The Devil's Teardrop

20

The capital of the free world.

The heart of the last superpower on earth.

And Cage nearly shattered an axle once again as his government-issue Crown Victoria crashed into another pothole.

"Goddamn city," he muttered.

"Careful," Parker ordered, nodding toward the glass sheets wrapped carefully and sitting on his lap like a newborn baby. He'd looked briefly at the yellow sheets. But they were badly damaged and he couldn't see any reference to the third and fourth targets. He'd have to analyze them in the lab.

Over crumbling pavement, under streetlights burnt out months ago and never replaced, past the empty poles that once held directional signs, which had long ago been stolen or blown down.

More potholes.

"I don't know why I live here." Cage shrugged.

Accompanied by Parker and Dr. John Evans, the agent was speeding back to headquarters through the dark streets of the District of Columbia.

"And it snows, we're fucked," he added.

Snow removal wasn't one of the District's strong suits either and a blizzard could hamper Jerry Baker's tactical efforts if they found the Digger's hidey-hole or the site of the next attack.

Evans was on his cell phone, apparently talking to his family. His voice was singsong, as if he were talking to a child but from the snatches of the conversation it seemed that his wife was on the other end of the line. Parker thought it was odd that a psychologist would talk to another adult this way. But who was he to talk about relationships? When Joan was drunk or moody Parker often found himself dealing with her the way he would a ten-year-old.

Cage juggled his own phone and called the hospital. He asked about Geller's condition.

When he hung up he said to Parker, "Lucky man. Smoke inhalation and a sprained toe from jumping out the window. Nothing worse than that. They're going to keep him in overnight. But it's just a precaution."

"Should get a commendation," Parker suggested.

"Oh, he will. Don't you worry."

Parker was coughing some himself. The pungent taste of the smoke was sickening.

They continued on for another half-dozen blocks before Cage gave Parker a telling "So."

"So," Parker echoed. Then: "What does that mean?"

"Wooee, we having a good time yet?" the agent said and slapped the steering wheel.

Parker ignored him and tucked a tiny scrap of burnt paper back under the glass protecting the unsub's notes.

Cage sped around a slow-moving car. After a few moments he asked, "How's your love life these days? You seeing anybody?"

"Not right now."

It had been nine months, he reflected, since he'd been going with someone regularly. He missed Lynne. She was ten years younger than he, pretty, athletic. They'd had a lot of fun together-jogging, dinners, day trips to Middleburg. He missed her vivacity, her sense of humor (the first time she'd been over to his house she'd glanced at a signature of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and, with perfect deadpan delivery, said, "Oh, I've heard of him. He's the guy started the Franklin Mint. I've got the thimble collection"). But the maternal side of her hadn't blossomed even though she was nearly thirty. When it came to his children, she had fun going to the museums and the Cineplex but Parker could see that any more of a commitment to the Whos-and to him-would soon become a burden to her. Love, like humor, Parker believed, is all in the timing. In the end they drifted apart with the agreement that in a few years, when she was ready for children, they might reconsider something more permanent. (Both knowing, of course, that, as lovers, they were saying goodbye for good.)

Cage now said, "Uh-huh. So you're just sitting at home?"

"Yeah," Parker said. "With my head in the sand like Ozzie the Ostrich."

"Who?"

"It's a kids' book."

"Don't you get the feeling there's stuff going on around you and you're missing it?"

"No, Cage, I don't. I get the feeling that my kids're growing up and I'm not missing it."

"That's important. Uh-huh. I can see where that would be kind of important."

"Very important."

Evans, still on the phone, was telling his wife he loved her. Parker tuned the words out. They depressed him.

"Whatta you think about Lukas?" Cage finally asked.

"What do I think? She's good. She'll go places. Maybe to the top. If she doesn't implode first."

"Explode?"

"No, implode. Like a lightbulb."

"That's good." Cage laughed. "But that's not what I'm asking. Whatta you think about her as a woman?"

Parker coughed. Shivered at the memory of the bullets and the flames. "You trying to set us up, Lukas and me?"

"Of course not." Then: "It's just I wish she had more friends. I'd forgot that you're a fun guy. You could hang out together some."

"Cage-"

"She's not married. No boyfriends. And, I don't know if you noticed," the wily agent said, "but she's good-looking. Don't you think?"

Sure, I think. For a lady cop. Of course Parker was attracted to her-and by more than just her appearance. He remembered a certain look in her eyes as she watched Robby run up the stairs earlier in the day. The way to a man's heart is through his children…

But what he told Cage was, "She can't wait till this case is over and she doesn't have to see me again."

"You think?" he asked, but cynically this time.

"You heard her-about my weapon."

"Hell, she just didn't want to send you back to your kids with your ass in a sling."

"No, it's more than that. I've been stepping on her toes and she doesn't like it. But I've got news for her. I'm going to keep on stepping if I think I'm right."

"Hey, there you go."

"What do you mean."

"That's just what she'd say. Aren't you two a pair…"

"Cage, take a break."

"Look, Margaret's only agenda is collaring perps. There's a ton of ego in her, sure, but it's good ego. She's the second-best investigator I know." Parker ignored the glance that accompanied this sentence. Cage thought for a moment. "You know what's good about Lukas? She takes care of herself."

"What does that mean?"

"I'll tell you. Couple months ago her house got broken into."

"Where's she live?"

"Georgetown."

"That happens there, yeah," Parker said. As much as he enjoyed the District he'd never live there, not with the children. Crime was terrible.

Cage continued, "She comes home from the office and sees the door's been jimmied. Okay? Her dog's in the backyard and-"

"She's got a dog? What kind?"

"I don't know. How do I know? Big black dog. Lemme finish. She makes sure her dog's okay then, instead of calling it in, she goes back to her van, puts on body armor, takes her MP-5 and secures the house herself."

Parker laughed. The thought of any other thin, attractive blonde stalking through a townhouse, armed with a laser-sighted machine gun, would have seemed absurd. But for some reason it was perfectly natural with Lukas. "Still don't get your point, Cage."

"No point. I'm only saying Lukas doesn't need anybody to take care of her. People being together, Parker, you know, men and women, don't you think it works out best that way? Nobody taking care of anybody else? That's a rule. Write it down."

Parker supposed the agent was talking about Joan. Cage had seen Parker and Joan together a number of times. And, sure, Parker had been drawn to his ex-wife because she was looking for someone to take care of her, and Parker-newly orphaned when they met-was desperate to nurture. Parker thought back several hours, Lukas addressing the troops in Gravesend. Maybe that was what had stirred him so much, listening to her: not so much her expertise as her independence.

They drove in silence for a moment.

"MP-5?" Parker asked, picturing the heavy black Heckler & Koch machine gun.

"Yep. Said her biggest worry was if she had to light up the perp she might ruin some of her wall decorations. She sews too. Makes these quilts you wouldn't believe."

"You told me that before. The perp-she bag him?"

"Naw. He'd booked."

Parker recalled her anger in Gravesend. He asked Cage, "Then what do you think it is? Why she's been on my case?"

After a moment the agent answered, "Maybe she envies you."

"Envies me? What do you mean?"

But he wouldn't answer. "That's not for me to say. Just hold that thought and when she gives you any static cut her some slack."

"You're making no sense, Cage. She envies me?"

"Think of it like one of your puzzles. Either you figure it out or she'll tell you the answer. That's up to her. But I'm not giving you any clues."

"Why would I want to know the answer to Margaret Lukas?"

But Cage only skidded around another canyon of a pothole and said nothing.

Evans closed his phone, poured himself another cup of coffee from the thermos. It must have held a half gallon of coffee. This time Parker accepted the offered cup and drank several sips of the strong brew.

"How's the family?" Parker asked him.

"I owe the kids big time." The shrink smiled ruefully.

"How many do you have?"

"Two."

"Me too," Parker said. "How old?"

"In their teens. They're a handful." He didn't give any details and didn't seem to want to say anything more. He asked, "Yours?"

"Eight and nine."

"Ah, you've got a few years of peace and quiet."

Cage said, "Grandkids are the best. Take it from me. You play with 'em, get 'em all dirty, let 'em spill ice cream on themselves, spoil 'em crazy and then you send 'em home to their parents. You go have a beer and watch the game. How can you beat that?"

They drove for a few moments in silence and finally Evans asked, "That incident you mentioned. With your son? What happened?"

"You ever hear about the Boatman?" Parker asked.

Cage glanced at Parker warily. Then back to the road.

Evans said, "Remember something from the papers. But I'm not sure."

Parker was surprised; the killer had been featured in the news for months. Maybe the doctor was new to the area. "He was a serial killer in Northern Virginia, Southern Maryland. Four years ago. He'd kidnap a woman, rape and murder her and leave the body in a dinghy or rowboat. The Potomac a couple times. The Shenandoah. Burke Lake in Fairfax. We had leads to this guy who lived in Arlington but we couldn't make a case. Finally I was able to connect him to one of the murders through a handwriting sample. SWAT arrested him. He was convicted but he escaped on the way to federal detention. Well, around that time I was in the middle of the custody battle with my ex. The court had awarded me temporary custody. The kids, the housekeeper and I were living in a house in Falls Church. Then one night, around midnight, Robby starts screaming. I run into his room. There's the Boatman, trying to break in."

Evans nodded, frowning in concentration. His eyes were pale and they studied Parker closely.

Even now, years later, Parker's heart trembled at the memory: not only at the image of the square, glazed face looking through the bedroom window but at his son's distilled terror. The tears streaming from his huge eyes, his shaking hands. He didn't tell Evans and Cage about the five minutes-they seemed like hours-of absolute horror: shepherding his children into the housekeepers room, guarding the door while listening to the Boatman stalk through the house. Finally, with the Fairfax County cops still not there, he stepped into the hallway, his service revolver in hand.

He realized that Evans was looking at him even more closely. He felt like a patient. The doctor noted Parker's expression and looked away. He asked, "And you shot him?"

"Yes. I did."

The gun is too loud! Parker had thought manically, as he fired, knowing how the explosions were adding to Robby's and Stephanie's terror.

The gun is too loud!

As Cage pulled up to headquarters Evans shoved the thermos back into his backpack and put a hand on Parker's arm. He gave the document examiner another close look. "Know what we're gonna do?"

Parker lifted an eyebrow.

"We're gonna catch this son of a bitch and both of us get back home to our families. Where we ought to be."

Parker Kincaid thought: Amen.

Inside the document lab at headquarters the team was reassembled.

Margaret Lukas was on the phone.

Parker glanced at her. Her cryptic look toward him in return brought to mind Cage's comments in the car.

Maybe she envies you…

She looked back down at the notes she was scribbling. He noticed her handwriting. The Palmer Method. Enviable precision and economy. No nonsense.

Hardy and C. P. Ardell stood nearby, also speaking on cell phones.

Parker set the glass sheets on the examination table.

Lukas shut off her phone. She looked at Cage and the others. "The safe house's completely gone. PERT's going through it but there's nothing left. The computer and the disks were totaled."

Cage asked, "How 'bout the building the Digger shot from?"

"As clean as the Texas Book Depository," she said bitterly. "They got shell casings this time but he wore-"

"Latex gloves," Parker said, sighing.

"Right. When he loaded the clips. And leather when he was in the apartment. Not a bit of trace."

A phone rang and Lukas answered. "Hello?… Oh, okay." She looked up. "It's Susan Nance. She's gotten more information back from Boston, White Plains and Philly about the other attacks Czisman was telling us about. I'll put her on the speaker."

She hit a button.

"Go ahead, Susan."

"I've tracked down the case detectives. They tell me that just like here there were no solid forensics. No prints, no witnesses. All of the cases're still open. They got the pictures of the unsub we sent and nobody recognizes him. But they all said something similar. Something odd."

"Which was?" Parker asked. He was carefully cleaning the glass that held the burnt yellow sheets.

"Basically that the violence was way out of proportion to the haul. Boston, the jewelry store? All he took was a single watch."

"Just one watch?" C. P. Ardell asked. "Was that all he had a chance to boost?"

"No. Looks like that was all he wanted. It was a Rolex but still… Worth only about two thousand. In White Plains he got away with thirty thousand. Philly, the bus murder scheme? The ransom was only for a hundred thousand."

And he's asking $20 million from D.C., Parker thought. The unsub was going for bigger and bigger hauls.

Lukas was apparently thinking the same. She asked Evans, "Progressive offender?"

Progressive offenders were serial criminals who committed successively more serious crimes.

But Evans was shaking his head. "No. He seems to be but progressives are always lust driven. Sadosexual murderers mostly." He rubbed the back of his bony hand against his beard. The hairs were short-as if he'd only started to grow it recently-and his skin must have itched. "They become increasingly more violent because the crime doesn't satisfy their need. But you rarely see progressive behavior in profit crimes."

Parker sensed the puzzle here was much more complicated than it seemed.

Or much simpler.

Either way, he felt the frustration of not being able to see any possible solutions.

The farmer has just one bullet in his gun…

Parker finished cleaning the glass and turned his attention to the evidence. He studied what was left of the two pages. He saw, to his dismay, that much of the ash had disintegrated. The fire damage was worse than he'd thought.

Still it would be possible to read some of the unsub's writings on the larger pieces of ash. This is done by shining infrared light on the surface of the ash. Burnt ink or pencil marks reflect a different wavelength from that of the burnt paper and you usually can make out much of the writing.

Parker carefully set the glass panes holding the yellow sheets side by side in the infrared Foster + Freeman viewer. He crouched and picked up a cheap hand glass he found on the table (thinking angrily: The goddamn Digger just destroyed my five-hundred-dollar antique Leitz).

Hardy glanced at the sheet of paper on the left. "Mazes. He drew mazes."

Parker ignored that sheet, though, and examined the one with the reference to the Mason Theater. He guessed that the unsub had also written down the last two targets-the one at 8 P.M. and the one at midnight. But these pieces were badly jumbled and flaked.

"Well, I've got a few things visible," he muttered. He squinted, trained the hand glass on another part of the sheet. "Christ," he spat out. Shook his head.

"What?" C. P. asked.

"Oh, the targets the Diggers already hit are perfectly legible. The Metro and the Mason Theater. But the next two… I can't make them out. The midnight hit, the last one… that's easier to read than the third. Write this down," he said to Hardy.

The detective grabbed a pen and pad of yellow paper. "Go ahead."

Parker squinted. "It looks like, 'Place where I…' Let's see. 'Place where I… took you.' Then a dash. Then the word 'black.' No, 'the black.' Then there's a hole in the sheet. It's gone completely."

Hardy read back, "'Place where I took you, dash, the black…'"

"That's it."

Parker looked up. "Where the hell is he talking about?"

But no one had any idea.

Cage looked at his watch. "What about the eight o'clock hit? That's what we oughta be concentrating on. We have less than an hour."

Parker scanned the third line of writing, right below the Mason Theater reference. He studied it for a full minute, crouching. He dictated, "'… two miles south. The R…' That's an uppercase R. But after that the ash is all jumbled. I can see a lot of marks but they're fragmented."

Parker took the transcription and walked to a chalkboard mounted on the wall of the lab. He copied the words for everyone to read:

… two miles south. The R…

… place where I took you-the black…

"What's it mean?" Cage asked. "Where the hell was he talking about?"

Parker didn't have a clue.

He turned away from the board and leaned over the glass sheets, as if he were staring down a bully in a schoolyard.

But the fragment of paper won the contest easily.

"Two miles south of what?" he muttered. "'R.' What's 'R'?"

He sighed.

The door to the document lab swung open and Parker did a double take. "Tobe!"

Tobe Geller walked unsteadily into the room. The young man had changed clothes and seemed to have showered but he smelled smoky and was coughing sporadically.

"Hey, boy, you got no business being here," Cage said.

Lukas said, "Are you crazy? Go home."

