“You really think lawyers are that good, all things considered…” The man's tone was droll.

The kid got hostile. “Hey, what the fuck is a guy supposed to do? Wear a goddamn condom? Hell, man, might as well fuck a garden hose.”

“Then we need a better idea. Blaming the cops is no kind of defense. They don't handle the DNA anyway. The hospital sends it straight to the Department of Health via a courier. Or don't you read the paper?”

“I read-”

“And a bath won't help there either,” the man continued relentlessly. “Just look at Motyka. He stuck the woman in a tub and that worked so well he's now facing life in prison. The semen goes up into the body. You need something more, some kind of flush action, I don't know. Plus there's the hair. Hair can also yield DNA, if they get a root, or they can simply match hair at the scene to hair on your head. Bathtub won't help with hair, either. Some anal-retentive crime tech will retrieve your hair from the drainpipes-they can retrieve blood samples from there too, you know. You can't approach this half-assed.”

“Shave.”

“Everywhere?”

“Yes.” The kid's tone was grudging. “Yeah, shit. Everywhere. Tell people you're into swimming. What the fuck.”

“Shaving is good,” the man conceded. “That resolves the hair. What else? They'll swab the woman's mouth. Remember that.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I read the same book you did.”

“No touching anything with your bare hands-not even an eyeball.”

“I read about that case, too.”

“No blue jeans, I guess.”

“Wear dust covers over your shoes to limit soil and fiber,” the kid added. “And, whenever possible, resort to social engineering. Breaking and entering leaves behind tool marks, and tool marks can also be matched.”

The man nodded: “That covers most of the trace evidence except for DNA then. We still need to figure out DNA. They get one little sample of semen, send it to the DNA database…”

“I know, I know.” The kid closed his eyes. He appeared to be thinking. Hard. He finally opened them again. “You could try confusing the issue. There was that guy who was arrested as a serial rapist based on DNA, then while he was in prison, another rape was reported with the same kind of DNA found on the girl's panties.”

“What happened?”

The kid sighed. “They busted the guy in prison for that, too. Perpetrating fraud, something like that.”

“He raped the other girl while he was behind bars?”

“No, man, he jacked off into a ketchup packet while he was behind bars, then mailed it to a friend who paid a girl fifty bucks to smear the stuff on her underwear and cry rape. You know, so it would appear like there was another guy running around with the same DNA, who was actually the rapist.”

“There is no such thing as two guys with the same DNA. Not even identical twins have the same DNA.”

“Yeah, and that would be the problem with the plan. The scientists knew that and the prosecution knew that, so they pressured the girl until she confessed what really happened.”

“Is there a moral to this story?”

“Pay the girl more than fifty bucks!”

The man sighed. “That is not a good plan.”

“Hey, you wanted an idea, I gave you an idea.”

“I wanted a good idea.”

“Ah, fuck you, too.”

The second man didn't say anything. The kid lapsed into silence as well.

“Gotta beat the DNA,” the kid muttered after a bit.

“Gotta beat the DNA,” the man agreed.

“The Raincoat on your John Thomas,” the kid mocked from Monty Python. “Ah, who needs it?”

“Wouldn't necessarily help anyway. Condoms leak, condoms break. Police are also getting better at tracing the lubricants and spermicide. That gives them a brand, then they start checking stores and next thing you know some pharmacy worker just happened to notice some guy buying some box…”

“You're screwed.”

“Yeah. Those scientists. Any little thing you introduce into the scene…”

The kid suddenly perked up. “Hey,” he said. “I have an idea.”

Chapter 1

THE BLONDE CAUGHT IN THE SIGHTS OF THE LEUPOLD Vari-X III 1.5-5 x 20mm Matte Duplex Illuminated Reticle scope didn't seem to fear for her life. At the moment, in fact, she was doing her hair. Now she had out a black compact and was checking her lipstick, a light, pearly pink. Jersey adjusted the Leupold scope as the reporter pursed her lips for her own reflection and practiced an alluring pout. Next to her, her cameraman let his heavy video equipment fall from his shoulder to the ground and rolled his eyes. Apparently, he recognized this drill and knew it would be a while.

Ten feet away from the blonde, another reporter, this one male-WNAC-TV, home of the Fox Futurecast, because heaven forbid anyone call it a forecast anymore-was meticulously picking pieces of lint off of his mud-brown suit. His cameraman sat in the grass, sipping Dunkin' Donuts coffee and blinking sleepily. On the other side of the stone pillar that dominated the sprawling World War Memorial Park, a dozen other reporters were scattered about, double-checking their copy, double-checking their appearance, yawning tiredly, then double-checking the street.

Eight-oh-one A.M., Monday morning. At least twenty-nine minutes until the blue van from Adult Correctional Institutions (ACI) was due to arrive at the Licht Judicial Complex in downtown Providence and everyone was bored. Hell, Jersey was bored. He'd been camped out on the roof of the sprawling brick courthouse since midnight last night. And damn, it got cold at night this early in May. Three Army blankets, a black coverall, and black leather Bob Allen shooting gloves and he still shivered until the sun came up. That was a little before six, meaning he'd had two and a half more hours to kill and not even the chance to stand up and stretch without giving his position away.

Jersey had spent the night-and now the morning-hunkered behind a two-foot-high decorative-brick trim piece that lined this section of the courthouse's roof. The faux railing afforded him just enough cover to remain invisible to people in the courtyard below, and more importantly, to the reporters camped in the grassy memorial park across the street. The railing also offered the perfect rifle stand, for when the moment came.

Sometime between 8:30 and 9:00 A.M., the blue ACI van would pull up. The eight-foot-high wrought-iron gate that surrounded the inner courtyard of the judicial complex would open up. The van would pull in. The gate would swing shut. The van doors would open. And then…

Jersey 's finger twitched on the trigger of the heavy barrel AR15. He caught himself, then eased his grip on the assault rifle, slightly surprised by his antsiness. It wasn't like him to rush. Calm and controlled, he told himself. Easy does it. Nothing here he hadn't done before. Nothing here he couldn't handle.

Jersey had been hunting since the time he could walk, the scent of gunpowder as reassuring to him as talcum. Following in his father's footsteps, he'd joined the Army at the age of eighteen, then spent eight years honing his abilities with an M16. Not to brag, but Jersey could take out targets at five hundred yards most guys couldn't hit at one hundred. He was also a member of the Quarter Inch Club-at two hundred yards, he could cluster three shots within a quarter-inch triangulation of one another. His father had been an American sniper in ' Nam, so Jersey figured that shooting was in his genes.

Five years ago, seeking a better lifestyle than the Army could afford him, he'd opened shop. He used a double-blind policy. The clients never knew his name, he never knew theirs. A first middleman contacted a second middleman who contacted Jersey. Money was wired to appropriate accounts. Dossiers bearing pertinent information were sent to temporary P.O. boxes opened at various MAIL BOXES ETC. stores under various aliases. Jersey had a rule about not hitting women or children. Some days he thought that made him a good person. Other days he thought that made him worse, because he used that policy to try to prove to himself that he did have a conscience when the bottom line was, well, you know-he killed people for money.