Page 23 of Badlands (Nora Kelly #5)

N ORMALLY, WHEN C ORRIE descended into the basement of the Albuquerque Field Office, she took a right into the forensic lab.

In fact, she couldn’t remember ever heading left from the bottom of the stairs, even during her initial tour.

But this time, she turned left.

The corridor was long, ending in a wall without windows or glass to soften the door set into it.

The signage was equally spare: to one side was a white square with a military-looking acronym stamped in capital letters: ALQ FO / OPR .

She hesitated a moment, uncertain whether to knock.

She was uncomfortably aware of her heart thumping in her chest. She knocked, and ten seconds later, a woman in a blue blazer and matching skirt opened the door.

“I’m Corinne Swanson,” Corrie told her.

“I have an eleven o’clock appointment.”

Wordlessly, the woman let her in, then waved toward a tiny alcove with a handful of chairs that reminded Corrie of the place in pharmacies where you wait your turn for a vaccine.

The woman returned to a front desk and consulted her computer.

“Yes, you’re logged for eleven,” the woman told Corrie almost before she’d taken a seat.

“Please come with me, Agent Swanson.”

Corrie rose again and followed the woman out of the vestibule, past some workstations, then down a short corridor.

There were only two doors on each side, with a frosted-glass window set high in each.

The décor, such as it was, had the beige neutrality of an interrogation unit.

Which, Corrie realized, wasn’t necessarily far from the truth.

Horace Driver hadn’t wasted any time.

She must have still been on her way back to the FO from Bernalillo when he began preparing an official complaint about her conduct.

He’d known just how to go about it, too, no doubt from long experience filing earlier complaints with the police and sheriff’s department: he’d contacted the FBI’s Office of Professional Responsibility.

Like Internal Affairs in police stations, the OPR was a feared and often hated unit: those who spied on their own, enforcing laws on those whose duty it was to enforce the law.

Corrie had heard the department mentioned numerous times, usually in low tones, but she hadn’t paid much attention.

Its staff members didn’t fraternize with other agents.

Corrie hadn’t recognized the woman who opened the door, nor any of those sitting at the workstations.

By now, she knew most people in the FO by sight, passing them on the way in or out of the building or in one of the cafeterias.

But this—this felt like a foreign country.

Yet in another way it was depressingly familiar.

She could not help but be reminded of her high school years, when she’d been hauled a number of times into the holding cell of the Medicine Creek police station for some minor infraction or disturbance.

Because Driver had submitted an official complaint, it had to be dealt with in the official FBI way.

And that meant a formal debriefing—a gentler-sounding word than interrogation —by the OPR.

She’d worked so hard, kept her head down and shoulder to the wheel, getting straight As through John Jay and doing her best afterward to keep her impulsivity and temper in check.

Had she really screwed up so badly with Driver?

Her flow of thought was interrupted when the woman opened the last door on the right.

Agent Sharp stood just inside a small room almost entirely filled by a table: four chairs on one side, two on the other.

“Agent Swanson,” Sharp said, nodding at the woman, leading Corrie inside, and directing her toward the two chairs.

“Take a seat.”

She walked around the table and sat down.

The wall was not painted, but covered in some kind of cloth or felt that made her wonder if the room was soundproofed.

A large condenser microphone hung from the ceiling, encased by a shock mount.

Sharp took a chair on the far side of the table, which she noticed had an array of knobs and buttons set into it, along with a portable microcassette recorder.

Her side of the table had nothing.

It was all she could do not to examine its wooden surface for grooves left by scraped fingernails.

Another man was sitting across the table.

He, too, was a stranger, dressed in the standard FBI uniform, perhaps thirty, with very blond hair cut short but carefully layered.

For whatever reason, he and Sharp sat apart, two empty seats between them.

The man nodded silently to Corrie.

“Before we start,” Sharp said, glancing down at a lone folder in front of him, “would you like a glass of water?”

Corrie shook her head.

She was determined to say as little as possible—and to betray a similar neutrality of emotion.

There’d been nobody at the office she knew well enough to ask how to handle this kind of situation.

She wasn’t that close to the other young agents, and in any case she’d never heard of anybody except the former forensic examiner, Lathrop, getting entangled with OPR.

