The phone rang. It was Tingle, and he said, "Drummond, I think Agent Margold was right."

"Right about what"

"The folks at Quantico tried to find that file. It disappeared."

"But…" Think, Drummond. "Don't they have a logging… a tracking system… something?"

"Of course. The request was logged in six months ago. When it arrived, it was assigned a lower priority and placed in a sort of hold status. Just as Agent Margold said, their procedure is to work emergency and higher-profile cases first, then the hold cases as they get to them."

"They have no idea how it disappeared?"

"They have an idea." After a moment he explained, "There's only one way it could have happened. Somebody who works at the unit removed the file and carelessly failed to log it out."

That was exactly what happened, I was sure, and carelessness had nothing to do with it. I now knew what I needed to know, and I bid the general farewell.

As she had with Jason, Jennie had probably sifted through hundreds of opened cases before she located Clyde, MaryLou, and Hank, who, individually and collectively, personified the resume for her plan. Or maybe not-maybe it was vice versa. Thinking back, the murders were tailored to fit their peculiar skills, each mirroring in some way their crimes at Fort Hood. As Jennie knew, practice makes perfect in crime, as in most human endeavors.

She gave them intimate insights into the defenses they needed to breach, and into the vulnerabilities and mindset of their victims, and their victims' defenders. After all, Jennie's office reviewed and provided physical support for the Secret Service and Supreme Court protection plans-she knew which victims were accessible, how, and when. As the task force responded to the wave of killings, as we adjusted our strategies and defenses, she adjusted hers, shifting from the most protected targets to the most careless, like horny Danny Carter, or to the most clueless, like poor Joan Townsend.

It now looked so obvious I couldn't believe we never even suspected it. But it wasn't at all obvious. In fact, it was the most stunning fakery I had ever seen. Only one piece, in fact, could not have been more apparent.

We should all have noticed the intensely psychological nature of the campaign waged against us, a psychic blitzkrieg. We awoke one morning to a disaster, behind the power curve, gripped with desperation, and the relentless fusillade of ensuing murders ground us down-left us sleepless, demoralized, frantic, clawing at one another's throats, and, in the end, so myopically focused on the facts that we missed the overall pattern.

The Army has an entire branch dedicated to the pursuit of psychological warfare, an art intended not to kill and maim, but to incubate panic, fear, and confusion, to create division, and ultimately, to cause defeat. Jennie directed the campaign from the outside, and from the inside, she worked on our brittle psyches, selfish impulses, and frayed egos.

I got out of my car and walked slowly back to Mark Townsend's door. I rang the bell again, and pretty young Janice answered again. I walked back down the hallway to the office and sat down with Mr. Townsend and told him everything I knew.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Using Mr. Townsend's phone, I called Larry, who rushed over with his apostles, Bob and Bill. They were anticipating a confession and looked a little demoralized when that turned out not to be the case.

Also, I called Chief Eric Tanner, who arrived alone.

Any cop will tell you the hardest part of the job is narrowing the suspects. Once you know who, the whats, whens, and hows come fairly easily Once you know who, you wonder what took you so long.

Jennie's plan relied on misdirection. She led the dogs as we chased the fox, and we never once thought to sniff her tail. She was confident we wouldn't, and as I mentioned previously, we all know what overconfidence breeds: sloppiness. The trail of breadcrumbs she left in her wake was long and reckless.

Within a few short hours, Larry obtained her record of travel five months earlier, the three-day round trip to Killeen, the hotel she stayed in, the meals she charged, the rental car she used, and so forth. It wasn't hard, really. It was all there on her Bureau Visa card.

Bob obtained her cell phone records from the week of the killings. What those records revealed were Jennie's repeated calls to several cell phones registered under the name Chester Upyers, though billed to a guy named Clyde Wizner. That Clyde, what a wicked sense of humor. Who would've guessed?

Bill worked on becoming my buddy again. Fat chance.

Eric Tanner really didn't need to be there, but he had earned a front-row seat at the endgame, and I wanted him to have it. And to justify his presence, he updated us on what the CID gumshoes at Fort Hood had learned about Clyde Wizner, about MaryLou Johnson, and about Hank Mercer.

There's always something, and in Clyde's case it was a voracious gambling problem. He was a high roller on a low roller's dime, and from accounts at various casinos he had visited, Clyde didn't know how or when to push away from the table. His only winnings from Vegas were frequent flyer miles and, according to a scrub of his medical records, two cases of clap. As Mom, in her more ruminative moments, used to warn me, one vice always begets another. Also, interviews with his neighbors and some talkative regulars at a local redneck dive indicated Clyde and MaryLou were a hot item and had been for years.

Regarding MaryLou, she had a record: three counts of prostitution, two for passing bad checks, and sundry lesser offenses. Born and bred in a dilapidated trailer park on the western outskirts of Killeen, she never came close to the American dream. Also, people who lived there a long time remembered that Mary-Lou's mother, who never married, many years before used to date a guy named Clyde something-or-other, a soldier at Fort Hood, if they recalled rightly. The possibility here was fairly ugly and, we all agreed, more than we needed, and a lot more than we wanted to know.

Hank lived three apartments down the hall from MaryLou, had twice been institutionalized, and had an IQ of 72. Neighbors in the apartment complex were shocked and dismayed to learn that he was an infamous thief and murderer. He was widely recalled as a gentle giant, helpful and compliant, a playful guy who liked to horse around with the little kiddies on the playground.

Eric Tanner had another interesting tidbit to pass on. Two of the civilian employees on his list of suspects at Fort Hood recalled being interviewed some five months earlier by a lady agent from the FBI. No, they didn't remember her name, but she was a looker and they'd know her if they ever saw her again.

So day turned Into evening, and we gathered together in -Mr. Townsend's tiny, overheated study We were all, I think, shocked and thoroughly depressed. Larry said to Townsend, "What we have, sir, is damning… but not damning enough. We can justify an arrest for conspiracy. Unfortunately nothing we have ties her directly to the most serious crimes, murder and extortion."

Bob seconded that view and further advised, "We could get a warrant, but an arrest would be premature at this point. We'll dig all night, but we shouldn't jeopardize our chances of a conviction."

Bill nodded agreeably Bill was everybody's pal. Bill would probably smile and nod even if I said we should just forget the whole thing. For the record, I preferred Larry over Bill. With Larry, you saw it coming, at least.

Mr. Townsend for some reason looked at me. He asked, "What do you think?"

"Arrest her right now."

"Why?"

"Because she's brilliant. Because she's smarter than us, and offered the slightest chance she'll outwit us. Because she has access to twelve and a half million bucks, and we have no idea what might spook her."