Up on the sixth floor of Claremont, in a windowless room still imbued with the faint redolence of cigarette smoke from a vanished time, Odessa told the story again, twice. Exactly the same, but for a few details that came back to her upon each retelling. The thumping noises she heard overhead as she moved from the Peters kitchen to the stairs, like sounds of a struggle, for example. The beep-beep of a passive “door open” signal as they entered the Peters house. Leppo requesting leftovers from the lunch rush instead of a freshly made meat loaf.

Odessa started to cry. Once she began, she found she could not stop. She could still speak, but the tears fell and her nose ran into tissues pulled from a box she held in her lap. This was a room normally reserved for interrogating suspects.

Her questioners’ faces were expressionless. She had never been on the other side of this. A few questions raised her antennae.

Did either of you drink any alcohol at dinner?

Are you on any medication right now?

She surrendered her sidearm for ballistics testing, which was standard procedure. They suggested she give a blood sample, claiming it was for her benefit. The way they said this didn’t sit well with her. But the blood test never came about anyway.

The sun rose, the morning shift arrived, and agents who never gave rookie Odessa the time of day came by the sixth floor just to get a look. That was when she knew—really knew—that she was in trouble. Even though it was justified, she was still implicated in a bad shoot. A fellow agent was down—and she had done it.

Around ten A.M., word came down that Odessa should be sent home. When she stopped at her cubicle to get her phone charger, the thought crossed her mind to retrieve whatever else she thought she wanted from her desk drawer in case she was never allowed back in here. Ridiculous, she told herself, but was it? From the window she could see down to Center Street, where television trucks were set up for live reporting.

Nobody told her Linus was waiting for her. She saw him in the lobby, wearing a suit without a necktie, as though he had dressed quickly and half for work, not sure what to do. He looked up from his phone and jumped to his feet when she approached, and she held him and broke down a little. She had no idea they had called him.

She had met Linus Ayers in law school in Boston, where he was from. They dated until graduation, broke up, and within a year were living together. It was love but it also made great financial sense for two young attorneys, one drawing a government salary from the FBI, the other a second-year lawyer in a white-shoe firm across the river in Manhattan.

“Thank you,” she whispered in his ear.