The Devil's Teardrop

12

"So he's in D.C. now, is he?" the man asked.

They were downstairs in Reception Area B. Which is what the sign on the door reported in pleasant scripty type. Within the Bureau, however, it was called Interrogation Room Blue, after the shade of the pastel decor inside. Parker, Lukas and Cage sat across the battered table from him-a large man with wild, gray hair. From the linguistics of his sentence Parker knew the man wasn't from the area. Locals always call the city "the District," never "D.C."

"Who would that be?" Lukas asked.

"You know who," answered the man coyly. "I call him the Butcher. What do you call him?"

"Who?"

"The killer with a man's mind and the devil's heart," he said dramatically.

This fellow might have been a nut but Parker decided that his words described the Digger pretty well.

Henry Czisman was in clean but well-worn clothes. A white shirt, straining against his large belly, a striped tie. His jacket wasn't a sports coat but was the top of a gray pinstripe suit. Parker smelled the bitter scent of cigarettes in the clothes. A battered briefcase sat on the table. He cupped a mug of ice water on the table in front of him.

"You're saying the man involved in the subway and theater shootings is called the Butcher?"

"The one who actually did the shootings, yes. I don't know his accomplice's name."

Lukas and Cage were silent for a moment. She was scrutinizing the man closely and would be wondering how Czisman knew the Digger had a partner. The news about the dead unsub had not been released to the press.

"What's your interest in all this?" Parker asked.

Czisman opened the briefcase and took out several old newspapers. The Hartford News-Times. They were dated last year. He pointed out articles that he'd written. He was-or had been-a crime reporter.

"I'm on a leave of absence, writing a true-crime book about the Butcher." He added somberly, "I'm following the trail of destruction."

"True crime?" Cage asked. "People like those books, huh?"

"Oh, they love 'em. Best-sellers. Ann Rule. That Ted Bundy book… You ever read it?"

"Might have," Cage said.

"People just eat up real-life crime. Says something about society, doesn't it? Maybe somebody ought to do a book about that. Why people like it so much."

Lukas prompted, "This Butcher you were mentioning…"

Czisman continued. "That was his nickname in Boston. Earlier in the year. Well, I think one paper called him the Devil."

The Devil's teardrop, Parker thought. Lukas was glancing at him and he wondered if she was thinking the same. He asked, "What happened in Boston?"

Czisman looked at him. Glanced at his visitors pass. It had no name on it. Parker had been introduced by Cage as a consultant, Mr. Jefferson.

"There was a shooting at a fast-food restaurant near Faneuil Hall. Lucy's Tacos."

Parker hadn't heard of it-or had forgotten, if the incident had made the news. But Lukas nodded. "Four killed, seven injured. Perp drove up to the restaurant and fired an automatic shotgun through the window. No motive."

Parker supposed that she'd read all the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program bulletins.

She continued, "If I recall, there was no description of that perp either."

"Oh, he's the same. You bet he is. And, no, there was no description. Just guesses. He's probably white. But not necessarily. How old? Thirties or forties. Height? Medium. Build? Medium. He could be anybody. Not like those ponytailed bodybuilding bad guys in made-for-TV movies. Pretty easy to spot them. But the Butcher… He's just an average man on the street. Pretty scary, isn't it?"

Lukas was about to ask a question but Czisman interrupted. "You said there was no motive in the restaurant shooting, Agent Lukas?"

"Not according to VICAP."

"Well, did you know that ten minutes after the Butcher finished lobbing rounds through the plate-glass window and killing the women and children, a jewelry store was robbed four miles away?"

"No. That wasn't in the report."

Czisman asked, "And did you know that every tactical officer for two miles around was at the restaurant? So even though the owner of the jewelry store hit the silent alarms the police couldn't get to the store in their normal response time of four minutes. It took twelve. In that time the thief killed the owner and a customer. They were the only witnesses."

"He was the Butcher's accomplice? The thief?"

Czisman said, "Who else would it be?"

Lukas sighed. "We need any information you have. But I don't sense you're really here out of civic duty."

Czisman laughed.

She added, "What exactly do you want?"

"Access," he said quickly. "Just access."

"To information."

"That's right. For my book."

"Wait here," she said, rising. She gestured Parker and Cage after her.

Just off Room Blue on the first floor of headquarters Tobe Geller was sitting in a small, darkened room, in front of an elaborate control panel.

On Lukas's orders he'd watched the entire interview with Henry Czisman on six different monitors.

Czisman would have no idea he was being watched because the Bureau didn't use two-way mirrors in its interrogation rooms-the sort you see in urban police stations. Rather, on the walls of the room were three prints of Impressionist paintings. They happened to have been picked not by a GSA facilities planner or a civilian interior designer but by Tobe Geller himself and several other people from the Bureau's Com-Tech group. They were prints of paintings by Georges Seurat, who pioneered the pointillist technique. Six of the tiny dots in each of the three paintings were in fact miniature video camera lenses, aimed so precisely that every square inch of the interrogation room was covered.

Conversations were also recorded-on three different digital recorders, one of which was linked to a computer programmed to detect the sequence of sounds of someone drawing a weapon. Czisman, like all interviewees, had been searched and scanned for a gun or knife but in this business you could never take too many precautions.

Lukas had instructed Geller, though, that his main job was not so much security as data analysis. Czisman would mention a fact-the robbery in Boston, for instance-and Geller would instantly relay the information to Susan Nance, a young special agent standing by upstairs in Communications. She in turn would contact the field office and seek to verify the information.

Czisman had never drunk from the mug of water Cage had placed in front of him but he did clutch it nervously, which is what everyone did when they sat in FBI interrogation rooms. The mug had a pressure-sensitive surface and a microchip, battery and transmitter in the handle. It digitized Czisman's fingerprints and transmitted them to Geller's computer. He in turn sent them to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System database for matching.

One of the video cameras-in a print of Seurat's famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, which was a complicated painting that every interviewee tended to look at frequently-was locked onto Czisman's eyes and was performing retinal scans for "veracity probability analysis"-that is, lie detection. Geller was also doing voice stress analysis for the same reason.

Lukas now directed Cage and Kincaid into the observation room.

"Anything yet?" Lukas asked Geller.

"It's prioritized," he said, typing madly.

A moment later his phone rang and Lukas slapped the speakerphone.

"Tobe?" a woman's voice asked.

"Go ahead," he said. "The task force is here."

"Hi, Susan," Lukas said. "Its Margaret. Go ahead. Give us the deets. What've you got?"

"Okay, prints came back negative on warrants, arrests, convictions. Name Henry Czisman is legit, address in Hartford, Connecticut. Bought his house twelve years ago. Property taxes are up to date and he paid off the mortgage last year. The image you beamed up matches his Connecticut driver's license photo ninety-five percent likely."

"Is that good?" Kincaid interrupted.

"My present picture matches ninety-two percent," Nance responded. "I've got longer hair now." She continued. "Employment record through Social Security Administration and IRS shows him working as a journalist since 1971 but some years he had virtually no income. Listed his job those years as free-lance writer. So he's taken plenty of time off. Not living on his wife's salary either; he used to be married but his filing status is single now. Paid no quarterly estimated this year, which he's done in the past. And that suggests he's got no reportable income at all this year. Ten years ago he had very high medical deductions. Looks like it was treatment for alcohol abuse. Became self-employed a year ago, quit a fifty-one-thousand-dollar-a-year job at the Hartford paper and is apparently living off savings."

"Quit, fired or took a leave of absence?" Kincaid asked.

"Not sure." Nance paused. She continued. "We couldn't get as many credit card records as we wanted, because of the holiday, but he's staying at the Renaissance under his name. And he checked in after a noon flight from Hartford. United Express. No advanced purchase. Made the reservation at ten A.M. this morning."

"So he left just after the first shooting," Lukas mused.

"One-way ticket?" Kincaid's question anticipated her own.

"Yes."

"What do we think?" Lukas asked.

"Goddamn journalist is all, I'd say," Cage offered.

"And you?" She glanced at Kincaid.

He said, "What do I think? I say we deal with him. When I analyze documents I need every bit of information I can get about the writer."

"If you know it's really the writer," Lukas said skeptically. She paused. Then said, "He seems like a crank to me. Are we that desperate?"

"Yes," Kincaid said, glancing at the digital clock above Tobe Geller's computer monitor, "I think we are."

In the stuffy interrogation room once more, Lukas said to Czisman, "If we talk off the record now… and if we can bring this to a successful resolution…"

Czisman laughed at the euphemism, motioned for the agent to continue.

"If we can do that then we'll give you access to materials and witnesses for your book. I'm not sure how much yet. But you'll have some exclusivity."

"Ah, my favorite word. Exclusivity. Yes, that's all I'm asking for."

"But everything we tell you now," Lukas continued, "will be completely confidential."

"Agreed," Czisman said.

Lukas nodded at Parker, who asked, "Does the name Digger mean anything to you?"

"Digger?" Czisman shook his head. "No. As in gravedigger?"

"We don't know. It's the name of the shooter-the one you call the Butcher," Lukas said.

"I only call him the Butcher because the Boston papers did. The New York Post called him the Devil. In Philadelphia he was the Widow Maker."

"New York? Philly too?" Lukas asked. Parker noticed that she was troubled by this news.

"Jesus," Cage muttered. "A pattern criminal."

Czisman said, "They've been working their way down the coast. Headed where, don't we wonder? To Florida for retirement? More likely the islands somewhere."

"What happened in the other cities?" Parker asked.

"The International Beverage case?" Czisman responded. "Ever hear of it?"

Lukas was certainly current on her criminal history. "The president of the company, right? He was kidnapped."

"Details?" Parker asked her, impressed at her knowledge.

Czisman looked at Lukas, who nodded for him to continue. "The police had to piece it together but it looks like-nobody's exactly sure-but it looks like the Butcher took the president's family hostage. The wife told her husband to get some money together. He agreed-"

"Was there a letter?" Parker asked, thinking there might be another document he could examine. "A note?"

"No. It was all done by phone. Well, the president tells the kidnapper he'd pay. Then he calls the police and hostage rescue surrounds the house, yada yada yada, the whole nine yards, while the president goes to his bank to get the ransom. But as soon as they opened up the vault a customer pulls out a gun and begins shooting. Killed everyone in the bank: the International Beverage president, two guards, three customers, three tellers, two vice presidents on duty. The video camera shows another man, with him, walking into the vault and walking out with a bag of money."

"So there was nobody in the house?" Lukas asked, understanding the scheme.

"Nobody alive. The Butcher-the Digger-had already killed the family. Looks like he did it after she called her husband."

Parker said, "He hit them at the weakest point in the kidnapping process. The police would have the advantage in a negotiation or in an exchange of the money. He preempted them." He didn't say aloud what he was thinking: that it was a perfect solution to a difficult puzzle-if you don't mind killing.

"Anything in the bank's security video that'd help us?" Cage asked.

"You mean, what color were their ski masks?"

Cage's shrug meant, I had to ask anyway.

"What about Philly?" Lukas asked.

Czisman said cynically, "Oh, this was very good. The Digger starts taking the bus. He'd get on, sit next to someone and fire one silenced shot. He killed three people, then his accomplice made the ransom demand. The city agreed to pay the ransom but set up surveillance to nail him. But the accomplice knew which bank the city had its accounts in. As soon as the rookies escorting the cash stepped outside the door of the bank the Digger shot them in the back of the head and they escaped."

"I never heard about that one," Lukas said.

"No, they wanted it kept quiet. Six people dead."

Parker said, "Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington. You're right-he was on his way south."

Czisman frowned. "Was?"

Parker glanced at Lukas. She told Czisman, "He's dead."

"What?" Czisman seemed truly shocked.

"The partner-not the Digger."

"What happened?" Czisman whispered.

"Hit-and-run after he dropped the extortion note off. And before he could collect his extortion money."

Czisman's face grew still for a long moment. Parker supposed he was thinking: There goes the exclusive interview with the perp. The huge man's eyes darted around the room. He shifted in his chair. "What was his scheme this time?"

Lukas was reluctant to say but Czisman guessed. "The Butcher shoots people until the city pays the ransom… But now there's nobody to pay the money to and so the Butchers going to keep right on shooting. Sounds just like their MO. You have any leads to where his lair might be?"

"The investigation is continuing," Lukas said warily.

Czisman stared at one of the prints. A pastoral landscape. He kneaded the water mug manically.

Parker asked, "How did you follow him here?"

"I read everything I can find about crimes where somebody has no qualms about killing. Most people do, you know. Unless their raison d'être is killing-like Bundy or Gacy or Dahmer. No, most professional criminals will hesitate to pull the trigger. But the Butcher? Never. And when I'd hear about a multiple homicide that was part of a robbery or extortion I'd go to the city where it had happened and interview people."

Lukas asked, "Why hasn't anybody made the connection?"

Czisman shrugged. "Isolated crimes, small body counts. Oh, I told the police in White Plains and Philly. But nobody paid much attention to me." He laughed bitterly, waved his arm around the room. "Took-what?-twenty-five dead before anybody'd perk up their ears and listen to me."

Parker asked, "What can you tell us about the Digger? Hasn't anybody gotten a look at him?"

"No," Czisman said, "he's a wisp of smoke. He's there and then he's gone. He's a ghost. He-"

Lukas had no patience for this. "We're trying to solve a crime here. If you can help us we'd appreciate it. If not we better get on with our investigation."

"Sure, sorry, sorry. It's just that I've lived with this man for the past year. It's like climbing a cliff-it could be a mile high but all you see is a tiny spot of rock six inches from your face. See, I have a theory why people don't notice him."

"What's that?" Parker asked.

"Because witnesses remember emotion. They remember the frantic robber who's shooting someone in desperation, the cop who's panicked and firing back, the woman screaming because she's been stabbed. But you don't remember calm."

"And the Digger's always very calm?"

"Calm as death," Czisman said.

"Nothing about his habits? Clothes, food, vices?"

"No, nothing." Czisman seemed distracted. "Can I ask what you've learned about the accomplice? The dead man?"

"Nothing about him either," Lukas said. "He had no ID on him. Fingerprints were negative."

"Would you… Would it be all right if I took a look at the body? Is it in the morgue?"

Cage shook his head.

Lukas said, "Sorry. It's against the regs."

"Please?" There was almost a desperation to the request.

Lukas, though, was unmoved. She said shortly, "No."

"A picture maybe," Czisman persisted.

Lukas hesitated then opened the file and took out the photo of the unsub at the accident site near City Hall and handed it to him. His sweaty fingers left fat prints on the glossy surface.

Czisman stared for a long moment. He nodded. "Can I keep this?"

"After the investigation."

"Sure." He handed it back. "I'd like to do a ride-along."

Where a reporter accompanies police on an investigation.

But Lukas shook her head. "Sorry. I'll have to say no to that."

"I could help," he said. "I might have some insights. I might have some thoughts that'd help."

"No," Cage said firmly.

With another look at the picture Czisman rose. He shook their hands and said, "I'm staying at the Renaissance-the one downtown. I'll be interviewing witnesses. If I find something helpful I'll let you know."

Lukas thanked him and they walked him back to the guard station.

"One thing," Czisman said, "I don't know what kind of deadlines he"-Czisman nodded toward Lukas's file, meaning the unsub-"came up with. But now that he's gone there's no one to control the Butcher… the Digger. You understand what that means, don't you?"

"What?" she asked.

"That he might just keep on killing. Even after the last deadline."

"Why do you think that?"

"Because it's the one thing he does well. Killing. And everybody loves to do what they do well. That's a rule of life now, isn't it?"

They huddled once more in the surveillance room, in a cluster around Tobe Geller and his computer.

Lukas said into the speakerphone, "How 'bout the other crimes he mentioned?"

Susan Nance responded, "Couldn't get any of the case agents in Boston, White Plains or Philly. But the on-duty personnel confirmed the cases are all open. Nobody heard of the name Butcher, though."

"Forensics?" Parker asked, just as Lukas started to ask, "Foren-?"

"Nothing. No prints, no trace. And the witnesses… well, the ones who lived said they never really saw either the unsub or the Digger-if it was the Digger. I've put in requests for more info on the shootings. They're calling case agents and detectives at home."

"Thanks, Susan," Lukas said.

She hung up.

Geller said, "I'm getting the other analysis…" He looked at the screen. "Okay… Voice stress and ret scans-normal readings. Stress is awfully low, especially for somebody being cross-examined by three feds. But I'd give him a clean bill of health. Nothing consistent with major deception. But then, with practice you can beat most polygraphs with a Valium and a daydream about your favorite actress."

Lukas's phone rang. She listened. Looked up. "It's security. He's almost out of primary surveillance range. We let him go?"

Parker said, "I'd say yes."

"Agreed," Cage said.

Lukas nodded. She said into her phone. "No detention for subject." She hung up then glanced at her watch. "The shrink? The guy from Georgetown?"

"He's on his way," Cage said.

Now Geller's phone rang. He answered and spoke for a moment. After he hung up he announced, "Com-Tech. They've found a hundred and sixty-seven working Web sites that have information about packing silencers and full-auto machine-pistol conversions. Guess what? Not one of 'em'll hand over e-mail addresses. They don't seem inclined to help out the federal government."

"Dead end," Lukas said.

"Wouldn't do us much good anyway," Geller noted. "Com-Tech added up the hit counter totals from about a hundred of the sites. More than twenty-five thousand people've logged on in the last two months."

"Fucked-up world out there," Cage muttered.

The door opened. Len Hardy walked inside.

"How's Moss?" Lukas asked.

"He's okay. There were two hang-ups on his voice mail at home and he thought they might've been death threats."