Sharp snapped a button on the desk.

“Checking for sound,” he said, glancing at the other man.

He nodded in return.

Only now did Corrie notice he had an earpiece, its wire running unobtrusively back down the nape of his neck.

There was another brief pause, during which Sharp pressed a few more buttons on the desk.

There was a small square of dark glass set high up in the opposite wall: Corrie wondered if a camera was concealed behind it.

She watched as Sharp took a deep breath.

He opened the folder, spread out a few pages, then gave the time and date for the benefit of the recorder, as well as the names of those present.

“Agent Swanson,” he said, “as you are aware, Horace Driver has filed a formal complaint against you.” He glanced down at the papers spread before him.

“Specifically, he attests that you treated him in a cavalier manner, were highly disrespectful, showed a lack of empathy in your questioning, and in general handled the interview with an attitude that demeaned not only him, but his daughter.” He paused.

“The Department of Justice requires us to investigate all allegations of misconduct against law enforcement officials of any type, so long as they were acting in an official capacity at the time. Our conduct is governed by statute 18 U.S.C. § 242, which protects the civil rights of any defendant or potential defendant.” He paused to look at her, eyes as sleepy as always.

“Do you understand?”

“I understand.”

“Based on our preliminary review, nothing about your actions or the recording of your interview would indicate that you violated Mr. Driver’s civil rights, engaged in fabrication of any sort, or otherwise conducted yourself unlawfully. We do not believe you committed a federal crime. However, we must nevertheless review the substance of Mr. Driver’s complaint for two reasons: so we can show due diligence, and so that, for your protection, we can provide proof we have examined the matter beyond the point of reasonable doubt.”

Jesus God .

Just listening to this recitation had made Corrie’s throat go dry.

It sounded like the opening statement of a court-martial.

She wished she’d accepted the offer of water.

“We are fortunate that you taped the entire exchange. That allows us to evaluate it in light of his allegations. Shall we begin?” Without waiting for a reply, Sharp reached for the recorder, checked the counter, then snapped it on.

The three of them listened in silence as Corrie offered her condolences to Mr. Driver; affirmed that she was the one who’d found the body; then, in response to Driver’s pointed questions, gave him details about the manner of his daughter’s death and the particular importance of gaining any information he might have—because, among other reasons, Mandy had not been the first woman to die this way.

This in turn led to Driver’s sudden rant about Oskarbi, accusing the long-gone professor of sleeping with students.

Then they reached the part when Corrie had inquired about Mandy’s work.

Sharp played this, then stopped, rewound, and played it a second time.

“Geo. We both worked for Geo.”

“And what kind of work was that?”

“Fracking.”

“Geo Solutions is an oil company involved in… fracking?”

Corrie looked down at her hands.

There was no denying it—her voice had clearly betrayed her private feelings—and Driver, his antennae already tuned to a sensitive degree, had picked up on it—and immediately transferred his anger to her.

Mercifully, Sharp did not play it a third time.

Rather, he let the tape continue.

After another, briefer rant—this one directed at Corrie—Driver resumed answering her questions, now with cold suspicion and biting, cynical replies.

Then came her second mistake: phrasing a question about Mandy in a way that implied she might have taken her own life.

“How do you know someone else wasn’t there, forcing her?”

“We’re considering every avenue—”

“You’re starting to sound like the cops I’ve been dealing with these past two months… Look, I’m done with this conversation. My daughter’s dead—now go do your shit.”

Since this was essentially the end of the interview, Sharp did not replay the final, bitter exchange.

He didn’t need to. Instead, he snapped off the recorder and let a brief silence settle over the room.

Then he looked questioningly at the OPR representative, who gave a faint shake of his head.

Sharp turned back to Corrie.

“Agent Swanson, we’ve now listened to the conversation that prompted Horace Driver’s complaints. At this time, it seems most germane to ask: Do you feel his complaints are justified?”

Justified?

Hell, no. This bastard is so zealous about filing complaints he had to be threatened with arrest. I’m just a fresh victim he can spew venom on.

Corrie didn’t say this aloud, of course: looking on herself as a victim was the wrong approach.

Instead, it was her turn to take a deep breath.

