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think she just couldn’t recognize the corpse. Was it in pretty bad shape?”
    Fortunately, Hanrihan felt the need to reassert his authority. “Who was the other dead man in Wisconsin?”
    â€œI don’t know.”
    â€œWhy did you run away if you’re innocent?”
    It was such a complicated question, but there was no use mentioning that to Hanrihan. He wanted to wrap it all up in one big confession and would hear anything else as a lie. I welcomed the stupidity because it was pushing back Sampson, who was closing in on the real questions.
    I said, “Ask her. Ask your partner.”
    â€œWhat are you talking about? What’s he talking about?”
    Sampson understood. She hesitated, deciding whether to explain it to him. It felt like she was measuring how much she hated him.
    Hanrihan got impatient. “Hell, you don’t understand him any more than I do.”
    Sampson said, “Why do you need snipers to dig up a dead body?”
    That was the question I dreaded, so I answered Hanrihan instead. “I ran because I didn’t want to talk to you.”
    â€œWhy didn’t you want to talk to the FBI?”
    â€œI don’t mind talking to the FBI. I didn’t want to talk to you. And I still don’t.”
    Sampson laughed. Hanrihan’s eyes got wide and the skin on his face pulled back. He showed her his bottom teeth, then he showed them to me. “Get up right now. You’re under arrest.” He stood over me and I jumped up fast so that we almost bumped heads. I put my hands forward for the cuffs, but he didn’t have any. He just stood there breathing through his nose like an angry bull. Sampson came close and put a hand on Hanrihan’s chest to move him back. “Calm down. You can’t fight him and arrest him.” Hanrihan brushed her hand aside. She didn’t mind. I walked away, toward the desk. She was studying me. “Besides,” she said, “he didn’t kill Godwin.”
    â€œAnd how do you know that?”
    â€œGodwin was shot from behind. And he was unarmed. Lieutenant Waters would have stepped right up and looked him in the eye and killed him up close. Now, you haven’t answered my question, Lieutenant,” she said.
    â€œWhat was that?”
    But before she could repeat the question, the door opened and Major Hensel entered.

6
    D o you own a suit?”
    â€œNot since I was about ten.”
    Major Hensel and I rode downtown in a taxi, neither of us speaking after that brief exchange. The clouds were still solid in all directions, light gray and unmoving. Occasionally, the cabbie put on his windshield wipers for a few moments until they started squeaking against the glass. It had taken Major Hensel only twenty minutes to spring me from Hanrihan and Sampson. If his silence was angry, I would find out soon enough. I hardly knew him. Even with the access this investigation gave me to personnel files, Major Hensel remained a cipher. The file I saw on the Camp Pendleton computers only contained his background page. He was born and raised in New York City and graduated in the top 10 percent of his class at West Point, served in Iraq twice, in Army Intelligence units. The details were vague: attached to CIA, JSOC liaison, attached to Defense Intelligence Agency. The file had no commendations, no senior officer reports of any kind. It looked like it had been heavily edited, but it was not restricted above the level that the file on any intelligence officer might be. Based on that, I began filling in the picture of a career intelligence officer on the fast track, suddenly stopped at major yet given control of SHADE. One night I told Will Panos what I had found out. “You looked at the wrong file,” he said. “The Major graduated from Princeton and taught at the Defense Language Institute in Monterey.”
    â€œI read his service file.”
    â€œSo did I,” he said.
    We were in Texas at the