Lukas said, "We should have Communications-"

Hardy, eyes on the elaborate control panels, interrupted. "I asked one of your people to check ' em out. One call was from Moss's brother. The other was a telemarketer from Iowa. I called 'em both back and verified them."

Lukas said, "That's just what I was going to ask, Detective."

"Figured it was."

"Thanks."

"District of Columbia at your service," he said.

Parker thought the irony in his voice was fairly subdued; Lukas didn't seem to notice it at all.

Parker asked, "What're we doing about that map? We've got to analyze the trace."

Geller said, "The best one I can think of is in the Topographic Archives."

"The Archives?" Cage asked, shaking his head. "There's no way we can get in there."

Parker could only imagine the difficulty of finding civil servants willing to open up a government facility on a holiday night.

Lukas flipped open her phone.

Cage said, "No way."

"Ah," she said, "you don't have the corner on miracles, you know."

13

The brass clock.

It meant so much to him.

Mayor Jerry Kennedy looked at it now, resting prominently on his desk in City Hall.

The gift was from students at Thurgood Marshall Elementary, a school square in the war zone of Ward 8, Southeast D.C. Kennedy had been very touched by the gesture. No one took Washington the City seriously. Washington the political hub, Washington the federal government, Washington the site of scandal-oh, that was what captured everyone's attention. But no one knew, or cared, how the city itself ran or who was in charge.

The children of Thurgood Marshall had cared, however. He'd spoken to them about honor and working hard and staying off drugs. Platitudes, sure. But a few of them, sitting in the pungent, damp auditorium (itself a victim of the school board scandal), had gazed up at him with the look of sweet admiration on their faces. Then they'd given him the clock in appreciation of his talk.

Kennedy touched it now. Looked at the face: 4:50.

So, the FBI had come close to stopping the madman. But they hadn't. Some deaths, some injuries. And more and more panic around the city. Hysteria. There'd already been three accidental shootings-by people carrying illegal pistols for protection. They thought they'd seen the Digger on the street or in their backyards and had just started shooting, like feuding neighbors in West Virginia.

And then there were the press reports berating Kennedy and the District police for not being up to the challenge of a criminal like this. For being soft on crime and for hiding out. One report even suggested that Kennedy had been unavailable-on the phone trying to get tickets to one of his beloved football games-while the theater shooting was going on. The reviews of his TV appearance were not good either. One interviewee, a political commentator, had actually echoed Congressman Lanier's phrase, "kowtowing to terrorists." He'd also worked the word "cowardly" into his commentary. Twice.

The phone rang. Wendell Jefferies, sitting across from the mayor, grabbed the receiver first. "Uh-huh. Okay…" He closed his eyes, then shook his head. He listened some more. He hung up.

"Well?"

"They've scoured the entire theater and can't find an iota of evidence. No fingerprints. No witnesses-no reliable ones anyway."

"Jesus, what is this guy, invisible?"

"They've got some leads from this former agent."

"Former agent?" Kennedy asked uncertainly.

"Document expert. He's found something but not much."

The mayor complained, "We need soldiers, we need police out on every street corner, we don't need former paper pushers."

Jefferies cocked his smooth head cynically. The possibility of police on every street corner of the District of Columbia was appealing, of course, but was the purest of fantasies.

Kennedy sighed. "He might not have heard me. The TV broadcast."

"Possibility."

"But it's twenty million dollars!" Kennedy argued with his unseen foe, the Digger. "Why the hell doesn't he contact us? He could have twenty million dollars."

"They nearly got him. Maybe next time they will."

At his window Kennedy paused. Looked at the thermometer that gave the outside temperature. Thirty-three degrees. It had been thirty-eight just a half hour ago.

Temperature falling…

Snow clouds were overhead.

Why are you here? he silently asked the Digger once again. Why here? Why now?

He raised his eyes and looked at the domed wedding cake of the Capitol Building. When Pierre L'Enfant came up with the "Plan of the City of Washington" in 1792 he had a surveyor draw a meridional line north and south and then another exactly perpendicular to it, dividing the city into the four quadrants that remain today. The Capitol Building was at the intersection of these lines.

"The center of the cross hairs," some gun-control advocate had once said at a congressional hearing where Kennedy was testifying.

But the figurative telescopic sight might very well be aimed directly at Kennedy's chest.

The sixty-three-square-mile city was foundering and the mayor was passionately determined not to let it go under. He was a native Washingtonian, a dying species in itself-the city population had declined from a high of more than 800,000 to around a half million. It continued to shrink yearly.

An odd hybrid of body politic, the city had only had self-rule since the 1970s (aside from a few-year period a century earlier, though corruption and incompetence had quickly pushed the city into bankruptcy and back under congressional domination). Twenty-five years ago the federal lawmakers turned the reins over to the city itself. And from then on a mayor and the thirteen-member City Council had struggled to keep crime under control (at times the District had the worst murder rate in America), schools functioning (students testing lower than in any other major city), finances in check (forever in the red) and racial tensions defused (Asian versus black versus white).

There was a real possibility that Congress would step in once more and take over the city; the lawmakers had already removed the mayor's blanket spending power.

And that would be a disaster-because Kennedy believed that only his administration could save the city and its citizens before the place erupted into a volcano of crime and homelessness and shattered families. More than 40 percent of young black men in D.C. were somewhere "in the system"-in jail, on probation or being sought on warrants. In the 1970s one-quarter of families in the District had been headed by a single parent; now the figure was closer to three-quarters.

Jerry Kennedy had had a personal taste of what might happen if the city continued its downward trajectory. In 1975, then a lawyer working for the District school board, he'd gone to the Mall-the stretch of grass and trees presided over by the Washington Monument-for Human Kindness Day, a racial unity event. He'd been among the hundreds injured when racial fighting broke out among the crowd. It was on that day that he gave up plans to move to Virginia and run for Congress. He decided to become the mayor of the nations capital. By God, he was going to fix the place.

And he knew how. To Kennedy the answer was very simple. And that answer was education. You had to get the children to stay in school and if you could do that then self-esteem and the realization that they could make choices about their lives would follow. (Yes, knowledge can save you. It had saved him. Lifting him out of the poverty of Northeast D.C., boosting him into William and Mary Law School. It got him a beautiful, brilliant wife, two successful sons, a career he was proud of.)

No one disagreed with the basic premise that education could save people of course. But how to solve the puzzle of making sure the children learned was a different matter. The conservatives bitched about what people ought to be like and if they didn't love their neighbors and live by family values then that was their problem. We home-school; why can't everybody? The liberals whined and pumped more money into the schools but all the cash did was slow the decay of the infrastructure. It did nothing to make students stay in those buildings.

This was the challenge for Gerald David Kennedy. He couldn't wave a wand and bring fathers back to mothers, he couldn't invent an antidote to crack cocaine, he couldn't get guns out of the hands of people who lived only fifteen miles from the National Rifle Association's headquarters.

But he did have a vision of how to make sure kids in the District continued their education. And his plan could pretty much be summarized by one word: bribery.

Though he and Wendell Jefferies called it by another name-Project 2000.

For the past year Kennedy, aided by his wife, Jefferies and a few other close associates, had been negotiating with members of the Congressional District Committee to impose yet another tax on companies doing business in Washington. The money would go into a fund from which students would be paid cash to complete high school-provided they remained drug free and weren't convicted of any crimes.

In one swoop, Kennedy managed to incur the political hatred of the entire political spectrum. The liberals dismissed the idea as a potential source of massive corruption and had problems with the mandatory drug testing as a civil liberties issue. The conservatives simply laughed. The corporations to be taxed had their own opinion, of course. Immediately, the threats started-threats of major companies pulling out of the District altogether, political action committee funds and hard and soft campaign money vanishing from Democratic party coffers, even hints of exposing sexual indiscretions (of which there were none-but try telling that to the media after they've gotten their hands on blurry videotapes of a man and a woman walking into a Motel Six or Holiday Inn).

Still, Kennedy was more than willing to risk this. And in his months of bargaining on Capitol Hill to get the measure through committee it appeared that the measure might actually pass, thanks largely to popular support.

But then that city employee-Gary Moss-had summoned up his courage and gone to the FBI with evidence of a huge kickback scheme involving school construction and maintenance. Early investigations showed that wiring and masonry were so shoddy in some schools that faculty and students were at serious physical risk. The scandal kept growing and, it turned out, involved a number of contractors and subs and high-ranking District officials, some of them Kennedy appointees and longtime friends.

Kennedy himself had extolled Moss and thrown himself into the job of rooting out the corruption. But the press, not to mention his opponents, continued to try to link him to the scandal. Every news story about payoffs in the "Kennedy administration"-and there were plenty of them-eroded the support for Project 2000 more and more.

Fighting back, the mayor had done what he did best: He gave dozens of speeches describing the importance of the plan, he horse-traded with Congress and the teachers' union to shore up support, he even accompanied kids home from school to talk to their astonished parents about why Project 2000 was important to everyone in the city. The figures in the polls stabilized and it seemed to Kennedy and Wendy Jefferies that they might just hold the line.

But then the Digger arrived… murdering with impunity, escaping from crowded crime scenes, striking again. And who got blamed? Not the faceless FBI. But everyone's favorite target: Jerry Kennedy. If the madman killed any more citizens, he believed, Project 2000-the hope for his city's future-would likely become just a sour footnote in Kennedy's memoirs.

And this was the reason that Jefferies was on the phone at the moment. The aide put his hand over the receiver.

"He's here," Jefferies said.

"Where?" Kennedy asked sourly.

"Right outside. In the hallway." Then he examined the mayor. "You're having doubts again?"

How trim the man was, Kennedy thought, how perfect he looks in his imported suit, with his shaved head, his silk tie frothing at his throat.

"Sure, I'm having doubts."

The mayor looked out of another window-one that didn't offer a view of the Capitol. He could see, in the distance, the logotype tower of Georgetown University. His undergrad alma mater. He and Claire lived not far away from the school. He remembered, last fall, the two of them walking up the steep stairway the priest had tumbled down at the end of The Exorcist.

The priest who sacrificed himself to save the girl possessed by a demon.

Now, there's an omen for you.

He nodded. "All right. Go talk to him."

Jefferies nodded. "We'll get through this, Jerry. We will." Into the phone he said, "I'll be right out."

In the hallway outside of the mayor's office a handsome man in a double-breasted suit leaned against the wall, right below a portrait of some nineteenth-century politician.

Wendell Jefferies walked up to him.

"Hey, Wendy."

"Slade." This was the mans first name, his real given name, believe it or not, and-with the surname Phillips-you'd think his parents had foreseen that their handsome infant would one day be a handsome anchorman for a TV station. Which in fact he was.

"Got the story on the scanner. Dude lit up two agents, did a Phantom of the Opera on a dozen poor bastards in the bleachers."

On the air, with an earplug wire curling down his razor-cleaned neck, Phillips talked differently. In public he talked differently. With white people he talked differently. But Jefferies was black and Slade wanted him to think he talked the talk.

Phillips continued. "Capped one, I think."

Jefferies didn't point out to the newscaster that in gangsta slang the verb "cap" meant "shoot to death" not "chandelier to death."

"Nearly got the perp but he booked."

"That's what I heard," Jefferies said.

"So the man's gonna rub our uglies and make us feel better?" This was a reference to Kennedy's impending press conference.

Jefferies had no patience today to coddle the likes of Slade Phillips. He didn't smile. "Here it is. This quote dude's gonna keep going. Nobody knows how dangerous he is."

"How dangerous is-"

Jefferies waved him quiet. "This is as bad as it gets."

"I know that."

"Everybody's going to be looking at him."

Him. Uppercase H. Jerry Kennedy. Phillips would understand this.

"Sure."

"So, we need some help," Jefferies said, lowering his voice to a pitch that resonated with the sound of money changing hands.

"Help."

"We can go twenty-five on this one."

"Twenty-five."

"You bargaining?" Jefferies asked.

"No, no. Just… that's a lot. What do you want me to do?"

"I want him-"

"Kennedy."

Jefferies sighed. "Yes. Him. To get through this like he's a hero. I mean, the hero. People're dead and more people're probably gonna die. Get the focus on him for visiting vics and standing up to terrorists and, I don't know, coming up with some brilliant shit about catching the killer. And get the focus off him for fuckups."

"Off-?"

"The mayor," Jefferies said. "Kennedys not the one-"

"No, he's not the one running the case." Phillips cleared his baritone voice. "Is that what you were going to say?"

"Right," Jefferies said. "If there's any glitch make sure he wasn't informed and that he did his best to make it right."

"Well, it's a Feebie operation, right? So we can just-"

"That's true, Slade, but we don't want to go blaming the Bureau for anything." Jefferies talked to his ten-year-old nephew in just this tone.

"We don't? Why exactly?"

"We just don't."

Finally Slade Phillips, used to reading off of a TelePrompTer, had had it. "I don't get it, Wendy. What do you want me to do?"

"I want you to play real reporter for a change."

"Sure." Phillips began writing copy in his head. "So Kennedy's taking a tough line. He's marshaling cops. He's going to the hospitals… Wait, without his wife?"

"With his wife," Jefferies said patiently.

Phillips nodded toward the press room. "But wait-they were saying… I mean, the guy from the Post said Kennedy didn't visit anybody. They were going to op-ed him on it."

"No, no, he went to the families who wanted to remain anonymous. He's been doing it all day."

"Oh, he has?"

It was amazing what $25,000 could buy you, Jefferies thought.

Phillips added, "That was good of him. Real good."

"Don't overdo it," Jefferies warned.

"But what do I do for footage? I mean, if the story's about him at the hospitals-"

Jefferies snapped, "Just show the same five seconds of tape over and over again like you guys always do. I don't know, show the ambulances at the Metro."

"Oh. Okay. What about the fuckup part? Why do you think there'll be a fuckup?"

"Because in situations like this there's always a fuckup."

"Okay, you need somebody to point a finger at. But not-"

"Not the feds."

"Okay," said Phillips. "But how exactly do I do that?"

"That's your job. Remember: who, what, when, where and why. You're the reporter." He took Phillips by the arm and escorted him down the hallway. "Go report."

14

"You don't look good, Agent Lukas."

"It's been a long day."

Gary Moss was in his late forties, heavy-set, with short-cropped kinky hair, just going gray. His skin was very dark. He was sitting on the bed in Facility Two, a small apartment on the first floor of headquarters. There were several apartments here, used mostly for visiting heads of law enforcement agencies and for the nights when the director or dep director needed to camp out during major operations. He was here because it was felt that, given what Moss knew and whom he was soon to testify against, he would survive about two hours if placed in District custody.

The place wasn't bad. Government issue but with a comfortable double bed, desk, armchair, tables, kitchen, TV with basic cable.

"Where's that young detective? I like him."

"Hardy? He's in the war room."

"He's mad at you."

"Why? Because I won't let him play cop?"

"Yeah."

"He's not investigative."

"Sure, he told me. He's a desk driver, like me. But he just wants a piece of the action. You're trying to catch that killer, aren't you? I saw about it on TV. That's why y'all've forgotten me."

"Nobody's forgotten about you, Mr. Moss."

The man gave a smile but he looked forlorn and she felt bad for him. But Lukas wasn't here just to hold hands. Witnesses who feel unhappy or unsafe sometimes forget things they've heard and seen. The U.S. attorney running the kickback case wanted to make sure that Gary Moss was a very happy witness.

"How're you doing?"

"Miss my family. Miss my girls. Doesn't seem right, when they've had a scare like that, I can't be there for them. My wife'll do a good job. But a man should be with his family, times like this."

Lukas remembered the girls, twins, about five. Tiny plastic toys braided into their hair. Moss's wife was a thin woman, with the wary eyes you'd expect of someone who's just watched her house burn to the ground.

"You celebrating?" She nodded at a gold, pointed hat with HAPPY NEW YEAR printed on it. There were a couple of noisemakers too.

Moss picked up the hat. "Somebody brought it for me. I said what was I supposed to do with half of Madonna's bra?"

Lukas laughed. Then she grew serious. "I just called on a secure phone. Your family's fine. There're plenty of people looking out for them."

"I never thought anybody'd try to hurt me or my family. I mean, when I was deciding to go to the FBI about what I found at the company. I figured I'd get fired but I never thought people'd want to hurt us."

He hadn't? The kickback scheme involved tens of millions of dollars and would probably result in the indictment of dozens of company employees and city officials. Lukas was surprised that Moss had survived long enough to make it into federal protection.

"What were you going to be doing tonight?" she asked. "With your family."

"Go to the Mall and watch the fireworks. Let the girls stay up late. They'd like that more than the show. How 'bout you, Agent Lukas? What'd you have planned?"

Nothing. She had nothing planned. She hadn't told anybody this. Lukas thought about several of her friends-a woman cop out in Fairfax, a firefighter in Burke, several neighbors, a man she'd met at a wine tasting, someone she'd met in dog class where she'd tried futilely to train Jean Luc. She was more or less close with all of these people and a few others. Some she gossiped with, some she'd shared plenty of wine with. One of the men she slept with occasionally. They'd all asked her to New Year's Eve parties. She'd told them all that she was going to a big party in Maryland. But it was a lie. She wanted to spend the last night of the year alone. And she didn't want anybody to know this-largely because she couldn't have explained why. But for some reason she looked at Gary Moss, a brave man, a man trapped in the firestorm of Washington, D.C., politics and she told him the truth. "I was going to be spending it with my pooch and a movie."

He didn't offer any cloying sympathy. Instead he said brightly, "Oh, you have a dog?"

"Sure do. Black Lab. She's pretty as a fashion model but board-certified stupid."

"How long you had her?"

"Two years. Got her on Thanksgiving."

