Laura created a small bubble of essence and nudged it into the phone. The speaker crackled with static. “Foyle, it’s me. Someone freakin’ messed with my tires. I’m waiting for a tow. Be there as soon as the truck shows up.”

She disconnected and resumed her seat. A moment later, Sinclair walked in. He had a tentative smile on his face that curiously faltered for a moment when he saw Laura. He extended his hand. “I’m Lieutenant Jonathon Sinclair.”

Laura returned the shake but did not get up. “Mariel Tate. I was expecting Agent Crawford.”

Sinclair took a seat without waiting to be asked. He seemed confused about something, preoccupied. “Lieutenant?”

Sinclair looked up. “I’m sorry, I was trying to recall something. Captain Foyle said Crawford is delayed and suggested I come in first.”

Laura pretended to consider the situation with a hint of annoyance. “Very well, Lieutenant.” She moved the folders on the table, then leaned back. “Tell me, Lieutenant, how you would have run the drug-raid mission differently.”

He looked surprised by the question but immediately focused on the idea. “We needed more people on the main entry and better intel. In retrospect, we relied too much on the druidess.”

“That would be Agent Crawford.”

“Yes. She was supposed to take out two brownie sentries,” he said.

“She did, though, didn’t she? One brownie was secured immediately, and the other turned out to not be what he seemed.”

“Yes,” Sinclair said. She felt a sense of doubt and hesitation.

“What do you think happened in that room, Lieutenant?”

He didn’t shrug like Gianni. He took his time to consider the question seriously, willing to offer his opinion. “I can’t say. I’ve read the reports. The preliminary report indicates that both Crawford and Sanchez were fired upon from the entrance to the room.”

“The timing and damage in the room suggest that Agent Crawford was engaged in the back of the room,” Laura said.

Sinclair nodded, but doubt lingered around him. Laura felt it whenever he said or heard the name Crawford. He had suspicions about her, vague, something undefined. She tried to think of anything she had done as Janice Crawford that might have prompted the emotion. Of course, being in the room when a teammate died might have had a lot to do with it. Laura glanced away in thought. “Lieutenant, present me with a plausible situation in which Agent Crawford shot Sanchez.”

He didn’t startle. “He could have fired on her, and she defended herself.”

She thought it interesting that the first scenario that came to his mind characterized Sanchez as the aggressor. She took that as a possibility that his doubts about Crawford lay elsewhere. “I don’t believe we’ve found the bullet that hit Crawford yet. Where it fell would be an interesting test of that theory. What if Crawford fired at Sanchez first?”

He shook his head. “She didn’t have a weapon that we know of. I didn’t see one when I found her. Crawford didn’t look like she was in any shape to hide a gun at that point.”

Now that was interesting, Laura thought. He was intrigued enough to read the reports to determine if Janice had fired a gun and think about possible scenarios if she had. Of course, analysis was part of any mission debrief, especially for one that had gone wrong, but his quick response indicated he checked that piece of data specifically. “Lieutenant, how would you characterize your relationship with Lieutenant Sanchez?”

“Good.”

Laura raised an eyebrow. She was feeling a sense of embarrassment. “That’s it? Did you socialize?”

He nodded. “We went for drinks together regularly. He was a stand-up guy, a little close to the vest. He loved baseball. Couldn’t stop talking about it.”

“I never understood the attraction myself,” she said.

He laughed. Good, she thought. She had finally gotten a spontaneous reaction from him. She even liked his laugh. “Me either, actually. I’m a basketball fan myself.”

“I like NASCAR,” she said.

His eyebrows shot up. “Wow.”

She surprised herself by the admission since it was a persona crossing. Laura liked stock-car racing, not Mariel. It was a minor point, but she had never done that before. She opened the folder again. “Let’s talk about the informant. Gianni found him, is that correct?”

“Officially, yes.”

She looked at him curiously. “And unofficially?”

Shutting down again, he chose his words carefully. “Sanchez and I went for drinks one night. We drove by this house. Sanchez slowed a bit and checked it out. Not long after that, Gianni came in with the informant.”

“I’m not seeing the connection,” she said.

“A week or so later, Gianni brought me to the same house to do an initial interview with an informant for the raid.”

“Did Sanchez say anything about Gianni’s scooping his informant?”

Sinclair shook his head. “No. It was just a drive-by. I asked him what he was looking at, and he changed the subject.”

So Sanchez had apparently been one step ahead of Gianni. Sanchez had covered Crawford’s back when she needed him, and he hadn’t even known her. He must have been a good agent.

“What do you make of it?” she asked.

Sinclair hesitated. “I don’t know.”

A lie, she thought. “Come on, Sinclair. You’re a smart guy. You must have an opinion.”

He sighed. “It could be anything. Sanchez might have had the informant in his sights, and Gianni beat him to it.”

“You don’t believe that. Sanchez and Gianni would have said something to each other. You would have heard about it.”

He rubbed his hands on his thighs, nervousness going up a tick in his emotional state. “Okay, I think Sanchez knew something about the raid.”

“He was dirty.” She threw it at him as if it were fact.

No cop liked to implicate another in breaking the law, but Sinclair didn’t startle like she expected him to. “I didn’t say that.”

“But you’re thinking it. You think Sanchez was involved with whatever was going on at the apartment complex, and they took him out.”

Sinclair’s anger increased, but he did a good job of hiding it to outward appearances. “I’m not going to speculate about a dead cop.”

Laura decided to back off. She had her answer anyway. Sinclair thought Sanchez had been on the wrong side. “Okay. Let’s move on. What do you think of Agent Crawford?”

His expression became more neutral, and the anger subsided. “I think she’s in a tough spot and doesn’t deserve it.”

That was nice to hear. He meant it, too. “Do you blame her for Sanchez’s death?”

He shook his head. “No.”

“You seem sure.”

“She was doing the captain a favor. She almost got killed, and now she’s got vultures circling.”

“What do you mean?”

He met her eyes for several impressive seconds. “The bridge.”

Laura, or rather Janice, hadn’t reported the bridge incident. “What bridge?”

He smirked, but in a congenial way. “The incident on the Anacostia Bridge. Something like that happens, you hear things.”

Laura wondered what else he had heard. She returned his smirk. “We all do, Lieutenant Sinclair. Tell me about the Vault.”

His lack of surprise was the perfect reaction. “Obviously, you know I’ve done some side work there.”

“Describe it for me?”

“There’s not much to tell. It’s routine security work. A lot of politicians go there for meetings.”

“With whom?”

“Each other. Business types. There are a couple of private rooms in the club and in the offices upstairs. I’ve run security for meetings.”

“Have you ever met Tylo Blume?”

He nodded. “Twice. The night he offered me the first job and one other time, when I worked with Sanchez.”

“When was that?”

Sinclair pursed his lips. “About two weeks ago. A private meeting in one of the function rooms.”

This was new. “Did you know anyone at the meeting?”

She sensed Sinclair debating what to tell her or what not to tell her. “Blume. Some guys from the State Department. Senator Hornbeck. A congressman-I think his name is Lewis-and a few elves looked familiar. They didn’t speak English.”