"To my pathetic bachelor quarters? Having broken a New Year's Eve date with undoubtedly my now-former girlfriend tonight? I don't think so." He started to laugh, then the sound dissolved into a cough. He controlled it and breathed deeply.

"How you doing, buddy?" C. P. Ardell asked, hugging Geller firmly. In the huge agent's face you could see the heartfelt, mano-a-mano concern that tactical agents have no trouble displaying.

"They don't even make a degree for my burns," Geller explained. "It's like I got New England tan. I'm fine." He coughed again. "Well, aside from the lungs. Unlike certain presidents I did inhale. Now. Where are we?"

"That yellow pad?" Parker said ruefully. "Hate to say it but we can't make out very much."

"Ouch," the agent said.

"Yeah, ouch."

Lukas walked to the examination table. Standing next to Parker. He couldn't smell the scented soap any longer, only acrid smoke.

"Hm," she said after a moment.

"What?"

She pointed to the fragments of jumbled ash. "Some of these little pieces might fit after the letter R, right?"

"They might."

"Well, what's that remind you of?"

Parker looked down. "A jigsaw puzzle," he whispered.

"Right," she said. "So-you're the puzzle master. Can you put them back together?"

Parker surveyed the hundreds of tiny fragments of ash. It could take hours, if not days; unlike a real jigsaw puzzle the edges of the pieces of ash were damaged and didn't necessarily match the adjoining pieces.

But Parker had a thought. "Tobe?"

"Yo?" The young agent coughed, dusted a burnt eyebrow.

"There're computer programs that solve anagram puzzles, aren't there?"

"Anagrams, anagrams? What're those again?"

It was tattooed C. P. Ardell who answered-a man whose most intellectual activity you'd guess would be comparing prices of discount beer. "Assembling different words out of a set of letters. Like n-o-w, o-w-n, w-o-n."

Geller said, "Oh, sure there are. But then you'd never use software to help you solve a puzzle, would you, Parker?"

"No, that'd be cheating." He smiled to Lukas. Whose stone face offered nothing more than a momentary glance and returned to the fragments of ash.

Parker continued, "After the sequence '… two miles. The R…' See all those bits of letters on the ash? Can you put them back together?"

Geller laughed. "It's brilliant," he said. "Well scan a handwriting sample from the note. That'll give us standards of construction for all of his letters. Then I'll shoot the pieces of ash on the digital camera with an infrared filter, drop out the tonal value of the burnt paper. That'll leave us with fragments of letters. And I'll have the computer assemble them."

"Will it work?" Hardy asked.

"Oh, it'll work," Geller assessed with confidence. "I just don't know how long it'll take."

Geller hooked up the digital camera and took several pictures of the ash and one of the extortion note. He plugged the camera into a serial port on a computer and began to upload the images.

His fingers flew over the keys. Everybody remained silent.

Which made the braying sound of Parker's phone a moment later particularly startling.

He jumped in surprise and opened his cell phone. He noted the caller ID was his home number.

"Hello?" he answered.

His heart froze as Mrs. Cavanaugh said in a taut voice, "Parker."

In the background he heard Robby sobbing.

"What is it?" he asked, trying not to panic.

"Everybody's okay," she said quickly. "Robby's fine. He just got a little scared. He thought he saw that man in the backyard. The Boatman."

Oh, no…

"There was nobody there. I turned the outdoor lights on. Mr. Johnsons dog got loose again and was jumping around in the bushes. That was all. But he's scared. Really scared."

"Put him on."

"Daddy? Daddy!" The boy's voice was limp with fear. Nothing upset Parker more than this sound.

"Hey, Robby!" Parker said brightly. "What happened?"

"I looked outside." He cried for a moment more. Parker closed his eyes. His son's fear was like his own. The boy continued. "And I thought I saw him. The Boatman. It was… I got scared."

"Remember, it's just the bushes. We're going to cut them down tomorrow."

"No, this was in the garage."

Parker was angry with himself. He'd lazily left the garage door up and there was plenty of junk inside that could resemble an intruder.

Parker said to his son, "Remember what we do?"

No answer.

"Robby? Remember?"

"I've got my shield."

"Good for you. How 'bout the helmet?" Parker glanced up and saw Lukas staring at him raptly. "You have your helmet?"

"Yes," the boy answered.

"And what about the lights?"

"We'll put them on."

"How many lights?" Parker asked.

"Every last one," the boy recited.

Oh, it was so hard, hearing his son's voice… And knowing what he had to do now. He looked around the lab, at the faces of these people who had become his own band of brothers tonight. And he thought, You can-with luck and strength-pry yourself loose from wives or lovers or colleagues. But not from your children. Never from your children. They have your heart netted forever.

Into the phone he said, "I'll be right home. Don't worry."

"Really?" the boy asked.

"As fast as I can drive."

He hung up. Everyone was looking at him, motionless.

"I have to go," he said, eyes on Cage. "I'll be back. But I have to go now."

"Is there anything I can do?" Hardy asked.

"No, thanks, Len," Parker answered.

"Jesus, Parker," Cage began, looking up at the clock. "I'm sorry he's scared but-"

Margaret Lukas lifted her hand and silenced the older agent. She said, "There's no way the Digger could know about you. But I'll send a couple of agents to stay outside your house."

He thought that she was saying this as a preface to talking him into staying. But then she added quietly, "Your little boy? Go home. Make him happy. However long it takes."

Parker held her eyes for a moment. Wondering: Had he found a clue to the maze of Special Agent Lukas?

Or was this only a false trail?

He started to thank her but he sensed suddenly that any show of gratitude, any response at all, would throw off this tenuous balance between them. So he simply nodded and hurried out the door.

As he left, the only sound in the lab was Geller's raspy voice speaking to his computer. "Come on, come on, come on." The way a desperate handicapper pleads with a losing horse at the track.

21

Pixel by pixel.

Watching the images fall into place on Tobe Geller's screen. Still a jumble.

Margaret Lukas paced, thinking about anagrams, about ash. Thinking about Parker Kincaid.

When he got home how would he comfort his son? Would he hold him? Read to him? Watch TV with him? Would he be the sort of father who talked to him about problems? Or would he try to distract the boy, take his mind off his fear? Bring him a present to bribe away his sorrow?

She had no idea. All Margaret Lukas knew was that she wanted Kincaid back here now, standing close to her.

Well, part of her did. The other part of her wanted him never to come back, to stay hidden forever in his little suburban fortress. She could-

No, no… Come on. Focus.

Lukas turned to compact Dr. Evans, watched him examining the extortion note carefully, rubbing his hand over his stubbly beard. His pale eyes were unsettling and she decided she wouldn't want him to be her therapist. He poured more coffee from his thermos. Then he announced, "I've got some thoughts about the unsub."

"Go ahead," she told him.

"Take 'em with a grain of salt," the doctor cautioned. "To do this right I'd need a ton more data and two weeks to analyze it."

Lukas said, "That's the way we work here. Kick around ideas. We're not holding you to anything."

"I think, from what we've seen, the Digger's just a machine. We'd call him 'profile-proof.' It's pointless to analyze him. It'd be like doing a profile of a gun. But the perp, the man in the morgue, he was a different story. You know organized offenders?"

"Of course," Lukas said. Criminal psychology 101.

"Well, he was a highly organized offender."

Lukas's eyes strayed to the extortion note as Evans described the man who'd written it.

The doctor continued. "He planned everything out perfectly. Times, locations. He knew human nature cold-he knew the mayor was going to pay, for instance, even though most authorities wouldn't have agreed to. He had backup plans upon backup plans. The firebomb at the safe house, I'm thinking of. And he found the perfect weapon-the Digger, a functioning human being who does nothing but kill. He took on an impossible task and he probably would've succeeded if he hadn't been killed in that accident."

"We had the bags rigged with tracers, so, no, he probably wouldn't have gotten away," Lukas pointed out.

"Oh," Evans said, "I'll bet he had some plan to counter that."

Lukas realized that this was probably right.

The doctor continued. "Now, he asked for twenty million. And he was willing to kill hundreds of people to get it. He wasn't a progressive offender but he did raise the stakes because he knew-well, he believed-he could get away. He believed he was good-but he was good. In other words his arrogance was backed up by talent."

"Making the prick all the more dangerous," C. P. grumbled.

"Exactly. No false sense of ego to trip him up. He was brilliant-"

"Kincaid said he was highly educated." Lukas said, wishing again that the document examiner were here to kick these ideas around with. "He tried to disguise it in the note but Parker saw right through it."

Evans nodded slowly at this information. Then asked, "What was he wearing when they brought him into the morgue?"

C. P. found the list and read it to the doctor.

Evans summarized, "So, cheap clothes."

"Right."

"Not exactly the sort of thing you'd expect from somebody with the intelligence to set this whole thing up and who was asking for twenty million dollars."

"True," Cage said.

"Which means what?" Lukas asked.

"I see a class issue here," Evans explained. "I think he preferred to kill rich people, society people. He saw himself as better than them. Sort of a heroic common man."

Hardy pointed out, "But in the first attack he had the Digger gun down everybody, not just the wealthy."

Evans said, "But consider where. Dupont Circle. It's Yuppieville there. Hardly Southeast. And the Mason Theater? Tickets for the ballet must've been selling for sixty bucks each. And there was the third location too," Evans reminded. "The Four Seasons. Even though he didn't hit it he sent us there. He was familiar with it. And it's very upscale."

Lukas nodded. It seemed obvious to her now and she was upset she hadn't realized it earlier. She thought again about Parker-how he approached puzzles. Thinking broadly. It was so hard sometimes, though.

Focus…

"I think he was angry at the rich. At society's elite."

"Why?" Cage asked.

"I don't know yet. Not on the facts we have. But he did hate them. Oh, he was full of hate. And we should remember that when we're trying to figure out what his next target will be."

Lukas pulled the morgue shot of the unsub closer, stared at him.

What had been in his mind? What were his motives.

Evans glanced at her and gave a short laugh.

"What?" Lukas asked.

He nodded at the extortion note. "I feel like it's the note I've been analyzing. Like that's the perpetrator."

She'd been thinking just the same.

Exactly what Parker Kincaid had said too.

Focus…

"Hold on, folks," Geller said. "We're getting something." Everyone leaned toward the screen on which they could see the words "… two miles south. The R…"

Behind that phrase the computer was inserting combinations of the letters from the fragments of ash. It would reject them if the pen stroke of one letter didn't match a stroke from the one to its left. But the system had now added a letter i behind the R. Another one was forming behind that.

"It's that funny i with a dot Parker was telling us about," Geller said.

"The devil's teardrop," Lukas whispered.

"Right," Geller said. "Then after that… a letter t. Is that a t. Damn tears, I can't see anything."

"Yep," Lukas said. "Definitely a t. R-i-t."

"What's that next letter?" Hardy asked, leaning toward the screen.

"I can't tell," Lukas muttered. "It's too fuzzy. A short letter-without any-what'd Parker call them?-ascenders or descenders."

She leaned over the tech's shoulders. The smell of smoke on him was strong. On the screen the letters were very faint, but, yes, there definitely was an i and a t. The next one though was just a blur.

"Damn," Geller muttered. "The computer says that that's the letter that fits. The strokes match. But I can't make it out. Anybody see better than me?"

"Looks like a zigzag or something," Lukas said. "An a or x maybe?"

Cage's head shot up. "Zigzag? Could it be a z?"

"Ritz!" Hardy blurted. "Maybe the Ritz-Carlton?"

"That's got to be it!" Lukas said, nodding at Evans. "He's going after more rich people."

"Sure!" Evans said. "And it makes sense-given his tendency to fool us-he'd figure we'd eliminate hotels because he used one before."

In the office chair Geller rolled to a different computer. In five seconds he had a Yellow Pages telephone directory on the screen. "Two Ritzes in the area. One at Tysons Corner. And one in Pentagon City."

Lukas said, "Parker said he'd stick to the District. I'm voting in Pentagon City."

She called Jerry Baker and told him about the latest target. "I want every tactical agent in the District and Northern Virginia mobilized. And send skeleton crews to Tysons." She added, "You're not going to like it but no hoods and helmets."

She meant: without Nomex hoods and Kevlar helmets-shorthand in the Bureau for going plainclothes.

"You sure?" Baker asked uncertainly. When officers dress for undercover surveillance they can't wear as much body armor as in an overt tactical operation. It's far riskier, especially with a perp armed with an automatic weapon.

"Has to be, Jerry. We've almost nailed this guy once and he's gonna be skittish as a deer. He sees anything out of the ordinary he's going to bolt. I'll take responsibility."

"Okay, Margaret. I'll get on it."

She hung up.

She found Len Hardy staring at her. His face suddenly seemed older, tougher. She wondered if he was going to confront her again about his being on a tactical team. But he asked, "You're running the operation plainclothes?"

"Right. Is there a problem with that, Detective?"

"Does that mean you're not going to evacuate the hotel?"

"No, I'm not," she answered.

"But there'll be a thousand people there tonight."

Lukas said, "It's got to be business as usual. The Digger can't suspect a thing."

"But if he gets past us… I mean, we aren't even sure what he looks like."

"I know, Len."

He shook his head. "You can't do it."

"We don't have a choice."

The detective said, "You know what I do for a living-compile statistics. You want to know how many bystanders die in covert tactical operations? There's probably an eighty percent chance of significant fatalities among innocents if you try to take him down in a situation like that."

"What do you suggest?" she snapped back, letting him see a flash of temper.

"Keep your people plainclothes but get all the guests out. Leave the employees inside if you have to but move everybody else out."

"The best we could do is get fifty or sixty agents inside the hotel," she pointed out. "The Digger walks in the front door, expecting to see five hundred guests, and he finds that few? He'd take off. And he'd go shoot up someplace else."

"For Christ sake, Margaret," Hardy muttered, "at least get the kids out."

Lukas fell silent, eyes on the note.

"Please," the detective persisted.

She looked into his eyes. "No. If we tried to evacuate anybody word would spread and there'd be panic."

"So you're just going to hope for the best?"

She glanced at the extortion note.

The end is night…

It seemed to be sneering at her.

"No," Lukas said. "We're going to stop him. That's what we're going to do." A glance at Evans: "Doctor, if you could stay here." Then a glance at Hardy. "You handle communications."

Hardy sighed angrily. He said nothing else.

"Let's go," Lukas said to Cage. "I've got to stop by my office."

"For what?" Cage asked, nodding to her empty ankle holster. "Oh, another backup?"

"No, for some party clothes. We've got to blend."

"He's got something good for us." Wendell Jefferies, the sleeves of his custom-made shirt rolled high, revealing health-club-toned arms.

By "he" the aide meant Slade Phillips, Mayor Kennedy knew.

The two men were in the City Hall office. The mayor had just given another embarrassing press conference, attended by only a dozen reporters, who, even as he spoke, took cell phone calls and checked pagers in hopes of getting better news from other sources. Who could blame them? Christ, he didn't have anything to say. All he could report on was the morale of some of the victims he'd been to visit at hospitals.

"He's going on the air at nine," Jefferies now told the mayor. "A special report."

"With what?"

"He won't tell me," Jefferies said. "Somehow he thinks that would be unethical."

Kennedy stretched and leaned back in the couch-a fake Georgian settee his predecessor had bought. The finish was chipping off the arms. And the hassock on which his size 12 feet rested was cheap; a piece of folded cardboard was stuffed under one leg to keep it from rocking.

A glance at the brass clock.

Dear your honor, thank you very much for coming to speak with us today. It has been an honor to hear you. You are a very good person for us children and students and we would like to comment… commem… commemorate your visit with this gift, which we hope you will like…

The minute hand clicked forward one stoke. In an hour, he thought, how many more people would be dead?

The phone rang. Kennedy glanced at it lethargically and let Jefferies answer.

"Hello?"

A pause.

"Sure. Hold on." He handed the receiver to Kennedy, saying, "This is interesting."