Moss said, "I got my girls a mutt last year. Pound puppy. We thought we'd lost her in the firebombing but she got out. Had the good sense to leave us behind and just take off, got away from the flames. What movie were you gonna watch?"

"Don't know for sure. Some chick flick, probably. Something good and sappy that'd make me cry."

"Didn't think FBI agents were allowed to cry."

"Only off duty. What we're going to do, Mr. Moss, is keep you here until Monday then you'll be moved to a safe house run by the U.S. Marshals."

"Ha. Tommy Lee Jones. The Fugitive. Wasn't that a good movie?"

"I didn't see it."

"Rent it sometime."

"Maybe I will. You'll be fine, Gary. You're in the safest place you could possibly be. Nobody can get to you here."

"Long as those cleaning men stop scaring the shit out of me." He laughed.

He was trying to be upbeat. But Lukas could see the man's fear-it was as if it pulsed though the prominent veins on his bony forehead. Fear for himself, fear for his family.

"Well get some good dinner brought in for you."

"A beer maybe?" he asked.

"You want a six-pack?"

"Hell, yes."

"Name your brand."

"Well, Sam Adams." Then he asked uncertainly, "That in the budget?"

"Provided I get one of them."

"Ill keep it nice 'n' cold for you. You come back and get it after you catch that crazy guy."

He toyed with the hat. For a moment she thought he might put it on but must have realized that the gesture would look pathetic. He tossed it onto the bed.

"Ill be back later," she told him.

"Where you going?"

"To look at some maps."

"Maps. Hey, good luck to you, Agent Lukas."

She walked through the door. Neither wished the other a happy New Year.

Outside, in the cool air, Parker, Cage and Lukas walked along the dimly lit sidewalk on the way to the Topographic Archives, six blocks from headquarters.

Washington, D.C., is a city of occasional beauty and some architectural brilliance. But at dusk in winter it becomes a murky place. The budget Christmas decorations did nothing to brighten the gray street. Parker Kincaid glanced up at the sky. It was overcast. He remembered that snow was predicted and that the Whos would want to go sledding tomorrow.

They'd trim the bushes in the backyard, as he'd promised Robby, and then drive out west, toward the Massanutten Mountains, with their sleds and a thermos of hot chocolate.

Lukas interrupted these thoughts by asking him, "How'd you get into the document business?"

"Thomas Jefferson," Parker answered.

"How's that?"

"I was going to be a historian. I wanted to specialize in Jeffersonian history. That's why I went to UVA."

"He designed the school, didn't he?"

"The original campus he did. I'd spend days in the archives there and at the Library of Congress in the District. One day I was in Charlottesville, in the library, looking over this letter Jefferson had written to his daughter, Martha. It was about slavery. Jefferson had slaves but he didn't believe in slavery. But this letter, written just before he died, was adamantly proslavery and recanted his earlier opinions. He said that slavery was one of the economic cornerstones of the country and should be retained. It seemed strange to me-and strange that he'd write it to his daughter. He loved her dearly but their correspondence was mostly domestic. The more I read it the more I began to think the handwriting didn't look quite right. I bought a cheap magnifying glass and compared the writing with a known."

"And it was a fake?"

"Right. I took it to a local document examiner and he analyzed it. Caused quite a stir-somebody slipping a forgery into the Jefferson archives, especially one like that. I got written up in the Post."

"Who'd done it?" Lukas asked.

"Nobody knows. It was from the sixties-we could tell that because of the absorption of the ink. The archivists think that the forger was a right-winger who'd planted the letter to take some of the wind out of the civil rights movement. Anyway, from then on I was hooked."

Parker gave Lukas his curriculum vitae. He had an M.S. in forensics from George Washington University. And he was certified by the American Board of Forensic Document Examiners in Houston. He was also in the American Society of Questioned Document Examiners, the National Association of Document Examiners and the World Association of Document Examiners.

"I did free-lance work for a while but then I heard that the Bureau was looking for agent-examiners. Went to Quantico and the rest is history."

Lukas asked, "What appealed to you about Jefferson?"

Parker didn't even consider this. He responded, "He was a hero."

"We don't see many of them nowadays," Cage said.

"Oh, people aren't any different now than they ever were," Parker countered. "There've never been many heroes. But Jefferson was."

"Because he was a renaissance man?" Lukas asked.

"Because of his character, I think. His wife died in childbirth. Just about destroyed him. But he rose above it. He took over raising his daughters. He put the same amount of effort into deciding what kind of dress to buy Mary as he did in planning an irrigation system for the farm or interpreting the Constitution. I've read almost all of his letters. Nothing was too much of a challenge for him."

Lukas paused, looking at a window display of some chic clothes, a black dress. He noted she wasn't admiring it; her eyes took in the outfit the way she'd looked at the extortion note, analytically.

Parker was surprised something like this would distract her. But Cage said, "Margaret here's one hell of a, whatta you call it, designer. Makes her own clothes. She's great."

"Cage," she chided absently.

"You know anybody who does that?"

No, Parker didn't. He said nothing.

She turned away from the window and they continued down Pennsylvania Avenue, the stately Capitol ahead of them.

Lukas asked him, "And you really turned down an SAC?"

"Yep."

A faint laugh of disbelief.

Parker remembered the day that Cage and the then deputy director came into the office to ask him if he'd leave the document department and run a field office. As Cage had observed on his front porch earlier that day Parker was not only good at analyzing documents; he was good at catching bad guys too.

An agent or an assistant U.S. attorney would come to him with a simple question about a document. Maybe a suspected forgery, maybe a possible link between a perp and a crime scene. And sitting in his bonsai-tree-filled office in the lab Parker would relentlessly cross-examine the unfortunate law enforcer, who only wanted some technical information on the document. But that wasn't enough for Parker.

Where'd you find the letter? No, no-which drawer? Does the unsub have a wife? Where does she live? Did he have a dog? What were the circumstances of his last arrest?

As one question led to another Parker Kincaid was soon talking less about whether the handwriting matched a signature in a DMV application and more about where the unsub would logically be hiding out. And he was nearly always right.

But he'd had to turn the offer down. A special agent in charge works long hours and, at that time in his life, he needed to be home. For the children's sake.

But none of this he wanted to share with Lukas.

He wondered if she'd ask more but she didn't. She pulled out her cell phone and made a call.

Parker was curious about the Topographic Archives they were headed for. He asked, "What exactly-?"

"Quiet," Lukas whispered abruptly.

"What-?" he began.

"Be quiet. Keep walking. And don't turn around."

He realized that she wasn't talking on the phone at all but merely pretending to.

Cage asked her, "You got him too? I put him twenty yards back."

"Closer to thirty. No visible weapons. And he's skittish. Erratic movement."

Parker realized that that had been why Lukas had been chatting him up and why she'd stopped and gazed at the dresses in the window-she'd suspected somebody'd been following them and she wanted the person lulled into thinking she didn't know. He too glanced back into a window they passed and saw a man trotting across the street-to the same sidewalk they were on.

Parker now noticed that both Cage and Lukas were holding their pistols. He hadn't seen them draw the weapons. They were black automatics and on the sights were three tiny green dots that glowed. His service pistol had been a clunky revolver and what he remembered most about it was hating the regulation that required him to be armed at all times; the thought of having a loaded gun anywhere near the Whos disturbed him terribly.

Lukas muttered something to Cage and he nodded. To Parker she said, "Act natural."

Oh, sure…

"You think it's the Digger?" he asked.

"Could be," she said.

"Plan?" Cage whispered.

"Take him," she responded calmly.

Lord, Parker thought. The Digger was behind them! With his machine gun. He'd been staking out headquarters and had learned they were primary on the case. We nearly got him at the theater; maybe the unsub had told him to take out the investigators if it looked as if they were getting close.

"You take the street," Lukas said to Cage. "Kincaid, you cover the alley. In case there's backup."

"I-"

"Shhh."

"On three. One… two…"

"But I-" Parker began.

"Three."

They separated fast. Cage stepped into the street, stopping cars.

Lukas turned and sprinted in the direction they'd just come from. "Federal agent!" she shouted. "You, you there! Freeze, hands on top of your head!"

Parker glanced into the alley and wondered what he was supposed to do if he saw an accomplice there. He pulled out his cell phone, punched in 911 and put his thumb over the SEND button. It was all he could think of.

He looked behind him, at Lukas. Beyond her, the man stopped abruptly then turned and took off in a dead run down the middle of the street.

"Hold it!"

Lukas was racing along the sidewalk. The man veered to the right, disappeared into traffic. She tried to follow but a car turned the corner quickly; the driver didn't see her and nearly slammed into her. Lukas flung herself back onto the sidewalk, inches from the fender.

When she started after him again the man was gone. Parker saw her pull her phone out and speak into it. A moment later three unmarked cars, with red lights flashing on the dashboard, skidded into the intersection. She conferred with one of the drivers and the cars sped off.

At a slow jog she returned to Parker. Cage joined them. Lukas lifted her hands in exasperation.

Cage shrugged. "You get a look at him?"

"Nope," Parker answered.

"I didn't either," Lukas muttered. Then she glanced at Parker's hands. "Where's your weapon?"

"My what?"

"You were covering the alley. We had a shake going down and you didn't draw your weapon?"

"Well, I don't have one. That's what I was trying to tell you."

"You're not armed?" she asked incredulously.

"I'm civilian," Parker said. "Why would I have a gun?"

Lukas gave a disdainful look to Cage, who said, "Assumed he had one."

She bent down and tugged up her jeans cuff. Pulled a small automatic out of an ankle holster. She handed it to Parker.

He shook his head. "No thanks."

"Take it," she insisted.

Parker glanced at the gun in her hand. "I'm not comfortable with guns. I was Sci-Crime, not tactical. Anyway, my service weapon was a revolver, not an automatic. Last time I fired one was on the range in Quantico. Six, seven years ago."

"All you do is point and pull," she said, angry now. "The safety's off. First shot is double action, second single. So adjust your aim accordingly." Parker wondered where her sudden anger came from.

He didn't take the weapon.

She gave a sigh, which left her mouth as a long tendril of steam in the cooling temperature. She said nothing but pushed the gun further out toward him.

He decided the battle wasn't worth it. He reached out and took the gun. Glanced at it briefly and slipped it in his pocket. Lukas turned, without saying anything, and they continued up the street. Cage gave him a dubious look, forewent a shrug, and made a call on his cell phone.

As they walked along the street Parker felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket-a huge pull, much greater than the dozen ounces the gun actually weighed. Yet it gave him no comfort to have this weapon at his side. He wondered why. A moment passed before he realized. Not because the hot piece of metal reminded him that the Digger might have been behind them a moment ago, intent on killing him and Cage and Lukas. Or even because it reminded him of the Boatman four years ago, reminded him of his son's terror.

No, it was because the gun seemed to have some kind of dark power, like the magic ring in one of J. R. R. Tolkien's books, a power that had possessed him and was carrying him further and further away from his children with every passing minute. A power that could separate him from them forever.

The Digger is in an alley.

He's standing still, looking around him.

There are no agents or police around here. Nobody chasing him or looking for him. Nobody to shoot him. Or capture him and send him back to Connecticut, where he likes the forests but he hates the barred rooms they make him sit in for hours and hours and do nothing, where people steal his soup and change the channels of the TV away from commercials about cars and puppies so they can watch sports.

Pamela said to him, "You're fat. You're out of shape. Why don't you take up running? Go buy some Nike…" Click. "… some Nike jogging shoes. Go do that. Go to the mall. I've got things to do."

The Digger now thinks he sees Pamela for a minute. He squints. No, no, it's merely a blank wall in the alley.

Do you promise to love, honor, cherish and… click… and obey?

He was jogging with Pamela one day, a fall day, through red leaves and yellow leaves. He tried to keep up, sweating, his chest hurting the way his brain hurt after the bullet bounced around in his cranium. Pamela ran ahead and he ended up jogging by himself. Ended up walking home alone.

The Digger is worried about what went wrong at the theater. He's worried about all the police and agents and worried that the man who tells him things will be unhappy because he didn't kill as many people as he was supposed to.

The Digger hears sirens in the distance. Many sirens.

He starts through the alley. Lets the shopping bag swing in his arm. The Uzi is inside the bag and it's heavy again because he reloaded it.

Ahead of him, in the alley, he sees some motion. He pauses. There's a young boy He's black and skinny. He's about ten years old. The boy is listening to someone talk to him. Someone the Digger can't see.

Suddenly the Digger hears Pamelas voice: "Have… have… have… children with you? Have… have… have… your baby?"

Then the memory of the song goes away because there's a tearing sound and the gun and the suppressor fall through the bottom of the shopping bag. He bends down to pick up the gun and as he does he looks up.

Hmmm.

This isn't funny.

The young boy and an older man, dressed in dirty clothes, the man who was talking to the boy, are walking up the alley. The man is bending the boy's arm upward. The boy is crying and his nose is bloody.

They are both looking at the Digger. The boy seems to be relieved. He pulls away from the man and rubs his shoulder. The man grabs the boy's arm again.

The man looks down at the Uzi. He gives the Digger a crooked smile. Says, "Whatever you doing, ain' my business. I'ma just go on my way."

"Leggo my arm," the boy whines.

"Shuddup." The man draws back his fist. The boy cowers.

The Digger shoots the man twice in the chest. He falls backward. The boy jumps back at the loud sound. The suppressor is still on the ground.

The Digger aims the gun at the boy, who is staring at the body.

"If somebody sees your face…"

The Digger starts to pull the trigger.

"Have… have… have… children with you?" The words rattle around in his skull.

The boy is still staring down at the body of the man who was beating him. The Digger starts to pull the trigger again. Then he lowers the gun. The boy turns and looks at the Digger. He whispers, "Yo, you cap him! Man, just like nothin', you cap him."

The boy is staring right at the Digger's face. Ten feet away.

Words rattling around. Kill him he's seen your face kill him, killhimkillhimkillhim.

And things like that.

The Digger says, "Hmmm." He stoops and picks up the spent shells and then the suppressor and wraps it and the gun in the torn puppy bag and walks out of the alley, leaving the boy beside a garbage pile, staring at the body.

Go back to the motel and… click… go back to the motel and wait.

He'll have some soup and wait. He'll listen to his messages. See if the man who tells him things has called to tell him he can stop shooting.

When I hear you coming through the door…

Some soup would be nice now.

I know I love you all the more.

He made soup for Pamela. He was making soup for Pamela the night she… click. It was Christmas night. Twelve twenty-five. One two two five. A night like this. Cold. Colored lights everywhere.

Here's a gold cross for you, he said. And this box is for me?… A present? Oh, it's a coat! Thank you thank you thank you…

The Digger is standing at the stoplight, waiting for the green.

Suddenly he feels something touch his hand.

The Digger isn't alarmed. The Digger never gets alarmed.

He grips the gun in the torn puppy bag. He turns slowly.

The boy stands beside him, holding the Diggers left hand tightly. He's looking straight ahead.

Love you love you love you…

The light changes.

The Digger doesn't move.

All the more…

"Yo, we can walk," says the boy, now staring at the puppies on the torn bag. The Digger sees the green figure in the WALK/DON'T WALK light.

The green figure seems happy.

Whatever happy is.

Holding hands, the two of them walk across the street.

15

The District of Columbia Topographic and Geologic Archives is housed in a musty old building near Seventh and E Streets.

It also, not coincidentally, is located near a little-known Secret Service facility and the National Security Council's Special Operations Office.

There's no reference to the Archives in any tourist literature and visitors who notice the sign on the front of the building and walk inside are politely told by one of the three armed guards at the front desk that the facility is not open to the public and that there are no exhibitions here but thank you for your interest. Have a nice day. Goodbye.

Cage, Parker and Lukas-on her ever-present phone-waited in the lobby. She shut off the unit. "Nothing. He just disappeared."

"No witnesses?"

"A couple of drivers saw a man in dark clothes running. They think he was white. They think he was medium build. But nobody'd swear to it. Jesus."

Cage looked around. "How'd you get us in here, Lukas? I couldn't get us in here."

Now it was Lukas's turn to shrug cryptically. It seemed that New Year's Eve was the day to call in markers and incur debts.

They were joined by Tobe Geller, who entered the facility at a slow trot. He nodded a greeting to the other members of the team. Then their fingerprints were checked by an Identi-Scanner and their weapons secured in a lock box. They were all directed to an elevator. They stepped into the car. Parker expected to rise but this elevator, it seemed, went no higher than the first floor. Lukas hit the button marked B7 and the car descended for what seemed like forever.

They stepped out into the Archives proper. Which turned out not to be stacks of dusty, old books and maps-which Parker, Certified Document Examiner, had been looking forward to checking out-but a huge room filled with high-tech desks, telephones, microphones and banks of twenty-four-inch NEC computer screens. Even tonight, New Years Eve, two dozen men and women sat in front of these screens, on which glowed elaborate maps, typing on keyboards and speaking into stalk mikes.

Where the hell am I? Parker wondered, looking around and concluding that the issue of access to the Archives had nothing to do with finding a civil servant with a key to the front door.

"What is this?" he asked Geller.

The young agent glanced tactfully at Cage, who nodded his okay to tell all. Geller replied, "Topographic and cartographic database of two hundred square miles around the District. Ground zeros the White House though they don't like it when you say that. In case of natural disaster, terrorist attack, nuclear threat-whatever-this's where they figure out if it's best for the government to sit tight or get out of town and if so how they ought to do it. What routes are safest, how many congressmen'll survive, how many senators. That sort of thing. Like the war room in Fail Safe. Way cool, hmm?"

"What're we doing here?"

"You wanted maps," he said, looking excitedly at all the equipment the way only a born hacker would do, "and this's the most comprehensive physical database of any area in the world. Lincoln Rhyme was saying we needed to know the area. Well, we may not. But they do." He nodded affectionately toward a long row of six-foot-high computer towers.

