“Not sure,” Laramie said, then, climbing the learning curve on Detective Cole, figured she ought to finish the thought Cole was likely to leave hanging. “So you’re saying we check and see whether more than one birth certificate was stolen from the place where he grabbed his?”

“Yeah. And other places. Problem is, when the kind of birth record he used is taken, sometimes there isn’t any record of it being there in the first place.”

“We should go the other way and look at the deaths,” Knowles said.

Cole rotated his head to take in Knowles, considered what he’d said, then nodded.

Laramie wasn’t grasping it yet.

“Little help?” she said.

“What-”

“It-”

They’d both started speaking at the same time, then stopped. Laramie almost flinched in anticipation of the argument she figured would ensue.

“Go ahead,” Cole said.

Knowles nodded. Laramie raised her eyebrows.

“It doesn’t do any good for our kind of guy, a sleeper,” Knowles said, “if he’s stolen the identity of somebody who’s alive. The way it’s done-at least the way I understand it-is you swipe the birth certificate, or just use the Social Security number, of a dead person.”

Catching up, Laramie said, “Nobody’s around to argue that you don’t exist.”

“Yeah.” Cole took the baton. “The most effective way to do it is by stealing the Social of somebody who died young. Would just make the most sense either way for it to be somebody born twenty-five or thirty years ago.”

“So there isn’t anybody still, what, actively grieving for him?”

“Well, yeah, that too, but what I’m talking about is the records. Last couple of decades, most jurisdictions have been keeping an electronic copy of birth certificates and death records in the same system. Before that, you could be born and die in the same town and the only record of either event was buried in separate files in different buildings. Plus you’re getting the age right on the Social Security number. But maybe the most important thing is, if we’re talking an early death-such as the real Benjamin Achar’s death from SIDS-there isn’t any significant record of life that’ll register with the federal government based on the Social. In many cases, Socials weren’t issued to children until they were six, eight, ten years old. Not until recently.”

Laramie considered this.

“So if you’re Achar, or his employers,” she said, “you steal a birth certificate from some town hall, making sure the person whose certificate you’re stealing died young. Preferably before the electronic-records era. And then, what, you apply for a new Social Security card using the birth certificate?”

“That’s right,” Knowles said. “Or get a new one. Say you lost yours-or they never gave you a number to begin with. And what we’re saying is we could find some Socials to check up on, doing it the same way Achar might have chosen his-by digging out names of people who died young in the same time period as the real Benjamin Achar, and checking to see whether their Socials have, after a long gap, eventually popped up on recent credit reports or tax returns.”

Laramie reached back and wrote Birth certificate thefts-dead-Mobile/other as their third note on the board, but was already thinking through some of the problems presented by this investigative strategy before she finished writing the words.

“Lot of dead people to check on,” she said, “in a lot of places. Plus we’ll need to find the deaths how? From town halls?”

“Libraries would be better,” Cole said. “In old newspaper files stored on microfiche.”

“Whole thing adds up to one hell of a thought, Detective,” Knowles said.

Laramie almost laughed out loud at these guys. She said, “Might test the resources of the support personnel we’ve got at our disposal, but it certainly is an interesting idea.”

Laramie noticed the salmon-colored hat first. She then realized what it was-her guide was standing in the doorway between the rooms.

“Headed for the airport,” he said, then thrust a thumb over his shoulder. “I set up some coffee and bagels in twelve. Door’s open.”

“What,” Laramie said, “no doughnuts? We’ve got an officer of the law here this morning.”

Cole swiveled his head to observe her guide-interested, Laramie thought, in the answer, and thereby confirming the truest of all stereotypes.

“No worries,” her guide said with a half-assed grin. “They’re even Krispy Kremes.”

Cole turned back around.

“I assume you heard the last part of our conversation,” Laramie said. “Can you accommodate that too?”

“We’ll get some investigators on it starting now,” he said.

Knowles stood and put his hat on.

“As chief scenario builder,” he said, “I’d say it’s a good time to get some chow.”

“Hear, hear,” Cole said.

The homicide cop rose and followed the author out of the room.

Laramie succeeded in waiting for both of them to leave the room before snorting out a laugh that wouldn’t stop for a while.

30

One of the more influential people Laramie encountered at Northwestern University-in ways both good and bad-was the sandy-haired, ageless professor of political science with the round, wire-rimmed glasses and piercing blue eyes whose name was Eddie Rothgeb. Before you got to know him, he was Professor Rothgeb, or maybe, if you were feeling loose, Ed. Only a few people came to call him Eddie-among them Laramie, Rothgeb’s wife, Heather, and the professor’s two sons. Laramie often excused certain things that had happened between her and Professor Eddie by labeling herself as too young and too stupid to know better.

Once Laramie and her guide retrieved Rothgeb from the airport, her guide-at Laramie’s request-deposited her and Rothgeb at the Krispy Kreme. She asked her guide to wait outside while she spoke with Rothgeb alone.

He looked the same. He always did. He even dressed the same-exactly the same, as though the jeans, V-neck sweater, blazer, and Converse All-Stars were a uniform the university required him to wear. Even his neatly trimmed beard, she decided, was exactly the same length as it had been the last time she’d seen him.

Rothgeb selected an original glazed, which he began consuming in small pieces, breaking them off while he sipped from a decaf mocha. Laramie thinking, Me and the rotating band of coffee-shop sissies, sampling oversweetened coffee concoctions from north to south. He sat before her at one of the restaurant’s Formica tables while Laramie worked through another cup of full test, having decided, on hearing Rothgeb’s order, to forgo the milk and sweetener.

Somebody’s gotta be a man about this coffee thing.

“So,” she said, laying out her usual opening. “I’ll begin this with a question.”

Rothgeb broke a piece from his doughnut and chewed it with some moistening help from his mocha.

“All right,” he said.

“How do you catch a sleeper?” Laramie said. “And I mean a real one-not some recent Arab immigrant with a heavy accent and a card-carrying membership in a radical mosque, but one who’s long since embedded himself. A deep-cover operative, awaiting orders, displaying no apparent affiliation with the people from whom he awaits orders, having long ago established a fully legitimate fake identity. How do you catch him-how do you even find him?”

Laramie’s guide had arranged-she didn’t ask how-for Rothgeb to listen to a one-play-only MP3 file on a portable device during his flight from Chicago. The content of Rothgeb’s file included Laramie’s findings and theories at the tail end of the recording.

The professor tilted his neatly trimmed head to the side, pondering the question.

“You know,” he said, “twenty years ago, this was considered a rampant problem.” He drew out the word rampant as though it were a curse that he relished using. “I’ve heard it speculated that hundreds, if not thousands, of Soviet sleepers are still here, having stayed on, as Americans, after the collapse of the USSR. Stayed asleep-or awakened, I don’t know how you’d put it.”