“You don’t think he might be involved?”

“I’m saying that I understand why he might be pissed that his wife failed to dispatch.”

“That’s the other thing.”

“What?”

“He asked me if I ever knew anyone to fail to dispatch twice in a row.”

“Implying he thought Jimmy Albert did that.”

“I think so.”

“I’ve been through his official records from the Agency. He’s like you. Officially he’s never failed to dispatch.”

“That doesn’t tell us anything about his private gigs, though.”

“So, what? You think he fumbled a private dispatch sometime recently?”

“He might have.”

“How do we tell?”

“We still think the Tunneys are involved in this, right?”

“It’s our best hypothesis at the moment, yes.”

“Do you have records of known Tunney associates? People who are suspected of participating in the family’s shadier side?”

“We do, but think about what you’re asking. That’s a few hundred low-lifes over the last decade.”

“We don’t need to look at them all.”

“Which ones do we need to look at?”

“Any of them that might have shown up in the morgue in the last couple of weeks. Start with the ones listed as suicides.”

Araceli Fuentes, medical examiner, opened the locker and rolled out the body inside. “Brodie Calhoun,” she said. “Fished him out of Lake Michigan yesterday.”

“He died yesterday?” Langdon asked.

“No, he died five or six days ago. But we fished him out of the lake yesterday.”

“He drowned?”

Fuentes pointed at his temple. “Bullet to the head.”

“So, suicide.”

“Seems likely, for obvious reasons. The angle of the bullet trajectory and powder pushed into the skin of the temple suggest the weapon was in this guy’s hand when it was fired.”

“We don’t have the gun.”

“No. It’s probably at the bottom of the lake.”

“Anyone coming to get him?” I asked.

“There’s a sister coming to get the body released,” Fuentes said. “She’s flying in from Boston. She’ll be here tomorrow. Until then he’s yours.”

“Thanks, Ara,” Langdon said.

“De nada. Roll him back in when you’re done.” Fuentes wandered off to do other things.

“Well?” Langdon asked me.

“Well, what?”

She motioned to the body. “Failed dispatch?”

“It’s possible.” I pointed to the head wound. “The wound makes sense.”

“Explain that.”

“If you’re working for less-than-entirely reputable people, and you’re injured to the point where you need a dispatcher, the dispatcher is going to make it look like a suicide, so just in case it fails no one will ask any questions about what happened.”

“And you know this because?”

“Come on, Langdon. We’re far enough along that we don’t need to pretend I’ve been a perfect angel all my life.”

“You’ve done this.”

“At the very least I know how it’s done. What do we know about this presumed suicide?”