Knowles looked at Cole, who nodded his affirmation of something.

“It’s late,” Knowles said, “but we’re up. We were thinking we’d give you the other updates now, get back to sleep, then get back on it around nine or ten A.M.”

Laramie had planned to do a roundtable at eight, to include Rothgeb, and maybe even Cooper by phone. Now she might just have something for Cooper to do. There might be some investigative work to be done in Cuba-work up a notion with Eddie Rothgeb on what sort of “Americanization facility” he should be looking for, then send Cooper on his way.

Maybe I could even go with him.

She immediately became infuriated with herself for thinking this final thought, and nodded quickly at Knowles in a vain attempt to expel it from her brain.

“Go ahead with your update,” she said.

Cole retreated to his seat by the phone and started in.

“Been interviewing, interrogating, and otherwise hassling every name that popped up in the terror book,” he said. “Plus a few more that didn’t. If you care, I think my tally is up to fifty-two interviews so far, and I’ve set another fourteen for today. Besides the fact that most of these conversations are basically putting me to sleep, I’m on to something-some kind of pattern, I think-I’m just not sure what. There are some consistent, and unique, pieces of his weekly routine-two events per week, I believe-which may have served as the ‘bread crumbs’ we’ve been speculating he may have left. I’m just not positive my theory makes sense yet.”

Laramie considered this for a moment but couldn’t grasp how it would work.

“You’re saying he might have left messages in those places?” she said. “In the bar where he hung out with his buddies on Thursday nights, or-”

“Yes and no,” Cole said. “Probably not literally. And not that obviously. But what I was thinking is, it might be in the numbers of the get-togethers.”

Knowles said, “Fourth day of the week at seven, for instance.”

“Right. I’ll have more today after I wrap up the circuit of interviews, but if I’m right-if he’s trying to give us a couple sets of numbers as the clue-then this guy was very, very good. For example, I’ve found no evident ‘confessions’ like we talked about before, and that’s pretty rare. Almost contrary to human nature if you’re talking ten years of undercover work. Even cops love to give themselves away to anybody who’s smart enough to figure it out. I’ll give you an example: I met a guy once who’d done some undercover work, and the name they gave him in his cover job on the docks was ‘Bobby Covert.’”

“As in covert operations?” Laramie said.

“One and the same.”

“You’re telling me nobody figured it out?”

“Nope-the guy busted a whole tier of New Jersey organized crime chiefs while working undercover at a trucking company under that name the whole time.”

“You said there were two pieces of his routine,” Laramie said, her mind a few lines back.

“Yeah,” Cole said. “That’s what I’m thinking. But I’m not positive.”

“Involving numbers?”

“I think it’s twice per week that he set regular appointments he never broke, but I haven’t boiled down the consistent, well-I guess you’d say least common denominators of the get-togethers. You know, which pieces, such as time of day, that might give us a code from the weekly arrangements he made.”

Laramie said, “But maybe the meeting times, if that’s what you’re talking about, are giving us numbers?”

“Not sure. There’s a hundred possibilities, from address to time to day and date, and so on. But he had two weekly things going-outside of obligatory work stuff, ordinary kid stuff, and dates with his wife. If you look only at the day of the week and the time, there’s a few ways to get either two or three numbers for each get-together. What are you getting at?”

“Two numbers, each in two or three sets,” Laramie said, “could mean he’s giving us GPS coordinates. Latitude and longitude in, what-‘degrees, minutes, seconds,’ right? Three sets. The third set, the seconds, sometimes being left out.”

Cole sat up a little straighter in his chair. For a moment, Laramie thought she was able to catch a glimpse of the lean, athletic cop Cole might once have been.

“Christ,” he said. “Here’s the thing-I wanted to flesh this out before going over it with you. Reason being, it’s insane at best to consider two weekly outings with friends a pattern, and a pattern expressing a code on top of it-”

“Go on,” Laramie said.

“Well, outside of work, his wife, and any practice, games, or class appointments with his kid, it’s looking like Achar kept two, and only two, regular appointments each week. One on Monday, when he would take his break at quarter after four and get two coffees from the Circle Diner. He’d bring the coffees back to the UPS facility and hand one off to the dispatcher, the girl named Lois-”

“When did you find that out?” Laramie said, amazed he’d found this when even Mary the profiler had not.

“Spent quite a while with her.” Cole offered a smirk and left it at that. “I don’t think they had anything going either, by the way, and I’d also discount the theory of her being some sort of control. But she confirmed to me that on Mondays, and Mondays only, he would radio in his break, and when he did, meaning each Monday, he’d always come back from the break with a coffee for her on his way back out to the job. Extra cream, one sugar.”

“Okay,” Laramie said.

“Second consistency was Tuesday night, for pool and darts at a tavern called Latona with seven of his buddies from work.”

“Seven, specifically?” Laramie said.

“Yep, interviewed them all, talked to Janine Achar for confirmation. Dispatcher not among the ‘buddies from work,’ in case you wondered. Anyway, he and the fellas met at five-thirty at the Latona every Tuesday after work.”

Laramie remembered seeing something about this in the terror book.

“Anyway, the reason I wanted to flesh this out on my own,” Cole said, “besides it maybe being nothing, is the huge list of numbers or factors that could plug into a code. There’s day of the week, the date, the time, the address of each of the events-coffee shop, pub, et cetera-plus, it could be the names of the places or the streets are figured into the code, if there is one. Maybe even the number of people involved at each event. But it’s interesting when you raise the GPS issue. If GPS coordinates have three sets of-”

“Either two or three sets of one-or two-digit numbers,” Laramie said, “more or less. Depending on how specific the reading is. If it’s just the latitude and longitude in ‘degrees’ and ‘minutes,’ for instance, and not down to street specificity, then it’s two sets for lat, two sets for long. If it’s more pinpointed, ‘seconds’ are provided too.”

“We work from there then,” Knowles said.

Cole had begun nodding.

“Two or three numbers would make sense as the simplest pattern you can generate from his appointments,” he said, “because you can come up with numbers solely from the days and times-or maybe the days and times and number of people involved. So, for instance: Monday-first day of the week; four-fifteen P.M. is the time; two people in the get-together, including him. Pick the numbers as you see fit. Tuesday’s day two, at five-thirty-and either seven or eight participants-depending on whether you count Achar in the number again.”

Knowles moved the mouse and the dual monitors came back to life, long since having gone to sleep. Laramie watched as he Googled a GPS translation site, asked for a repeat on the first shot at numbers Cole had just taken, then entered one combination of degrees, minutes, and seconds for both latitude and longitude based on what Cole had stated. Laramie noticed Knowles mouthed the numbers to help himself remember them.

“Here’s what we might get,” Knowles said, “using the factors you suggest and in the order you mentioned them.”