"I thought so too," he said.

"So is 'instrument,'" Wohl chimed in. "God using this fellow as his 'instrument.'"

"Yeah," Larkin said. "I sent this off, as a matter of routine, to a psychiatrist for a profile. I'll be interested to hear what he has to say. Incidentally, if you have a good shrink, I'd be interested in what he thinks too."

"Her," Wohl said. "Not a departmental shrink. But she was very helpful when we had a serial rapist, ultimately serial murderer, running around the northwest. When we finally ran him down, it was uncanny to compare what she had to say about him based on almost nothing, and what we learned about him once we had stopped him."

"Interesting," Larkin said.

"Payne's sister. Dr. Amelia Payne. She teaches at the University."

"What's even more interesting, Mr. Larkin…" Pekach said.

"Charley, please," Larkin interrupted.

"…is that Matt, Detective Payne, got this guy. With his next victim already tied up in the back of his van," Pekach concluded.

"Fascinating," Larkin said, looking at Matt.

He already knew that, Matt thought. He's not going to shut Pekach up, but he knew. He really must have some files.

"Okay, Matt," Wohl ordered. "As a first order of business, run this letter past Dr. Payne, will you, please?"

"Yes, sir."

"Mike, how are we fixed for cars?"

"Not good. Worse than not good."

"Matt's going to be doing a lot of running around," Wohl said. " He's going to need a car."

"Let him use mine," Pekach volunteered. "With or without Sergeant O'Dowd. I can get a ride if I need one."

"With your sergeant," Wohl said. "Matt, take the Xerox-before you go, make half a dozen copies-to Amy. Explain what we need, and why we need it yesterday. On the way, explain this to Sergeant O'Dowd, ask him for suggestions. The minute you can get through to him, call Chief Coughlin and ask him if he can meet us, make sure you tell him Mr. Larkin will be there, at Bookbinder's for lunch. I'll see if I can get Chief Lowenstein to come too."

"It's Sunday. There's no telling where Amy might be."

"Find her," Wohl ordered. "And keep me advised, step by step."

"Yes, sir."

FOURTEEN

"There are some other things I think we can safely say about this guy," Larkin said after Matt had gone. "For one thing, he's intelligent, and he's well educated. The two don't always go together. You'll notice that he correctly capitalizes all references to the deity. 'His instrument,' for example, has a capital 'H.'"

Sabara grunted.

"And there are no typos on either the letter or the envelope, which were typed on an IBM typewriter. One of those with the ball. So he both knows how to type and has access to an IBM typewriter. Which means probably in an office. Which would mean that he would also have access to a blank sheet of paper, and probably an envelope. He used instead a sheet of typing paper from one of those pads you buy in Woolworth's or McCrory's. There are traces of an animal-based adhesive on the top edge. Actually the bottom, which just means that after he ripped the sheet free, he put it in the typewriter upside down. And he used an envelope from the Post Office. Which probably means that he knows somebody was going to take a good close look at both the letter and the envelope and didn't want us to be able to find him by tracing the paper or envelope."

"Then why write the letter in the first place? Take that risk?" Sabara asked.

"Because he believes that he is a Christian, and is worried about the Vice President's soul," Larkin said. "Which brings us back to someone who thinks he's doing the Lord's work being a very dangerous character, indeed."

"We keep saying 'he,'" Wohl said, but it was a question.

'Two things. Both unscientific," Larkin replied. "Women don't normally do this sort of thing. And there is, in my judgment, a masculine character to the tone of the letter. It doesn't sound as if it's written by a female. But I could be wrong."

"Yeah," Wohl said thoughtfully.

"One more speculation," Larkin said. "'High explosives.' Technically, there are low-yield explosives and high-yield explosives. Maybe he knows the difference. That could suggest that this guy has some experience with explosives. It could just as easily mean, of course, that he doesn't know the difference, but just heard the term."

"But the whole letter suggests that he isn't thinking of taking a shot at the Vice President," Wohl said.

"Presuming, for the sake of argument, that you're right, that's a mixed blessing. Getting close enough to the Vice President to take a shot at him wouldn't be easy. Using explosives-and I don't think we can dismiss military ordnance, hand grenades, mines, that sort of thing-is something else. And since this guy is doing God's work, I don't think he's worrying about how many other people might have to be 'disintegrated.'"

"I don't suppose there's any chance of having the Vice President put off his visit until we can get our hands on this guy?" Wohl asked.

"No," Larkin said. "Not a chance."

"Has he seen this letter?"

Larkin shook his head, no.

"Well, you tell us, Charley," Wohl said. "How can we help?"

"That's a little delicate…"

"You'd rather discuss that in private, is that what you mean?"

Larkin nodded.

"Charley, anything that you want to say to me, you can say in front of these people," Wohl said.

Larkin hesitated, and then said, "You are like your dad, Peter. He once told me he never had anyone working for him he couldn't trust."

"There are some I trust less than others," Wohl said. "These I trust, period."

"Okay," Larkin said. "The word that gets back to me is that there is some bad feeling between the Police Department and the feds, the FBI in particular, but the feds generally."

"I can't imagine why anyone would think that," Wohl said, lightly sarcastic.

Larkin snorted.

"There's a story going around that both you, the Department, I mean, and the FBI were going after a big-time car thief. And the first time that either of you knew the other guys were working the job was when your cars ran into each other when you were picking him up."

"Not true," Wohl said.

Larkin looked at him in surprise.

'The real story is that nobody in the Department, except one hardnosed Irishman, believed that the car thief could possibly be a car thief. We were wrong, and the FBI was right."

"One of your guys, the hard-nosed Irishman?"

Wohl pointed at Jack Malone.

"And I didn't believe him, either," Wohl said. "Walter Davis and I had a long talk to see if we couldn't keep something like that from happening again."

Walter Davis was the SAC, the special agent in charge, of the Philadelphia office of the FBI.

"You get along with Davis all right, Peter?"

"As well as any simple local cop can get along with the FBI," Wohl said.

"Did you almost say 'the feds'?"

"No."

"Out of school," Larkin said. "I hear that part of the problem is a Captain Jack Duffy."

"Out of school, did you hear what Captain Duffy is supposed to have done?"

"What he doesn't do is the problem, is what I hear. Phrased delicately, both Walter Davis and our SAC here…Joe Toner, you know him, our supervisory agent in charge?"

Wohl shook his head, no.

"…tell me that in the best of all possible worlds, Captain Duffy would be a bit more enthusiastically cooperative than he is."

"That's delicately phrased," Wohl said. "But I don't think it's Duffy personally. He takes his guidance from the commissioner."

"Okay. Confession time," Larkin said. "Joe Toner found out somehow that Dignitary Protection had been given to something called Special Operations, which was under an Inspector Wall. So, when I began to suspect that this vice presidential visit was going to present serious problems, I decided I was going to bypass Captain Duffy. I called the Dignitary Protection sergeant…you know who I mean, the caretaker sergeant?"