Chapter 24: Three Reports, Three Keys

The federal investigator's name was Haas. Kapitän Lena Haas, Bundeskriminalpolizei, forty-three, with the compact economy of movement that Blackwell associated with people who had learned to be efficient inside bureaucratic constraints rather than spite them. She came through the forward car door at seven-fourteen with three uniformed officers behind her and a civilian technician carrying a scene-kit that Solano assessed at a glance and found adequate without saying so.

Haas took in the dining car — the overturned evidence table, the eleven passengers arranged with varying degrees of composure along both window rows, Vásken seated at the far end with her arms folded and her face arranged into something that was not quite patience and not quite challenge — and then she took in Blackwell, and something in her expression registered a category that was not quite welcome.

"Mr. Blackwell," she said.