“That far back?” Brennan shakes her head. “I’m sorry. We wipe the files every three months unless there’s been an incident, like a fight or shoplifting or a slip-and-fall. Then we’ll save it for as long as we need to, for legal or whatever.”

“And you control the surveillance from here? Do you have a security room?”

“We do now,” says Brennan. “It used to be centralized, but I guess that didn’t work out.”

“When was it centralized and for how long?”

“Not sure. Before my time.”

“Is there anybody around who would know?”

Brennan drums her fingers on her desk for a moment. “Hold on.” She presses a button on her phone console. “Paul? Gayle. Listen. What was the name of that woman from IT, the one who was here a few months ago about the checkout scanners?” Brennan rolls her eyes and says, “Right, the really hot one.” She scrawls on a pad. “Okay, Paul, thanks.” A pause. “What? No. Don’t worry. She didn’t complain about you. Relax.”

Brennan hangs up, tears the page off the pad. “Lindsay Farrow. She works out of the supercenter in Salem. Should I tell her you’re coming?”

“Please don’t,” says Gagnon. “It just makes people nervous.”

CHAPTER
79

Etna, New Hampshire

Now I know why the name Etna rings a bell—it’s where two Dartmouth professors were murdered in their home. Two teenage boys came looking for money, stole about three hundred dollars, then stabbed the professors to death. The Dartmouth Murders, they called them.

That was years ago, before my and Garrett’s time at school here, and although Etna—POPULATION 870, according to the sign at the town limits—is just a few miles from campus, neither of us ever visited. Not much here to visit.

Etna Drags wasn’t coming up on my GPS, so I had to stop at the post office and ask for directions, and that led me here, to the end of a narrow dirt road. I get out of the car and look through a chain-link fence. Two NO TRESPASSING signs are shot through with rusted bullet holes. Birds cry in the distance.

From where I’m standing, I can see a long strip. The paved surface looks pretty sound even though grass is growing through the cracks. Set back from the strip are two structures, an open-air Quonset-type hangar and a two-story brick building with broken windows that might once have been a control tower.

Is it possible that this is the place Garrett met the First Gentleman?

I squeeze my way through the sagging gate and past a clump of crushed and rusted car bodies. Drag-strip casualties, I suppose.

“Hey! What are you doing?”

I turn and see a man with a chest-length black beard coming from the hangar. He’s in a grease-stained denim jumpsuit, and he’s holding a pistol in his right hand, though his arm is at his side.