As it turned out, no one had seen a stranger around the library. And no one had seen Kevin. The front desk receptionist would have remembered Kevin—he was an avid reader. Short of bypassing the security system, of which there was no evidence, the likelihood of anyone entering the library unseen was small. Carl had been in the closet yesterday morning and there’d been no bomb, which meant Slater had found a way in since then, either at night or under their noses, unrecognized. How?

An hour after the explosion, Jennifer sat across from Kevin in a small Chinese restaurant and tried to distract him with small talk while they ate. But neither of them was good at small talk.

They went back to the warehouse at nine, this time armed with high-powered halogens that lit up the interior like a football field. Kevin walked through the scene with her. But now it was nearing midnight, and he was half-asleep on his feet. Unlike the library, the warehouse was still silent. No police, no ATF, only FBI.

She hadn’t bothered to tell Milton about the incident at the warehouse. She would as soon as she was done with it. She’d explained the situation to Frank, and he’d finally agreed to her reasoning, but he wasn’t happy with it. He was getting an earful from a dozen different sources. The governor wanted this tied up now. Washington was starting to apply pressure too. They were running out of time. If another bomb went off, they might take the case from her.

Jennifer glanced at Kevin, who leaned his head back against the wall in the reception area, eyes closed. She entered a ten-by-ten office storage room where they were compiling evidence for delivery to the lab. Under other circumstances, she would probably be doing this back at her desk, but Milton would be breathing down her neck. Besides, proximity favored the storage room, so Galager had transferred what he needed from the van and set up temporary shop here.

“Any conclusions, Bill?”

Galager leaned over a drawing of the warehouse floor plan, on which he’d painstakingly redrawn the footprints as they appeared.

“Best as I can tell, Slater entered and left through the fire escape. We have a single set of footprints coming and going, which correlates with the testimony. He walks up and down the hall a half-dozen times, waiting for Kevin to show, descends the stairs at least twice, springs his trap, and ends up in this room here.” He tapped the room next to Kevin’s hiding place.

“How did he lock the door? He shut it with the string, but Sam told me it was open when they first arrived.”

“We can only assume that he had the lock rigged somehow. It’s feasible that with a hard knock the lock could engage.”

“Seems thin,” Jennifer said. “So we have him entering and leaving through the fire escape. Kevin enters and leaves through the front door. What about the footprints themselves?”

“When all is said and done, there are only four clear prints, all of which we’ve casted and photographed. Problem is, they’re all from the hallway and the stairs where both Kevin and Slater walked. Same size. Same basic shape. Both hard-soled and similar to what Kevin is wearing—impossible to visually determine which is which. The lab will break it down.”

Jennifer considered his report. Sam hadn’t entered the building, which was good thinking. But she hadn’t seen Slater come or go either.

“What about the recording?” Galager had already transferred the data to a tape, which he had in a small recorder on the table.

“Again, the lab will have to tell us what they can come up with, but it sounds clean to me. This is the first recording from the hotel room.” He punched the play button. Two voices filled the speaker. Slater and Samantha.

“There, that’s better, don’t you think? The game won’t last forever; we might as well make this more interesting.”

Low and gravelly. Breathy. Slater.

“What good is a game that you can’t lose? It proves nothing.”

She recognized Sam’s voice. The tape played to the end of the conversation and clicked off.

“Here’s the second recording, made while we were here earlier this evening.” Galager punched it up. This time it was Kevin and Slater.

Kevin: “H . . . hello?”

Slater: “H . . . hello? You sound like an imbecile, Kevin. I thought I said no cops.”

The recordings were clear and clean. Jennifer nodded. “Get them to the lab with the footprints immediately. Any word yet on the dagger tattoo or the blood work from the warehouse?”

“Blood’s too old for anything but type. They’re having trouble even with that, though. Twenty years is a long time.”

“So it is twenty years old?”

“Best estimate, seventeen to twenty. Follows his confession.”

“And the type?”

“They’re having a hard time typing it. On the other hand, we do have something with the tattoo. A parlor in Houston says they have a large man with blond hair who comes in on occasion. Same tattoo as the one Kevin drew us. Says he’s never seen a tattoo like it except on this man.” Galager grinned deliberately. “The report came in about an hour ago. No current address, but the parlor says the man was in last Tuesday around ten o’clock.”

“In Houston?” That’s where Sam had gone. “Slater was in Houston last week? Doesn’t sound right.”

“Houston?” Kevin asked behind her. They turned to see him standing in the door. He walked in. “You have a lead in Houston?”

“The tattoo—”

“Yeah, I heard. But . . . how could Slater be in Houston?”

“Three-hour flight or a very long day’s drive,” Galager said. “Possible he’s going back and forth.”

Kevin’s brow furrowed. “He has a dagger tattoo? What if this guy turns out to be the boy, but not Slater or the Riddle Killer? You pick him up and now he knows about me, where I live. All I need is another wacko after me.”

“Unless this guy lives in a cave,” Galager said, “he’s heard the confession and seen your face on television. There’s a chance he isSlater. And there’s an even better chance that Slater is the boy. We have a man threatening you who all but admits that he’s the boy; a boy who has reason to threaten you, identified with a very unique tattoo. And now we have a man with the same tattoo. Circumstantial, I realize, but it sounds pretty plausible to me. We make busts on less.”

“But can you put someone behind bars with that?”

“Not a chance. That’s where the physical and forensic evidence comes in. As soon as we have a suspect in custody, we measure him up against the evidence we’ve gathered, which is substantial. We have Slater’s voice on tape. We have his shoe print. We have several bombs, all of which were made somewhere. We have six bugs—all this in three days. A virtual windfall in cases like this. I’d say Slater’s getting sloppy.”

And more so today than yesterday.“He’s at least pushing the pace,” Jennifer said. “Getting caught doesn’t seem to concern him. Which isn’t good.”

“Why?” Kevin asked.

She looked at his haggard face. A blade of grass from the library lawn was still stuck in his shaggy hair. His blue eyes looked more desperate than enchanting now. He didn’t tap his foot or rake his hair as frequently. The man needed rest. “Based on his profile, my guess is that he’s closing in on his objective.”

“Which is what?”

Jennifer glanced at Galager. “Good work, Bill. Why don’t you wrap it up and call the locals?” She took Kevin’s arm and led him out. “Let’s take a walk.”

Two of the streetlights nearest the warehouse were either shut down on energy conservation timers or burned out. A cool ocean breeze drifted over Long Beach. She’d shed her jacket and wore a sleeveless gold blouse with a black skirt—it was actually a bit chilly at this hour.

She crossed her arms. “You okay?”

“Tired.”

“Nothing like fresh air to clear the mind. This way.” She led him toward the fire escape in the back.