their arms, pointing to crumpled floats and tractors behind police barricades. Blurry phone footage showing the screaming crowds, and one showing somebody in a harlequin costume, calmly walking along, shooting, until he in turn falls back when shot. Various witnesses—tourists, cops, residents—saying what they saw, with tears in their eyes and shaking voices. Talking heads drawing comparisons to the Boston Marathon bombing, the Las Vegas shooting, September 11th.

I can’t stomach this. Not now. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

“Anyone care if I turn this shit off?” I ask.

I reach for the remote without waiting for an answer—just as my phone rings.

I check the screen. It’s another 504 number I don’t recognize.

Holy shit. Is it Billy again?

I answer nervously—then exhale.

“Rooney, it’s Cunningham,” comes his tired voice. “Where are you? You okay?”

“Hey, Chief. I’m hanging in there. I just got home. Did you get my—”

“That’s why I’m calling,” he says. “How soon can you get to Pontchartrain Park? I’m with Morgan and his team of all-star rejects. We want you down here. Now.”

“It might take some time, with all the roadblocks,” I say.

“No worries,” he says. “A cruiser will come by and pick you up.”

CHAPTER 87

The Alfred J. LeMont Federal Building, home to the FBI’s New Orleans Field Office, is an ugly concrete tower tucked away on the outskirts of town near the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Over the years, I’ve worked a few other joint cases with the Feds, but I’ve never stepped inside their facility. It’s not that I didn’t want to. I was never invited. Until now.

It’s a monument to law and order, of peace and progress, but my mood sours the moment I step inside, when I see Special Agent Morgan standing outside of a conference room, talking to a woman wearing a Homeland Security windbreaker.

“Morgan!” I yell. “You son of a bitch, this is all your fault! You idiot! Moron! I fucking gave you everything on a goddamn silver platter, and you let the attack happen!”

Morgan, eyes blazing with anger and fury, says, “What silver platter, Rooney? Huh? What goddamn platter? You focused on a poor Syrian dishwasher. You gave us a nearly illiterate Aryan Brotherhood goon who knew nothing we didn’t already know … you were obsessed about David Needham … the wrong Needham! We had hundreds of tips! Hundreds! And DC kept on promising to help us with some back-channel nonsense … which never panned out.”

“You could have done more!”

“We all could have done more … all of us … and for Christ’s sake, what was I supposed to do? Drop everything and focus on you … a fry cook? A disgraced police detective?”