The mayor took the receiver. "Yes?"

"Mayor Kennedy?"

"That's right."

"This is Len Hardy."

"Detective Hardy?"

"That's right. Is… Is anybody else listening?"

"No. It's my private line."

The detective hesitated then said, "I've been thinking… About what we were talking about."

Kennedy sat up, took his feet off the couch.

"Go ahead, son. Where are you?"

"Ninth Street. FBI headquarters."

There was silence. The mayor encouraged, "Go on."

"I couldn't just sit here anymore. I had to do something. I think she's making a mistake."

"Lukas?"

Hardy continued, "They found out where he's going to hit tonight. The Digger, the shooter."

"They did?" Kennedy's strong hand gripped the phone hard. Gestured to Jefferies to hand him a pen and paper. "Where?"

"The Ritz-Carlton."

"Which one?"

"They aren't sure. Probably Pentagon City… But, Mayor, she's not evacuating them."

"She's what?" Kennedy snapped.

"Lukas isn't evacuating the hotel She's-"

"Wait," Kennedy said. "They know where he's going to hit and she's not telling anyone?"

"No, she's going to use the guests for bait. I mean, that's the only way to say it. Anyway, I thought about what you said. I decided I had to call you."

"You did the right thing, Officer."

"I hope so, I really hope that. I can't talk any longer, Mayor. I just had to tell you."

"Thank you." Jerry Kennedy hung up and rose to his feet.

"What is it?" Jefferies asked.

"We know where he's going to hit. The Ritz. Call Reggie, I want my car now. And a police escort."

As he strode to the door Jefferies asked, "How 'bout a news crew?"

Kennedy glanced at his aide. The meaning of the look was unmistakable. It meant: Of course we want a news crew.

They're both standing awkwardly, side by side, four arms crossed, in the Diggers motel room.

They're both watching TV.

Funny.

The pictures on the TV look familiar to the Digger.

The pictures are from the theater. The place where he was supposed to spin around like he did in the Connecticut forest and send bullets into a million leaves. The theater where he wanted to spin, where he was supposed to spin, but he couldn't.

The theater where the… click… where the scary man with the big jaws and tall hat came to kill him. No, that's not right… Where the police came to kill him.

He watches the boy as the boy watches TV. The boy says, "Shit." For no reason, it seems.

Just like Pamela.

The Digger calls his voice mail and hears the woman's electronic voice say, "You have no new messages."

He hangs up.

The Digger does not have much time. He looks at his watch. The boy looks at it too.

He is thin and frail. The area around his right eye is slightly darker than his dark skin and the Digger knows that the man he killed had hit the boy a lot. He thinks he's happy he shot the man. Whatever happy is.

The Digger wonders what the man who tells him things would think about the boy. The man did tell him to kill anybody who got a look at his face. And the boy has gotten a look at his face. But it doesn't… click… it doesn't seem… click… seem right to kill him.

Why, it seems to me that every day,

I love you all the more.

He goes into the kitchenette and opens a can of soup. He spoons some into a bowl. Looks at the boy's skinny arms and spoons some more in. Noodles. Mostly noodles. He heats it in the microwave for exactly sixty seconds, which is what the instructions tell him to do to get the soup "piping hot." He sets the bowl in front of the boy. Hands him a spoon.

The boy takes one bite. Then another. Then he stops eating. He's looking at the TV screen. His small, bullet-shaped head lolls from one side to the other, his eyes droop, and the Digger realizes he's tired. This is what the Digger's head and eyes do when he's tired.

He and the boy are a lot alike, he decides.

The Digger motions to the bed. But the boy looks at him fearfully and doesn't give a response. The Digger motions to the couch and the boy gets up and goes to the couch. He lies down. Still staring at the TV. The Digger gets a blanket and drapes it over the boy.

The Digger looks at the TV. More news. He finds a channel that has commercials. Selling hamburgers and cars and beer.

Things like that.

He says to the boy, "What s…" Click… "What's your name?"

The boy looks at him with half-closed lids. "Tye."

"Tye." The Digger repeats this several times to himself. "I'm going… I'm going out."

"Butyoubeback?"

What does he mean? The Digger shakes his head-his head with the tiny indentation above the temple.

"You comin' back?" the boy mutters again.

"I'm coming back."

The boy closes his eyes.

He tries to think of something else to say to Tye. There're some words he feels he wants to say but he doesn't remember what they are. It doesn't matter anyway because the boy is asleep. The Digger pulls the blanket up higher.

He goes to the closet, unlocks it and takes out one of the boxes of ammunition. He pulls on the plastic gloves and reloads two clips for the Uzi and then he repacks the silencer. He locks up the closet again.

The boy remains asleep. The Digger can hear his breathing.

The Digger looks at the torn puppy bag. He is about to crumple it up and throw it out but he remembers that Tye looked at the bag and he seemed to like it. He liked the puppies. The Digger smoothes it and puts it beside the boy so that if he wakes up while the Digger is gone he'll see the puppies and he won't be afraid.

The Digger doesn't need the puppy bag anymore.

"Use a plain brown bag for the third time," the man who tells him things told him.

So the Digger has a brown paper bag.

The boy turns over but is still asleep.

The Digger puts the Uzi into the brown bag, pulls his dark coat and gloves on and leaves the room.

Downstairs he gets into his car, a nice Toyota Corolla.

He loves those commercials.

Ohhhhh, everyday people…

He likes those better than Oh, what a feeling…

The Digger knows how to drive. He's a very good driver. He used to drive with Pamela. She'd drive fast when she drove and he'd drive slow. She got tickets and he never did.

He opens the glove compartment. There are several pistols inside. He takes one and puts it in his pocket. "After the theater," warned the man who tells him things, "there'll be more police looking for you. You'll have to be careful. Remember, if anybody sees your face…"

I remember.

Upstairs, in Robby's room, Parker sat with his son. The boy was sitting in bed, Parker in the bentwood rocker he'd bought at Antiques 'n' Things and tried unsuccessfully to refinish himself.

Two dozen toys were on the floor, a Nintendo 64 plugged into the old TV, Star Wars posters on the walls. Luke Skywalker. And Darth Vader…

Our mascot for the evening.

Cage had said that. But Parker was trying not to think about Cage. Or Margaret Lukas. Or the Digger. He was reading to his son. From The Hobbit.

Robby was lost in the story even though he'd heard his father read it to him a number of times. They gravitated to this book when Robby was frightened-because of the scene of slaying a fierce dragon. That part of the book always gave the boy courage.

When he'd walked in the front door of his house not long ago the boy's face had lit up. Parker had taken his son's hand and they'd walked to the back porch. He'd patiently showed the boy once again that there were no intruders in the backyard or the garage. They decided that crazy old Mr. Johnson had let his dog out again without closing the fence.

Stephie had hugged her father too and asked how his friend was, the sick one.

"He's fine," Parker had said, looking for but finding not a bit of truth to hang the statement on. Oh, the guilt of parents… What a hot iron it is.

Stephie had watched sympathetically as Robby and Parker had gone upstairs to read a story. At another time she might have joined them but she instinctively knew now to leave them alone. This was something about his children that Parker had learned: They bickered like all healthy youngsters, tried to outshine each other, engaged in typical sibling sabotage. Yet when something affected the core of one child-like the Boatman-the other knew instinctively what was needed. The girl had vanished into the kitchen, saying, "I'm making Robby a surprise for dessert."

As he read he would glance occasionally at his sons face. The boys eyes were closed and he looked completely content. (From the Handbook: "Sometimes your job isn't to reason with your children or to teach them or even to offer a sterling example of maturity. You simply must be with them. That's all it takes.")

"You want me to keep reading?" he whispered.

The boy didn't respond.

Parker left the book on his lap and remained in the scabby rocking chair, easing back and forth. Watching his son.

Thomas Jefferson's wife, Martha, had died not long after their third daughter was born (the girl herself died at age two). Jefferson, who never remarried, had struggled to raise his two other girls by himself. As a politician and statesman he was often forced to be an absent father, a situation he truly hated. It was letters that kept him in touch with his children. He wrote thousands of pages to the girls, offering support, advice, complaints, love. Parker knew Jefferson as well as he knew his own father and could recall some letters from memory. He thought of one of these now, written when Jefferson was vice president and in the midst of fierce political battles between the rival parties of the day.

Your letter, my dear Maria, of Jan. 21 was received two days ago. It was like the bright beams of the moon on the desolate heath. Environed here in scenes of constant torment, malice and obloquy, worn down in a state where no effort to render service can aver any thing, I feel not that existence is a blessing but when something recalls my mind to my family.

Looking at his son, hearing his daughter bang pans downstairs, he worried, as he often did, if he was raising his own children right.

How often he'd lain asleep at night worrying about this.

After all, he'd separated two children from their mother. That the courts and all of his (and most of Joans) friends agreed that it was the only sane thing to do made little difference to him. He hadn't become a single father by the quirk of death as Jefferson had; no, Parker had made that decision himself.

But was it truly for the children that he'd done this? Or was it to escape from his own unhappiness? This is what tormented him so often. Joan had seemed so sweet, so charming, before they were married. But much of it, he'd realized, was an act. She was in fact cagey and calculating. Her moods whipped back and forth-cheerful for a while, she'd plunge into days of rage and suspicion and paranoia.

When he'd met Joan he was learning how very different life becomes when you're still young and your parents die. The demilitarized zone between you and mortality is gone. You seek as a mate either someone to take care of you or, as Parker had done, someone to take care of.

Don't you think it works out best that way? Nobody taking care of anybody else? That's a rule. Write it down.

So it wasn't surprising that he sought out a woman who, though beautiful and charming, had a moody, helpless side to her.

Naturally, not long after the Whos were born, when their married life demanded responsibility and sometimes just plain hard work and sacrifice, Joan gave rein to her dissatisfactions and moods.

Parker tried everything he could think of. He went with her to therapy, took over more than his share of work with the children, tried joking her out of her funks, planned parties, took her on trips, cooked breakfasts and dinners for the family.

But among the secrets Joan had kept from him was a family history of alcoholism and he was surprised to find that she'd been drinking much more than he'd believed. She'd do twelve-steps from time to time and try other counseling approaches. But she always lapsed.

She withdrew further and further from him and the children, occupying her time with hobbies and whims. Taking gourmet cooking classes, buying a sports car, shopping compulsively, working out like an Olympian at a fancy health club (where she met husband-to-be Richard). But she always pulled back; she gave him and the children just enough.

And then there was the Incident.

June, four years ago.

Parker returned home from work at the Bureau's document lab and found Joan gone, a baby-sitter looking after the Whos. This wasn't unusual or troublesome in itself. But when he went upstairs to play with the children he saw immediately that something was wrong. Stephie and Robby, then four and five, were sitting in their shared bedroom, assembling Tinkertoys. But Stephanie was groggy. Her eyes were unfocused and her face slick with sweat. Parker noticed that she'd thrown up on the way to the bathroom. He put the girl into bed and took her temperature, which was normal. Parker wasn't surprised that the baby-sitter hadn't noticed Stephanie's illness; children are embarrassed when they vomit or mess their pants and often try to keep accidents secret. But Stephie-and her brother-seemed much more evasive than Parker would have expected.

The boy's eyes kept going to their toy chest. ("Watch the eyes first," his Handbook commands. "Listen to the words second.") Parker walked toward the chest and Robby started to cry, begging him not to open the lid. But of course he did. And stood, frozen, looking down at the bottles of vodka Joan had hidden there.

Stephanie was drunk. She'd tried imitating Mommy, drinking Absolut-from her Winnie the Pooh mug.

"Mommy said not to say anything about her secret," the boy told him, crying. "She said you'd be mad at us if you found out. She said you'd yell at us."

Two days later he started divorce proceedings. He hired a savvy lawyer and got Child Protective Services involved before Joan made the false abuse claim the attorney thought she'd try.

The woman fought and she fought hard-but it was the way someone fights to keep a stamp collection or a sports car, not something you love more than life itself.

And in the end, after several agonizing months and tens of thousands of dollars, the children were his.

He'd thought that he could concentrate on putting his life back together and giving the children a normal life.

And he had-for the past four years. But now she was at it again, trying to modify the custody order.

Oh, Joan, why are you doing this? Don't you ever think about them? Don't you understand that our egos-parents' egos-have to dissolve into benevolent vapor when it comes to our children? If he truly thought it would be better for Robby and Stephie to split their time between Parker and Joan he'd agree in a heartbeat; it would destroy part of him. But he'd do it.

Yet he believed this would be disastrous for them. And so he'd duke it out with his ex-wife in court relentlessly and at the same time shield the children from the animosity of the proceedings. At times like this you fought on two fronts: You battled the enemy and you battled your own overwhelming desire to be a child yourself and share your pain with your children. But this you could never do.

"Daddy," Robby said suddenly, "you stopped reading."

"I thought you were asleep." He laughed.

"My eyelids were just resting. They got tired. But I'm not."

Parker glanced at the clock. Quarter to eight. Fifteen minutes until-

No, don't think about that now.

He asked his son, "You have your shield?"

"Right here."

"Me too."

He picked up the book and began to read once more.

22

Margaret Lukas looked over the families at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel.

She and Cage stood in the main entrance, where hundreds of people were gathering for parties and dinner. Lukas was wearing a navy-blue suit she'd designed and made herself. It was cut close to her body, made from expensive worsted wool, and it had a long, pleated skirt. She'd cut a special dart in the jacket to make certain that the Clock 10 on her hip did not ruin the stylish lines of the outfit. It would be perfect for the opera or a fancy restaurant but, as it happened, she had worn it only to weddings and funerals. She called it her married-buried suit.

Fifteen minutes until eight.

"Nothing, Margaret," came the gruff voice in her headset. C. P. Ardell's. He was downstairs at one entrance to the Ritz, the parking garage, pretending to be a slightly drunk holiday reveler. The big agent wore a considerably more mundane costume than Lukas's-stained jeans and a black leather bikers jacket. On his head was a Redskins hat, which he wore not because of the cold but because he had no hair to obscure the earphone wire of his radio. There were an additional sixty-five plainclothes agents in and around the hotel, armed with more weaponry than you'd find at an El Paso gun show.

All looking for a man for whom they had virtually no description.

Probably white, probably average build.

Probably wearing a gold crucifix.

In the lobby Lukas and Cage scanned the guests, the bellhops, the clerks. Nobody came close to matching their fragile description of the Digger. She realized they were standing with their arms crossed, looking just like well-dressed federal agents on stakeout.

"Say something amusing," she whispered.

"What?" Cage asked.

"We're sticking out. Pretend we're talking."

"Okay," Cage said, smiling broadly. "So whatta you think of Kincaid?"

The question threw her. "Kincaid? What do you mean?"

"I'm making conversation." A shrug. "Whatta you think of him?"

"I don't know."

"Sure you do," Cage persisted.

"He's perp smart, not street smart."

This time Cage's shrug was one of concession. "That's good. I like that." He said nothing more for a moment.

"What're you getting at?" she asked.

"Nothing. I'm not getting at anything. We're pretending to talk is all."

Good, she thought.

Focus…

They studied a dozen other possible suspects. She dismissed them for reasons she knew instinctively but couldn't explain.

Street smart…

A moment later Cage said, "He's a good man. Kincaid."

"I know. He's been very helpful."

Cage laughed in the surprised way of his-the way that meant: I'm on to you. He repeated, "Helpful."

More silence.

Cage said, "He lost his parents just after college. Then there was that custody battle a few years ago. Wife was psycho."

"That's hard," she said and made a foray into the crowd. She brushed up against a guest with a suspicious bulge under his arm. She recognized a cell phone immediately and returned to Cage. Found herself asking impulsively, "What happened? With his folks?"