Lukas said, "They're letting us use the facility, under protest, provided we don't take any printouts or downloads with us."

"We get searched on the way out," Geller said.

"How come you know so much about it?" Parker asked Geller.

"Oh, I sort of helped set it up."

Lukas added, "Oh, by the way, Parker, you've never heard of this place."

"Not a problem," said Parker, eyeing the two machine-gun-armed guards by the elevator door.

Lukas said, "Now, what're the materials Rhyme found?"

Parker looked at the notes he'd taken. He read, "Granite, sulfur, soot, ash, clay and brick."

Tobe Geller sat down at a monitor, turned it on, typed madly on a keyboard. An image of the Washington, D.C., area came on the screen. The resolution was astonishing. It looked three-dimensional. Parker thought, absurdly, how Robby and Stephie would love to play Mario Bros. on a monitor like this.

Lukas said to Parker, "Where do we start?"

"One clue at a time," he responded. "Then start narrowing down possibilities. The way you solve puzzles."

Three hawks have been killing a farmer's chickens…

"First, granite, brick dust and clay," he mused. "They point to demolition sites, construction…" He turned to Geller. "Would they be on this database?"

"No," the young agent responded. "But we can track down somebody at Building Permits."

"Do it," Parker ordered.

Geller made the call on a landline-no cell phone would work this far underground and, besides, like all secure facilities in Washington, Parker supposed, the walls were shielded.

"What next?" Parker wondered. "Sulfur and soot… That tells us it's industrial. Tobe, can you highlight areas based on air pollutants?"

"Sure. There's an EPA file." He added cheerfully, "Its to calculate penetration levels of nerve gas and bioagent weapons."

More buttons.

The business of the District of Columbia is government, not industry, and the commercial neighborhoods were devoted mostly to product warehousing and distribution. But on the screen portions of the city began to be highlighted-in, appropriately, pollution-tinted yellow. The majority were in the Southeast part of town.

"He's probably living near there," Lukas reminded. "What industrial sites are adjacent to areas of houses and apartments?"

Geller continued to type, cross-referencing the industrial neighborhoods with residential. This eliminated some but not many of the manufacturing areas; most of them were ringed with residential pockets.

"Still too many," Lukas said.

"Let's add another clue. The ash," Parker said. "Basically burnt animal flesh."

Geller's hands paused above the keyboard. He mused, "What could that be?"

Lukas shook her head. Then asked, "Are there any meat-processing plants in any of those areas?"

This was a good suggestion, one Parker himself had been about to make.

Geller responded, "None listed."

"Restaurants?" Cage suggested.

"Probably too many of them," Parker said.

"Hundreds," Geller confirmed.

"Where else would there be burnt meat?" Lukas asked no one in particular.

Puzzles…

"Veterinarians," Parker wondered. "Do they dispose of the remains of animals?"

"Probably," Cage said.

Geller typed then read the screen. "There are dozens. All over the place."

Then Lukas looked up at Parker and he saw that the chill from earlier was gone, replaced by something else. It might have been excitement. Her blue eyes were stones still, perhaps, but now they were radiant gems. She said, "How about human remains?"

"A crematorium!" Parker said. "Yes! And the polished granite-that could be from tombstones. Let's look for a cemetery."

Cage gazed at the map. He pointed. "Arlington?"

The National Cemetery took up a huge area on the west side of the Potomac. The area around it must be saturated with granite dust.

But Parker pointed out: "Its not near any industrial sites. Nothing with significant pollution."

Then Lukas saw it. "There!" She pointed a finger, tipped with an unpolished but perfectly filed nail. "Gravesend."

Tobe Geller highlighted the area on the map, enlarged it.

Gravesend…

The neighborhood was a part of the District of Columbia's Southeast quadrant. Parker had a vague knowledge of the place. It was a decrepit crescent of tenements, factories and vacant lots around Memorial Cemetery, which had been a slave graveyard dating back to the early 1800s. Parker pointed to another part of Gravesend. "Metro stop right here. The unsub could've taken the train directly to Judiciary Square-City Hall. There's a bus route nearby too."

Lukas considered it. "I know the neighborhood-I've collared perps there. There's a lot of demolition and construction going on. It's anonymous too. Nobody asks any questions about anybody else. And a lot of people pay cash for rent without raising suspicion. It'd be the perfect place for a safe house."

A young technician near them took a phone call and handed the receiver to Tobe Geller. As the agent listened to the caller his young face broke into an enthusiastic smile. "Good," he said into the phone. "Get it to the document lab ASAP." He hung up. "Get this… Somebody got a videotape from the Mason Theater shooting."

"A tape of the Digger?" Cage asked enthusiastically.

"They don't know what it's of exactly. Sounds like the quality's pretty bad. I want to start the analysis right away. Are you going to Gravesend?"

"Yep," Parker said. Looked at his watch. Two and a half hours until the next attack.

"MCP?" Geller asked Lukas.

"Yeah. Order one."

Parker recalled: a mobile command post. A camper outfitted with high-tech communications and surveillance equipment. He'd worked in one several times, analyzing documents at crime scenes.

"Ill have a video data analyzer installed," Geller said, "and get going on the tape. Where will you be?"

Lukas and Parker said simultaneously, "There." They found they were pointing at the same vacant lot near the cemetery.

"Not many apartments around there," Cage pointed out.

Parker said, "But it's close to the stores and restaurants."

Lukas glanced at him and nodded. "We should narrow down the search by canvassing those places first. They'll have the most contact with locals. Tobe, pick up C. P. and Hardy and bring 'em with you in the command post."

The agent hesitated, a dubious look on his face. "Hardy? We really need him?"

Parker had been wondering the same thing. Hardy seemed like a nice enough guy, a pretty good cop. But he was way out of his depth in this case and that meant he, or somebody else, might get hurt.

But Lukas said, "If it's not him the District'll just put somebody else on board. At least we can control Hardy. He doesn't seem to mind sitting in the back seat."

"Politics suck," Cage muttered.

As Geller pulled on his jacket Lukas said, "And that shrink? The guy from Georgetown? If he's not at headquarters yet have somebody drive him over to Gravesend."

"Will do." Geller ran for the elevator, where he was, as he'd predicted, thoroughly searched.

Lukas stared at the map of Gravesend. "It's so damn big."

"I've got another thought," Parker said. He was thinking back to what he'd learned about the unsub from the note. He said, "We think he probably spent time on a computer, remember?"

"Right," Lukas said.

"Let's get a list of everybody in Gravesend who subscribes to an online service."

Cage protested, "There could be thousands of'em."

But Lukas pointed out, "No, I doubt it. It's one of the poorest parts of the city. Computers'd be the last thing people'd spend money on."

Cage said, "True. Okay, I'll have Com-Tech get us a list."

"There'll still be a lot of territory to cover," Lukas muttered.

"I've got a few other ideas," Parker said. And walked to the elevator door, where he too was diligently searched like a suspected shoplifter by the humorless guards.

Kennedy paced in a slow circle around the dark green carpet in his office.

Jefferies was on his cell phone. He clicked it off.

"Slade's got a few ideas but nothing's going to happen fast."

Kennedy gestured toward the radio. "Well, they were damn fast to report that I've been sitting on my butt while the city's getting the hell shot out of it. They were fast to report that I didn't lift the hiring freeze at the police department so we'd have more money for Project 2000. Jesus, the media's making it sound like I'm an accomplice."

Kennedy had just been to three hospitals to see the people wounded in the Diggers attacks and their families. But none of them seemed to care about his visit. All anyone asked was why wasn't he doing more to catch the killer?

"Why aren't you at FBI headquarters?" one woman had demanded tearfully.

Because they haven't fucking invited me, Kennedy thought furiously. Though his answer was a gentle "I'm letting the experts do their job."

"But they're not doing their job. And you're not either."

When he left her bedside Kennedy didn't offer to shake hands; her right arm had been so badly shot up it had been amputated.

"Slade'll come up with something," Jefferies now said.

"Too little, too late. Now, that man is too damn pretty," Kennedy spat out. "Pretty people… I never trust them." Then he heard the paranoid words and he laughed. Jefferies did too. The mayor asked, "Am I turning into a crank, Wendy?"

"Yessir. It's my duty to tell you your brains've gone to grits."

The mayor sat down in his chair. He looked at his desk calendar. If it weren't for the Digger he would have been attending four parties tonight. One at the French embassy, one at his alma mater, Georgetown University, one at the city workers' union hall, and-the most important, where he'd actually ring in the New Year-the African-American Teachers' Association in the heart of Southeast. This was the group that was lobbying hard to get his Project 2000 accepted among rank-and-file teachers throughout the District. He and Claire needed to be there tonight, as a show of support. And yet it would be impossible for him to attend any parties, do any celebrating, with that madman stalking the citizens of his city.

A wave of anger passed through him and he grabbed the phone.

"What," Jefferies asked cautiously, "are you going to do?"

"Something," he answered. "I'm going to goddamn do something." He began dialing a number from a card on his Rolodex.

"What?" asked Jefferies, now even more uneasy.

But by then the call to FBI headquarters had been connected and Kennedy didn't respond to his aide.

He was patched through several locations. A mans voice answered. "Yes."

"This's Mayor Jerry Kennedy. Who'm I speaking to?"

A pause. Kennedy, who often made his own phone calls, was used to the silence that greeted his salutation. "Special Agent C. P. Ardell. What can I do for you?"

"That Agent Lukas, she's still in charge of the METSHOOT operation?"

"That's right."

"Can I speak to her?"

"She's not here, sir, no. I can patch you through to her cell phone."

"That's all right. I'm actually trying to reach the District liaison officer, Detective Hardy."

Agent Ardell said, "Hold on. He's right here."

A moment later a voice said tentatively, "Hello?"

"This Hardy?"

"Len Hardy, that's right."

"This's your mayor again."

"Oh. Well. How are you, sir?" Caution now mixed with the youth in the man's voice.

"Can you update me on the case? I haven't heard a word from Agents Lukas or Cage. You have any idea where the Digger's going to hit next?"

Another pause. "Nosir."

The pause was too long. Hardy was lying about something.

"No idea at all?"

"They aren't exactly keeping me in the loop."

"Well, your job's liaison, right?"

"My orders are just to write a report on the operation. Agent Lukas said she'd contact Chief Williams directly."

"A report? That's ass covering. Listen to me. I have a lot of confidence in the FBI. They do this shoot-'em-up stuff all the time. But how close are they to stopping this killer? Bottom line. No bullshit."

Hardy sounded uneasy. "They have a few leads. They think they know the neighborhood where the unsub's safe house is-the guy who was killed by the truck."

"Where?"

Another pause. He pictured poor Hardy twisting in the wind, feds on one side, his boss on the other. Well, too fucking bad.

"I'm not supposed to give out tactical information to anyone, sir. I'm sorry."

"It's my city that's under attack and my citizens who're being slaughtered. I want answers."

More silence. Kennedy looked up at Wendell Jefferies, who shook his head.

Kennedy forced his anger down. He tried to sound reasonable as he said, "Let me tell you what I have in mind. The whole point of this scheme was for those men to make money. It's not to kill."

"I think that's true, sir."

"If I can just have a chance to talk to the killer-at this safe house or where he's going to hit at eight-I think I can convince him to give up. I'll negotiate with him. I can do that."

Kennedy did believe this. Because one of his talents (in this respect like his namesake from the sixties) was his ability to persuade. Hell, he'd sweet-talked two dozen of the toughest presidents and CEOs in the District into accepting the tax that would fund Project 2000. He'd talked poor Gary Moss into naming names in the Board of Education scandal.

Twenty minutes with this killer-even staring down the barrel of that machine gun of his-would be enough. He'd work out some kind of arrangement.

"The way they're describing him," Hardy said, "I don't think he's the sort you can negotiate with."

"You let me be the judge of that, Detective. Now, where's his safe house?"

"I…"

"Tell me."

The line hummed. Still, the detective said nothing.

Kennedys voice lowered. "You don't owe the feds a thing, son. You know how they feel about you being on the task force. You're a step away from fetching coffee."

"That's wrong, sir. Agent Lukas's made me part of the team."

"Has she?"

"Pretty much."

"You don't feel like a third wheel? I'm asking that 'cause I feel like one. If Lanier had his way-you know Congressman Lanier?"

"Yessir."

"If he had his way my only job tonight'd be sitting in the reviewing stand on the Mall watching fireworks… You and me-the District of Columbia's our city. So, come on, son, where's that goddamn safe house?"

Kennedy watched Jefferies cross his fingers. Please… It would be perfect. I show up there, I try to talk the man into coming out with his hands up. Either he surrenders or they kill him. And either way, my credibility survives. Either way, I'm no longer the mayor who watched the murder of his city on CNN while he kicked back with a beer.

Kennedy heard voices from the other end of the line. Then Hardy was back. "I'm sorry, Mayor, I have to go. There're people here. I'm sure Agent Lukas will be in touch."

"Detective…"

The line went blank.

Gravesend.

The car carrying Parker and Cage bounded over gaping potholes and eased to a stop at a curb where trash and rubble spilled into the street. The burnt-out torso of a Toyota rested, ironically, against a fire hydrant.

They climbed out. Lukas had driven in her own car, a red Ford Explorer, and was already at the vacant lot that was the rendezvous point. She was standing with her hands on her trim hips, looking around.

The smells of urine and shit and burning wood and trash were very strong.

Parker's parents, who became world travelers after his father had retired from teaching history, had once found themselves in a slum in Ankara, Turkey. Parker still could remember the letter he'd received from his mother, who was an ardent correspondent. It was the last letter he'd received from them before they'd died. It was framed and up on the wall of his study downstairs, next to the Whos' wall of fame.

They're impoverished, the people here, and that, more than racial differences, more than culture, more than politics, more than religion, turns their hearts to stone.

He thought of her words now, as he looked over the desolation of the area.

Two black teenagers, who'd been leaning against a wall graffiti'd with gang colors, looked at the men and women arriving-obviously law enforcers-and walked away slowly, uneasiness and defiance on their faces.

Parker was troubled-though not by the danger; by the hugeness of the place. It was three or four square miles of slums and row houses and small factories and vacant lots. How could they possibly find the unsub's safe house in this much urban sprawl?

There were some riddles that Parker had never been able to figure out.

Three hawks…

Smoke wafted past him. It was from fires in the oil drums where the homeless men and women and the gangstas burned wood and trash for warmth. He saw more hulks of stripped cars. Across the street was a building that seemed deserted; the only clue to habitation was a bulb burning behind a red towel covering a broken window.

Just past the Metro stop, over a tall, decaying brick wall, the chimney of the crematorium rose into the night sky. There was no smoke rising from it but the sky above the muzzle rippled in the heat. Perhaps its fires always burned. Parker shivered. The sight reminded him of old-time pictures of-

"Hell," Lukas muttered. "It looks like hell."

Parker glanced at her.

Cage shrugged in agreement.

A car arrived. It was Jerry Baker, wearing a bulky windbreaker and body armor. Parker saw that, as befit a tactical agent, he was also wearing cowboy boots. Cage handed him the stack of computerized pictures of the unsub-the death mask portrait from the morgue. "We'll use these for the canvas. At the bottom? That's the only description we have of the Digger."

"Not much."

Another shrug.

More unmarked cars and vans began to pull up, their dashboard flashers reflecting in the bands of storefront windows. FBI government issue wheels. White-and-teal District police cars too, their light bars revolving. There were about twenty-five men and women in total, half of them federal agents, half uniformed cops. Baker motioned to them and they congregated around Lukas's truck. He distributed the printouts.

Lukas said to Parker, "Want to brief them?"

"Sure."

She called, "If you could listen to Agent Jefferson here."

It took a second before Parker recognized the reference to his stage name. He decided he would've been a failure at undercover work. He said, "The man in the picture you've got there was the perp responsible for the Metro and Mason Theater shootings. We think he was working out of a safe house somewhere here in Gravesend. Now, he's dead but his accomplice-the shooter-is still at large. So we need to find the safe house and find it fast."

"You have a name?" one of the District cops called.

"The unsub-the dead one-is a John Doe," Parker said, holding up the picture. "The shooter's got a nickname. The Digger. That's all. His description's on the bottom of the handout."

Parker continued. "You can narrow down the canvassing area some. The safe house is probably near a demolition or construction site and won't be far from the cemetery. He also recently bought some paper like this-" Parker held up the clear sleeves holding the extortion note and the envelope. "Now, the paper was sun-bleached so it's possible that he bought it in a store that displays their office supplies in or near a south-facing window. So hit every convenience store, drugstore, grocery store and newsstand that sells paper. Oh, and look for the type of pen he used too. It was an AWI black ballpoint. Probably cost thirty-nine or forty-nine cents."

That was all he could think of. With a nod he handed off to Lukas. She stepped in front of the agents. Looked over them, silent, until she had everyone's attention. "Now, listen up. Like Agent Jefferson said, the unsub's dead but the shooter sure as hell isn't. We don't know if he's in Gravesend and we don't know if he's living in the safe house. But I want everybody here to assume he's ten feet behind you and has a clear path to target. He's got no problem lighting up law enforcement personnel. So as you go through the neighborhood I want everyone to be looking for ambush positions. I want weapon hands free, I want jackets and coats unbuttoned, I want holster thongs unsnapped."

She paused for a moment. She had their complete attention, this thin woman with silver-blond hair.

"At eight o'clock-yep, that's right, just over two hours-our perp is going to find someplace that's filled with people and he's going to empty his weapon at them again. Now I do not want to work that crime scene and have to look into the eyes of someone who's just lost a parent or a child. I do not want to have to tell them I'm sorry but we couldn't find this beast before he killed again. That is not going to happen. I'm not going to let it. And you're not."

