Matt stepped inside and when he did, nobody turned around. Not at first. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was boisterous and red-faced and healthy. Everyone talked at the same time. Everyone smiled and swore too casually and looked soft.

And then he saw his brother, Bernie.

Except, of course, it wasn't Bernie. Bernie was dead. But man, it looked like him. At least from the back. Matt and Bernie used to come here with fake IDs. They'd laugh and be boisterous and talk at the same time and swear too casually. They'd watch those other guys, the rec-league softball players, and listen to them talk about their kitchen additions, their careers, their kids, their boxes at Yankee Stadium, their experiences coaching Little League, the lamentations over their declining sex lives.

As Matt stood there, thinking about his brother, the energy of the place shifted. Someone recognized him. A ripple began. Murmurs followed and heads turned. Matt looked around for Lance Banner. He didn't see him. He spotted the table with the cops- you could just tell that was what they were- and recognized one of them as the cop-kid Lance had braced him with yesterday.

Still heavily under the influence, Matt tried to keep his walk steady. The cops gave their best laser glares as he approached. The glares didn't faze him. Matt had seen much worse. The table grew silent as he approached the cop-kid.

Matt stopped in front of him. The kid did not step back. Matt tried not to sway.

"Where's Lance?" Matt asked.

"Who wants to know?"

"Good one." Matt nodded. "Say, who writes your lines?"

"What?"

" 'Who wants to know?' That's funny stuff, really. I mean, I'm standing in front of you, I'm asking you directly, and you come up, bang, on the spot, no time to think, with, 'Who wants to know?' " Matt moved in closer. "I'm standing right here- so who the hell do you think wants to know?"

Matt heard the sound of chair legs scraping the floor, but he didn't look away. The cop-kid glanced toward his buddies, then back at Matt. "You're drunk."

"So?"

He got into Matt's face now. "So you want me to haul your ass downtown and give you a Breathalyzer?"

"One"- Matt raised his index finger-"Livingston's police station is not downtown. It's more midtown. You've been watching too many repeats of NYPD Blue. Two, I'm not driving, numbnuts, so I'm not sure what a Breathalyzer is supposed to do for you. Three, while we're on the subject of breath and you standing in my face and all, I have mints in my pocket. I'm going to slowly reach for them so you can have one. Or even the whole pack."

Another cop stood. "Get out of here, Hunter."

Matt turned toward him and squinted. It took him a second to recognize the ferret-faced man. "My God, it's Fleisher, right? You're Dougie's little brother."

"Nobody wants you here."

"Nobody…?" Matt turned from one man to the other. "Are you guys for real? You going to run me out of town now? You"- Matt snapped, pointed-"Fleisher's little brother, what's your first name?"

He didn't answer.

"Never mind. Your brother Dougie was the biggest pothead in my class. He dealt to the whole school. We called him Weed, for crying out loud."

"You talking trash about my brother?"

"I'm not talking trash. I'm talking truth."

"You want to spend the night in jail?"

"For what, asswipe? You going to arrest me on some trumped-up charge? Go ahead. I work for a law firm. I'll sue your ass back to the high school equivalency exam you probably never passed."

More chair scrapes. Another cop stood. Then another. Matt's heart started doing a quick two-step. Someone reached and grabbed his wrist. Matt pulled away. His right hand formed a fist.

"Matt?"

This voice was gentle and struck a distant chord deep inside of him. Matt glanced behind the bar. Pete Appel. His old friend from high school. They'd played together at the Riker Hill Park. The park was a converted Cold War missile base. He and Pete used to play rocket ships on the cracked concrete launch pads. Only in New Jersey.

Pete smiled at him. Matt relaxed the fist. The cops all stayed in place.

"Hey, Pete."

"Hey, Matt."

"Good to see you, man."

"You too," Pete said. "Look, I'm getting off now. Why don't I give you a lift home, okay?"

Matt looked at the cops. Several were red-faced, ready to go. He turned back to his old friend. "That's okay, Pete. I'll find my way."

"You sure?"

"Yeah. Look, man, sorry if I caused you any trouble."

Pete nodded. "Good to see you."

"You too."

Matt waited. Two of the cops made a space. He did not look back as he walked out into the lot. He sucked in the night air and started down the street. Soon he broke into a run.

He had a specific destination in mind.

Chapter 17

LANCE BANNER WAS still smiling at Loren. "Come on, get in," he said. "We'll talk."

She took one more look at Marsha Hunter's house and then slid into the passenger seat. Lance started driving around the old neighborhood.

"So," he said, "what did you want with Matt's sister-in-law?"

She swore Lance to secrecy but still tossed him only the bare bones- that she was investigating the suspicious death of Sister Mary Rose, that they weren't sure that there was even a murder yet, that Sister Mary Rose had possibly placed a phone call to Marsha Hunter's residence. She did not tell him about the implants or the fact that they didn't know the nun's real identity.

For his part, Lance informed her that Matt Hunter was married now, that he currently worked as a "low-level, shat-upon" paralegal in his brother's old law firm. Matt Hunter's wife, Lance said, was from Virginia or Maryland, he couldn't remember which. Lance also added, with a little too much enthusiasm, that he would be happy to help Loren look into this case.

Loren told him not to bother, that this was her investigation, that if he thought of something he should let her know. Lance nodded and drove her back to her own car.

Before Loren stepped out, she said, "Do you remember him? I mean, as a kid?"

"Hunter?" Lance frowned. "Yeah, sure, I remember him."

"He seemed like a pretty straight shooter."

"So do a lot of killers."

Loren reached for the door handle, shaking her head. "You really believe that?"

Lance said nothing.

"I read something the other day," Loren said. "I don't remember the details, but the basic premise was that by the age of five, much of our future self is determined: how well we'll do in schools, if we'll grow up to be a criminal, our capacity to love. You buy that, Lance?"

"Don't know," he said. "Don't much care."

"You've caught a lot of bad guys, right?"

"Yeah."

"You ever look into their past?"

"Sometimes."

"Seems to me," Loren said, "that I always find something. There's usually a pretty obvious case of past psychosis or trauma. On the news, the neighbors are always like, 'Gee, I didn't know that nice man was chopping up little kids- he always seemed so polite.' But you go back, you ask their schoolteachers, you ask their childhood friends, they almost always tell a different story. They're never surprised."

Lance nodded.

"So what about it?" she asked. "You see anything in his past that makes Matt Hunter a killer?"

Lance thought about it. "If it was all determined by the age of five, we wouldn't have jobs."

"That's not an answer."

"Best I can do. You try to profile based on how a third-grader played on the monkey bars, we're all screwed."

He had a point. Either way Loren needed to keep her eye on the ball- right now that meant tracking down Matt Hunter. She got back into her car and started south. There was still time to get to Lockwood Corp. in Wilmington, Delaware, before it was too dark.