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situation so many times, he knew every possible reaction to his arrival on the scene: genuine welcome, hypocritical welcome, cloaked annoyance, open hostility. Walsh was a number three who would have claimed he said exactly what he thought.
    “Hell no,” he said at last. “If we don’t nail this scumbag ASAP, we’re all gonna be running around with targets on our backs. I got no problem with you having a bigger one than me.”
    “It’s still your case. I’m here as support.”
    “Funny. I said the same thing to the homicide lieutenant.”
    Quinn said nothing, already starting to lay out a team strategy in his mind. It looked like he might have to work around Walsh, although it seemed unlikely that the ASAC (assistant special agent in charge) here would have assigned a less than stellar agent to this case. If Peter Bondurant could make top dogs in Washington bark, the locals weren’t apt to antagonize the man. According to the faxes, Walsh had a solid rep that spanned a lot of years. Maybe a few too many years, a few too many cases, a few too many political games.
    Quinn already had a picture of the political situation here. The body count was three—just meeting the official standard to be considered serial murders. Ordinarily he would have been consulted by phone at this stage—if he was consulted at all. In his experience, locals usually tried to handle this kind of thing themselves until they were slightly deeper in dead bodies. And with a caseload of eighty-five, he had to prioritize worst to least. A three-murder case rarely made his travel schedule. His physical presence here seemed unnecessary—which aggravated his frustration and his exhaustion. He closed his eyes for two seconds, reining the feelings back into their corral.
    “Your Mr. Bondurant has friends in very high places,” he said. “What’s the story with him?”
    “He’s your basic nine-hundred-pound gorilla. Owns a computer outfit that has a lot of defense contracts—Paragon. He’s been making noises about moving it out of state, which has the governor and every other politician in the state lining up to kiss his ass. They say he’s worth a billion dollars or more.”
    “Have you met him?”
    “No. He didn’t bother to go through our office to get to you. I hear he went straight to the top.”
    And in a matter of hours the FBI had Quinn on a plane to Minneapolis. No consideration to the normal assignment of cases by region. No consideration to the cases he had ongoing. None of the usual bureaucratic bullshit entanglements over travel authorizations.
    He wondered sourly if Bondurant had asked for him by name. He’d been in the spotlight a hell of a lot in the last year. Not by his own choosing. The press liked his image. He fit their profile of what a special agent from the Investigative Support Unit should look like: athletic, square-jawed, dark, intense. He took a good picture, looked good on television, George Clooney would play him in the movies. Some days the image was useful. Some days he found it amusing. More and more it was just a pain in the ass.
    “He didn’t waste any time,” Walsh went on. “The girl’s not even cold yet. They don’t even know for a fact it’s his kid—what with the head gone and all. But you know, people with money don’t screw around. They don’t have to.”
    “Where are we at with the ID on the victim?”
    “They’ve got her DL. They’re going to try to get her fingerprints, but the hands were pretty badly burned, I’m told. The ME has requested Jillian Bondurant’s medical history regarding any distinguishing marks or broken bones to see if anything matches up. We know the body is the right size and build. We know Jillian Bondurant had dinner with her father Friday night. She left his house around midnight and hasn’t been seen since.”
    “What about her car?”
    “No one’s found it yet. Autopsy’s scheduled for tonight. Maybe they’ll get lucky and be able to match the