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not because she thought we were. The information I skimmed from various badges and the nametags on the man beside her told me he was Operations Bureau Commander Matheson, the number two in the room. Like his boss, the Chief Deputy, Matheson was also short. He kept himself in shape, though, and I guessed his age at about forty. A roll of thick blond curls crowned his pudgy red face. He reminded me of Richard Simmons. I wondered if he took aerobics classes.
    “Ranger Gomez and Special Agent Cooper, OSI,” said Gomez, parrying Foote’s tone with practiced dull efficiency. “We’ve been informed through channels that Airman First Class William Sponson, AWOL from Lackland AFB, had been picked up at Horizon Airport. We’re here to check on that report.”
    Gomez’s subtext: I’m a Texas Ranger. Fuck with me at your peril.
    “Don’t you Air Force people wear a uniform?” Matheson inquired, frowning at me.
    Subtext: I wonder what you’d look like in Spandex.
    “Of course, we welcome Ranger support,” Foote added.
    Subtext: I’m not going to fuck with you. It’s just that me and this guy beside me are completely out of our depth, and I was hoping to keep the people who are aware of that to a manageable circle I can browbeat .
    “Washington sent me here, but I’m guessing if my deserter’s around, the only place he’s headed is the morgue,” I said. “And I’m further guessing along with twenty-six others.”
    “Can you give us the specifics of what’s happened, ma’am, sir?” I asked when there was no response.
    “We’re working on it,” said Matheson.
    Subtext: We’ve got no idea whatsoever.
    But then the Chief Deputy sighed, glanced at Matheson and said, “Look, your summary’s on the money. But there are no witnesses and there are also no surveillance cameras so therefore no surveillance footage. If it sounds like we don’t know what happened here, that’s because, honestly, right at this point we don’t know.”
    Subtext: No more subtext, fellas.
    “Almost all of the 27 DOAs have multiple gunshot wounds,” she continued. “Whoever did this even went into homes. We’ve got men, women and children murdered. And the information you have about your airman is correct. We found him – he’s dead. His identity is yet to be positively confirmed with your personnel department, but he was carrying his Air Force photo ID card.”
    Maybe I was wrong about Foote. It had been known to happen. “So, everyone present at this facility was murdered sometime last night?” I asked.
    “We’ve narrowed the attack to between four-thirty and six this morning,” Matheson answered.
    “And we do have one survivor,” said Foote. “We believe it’s one of the Learjet pilots.”
    “Is he talking?” asked Gomez.
    The Chief Deputy shook her head. “We wish. He’s in a coma. They – whoever they were, and there had to be quite a few of them given the area covered by this attack – shot him in the back and left him for dead. His spinal cord’s smashed, but he’s alive. Barely.”
    There was a knock on the partially closed door behind us. A woman in a blue CSI suit stepped in, the white booties still on her feet.
    Matheson raised his chin at her. “Give us a minute, Liz.”
    Subtext: Let’s not give these out-of-towners anything we don’t have to.
    “No, tell us what you’ve got,” Foote said to her, countering the commander, sticking to her earlier decision to play it straight.
    Liz was about five foot four, in her late twenties. Her hair was wavy, dark and cut shortish, presumably so that she wouldn’t inadvertently dip the ends of it into her work. Her gray eyes were clear and intelligent, her casework yet to etch its lines around them. “Chief, I can confirm that vic 5AF was also sexually assaulted,” she said. “Semen and blood in the mouth and the back of the nose passage.”
    “Blood?” Foote asked.
    “Yes, Chief. Quite a bit.”
    “Hers?”
    “No way to know until we test, though