Page 13 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

C ORRIE ENTERED THE conference room, trying to look as self-assured as possible.

Agents Bellamy and O’Hara were waiting for her, each with their laptop computers and briefcases open, files spread across the table.

The two agents looked almost like twins, both blond, tall, and Nordic, with buzz cuts, blue suits, white shirts, and muted ties.

They were a few years more senior than her, and she could imagine what they’d felt when Sharp told them, in terse terms that left no room for questions, that she was lead agent in the case.

She had gotten to know the two agents reasonably well during her last, rather notorious investigation—the Dead Mountain case—and despite the physical resemblance, they couldn’t be less alike.

Bellamy was a whining, sexist, self-important douchebag, while O’Hara seemed more of a quiet, stand-up guy.

And, naturally, they were in competition with each other, especially now that they’d been assigned a new case.

All FBI cases were code-named, and this one had been labeled Badlands.

“Greetings,” said Corrie, laying her briefcase on the table and unhooking it, taking out her own laptop and files.

“I hear you have some good stuff for me today. But first—coffee?” This might prove to be a long meeting, and she was dying for a cup herself.

“Sure,” said Bellamy.

“I’ll take mine with cream and sugar.”

Corrie realized too late the trap she’d walked into.

But before she could think of how to respond, O’Hara rose.

“And you, Agent Swanson? How do you take it?”

Now she felt even more awkward at inadvertently triggering this Goofus and Gallant exchange.

“Why don’t we all just get our own?” she said with what she hoped sounded like a genuine laugh.

They went down the hall to the kitchenette, served themselves coffee, and returned to the conference room.

“Okay,” said Corrie in her best supervisory tone, “I’m all ears.”

O’Hara was about to talk but Bellamy interrupted him.

“We’ve made really good progress,” he said, rapping away at the keyboard of his laptop.

“Using the AI baked into the latest NamUs release candidate, we trimmed down that list from one thousand seventy-one names to thirteen.”

“Thirteen?” Corrie said, surprised.

“That’s terrific.”

“Got ’em right here.” Bellamy whipped a folder out of his briefcase, slapped it on the table, and slid it over to Corrie.

She opened it. Inside were thirteen missing persons reports, each with a photograph clipped to the front.

She sorted through them, amazed at how thirteen missing women could all look so much like her forensic reconstruction.

Each report had, in addition to the picture, a host of personal details: addresses, employment history, bios, where last seen, investigative summaries, and in some cases much more.

“This is awesome,” said Corrie, looking up.

“No way to narrow it down further, I suppose?”

O’Hara spoke.

“Not without unwarranted guesswork.”

“I see.” She paused.

It was possible, of course, that the actual victim was among the thousand-odd names that had been tossed aside, but she had enough confidence in the ever-stronger NamUs beta AIs that this baker’s dozen seemed a good enough place to start.

“Agent O’Hara, what are your thoughts?”

O’Hara gave a small smile.

“Since you asked, number three is my guess. Number ten a close runner-up.”

Corrie pulled out number three and glanced over it.

Joyce Pollard Black, thirty-eight, freelance web designer, Albuquerque.

Disappeared six years ago; BA in anthropology, University of New Mexico; single.

She looked up. “Why her?”

“She’s a dead ringer for your reconstruction. More than the others.”

“Maybe so,” interrupted Bellamy, “but you’ve got to take forensic reconstructions with a grain of salt.”

Saying nothing, Corrie pulled out the file on number ten.

Martha Jane Markey, thirty-nine, high school social studies teacher, Corrales.

BA in anthropology, New Mexico State University; single; disappeared five years ago.

“And why her?”

“Anthro major, teaches social studies, single… but primarily because her parents were dead, and she had no siblings—which means no one to push for a thorough investigation into her disappearance. If you look at the file, you’ll see the investigation was cursory. And she had a drug problem. Arrested for opioid possession.”

Corrie looked at the bio and saw that her parents had died in a car crash when she was eighteen.

She scanned the rest of the folder, but found nothing further to sink her teeth into.

No smoking gun—but she couldn’t afford to ignore it.

“Looks promising,” she said to O’Hara.

“Worth following up in the field.”

She glanced at Bellamy.

He looked eager to say something.

“And you, Agent Bellamy? Thoughts?”

“Number one,” he said.

She pulled it out. Molly D.

Vine, forty, high school science teacher.

MA in anthropology, UNM; lived in Tesuque; disappeared five years ago.

“And your reasons?”

“Look at page three.”

She flipped to the page and gave the short bio it contained a cursory scan.

“What about it?”

“She was headed for a PhD in anthropology, then dropped out suddenly. Why? And compare her picture to your reconstruction.”

This, from the guy who’d just expressed dubiousness for such forensic work.

Corrie compared the two and was unimpressed.

“Number one has brown eyes. And of all the pictures, she looks the least like the reconstruction.”

“So?” said Bellamy, a challenging tone in his voice.

“Your own report said only seventy percent of natural blonds have blue eyes. That leaves thirty percent with a different color.”

Corrie, irritated, nevertheless had to concede the point.

“And the chin’s the same. Funny-looking, pointed, like in your reconstruction. None of the others have that chin. That’s the facial detail I’m focusing on.”

Corrie gritted her teeth but said nothing.

“Now, take another gander at the bio. It shows instability in her life—and not just the sudden abandonment of her degree. Her father left home when she was two. He gets remarried, drops out of her life totally. That must’ve hurt. And look—married at twenty, divorced at twenty-one? That’s a red flag. She’s a science teacher, but she moved schools three times in nine years and changed her habitation four times. Restless? Unhappy? I mean, if we’re looking for somebody likely to just call it quits, walk off into the desert, take off all her clothes, and fry from heatstroke—she’s my choice.”

Once again, Corrie had to admit that, despite Bellamy’s annoying bluster, the agent was making a certain amount of sense.

She flipped back to Vine’s bio and read it more carefully.

Vine may have dropped out of the PhD program, but she did get her MA in anthropology, and later a teaching certificate.

Corrie read more carefully this time, curious to see the subject of her MA thesis at UNM.

And there it was, staring her in the face: “The Late Chacoan Cultural Phase in Northern New Mexico.”

She stiffened: Was this the smoking gun she was looking for?

The Gallina culture was late Chacoan.

“So,” said Bellamy, in a self-satisfied tone, tapping his finger obnoxiously on the file, “number one here, this Molly D. Vine, is your victim. I’m sure of it.”

She looked up at him, amazed to find that Bellamy wasn’t such a dolt after all—and realized she’d just learned a valuable lesson about never making assumptions of another agent’s work just because they were a douchebag.

“Agent Bellamy,” she said, “I believe you’re right.”