Parker found himself drawn into her words, delivered in a firm, even voice. He thought about the Band of Brothers speech from Shakespeare's Henry V, which had been Robby's introduction to theater. The boy had memorized the speech the day after they returned from Kennedy Center.

"All right," Lukas said. "Any questions?"

"Anything more on his armament?"

"He's been armed with a full-auto Uzi loaded with long clips and a suppressor. We have no further information."

"How green-lighted are we?" one agent asked.

"To light up the shooter?" Lukas replied. "Totally green-lighted. Anything else?" No one raised a hand. "Okay. We're on emergency frequency. I don't want any chatter. Don't report in that you haven't found anything. I don't care about that. You see the suspect, call for backup, clear your background and engage. Now go find me that safe house."

Parker himself felt oddly moved by these words. It had been years since he'd fired a weapon but he suddenly wanted a piece of the Digger himself.

Lukas directed teams of agents and officers to those parts of Gravesend she wanted them to canvas. Parker was impressed; she had a remarkable sense of the geography of this neighborhood. Some people, he reflected, are just natural-born cops.

Half of the agents started off on foot; the others climbed into their cars and sped away. Leaving Cage, Lukas and Parker standing on the curb. Cage made a call. He spoke for a moment. Hung up.

"Tobe's got an MCP. They're on their way. He's analyzing the tape from the theater. Oh, and that psychologist from Georgetown's on his way over here too."

Most of the streetlights were out-some shattered from bullets, it looked like. Pale green illumination lit the street from the fluorescent lights of the few stores that were open. Two agents were canvassing across the street. Cage looked around and saw two young men rubbing their hands over an oil drum in which a fire burned. Cage said, "I'll talk to them." He walked into the vacant lot. It seemed that they wanted to leave but figured that would look more suspicious. Their eyes locked onto the fire as he approached and they fell silent.

Lukas nodded toward a pizza parlor half a block away. "I'll take that," she said to Parker. "You want to wait here for Tobe and the shrink?"

"Sure."

Lukas started up the street, leaving Parker alone.

The temperature was continuing to fall. There was now a sharp edge to the air: that frostiness that he enjoyed so much in the autumn-evoking memories of driving the children to school while juggling mugs of hot chocolate, shopping for Thanksgiving dinner, picking pumpkins in Loudon County. But tonight he was aware only of the painful sting in his nostrils and on his ears and fingertips; the sensation was like a razor slash. He stuffed his hands in his pockets.

Maybe because most of the agents had left, the locals were returning to the streets. Two blocks away, a nondescript man in a dark coat stepped out of a bar and walked slowly up the street then stepped into the darkened alcove of a check-cashing outlet-to pee, Parker guessed.

A tall woman, or transvestite, obviously a hooker, walked out of the alley where she'd been waiting for the crowd to disburse.

Three young black men pushed out of an arcade and cracked open a bottle of Colt 45 malt liquor, laughing hard as they disappeared down an alley.

Parker turned away and happened to glance across the street.

He saw a thrift store. It was closed and at first he didn't pay much attention to the place. But then he noticed boxed sets of cheap stationery on shelves near the cash register. Could this be where the unsub had bought the paper and envelope for the note?

He stepped to the window of the store and gazed through the greasy glass, cupping his hands against the glare of the one nearby streetlight that still worked and trying to see the packages of paper. His hands shook in the chill. Beside him a rat nosed through a pile of trash. Parker Kincaid thought, This is crazy. I have no business being here.

But, still, he lifted his sleeve and, using the fleece cuff of his bomber jacket, wiped the grimy glass in front of him as carefully as a diligent window cleaner so that he'd have a better view of the merchandise inside.

16

"Maybe I seen him. Yeah, maybe."

Margaret Lukas felt her heart pump faster. She pushed the picture of the unsub closer and the counterman at the Gravesend pizza place-a chubby Latino in tomato-sauce-stained whites-continued to study it carefully.

"Take your time," she said. Please, she thought. Let's have a break here…

"Maybe. I no so sure. What it is, we get tons 'n' tons of people in here. You know?"

"Its very important," she said.

She'd remembered that the coroner had found steak in the belly of the unsub. There was no steak on the menu here. Still, it was the only twenty-four-hour restaurant on the street near the Metro stop and she figured that the unsub might have stopped in at some point in the past few weeks. Maybe he'd even planned the extortion scheme here-he might've sat under this sickly light at one of the chipped tables to draft the note as he looked around at the sad people eating greasy food and thought, arrogantly, how much smarter he was than they. How much richer he was about to be.

She laughed to herself. Maybe he'd been as smart and arrogant as she was. As much as Kincaid.

Three of them, all alike.

Three hawks on a roof. One's dead; that leaves two on the roof. You and me, Parker.

The clerk's brown eyes lifted, gazed into her blue ones. They dropped bashfully to the paper again. It seemed to be a personal defeat when he finally shook his head. "No, I no think so. Sorry. Hey, you want a slice? The double cheese, it's fresh. I just made it."

She shook her head. "Anybody else working here?"

"No, just me tonight. I got the holiday. You did too, looks like." He struggled for something to say. "You work many holidays?"

"Some," she said. "Thanks."

Lukas walked to the front door. She paused, looked outside.

The agents from the field office were canvassing across the street. Cage was talking to more gangstas in the vacant lot and Kincaid was ogling some thrift store as if the crown jewels were in the window.

The other agents were dispersed where she'd sent them. But had she been right? she wondered. Who knew? You can read all the books on investigative techniques ever written but the bottom line is improvisation. It was just like solving one of Kincaid's puzzles. You had to look beyond the formulas and rules.

In front of her, through the greasy windows, she could see the dilapidated streets of Gravesend fade into smoke and darkness. It seemed so large and impenetrable.

She wanted Tobe Geller here, she wanted the Georgetown psychologist, she wanted the list of on-line subscribers… Everything was taking too long! And there were far too few leads! Her hand balled into a fist, a nail pushing into her palm.

"Miss?" came the voice behind her. "Miss Agent? Here."

She turned. The anger dissipating like steam. The counterman was offering her a Styrofoam cup of coffee. In his other hand were two packets of sugar, a little plastic container of half-and-half and a stirrer.

The man had brushed his hair back with his hands and looked at her with a forlorn puppy gaze. He said simply, "It's getting colder out."

Touched by his oblique admiration, she smiled, took the cup and poured in one sugar.

"Hope you get some celebrating in tonight," he said.

"You too," she said. And pushed out of the door.

Walking down the cold streets of Gravesend.

She sipped the bad coffee, felt the hot steam waft around her mouth. It was getting colder.

Well, keep going, she thought. Get colder and colder. Today had been far too like autumn for her. Please… Snow like mad.

Scanning the street. The two agents from the field office were out of sight, probably on an adjacent block. Cage too had vanished. And Kincaid was still gazing into the store near the staging area.

Kincaid…

And what exactly was his story. Turning down a special-agent-in-charge slot? Lukas couldn't understand that-an SAC was the next destination on her roadmap to the dep director spot. And beyond. Still, even though she didn't comprehend his not wanting the position she respected him more for saying no than if he'd taken the job without wanting it.

What did explain the walls he'd put up around his life? She couldn't guess but she saw them clearly; Margaret Lukas knew walls. He reminded her of herself-or rather of her selves, plural. Jackie and Margaret both. Thinking of the changeling story she'd read years ago, she wondered what kind of books Parker read to his children. Dr. Seuss, of course-because of his nickname for them. And probably Pooh. And all the Disney spin-offs. She pictured him in that cozy suburban house-a house very similar to the one Jackie had lived in-sitting in the living room, a fire burning in the fireplace, reading to them as they lay sprawled at his side.

Lukas's eyes happened to fall on a young Latino couple walking down the sidewalk toward the staging area. The wife bundled in a black scarf, the husband in a thin jacket with a Texaco logo on the chest. He pushed a baby carriage, inside of which Lukas caught sight of a tiny infant, packed in swaddling, only its happy face visible. She thought instinctively about what kind of flannel she'd buy to sew the child a pair of pajamas.

Then the couple moved on.

Okay, Parker, you like puzzles, do you?

Well, here's one for you. The riddle of the wife and the mother.

How can you be a wife without a husband? How can you be a mother without a child?

It's a tricky one. But you're smart, you're arrogant, you're the third hawk. You can figure it out, Parker.

Lukas, alone on the nearly deserted street, leaned against a lamppost, curled her arm around it-her right arm, ignoring her own orders to keep shooting hands free. She gripped the metal hard, she gripped it desperately Struggled to keep from sobbing.

A wife without a husband, a mother without a child…

Give up, Parker?

I'm the answer to the riddle. Because I'm the wife of a man lying in the cold ground in Alexandria Cemetery. Because I'm the mother of a child lying beside him.

The riddle of the wife and mother…

Here's another: How can ice burn?

When an airplane drops from the sky into a field on a dark November morning, two days before Thanksgiving, six days before your birthday, a hot autumn day, and explodes into a million fragile bits of metal and plastic and rubber.

And flesh.

That's how ice can burn.

And that's how I became a changeling.

Oh, puzzles are easy when you know the answer, Parker.

So simple, so simple…

Hold on, she thought, letting go of the lamppost. Taking a deep breath. Locking away the urge to cry. Enough of that.

One thing Special Agent Lukas didn't tolerate was distraction. She had two rules she repeated endlessly to new recruits in the field office. The first was "You can never have too many deets." The second was "Focus."

And "focus" was what she now ordered herself to do.

Another breath. She looked around. Saw some motion in a vacant lot nearby-a young kid, wearing gang colors. He stood over an oil drum, waiting for some of his homeys. He had a teenagers attitude-which was a hell of a lot more dangerous than a thirty-year-old's, she knew. He gave her the eyeball.

Then up the street, a block away, she thought she saw a man in the alcove of a check-cashing store. She squinted. Was anybody there? Somebody hiding in the shadows?

No, there was no more motion. It must've been her imagination. Well, this's the place to get spooked.

Gravesend…

She tossed out the remains of the coffee and walked toward the teenager in the vacant lot to see if he knew anything about their mysterious unsub. Pulling the computer printout from her pocket, she wove easily around rusting auto parts and piles of trash-the same way Jackie Lukas used to maneuver through the perfume counters at Macy's on her way to a drop-dead sale in women's sportswear.

Parker stepped away from the thrift store, disappointed.

The stationery he'd seen inside wasn't the same as the extortion note or the envelope. He looked around the streets. He was shivering hard. He thought: Stephie's outgrown her down jacket. I'll have to get her a new one. And what about Robby? He had the fiberfill, the red one, but maybe Parker would get the boy a leather bomber jacket. He liked his fathers.

He shivered again and rocked on his feet.

Where the hell was that van? They needed the on-line service subscriber list. And the demolition and construction permit information. And the shrink. He wondered too what the tape of the shooting would show.

Parker looked around once more at the devastated streets. No Lukas, no Cage. He watched a young couple-they looked Hispanic-wheeling a baby carriage toward him. They were about thirty feet away. He thought about the times just after Robby was born when he and Joan would take after-dinner strolls like that.

Again his eye caught the man huddling in the check-cashing alcove. Absently wondered why he was still there. He decided to be useful and fished in his pocket for a picture of the unsub. He'd do some canvassing himself.

But something odd was happening…

The man looked up and, though Parker couldn't see clearly through the dim light and smoke from the oil drums, reached into his coat and pulled something out, something black, shiny.

Parker froze. It was the man who'd followed them near the Archives!

It was the Digger!

Parker reached into his pocket, for the gun.

But the gun wasn't there.

He remembered the pistol pressing into his hip as he sat in Cage's car and he'd adjusted it in his pocket. It must have fallen out into the front seat.

The man glanced at the couple, who were between him and Parker, and lifted what must have been the silenced Uzi.

"Get down!" Parker cried to the couple, who stopped walking and stared at him uncertainly "Down!"

The Digger turned toward him and lifted the gun. Parker tried to leap into the shadows of an alley. But he tripped over a pile of trash and fell heavily to the ground. His breath was knocked out of him and he lay on his side, gasping, unable to move, as the man walked steadily closer. Parker called to the couple once more but his voice came out as a breathy gasp.

Where was Cage? Parker couldn't see him. Or Lukas or any of the other agents.

"Cage!" he called but his voice was still merely a whisper.

The Digger approached the couple, only ten feet from him. They still didn't see him.

Parker tried to climb to his feet, waving desperately to the young man and woman to get down. The Digger moved forward, his round face an emotionless mask. One squeeze of the trigger and the couple and their baby would die instantly.

The killer aimed his gun.

"Get… down!" Parker rasped.

Then a woman's brash voice was shouting, "Freeze, federal agents! Drop the weapon or we'll shoot!"

The attacker turned, gave a choked cry as the couple spun around. The husband pushed his wife to the ground and shielded the baby carriage with his body.

"Drop it, drop it, drop it!" Lukas continued, screaming now, moving forward steadily, hand extended in front of her, drawing a perfect target on the man's large chest.

The Digger dropped the gun and his hands shot into the air.

Cage was running across the street, his own weapon in his hand.

"On your face!" Lukas shouted. "On your face!"

Her voice was so primitive, so raw, that Parker hardly recognized it.

The man dropped like a log.

Cage was speaking into his phone, summoning backup. Parker could see several other agents sprinting toward them. He climbed unsteadily to his feet.

Lukas was crouched on the ground, her gun pressed into the killer's ear.

"No, no, no," the man wailed. "No, please…"

She cuffed him, using only her left hand, the gun never wavering from its target.

"What the hell're-" he choked.

"Shut up!" Lukas snapped. She pushed her weapon harder into the man's head. Steam rose from the man's groin; he'd emptied his bladder in fear.

Parker held his side, struggling to fill his lungs.

Lukas, breathing deeply herself, backed away and holstered her weapon. She stepped into the street, eyes contracted and icy, glancing at Parker then at the suspect. She walked to the shaken couple and spoke to them for a few moments. Wrote their names in her notebook and sent them on their way. The father glanced uncertainly at Parker then ushered his wife down a side street, away from the staging area.

As Cage frisked the attacker one of the other agents walked over to the man's weapon and picked it up.

"Not a gun. It's a video camera."

"What?" Cage asked.

Parker frowned. It was a camera. It had broken in the fall to the concrete.

Cage stood. "He's clean." He flipped through the man's snakeskin wallet. "Andrew Sloan. Lives in Rockville."

One of the other agents pulled out his radio and called in a warrants request-federal, Maryland and Virginia.

"You can't-" Sloan began to protest.

Lukas took a step forward. "You keep your mouth shut until we tell you to answer!" she raged. "Understand?" Her anger was almost embarrassing. When he didn't answer she crouched and whispered in Sloan's ear, "You got me?"

"I got you," he responded in a numb voice.

Cage pulled one of Sloan's business cards from his wallet. Showed it to Lukas and Parker. It read NORTHEAST SECURITY CONSULTANTS. Cage added, "He's a private eye."

"No warrants," said the agent who'd called in the request.

Lukas nodded at Cage.

"Who's your client?" Cage asked.

"I don't have to answer."

"Yeah, Andy, you do have to answer," Cage said.

"My client's identity is confidential," Sloan recited.

Two more agents arrived. "Under control?" one asked.

"Yeah," Cage muttered. "Get him up."

They pulled him roughly into a sitting position. Left him on the curb. Sloan glanced down at the front of his pants. The wet spot didn't embarrass as much as infuriate him. "Asshole," he muttered to Cage. "I got a law degree. I know my rights. I wanta take a video of you beating off in the bushes, I can do it. I'm on a public street here and-"

Lukas came up behind him, bent down. "Who… is… your… client?"

But Parker leaned forward, motioned Cage out of the streetlight so he could get a better look. "Wait. I know him."

"You do?" Lukas asked.

"Yeah. I saw him at the Starbucks near me. And I think someplace else too in the last couple of days."

Cage kicked the man gently in the leg. "You been following my friend here? Huh? You been doing that?"

Oh, no, Parker thought, finally understanding. Oh, Jesus… He said, "His clients Joan Marel."

"Who?"

"My ex-wife."

There was no reaction in Sloan's face.

Parker was in despair. He closed his eyes. Shit, shit, shit… Until tonight every foot of tape the private eye might've shot would have shown Parker to be a diligent father. Going to PTO meetings, chauffeuring twenty miles a day to school and sports practices, cooking, shopping, cleaning, wiping tears and working on Suzuki piano with the Whos.

But tonight… of all nights. Sloan was an eyewitness to Parkers being right smack in the middle of one of the city's most dangerous police actions. In harm's way, his children lied to and entrusted to a baby-sitter on a holiday…

Mr. Kincaid, as you know, the judicial system will bend over backwards to place the children with their mother. In this case, however, we are inclined to place them with you, subject to the caveat that you can assure the court there will be no possibility that your career will in any way jeopardize the well-being of Robby and Stephanie…

"That right?" Cage asked Sloan ominously.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah. She hired me."

Cage saw Parker's expression and asked, "This a problem?"

"Yeah, it's a problem."

It's the end of the world…

Cage surveyed the private eye. "The custody fight thing?" he asked Parker.

"Yes."

In disgust Lukas said, "Get him outa here. Give him back his camera."

"Its broke," Sloan snapped. "You're going to pay for it. Oh, you bet you are."

Cage undid the cuffs. Sloan stood unsteadily "I think I sprained my thumb. It hurts like a bitch."

"I'm sorry about that, Andy," Cage said. "And how're your wrists?"

"They hurt. I gotta tell you, I'm going to have to file a complaint. She put 'em on way too tight. I've cuffed people. You don't have to make 'em that tight."