"Car accident. One of those crazy things. His mother'd just been diagnosed with cancer and it looked like they caught it in time. But they got nailed by a truck on Ninety-five on the way to Johns Hopkins for chemo. Dad was a professor. Met him a couple times. Nice guy."

"Was he?" she muttered, distracted again.

"History."

"What?"

"That's what Kincaid's dad taught. History."

More silence.

Lukas finally said, "I just need some phony conversation, Cage, not matchmaking."

He responded, "Am I doing that? Would I do that? I'm only saying you don't meet a lot of people like Kincaid."

"Uh-huh. We've got to stay focused here, Cage."

"I'm focused. You're focused. He doesn't know why you're pissed at him."

"Very simple. He wasn't being part of the team. I told him that. We settled it. End of story."

"He's decent," Cage offered. "A stand-up guy. And he's smart-his mind's a weird thing. You should see him with those puzzles of his."

"Yeah. I'm sure he's great."

Focus.

But she wasn't focusing. She was thinking about Kincaid.

So he had his own capital I Incidents-deaths and divorce. A hard wife and a struggle to raise the children by himself. That explained some of what she'd seen before.

Kincaid…

And thinking about him, the document examiner, she thought again about the postcard.

Joeys postcard.

On the trip from which they'd never returned, Tom and Joey had been visiting her in-laws in Ohio. It was just before Thanksgiving. Her six-year-old son had mailed her a postcard from the airport before they boarded the doomed plane. Probably not a half hour before the 737 had crashed into the icy field.

But the boy hadn't known you needed a stamp to mail postcards. He must have slipped it into the mailbox before his father knew what he was doing.

It arrived a week after the funeral. Postage due. She'd paid for it and for the next three hours carefully peeled off the Postal Service sticker that had covered up part of her son's writing.

Were having fun mommy. Granma and I made cookys

I miss you. I love you mommy…

A card from the ghost of her son.

It was in her purse right now, the gaudy picture of a sunset in the Midwest. Her wedding ring was stored in her jewelry box but this card she kept with her all the time and would until she died.

Six months after the crash Lukas had taken a copy of the card to a graphoanalyst and had her son's handwriting analyzed.

The woman had said, "Whoever wrote this is creative and charming. He'll grow up to be a handsome man. And brilliant, with no patience for deception. He also has a great capacity for love. You're a very lucky woman to have a son like this."

For ten dollars more the graphoanalyst had tape-recorded her comments. Lukas listened to the tape every few weeks. She'd sit by herself in her dark living room, put a candle on, have a drink-or two-and listen to what her son would have been like.

Then Parker Kincaid shows up at FBI headquarters and announces with that know-all voice of his that graphoanalysis is nonsense.

People read tarot cards too and talk to their dear departed. It's bogus.

It's not! she now raged to herself. She believed what the graphoanalyst had told her.

She had to. Otherwise she'd go insane.

It's as if you lose a part of your mind when you have children. They steal it and you never get it back… Sometimes I'm amazed that parents can function at all.

Dr. Evans's observation. She hadn't let on at the time but she knew it was completely true.

And here was Cage trying to set her up. So, she and Kincaid were similar. They were smart (and, yes, arrogant). They were both missing parts of their lives. They both had their protective walls-his to keep the danger out, hers to keep herself from retreating inside, where the worst danger lay. Yet the same instincts that made her a good cop told her-for no reason that she could articulate-that there was no future between them. She had returned to a "normal" life as much as she ever could. She had her dog, Jean Luc. She had some friends. She had her CDs. Her runners' club. Her sewing. But Margaret Lukas was emotionally "plateaued," to use the Bureau term for an agent no longer destined for advancement.

No, she knew she'd never see Parker Kincaid after tonight. And that was perfectly all right-

The earphone crackled. "Margaret… Jesus Christ." It was C. P. Ardell, stationed downstairs.

Instantly she drew her weapon.

"You have the subject?" she whispered fiercely into her lapel mike.

"No," the agent said. "But we've got a problem. It's a mess down here."

Cage too was listening. His hand strayed to his own weapon as he looked at Lukas, frowning.

C. P. continued. "It's the mayor. He's here with a dozen cops and, fuck, a camera crew too."

"No!" Lukas snapped, drawing the attention of a cluster of partyers nearby.

"They got lights and everything. The shooter sees this, he'll take off. Its like a circus."

"I'll be right there."

"Your honor, this is a federal operation and have to ask you to leave right now."

They were in the parking garage. Lukas noted immediately that there was a controlled entrance and exit-to get in you needed to take a ticket. That meant that license plates were recorded and that in turn meant that the Digger would probably not come in this way-the unsub would have told him not to leave a record of his visit. But Mayor Kennedy and his damn entourage were headed for the main entrance to the hotel, where he and his uniformed bodyguards could be spotted in a minute by the killer.

And for God's sake, a camera crew?

Kennedy looked down at Lukas. He was a head taller. He said, "You have to get the guests out of here. Evacuate them. When the killer shows up let me talk to him."

Lukas ignored him and said to C. P., "Any of them get into the hotel itself?"

"No, we stopped 'em here."

Kennedy continued. "Evacuate! Get them out!"

"We can't do that," she said. "The Digger'll know something's wrong."

"Well, tell them to go their rooms at least."

"Think about it, Mayor," she snapped. "Most of them aren't guests. They're just locals-here for dinner and parties. They don't have rooms."

Lukas looked around the entrance to the hotel and the street outside. It wasn't crowded-the stores were all closed for the holiday. She whispered fiercely, "He could be here at any minute. I'm going to have to ask you to leave." Thought about adding "sir." She didn't.

"Then I'm going to have to go over your head. Who's your supervisor?"

"I am," Cage said. No shrugs now. Just a cold glare. "You have no jurisdiction here."

The mayor snapped, "So, who's your supervisor."

"Somebody you don't want to call, believe me."

"Let me be the judge of that."

"No," Lukas said firmly, glancing at her watch. "The Digger could be in the building right now. I don't have time to argue with you. I want you and your people out of here now!"

Kennedy looked at his aide-what was his name? Jefferies, she believed. A reporter was nearby, filming the entire exchange.

"I'm not going to let the FBI risk those people's lives. I'm going to-"

"Agent Ardell," she said, "put the mayor in custody."

"You can't arrest him," Jefferies snapped.

"Yes, she can," Cage said angrily now, with the most minute of shrugs. "And she can arrest you too."

"Get him out of here," Lukas said.

"Lockup?"

Lukas considered. "No. Just stay with him and keep him out of our hair until the operation's over."

"I'm call my lawyer and-"

A flash of anger burst inside her, as bright as the one that made her explode at Kincaid. She looked up at him, pointed a finger at his chest. "Mayor, this is my operation and you're interfering with it. I'll let you go on your way with Agent Ardell or, so help me, I'll have you detained downtown. It's entirely up to you."

There was a pause. Lukas wasn't even looking at the mayor; her eyes were scanning the parking lot, the sidewalks, the shadows. No sign of anyone who might be the Digger.

Kennedy said, "All right." He nodded toward the hotel. "But if there's any bloodshed tonight, it'll be on your hands."

"Goes with the territory," she muttered, recalling she'd threatened Kincaid with the same words. "Go on, C. P."

The agent led the mayor back to his limo. The two men got inside. Jefferies stared defiantly at Lukas for a moment but she turned quickly, and together she and Cage walked back toward the hotel.

"Shit," Cage said.

"No, I think it's okay. I don't think the Digger could've seen anything."

"That's not what I mean. Think about it-if Kennedy found out we were here, that means we've got a leak. Where the hell do you think it is?"

"Oh, I know that." She opened her cell phone and made a call.

"Detective," Lukas said, struggling to control her anger, "you know that information about tac operations is secure. You want to give me a reason why I shouldn't refer what you did to the U.S. attorney?"

She expected Len Hardy to deny or at least offer some slippery excuse about a mistake or getting tricked. But he surprised her by saying briskly, "Refer whatever you want but Kennedy wanted a chance to negotiate with the shooter. I gave it to him."

"Why?"

"Because you're willing to let, what, a dozen people die? Two dozen?"

"If it meant stopping the shooter then, yeah, that's exactly what I'm willing to do."

"Kennedy said he could talk to him. Talk him into taking the money. He-"

"You know he showed up with a goddamn TV crew?"

Hardy's voice was no longer so certain. "He… what?"

"A TV crew. He was playing it for media. If the Digger'd seen the lights, the police bodyguard… he'd just leave and find another target."

"He said he wanted to talk to him," Hardy said. "I didn't think he was going to use it for PR."

"Well, he did."

"Did the Digger-?"

"I don't think he could've seen anything."

Silence for a moment. "I'm sorry, Margaret." He sighed. "I just wanted to do something. I didn't want any more people to die. I'm sorry."

Lukas gripped her phone. She knew she should fire him, kick him off the team. Probably file a report with the District police commission too. And yet she had an image of the young man returning to his house, a house as silent as the one she returned to every night after Tom and Joey had died-a silence that hurts like a slap from a lover. He'd spend the holiday alone, forced to suffer a false mourning for Emma-a wife not alive and not dead.

He seemed to sense her weakening and said, "It won't happen again. Give me another chance."

Yes? No?

"Okay, Len. We'll talk about it later."

"Thanks, Margaret."

"We've got to get back on stakeout."

She clicked off the phone abruptly and if Hardy said anything else she never heard it. She returned to the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton.

Lukas slipped her weapon off her hip once more, held it at her side and began to circulate through the crowd. Cage tapped his watch. It was a few minutes to eight.

They looked over the railing at the dark water and joked about the Titanic, they ate the shrimp and left the chicken livers, they talked about wine and about interest rates and about upcoming elections and about congressional scandals and about sitcoms.

Most of the men were in tuxedos or dinner jackets, most of the women in dark dresses whose hems hovered an inch above the lacquered deck.

"Isn't this something? Look at the view."

"Will we be able to see the fireworks?"

"Where'd Hank get to? He's got my beer."

The hundreds of partyers had stationed themselves all over the lengthy yacht. There were three decks and four bars and everyone at the New Year's Eve bash was feeling great.

Lawyers and doctors, finding a few hours of peace from their clients' and patients' woes. Parents, enjoying a respite from their children. Lovers, thinking about finding an empty stateroom.

"So what's he going to do I heard he was going to run but the polls suck why should he oh what about Sally Claire Tom did they really get that place in Warrenton well I don't know how he can afford it… "

Minutes clicked past and the time grew closer to eight o'clock.

Everyone was happy.

Pleasant people enjoying a party, enjoying the company of friends.

Thankful for the view they'd have of the fireworks at midnight, thankful for the chance to celebrate and be away from the pressures of the nations capital for the evening.

Thankful for the creature comforts conferred upon them by the crew and caterers on board the luxury yacht the Ritzy Lady, which floated regally in her dock on the Potomac, exactly two miles south of the Fourteenth Street Bridge.

23

Robby had moved from J. R. R. Tolkien to Nintendo.

He didn't seem upset anymore and Parker could stand it no longer; he had to find out about the Digger, about the most recent attack. Had Lukas and Cage succeeded? Had they found him?

Had they killed him? He maneuvered through the toys on the floor and walked downstairs, where Stephie was in the kitchen with Mrs. Cavanaugh. The girl was squinting in concentration as she scrubbed one of Parker's stainless-steel pots. She'd made a caramel corn Christmas tree, sprinkled with green sugar. It sat, charmingly lopsided, on a plate on the counter.

"Beautiful, Who," he told her.

"I tried to put silver balls on it but they fell off."

"Robby'll love it."

He started for the den but saw a hollowness in her face.

He put his arm around the girl. "Your brother's okay, you know."

"I know."

"I'm sorry tonight's gone all ka-flooey."

"That's okay."

Which meant of course that it wasn't quite okay.

"We'll have fun tomorrow… But, honey, you know my friend? I may have to go back and see him."

"Oh, I know," Stephie said.

"You do?"

"I could tell. Sometimes you're all-the-way here and sometimes you're partway here. And tonight, when you came back, you were only partway here."

"Tomorrow I'll be all-the-way here. It's supposed to snow. You want to go sledding?"

"Yeah! Can I make the hot chocolate?"

"I was hoping you would." He hugged his daughter then rose and walked into the den to call Lukas. He didn't want her to overhear his conversation.

But through the curtained window he saw motion on the sidewalk, a man, he thought.

He walked quickly to the window and looked out. He couldn't see anyone-only a car he didn't recognize.

He slipped his hand into his pocket. And kneaded the cold metal of Lukas's gun.

Oh, not again… Thinking of the Boatman, remembering that terrible night.

The gun is too loud!…

The doorbell rang.

"I'll get it," he called abruptly, glancing into the kitchen. He saw Stephie blink. Once again his brusque manner had startled one of his children. Still, there was no time to comfort her.

Hand in his pocket, he looked through the window in the door and saw an FBI agent he recognized from earlier in the evening. He relaxed, leaned his head against the doorjamb. Breathed deeply to calm himself then opened the door with a trembling hand. A second agent walked up the steps. He remembered Lukas's comment about sending some men to watch the house.

"Agent Kincaid?"

He nodded. Looking over his shoulder to make sure Stephie was out of earshot.

"Margaret Lukas sent us to keep an eye on your family."

"Thanks. Just park out of sight if you would. I don't want to upset the children."

"Sure thing, sir."

He glanced at his watch. He was relieved. If the Digger had struck again, Cage or Lukas would have called. Maybe they'd actually caught the son of a bitch.

"The shooter in the Metro killing?" he asked. "The Digger. They got him?"

The look that passed between the two men chilled Parker.

Oh, no…

"Well, sir-"

Inside the house the phone started to ring. He saw Mrs. Cavanaugh answer it.

"The shooter, he got on board a party yacht on the Potomac. Killed eleven, wounded more than twenty. I thought you knew."

Oh, God. No…

Nausea churned inside him.

Here I was reading children's books while people were dying. You've been living life on Sesame Street…

He asked, "Agent Lukas… she's all right? And Agent Cage?"

"Yessir. They weren't anywhere near the boat. They found some clue that said 'Ritz,' so they thought the Digger was going to hit one of the Ritz hotels. But that wasn't it. The name of the boat was the Ritzy Lady. Bad luck, huh?"

The other agent said, "Security guard got off a couple shots and that scared the shooter off. So it wasn't as bad as it might've been. But they didn't hit him, they don't think."

Bad luck, huh?

No, not luck at all. When you don't solve the puzzle it's not because of luck.

Three hawks…

He heard Mrs. Cavanaugh's voice, "Mr. Kincaid?"

He glanced into the house.

Eleven dead…

"Phone for you."

Parker walked into the kitchen. He picked up the phone, expecting to hear Lukas or Cage.

But it was a smooth-sounding, pleasant baritone he didn't recognize. "Mr. Kincaid?"

"Yes? Who's this?"

"My names Slade Phillips, WPLT News. Mr. Kincaid, we're doing a special report on the New Years Eve shootings. We have an unnamed source reporting that you've been instrumental in the investigation and may be responsible for the mix-up in sending the FBI to the Ritz-Carlton Hotel when in fact the killer had targeted another location. We're going on the air with that story at nine. We want to give you the chance to tell your side. Do you have anything to say?"

Parker inhaled sharply. He believed his heart stopped beating momentarily.

This was it… Joan would find out. Everyone would find out.

"Mr. Kincaid?"

"I have no comment." He hung up, missing the cradle. He watched the phone spiral downward and hit the floor with a resounding crack.

The Digger returns to his comfy motel room.

Thinking of the boat-where he spun around like… click… like a whirligig among red and yellow leaves and fired his Uzi and fired and fired and fired…

And watched the people fall and scream and run. Things like that.

It wasn't like the theater. No, no, he got a lot of them this time. Which will make the man who tells him things happy.

The Digger locks the motel door and the first thing he does is walk to the couch and look at Tye. The boy is still asleep. The blanket has slipped off him and the Digger replaces it.

