Free White Fire by Douglas Preston, Lincoln Child Page A

hands, a pained look pinching his narrow face. “It’s the best I can do.”
    “How long do I have to think about it?”
    “Not long. They can withdraw the offer at any moment. If you could decide right now, that would be best.”
    “I’ve got to think about it.”
    “You have my number.”
    Corrie rose and shook his limp, sweaty hand, walked out. The guard, who had been waiting outside the door, led her back to the dayroom. She sat down and stared at the black-and-white carpet and thought about what her life would look like in ten years, after she got back out. Her eyes began leaking again, and she wiped at them furiously, to no avail.

10
    J enny Baker arrived at the Roaring Fork City Hall lugging Chief Stanley Morris’s second briefcase in both hands. The chief carried two bulging briefcases to every meeting he attended, it seemed, so as to be prepared to answer any question that might come up. Jenny had tried to persuade him to get a tablet computer, but he was a confirmed Luddite and refused even to use the desktop computer in his office.
    Jenny rather liked that, despite the inconvenience of having to lug around two briefcases. So far, the chief had proven a pleasant man to work for, rarely made demands, and was always agreeable. In the two weeks she had interned in the police station, she’d seen him flustered and worried but never angry. Now he walked alongside her, chatting about town business, as they entered the meeting room. Big town meetings were sometimes held in the Opera House, but this one—on December thirteenth, less than two weeks from Christmas—was not expected to be well attended.
    She took a seat just behind the chief in the town-official seating area. They were early—the chief was always early—and she watched as the mayor came in, followed by the Planning Board, the town attorney, and other officials whose names she did not know. Hard on their heels came a contingent from The Heights, led by Mrs. Kermode, her coiffed, layered helmet of blond hair utterly perfect. She was followed by her brother-in-law, Henry Montebello, and several anonymous-looking men in suits.
    The main item of the meeting—the agenda was routinely published in the paper—involved a proposal from The Heights regarding where the Boot Hill remains were to be reinterred. As the meeting opened, with the usual pledge of allegiance and the reading of minutes, Jenny’s thoughts drifted to the woman she had met—Corrie—and what had happened to her. It sort of freaked her out. She had seemed so nice, so professional—and then to be caught breaking into a warehouse, desecrating a coffin, and stealing bones. You never could tell what some people were capable of doing. And a student at John Jay, too. Nothing like that had ever happened in The Heights, and the neighborhood was still up in arms about it. It was all her parents talked about at breakfast every morning, even now, ten days after the event.
    As the preliminaries went on, Jenny was surprised to see just how many people were filing into the public seating area. It was already packed, and now the standing-room area in the back was filling up. Maybe the cemetery thing was going to erupt into controversy again. She hoped this wasn’t going to make the meeting run late—she had a dinner date later that evening.
    The meeting moved to the first item on the agenda. The attorney for The Heights rose and gave his presentation in a nasal drone. The Heights, he said, proposed to rebury the disinterred remains in a field they had purchased for just such a purpose on a hillside about five miles down Route 82. This surprised Jenny; she had always assumed the remains would be reburied within the town limits. Now she understood why so many people were there.
    The attorney went through some legal gobbledygook about how this was all perfectly legal, reasonable, proper, preferable, and indeed, unavoidable for various reasons she didn’t understand. As he continued, Jenny heard a