Aloisius Dupree

Aloisius Dupree is an FBI special agent whose friendship with Amaia Salazar survives distance, disrupted communications, and a growing sense of danger around their contact. He is not a conventional on-call adviser: he controls when they speak, offers only fragments of what he knows, and sometimes disappears into silence. Yet his warnings and investigative perspective matter to Amaia precisely because she trusts him enough to bring him the case’s most troubling uncertainties.

Identity and Introduction

Dupree enters Amaia’s immediate awareness through a telephone call made after a woman has shut a door in her face. As Amaia walks toward her car, she holds the phone close, straining for any sign that he is on the other end. The connection yields a scene rather than an explanation: repetitive funeral chanting, voices reverberating as if in a vast cathedral, and the prolonged cry of a dying creature. Amaia recognizes Dupree’s presence in the call, but what she hears frightens her; when he finally speaks, his voice carries distress as acute as hers. He tells her not to call again and says that he will contact her. The line cuts off before she can recover the closeness she had hoped the call would provide.

The episode establishes the conditions of Dupree’s presence in the story. He is physically absent, available only through a failing line, and surrounded by circumstances Amaia cannot see. Their friendship is nevertheless intimate: she knows the sound of his voice and experiences the interruption as a rupture with a close, valued friend, not merely the loss of a professional contact.

A Friendship Under Surveillance

The call is followed almost immediately by another, this time from an FBI office. Agent Johnson, speaking from Virginia, tells Amaia that applications have opened for exchange courses at Quantico and that the criminal-behavior unit hopes to have her attend. The formal invitation might seem routine, but Johnson also asks whether she has had contact with Dupree. To Amaia, the timing—roughly two minutes after her call—and the pointed question make clear that their communications are being listened to.

The suspicion fits a longer pattern. Johnson had previously advised Amaia to avoid official channels when contacting Dupree and supplied a private number for matters concerning him. Calls to Dupree have reached her at a distance, laden with echoes; some have broken off, and on one occasion the caller information vanished from her screen as though the calls had never taken place. Amaia also remembers that Jonan Etxaide traced earlier calls to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, after a warning came from FBI headquarters. These details do not explain who is monitoring the contact or why, but they make the phone itself an unstable boundary between friendship and institutional scrutiny.

Confidential Counsel on the Case

When Dupree later calls from what he describes as a secure number, he still insists that Amaia should not call him and that he will call when she needs him. She does not ask how he knows when that moment has arrived; their relationship, she reflects, has always worked that way. Once they are speaking, Amaia gives him a concentrated account of the investigation: her suspicion that her mother may still be alive, the dead girl who is to be handed over, Elena Ochoa’s reaction, and the message from Berasategui alongside the unusual manner of his suicide. She also describes a foul, strange trail of saliva resembling that of an ancient reptile found only on the distant island of Komodo.

Dupree listens, but the exchange brings no immediate solution. Amaia hears his exhausted breathing, then silence. When she asks whether he is still there, he says that he cannot continue the conversation, does not yet know how, but will get something to her in the coming days, and has to hang up. The promise is deliberately limited: he offers neither a finding nor a timetable beyond the next few days. His silence and abrupt departure preserve the impression that he is constrained, though the evidence does not establish the cause or the nature of that constraint.

Rules of Contact and Mutual Concern

The calls acquire a recurring rhythm: Amaia waits for night, and Dupree appears when he chooses. While searching the countryside, she checks her phone even though she knows she cannot call him before sunset. The screen shows no coverage and no incoming calls that morning. Her restraint is practical as well as personal; contact with Dupree is governed by a rule she accepts rather than a channel she can freely use.

Their concern also runs in both directions. During a later conversation, Dupree says that he usually speaks with Johnson, believes Johnson sincerely appreciates him, and knows that Johnson is worried because Dupree has not communicated with his superiors for some time. Johnson has asked whether Amaia and Dupree are still in touch. Amaia tells Dupree she has not disclosed anything and waited to speak to him first; she then asks whether he is in danger. His silence leaves the question unanswered. The exchange shows Amaia trying to protect his confidence while also recognizing that the silence around him may signal more than inconvenience.

Warnings and Narrative Role

When Dupree calls again, Amaia is driving back toward Elizondo through a snowbound night. A journey that normally takes fifty minutes has taken nearly two hours. After the phone displays the number from which Dupree last called, she stops the car to answer. He asks whether it is night in Baztán, the region of the core investigations and family search, repeating a familiar opening before responding to her. Amaia says she feels lost. When she refers to news about a policeman dead in Spain, Dupree interrupts with a warning not to believe what is being reported. The exchange raises uncertainty about what has been said of him without resolving his circumstances.

His advice is similarly oblique. When Amaia demands useful information rather than riddling instruction, Dupree reminds her that someone close by was not what they appeared to be, then leaves the identification to her. Later he invokes the image of a demon riding on her. Amaia replies that the case has been closed since the girl’s father died by suicide in prison and his wife made a statement implicating him; she withholds from Dupree what Yolanda Berrueta told her and what happened in Ainhoa. The uneven disclosure is significant: each is guarding something, and Dupree’s warning gives Amaia a direction rather than a name.

Dupree’s role is therefore defined less by complete answers than by the pressure his partial access creates. His calls connect Amaia’s police investigation to a wider, opaque field of danger, while their interruptions keep the reader, like Amaia, alert to what cannot yet be confirmed. He is friend, confidential sounding board, and warning voice, but never an omniscient guide. The limits of his knowledge and safety remain unresolved; what endures is the trust between them and the uneasy expectation that he will call when the next warning is needed.