The Digger turns the TV on and sees pictures of the Ritzy Lady boat. Once again he sees that man he recognizes-the… click… the mayor. Mayor Kennedy. He's standing in front of the boat. He's wearing a nice suit and a nice tie and it looks odd to see him wearing such a fancy suit with all the yellow bags of bodies behind him. He's speaking into a microphone but the Digger can't hear what he's saying because he doesn't have the TV volume on because he doesn't want to wake up Tye.

He continues to watch for a while but no commercials come on and he's disappointed so he shuts off the TV, thinking, "Good night, Mayor."

He begins to pack his belongings, taking his time.

Motels are nice, motels are fun.

They come and clean up the room every day. Even Pamela didn't do that. She was good with flowers and good with that stuff you did in bed. That… click, click… that stuff.

Mind jumping, bullets rattling around the cra… crane… cranium.

Thinking, for some reason, about Ruth.

"Oh, God, no," Ruth said. "Don't do it!"

But he'd been told to do it-to put the long piece of glass in her throat-and so he did. She shivered as she died. He remembers that. Ruth, shivering.

Shivering like on Christmas day, twelve twenty-five, one two two five, when he made soup for Pamela and then gave her her present.

He looks at Tye. He'll take the boy out… click… West with him. The man who tells him things told him he'd call after they finished in Washington, D.C., and tell him where they'd go next.

"Where will that be?" the Digger asked.

"I don't know. Maybe out West."

"Where's the West?" he asked.

"California. Maybe Oregon."

"Oh," responded the Digger, who had no idea where those places were.

But sometimes, late at night, full of soup and smiling at the funny commercials, he thinks about going out West and imagines what he'll do out there.

Now, as he packs, he decides he'll definitely take the boy with him. Out West out… click.

Out West.

Yes, that would be good. That would be nice. That would be fun.

They could eat soup and chili and they could watch TV. He could tell the boy about TV commercials.

Pamela, the Digger's wife, with a flower in her hand and a gold cross in between her breasts, used to watch commercials with him.

But they never had a child like Tye to watch commercials with.

"Me?" Pamela asked. "Have a baby with you? Are you mad crazy nuts fucked…" Click. "… fucked up? Why don't you go away? Why are you still here? Take your fucking present and get out. Go away. Do you…"

Click…

But I love you all the…

"Do you need me to spell it out for you? I've been fucking William for a year. Is this news to you? Everybody in town knows except you. If I were going to have a baby I'd have his baby."

But I love you all the more.

"What are you doing? Oh Je-

Click.

– sus. Put it down!"

The memories are running like lemmings through the Digger's cranium.

"No, don't!" she screamed, staring at the knife in his hand. "Don't!"

But he did.

He put the knife into her chest, just below the gold cross he'd given her that morning, Christmas morning. What a beautiful red rose blossoms on her blouse! He put the knife in her chest once more and the rose got bigger.

And bleeding bleeding bleeding, Pamela ran for… where? Where? The closet, yes, the closet upstairs. Bleeding and screaming, "Oh Jesus Jesus Jesus… "

Pamela screaming, lifting the gun, pointing it at his head, her hand blossoming into a beautiful yellow flower as he felt a thud on his temple. I love you all the…

The Digger woke up sometime later.

The first thing he saw was the kind face of the man who would tell him things.

Click, click…

He now calls his voice mail. No messages.

Where is he, the man who tells him things?

But there's no time to think about it, about being happy or sad, whatever they are. There's only time to get ready for the last attack.

The Digger unlocks the closet. He takes out a second machine pistol, also an Uzi. He puts on the smelly latex gloves and starts to load the clips.

Two guns this time. And no shopping bags. Two guns and lots and lots of bullets. The man who tells him things told him that this time he has to shoot more people than he's ever shot before.

Because this will be the last minute of the last hour of the last night of the year.

24

A sweating Parker Kincaid ran into the FBI Document Division lab.

Lukas walked up to him. Her face was paler than he'd remembered it. "I got your message," she said. "That reporter-Phillips-he got to one of the mailroom people. Somehow he found out your real name."

"You promised," he raged.

"I'm sorry, Parker," she responded. "I'm sorry. It didn't come from here. I don't know what happened."

Dr. Evans and Tobe Geller were quiet. They knew what was going on but, perhaps seeing the look in Parkers eyes, they wanted no part of it. Cage was not in the room.

Parker had called them on his cell phone as he sped-with a red dashboard flasher borrowed from the agents stationed in front of his house-from Fairfax to downtown. His mind had been racing. How could he control the disaster? All he'd wanted to do was help save some lives. That was his only motive, save some children. And look what had happened…

Now his own children would be taken away from him.

The end of the world…

He pictured the nightmare if Joan had even partial custody. She'd soon lose interest in mothering. If she couldn't get a baby-sitter she'd drop them off, alone, at the mall. She'd lose her temper at them. They'd have to fix their own meals, wash their own clothes. He was in despair.

Why the hell had he even considered Cage's request for help tonight?

A small TV sat on a table nearby. Parker turned it on to the news. It was just nine. A commercial ended and smiling pictures of the WPLT "news team" flipped onto the screen.

"Where's Cage?" he asked angrily.

"I don't know," Lukas answered. "Upstairs somewhere."

Could they move out of the state? he wondered manically But, no, Joan would fight that and the Virginia courts would still have jurisdiction.

On the screen, that son of a bitch Phillips looked up from a stack of papers and gazed at the camera with a grotesquely sincere expression.

"Good evening. I'm Slade Phillips… Eleven people were killed and twenty-nine were wounded an hour ago in the third of the mass shootings that have terrorized Washington tonight. In this special report we'll have exclusive interviews with victims and with police on the scene. In addition, WPLT has obtained exclusive videotape of the scene of the most recent killings-on a yacht anchored in the Potomac River."

Parker, hands clenched, watched silently.

"WPLT has also learned that police and FBI agents were sent to a hotel where it was mistakenly believed that the killer would strike next, leaving too few officers and agents to respond to the shooting on the boat. It's not known for certain who is responsible for this mix-up but informed sources have… have reported… "

Phillips's voice faded. The anchor cocked his head, probably listening to someone through the flesh-colored earphone stuck in his ear. He glanced camera right and a shadow of a frown crossed his face. There was a brief pause and his mouth registered defeat as he recited, "Informed sources have reported that District of Columbia Mayor Gerald D. Kennedy is being detained by federal authorities, possibly in connection with this unsuccessful operation… Now, standing by at the site of the most recent shooting, is Cheryl Vandover. Cheryl, could you tell us-"

Cage walked into the lab, wearing an overcoat. He clicked the TV set off. Parker closed his eyes and exhaled. "Jesus."

"Sorry, Parker," Cage said. "Things fall through the cracks sometimes. But I made a deal with you and we're keeping our end of the bargain. Oh, one thing-don't ever ask me how I did this one. You definitely don't wanna know. Now, we got one more chance. Let's nail this prick. And this time, no foolin'."

The limo eased up to the curb in front of City Hall like a yacht docking.

Mayor Jerry Kennedy didn't like the simile but he couldn't help it. He'd just been at the Potomac riverside, comforting survivors and surveying the devastation that the Digger had caused. His tall, thin wife, Claire, at his side, they'd been astonished at how the bullets had torn the decks and cabins and tables to pieces. He could only imagine what the bullets had done to the bodies of the victims.

He leaned forward and clicked the TV off.

"How could he?" Claire whispered, referring to Slade Phillips's suggestion that Kennedy had in some mysterious way been responsible for the deaths on the boat.

Wendell Jefferies leaned forward, resting his glossy head in his hands. "Phillips… I already paid him. I-"

Kennedy waved him silent. Apparently the aide had forgotten about the huge, bald federal agent in the front seat. Bribing media was undoubtedly a federal offense of some kind.

Yeah, Jefferies had paid Slade Phillips his twenty-five thousand. And, no, they'd never get it back.

"Whatever happens," Kennedy said to Jefferies and Claire solemnly, "I don't want to hire Slade Phillips as my press secretary."

His delivery was, as always, deadpan and it took them a minute before they realized it was a joke. Claire laughed. Jefferies still seemed shell-shocked.

The irony was that Kennedy would never have a press secretary again. Former politicians don't need one. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry.

"What do we do now?" Claire asked.

"Well have a drink and then go to the African-American Teachers' Association party. Who knows? The Digger might still come forward and want the money. I still may have a chance to meet him face-to-face."

Claire shook her head. "After what happened on the boat? You couldn't trust him. He'd kill you."

Couldn't kill me any deader than the press has done tonight, Kennedy thought.

Claire tacked down her wispy hair with a burst from a small container of perfumed spray. Kennedy loved the smell. It comforted him. The vibrant fifty-nine-year-old woman with keen eyes had been his main advisor since his first days of public office, years ago. To hell with nepotism; it was only that she was white that kept her from being his primary assistant as mayor: a characteristic that she too insisted would put him at a disadvantage in the 60-percent-black District of Columbia.

"How bad is all this?" she asked.

"As bad as it gets."

Claire Kennedy nodded and put her hand on her husband's substantial leg.

Neither spoke for a moment.

"Is there any champagne in there?" he asked suddenly, nodding toward the minibar.

"Champagne?"

"Sure. Let's start celebrating my ignominious defeat early."

"You wanted to teach," she pointed out. Then with a wink she added, "Professor Kennedy."

"And you did too, Professor Kennedy. We'll tell William and Mary we want adjoining lecture halls."

She smiled at him and opened the minibar of the limo.

But Jerry Kennedy wasn't smiling. Teaching would be a failure. A successful job at a Dupont Circle law firm would be a failure. Kennedy knew in his heart that his life's purpose was to make this struggling, oddly shaped chunk of swampy land a better place for the youngsters who happened to be born here and that his Project 2000 was the only thing faintly within his grasp that would allow that to happen. And now those hopes had been destroyed.

He glanced at his wife. She was laughing.

She pointed to the bar. "Gallo and Budweiser."

What else in the District of Columbia?

Kennedy lifted up on the door handle and stepped out into the cooling night.

The guns are finally loaded.

The silencer he's been using has been repacked and the new one is mounted on the second gun.

The Digger, in his comfy room, checks his pocket. Let's see… He has one pistol with him and two more in the glove compartment of his car. And lots and lots of ammunition.

The Digger takes his suitcase out to the car. The man who tells him things told him that the room was paid for. When it was time to go all he had to do was leave.

He packs his cans of soup and dishes and glasses and takes them in a box to the Everyday People Toyota.

The Digger returns to the room and looks at thin Tye for a few minutes, wonders again where… click… where Out West is then wraps the blanket around him. And carries the boy, light as a puppy, down to the car and puts him in the back seat.

The Digger sits behind the wheel but doesn't start the car right away. He turns around and looks at the boy some more. Tucks the blanket around his feet. He's wearing tattered running shoes.

A memory of someone speaking. Who? Pamela? William? The man who tells him things?

"Sleep…"

Click, click.

Wait, wait, wait.

"I want you to…" Click, click.

Suddenly there is no Pamela, no Ruth with the glass in her neck, no man who tells him things. There is only Tye.

"I want you to sleep well," the Digger says to the boys still form. These are the words he wanted to say to him. He isn't exactly sure what they mean. But he says them anyway.

When I go to sleep at night,

I love you all the more…

He starts the car. He signals and checks his blind spot, then pulls out into traffic.

25

The last location.

… place I showed you-the black…

Parker Kincaid stood in front of the blackboard in the Document Division lab. Hands on his hips. Staring at the puzzle in front of him… place I showed you-the black…

"The black what?" Dr. Evans mused.

Cage shrugged. Lukas was on the phone with the PERT crime scene experts on board the Ritzy Lady. She hung up and told the team that, as they'd expected, there were few solid leads. They'd found bullet casings with a few prints on them. They were being run through AFIS, and Identification was going to e-mail Lukas the results. There was no other physical evidence. Witnesses had reported a white man of indeterminate age in a dark coat. He carried a brown bag, which presumably held the machine gun. A bit of fiber had been recovered. It was from the bag, techs from PERT had decided, but was generic and provided no clues as to the source.

Parker looked around, "Where's Hardy?"

Cage told him about the incident at the Ritz.

"She fire him?" Parker asked, nodding toward Lukas.

"No. Thought she should have but she gave him hell-and then a second chance. He's in the research library downstairs. Trying to make amends."

Parker looked back at Geller. The young agent stared at the screen in front of him as the computers improvised anagram program vainly tried to assemble letters following the word "black." The ash behind this word, however, was much more badly damaged than that in the Ritzy Lady notation.

Parker paced for a moment then stopped. He stared up at the blackboard. He felt the queasy sense of nearly but not quite figuring out a clue. He sighed.

He found himself standing next to Lukas. She asked him, "Your boy? Robby? Is he all right?"

"He's fine. Just a little scared."

She nodded. A computer nearby announced, "You've got mail." She walked to it and read the message. Shook her head. "The prints on the shell casings're from one of the passengers on the boat picking up souvenirs. He checks out." She clicked the SAVE button.

Parker gazed at the screen. "That's making me obsolete."

"What?"

"E-mail," he said. He looked at Lukas and added, "As a document examiner, I mean. Oh, people're writing more than ever because of it, but-"

"But there's less handwriting nowadays," she said, continuing his thought.

"Right."

"That'll be tough," she said. "Lose a lot of good evidence that way."

"True. But for me that's not what's sad."

"Sad?" She looked at him. Her eyes were no longer stony but she seemed wary once again of an inartful term echoing in such an esteemed forensic lab.

"For me," he told her, "handwriting's a part of a human being. Like our sense of humor or imagination. Think about it-it's one of the only things about people that survives their death. Writing can last for hundreds of years. Thousands. It's about as close to immortality as we can get."

"Part of the person?" she asked. "But you said graphoanalysis was bogus."

"No, I mean that whatever somebody wrote is still a reflection of who they are. It doesn't matter how the words are made or what they say, even if they're mistaken or nonsensical. Just the fact that someone thought of the words and their hands committed them to paper is what counts. It's almost a miracle to me."

She was staring at the floor, her head down.

Parker continued. "I've always thought of handwriting as a fingerprint of the heart and mind." He laughed self-consciously at this, thinking that she might have another brusque reaction to a sentimental thought. But something odd happened. Margaret Lukas nodded and looked away from him quickly. Parker thought, for a moment, that another message had flashed on a nearby computer and caught her attention. But there wasn't any. With her head turned away from him he could see her reflection in the screen and it seemed that her eyes were glistening with tears. This was something he never would have expected from Lukas but, yes, she was wiping her face.

He was about to ask her if anything was wrong but she stepped abruptly up to the glass panes holding the burnt yellow sheets. Without giving him a chance to say anything about the tears Lukas asked, "The mazes he drew? You think there's anything there? Maybe a clue?"

He didn't answer. Just continued to look at her. She turned to him briefly and repeated, "The mazes?"

After a moment he looked down, studied the sheet of yellow paper. Only psychopaths tend to leave cryptograms as clues and even then they rarely do. But Parker decided it wasn't a bad idea to check; they had so little else to go on. He put the glass panes holding the sheet on the overhead projector.

Lukas stood beside Parker.

"What're we looking for?" Cage asked.

"Do the lines make any letters?" Lukas asked.

"Good," Parker said. She was starting to get the hang of puzzles. They examined the lines carefully. But they found nothing.

"Maybe," she then suggested, "it's a map."

Another good idea.

Everyone gazed at the lines. As head of the District field office Lukas was an expert on the layout of the city. But she couldn't think of any streets or neighborhoods the mazes corresponded to. Neither could anyone else.

Geller looked back at his computer. He shook his head. "The anagram thing isn't working. There just isn't enough of the ash left to make any letters at all."

"We'll have to figure it out the old-fashioned way." Parker paced, staring at the blackboard. "'… the black…'"

"Some African-American organization?" Evans suggested.

