Finally, Tappan spoke. “A crime scene?”
“You can see as well as I the execution-style shot to the head, the clean entrance hole, the gaping exit wound. This is not a suicide: dead people can’t bury themselves. And obviously this is not an alien—right? Not with a Saint Christopher medal and a checked shirt collar.”
After a moment, Tappan nodded. The color had returned to his features. “Of course. I see that. But what about the strange-looking skin, and the lack of features? It may be human, but it’s no ordinary corpse.”
“I haven’t a clue about that,” said Nora. “All I know is, we need to report this.”
“To whom?”
“Since we’re on federal land, to the FBI. And as it turns out, I know the right person to contact in the Albuquerque Field Office.”
“Really?” Tappan looked at her speculatively. “And who might that be?”
“Special Agent Corinne Swanson.”
9
THIS IS SOME desolate country out here,” said Special Agent Morwood, behind the wheel of his candy-apple-red pickup truck as they headed south of Vaughn, New Mexico, on Route 285. The road stretched ahead of them like a gray slash through a landscape of grass and chamisa, with a few splotches of April flowers visible here and there. “I’ve been back with the Albuquerque FO for half a dozen years, and rarely do we have a case out in these parts.”
“Why is that?” Special Agent Corrie Swanson asked.
He chuckled. “Nobody lives here. There’s nobody to get into trouble.”
The truck hummed on the highway, going ninety, but the land was so empty it almost felt to Corrie like they weren’t moving. They were being followed by the Evidence Response Team van, with two ERT technicians. Theirs were the only vehicles on the road, as far as Corrie could tell.
“Be sure to give me plenty of advance notice of our turnoff,” Morwood said.
He had asked Corrie to navigate, and she was doing so with her iPhone. They had gone out of cellular range a while ago, but the GPS still seemed to be working. She hoped to God she wouldn’t get them lost.
“It’s another forty miles, sir.”
“Christ.” He drove for a while in silence. “So, Corrie, I’ve been thinking: How would you feel if I put you in charge of this case? I’ll be your junior partner, so to speak. All the decisions are going to be yours. Of course, I’ll step in if I think there’s a problem, but for the most part I’m going to let you take the lead.”
“Thank you, sir. I appreciate that very much.” She knew, as an FBI agent with just over a year’s field experience under her belt, that this was the next step in the “ghosting” process: to run her own case, with her mentor acting as a junior partner. She tried to tamp down her nervousness and excitement. After all, it couldn’t be as dangerous, or as complicated, as the two major cases she’d already worked on since joining the Albuquerque FO.
“When we get there, I want you to take charge and establish your authority in a nice, easy way. I’ll remain in the background.”
“Yes, sir.” Her nervousness increased.
Like all rookie agents, Corrie had been assigned a mentor for her first two years, someone to supervise her cases and make sure she didn’t screw up. When she first met Morwood, she had not been impressed. The supervisory special agent was approaching fifty, a plain man in a blue suit, balding, with a stock of forgettable ties and a dry manner. The only surprising thing about him was the confiscated Nissan pickup truck he used as his G-ride, with its racing stripes and giant decal of a Chinese dragon emblazoned across the side and hood. He joked that it allowed him to go around incognito.
Early on, his cool manner and devotion to the rule book had put her off. But over time, she’d realized he genuinely had her best interests at heart and was, in fact, a very fine agent—even while the reason he’d given up a stellar field career to supervise new hires remained an endless source of conjecture among the junior agents. While the two would never have anything approaching a friendship, it was, at least, a relationship of mutual respect and even regard.
Another brief silence, and then Morwood asked: “So. What do you know about the Roswell Incident?”
“Not much beyond what I read on the internet last night. It didn’t make a lot of sense.” Corrie had spent hours reading and taking notes, astonished by the mass of contradictory and bizarre information. Apparently it was one of those things, like the Kennedy assassination, that drew conspiracy theorists like moths to a flame.