“Sir,” she said, “listening to the conversation, I can see why Mr. Driver was offended. He was overwhelmed by grief over his daughter’s death. The mindset in which I approached the interview was primarily what he might be able to offer me to help solve this case.” She paused to lick her lips.

“In retrospect, I can see I pushed ahead too quickly in my eagerness to question Mr. Driver. I carelessly conveyed personal feelings about an issue sensitive to him. I was not as tactful as I should have been, or cognizant of Driver’s state of mind… which, by that point, he’d made clear. I ignored my training at the Academy and the mentoring I’d received from Agent Morwood and yourself. There is no excuse I can offer. All I can do is tell you how sorry I am that this happened. I realize Mr. Driver was offended not without reason. I let you and the Bureau down, and I will make every effort to learn from this mistake and ensure it never happens again.”

She exhaled with a long shudder.

There: she’d said it all.

She’d laid it all out on the table, plowing ahead even as Sharp had once or twice opened his mouth to interject.

It had been important to her, she realized in hindsight, to do this: she knew she’d screwed up, but deep down she felt this was an overreaction by both Driver and the Bureau—and she wanted to make it clear, without needing to be told, that she understood her mistake…

but clear on her own terms.

Now she glanced from Sharp to the OPR rep and back again.

Her mentor was looking a little less sleepy than usual.

For a moment, their eyes locked silently.

And then he nodded.

“I think, Agent Swanson,” he said, “that you’ve done as good a job at getting to the crux of this issue as we could have. But you’re going to have to tell all this to Mr. Driver as well, in the form of an apology. In this kind of situation, it’s as important you go through the process with him as you have with us. You need to own your actions; he needs to know you’ll use this to do better.”

Corrie had wondered if this would be one of the conditions.

The good news was that—seeing the OPR rep unexpectedly stand up from his seat and start moving away from the table while adjusting his tie—there might be no further consequences: no keelhauling, no flogging round the fleet.

But the thought of seeing Driver face-to-face again, in any capacity, was sufficiently unnerving as to almost mitigate the relief she felt.

The OPR worker nodded to each of them in turn, then left the room, silently closing the door behind him.

Sharp closed his binder, snapped off the buttons on the desk, put the recorder away.

His slow, deliberate movements seemed gauged to let the pressurized atmosphere in the interview room deflate a little.

Finally, he sighed and glanced at the overhead mic—signaling it was off—then turned his eyes to Corrie.

“I’m sorry you had to endure that.”

He stopped.

When it became clear he was waiting for a response, Corrie nodded.

“I’ve been in rooms like this before—on both sides of the table. There’s always a reason these reviews take place. In this case—” he stopped to pat the folder—“I have two takeaways. The first is that Driver was an exceedingly difficult interview. He was hurting, but he was also eager for confrontation. He’d been badly treated by law enforcement—and you took the brunt of that.” He paused.

“He’d lost a daughter—and, by the way, he lost his job, as well.”

“I didn’t know that,” Corrie said.

“He missed work searching for his daughter, and Geo, being the giant company it is, simply fired him.

“Sometimes it’s the people we’re sworn to protect that can be a big pain in the ass.

We can’t change that.

And we can’t change the Bureau’s red tape, which you’ve just experienced here in this room.

”

Now he pushed his chair back from the desk.

“Now that I’ve said that, I wonder if you might hazard a guess as to my second takeaway.”

Corrie was still getting over her shock of learning Driver had been fired.

It made her feel even worse about her screwup.

“Sir, I believe the other takeaway is that I still have a lot to learn.”

Sharp raised an eyebrow.

“That, Corrie, is what I’d hoped to hear. Interviewing a victim—as Mr. Driver was—requires great sensitivity. It requires that you keep your personal opinions scrupulously under wraps. Now you’ve had your baptism by fire. Yes, you have a lot to learn, but you’ve also come a remarkable distance in a short time.” He hesitated, as if pondering whether to say something, and then said it, all in a rush.

“You’re one of the most promising agents I’ve ever come across.”

He stood up, and Corrie quickly followed suit, stunned by this last statement, her face flushing.

“Back to work, Agent Swanson,” he said with a ghost of a smile.