I spotted my new partner as I walked up to the Watergate Hotel. She was standing a bit away from the lobby entrance, sucking on an electronic cigarette. As I got closer the chip in her badge started spilling her details into my field of vision. It was the Bureau’s way of letting its agents know who was who on the scene. My partner didn’t have her glasses on so she wouldn’t have had the same waterfall of detail on me scroll past her as I walked up. But then again, it was a pretty good chance she didn’t need it. She spotted me just fine in any event.

“Agent Shane,” said my new partner, to me. She held out her hand.

“Agent Vann,” I said, taking the hand.

And then I waited to see what the next thing out of her mouth would be. It’s always an interesting test to see what people do when they meet me, both because of who I am and because I’m Haden. One or the other usually gets commented on.

Vann didn’t say anything else. She withdrew her hand and continued sucking on her stick of nicotine.

Well, all right then. It was up to me to get the conversation started.

So I glanced over to the car that we were standing next to. Its roof had been crushed by a love seat.

“This ours?” I asked, nodding to the car, and the love seat.

“Tangentially,” she said. “You recording?”

“I can if you want me to,” I said. “Some people prefer me not to.”

“I want you to,” Vann said. “You’re on the job. You should be recording.”

“You got it,” I said, and started recording. I started walking around the car, getting the thing from every angle. The safety glass in the car windows had shattered and a few nuggets had crumbled off. The car had diplomatic plates. I glanced over and about ten yards away a man was on his phone, yelling at someone in what appeared to be Armenian. I was tempted to translate the yelling.

Vann watched me as I did it, still not saying anything.

When I was done I looked up and saw a hole in the side of the hotel, seven floors up. “That where the love seat came from?” I asked.

“That’s probably a good guess,” Vann said. She took the cigarette out of her mouth and slid it into her suit jacket.

“We going up there?”

“I was waiting on you,” Vann said.

“Sorry,” I said, and looked up again. “Metro police there already?”

Vann nodded. “Picked up the call from their network. Their alleged perp is an Integrator, which puts it into our territory.”

“Have you told that to the police yet?” I asked.

“I was waiting on you,” Vann repeated.

“Sorry,” I said again. Vann motioned with her head, toward the lobby.

We went inside and took the elevator to the seventh floor, from which the love seat had been flung. Vann pinned her FBI badge to her lapel. I slotted mine into my chest display.

The elevator doors opened up and a uniformed cop was there. She held up her hand to stop us from getting off. We both pointed to our badges. She grimaced and let us pass, whispering into her handset as she did so. We aimed for the room that had cops all around the door.

We got about halfway to it when a woman poked her head out of the room, looked around, spied us, and stomped over. I glanced at Vann, who had a smirk on her face.

“Detective Trinh,” Vann said, as the woman came up.

“No,” Trinh said. “No way. This has nothing to do with you, Les.”

“It’s nice to see you, too,” Vann said. “And wrong. Your perp is an Integrator. You know what that means.”

“‘All suspected crimes involving Personal Transports or Integrators are assumed to have an interstate component,’” I said, quoting the Bureau handbook.

Trinh looked over at me, sourly, then made a show of ignoring me to speak to Vann. I tucked away that bit of personal interaction for later. “I don’t know my perp’s an Integrator,” she said, to Vann.

“I do,” Vann said. “When your officer on scene called it in, he ID’d the perp. It’s Nicholas Bell. Bell’s an Integrator. He’s in our database. He pinged the moment your guy ran him.” I turned my head to look at Vann at the mention of the name, but she kept looking at Trinh.

“Just because he’s got the same name doesn’t make him an Integrator,” Trinh said.

“Come on, Trinh,” Vann said. “Are we really going to do this in front of the children?” It took me a second to realize Vann was talking about me and the uniformed cops. “You know it’s a pissing match you’re going to lose. Let us in, let us do our job. If it turns out everyone involved was in D.C. at the time, we’ll turn over everything we have and be out of your hair. Let’s play nice and do this all friendly. Or I could not be friendly. You remember how that goes.”

Trinh turned and stomped back to the hotel room without another word.

“I’m missing some context,” I said.

“You got about all you need,” Vann said. She headed to the room, number 714. I followed.

There was a dead body in the room, on the floor, facedown in the carpet, throat cut. The carpet was soaked in blood. There were sprays of blood on the walls, on the bed, and on the remaining seat in the room. A breeze turned in the room, provided by the gaping hole in the wall-length window that the love seat had gone through.

Vann looked at the dead body. “Do we know who he is?”

“No ID,” Trinh said. “We’re working on it.”

Vann looked around, trying to find something. “Where’s Nicholas Bell?” she asked Trinh.

Trinh smiled thinly. “At the precinct,” she said. “The first officer on the scene subdued him and we sent him off before you got here.”

“Who was the officer?” Vann asked.

“Timmons,” Trinh said. “He’s not here.”

“I need his arrest feed,” Vann said.

“I don’t—”

“Now, Trinh,” Vann said. “You know my public address. Give it to Timmons.” Trinh turned away, annoyed, but pulled out her phone and spoke into it.

Vann pointed to the uniformed officer in the room. “Anything moved or touched?”

“Not by us,” he said.

Vann nodded. “Shane.”

“Yeah,” I said.

“Make a map,” Vann said. “Make it detailed. Mind the glass.”

“On it,” I said. My recording mode was already on. I overlaid a three-dimensional grid on top of it, marking off everything I could see and making it easier to identify where I needed to look behind and under things. I walked the room, carefully, filling in the nooks and crannies. I knelt down when I got to the bed, turning on my headlights to make sure I got all the details. And there were in fact details to note under the bed.

“There’s a glass under here,” I said to Vann. “It’s broken and covered in blood.” I stood up and pointed over to the room’s desk, which featured a set of glasses and a couple of bottles of water. “There are also glass shards on the floor by the desk. Guessing that’s our murder weapon.”

“You done with your map?” Vann said.

“Almost,” I said. I took a few more passes around the room to pick up the spots I’d missed.

“I assume you also made your own map,” Vann said, to Trinh.

“We got the tech on the way,” Trinh said. “And we’ve got the feeds from the officers on the scene.”

“I want all of them,” Vann said. “I’ll send you Shane’s map, too.”

“Fine,” Trinh said, annoyed. “Anything else?”

“That’s it for now,” Vann said.

“Then if you don’t mind stepping away from my crime scene. I have work to do,” Trinh said.

Vann smiled at Trinh and left the room. I followed. “Metro police always like that?” I asked, as we stepped into the elevator.

“No one likes the feds stepping into their turf,” Vann said. “They’re never happy to see us. Most of them are more polite. Trinh has some issues.”

“Issues with us, or issues with you?” I asked.

Vann smiled again. The elevator opened to the lobby.

*   *   *

“Do you mind if I smoke?” Vann asked. She was driving manually toward the precinct house and fumbling for a package of cigarettes—real ones this time. It was her car. There was no law against it there.