“Who knows? Maybe he was in a rush. Maybe he didn’t want to double his felonies. Look, I don’t want to talk about Garrett Wilson. I need you to make a trip for me. Official. On the record.”

“Where to?”

“Back to New Hampshire. Manchester.”

“For what?”

“You know Bracken, the mayor up there?”

“Dale Bracken? I’ve heard of him. Didn’t he play for Yale?”

“He did. All-America linebacker. He wants to run for Congress next year, and Maddy wants you there for a fundraiser.”

Cole gets it. “Jock to jock, right?” His typical campaign shtick.

“It sends an early message to the party that the president’s made her choice. Helps eliminate infighting and wasted funds come primary time. You can plug your fitness program in the remarks.”

Cole sighs. “Fine. No problem. I’ll do it.”

“Good. The travel office will set it up.” Pearce grins. “My people. Not your band of sky pirates.”

Cole feels Pearce’s hand on his knee. A brotherly gesture, meant to welcome him back into the fold. Also his traditional signal that a meeting is over. They both stand. Cole is ushered toward the door. Pearce pauses with his hand on the doorknob.

“Cole, my old friend.” His voice is low. “We’ve been through a lot together. And now we’re on the cusp of doing something really great. We’ve got more important things to worry about than some second-rate reporter with a side hustle in drugs. The silver lining for you is that his book is now as dead as he is.”

Cole winces at Pearce’s last remark, delivered with casual coldness.

Like only the Gray Ghost can.

CHAPTER
82

Concord, New Hampshire

Gagnon huddles over the flat-screen monitor at police headquarters as data analyst Beth Condon works on the screenshot from the seventeen-year-old Walmart video.

“You’re lucky,” says Condon. “No lossy compression.”

“Explain, please,” says Gagnon.

“Usually, stored files are compressed to save space on a hard drive or server. When you do that, you lose data. Looks like this file is intact. You said this was some kind of experimental program?”

“Yeah. It lasted only eighteen months.”

“That’s probably why it’s not compressed. If it had gone on longer, they probably would have condensed everything. This file is huge. There’s a lot to work with.”

As Condon talks, her eyes never leave the screen. Her fingers dance over the keypad. The image is currently blown up so that two figures almost fill the frame. The checkout clerk’s vest forms a soft blue edge in the foreground.

“What are you doing, exactly?” asks Gagnon.

“Motion deblurring. Focus sharpening.”

“I don’t see any difference.”

“That’s because I haven’t re-rendered it yet. Hold on.” She taps one more key and sits back. “There.”