What the hell was he going to do, Parker was thinking. He stared at the ground, hands shoved into his pockets.

"Andy," Cage asked, "were you the one following us on Ninth Street tonight? An hour ago?"

"Maybe I was. But I wasn't breaking any laws there either. Look it up, Officer. In public I can do whatever I want."

Cage walked up to Lukas. He whispered to her. She grimaced, looked at her watch then nodded reluctantly.

"Look, Mr. Sloan," Parker said. "Is there anyway we could talk about this?"

"Talk? What talk? I give my client the tape, I tell her what I saw. That's all there is to it. I may sue you too."

"Andy, here's your wallet." Cage walked up to him and handed it back. Then the tall agent lowered his head and whispered into Sloan's ear. Sloan started to speak but Cage held up a finger. Sloan continued to listen. Two minutes later Cage stopped talking. He looked into Sloan's eyes. Sloan asked one question. Cage shook his head, smiling.

The agent walked back to Lukas and Parker, Sloan right behind.

Cage said, "Now, Andy, tell Mr. Kincaid who your employer is."

Parker, still lost in his hopelessness, listened with half an ear.

"Northeast Security Consultants," the private eye said, hands together in front of him, as if he were still cuffed.

"And what's your position with them?"

"I'm a security specialist."

Cage asked, "And who's the client you're working for tonight."

"Mrs. Joan Marel," he said matter-of-factly.

"What did she hire you for?" Cage asked like a cross-examining attorney.

"To follow her husband. I mean, her ex-husband. And to get evidence against him for a child custody action."

"And have you seen anything that Mrs. Marel could use to her advantage in that action?"

"No, I haven't."

This got Parker's attention.

The man continued, "In fact Mr. Kincaid seems to me to be a…" Sloan's voice faltered.

Cage prompted, "Flawless."

"Flawless father…" Sloan hesitated. He said, "You know, I'd probably say 'perfect.' I'd feel more comfortable saying that."

"All right," Cage said. "You can say 'perfect.'"

"A perfect father. And I've never witnessed anything… uhm." He thought for a moment. "I've never witnessed him do anything that would jeopardize his children or their happiness."

"And you didn't get any videotape of him doing anything dangerous?"

"Nosir. I didn't take any tape at all. I didn't see anything that might be helpful to my client by way of evidence."

"What are you going to go back and tell your client? About tonight, I mean?"

Sloan said, "I'm going to tell her the truth."

"Which is?"

"That Mr. Kincaid went to visit a friend in the hospital."

"What hospital?" Cage asked Sloan.

"What hospital?" Sloan asked Parker.

"Fair Oaks."

"Yeah," Sloan said, "that's where I went."

"You'll work on that?" Cage asked. "Your delivery was a little rough."

"Yeah. I'll work on it. I'll get it down real good."

"Okay, now get the hell out of here."

Sloan ejected the tape from what was left of the video camera. He handed it to Cage, who tossed it into a burning oil drum.

The private eye disappeared, looking back uneasily as if to see which of the agents was going to shoot him in the back.

"How the hell'd you do that?" Parker muttered.

Cage offered a shrug Parker didn't recognize. He understood it to mean "Don't ask."

Cage the miracle worker…

"Thanks," Parker said. "You don't know what would've happened if-"

"Kincaid, where the hell was your weapon?" Lukas's abrupt voice interrupted him. He turned to her.

"I thought I had it. It must be in the car."

"Don't you remember procedure? Every time you deploy at a scene you check to make sure your weapon is with you and functioning. You learned that the first week in the Academy."

But Lukas's face was again contracted with cold fury. In a gruff whisper: "What do you think we're doing here?"

Parker began, "I keep telling you I'm not tactical… I don't think in terms of weapons."

"'Think in terms'?" she spat out cynically. "Look, Kincaid, you've been living life on Sesame Street for the last few years. You can go back to that world right now and God bless and thanks for the help. But if you're staying on board you'll carry your weapon and you'll pull your share of the load. You may be used to baby-sitting but we're not. Now, you going or staying?"

Cage was motionless. Not even the faintest shrug moved his shoulders.

"I'm staying."

"Okay."

Lukas looked neither satisfied with his acquiescence nor apologetic for her outburst. She said, "Now get that weapon and let's get back to work. We don't have much time."

17

The large Winnebago camper rocked along the streets of Gravesend.

It was the MCP. The mobile command post. And it was plastered with bumper stickers: NORTH CAROLINA AKC DOG SHOW. WARNING: I BRAKE FOR BLUE RIBBONS. BRIARDS ARE OUR BUSINESS.

He wondered whether the stickers were intentional-to fool perps-or if the Bureau had bought the van secondhand from a real breeder.

The camper eased up to the curb and Lukas motioned Cage and Parker inside. One whiff of the air told him that it had belonged to dog owners. Still, it was warm inside-with the cold and the scare from the private eye Parker was shivering hard and he was glad to be out of the chill.

Sitting at a computer console was Tobe Geller. He was staring at a video monitor. The image on the screen was broken into a thousand square pixels, an abstract mosaic. He tapped buttons, spun the trackball on his computer, typed in commands.

Detective Len Hardy sat nearby and C. P. Ardell, in his size 44 jeans, was wedged into one of the booths against the wall. The psychologist from Georgetown University hadn't yet arrived.

"The video from the Mason Theater shooting," Geller said, not looking away from the screen.

"Anything helpful?" Lukas asked.

"Nuthin' much," the young agent muttered. "Not yet anyway. Here's what it looks like full screen, real time."

He hit some buttons and the image shrank, became discernible. It was a dim view of the interior of the theater, very jumbled and blurry. People were running and diving for cover.

"When the Digger started shooting," C. P. explained, "some tourist in the audience turned on his camcorder."

Geller typed more and the image grew slightly clearer. Then he froze the tape.

"There?" Cage asked, touching the screen. "That's him?"

"Yep," Geller said. He started the tape again, running it in slow motion.

Parker could see virtually nothing distinct. The scene was dark to begin with and the camera had bobbed around when the videotaper had huddled for cover. As the frames flipped past, in slow motion, faint light from the gun blossomed in the middle of the smudge that Geller had identified as the Digger.

Hardy said, "It's almost scarier, not exactly seeing what's going on."

Parker silently agreed with him. Lukas, leaning forward, stared intently at the screen.

Geller continued. "Now, this ones about the clearest." The frame froze. The image zoomed in but as the pixel squares grew larger they lost all definition. Soon the scene was just a hodgepodge of light and dark squares. "I've been trying to enhance it to see his face. I'm ninety percent sure he's white. But that's about all we can say."

Parker had seen something. "Back out again," he said. "Slowly."

As Geller pushed buttons the squares grew smaller, began to coalesce.

"Stop," Parker ordered.

The image was of the Digger from the chest up.

"Look at that."

"At what?" Lukas asked.

"I don't see anything," Hardy said, squinting.

Parker tapped the screen. In the center of what was probably the Diggers chest were some bright pixels, surrounded by slightly darker ones in a V-shape, which were in turn surrounded by very dark ones.

"It's just a reflection," Lukas muttered, distracted and impatient. She looked at her watch.

Parker persisted. "But what's the light reflecting off of?"

They stared for a moment. Then: "Ha," Geller said, his handsome face breaking into a grin. "Think I've got it."

"What, Tobe?" Parker asked.

"Aren't you a good Catholic, Parker?"

"Not me." He was a lapsed Presbyterian who found the theology of Star Wars more palatable than most religions.

"I went to a Jesuit school," Hardy said. "If that helps."

But Geller wasn't interested in anyone's spiritual history. He pushed himself across the tiny space in his wheeled office chair. "Let's try this." He opened a drawer and took out a small digital camera, handed it to Parker. He plugged it into a computer. He then bent a paper clip into the shape of an X, unhooked two buttons of his shirt and held the clip against his chest. "Shoot me," he said. "Just push that button."

Parker did and handed the camera back. Geller turned to the computer, typed and a dark image of the young agent came up on the screen. "Handsome fella," said Geller. He hit more buttons, keeping the bright silver of the paperclip in the center of the screen as he zoomed in. The image disappeared into exactly the same arrangement of bright squares as in the picture of the Digger.

"Only difference," Geller pointed out, "is that his has a yellowish tint. So our boys wearing a gold crucifix."

"Add that to our description of the shooter, send it out," Lukas ordered. "And tell them we've confirmed he's white." Cage radioed Jerry Baker with the information and told him to pass the word to the canvassers.

The Diggers only identifying characteristic-that he wore a cross.

Was he religious?

Was it a good-luck charm?

Or had he ripped it from the body of one of his victims as a trophy?

Cage's phone rang. He listened. Hung up. Shrugged, discouraged. "My contact at the FAA. They've called all the fixed-base operators in the area about chopper rentals. Man fitting the description of the unsub contracted to charter a helicopter from a company in Clinton, Maryland. Gave his name as Gilbert Jones."

"Jones?" C. P. asked sarcastically. "I mean, shit, that's original."

Cage continued. "He paid cash. The pilot was supposed to pick up some cargo in Fairfax then there'd be another hour leg of the flight but Jones didn't tell him where. Was supposed to call instructions in to the pilot at ten-thirty this morning. But he never did. The pilot checks out okay."

"Did Jones give him an address or phone number?"

Cage's shrug said, He did but they were both fake.

The door opened and a man in an FBI windbreaker nodded to Lukas.

"Hi, Steve," she said.

"Agent Lukas. I've got Dr. Evans here. From Georgetown."

The psychologist.

The man stepped inside. "Evening," he said. "I'm John Evans." He was shorter than his calm, deep voice suggested. His dark hair was shot with gray and he had a trim beard. Parker liked him immediately. He wore a smile as easy as his old chinos and gray cardigan sweater and he carried a heavy, battered backpack instead of a briefcase. His eyes were very quick and he examined everyone in the camper carefully before he was halfway through the door.

"Appreciate your coming down," Lukas said to him. "This is Agent Cage and Agent Geller. Agent Ardell's over there. Detective Hardy. My name's Lukas." She glanced at Parker, who nodded his okay to mention his real name. "And this's Parker Kincaid-he's a document expert used to work for the Bureau." She added, "He's here confidentially and we'd appreciate your not mentioning his involvement."

"I understand," Evans said. "I do a lot of anonymous work too. I was going to put up a Web site but I figured I'd get too many cranks." He sat down. "I heard about the incident at the Mason Theater. What exactly's going on?"

Cage ran through a summary of the shootings, the death of the unsub, the extortion note and the killer.

Evans looked at the death mask picture of the unsub. "So you're trying to figure out where his partner's going to hit next."

"Exactly," Lukas said. "All we need is fifteen minutes and we can get a tactical team on the premises to take him out. But we need that fifteen minutes. We've got to get a leg up here."

Parker asked, "You've heard the name before? 'The Digger'?"

"I have a pretty big criminal data archive. When I heard about the case I did a search. There was a man in California in the fifties. Murdered four migrants. His nickname was the Gravedigger. He was killed in prison a few months after he went inside. Obispo Men's Colony. Wasn't part of a cult or anything like that. Now, some members of an acting troupe called the Diggers in San Francisco in the sixties were regularly arrested for petty larceny-basically just shoplifting. Nothing serious. Then there was a motorcycle gang in Scottsdale called the Gravediggers. They were involved in a number of felonious assaults. But they disbanded in the mid-seventies and I don't have any record of any of the individual bikers."

Lukas said to Geller, "Call Scottsdale P. D. and see if there's anything on them."

The agent made the call.

Evans's eyes carefully studied the equipment in the van, pausing on the morgue photo of the unsub. He looked up. "Now, the only reference to the Digger, singular, is a man in England in the 1930s. John Barnstall. He was a nobleman-a viscount or something like that. Lived in Devon. He claimed he had a family but he seemed to live alone. Turned out Barnstall'd killed his wife and children and two or three local farmers. He'd dug a series of tunnels under his mansion and kept the bodies down there. He embalmed them."

"Gross," Hardy muttered.

"So the press called him the Digger-because of the tunnels. A London gang in the seventies took the name from him but they were strictly small change."

"Any chance," Lukas asked, "that either the unsub or the Digger himself had heard about Barnstall? Used him as a sort of role model."

"I can't really tell at this point. I need more information. We'd have to identify patterns in their behavior."

Patterns, Parker reflected. Discovering consistent patterns in questioned documents was the only way to detect forgeries: the angle of the slant in constructing letters, penstroke starts and lifts, the shape of the descenders on lower case y, g and q, the degree of tremble. You could never judge a forgery in isolation. He told Evans, "One thing you should know-this might not be the first time the Digger and his accomplice have done this."

Lukas said, "A free-lance writer contacted us. He's convinced the shootings're part of a pattern of similar crimes."

"Where?"

"Boston, the New York suburbs and Philadelphia. Always the same-larceny or extortion were the main crimes with tactical murders to support them."

Evans asked, "He was after money?"

"Right," Parker said. "Well, jewelry once."

"Then it doesn't sound like there's any connection with Barnstall. His diagnosis was probably paranoid schizophrenia, not generalized antisocial behavior-like your perpetrator here. But I'd like to know more about the crimes in the other cities. And find out some more about his MO today."

Hardy said, "What we're doing here is trying to find his safe house. It could have a lot of information in it."

Lukas shook her head, disappointed. "I was hoping the name Digger meant something. I thought it might be the key."

Evans said, "Oh, it still might-if we get more data. The good news is that the name isn't more common. If the accomplice-the dead man-came up with the name Digger, that tells us something about him. If it was the Digger's nickname for himself then that tells us something about him. See, naming-designating-is very important in arriving at psych profiling."

He looked at Parker. "For instance, when you and I describe ourselves as 'consultants' there're some psychological implications to that. We're saying that we're willing to abdicate some control over the situation in exchange for a certain insulation from responsibility and risk."

That's one hundred percent right, Parker thought.

"You know," Evans said, "I'd be happy to hang around for a while." He laughed again, nodded at the morgue picture. "I've never analyzed a corpse before. It'll be quite a challenge."

"We could sure use the help," Lukas said. "I'd appreciate it."

Evans opened his backpack and took out a very large metal thermos. He opened the lid and poured black coffee into the lid cup. "I'm addicted," he said. Then he smiled. "Something a psychologist shouldn't admit, I suppose. Anybody want some?"

They all declined and Evans put the thermos away. The doctor pulled out his cell phone and called his wife to let her know he'd be working late.

Which reminded Parker of the Whos and he took out his own phone and called home.

"Hello?" Mrs. Cavanaugh's grandmotherly voice asked when she answered the phone.

"It's me," Parker said. "How's the fort?"

"They're driving me into bankruptcy. And all this Star Wars money. I can't figure out what it is. They're keeping me confused on purpose." Her laugh included the children, who would be nearby.

"How's Robby doing?" Parker asked. "Is he still upset?"

Her voice lowered. "He got sort of moody a few times but Stephie and I pulled him out of it. They'd love for you to be home by midnight."

"I'm trying. Has Joan called?"

"No." Mrs. Cavanaugh laughed. "And funny thing, Parker… But if she were to call and I happened to see her name on the caller ID, I might be too busy to answer. And she might think you were all at a movie or Ruby Tuesday for the salad bar. How would you feel about that?"

"I'd feel really good about that, Mrs. Cavanaugh."

"I thought you might. That caller ID is a great invention, isn't it?"

"Wish I had the patent," he told her. "I'll call later."

They hung up.

Cage had overheard. He asked, "Your boy? He okay?"

Parker sighed. "He's fine. Just having some bad memories from… you know, a few years ago."

Evans lifted an eyebrow and Parker said to him, "When I was working for the Bureau a suspect broke into our house." He noticed Lukas was listening too.

"Your boy saw him?" Evans asked.

Parker said, "It was Robby's window the perp tried to break into."

"Jesus," C. P. muttered. "I hate bad stuff when it happens to kids. I fucking hate that."

"PTSD?" Lukas asked.

Posttraumatic stress disorder. Parker had been worried that the boy would suffer from the condition and had taken him to a specialist. The doctor, though, had reassured him that because Robby had been very young and hadn't actually been injured by the Boatman he probably wasn't suffering from PTSD.

Parker explained this and added, "But the incident happened just before Christmas. So this time of year he has more memories than otherwise. I mean, he's come through it fine. But…"

Evans said, "But you'd've given anything for it not to have happened."

"Exactly," Parker said softly, looking at Lukas's troubled face and wondering why she was familiar with the disorder.

The therapist asked, "He's all right, though. Tonight?"

"He's fine. Just got a little spooked earlier."

"I've got kids of my own," Evans said. He looked at Lukas, "You have children?"

"No," she said. "I'm not married."

Evans said to her, "It's as if you lose a part of your mind when you have children. They steal it and you never get it back. You're always worried that they're upset, they're lost, they're sad. Sometimes I'm amazed that parents can function at all."

"Is that right?" she asked, distracted once more.

Evans returned to the note and there was a long moment of silence. Geller typed on his keyboard. Cage bent over a map. Lukas toyed with a strand of her blond hair. The gesture would have been coy and appealing except for her stony eyes. She was someplace else.

Geller sat up slightly as his screen flashed. "Report back from Scottsdale…" He read the screen. "Okay, okay… P. D. knew about the gang, the Gravediggers, but they have no contact with anybody who was in it. Most of'em are retired. Family men now."

Yet another dead end, Parker thought.

Evans noticed another sheet of paper and pulled it toward him. The Major Crimes Bulletin-about Gary Moss and the firebombing of his house.

"He's the witness, right?" Evans asked. "In that school construction scandal."

Lukas nodded.