"Possibly," Parker said. "But remember the unsub was smart. Educated."

Cage frowned. "What do you mean?"

It was Lukas who answered. "The word 'black' is lowercase. If it were the name of a group he'd probably capitalize it."

"Exactly," Parker said. "I'd guess it's descriptive. There's a good chance it does refer to race but I doubt it's a reference to a specific organization."

"But don't forget," Cage said. "He also likes to fool us."

"True," Parker admitted.

Black…

Parker walked to the examination table, stared down at the extortion note. Put his hands on either side of it. Stared at the devils teardrop dot above the letter i. Stared at the stark ink.

What do you know? he asked the document silently. What aren't you telling us? What secrets are you keeping? What-?

"I've got something," the voice called from the doorway.

They all turned.

Detective Len Hardy trotted into the lab, a sheaf of papers under his arm. He'd been running and he paused, caught his breath. "Okay, Margaret, you were right. I don't shoot and I don't investigate. But nobody's a better researcher than I am. So I decided why don't I do that? I've found out some things about the name. The Digger." He dropped the papers on the desk and started through them. He glanced at the team. "I'm sorry about before. With the mayor. I screwed up. I just wanted to do something to keep people from getting hurt."

"It's all right, Len," Lukas said. "What do you have?"

Hardy asked Dr. Evans, "When you were checking out the name, what databases did you use?"

"Well, the standard ones," the doctor answered. He seemed defensive.

"Criminal?" Hardy asked, "VICAP, N.Y.P.D. Violent Felons, John Jay?"

"Those, sure," Evans said, eyes avoiding Hardy's.

"That was fine," Hardy said, "but I got to thinking why not try noncriminal resources? I finally found it. The database at the Religious History Department at Cambridge University." Hardy opened a notebook. There were dozens of pages inside, indexed and organized. The young detective was right; he sure knew how to research.

"That group you mentioned in San Francisco in the sixties?" he asked Dr. Evans. "The one called the Diggers?"

"But I checked them out," the doctor said. "They were just an acting troupe."

"No, they weren't," Hardy responded. "It was a radical underground political and social movement, centered in Haight-Ashbury. I checked out their philosophy and history, and it turns out they took their name from a group in England in the seventeenth century. And they were a lot more radical. They advocated abolishing private ownership of land. Here's what's significant. They were mostly economic and social but they allied themselves with another group, which was political and more active-sometimes militant. They were called the 'True Levelers.'"

"'Levelers,"' Cage muttered. "That's a damn spooky name too."

Hardy continued. "They objected to control of the people by an upper-class elite and by a central government."

"But what does it mean for us?" Lukas asked.

Hardy said, "It might help us find the last target. What would he want to hit to quote level our capitalistic society?"

Parker said, "Before we can answer that we need to know why he's got it in for society."

"Religious nut?" Geller said. "Remember the crucifix?"

"Could be," Evans said. "But most religious zealots wouldn't want money; they'd want a half hour on CNN."

"Maybe he had a grudge," Parker said.

"Sure. Revenge." Lukas said this.

"Somebody hurt him," Parker said. "And he wants to get even."

Evans nodded. "It's making sense."

"But who? Who hurt him?" Hardy mused, staring again at the ghostly extortion note.

"He got fired?" Cage suggested. "Disgruntled worker."

"No," Evans said, "a psychotic might kill for that but he wasn't psychotic. He was too smart and controlled."

Geller rasped, "Big business, big corporations, fat cats…"

"Wait," Hardy said, "if those were his targets wouldn't he be in New York, not Washington?"

"He was," Cage pointed out. "White Plains."

But Hardy shook his head. "No, remember-White Plains, Boston, Philly? Those were just trial runs for him. This is his grand finale."

"Government," Parker said. "That's why he's here."

Hardy nodded. "And the Diggers objected to central government. So maybe it isn't upper-class society at all." He glanced at Evans. "But the federal government."

Lukas said, "That's it. It's got to be."

Parker: "The government was responsible for something that hurt him." Looking over the team. "Any thoughts on what?"

"Ideology?" Cage wondered aloud. "He's a communist or part of a right-wing militia cell."

Evans shook his head. "No, he would've delivered a manifesto by now. It's more personal than that."

Lukas and Hardy caught each others eyes. It seemed to Parker that they came up with an identical thought at the same time. It was the detective who said, "The death of somebody he loved."

Lukas nodded.

"Could be," the psychologist offered.

"Okay," Cage said. "What could the scenario've been? Who died? Why?"

"Execution?" Hardy suggested.

Cage shook his head. "Hardly ever see federal capital crimes. They're mostly state."

"Coast guard rescue goes bad," Geller suggested.

"Far-fetched," Lukas said.

Hardy tried again, "Government car or truck involved in a crash, postal worker shooting spree, Park Service accident… diplomats…"

"Military," Cage suggested. "Most deaths involving the federal government are probably military related."

"But," Lukas said, "there must be hundreds of fatalities every year in the armed forces. Was it an accident? A training exercise? Combat?"

"Desert Storm?" Cage suggested.

"How old was the unsub?" Parker asked.

Lukas grabbed the medical examiner's preliminary report. She read, looked up. "Mid-forties."

Black…

Then Parker understood. He said, "The black wall!"

Lukas nodded. "The Vietnam Memorial."

"Someone he knew," Hardy said, "was killed in 'Nam. Brother, sister. Maybe his wife was a nurse."

Cage said, "But that was thirty years ago. Could something like this resurface now?"

"Oh, sure," Evans said. "If your unsub didn't work through his anger in therapy it's been festering. And New Year's Eve's a time for resolutions and people taking bold action-even destructive action. There'll be more suicides tonight than on any other night of the year."

"Oh, Jesus," Lukas said.

"What?"

"I just realized-the Memorial's on the Mall. There're going to be two hundred thousand people there. For the fireworks. We've got to close off that part of the park."

"It's already packed," Parker said. "They've been camping out for hours."

"But, Jesus," Cage said, "we need more manpower." He called Artie, the building's night entrance guard, who made an announcement over the PA that all available agents in the building were needed in the lobby for an emergency assignment.

Lukas called Jerry Baker and told him to get his tactical agents to the northwest portion of the Mall. She then paged the deputy director on call for the evening. He called back immediately. She spoke to him for a moment then hung up.

She looked at the team. "The dep director's on his way over. I'm going to meet him downstairs to brief him then I'll meet you at the Memorial."

Cage put his coat on. Geller stood and checked his weapon. It looked alien in his hands, which were undoubtedly much more accustomed to holding a computer mouse.

Lukas said, "Hold on, Tobe. You're going home."

"I can-"

"That's an order. You've already done enough."

He protested a bit more. But in the end Lukas won-though only after promising that she'd call him if she needed any other tech assistance. "I'll have my laptop with me," he said, as if he couldn't imagine ever being more than three feet from a computer.

Lukas walked over to Hardy. "Thanks, Detective. That was damn good police work."

He grinned. "Sony I fucked up with the mayor. He-"

She waved her hand, acknowledging the apology. Offered a slight smile. "Everything's right as rain." Then she asked him, "You still want a piece of the action tonight?"

"Oh, you bet I do."

"Okay, but keep to the rear. Tell me true… You really know how to shoot?"

"I sure as hell do. And I'm pretty good too… if it's not windy." The young detective, still grinning, pulled on his trench coat.

Parker, feeling the weight of the gun in the pocket, donned his jacket. Lukas glanced at him dubiously. "I'm going," he said firmly in response to her glance.

She said, "You don't have to, Parker. It's okay. You've done enough too."

He smiled at her. "Just point and shoot, right?"

She hesitated then said, "Just point and shoot."

Here it comes, here it comes…

My God, look at them all!

A dozen, two dozen agents running out of FBI headquarters. Some in bulletproof vests, some not.

Henry Czisman took one last sip of Jim Beam and rested the brown bottle on the back seat of his rental car, which reeked of tobacco and whiskey. He crushed out his Marlboro in the overflowing ashtray.

They ran toward their cars. One by one they started up and sped away

He didn't follow. Not yet. He waited, patient as an adder.

Then Czisman saw the tall gray-haired agent, Cage, push through the front door. Looking behind him. And, yes! There he was: Parker Kincaid.

Though Czisman had not told the FBI agents everything, he had in fact been a journalist for most of his life. And a good one. He could read people as perceptively as any street cop. And while they were undoubtedly running their retinal scans and voice stress analysis on him in their interrogation room he was running his own tests. Less high-tech and more intuitive, his were nonetheless just as accurate as the Bureau's. And one of the things he'd decided was that Jefferson was not Jefferson at all. When the man had left the headquarters in a hurry and gotten into his own car several hours ago Czisman had sent the man's license plate to a private eye in Hartford, Connecticut, and had gotten his real identity. Parker Kincaid. A simple search on the Internet had revealed he was the former head of the Bureaus Document Division.

If the Bureau was using a former agent as a consultant he must be good. Which meant he was the one worth following. Not bureaucratic Cage. Not unfeeling Lukas.

Pausing to zip up his leather jacket, Kincaid looked around to orient himself then climbed into an unmarked car with Cage and another young agent or officer, an earnest man in a trench coat. They turned on a red light on the dash and sped quickly west-toward the Mall.

Czisman easily slipped into the motorcade of cars, which were moving so frantically that no one noticed him. Around Eighteenth Street though, near Constitution Avenue, the crowds and traffic were so thick that the Bureau vehicles were forced to stop and the agents climbed out, ran to the Mall. Czisman was close behind.

Cage and Kincaid stood together, looking over the crowds. Kincaid pointed toward the west side of the Vietnam monument and Cage nodded toward the east. They separated and moved off in their respective directions, the man in the trench coat trotting away from them both, toward Constitution.

Czisman was a heavy man and out of shape. His breath snapped in and out of his congested lungs and his heart pounded like a piston. But he managed to keep up with Parker Kincaid very easily, pausing only momentarily-to take the pistol from the sweaty waistband of his slacks and slip it into his coat pocket.

26

The Digger's coat is heavy.

Heavy from the weight of the guns.

From the weight of the clips, containing hundreds of rounds of.22…

Click, click…

… of… of.22 caliber long-rifle ammunition warning bullets can travel up to one mile do not allow children to shoot unsupervised.

But the Digger would never do that-let a child shoot unsupervised.

Not Tye. Never, ever, ever Tye.

Two nicely packed suppressors. Cotton and rubber, cotton and rubber.

You're the you're the you're best…

The machine guns are in the inside pockets of his nice blue or black overcoat, his Christmas present from Pamela. One of the pistols from the glove compartment of his Toyota is in the right outside pocket of his coat. Four more clips for the Uzis are in the left-hand pocket.

No bags, no puppies…

He's standing in shadows and none of the people nearby notice him. He looks for police or agents and sees none.

Tye is asleep in the back seat of the car, a block away. When the Digger left him his sticklike arms were folded over his chest.

This is what worries him the most-if the police start shooting or if the Digger has to shoot with the unsilenced pistols Tye might wake up from the sound. And then he won't sleep well.

He's also worried that the boy will be cold. The temperature keeps falling. But the Digger remembers that he tripled the blanket over Tye. He'll be all right. He's sleeping. Children are always all right when they're sleeping.

He is standing by himself watching some of the people who are about to die. He calls one last time on his cell phone and the lady who sounds like Ruth before the triangle of glass says, "You have no new messages."

So it's okay to kill these people.

They'll fall to the ground like dark leaves.

Chop chop chop chopchopchop…

He'll… click… he'll spin around, like a top, like a toy Tye might like, and he'll spread the bullets throughout the crowd. Bullets from two guns.

Then he'll get into the car and check his messages and if the man who tells him things still hasn't called then he and Tye will drive until they find… click… they find California.

Somebody will tell him where it is.

It can't be that hard to find. It's somewhere Out West. He remembers that.

Is the Digger behind him?

In front?

Beside?

Parker Kincaid, separated from the other agents, walked in a large, frantic circle near the Vietnam Memorial, lost in a sea of people. Looking for a man in a dark coat. With a shopping bag. Wearing a crucifix.

Far too many people. Thousands of them. Ten thousand.

Cage was on the other side of the Memorial. Len Hardy was on Constitution Avenue. Baker and the other tactical officers were making a sweep from the other side of the Mall.

Parker was about to stop a group from walking down to the Memorial itself, send them to the safety of a cluster of officers, but then he paused.

He realized suddenly that he hadn't been thinking clearly.

Puzzles. Remember the puzzles.

Three hawks have been killing a farmer's chickens…

Then he understood his mistake. He'd been looking in the wrong places. He stepped aside, out of the way of the crowd, and examined the grounds near the Vietnam Memorial. He thought of the unsub's mazes and realized that the man would have known that by the third attack the agents would have some description of the Digger. He would've told the killer not to approach the Memorial along one of the sidewalks, where he could be spotted more easily; he should come in through the trees.

Parker turned quickly and disappeared into a thicket of maple and cherry trees. It was still crowded with people making their way to the Mall but he didn't stop to tell them to leave the area. His job now wasn't to be a caretaker, a helping hand, a father; he was a hunter-just like that night years ago when he stalked through his house, looking for the Boatman.

Searching for his prey.

Searching for a faceless man in a dark coat.

A man wearing a cross.

Henry Czisman was thirty feet behind Kincaid, walking past the Vietnam Memorial, when Kincaid turned suddenly and moved into a grove of trees.

Czisman followed, looking around him at the sea of people.

What a target the Digger would have here!

He could cut them down like grass.

Czisman's own pistol was in his hand, pointed at the ground. No one saw it; the crowd was distracted, wondering what was going on-with all the police and federal agents telling them to leave the Mall.

Kincaid walked steadily through the trees, Czisman now perhaps twenty feet behind him. Still, there were people everywhere-dozens separated him from Kincaid-and the document examiner had no idea he was being followed.

They were about thirty feet from the solemn black wall when Czisman saw a man in a dark overcoat step from behind a tree. It was a cautious, furtive movement and suggested that the man had been hiding. And when he walked toward the Memorial he moved too deliberately, his head down, focused on the ground for no reason, as if he were trying not to be noticed. He disappeared into the crowd not far from Kincaid.

Czisman trotted after him.

Suddenly Kincaid turned. He glanced at Czisman, away, then back again with a frown, realizing that he'd seen the face before but couldn't place it. Czisman turned away and ducked behind several large men carrying a cooler. He believed he lost Kincaid. He returned to his search, looking again for the man in the dark overcoat.

Where-?

Yes, yes, there he was! A man in his forties, completely nondescript. He was unbuttoning the coat, looking around with dull eyes at the crowds around him.

And then Czisman saw the flash. A flash of gold on the man's neck.

He wears a gold cross…

The agents in the bar had told him that the Digger wore a cross.

So here he is, Czisman thought. The Butcher, the Widow Maker, the Devil…

"Hey!" A voice called.

Czisman turned. It was Kincaid.

Now, he thought. Now!

Czisman lifted his revolver, aimed it toward his target.

"No!" Kincaid shouted, seeing the gun. "No."

But Czisman had no clear shot. There were too many people here. He danced to the side and pushed through a break in the crowd, knocking several people aside. He lost Kincaid.

Twenty feet away, the Digger-oblivious to both men-looked over the crowds like a hunter gazing at a huge flock of geese.

Czisman shoved aside a cluster of college students.

"What the fuck you doing, man?"

"Hey…"

Czisman ignored them. Where was Kincaid? Where?

Still no target! Too many people…

The Digger's coat fell open. In one of the inside pockets was a large, black machine gun.

But nobody sees him! Czisman thought. It's as if he's invisible.

Nobody knows. Families, children, just feet away from the killer…

The crowd seemed to swell with people. The police were directing everyone toward Constitution Avenue but many of them were remaining-so they wouldn't lose a good view of the fireworks, Czisman supposed.

