08/23/2023 Snippet, ANALOG.

The trick will be to tie all of this together.

“We’re not talking right now,” Walter told Greg. “I ain’t telling you anything, either.”

“That’s fine,” Greg assured him. “What aren’t we talking about?”

Walter Jenkins looked around a couple of times. The furtive look made him look even more like a rodent, in Greg’s carefully hidden opinion. Very carefully hidden: a man couldn’t help his looks, and Walter was a solid guy in the Bureau. Whatever he had to say was probably dynamite. “Look, there wasn’t anything on Feeney. Not in the files, not in the backups — and not in the third set of backups we’re not supposed to be keeping, you know what I mean? Everything was clean as a whistle.”

“Which means somebody scrubbed really hard, Walter. Which I had figured out already.”

Walter shook his head. “Nah, I don’t think anybody scrubbed at all, Greg. You see, after I looked up old Oswald, I thought I’d check out anybody else with that last name. Turns out we got a file on his kid, too. Which I’m not showing you,” he said while pushing over a folder. He smacked Greg’s fingers lightly as the inquisitor reached out. “Straight up, this time. I just want you to see that it’s real.”