Evans shook his head as he read. "The killers didn't care if they murdered his children too… Terrible." He glanced at Lukas. "Hope they're being well looked after," the doctor said.

"Moss is in protective custody at headquarters and his family's out of state," Cage told him.

"Killing children," the psychologist muttered and pushed the memo away.

Then the case began to move. Parker remembered this from his law enforcement days. Hours and hours-sometimes days-of waiting; then all at once the leads begin to pay off. A sheet of paper flowed out of the fax machine. Hardy read it. "It's from Building Permits. Demolition and construction sites in Gravesend."

Geller called up a map of the area on his large monitor and highlighted the sites in red as Hardy called them out. There were a dozen of them.

Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the locations. He reported back that he was disbursing the teams there.

A few minutes later a voice crackled through the speaker in the command post. It was Bakers. "New Years Leader Two to New Years Leader One."

"Go ahead," Lukas said.

"One of my S &S teams found a convenience store. Mockingbird and Seventeenth."

Tobe Geller immediately highlighted the intersection on the map.

Please, Parker was thinking. Please…

"They're selling paper and pens like the kind you were describing. And the display faced the window. Some of the packs of paper're sun-bleached."

"Yes!" Parker whispered.

The team leaned forward, gazing at the map on Geller's screen.

"Jerry," Parker said, not bothering with the code names that the tactical agents were so fond of, "one of the demolition sites we told you about-it's two blocks east of the store. On Mockingbird. Get the canvassers going in that direction."

"Roger. New Year's Leader Two. Out."

Then another call came in. Lukas took it. Listened. "Tell him." She handed the phone to Tobe Geller.

Geller listened, nodding. "Great. Send it here-on MCP Fours priority fax line. You have the number? Good." He hung up and said, "That was Com-Tech again. They've got the ISP list for Gravesend."

"The what?" Cage asked.

"Subscribers to Internet service providers," Geller answered.

The fax phone rang and another sheet fed out. Parker glanced at it, discouraged. There were more on-line subscribers in Gravesend than he'd anticipated-about fifty of them.

"Call out the addresses," Geller said. "I'll type them in." Hardy did. Geller was lightning fast on the keyboard and as quickly as the detective could recite the addresses a red dot appeared on the screen.

In two minutes they were all highlighted. Parker saw that his concern had been unfounded. There were only four subscribers within a quarter-mile radius of the convenience store and the demolition site.

Lukas called Jerry Baker and gave him the addresses. "Concentrate on those four. We'll meet you at the convenience store. That'll be our new staging area."

"Roger. Out."

"Let's go," Lukas called to the driver of the MCP, a young agent.

"Wait," Geller called. "Go through the vacant lot there." He tapped the screen. "On foot. You'll get there faster than in cars. We'll drive over and meet you."

Hardy pulled his jacket on. But Lukas shook her head. "Sorry, Len… What we talked about before? I want you to stay in the MCP."

The young officer lifted his hands, looked at Cage and Parker. "I want to do something."

"Len, this could be a tactical situation. We need negotiators and shooters."

"He's not a shooter," Hardy said, nodding at Parker.

"He's forensic. He'll be on the crime scene team."

"So I'm just sitting here, twiddling my thumbs. Is that it?"

"I'm sorry. That's the way it's got to be."

"Whatever." Pulled his jacket off and sat down.

"Thank you," Lukas said. "C. P., you stay here too. Keep an eye on the fort."

Meaning, Parker guessed, make sure Hardy doesn't do anything stupid. The big agent got the message and nodded.

Lukas pushed open the door of the camper. Cage stepped outside. Parker pulled on his bomber jacket and followed the agent. As he climbed outside Lukas started to ask, "You have-?"

"It's in my pocket," he answered shortly, slapping the pistol to make sure, and caught up with Cage, who was moving through the smoky vacant lot at a slow trot.

Henry Czisman took a tiny sip of his beer.

He was certainly no stranger to liquor but he wanted at this particular moment to be as sober as possible. But a man in a bar in Gravesend on New Year's Eve had better be drinking or else incur the suspicion of everybody in the place.

The big man had nursed the Budweiser for a half hour.

Joe Higgins' was the name of the bar, Czisman noted. According to my training as a journalist, Czisman thought with irritation, this is wrong. Only plural nouns take just the s apostrophe to form the possessive. The name of the place should be Joe Higgins's.

Another sip of beer.

The door opened and Czisman saw several agents walk inside. He'd been expecting someone to come in here for the canvass and he'd been very concerned that it might be Lukas or Cage or that consultant, who would recognize him and wonder why he was dogging them. But these men he'd never seen before.

The wiry old man beside Czisman continued. "So then I go, 'The block's cracked. What'm I gonna do with a cracked block? Tell me what am I gonna do?' And he ain' have no answer for that. Gee willikers. The fuck he think I was gonna do, not see it?"

Czisman glanced at the scrawny guy, who was wearing torn gray pants and a dark T-shirt. December 31 and he didn't have a coat. Did he live nearby? Upstairs. The man was drinking whiskey that smelled like antifreeze.

"No answer, hm?" Czisman asked, eyes on the agents, studying them.

"No. And I tell him I'ma fuck him up he don't gimme a new block. You know?"

He'd bought the black guy a drink because it would look less suspicious to see a black guy and a white guy with their heads down over a beer and a slimy whiskey in a bar like Joe Higgins', with or without the correct possessive case, rather than just a white guy by himself.

And when you buy somebody a drink you have to let them talk to you.

The agents were showing a piece of paper-probably the picture of the Digger's dead accomplice-to a table of three local crones, painted like Harlem whores.

Czisman looked past them to the Winnebago parked across the street. Czisman had been staking out FBI headquarters on Ninth Street when he'd seen the three agents hurry outside, along with a dozen others. Well, they wouldn't let him go for a ride-along-so he'd arranged for his own. Thank God there'd been a motorcade of ten or so cars and he'd just followed them-through the red lights, driving fast, flashing his brights, which is what you're supposed to do as a cop when you're in pursuit but don't have a dashboard flasher. They'd parked in a cluster near the bar and, after a briefing, had fanned out to canvass for information. Czisman had parked up the street and had slipped into the bar. His digital camera was in his pocket and he'd taken a few shots of the agents and cops being briefed. Then there was nothing to do but sit back and wait. He wondered how close they were to finding-what had he called it?-the Digger's lair.

"Hey," said the black guy, only now noticing the agents. "Who they? Cops?"

"We're about to find out."

A moment later one of them came up to the bar. "Evening. We're federal agents." The ID was properly flashed. "I wonder if either of you've seen this man around here?"

Czisman looked at the photo of the dead man he'd seen in FBI headquarters. He said, "No."

The black guy said, "He looks dead. He dead?"

The agent asked, "You haven't seen anyone who might resemble him?"

"No sir."

Czisman shook his head.

"There's somebody else we're looking for too. White male, thirties or forties. Wearing a dark coat."

Ah, the Digger, thought Henry Czisman. Odd to hear somebody he'd come to know so well described from such a distant perspective. He said, "That could be a lot of people around here."

"Yessir. The only identifying characteristic we know about him is that he wears a gold crucifix. And that he's probably armed. He might have been talking about guns, bragging about them."

The Digger wouldn't ever do that, Czisman thought. But he didn't correct them and said merely, "Sorry."

"Sorry," echoed the whiskey drinker.

"If you see him could you please call this number?" The agent handed them both cards.

"You bet."

"You bet."

When the agents left, Czisman's drinking buddy said, "What's that all about?"

"Wonder."

"Something's always going down 'round here. Drugs. Bet it's drugs. Anyway, so I gotta truck with a busted block. Wait. I tell you 'bout my truck?"

"You started to."

"I'ma tell you 'bout this truck."

Suddenly Czisman looked at the man beside him carefully and felt that same tug of curiosity that'd driven him to journalism years ago. The desire to know people. Not to exploit them, not to use them, not to expose them. But to understand and explain them.

Who was this man? Where did he live? What were his dreams? What sort of courageous things had he done? Did he have a family? What did he like to eat? Was he a closet musician or painter?

Was it better, was it more just, for him to live out his paltry life? Or was it better for him to die now, quickly, before the pain-before the sorrow-sucked him down like an undertow?

But then Czisman caught a glimpse of the Winnebago door opening and several men hurrying outside. That woman-Agent Lukas-stepped out a moment later.

They were running.

Czisman tossed money down on the bar and stood.

"Hey, you don' wanna hear 'bout my truck?"

Without a word the big man stepped quickly to the door, pushed outside and started after the agents as they jogged through the decimated lots of Gravesend.

18

By the time the team met up with Jerry Baker two of his agents had found the safe house.

It turned out to be a shabby duplex two doors from an old building that was being torn down-one of the construction sites they'd found. Clay and brick dust were everywhere.

Baker said, "Showed a couple across the street the unsub's picture. They've seen him three or four times over the past few weeks. Always looked down, walked fast. Never stopped or said anything to anybody."

Two dozen agents and officers were deployed around the building.

"Which apartment was his?" Lukas asked.

"Bottom one. Seems to be empty. We've cleared the top floor."

"You talk to the owner? Got a name?" Parker asked.

"Management company says the tenant is Gilbert Jones," an agent called.

Hell… The fake name again.

The agent continued: "And the Social Security number was issued to somebody who died five years ago. The unsub signed up for the on-line service-name of Gilbert Jones again-with a credit card in that name but its one of those credit-risk cards. You put money in a bank to cover it and it's only good as long as there's money there. Bank records show that this is his address. Priors were all fake."

Baker asked, "Entry now?"

Cage looked at Lukas. "Be my guest."

Baker conferred with Tobe Geller, who was carefully monitoring the screen on his laptop. Several sensors were trained on the downstairs apartment.

"Cold as a fish," Tobe reported. "Infrareds aren't picking up anything and the only sounds I'm registering are air in the radiator and the refrigerator compressor. Ten to one it's clean but you can screen body heat if you really want to. And some bad guys can be very, very quiet."

Lukas added, "Remember-the Digger packs his own silencers so he knows what he's doing."

Baker nodded, then pulled on his flak jacket and helmet and called five other tactical agents over to him. "Dynamic entry. We'll cut the lights and move in through the front door and the rear bedroom window simultaneously. You're green-lighted to neutralize if there's any threat risk at all. I'm primary through the door. Questions?"

There were none. And the agents moved quickly into position. The only noise they made was the faint jingling of their equipment.

Parker held back, watching Margaret Lukas, in profile, staring intently at the front door. She turned suddenly and caught him watching her. Returned a cool look.

Hell with her, Parker thought. He was angry at the dressing-down she'd given him about the gun. It'd been completely unnecessary, he thought.

Then the lights went out in the duplex and there was a loud bang as the agents blew in the front door with 12-gauge Shok-Lok rounds. Parker watched the beams from the flashlights, hooked to the ends of their machine guns, illuminate the inside of the apartment.

He expected to hear shouting at any minute: Freeze, get down, federal agents…! But there was only silence. A few minutes later Jerry Baker walked outside, pulling his helmet off. "Clean."

The lights went back on.

"We're just checking for antipersonnel devices. Give us a few minutes."

Finally an agent called out the front door, "Premises secure."

As Parker ran forward he prayed a secular prayer: Please let us find something-some trace evidence, a fingerprint, a note describing the site of the next attack. Or at the very least something that gives us a hint where the unsub lived so we can search public records to find a devils teardrop above an i or a j… Let us finish this hard, hard work and get back home to our families.

Cage went in first, followed by Parker and Lukas. The two of them walked side by side. In silence.

The apartment was cold. The lights were glaring. It was a depressing place, painted with pale green enamel. The floor was brown but much of the paint had flaked away. The four rooms were mostly empty. In the living room Parker could see a computer on a stand, a desk, a musty armchair shedding its stuffing, several tables. But to his dismay he could see no notes, scraps of paper or other documents.

"We got clothes," an agent called from the bedroom.

"Check the labels," Lukas ordered.

A moment later: "Are none."

"Hell," she spat out.

Parker glanced at the living room window and wondered about the unsub's dietary habits. Cooling in the half-open window were four or five large jugs of Mott's apple juice and a battered cast-iron skillet filled with apples and oranges.

Cage pointed to them. "Maybe the bastard was constipated. Hope it was real painful."

Parker laughed.

Lukas called Tobe Geller and asked him to come check out the computer and any files and e-mail the unsub had saved on the hard drive.

Geller arrived a few minutes later. He sat down at the desk and ran his hand through his curly hair, examining the unit carefully. Then he looked up, around the room. "Place stinks," he said. "Why can't we get some upscale perps for a change?… What is that?"

Parker smelled it too. Something sweet and chemical. Cheap paint on hot radiators, he guessed.

The young agent gripped the computer's electric cord and wound it around his left hand. He explained, "It might have a format bomb inside-if you don't log on just right it runs a program and wipes the hard drive. All you can do then is unplug and try to override it later in the lab. Okay, let's see… "

He clicked on the power switch.

The unit buzzed softly. Geller was ready to yank the cord from the socket but then he smiled. "Past the first hurdle," he said, dropping the cord. "But now we need the password."

Lukas muttered, "Won't it take forever to figure out?"

"No. It'll take…" Geller pulled the housing off the computer, reached inside and took out a small computer chip. Suddenly the screen reported, Loading Windows 95. Geller said, "About that much time."

"That's all you have to do to beat a password?"

"Uh-huh." Geller opened his attaché case and pulled out a dark blue Zip drive unit. He plugged this into a port on the computer and installed it. "I'm going to download his hard drive onto these." He tossed a half-dozen Zip disks onto the desk.

Lukas's cell phone rang. She answered. Listened. Then she said, "Thanks." She hung up, not pleased. "Pen registers from the phone line here. All he's called is the connection for the on-line service. Nothing else coming in or going out."

Damn. The man had been smart, Parker reflected. A puzzle master in his own right.

Three hawks have been killing a farmer's chickens…

"Found something in the bedroom," a voice called. An agent wearing latex gloves walked into the living room. He was holding a yellow pad with writing and markings on it. Parker's heart sped up a few beats when he saw this.

He opened his attaché case and pulled on his own latex gloves. He took the pad and set it on the table next to Geller, bent the desk lamp over it. With his hand glass he studied the first page and noticed immediately that it had been written by the unsub-he'd stared at the extortion note so much that he knew the handwriting as well as his own and the Whos'.

The devils teardrop over a lowercase i…

Parker scanned the sheet. Much of it was doodlings. As a document examiner, Parker Kincaid believed in the psychological connection between our minds and our hands: personality revealed not by how we form letters (that graphoanalysis nonsense that Lukas seemed so fond of) but through the substance of what we write and draw when we're not really thinking about it. How we take notes, what little pictures we make in the margins when our minds are occupied elsewhere.

Parker had seen thousands of renderings on the documents he'd examined-knives, guns, hanged men, stabbed women, severed genitals, demons, bared teeth, stick figures, airplanes, eyes. But he'd never seen what their unsub had drawn here: mazes.

So he was a puzzle master.

Parker tried one or two. Most of them were very complicated. There were other notations on the page but he kept getting distracted by the mazes, his eye drawn to them. He felt the compulsion to solve them. This was Parker's nature; he couldn't control it.

He sensed someone nearby. It was Margaret Lukas. She was staring at the pad.

"They're intricate," she said.

Parker looked up at her, felt her leg brush against him. The muscles in her thigh were very strong. She'd be a runner, he guessed. Pictured her on Sunday mornings in her workout spandex, sweaty and flushed, walking through the front door after her three miles…

He turned back to the maze.

"Must've taken him a long time to make it," she said, nodding at the maze.

"No," Parker said. "Mazes are hard to solve but they're the easiest puzzles to make. You draw the solution path first and then once that's finished you just keep adding layer and layer of false routes."

Puzzles are always easy when you know the answer…

She glanced at him once more then walked away, helped a crime scene tech cut open the mattress, searching for more evidence.

Just like life, right?

Parker's eyes returned to the yellow pad. He lifted the top sheet and on the next page he found a dense page of notes, hundreds of words in the unsub's writing. Toward the bottom of the page he saw a column. The first two entries were:

Dupont Circle Metro, top of the escalator, 9 A.M.

George Mason Theater, box No. 58, 4 P.M.

My God, he thought, this's got the real targets on it. It's not a decoy! He looked up and called to Cage, "Over here!"

Just as Lukas stepped into the doorway and shouted, "I smell gas! Gasoline. Where's it coming from?"

Gas? Parker glanced at Tobe, who was frowning. He realized that, yes, that was the smell they'd detected earlier.

"Oh, Jesus." Parker looked at the bottles of apple juice.

It was a trap-in case the agents got into the safe house.

"Cage! Tobe! Everybody out!" Parker leapt to his feet. "The bottles!"

But Geller glanced at them and said, "It's okay… Look: there's no detonator. You can-"

And then the stream of bullets exploded through the window, tearing the table into shreds of blond wood, shattering the bottles and spraying rosy gasoline over the walls and floor.

19

A thousand invisible bullets, a million.

More bullets than Parker'd ever seen or heard in all his weeks on the range at Quantico.

Glass, wood, splinters of metal shot through the living room.

Parker huddled on the floor, the precious yellow pad still on the desk. He tried to grab it but a cluster of slugs pummeled the floor in front of him and he leapt back against the wall.

Lukas and Cage crawled out the front door and collapsed into the hallway, weapons drawn, looking for a target out the window. Shouting, calls for backup, cries for help. Tobe Geller pushed back from the desk but the chair legs caught on the uneven floor and he tumbled backward. The computer monitor imploded as a dozen slugs struck it. Parker went for the yellow pad again but dropped to his belly as a line of bullets snapped into the walls, heading straight for him. He dodged the volley and lay flat on the floor.