The Digger was squinting, looking for a place to shoot from. He stepped onto a slight rise in the grass.

Kincaid emerged from the crowd.

Czisman pulled back the hammer of his pistol.

27

The limo had parked beside the Mall, near the box seats reserved for diplomats and members of Congress.

Mayor Kennedy and his wife climbed out, accompanied by C. P. Ardell.

"You have to dog us like this?" Claire asked the agent. "It's orders," Ardell said. "You understand."

Claire shrugged.

Understand? Kennedy thought. What he understood was that he was virtually under arrest and that he couldn't even avoid the humiliation of appearing in public in his own city without a baby-sitter.

Any hope that his career would survive tonight was being tidily laid to rest by a few glances at the people who stood near the reviewing stand watching him. The ambiguity of Slade Phillips's news report had been missed, or ignored, and it seemed that everyone here thought Kennedy was practically the Digger's partner.

Cameras flashed, capturing the stark images that would be identified in the papers tomorrow as "Mayor and Mrs. Jerry Kennedy." He waved to some of the people on the viewing stand and, with grave tact, fielded cursory comments such as "Where've you been hiding?"

"How you doing, Jerry?" No one here really wanted answers; they were hard at work distancing themselves from the soon-to-be-former mayor.

The other question Kennedy heard was: "Heard you weren't coming to the fireworks tonight, Jerry. What brings you out here?"

Well, what brought him out was Claire.

The secretary of the African-American Teachers' Association had called and, only moderately embarrassed, had said it would be better for him not to attend the party he was supposed to be keynote speaker at. "Probably best for everybody."

Well, he'd have been perfectly content to slink back home. But sitting in his City Hall office beside him on the couch, Claire had had a different idea. "Let's get drunk and go watch the goddamn fireworks."

"I don't know," Kennedy had said dubiously.

"Well, I do. You're not the sulking kind, honey. Go out with your head high."

And he'd thought for a few seconds and decided it was the smartest thing he'd heard all night. She'd tracked down a bottle of Moët and they'd drunk it on the way here.

As they wound through the crowd on the reviewing stand Kennedy shook the hand of Congressman Lanier, who obviously recognized Agent Ardell for exactly what he was-a jailor.

Lanier probably could think of nothing to say that didn't sound like gloating so he merely tipped his head and offered a very unflirtatious "Claire, you're beautiful tonight."

"Paul," she said and, nodding to the quiet Mrs. Lanier, added, "Mindy."

"Jerry," Lanier asked, "what's the latest on the shootings?"

"I'm still waiting to hear."

"We've got room for you right over there, Mayor," said a junior aide, pointing at a deserted bank of orange folding chairs behind the other viewers. "Your friend too." He glanced at the large agent.

"No, no," Kennedy said. "Well just sit on the stairs."

"No, please…"

But, for the moment at least, Kennedy retained some social autonomy, even if he had no fiscal, and he waved off Lanier and the aide. He sat down beside Claire on the top step, dropping his jacket on the wood for her to sit on. C. P. Ardell seemed dense but he was apparently sensitive enough to know what kind of embarrassment the mayor would be feeling at the presence of a federal agent so the big man sat a few feet away from the mayor and his wife, didn't hover over them.

"Used to come here when I was a kid," the agent said to the mayor. "Every Sunday."

This surprised Kennedy. Most FBI agents were transplants to the area. "You grew up here?"

"Sure did. Wouldn't live in Maryland or Virginia for a million dollars."

"Where's your home, Agent Ardell?" Claire asked him.

"Near the zoo. Just off the parkway."

Kennedy laughed faintly. At least if he had to be under detention he was glad his turnkey was a loyal citizen.

Feeling warm from the champagne, he moved closer to Claire and took her hand. They looked out over the Mall. Gazed at the hundreds of thousands of people milling about. Kennedy was pleased to see that there was no microphone on the reviewing stand. He didn't want to hear any speeches. Didn't want anybody to offer the mike to him for impromptu remarks-Lord, what on earth could he say? All he wanted was to sit with his wife and watch the fireworks blossom over his city. And forget the agony of this day In his radio plea to the Digger he'd referred to this as the last day of the year. But it was, apparently, the end of many things: his chance to help the city, the lives of many of his residents, so horribly killed.

The end of his tenure in office too; Lanier and the others in Congress who wanted to snatch the District away from its people would probably be able to leverage the Digger incident into something impeachable-maybe interference with a police investigation, something like that. Add in the Board of Education scandal and Kennedy could be out of office within a few months. Wendell Jefferies and all the other aides would be swept out with him. And that would be the end of Project 2000.

The end of all his hopes for the District. His poor city would be set back another ten years. Maybe the next mayor-

But then Kennedy noticed something odd. That the spectators seemed to be moving east purposefully, as if they were being herded. Why? he wondered. The view was perfect from here.

He turned to Claire, started to mention this but suddenly she tensed.

"What's that?" she asked.

"What?"

"Gunshots," she said. "I hear gunshots."

Kennedy looked into the air, wondering if the sound perhaps was the fireworks, starting early. But, no. All he saw was the dark, cloudy sky, pierced by the white shaft of the Washington Monument.

Then they heard the screaming.

Czisman's shots did what he'd intended.

When he'd realized that nobody had seen the Digger-and that he himself had no clean shot at the killer-he'd fired twice into the air, to scatter the people and clear a line of fire.

The explosions sent the crowd into a panic. Howling, screaming, everyone scattered, knocking the Digger to his knees. In seconds the area immediately in front of the Vietnam Memorial was virtually empty.

Czisman saw Kincaid too, flinging himself to the ground and pulling a small automatic out of his pocket. The man hadn't seen the Digger-a thick stand of evergreens separated them.

That was fine with Czisman. He wanted the killer.

The Digger was rising slowly. The machine gun had fallen from his coat and he looked around for it. He caught sight of Czisman and froze, gazing at him with the strangest eyes Czisman had ever seen.

In those eyes was less feeling than in an animals. Whoever the mastermind behind the killings had been-the one lying on the slab in the morgue-that man wasn't pure evil. He would've had emotions and thoughts and desires. He might have reformed, might have developed the nub of a conscience that was possibly within him.

But the Digger? No. There was no redemption for this machine. There was only death.

The killer with a mans mind and the devil's heart…

The Digger glanced at the gun in Czisman's hand. Then his eyes rose again and he stared at the journalist's face.

Kincaid was rising to his feet, shouting at Czisman, "Drop the weapon, drop the weapon!"

Czisman ignored him and lifted the gun toward the Digger. With a shaking voice he began to say, "You-"

But there was a soft explosion at the Diggers side. A tuft of the man's overcoat popped outward. Czisman felt the hard fist in his chest, dropped to his knees. He fired his own gun but the shot went wide.

The Digger removed his hand from his pocket, holding a small pistol. He aimed at Czisman's chest once more, fired twice.

Czisman flew backward under the impact of the rounds.

As he tumbled to the cold earth, seeing distant lights reflected in the wall of the Vietnam Memorial, he muttered, "You…"

Czisman tried to get his gun… But where was it? It had fallen from his hand.

Where, where?…

Kincaid was running for cover, looking around, confused. Czisman saw the Digger walk slowly toward his machine gun, pick it up and fire a burst toward Kincaid, who dove behind a tree. The Digger trotted away, crouching, through the bushes toward the fleeing crowds.

Czisman groped for his gun. "You… you… you…" But his hand fell to the ground like a rock and then there was only blackness.

A few people…

Click, click…

Funny…

A few people were nearby, huddled on the ground, looking around. Frightened. The Digger could easily have shot them but then the police would see him.

"The last time kill as many as you can," said the man who tells him things.

But how many is as many as you can?

One, two, three, four, five…

The Digger doesn't think he meant only a half dozen.

The last minute of the last hour of the…

So he's hurrying after them, doing the things he ought to do, looking scared, running the way the crowd does, hunching over. Things like that.

You're… you're… you're the best.

Who was that man back there? he wonders. He wasn't a policeman. Why was he trying to shoot me?

The Digger has hidden the… click, click… the Uzi under his overcoat, the overcoat that he loves because Pamela gave it to him.

There are shouts nearby but they don't seem to be directed at him so he doesn't pay any attention. Nobody notices him. He's moving through the grass, near the bushes and trees, along that wide street-Constitution Avenue. There are buses and cars and thousands and thousands of people. If he can get to them he can kill hundreds.

He sees museums, like the one where they have the picture of the entrance to hell. Museums are fun, he thinks. Tye would like museums. Maybe when they're in California they can go to a museum together.

More shouting. People are running. There are men and women and children all over the place. Police and agents. They have Uzis or Mac-10s or, click, pistols like the Digger's pistols and like the pistol of the fat man who just tried to shoot him. But these men and women aren't shooting because they don't know who to shoot at. The Digger is just one of the crowd.

Click, click.

How far does he have to go to get to more people?

A few hundred feet, he guesses.

He's trotting toward them. But his path is taking him away from Tye-from the car parked on Twenty-second Street. He doesn't like that thought. He wants to get the shooting over with and get back to the boy. When he gets to the crowd he'll spin like a whirligig, watch the people fall like leaves in a Connecticut forest then go back to the boy.

When I travel on the road,

I love you all the more.

Spin, spin, spin…

They'll fall like Pamela fell with the rose on her chest and the yellow flashing flower in her hand.

Fall, fall, fall…

More people with guns are running over the grass.

Suddenly, nearby, he hears explosions, cracks and bangs and pops.

Are people shooting at him?

No, no… Ah, look!

Above him flowers are blossoming in the air. There's smoke and brilliant flowers, red and yellow. Also blue and white.

Fireworks.

His watch beeps.

It's midnight.

Time to shoot.

But the Digger can't shoot just yet. There aren't enough people.

The Digger keeps moving toward the crowd. He can shoot some, but not enough to make the man who tells him things happy.

Crack…

A bullet streaks past him.

Now someone is shooting at him.

Shouting.

Two men in FBI jackets in the middle of the field to the Digger's right have seen him. They're standing in front of a wooden platform, decorated with beautiful red and blue and white banners, like the ones the fat New Year's babies wear.

He turns toward them and fires the Uzi through his coat. He doesn't want to do this-to put more holes in the beautiful black or blue coat Pamela gave him but he has to. He can't let anyone see the gun.

The men clutch at their faces and necks as if bees are stinging them and fall down.

The Digger turns and continues moving after the crowds.

Nobody has seen him shoot the men.

He only has to walk a couple of hundred feet further and he'll be surrounded by lots of people, looking around like everybody else, looking for the killer, looking for salvation. And then he can shoot and shoot and shoot.

Spinning like a whirligig in a Connecticut forest.

28

When the first bullets crashed into the wood around him Jerry Kennedy shoved Claire off the platform and onto the cold ground.

He jumped after her and lay on his side, shielding her from the bullets. "Claire!" Kennedy shouted.

"I'm all right!" Her voice was edgy with panic. "What's going on?"

"Somebody's shooting. It must be him! The killer-he must be here!"

They lay side by side, huddling, smelling dirt and grass and spilled beer.

One person on the platform had been hit-the young aide, who'd been shot in the arm as Congressman Lanier leapt behind him for cover. But no one else seemed to be injured. Most of the shots had been wild. The killer had been aiming at the two agents in front of the viewing stand, not at anyone on the platform.

Kennedy could see the agents were dead.

The mayor glanced up and saw C. P. Ardell, holding his black pistol in front of him, looking over the field. He stood tall, wasn't even crouching.

"Agent Ardell!" Kennedy shouted. "There he is! There!"

But the agent didn't shoot. Kennedy climbed halfway up the stairs, tugged at the man's cuff, pointing. "He's getting away. Shoot!"

The huge agent held his automatic out in front of him like a sharpshooter.

"Ardell!"

"Ahnnnn," the agent was saying.

"What're you waiting for?" Kennedy cried.

But C. P. Ardell just kept saying, "Ahnnnnn, ahnnnn," gazing out over the field.

Then Ardell started to turn, slowly revolving, looking north, then east, then south… Looking toward the wall of the Vietnam Memorial, then at the trees, then at the Washington Monument, then at the flag that decorated the backdrop of the viewing platform.

"Ahnnnn."

The agent turned once more, a complete circle, and fell onto his back, staring up at the sky with glazed eyes. Kennedy saw the top of his head was missing.

"Oh, Jesus!"

Claire gave a gasp as a stream of the man's blood cascaded down the stairs and pooled inches from her face.

The agent said "Ahnnnnnn" once more, blew a slick bubble from his mouth. Kennedy took the man's hand. It quivered slightly. Then it was still.

Kennedy stood up. He looked past the podium, which Lanier, his aide and another congressman were hiding behind. The Mall was dim-there were no lights on because of the fireworks-but in the headlights from the emergency vehicles Kennedy had a view of the chaos. He was looking for the silhouette of the Digger.

"What the hell're you doing in my city?" he whispered. Then his voice rose to a shout, "What the hell are you doing here?"

"Jerry, get down!" Claire pleaded.

But he stayed where he was, scanned the field, trying to find the dark form of the killer once more.

Where was he? Where?

Then he saw a man in the shadows, walking fast along a row of cherry trees not far from Constitution Avenue.

He was making for the crowds farther east on the Mall.

Kennedy stood and pried the pistol from the dead agent's hand.

"Oh, Jerry, no," Claire said. "No! Call on your phone."

"There's no time."

"No…" She was crying softly.

He paused, turned to her. Touched her cheek with his left hand and kissed her forehead the way he always did before they shut the light out and went to sleep. Then he leapt over the huddling lumps of a young politico couple and sprinted over the grass.

He thought: I'm going to have a fucking heart attack, I'm going to have a heart attack and die… But he didn't slow down.

The familiar sights of the city were around him: The white Washington Monument, the stark cherry trees, the tower of the Smithsonian, the gray neo-Gothic buildings of the museums, the tourist buses…

Kennedy gasped and ran, gasped and ran.

The Digger was a hundred feet away from him. Then ninety feet…

Eighty feet.

Kennedy watched the killer move closer to the crowd. He pulled a black machine gun from under his coat.

There was a shot from the trees to Kennedy's left. Then another and two more.

Yes! Kennedy thought. They've seen him!

But suddenly a tuft of grass beside Kennedy flew into the air and another bullet snapped over his head.

Jesus! They were shooting at him. They'd seen a man with a gun running toward the crowds and assumed he was the killer.

"No, no!" He crouched then pointed toward the Digger. "It's him!"

The killer was in the tree line, moving around to the side of the crowd. In just a minute he'd be only fifty feet from them and could kill hundreds with a single burst from the gun.

Hell with it. Let's just hope the cops're bad shots. Kennedy began to sprint forward again.

There was one more shot in his direction but then someone must have identified him. Shouts over the bullhorn ordered the officers to cease fire.

"Get back!" Kennedy was shouting to the crowd.

But there was nowhere for them to go. They were packed together like cattle. Thousands. Some staring at the fireworks, some looking around, uneasy and confused.

Kennedy steered toward the trees, his chest on fire, speeding toward the place where he'd last seen the Digger.

I'm dying, he thought. He pictured himself on the ground, retching in agony as his heart shut down.

And besides, what on earth am I doing? What kind of idiocy is this? The last time he'd fired a gun had been at summer camp with his son-thirty years ago. He'd fired three shots and missed the target completely, to the boy's shame.

Running, running…

Closer to the tree line, closer to the Digger.

Agents had seen where he was headed and must have assumed that he was after the killer. A rough line of a dozen men and women in tactical police gear were jogging toward him.

The Digger stepped out of the bushes, pointing the machine gun toward the crowd. He nodded to himself.

