"Got a medical bulletin for you: It's not working."

"It's a clinical trial. We don't know the proper dose yet. We expect a setback or two in the early—"

"Setback? Torture and murder—"

"I can assure you he did not lay a finger on Gerhard."

Jack would need more than just Levy's word.

"What about kidnapping? Just a 'setback'?"

"You keep blaming him without proof. And he has an alibi. The attempted abduction was… unfortunate. But it doesn't mean the trial is a failure, it simply means we need to adjust the dosage. Which we have. I'm sure nothing like that will ever happen again."

Jack stared at him. "You're not sure at all."

Levy looked away—confirmation enough.

"We'll make you the same offer we made Gerhard."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Why…" He seemed flustered for a second. "Why, Creighton, of course. We'll pay you whatever you might have received from Mrs. Pickering and—"

"Gerhard took your offer?"

A nod.

Crook.

"And true to his word, he said nothing to the Pickering woman. So you can see there was no need for Jeremy to even talk to him, let alone kill him."

"Speaking of Mrs. Pickering, what's the story with Bolton and her daughter?"

"Well, he's a hetero male, she's a female the same age he was when he was locked up. What more story do you need?"

Keeping in character, Jack said, "Yeah, I suppose the first thing I'd do once I got out of stir was hook up with some poontang."

"Well, it wasn't the first thing. The very first thing he did was get himself tattooed." He held up his hand and pointed to the web between his thumb and forefinger. "Right here, of all places."

Jack remembered the Kicker in the bookstore yesterday.

"Tattoo of what?"

"Some ridiculous little stick figure."

Jack felt a chill ripple across his back.

"With a diamond-shaped head?"

"Why, yes. How did you know? You've never been that close to Bolton." His eyes narrowed. "Or have you?"

Jack didn't answer immediately. His brain was too wrapped up in all the unfolding connections. Connections… not coincidences.

Jeremy Bolton was a Kicker.

"Excuse me?" Levy said, waving a hand. "Are you there? How did you know?"

Jack shook himself. "That figure is all over Manhattan. Followers of a book called Kick."

Levy snapped his fingers. "Right. Bolton once had a book with that figure on its cover. What's it mean?" He grimaced. "Working at Creighton tends to insulate you from the Zeitgeist."

Jack wished he could escape the Zeitgeist. He didn't know what the figure meant, but knew he had to find the connection.

"The author, Hank Thompson—"

"Did you say Hank Thompson? That's the author who's been interviewing Bolton."

Jack felt as if he'd been kicked.

"What? Why? How?"

"Research. His next book is going to be on the Atlanta abortionist killings."

Funny… just a few hours ago he'd said he hadn't decided yet. But he might simply be keeping the topic under wraps.

That didn't bother Jack anywhere near as much as the way two supposedly separate parts of his present-day life were intersecting.

"I'm kind of surprised you let anyone get near Bolton."

"The last thing we wanted, believe me. We turned him away but Thompson threatened to take us to court. We feared he might win—freedom of the press and all that crap—so we granted him access. But we've limited it as much as possible."

"How limited?"

"Thompson had one hour access a week."

"He did time at Creighton back in the nineties, you know."

"Of course I know. Our security had him fully vetted before we let him in. Unfortunately he turned out to be just what he said he was: a former inmate and a bestselling author." He smiled. "I never knew he was the author of Kick. I'll have to read it sometime."

"Their stays at Creighton overlapped. Any chance they could have met there?"

He shook his head. "Highly unlikely. Prisoners in the maximum security wing have no contact with the other residents. He told us it was the Creighton connection that inspired him to write Bolton's story."

All very probable. Maybe even explained Thompson's reluctance to talk about Creighton, but a part of Jack wasn't buying it.

Damn, he wished he'd known this before interviewing Thompson. Could have asked some interesting follow-up questions when he said he hadn't decided what to write next.

"Would you believe," Levy was saying, "Thompson says he thinks Bolton is innocent, that he was framed by the real killers?"

"Who were…?"

"Who else? Radical Christian extremists."

"Any chance that's true?"

"Are you kidding? Not in a million years. I've seen the case files—we check out every inmate exhaustively—and the evidence against Jeremy Bolton was overwhelming. After what he did to me, can you doubt his impulsive violence?"

No, Jack couldn't.

"What did you tell Thompson when you let Bolton out?"

"Nothing. Didn't need to. He'd completed his interviews before the start of the trial."

"A convenient coincidence. Could they possibly be meeting outside?"

Levy shook his head. "Bolton is violent but he's not stupid. If Thompson exposes him—accidentally, or deliberately for the publicity—the clinical trial is over and Bolton is back behind bars."

Jack had a strong sense that that was just where this man wanted him.

Levy waved Thompson away.

"Anyway, back to this Pickering girl. I just wish she were a few years older, then we wouldn't have her overprotective mother in the picture."

"How did you sneak him back into civilization?"

"We put him through the witness protection program—even the FBI didn't know his real identity."

"So you Earl Scheibed him into a law-abiding citizen. Why put him in Queens?"

"He wanted Rego Park and he persuaded the Bureau to put him there."

"Wait-wait-wait. He wanted Rego Park? Why?"

"I have no idea. I remember thinking it odd—born and raised in Mississippi, and he insists on Rego Park, Queens. Go figure."

"Yeah. Go figure."

Something about that bothered Jack, but he couldn't say why.

"The other odd thing is his money. He was set up with an apartment and a stipend to provide him with the essentials, but not enough to be comfortable. The idea was to spur him to get a job. He's been locked up since his teens. We gave him some training, but we wanted to see how he functioned as an adult in the real world."

"He's telling people he designs video games."

"Yes, I know. He's obsessed with them—structure, design, gameplay. He probably could design one."

"But he doesn't. He doesn't do much of anything according to Mrs. Pickering. Yet she told me he's got a beautiful townhouse with state-of-the-art computer and AV setups. How's he afford that?"

"We don't know. He goes out and buys these things for cash. When we ask he won't tell. When we threaten he says what's the difference where he gets his money as long as it's not jeopardizing the clinical trial?"

Jack wondered if Thompson might be the source—paying him for an exclusive story.

Thompson's reticence about Creighton was becoming more and more understandable.

"So, you tell him to 'fess up or you'll haul his ass back behind bars, but he blows you off. Seems to know you don't mean it. He indispensable?"

Levy looked at him. "Let me put it this way: If we can succeed in taming and making an upstanding citizen of Jeremy Bolton, we can succeed with anyone."