Thinking, as he had before tonight, that he was nearly as afraid of being wounded as he was of dying. He couldn't stand the thought of the Whos seeing him hurt, in the hospital. And he, unable to take care of them.

There was a pause in the fusillade and Parker started for Tobe Geller.

Then the Digger, somewhere outside, on a rooftop maybe, lowered his aim and fired toward the metal pan that the fruit rested in. It too had been placed there for a purpose. The bullets clanged off it and sparks shot into the gasoline. With a huge roar the pungent liquid ignited.

Parker was blown out the door into the hallway by the explosion. He lay on his side beside Cage and Lukas.

"No, Tobe!" Parker cried, trying to get back inside. But a wave of flame filled the doorway and forced him back.

They crouched in the windowless corridor. Lukas on one phone, Cage on another. "… maybe the roof! We don't know… Call D.C.F.D… One agent down. Make that two… He's still out there. Where the hell is he?"

And the Digger kept firing.

"Tobe!" Parker shouted again.

"Somebody!" Geller called. "Help me."

Parker caught a glimpse of the young man on the other side of the raging flames. He lay curled on the floor. The apartment was awash with fire but still the Digger kept shooting. Pumping round after round from the terrible gun into the flaming living room. Soon Geller was lost to sight. It seemed that the table where the yellow pad rested was consumed in flames. No, no! The clues to the last sites were burning to ash!

Voices from somewhere:

"… where is he?"

"… going on? Where? Silencer and flash suppressor. Can't find him… No visual, no visual!"

"Fuck no, he's still shooting! We've got somebody down outside! Jesus…"

"Tobe!" Cage shouted and he too tried to run back into the apartment, which was filled with swirling orange flames, mixed with black, black smoke. But the agent was driven back by the astonishing heat-and by yet another terrifying row of black bullet holes snapping into the wall near them.

More shooting. And still more.

"… that window… No, try the other one."

Cage cried, "Get the fire trucks here! I want 'em here now!"

Lukas called, "They're on their way!"

Soon the sound of the transmissions was lost in the roar of the fire.

Through the noise they could just make out poor Tobe Geller's voice. "Help me! Please! Help me…" Growing softer.

Lukas made one last attempt to get inside but got only a few feet before a ceiling beam came down and nearly crushed her. She gave a scream and fell back. Staggering, choking on smoke, Parker helped her toward the front door as a tornado of flames poured into the corridor and moved relentlessly toward them.

"Tobe, Tobe…" she cried, coughing fiercely. "He's dying…"

"We've gotta get out," Cage shouted. "Now!"

Foot by foot they made their way toward the front door.

In a madness of panic and hypoxia from the burning air Parker kept wishing he were deaf so he couldn't hear the cries from the apartment. Kept wishing he were blind so he couldn't see the loss and sorrow the Digger had brought them, all these good people, people with families, people with children like his.

But Parker Kincaid was neither deaf nor blind and he was very much here, in the heart of this terror-the small automatic pistol in his right hand and his left arm around Margaret Lukas as he helped her through the smoke-shrouded corridor.

Look, Kincaid, you've been living life on Sesame Street for the last few years…

"… no location… no visible flash… Jesus, what is this…" Jerry Baker was shouting, or someone was.

Near the doorway Cage stumbled. Or someone did.

A moment later Parker and the agents were tumbling down the front stairs into the cold air. Despite their racking coughs and vision blurry with tears Cage and Lukas dropped into defensive positions, like the rest of the agents out here. They wiped their eyes and scanned building tops, searching for targets. Parker, kneeling behind a tree, followed their lead.

Crouching beside the command post van, C. P. Ardell held an M-16 close to his thick cheek and Len Hardy brandished his small revolver. The detective's head was moving back and forth, fear and confusion in his face.

Lukas caught Jerry Bakers eye and in a whisper she called, "Where? Where the hell is he?"

The tactical agent motioned toward an alley behind them and then returned to his walkie-talkie.

Cage was retching from the smoke he'd swallowed.

Two minutes passed without a shot.

Baker was speaking into his Motorola, "New Year's Leader Two… Subject was east of us, seemed to be shooting downward at a slight angle. Okay… Where?… Okay. Just be careful." He said nothing for a long moment, his eyes searching the buildings nearby. Then he cocked his head as somebody came back on the line. Baker listened. He said, "They're dead? Oh, man… He's gone?"

He stood up, holstered his weapon. He walked over to Cage, who was wiping his mouth with a Kleenex. "He got into the building behind us. Killed the couple who lived upstairs. He disappeared down the alley. He's gone. Nobody got a look at him."

Parker glanced toward the mobile command post, saw John Evans in the window. The doctor was looking at the grim spectacle with a curious expression on his face: the way a child sometimes looks at a dead animal, emotionless, numb. He may have been an expert in the theory of criminal violence but perhaps had never witnessed its practical application firsthand.

Parker then looked back at the building, which was now engulfed in flames. Nobody could survive the inferno.

Oh, Tobe…

Sirens cut through the night. He could see flashing lights reflected along both ends of the street as the fire engines sped closer. All the evidence gone too. Hell, it'd been in his hand! The yellow pad with the locations of the next two targets on it. Why the hell hadn't he glanced at it ten seconds earlier? Why had he wasted precious seconds looking at the mazes? Again Parker sensed that the document itself was the enemy and had intentionally distracted him to give the Digger time to attack them.

Hell. If he-

"Hey," somebody shouted. "Hey, over here! Need some help!"

Parker, Lukas and Cage turned toward an agent in an FBI windbreaker. He was running down a narrow alley beside the burning duplex.

"There's somebody here," the agent called.

A figure lay on the ground, on his side, surrounded by an aura of blue smoke.

Parker assumed the man was dead. But suddenly he lifted his head and cried, "Put it out!" in a gruff whisper. "Damnit, put it out!"

Parker wiped smoke tears from his eyes.

The man lying on the ground was Tobe Geller.

"Put it out!" he called again and his voice dissolved into a hacking cough.

"Tobe!" Lukas ran toward him, Parker beside her.

The young agent must have jumped through the flames and out the window. He'd been in the Digger's line of fire out here in the alley but maybe the killer hadn't seen him. Or hadn't bothered to shoot a man who was obviously badly wounded.

A medic sprinted up to him and asked, "Where you hurt? You hit anywhere?"

But all Geller would offer was his crazed shout. "Put it out, put out the fire!"

"You bet they will, son. The trucks are here. They'll have it out in no time." The medic crouched down. "But we've got to get-"

"No, goddamnit!" Geller pushed the medic aside with surprising strength and looked directly at Parker. "The pad of paper! Put the fire out!" He was gesturing toward a small fire near his leg. That's what the young agent had been shouting about, not the building.

Parker glanced at it. He saw one of the unsub's elaborate mazes go up in flames.

It was the yellow pad. In a split-second decision Tobe Geller had forgone his computer disks and grabbed the unsub's notes.

But it was now on fire, the page with the notes on it was curling into black ash. Parker tore his jacket off and carefully laid it over the pad to extinguish the flames.

"Look out!" somebody called. Parker looked up just as a huge piece of burning siding crashed to the ground three feet from him. A cloud of orange sparks swarmed. Parker ignored them and carefully lifted his jacket off the pad, surveying the damage.

Flames began spurting through the wall behind them. The whole building seemed to sink and shift.

The medic said, "We gotta get out of here." He waved to his partner, who ran up with a gurney. They eased Geller onto the stretcher and hurried off with him, dodging falling debris.

"We gotta pull back!" a man in a black fireman's coat shouted. "We're going to lose the wall! It's gonna come down on top of you!"

"In a minute," Parker answered. He glanced at Lukas. "Get out of here!"

"You can't stay here, Parker."

"The ash is too fragile! I can't move it." Lifting the pad would crumble the ash into powder and they'd lose any chance to reconstruct the sheets. He thought of the attaché case inside the apartment, now destroyed, and the bottle of parylene in it, which he could've used to harden the damaged paper and protect it. But all he could do now was cover the ash carefully and hope to reassemble it in the lab. A gutter fell from the roof and stabbed the ground, end first, inches away from him.

"Now, mister!" the fireman shouted.

"Parker!" Lukas called again. "Come on!" She retreated a few yards but paused, staring at him.

Parker had an idea. He ran to the duplex next door, pulled off the storm window and broke the glass with a kick. He picked up four large pieces. He returned to the pad, which lay like a wounded soldier on the ground, and dropped to his knees. He carefully sandwiched the two sheets of scorched paper-the only ones with writing on them-between pieces of glass. This was how document examiners in the Bureau used to protect the samples sent to them for analysis before the invention of thin plastic sheets.

Chunks of burning wood fell around him. He felt a stream of water as the firemen trained a hose on the flames above him.

"Stop it!" he shouted to them, waving his arm. Worried that the water would further damage the precious find.

Nobody paid him any attention.

"Parker," Lukas shouted. "Now! The walls about to come down!"

More two-by-fours crashed to the ground. But still he remained on his knees, carefully tucking bits of ash into the sandwich of glass.

Then, as timbers and bricks and fiery siding fell around him, Parker slowly rose and, holding the glass sheets in front of him, he walked away from the flames, perfectly upright and taking gentle steps, like a servant carrying a tray of wine at an elegant cocktail party.

Another picture.

Snap.

Henry Czisman stood in an alleyway across the street from the burning building. Sparks were flying leisurely into the sky like fireworks seen from miles away.

How important this was. Recording the event.

Tragedy is so quick, so fleeting. But sorrow isn't. Sorrow is forever.

Snap.

He took another picture with his digital camera.

A policeman lying on the ground. Maybe dead, maybe wounded.

Maybe playing dead-when the Digger comes to town people do whatever they must to stay alive. They tuck their courage away and huddle until long after its safe to get up. Henry Czisman had seen this all before.

Picture: the wall of the duplex falling in a fiery explosion of beautiful embers.

Picture: a trooper with three fingers of blood cascading down the left side of her face.

Picture: the illumination from the flames reflected in the chrome of the fire trucks.

Snap, snap, snap… He couldn't take enough shots. He was driven to record every detail of the sorrow.

He glanced up the street and saw several agents talking to passersby.

Why bother? he thought. The Diggers come and the Diggers gone.

He knew he too should go. He definitely couldn't be seen here. So he started to slip his camera into the pocket of his jacket. But then he glanced back at the burning building and saw something.

Yes, yes. I want that. I need that.

He lifted the camera, pointed it and pushed the button.

Picture: the man who called himself Jefferson, though that was not his name, the man who was now so intertwined in this case, was resting something on the hood of a car, bending forward to read it. A book? A magazine? No, it glistened like a sheet of glass. All you could really see in the picture was the rigid attention of the man as he wrapped his leather jacket around the glass the way a father might bundle up his infant for a trip outside in the cold night air.

Snap.

So. Protect the mayor.

And don't trash the feds.

Anchorman Slade Phillips was in a coffee shop on Dupont Circle. There were still several dozen emergency vehicles parked nearby, lights flashing through the gray evening. Yellow police tape was everywhere.

Phillips had shown his press pass and gotten through the line. He'd been terribly shaken by what he'd seen at the foot of the escalator. The sludge of blood still drying. Bits of bone and hair. He-

"Excuse me?" a woman's voice asked. "You're Slade Phillips. WPLT."

Anchorpeople are forever doomed to be known by both names. Nobody ever says Mister. He looked up from his coffee at the flirty young blonde. She wanted an autograph. He gave her one.

"You're so, like, good," she said.

"Thank you."

Go away.

"I want to be in TV someday too."

"Good for you."

Go away.

She stood for a moment and when he didn't ask her to join him she walked away on high heels, in a gait that reminded Phillips of an antelope's.

Sipping decaf. All the carnage in the Metro-he couldn't get it out of his mind. Jesus… Blood everywhere. The chips in the tile and dents in the metal… Bits of flesh and bits of bone.

And shoes.

A half-dozen shoes had lain bloody at the base of the escalator. For some reason they were the most horrifying sight of all.

This was the kind of story most reporters dream about in their ambitious hearts.

You're a reporter, go report.

Yet Phillips found he had no desire to cover the crime. The violence repulsed him. The sick mind of the killer scared him. And he thought: Wait. I'm not a reporter. He wished he'd said this to that slick prick, Wendy Jefferies. I'm an entertainer. I'm a soap opera star. I'm a personality.

But he was too deep in Jefferies's pocket for that kind of candor.

And so he was doing what he was told.

He wondered if Mayor Jerry Kennedy knew about his arrangement with Jefferies. Probably not. Kennedy was a stand-up son of a bitch. Better than all the previous mayors of the District rolled into one. Because if Slade Phillips wasn't a Peter Arnett or Tom Brokaw at least he knew people. And he knew that Kennedy did want a chance to fix as much of the city as he could before the electorate threw his ass out. Which would undoubtedly be in the next election.

And this Project 2000 of his… Man, it took some balls to tax the corporations in the city even more than they were already taxed. Bad blood there. And Kennedy was also coming down like a Grand Inquisitor on that school construction scandal. Rumors were that he'd wanted to pay that whistle-blower, Gary Moss, an additional bonus from District coffers for coming forward and risking his life to testify (an expense Congressman Lanier had refused to approve, of course). There were rumors too that Kennedy was going to crucify anyone involved in the corruption-including long-time friends.

So Phillips could rationalize taking some of the heat off Kennedy's office. It was for a higher good.

More decaf. Convinced that real coffee would affect his gorgeous baritone, he lived on unleaded.

He looked out the window and saw the man he was waiting for. A slight guy, short. He was a clerk at FBI headquarters and Phillips had been currying him for a year. He was one of the "sources who wish to remain anonymous" that you hear about all the time-sources whose relationship to honesty was a bit dicey. But what did it matter? This was TV journalism and a different set of standards applied.

The clerk glanced at Phillips as he stepped into the coffee shop, looking around cautiously like a bumbling spy. He pulled off his overcoat, revealing a very badly fitting gray suit.

The man was basically a mailboy though he'd told Phillips that he was "privy" (oh, please…) to most of the Bureaus "primary decision-making activities."

Ego's such a bitch, Phillips thought. "Hello, Timothy."

"Happy New Year," the man said, sitting down and looking like a butterfly pinned to the wall.

"Yeah, yeah," Phillips said.

"So what's good tonight? They have moussaka? I love moussaka."

"You don't have time to eat. You have time to talk."

"Just a drink?"

Phillips flagged down a waitress and ordered more decaf for him and regular for Timothy.

"Well-" He looked disappointed. "I meant a beer."

The anchorman leaned forward. Whispered, "The crazy guy. The Metro shooter. What's going on with it?"

"They don't know too much. It's weird. Some people're talking about a terrorist cell. Some people're talking right-wing militia. Couple people think it's just a straight extortion scheme. But there isn't any consensus."

"I need some focus," Phillips said.

"Focus? What do you mean 'focus'?" Timothy glanced at a nearby table, where a man was eating moussaka.

"Kennedy's taking a hit on this. That's not fair."

"Why the hell not? He's a goon."

The anchorman wasn't here to debate the mayor's competence. Whatever history decided about the tenure of Gerald D. Kennedy, Slade Phillips was being paid $25,000 to suggest to the world that the mayor wasn't a goon. So he continued, "How's the Bureau handling it?"

"It's a tough case," said Timothy, who aspired to be an FBI agent but was forever destined to fall just short of every goal he set for himself in life. "They're doing their best. They got the perp's safe house. You hear?"

"I heard. I also heard he pulled an end run and shot the shit out of you."

"We've never been up against anything like this before."

We?

Phillips nodded sympathetically. "Look, I'm trying to help you guys out. I don't want to go with the story the station's got planned. That's why I wanted to talk to you tonight."

Timothy's puppy-dog eyes flickered and he asked, "Story? They've got planned?"

"Right," Phillips said.

"Well, what is it?" Timothy asked. "The story?"

"The screw-up at the Mason Theater."

"What screw-up? They stopped him. Hardly anybody got killed."

"No, no, no," Phillips said. "The point is they could've capped the shooter. But they let him get away."

"The Bureau didn't screw up," Timothy said defensively. "It was a high-density tac op. Those're a bitch to run."

High-density tac op. Tactical operation, Phillips knew. He also knew that Timothy had probably learned the phrase not at FBI headquarters but from a Tom Clancy novel.

"Sure. But add that to the other rumor…"

"What other rumor?"

"That Kennedy wanted to pay the perps but the Bureau set up some kind of trap. Only they fucked up and the shooter found out about it and now he's killing people just to kill them."

"That's bullshit."

"I'm not saying-" Phillips began.

"That's not fair." Timothy came close to whining. "I mean, we got agents all over town ought to be home with their families. It's a holiday. I've been taking faxes to people all night…" His voice faded as he realized the veil covering his true function at FBI headquarters had slipped.

Phillips said quickly, "I'm not saying I feel that way. I'm just saying that's the story they've got planned. This asshole's killing people. They need to point fingers."

"Well…"

"Is there anything else to focus on? Something other than the Bureau."

"Oh, that's what you meant by focus."

"Did I say focus?"

"Yeah, earlier you did… How about the District metro police? They could be the screw-up factor."

Phillips wondered how much money Wendy Jefferies would pay for a story that the District police, which ultimately reported to Mayor Kennedy, was the quote screw-up factor.

"Keep going. That one doesn't excite me."

Timothy thought for a moment. Then he smiled. "Wait. I have an idea."

"Is it a good idea?" Phillips asked.

"Well, I was at HQ? And I heard something odd…" Timothy frowned, his voice fading.

The anchorman said, "Hey, that moussaka does look good. How 'bout we get some?"

"Okay," said Timothy. "And, yeah, I think it's a good idea."