Kennedy stopped running, lifted Ardell's pistol and aimed it toward the killer. He wasn't even sure what to aim at, how the sights on the heavy gun worked. Whether he should aim high or low. But Kennedy was a strong man and he held the gun very steadily in his hand. He remembered how he and his eldest son stood side by side at camp, listening to the camp counselor: "Squeeze the trigger. Don't jerk it." The boys giggling at the word.

And so tonight Jerry Kennedy squeezed.

The explosion was huge and he wasn't prepared for the pistol to buck so high in the air.

Kennedy lowered the gun again. Squinted over the dim field. He laughed out loud.

Christ, I did it! I hit him!

The Digger was on the ground, grimacing and clutching at his left arm.

Kennedy fired again. This bullet missed and he fired another round, two more.

The Digger rolled to his feet. He started to aim at Kennedy but the mayor fired again. This was a miss too-the bullet struck a tree-but it was close and the Digger stumbled backward. He fired a short burst toward Kennedy. All the bullets missed.

The killer looked to his left, where the line of agents and cops was moving toward him. He aimed toward them and must have pulled the trigger. Kennedy heard nothing, saw no flash from the end of the gun. But one agent fell and bits of grass and dirt leapt into the air. The other agents dropped into defensive postures on the ground. They aimed toward him but no one fired. Kennedy saw why-because the crowds were directly behind the Digger. They would surely have hit some people in the crowd.

Only Kennedy had a clear shot.

He stood up from his crouch and fired five more times at the black bundle on the ground, driving the Digger back, away from the crowds.

Then the gun clicked. It was empty.

He squinted, looking past the pistol.

The dark form of the Digger was gone.

Panting now.

Something within the Digger snaps and he forgets everything the man who tells him things told him. He forgets about killing as many people as he can and forgets about people seeing his face and forgets about spinning around like a leafy seed in Connecticut. He wants to get out of here and get back to Tye.

The bullets that man was firing came so close… He nearly killed me. And if he gets killed what's going to happen to the boy?

He drops into a crouch and sprints toward a tour bus. The engine is idling, a cloud of exhaust rises from the tailpipe.

His arm hurts so badly.

Pain…

Look, there's a red rose on his arm!

But, oh, how it… click… how it hurts.

He hopes he never feels pain like this again. He hopes Tye never ever has to feel pain like this.

He looks for the man who shot him. Why did he do that? The Digger doesn't understand. He's just doing what he's been told.

Even if you loved me less,

I'd love you all the more.

Fireworks blossom over the Mall.

A line of police and agents is moving closer. They start shooting. The Digger climbs up the stairs of the bus and turns, spraying bullets at the cluster of pursuing agents.

There's a huge star burst of orange.

"Oh, my" he says, thinking: Tye would like that.

He breaks a window in the bus and carefully aims his gun.

29

Parker and Cage crouched behind a squad car.

Neither of them had much tactical training and knew it was prudent to leave the shoot-'em-up stuff to the younger, more experienced agents.

Besides, as Cage had just shouted to Parker a minute ago, it was a goddamn war zone. Bullets flying everywhere. The Digger had good protection inside the bus and was firing careful bursts through the shattered windows. Len Hardy was pinned down with several other District cops on the other side of Constitution Avenue.

Cage pressed his side and winced. He hadn't been hit but a stream of bullets had ripped through the sheet steel of the car they were using for cover and he'd flung himself to the ground, landing hard on his side.

"You okay?" Parker asked.

"Rib," the man moaned. "Feels broken. Shit."

Agents had cleared the area around the bus and were peppering it freely whenever they thought there was a target. They'd flattened the tires so the Digger couldn't drive away although Parker could see there was no chance of that happening in any case-the broad avenue was one huge traffic jam for a half mile in both directions.

Parker heard snippets of radio transmissions.

"No target presenting… Get a flash-bang inside. Who's got a grenade? Two down on Constitution. We got… anybody copying? We got two down on Constitution… Snipers in position."

Then Cage glanced up over the hood of the torn car.

"Jesus," Cage gasped, "what's the fucking kid doing?"

Parker looked too, toward Constitution Avenue, following the agent's gaze. There was Len Hardy, his tiny gun in his hand, crawling from tree to tree toward the bus, lifting his head and firing a shot occasionally.

Parker said, "He's nuts. He doesn't even have body armor."

"Len!" Cage shouted, then winced at the pain.

Parker took over. "Len!… Len Hardy! Get back. Let SWAT handle it."

But he didn't hear them. Or pretended he hadn't.

Cage wheezed, "It's like he's got some kind of death wish."

Hardy stood and sprinted toward the bus, emptying his weapon as he ran. Even Parker knew this wasn't proper procedure for a tactical operation.

Parker saw the Digger move toward the back of the bus, where he'd have a good shot at Hardy. The detective didn't notice. He huddled on the ground, completely exposed, reloading.

"Len!" Parker cried. "Get under cover."

"He doesn't even have Speedloaders," Cage muttered. Hardy was slipping the new shells into his revolver one by one.

The Digger moved closer to the back of the bus.

"No!" Parker muttered, knowing he was going to see the young man die.

"Jesus," Cage cried, gasping.

Then Hardy looked up and must have realized what was happening. He lifted the gun and fired three more times-all the shells he'd been able to reload-and then he stumbled backward, trying to get to cover.

"He's dead," Cage muttered. "He's dead."

Parker saw the killer's silhouette near the emergency exit in the back of the bus-where he had a perfect shot at Hardy, sprawled on the street.

But before the Digger could fire, an agent rolled out from behind a car and crouched, firing a stream of bullets into the bus. Blood sprayed the inside windows. Then there was a sensuous whoosh and fire erupted inside the bus. A flaming stream of fuel flowed to the curb.

Hardy struggled to his feet and ran for cover behind a District squad car.

There was a heartrending scream from inside the bus as the interior disappeared in orange fire. Parker saw the Digger, a mass of boiling flames, rise once then fall into the aisle of the bus.

There were soft snaps from inside-like the popcorn that Stephie had made earlier for her brother's surprise dessert-as the Digger's remaining bullets exploded in the fire. A tree on Constitution Avenue caught fire and illuminated the macabre spectacle with an incongruously cheerful glow.

Slowly the agents rose from cover and approached the bus. They stood at a cautious distance as the last of the burning ammunition detonated and the fire trucks arrived and began pumping foam on the charred hulk of the vehicle.

When the flames had died down, two agents in full body armor made their way to the door of the bus and looked inside.

Suddenly a series of loud bangs shook the Mall.

Every agent and cop nearby dropped into defensive positions, lifting their weapons.

But the sounds were only the fireworks-orange spiders, blue star bursts, white concussion shells. The glorious finale of the show.

The two agents stepped out of the doorway of the bus, pulled their helmets off.

A moment later Parker heard one of the agent's staticky transmission in Cage's radio. "Vehicle is secure," he said. "Subject confirmed dead" was the unemotional epitaph for the killer.

As they walked back to the Vietnam Memorial Parker told Cage about Czisman, how the shooting had started.

"He fired warning shots. He hadn't done that, the Digger would've killed a hundred people right here. Maybe me too."

"What the hell was he up to?"

In front of them a cop was covering Henry Czisman's body.

Cage bent down, grimacing in pain. A medic had poked his abdomen and proclaimed that the fall had resulted in the predicted broken rib. The agent was taped then given some Tylenol 3. The most frustrating part of the injury seemed to be that shrugging was momentarily too painful for him.

The agent pulled the yellow rubberized sheet away from the corpse. He went through the journalists pockets. Took out his wallet. Then he found something else.

"What's this?" He lifted a book out of the man's jacket pocket. Parker saw that it was a little gem of a book: Leather-bound, hand-stitched pages, not "perfect"-glued-binding as in mass-market books. The paper was vellum, which in Thomas Jefferson's day was smoothed animal skin but nowadays was very high-quality cloth paper. The edges of the paper were marbleized in red and gold.

And inside, the calligraphic handwriting-presumably Czisman's-was as beautiful as an artist's. Parker couldn't help but admire it.

Cage flipped through it, paused at several pages, read them, shaking his head. He handed it to Parker. "Check this out."

Parker frowned, looking at the title, written in gold ink on the cover. A Chronicle of Sorrow.

He opened it. Read out loud. "To the memory of my wife, Anne, the Butcher's first victim.'"

The book was divided into sections. "Boston."

"White Plains." And photographs of crime scenes had been pasted inside. The first one was headed "Hartford." Parker turned the page and read, "'From the Hartford News-Times.'" Czisman had copied the text of the article. It was dated in November of last year.

Parker read, "Three Killed in Holdup… Hartford Police are still searching for the man who walked into the offices of the News-Times on Saturday and opened fire with a shotgun, killing three employees in the classified advertising department.

"'The only description of the killer was that he was a male of medium build, wearing a dark overcoat. A police spokesman said that his motive may have been to divert law enforcement authorities while his accomplice robbed an armored truck making a delivery to a bank on the other side of town. The second gunman shot and killed the driver of the truck and his assistant. He escaped with $4,000 in cash.'"

Cage muttered, "Killed three people for four G's. That's him all right."

Parker looked up. "One of the clerks killed at the paper was Anne Czisman. She was his wife."

"So he wanted the prick as much as we did," Cage said.

"Czisman was using us to get to the unsub and the Digger. That's why he wanted to see the body in the morgue so much. And that's why he was following me."

Revenge…

"This book… it was his way of dealing with his grief." Parker crouched and reverently pulled the sheet back up over the man's face once more.

"Let's call Lukas," he said to Cage. "Give her the news."

At FBI headquarters Margaret Lukas was in the employees' lobby on Pennsylvania Avenue, briefing the deputy director, a handsome man with a politician's trim graying hair. She'd heard the reports that the Digger was on the Mall and that there had been shooting. Lukas was desperately eager to get to the Mall herself but since she was primary on the case, protocol dictated that she keep the senior administrators in the Bureau informed.

Her phone buzzed. And she answered fast, superstitiously not letting herself hope that they'd captured him.

"Lukas here."

"Margaret," Cage said.

And she knew immediately from his tone that they'd nailed the killer. It was a sound in a cop's voice you learn early in your career.

"Collared or tagged?"

Arrested or dead, she meant.

"Tagged," Cage responded.

Lukas came as close to saying a prayer of Thanksgiving as she'd come in five years.

"And, get this, the mayor winged him."

"What?"

"Yep, Kennedy Got off a few shots. That saved some lives."

She relayed this news to the deputy director.

"You okay?" she asked Cage.

"Fine," Cage responded. "Cracked a rib while I was covering my ass is all."

But her gut tightened. She heard something else in his voice, a tone, a hollowness.

Jackie, it's Tom's mother… Jackie, I have to tell you something. The airline just called… Oh, Jackie…

"But?" she asked quickly. "What happened? Is it Kincaid?"

"No, he's okay," the agent said softly.

"Tell me."

"He got C. P., Margaret. I'm sorry. He's dead."

She closed her eyes. Sighed. The fury steamed through her again, fury that she herself hadn't had a chance to park a bullet in the Digger's heart.

Cage continued. "Not even a firefight. The Digger shot toward where the mayor was sitting. C. P. just happened to be in the wrong place."

And it was the place that I'd sent him to, she thought bitterly. Christ.

She'd known the agent for three years… Oh, no…

Cage was adding, "The Digger capped four other friendlies and we've got three injured. Looks like six civies wounded. Still a half-dozen reported missing but no bodies. They probably just scattered and their families haven't found them yet. Oh, and that Czisman?"

"Who, the writer?"

"Yeah, Digger got him."

"What?"

"He wasn't a writer at all. I mean, he was but that's not what he was doing here. The Digger'd killed his wife and he was using us to get him. The Digger took him out first though."

So, it's been amateur night, she thought. Kincaid, the mayor. Czisman.

"What about Hardy?"

Cage told her that the young detective had made a one-man assault on the bus the Digger'd holed up in. "He got pretty close and had good firing position. Might've been his shots that hit the Digger. Nobody could tell what was going on."

"So he didn't shoot himself in the foot?" Lukas asked.

Cage said, "I'll tell you, it looked like he was hell-bent on killing himself but when it came right down to it he backed off and went for cover. Guess he decided to stick around for a few years."

Just like me, Lukas the changeling thought.

"Is Evans there?" Cage asked.

Lukas looked around. Surprised that the doctor wasn't here. Funny… She'd thought he was coming down to the lobby to meet her. "I'm not sure where he is," she answered. "Must be upstairs still. In the document lab. Or maybe the Crisis Center."

"Find him and give him the good news. Tell him thanks. And tell him to submit a big bill."

"Will do. And I'll call Tobe too."

"Parker and I're gonna do crime scene with PERT then head back over there in forty-five minutes or so."

When she hung up the dep director said, "I'm going down to the Mall. Who's in charge?"

She nearly said, Parker Kincaid. But caught herself. "Special Agent Cage. He's near the Vietnam Memorial with PERT."

"There'll have to be a press conference. Ill give the director a heads-up. He may want to make a statement too… Say, you miss a party tonight, Lukas?"

"That's the thing about holidays, sir. There'll always be one next year," She laughed. "Maybe we ought to make up T-shirts with that saying on them."

He smiled stiffly. Then asked, "How's our whistle-blower doing? Any more threats?"

"Moss? I haven't checked on him lately," she said. "But I definitely have to."

"You think there's a problem?" The dep director frowned.

"Oh, no. But he owes me a beer."

In the deserted document lab Dr. John Evans folded up his cell phone. He clicked the TV set off.

So they'd killed the Digger.

The news reports were sporadic but as best Evans could tell there'd been minimal fatalities-not like the Metro shooting and not like the yacht. Still, from the TV images, Constitution Avenue looked like a war zone. Smoke, a hundred emergency vehicles, people hiding behind cars, trees, bushes.

Evans pulled on his bulky parka and walked to the corner of the lab. He slipped the heavy thermos into his knapsack, slung it over his shoulder then pushed through the double doors and started down the dim corridor.

The Digger… What a fascinating creature. One of the few people in the world who really was, as he'd told the agents, profile-proof.

At the elevator he paused, looked at the building directory, trying to orient himself. There was a map. He studied it. FBI headquarters was much more complicated than he'd imagined.

His finger hovered over the DOWN button but before he could push it a voice called, "Hi." He turned. Saw somebody walking toward him from the second bank of elevators.

"Hi, there, Doctor," the voice called again. "You heard?"

It was that young detective. Len Hardy. His overcoat was no longer perfectly pressed. It was stained and sooty. There was a cut on his cheek.

Evans pushed the DOWN button. Twice. Impatient. "Just saw it on the news," he told Hardy. He shrugged the backpack off his shoulder. The doctor grunted as he caught the bag in the crook of his arm and began to unzip it.

Hardy glanced absently at the stained backpack. He said, "Man, I'll tell you, I spoke a little too fast there, volunteering to go after that guy. I went a little crazy. Some kind of battlefield hysteria."

"Uh-huh," Evans said. He reached inside the backpack and took out the thermos.

Hardy continued, chatting away. "He nearly nailed me. Shook me up some. I was maybe thirty feet from him. Saw his eyes, saw the muzzle of his gun. Man… I was suddenly real happy to be alive."

"That happens," Evans said. Where the hell was the elevator?

Hardy glanced at the silver metal cylinder. "Say, you know where Agent Lukas is?" the detective asked, looking up the dark corridor.

"I think she's downstairs," Evans said, unscrewing the lid to the thermos. "She had to brief somebody. The lobby on Ninth. Didn't you just come that way?"

"I came in through the garage."

The doctor pulled the top off the thermos. "You know, Detective, the way you told everybody about the Diggers and Levelers? You made it sound like you didn't trust me." He turned toward Hardy.

Evans looked down. He saw the black, silenced pistol Hardy was pointing at his face.

"Trust didn't have anything to do with it," Hardy said.

Evans dropped the thermos. Coffee splashed onto the floor. He saw the flash of yellow light from the muzzle of the gun. And that was all he saw.