The mayor began to laugh, then the people around him joined in. Soon there was rolling laughter, people pointing. Even a crook who was holding a hostage around the throat, a gun to his ear, at the other end of town looked over at the sudden noise to see what was going on. It was his downfall. Agent Wallace thunked him over the head and laid him flat.

It was a good day for taking a bite out of crime in Hogan's Alley.

3

SHE MET WITH COLIN PETTY, a supervisor in the Personnel Division, known in the Bureau as the Bald Eagle. He was thin, sported a thick black mustache, and had a very shiny head. He told her up front that she'd impressed some important people, but that was at Quantico. No one working here in Headquarters was impressed yet. She was going to have to work her butt off. She nodded, knowing where she'd been assigned. It was tough, but she managed to pull out a bit of enthusiasm.

"I'm pleased to be going to the Los Angeles field office," she said, and thought, I don't want anything to do with any bank robberies. She knew they dealt with more bank robberies than any field office in the Bureau. She guessed it was better than Montana, but at least there she could go skiing. How long was a usual tour of duty? She had to get back here, somehow.

"L.A. is considered a plum assignment for a new agent right out of the Academy," Mr. Petty said as he flipped through her personnel file. "You originally requested Headquarters, I see here, the Criminal Investigative Division, but they decided to send you to Los Angeles." He looked up at her over his bifocals. "You have a B.S. in Forensic Science and a Master's degree in Criminal Psychology from Berkeley," he continued. "Seems you've got a real interest here. Why didn't you request the Investigative Services Unit? With your background, you would probably have been escorted through the door. I take it you changed your mind?"

She knew there were notes about that in her file. Why was he acting as if he didn't know anything? Of course. He wanted

her to talk, get her slant on things, get her innermost thoughts. Good luck to him on that, she thought. It was true that it was her own fault that she was being assigned to Los Angeles and there was no secret as to why.

She forced a smile and shrugged. "The fact is that I just don't have the guts to do what those people do every day of their lives and probably in their dreams as well. You're right that I prepared myself for this career, that I believed it was what I wanted to do with my life, but-" She shrugged again. And swallowed. She'd spent all these years preparing herself, and she'd failed. "It all boils down to no guts."

"You always wanted to be a Profiler?"

"Yes. I read John Douglas's book Mindhunter and thought that's what I wanted to do. Actually I've been interested in law enforcement for a very long time, thus my major in college and graduate school." It was a lie, but that didn't matter. She told it easily, with no hesitation. She had practically come to believe it herself over the past several years. "I wanted to help get those monsters out of society. But after the lectures by people from ISU, after seeing what they see on a day-today basis for just a week, I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the horror of it. The Profilers see unspeakable butchery. They live with the results of it. Every one of those monsters leaves a deep mark on them. And the victims, the victims ..." She drew a deep breath. "I knew I couldn't do it." So now she'd go after bank robbers and he would remain free and she wanted to cry. All this time and commitment and incredibly hard work, and she was going to go after bank robbers. She should have just quit, but the truth of the matter was that she just didn't have the energy to redefine herself again, and that's what it would mean.

Mr. Petty said only, "I couldn't either. Most folks couldn't. The burnout rate is incredible in the unit. Marriages don't do well either. Now, you did excellently at the Academy. You handle firearms well, particularly in mid-distances, you excel at self-defense, you ran the two miles in under sixteen minutes, and your situation judgment was well above average. There's a little footnote here that says you managed to take down Dillon Savich in a Hogan's Alley exercise, something neverbefore done by a trainee." He looked up, his eyebrows raised. "Is that true?"

She remembered her rage when he'd disarmed her twice. Then, just as suddenly, she remembered her laughter when he'd walked away, his boxer shorts showing through the big rip in his pants. "Yes," she said, "but it was my partner, Porter Forge, who threw me his SIG so I could shoot him. Otherwise I would have died in the line of duty."