Angel Killer Read Free

Virginia, and the building is a relic of a bygone age in law enforcement. Brown plastic signs on doors for divisions that no longer exist line the forgotten corridors.
    Decades ago, several of its floors were filled with refrigerator-sized computers compiling data on license plates, hair dyes and carpet fibers entered by hand from physical files. Now it’s a ghost town of hallways with burned-out fluorescent lights and missing ceiling tiles. The custodian has more computing power in his pocket than this whole building once held.
    The Ailes group is tucked away on a floor that used to hold thousands of binders indexing things like tennis shoe prints with year of manufacture, how many were sold in each size and in what regions. The FBI has always thrived on this kind of data. A 1983 Puma running shoe can help you narrow a list of thousands down to just one or two people.
    Almost all this information is now digitized. The section of indexed tire prints once took up an entire floor. Today you can fit it into an e-mail attachment. In the academy, our professors would regale us with stories about spending weeks hunting through catalogs of fibers to find out the make and model of the trunk where a victim had been stashed. It was a different kind of detective work, one where you could still touch all the evidence.
    When I enter, I notice the linoleum floor still has deep gouges from where the massive walls of cabinets once stood holding all those physical bits of information. Half-repaired light fixtures dangle from the tennis court–sized room. At the far end sit six desks pushed up against one another, bullpen-style. Three heads lean over computer screens. Two young men and a woman. All of them are dressed in proper FBI ties or polo shirts. None of them look like the barefooted hippies I’d been led to imagine or the red-robed cardinals I’d feared.
    This isn’t as sinister as I was expecting. This looks like a bunch of college kids trying to get out a school newspaper.
    A young woman, maybe a year or two younger than me, looks up from her computer screen. With short auburn hair and big cheekbones, she has that Nebraska farmer look but an athletic build. She clicks a window closed before I can get a proper glance. What I see looks like a profile of an agent.
    “I’m looking for Dr. Ailes?”
    She points to the conference room. “He’s over there right now.” She turns back to her computer before I have a chance to reply.
    I thank her anyway and walk over to the door. I’d been expecting an office, but I realize his desk was probably at one of the terminals back in the bullpen, alongside his geeks.
    Ailes’s voice calls out from the cracked door. “Have a seat, Agent Blackwood, and close the door behind you.”
    I’VE BEEN SITTING here for several minutes at a table filled with file folders, watching my inquisitor finish something on his computer. This is either a test of my patience or he’s genuinely overwhelmed.
    Ailes holds up a finger, telling me he’ll be another moment. Even seated, I can tell he’s tall. Although graying at the temples, he doesn’t look like an academic. I remember something about him serving in the Navy before getting his PhD. He still has a lot of that bearing. Okay, maybe he doesn’t look like a bishop. He could be a Moorish knight.
    My eyes drift around the files on the table. They all have numbers for identifiers. I can see the edge of a magazine poking out of one. Something looks familiar . . .
    I know the magazine instantly from just a few centimeters of the cover.
    I feel my heart sink.
    “Why did you go over Agent Miller’s head on the Hashimi case?”
    “Pardon me?” I pull my attention away from the magazine.
    Ailes looks up from his screen and sets his reading glasses down. “Miller. Why’d you go over his head?” He gives me the intimidating stare I’d seen across the Quantico campus.
    I’d feared repercussions on this. We were trying to pin down a ring of credit