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topped out when a new director took over the Bureau, heard he was intimately involved with the tragic incident at a huge mall in Minnesota, and wanted him far from headquarters. An assistant, some acid-blooded corpse named Mr. Renfro, had handled the delicate task of prying Nick from his deputy directorship and reassigning him to fieldwork in an office that was big and produced more than its share of cases closed but didn’t need radical shaking up or bold new leadership, just a dozing caretaker to sign the requisitions, approve the budget, and make sure the squads were adequately staffed until he retired.
    Swagger didn’t say a thing. He knew he’d shaken up his pal with a strange request a few days ago and that Nick had to vent. He let the younger man flail away, unburden himself, get it all out.
    It was typical Swagger, laconic and detached and seemingly camouflaged even if he wore a suit, an off-the-rack khaki rag that resembled a grocery bag on a scarecrow. He had one leg cranked awkwardly over the knee of the other, showing a beat-to-hell Nocona, and looked younger sitting than walking, because when he walked, the vibrations of several competing wound-deficient parts of him turned his progress into a slow and uncertain shuffle. You winced for the pain that hip had to cause him and wondered why the old coot was too stubborn to take painkillers. At least he wasn’t wearing that goddamn faded Razorbacks cap.
    “I can’t believe I wasted a Justice Department witness protection identity on you,” Nick fumed. “Who do you think you are, MarkLane? It’s over. Oswald did it. Nobody else. That’s what all the sensible research shows, that’s what the latest computer re-creations show, that’s what all the House panels concluded. Only fruitcakes and vegetarians believe in a conspiracy. Man, if it gets out that I bought in to this kind of scheme, Renfro will have my ass on a clothesline by Wednesday.”
    “I appreciate your kindness,” Swagger finally said. “And no, I ain’t gone insane. I think my mind is working normally. Slow, as usual, but normal.”
    Nick made a sound that expressed frustration. “Man,” he said, “I should never try to outguess you. JFK! Never in a million years would I guess you’d tumble into that slime pit.”
    “If it helps, and you have to justify it”—the secret identity didn’t require formal computer paperwork and headquarters approval, which could be penetrated by hackers, only the okay of the senior bureau field officer, that is, Nick himself—“you can tell them you took a flier on a murder investigation. Fellow came to Dallas, your neck of the woods, went home to Baltimore, and got himself killed under circumstances that look very much like a professional hit.”
    “Murder isn’t in our jurisdiction,” Nick said grumpily. “That’s a local issue.”
    “True, but the wheelman traveled from somewhere to Baltimore to do the job. Maybe from Dallas. We know that because there can’t be but two or three professional car killers in the world at any one time, and they ain’t known to hang out in Baltimore.”
    “You don’t even know it was a pro. It could have been a kid on meth.”
    “I saw the Baltimore report. There was a witness, a girl walking a dog. She was observant. He accelerated clean through the hit and kept on a line afterward, without a waver or a wobble, then took a hard left at speed and was out of the neighborhood in about three seconds flat, without one squeal of brakes, one skid mark, one spinout or dent. That’s professional driving, even if nobody in Baltimore figuredit out. If he went from anywhere to Baltimore, he’s your baby, and when you’re done with him on interstate violations, crossing state lines to commit a crime, five to eight, you hand him to the Baltimore prosecutor and he goes down for the long one and rots out in their pen.”
    It was hardly enough, Nick knew. Murders were a dime a dozen. He tried to spin it enough to make