Curtis got out from behind the steering wheel and glanced around the neighborhood.

It wasn't that early in the morning, but the street was quiet. There were only the sounds of dogs yapping down the block and, not too far off in the distance, the horn blare from a SEPTA light-rail train.

He saw a skinny, mangy gray cat across the street. It was eating Halloween candies that had been dropped and squashed on the sidewalk.

Probably stolen from some poor kid.

But who'd go door to door for candy in this dump of a place?

For drugs, sure. Which is why it's quiet now.

Damn lowlifes up all night chasing ass and doing dope.

But catching them now all good and sleepy will be some sort of justice.

He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of He reached back inside the door of the minivan. There was a stack of six thin white paperboard envelopes on the dashboard, and he pulled the top one off the stack. Each of the envelopes bore the distinctive FedEx logotype, as well as a clear plastic pouch holding a bill of lading.

Stepping carefully, Curtis carried the envelope toward the front door of the row house. Parts of the crumbling sidewalk were broken down to bare dirt, and there were knee-high dead weeds in the cracks.

The house itself, built of masonry blocks with a front facade of red brick, was also in really bad shape. There were several holes in the wall where bricks were completely missing. The house hadn't been painted in far too many years, leaving bare wood that had rotted in places. Racks of rusty burglar bars covered the solid metal front door and the four doublewindows-two upstairs and two at street level-and the first-floor windows were fitted with poorly cut pieces of weather-warped plywood.

To the right of the concrete steps, on the sidewalk and up against the foot of the house, Curtis saw five or six black trash bags. They were packed full, piled high, one on the bottom with a big torn hole. They looked to have been there for some time, easily days if not weeks.

Curtis went up the flight of four concrete steps leading to the battered front door. He saw out of the corner of his eye what at first he thought were two black cats. They'd been along the wall behind the trash bags. Then they'd bolted away, running behind some weeds in front of the small wood-framed window of the basement.

Those aren't cats. They're goddamn rats!

He now noticed that the basement window was open, pulled inward from the top. The rats had disappeared into it.

Curtis shook his head in disgust.

As he reached the bar-covered metal door, a breeze blew past, bringing with it a vile stench. He gagged.

He looked at the garbage bags.

Jesus! Whatever it is has to be in there.

It's worse than raw chicken-or maybe dead rats-that's gone bad.

He looked to the window where the rodents had run inside.

Or… could it be coming from the basement?

What a shithole!

He pulled back his sleeve, testing the air. The breeze had stopped and the stench had subsided.

For now.

I need to see who's home, then get the hell out of here…

There was no doorbell-just a crude little hole where it had once been mounted-so he balled his fist, reached between the bars, and pounded on the metal door.

As he waited for some kind of life to wake up inside-other than the vile vermin-he glanced at the FedEx envelope in his hand.

Its bill of lading had a return field that read:

United States Department of the Treasury 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W. Washington, D.C. 20500

Will grinned. He knew that was the address of the White House, and had listed it as an inside joke. He had no idea where the hell the U.S. Treasury had its main office-and didn't give a damn, because he knew the "recipient" wouldn't know, either.

The field for "Recipient" read:

Kendrik Mays 2620 Wilder Street Philadelphia, PA 19147

Also on the bill of lading was a bold black X in the box beside the line that stated: GOVERNMENT-ISSUED ID amp; PERSONAL SIGNATURE OF RECIPIENT REQUIRED FOR DELIVERY.

After knocking again and waiting another few minutes, he'd yet to hear anything moving inside the house.

Dammit! Not even another rat.

Another dead end.

Move this one to the bottom of the stack with the other dead end.

Maybe try again later. At least there's a house at this address.

Just as he turned to go down the steps to the minivan, he saw movement in the left downstairs window, where he noticed a knothole in the warped wood.

So you use that as a peephole, eh?

Nervously, he readjusted the.45-caliber Glock that he had stuck under the waistband of his pants, right behind the buckle of his heavy leather belt.

This morning's work wasn't wasted after all…

Curtis turned back to the door. At five o'clock that morning, Will Curtis had awakened and gone downstairs to the kitchen to make his coffee, just as he'd done every day for as long as he could remember, easily twenty years.

All the while careful not to wake up his wife.

Not even a week after Wendy had been attacked, Linda had moved into her old bedroom. It was on the back side of the row house's first floor. It had not exactly been left as a shrine after Wendy had moved out and gotten her first apartment-if only because Wendy had needed a lot of the furniture and other items to kick-start her new independence-but it still had a lot of her personal items from growing up, things like the many trophies she had won playing soccer in junior and senior high school. And the walls were practically covered solid with framed and pushpinned photographs of Wendy and her countless gal pals, from birthday parties to summer trips at the Jersey shore, all from various points of her teen years.

A lot of memories for Linda to recall as she lay there. And, ever more the recluse, she spent more and more time in Wendy's old bed. (They'd told Wendy that a new life required a new bed, and among the apartment-warming gifts they'd given her had been a queen-size bed-the one she'd been attacked on.)

I don't know who's going to take care of Linda when I'm gone, but I do know she won't want for anything.

Especially with the house being paid off and the fat payout from my life insurance policy coming.

Which is damn convenient, because she's barely holding on to her teller job.

And I'm feeling worse every day.

As the coffee brewed, Will Curtis went down into the basement.

Shortly after moving into the house, he'd begun converting the basement into a recreation room. It had a pair of soft, deep sofas that faced a monster flat-screen plasma TV. In the corner was a freestanding bar he'd built himself. And just about every nook and cranny was filled with Philadelphia Eagles memorabilia-he'd started the collection in his youth and later had help from Wendy, who'd grown into a genuine fan, too.

And, in the corner of the rec room, his desk held a desktop computer.

Every morning, by the time he'd finished checking his e-mail, the pot of coffee would have finished brewing. He'd then go up and pour a big cup to bring back down and drink while catching up on e-mails and then reading phillybulletin.com, the online edition of the Philadelphia Bulletin. Up until a couple years ago, he would go out to the front stoop and pick up the paper version that he'd subscribed to forever. But, as it had never arrived until at least six in the morning-and, on rainy days, arrived wet-he'd let the subscription lapse after getting in the habit of reading the news online.

And not just news.

Lately, he'd started following a new website, the name of which he really liked: CrimeFreePhilly.com. It had news articles, but also a lot of information about crime and criminals. And so, in the last month, it had become an indispensable tool for Curtis.