Harris snorted. "Yeah. Really nice guy."

"Who's sitting on him now?"

"Charley Bell, in that old PECO van."

Payne nodded. The Philadelphia Electric Company van was always a good choice, its paint shot but the faded PECO logotype on it easily recognizable.

"Okay," Payne then said, "it's no doubt way too soon to have much on this new one that's got Hizzonor spitting mad. But punch up number twelve on the main bank, please."

Rapier worked the keyboard and the case sheet for Jossiah Miffin appeared. It showed both his mug shot, in which he had close-cropped hair, and his Medical Examiner's Office photo, where he had long black hair. Both showed the nasty J-shaped scar on his left cheek. Name: Jossiah A. MIFFIN Description: Black Male, age 30, 5'7", 180 lbs. L.K.A.: 1822 W. Ontario St, Phila. Prior Arrests: 8 total: possession of marijuana (6); possession of Methamphetamine (1); convicted of Indecent assault amp; corruption of a minor (1) and sentenced to probation of intense sex offender treatments amp; no unsupervised contact with minors. Call Received: 02 Nov, 0730 hours. Cause of Death: Gunshots (2) to head (99 percent probability). Case No.: 2010-81-039617-POP-N-DROP Notes: Fugitive. Warrants issued for multiple probation violations. Has prominent J-shape scar on left cheek. Takeeta Smith, 14-year-old female witness who claims to be niece of deceased, stated in interview that she saw him killed 01 Nov 2130 hrs by SNU in street at L.K.A. amp; described SNU as a skinny white male approximately 40 years of age wearing delivery uniform. Assailant left Wanted sheet at scene in FedEx envelope that was discarded. Body transported to Lex Talionis, Old City.

"Check out the Notes, Matt," Harris was saying, looking at the main monitor.

Payne looked up at the main monitor and read it.

"A FedEx delivery there at nine-thirty on a Sunday night?"

Then he turned to Rapier: "Punch up that interview with the girl, the animal's so-called niece."

The main bank of screens then showed Homicide Detective Jeff Kauffman-a tall, dark-haired thirty-four-year-old who had a quick laugh when he wasn't interviewing murder suspects-in Homicide Interview Room II with Takeeta Smith. She was sipping from a plastic bottle of grape-flavored soda. The empty wrapper of a Tastykake lay on the metal table.

They were almost exactly halfway through the interview when Takeeta's scratchy voice coming through the speakers in the ECC ceiling said:

"It be a FedEx envelope. And dude had a FedEx uniform."

"You're positive?"

She looked at Kauffman like he was from another planet, then said:

"Yeah, fool. I be positive. I mean, he be standing in the headlight, clear as damn day. Can't miss no FedEx sign. It be on every box my cousin's black tar shit come in from Texas."

Harris chuckled, then said, "Look at her Oh shit, what'd I just say? expression. Now who's the fool, Takeeta?"

"What a brain trust," Payne said. "They just don't know better. Reminds me of that arrogant Hank Whatshisname, the U.S. congressman from somewhere near Atlanta, who was grilling an admiral on Capitol Hill about the Navy's plans to station some eight thousand sailors and their families on Guam. He lectured the admiral that the island was only twenty-four miles long, seven 'at its least widest'-that's what he said, 'least widest, shore to shore'-and that he was afraid that with all those extra people, the island would tip over and capsize."

Harris laughed. "You're kidding."

Payne shook his head. "I shit you not, my friend. That's the kind of brilliant example of the 'geniuses' in our government that kids like her get to look up to as role models."

He looked over at Radcliffe. "Andy, who've been your role models in life?"

"Well, my momma, of course," he said immediately, clearly without thought. "She taught me hard work, discipline, never to give up. And there's Will Parkman, that really good cop who was a Marine and helps me go to school so I can eventually get a job here." He paused and thought, then added, "And you, Marshal."

Payne looked at Radcliffe, thinking that he now was being mocked. But when Matt saw Andy's face, he knew Andy was sincere.

Payne said, "I'd be damned careful about that last guy. He'll only lead you to trouble." He sighed. "And damn sure not to catch any bad guys."

"What's up with the bad-guy pop-and-drops having histories of sex crimes," Radcliffe said, "and STDs?"

"Where'd you get that?" Payne said, impressed.

He pointed at his laptop screen. "From the master file case notes."

"You've gone all the way back to the beginning?"

"Sure. Isn't that what you're supposed to do when trying to turn over a rock under a rock?"

Payne nodded. "Yes, indeed it is. And, to answer your question, there's not any single answer-with the exception of what Kerry recently suggested. None apparently knows what the hell a condom is."

Radcliffe said, "I've been feeding key data into my skunk-works search engine."

Radcliffe had managed to get his hands on an early version of a super-powerful software program developed at MIT, and Payne had seen him use it before.

"And?" Payne said.

"All the pop-and-drops who'd been shot had either been charged with or served time for a sex crime, all but the lawyer and his client."

"Right."

"Jay-Cee," Harris put in, "had charges against him of involuntary deviant sexual intercourse and rape of an unconscious or unaware person in one case that Gartner got tossed."

"Tossed on a technicality," Radcliffe said. "The chain of evidence of the rape kit was broken. It was deemed inadmissible in the trial. But the results still are on file. They state that the blood test from the girl he raped showed that she had really early stages of the bacterial disease gonorrhea."

"And?" Payne said.

Radcliffe shrugged. "Nguyen's master case file from those charges says that he was undergoing treatment for gonorrhea."

"So Nguyen gave the girl the clap," Payne said.

"Would appear that way."

"Nothing new. Kerry has a story about one where the rape victim got whatever disease in her throat," Payne said. He then appeared to be in deep thought. He said: "Which puts Nguyen in line with the other pop-and-drops, leaving only Gartner with no sex-crime link. He may just have been in the wrong place at the wrong time when Jay-Cee got popped." He paused, then added, "Lucky us."

"You didn't like Gartner?"

"Nobody liked that slimy sonofabitch."

Andy Radcliffe raised his eyebrows, nodded once, then looked back to the laptop screen. "Maybe I can find a link with Gartner and some sex crime…"

"Kerry, let's take another look at the interview I had with Shauna Mays."

Rapier worked his control panel, and the image of Matt with the malnourished and badly bruised woman in Homicide's Interview Room II came on the monitor. In the right-hand bottom corner was a small date stamp: 01 NOV, 13:20:01.

"Run it up to about 13:30," Payne said.

Rapier fast-forwarded to that point on the clock, hit play, and shortly thereafter the sound of Payne exhaling came through the speakers in the ceiling. Then his voice, slightly frustrated, said:

"Okay, let's start from the beginning. Who had the gun?"

"A delivery guy. He come in with Kendrik's paper. That paper I had that the cop took?"

"The Wanted sheet?"

"Yeah, that's it. He come in and-No, wait. First he say he got a check for Kendrik. And when I let him in, he give me the paper. The sheet. Said there was no check."

"This began at what time?"

She cocked her head. "Time? This morning, all I know. Ain't no clocks in a crack house!"

In the ECC, there was a chorus of chuckles from Harris, Radcliffe, and Rapier.

As they watched Payne in the video nodding while writing in his notepad, Kerry said, "Gee, Marshal, I thought everyone knew crack houses didn't have clocks."