There are a few people in suits in the corridors, all moving with purpose. At the end of a hallway, behind a glass door, a woman at another desk.
“Please wait. An agent will be with you shortly.” The receptionist extends a hand to the other side of the tiny foyer, which is the entry to the suite of offices beyond.
There are no chairs, but the opposite wall is decorated with a board of FBI Most Wanted posters. A guy stands facing them, hands on hips, pushing back the fall of his windbreaker.
Emma stands nearby and checks her watch. Cooper said ten, and it’s edging toward ten past. She could’ve come at ten thirty, slept in an extra half hour.
Last night’s motel off Route 1 turned out to be seedier than she would’ve liked, but the woman in the diner poured her extra coffee. It was probably on account of her hair, Emma thinks. She wears a scarf over it occasionally, which makes her look like a cancer patient. She’s found that it’s sometimes better to look like a cancer patient than to deal with random strangers sneering at her.
Yesterday she wore her scarf. Now she’s here without it, in the foyer of Behavioral Science, as the boy to her right continues his contemplation of the Most Wanted posters. He has pressed cargo pants and his collar is stiff and neat. He checks his watch, and Emma realizes they are both waiting. This is a waiting area, though. There are many offices. She wonders why Cooper didn’t have her directed to wait in his.
Emma anchors herself in the solid press of her feet on the concrete floor, her hands in her pockets, shoulders square. She’s relieved to find herself steady, holding firm.
Then she rubs a hand across her head and it arrives: She has not seen anyone in this building so far who is younger than their midtwenties. She is young. The guy beside her is young. They could be the only young people in the building, and they are both waiting here.
When she turns, he is already looking at her.
“I’m thinking… I’m thinking maybe we should introduce ourselves,” he says.
He has very dark hair and eyes, olive skin. He holds out his hand.
“Bell, Travis J.” He doesn’t squeeze her fingers out of existence. It’s a short, professional handshake. “I’m waiting on Special Agent Cooper and I believe you might be, too.”
“I am. I mean, yes. I’m Emma Lewis.”
“Pleased to meet you.”
“Likewise.”
She absorbs his accent: southern, probably Texas with that laconic delivery, and if she had to guess she’d say army brat or law enforcement trainee. After the handshake, they return to standing side by side, like a pair of trout who’ve somehow found themselves swimming together against the current. Through the glass door, Emma sees a figure approaching. When she straightens, Bell does the same and speaks out of the corner of his mouth.
“Were you told about a unit? I was told there was going to be a unit.”
Emma presses her lips. “I think we’re the unit.”
Cooper has already breached the door.
“Miss Lewis, Mr. Bell.” He shifts the folders he’s carrying and shakes their hands in turn. Emma finds it easier to take his hand here, in a formal setting. “You’ve already been introduced? Thank you both for coming. There’s a place for us to talk—please follow me.”
He leads them, not toward the offices as Emma had anticipated, but back out to the hallway. Cooper’s walk is brisk, military; otherwise, he is just a slight, Caucasian man in a regulation suit who looks more like an accountant than an FBI agent. He steers their course farther along and then around a corner into another corridor.
“Why aren’t we talking in your office about this?” Emma asks.
Cooper stops at the door to a room. He unlocks it, opens it, gestures for them to enter. “Because my office—like every office in Behavioral Science—is covered in paperwork about active cases, which is something you’re not allowed to see.”
The room they’ve entered is large, gray, and dim. There’s a wooden desk, four folded metal chairs with cushioned seats, an office lamp on the desk, two large filing cabinets. More than a dozen cardboard file boxes are stacked on the floor and against two walls.
“We can only see information on cold cases,” Bell says. It’s not a question. Emma notices how straight his posture is and wonders if upright translates to uptight.
Cooper nods. “This unit is not concerned with active cases. That’s a bureau directive, by the way. You’re only researching perpetrators who’ve been convicted and are serving sentences.”
“And we’re the unit, aren’t we?” Emma wants to know for sure.
“Yes,” Cooper confirms.
Bell, Travis J., turns his head and looks at Emma, and Emma finds something she wasn’t expecting in that look. You were right, his eyes say. Unusual to meet a guy who’ll admit that.
“Okay.” Cooper points to the groupings of file boxes. “Subject one, Clarence McMurtry. Subject two, Michael Gesak. Subjects three, four, five… I’ve made up a summary for each subject so you won’t need to review all these files, although they’re here for extra research. But I think it’s better if you relate to the subjects as teenagers. I’d like you to go in with an open mind.”
“When do we go in?” Bell asks.
“Your first interview is scheduled for tomorrow.”
Fuck, Emma thinks, but what she says is “That’s soon.”
“Yes.” Cooper makes no apology for it, and Emma liked him better when he was pussyfooting around her during his first approach at OSU. “Grab a chair, that’s it, any of those chairs is fine. Here’s the summary for McMurtry. These folders have the questionnaires—the pink one is for the interviewer, the blue one is for the subject, if he consents to fill it out.”
Bell hunkers forward on his chair, lifts the cover on the folder holding the pink pages. “So we go to the facility, follow the admission processes, and we get, what, an interview room?”
Cooper nods. “You’ll be provided with identification—the interview times are already set up. You go in, conduct the interview, write up your report, and submit it with your travel receipts. It should be pretty straightforward.”
This is all happening very fast. Emma thought there would be more preamble.
“Back up a little,” she says. “These interviews… This is the second run at them, is that right?”
“That’s correct,” Cooper says.
“What went wrong the first time?”
“The subjects… I explained this with you. They don’t talk to us.”
“They refuse to speak? They clam up?”
Cooper grimaces, undoes the button on his suit jacket. “Sometimes it’s like that. They withdraw. You can see the shutters roll down. Other times they reply in monosyllables. Swear. Whine. Last time we tried to interview McMurtry, he gave us a long diatribe about his treatment in prison—everything up to and including the quality of the toilet paper.”
“But nothing about the murders,” Emma says.
“That’s right.”
“And that’s the information you need.”
“We need details. What was their state of mind prior to each crime, what were they thinking about. How did they select their victims, what preparations did they make, if any. We don’t really expect any useful insight into motive from teenage subjects. Half the time they don’t know why they’re doing what they’re doing. But information about preparation, process, aftermath… that’s all stuff we can use.”