“That glass is supposed to be bullet-resistant,” Naomi says, shocked by the news.

“Under normal circumstances it would be,” the security chief tells her.

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Whoever did this was firing something like an elephant gun. We found a large hunk of lead in the bedroom ceiling. Had to be a fifty caliber, and to get through the glass—it punched a hole as big as a grapefruit. The angle indicates it was fired from ground level, from the vicinity of the alley.”

“An elephant gun, you say?”

He shrugs. “Something powerful enough to stop an elephant. Your window barriers will stop penetration from small-arms fire, up to and including an Uzi on full auto. So this had to have been a high-powered rifle with special ammunition. We’re going to turn the slug over to the police, see what they make of it. With your permission.”

Naomi nods her permission and turns to me. “My God, what if Jack had been there?”

“Saved by his wife, you might say. I’ll be sure to tell him that.”

“This is serious.”

“I am serious. Jack should know that in his case there’s an advantage to staying married.” When she frowns her disapproval at my jocularity, I add, “Come on, this was a drive-by shooting, not a serious assassination attempt.”

“With an elephant gun.”

“Don’t get hung up on the size of the gun. Whoever did this obviously knew they needed a powerful weapon to make a statement. Had they wanted to kill one of us, they’d have fired into a room that was occupied. The lights never came on in Jack’s room because he never came back from happy hour with his state cop buddy. It can’t be a coincidence that the shot was fired into an unoccupied room. And into the ceiling at that.”

Naomi stares at me, her brain buzzing through the possibilities, and in the end she agrees with my assessment. “The odds favor your theory,” she admits. “This was likely a warning shot, intended to discourage our investigation.”

“No chance of that.”

“None whatsoever,” Naomi says, resolute. “As a precaution I’ll keep the Beacon Hill security guards stationed outside the residence, at least for now.”

“So we can all go back to bed?”

“That’s advisable. We’re all going to need as much rest as we can get. That goes for you, young man,” she says to Teddy, who has lingered nearby, awaiting instructions. “By my estimation you haven’t had a full sleep cycle in at least three days. I want your mind clear for the next assignment, which is going to be difficult.”

“What’s the next assignment?” he asks instantly, beating me to it.

“I’ll know more tomorrow,” Naomi says enigmatically, and marches off to her room, as if on a mission.

Teddy waits until she’s gone before touching me on the arm to get my attention. “She’ll know more tomorrow?” he asks, puzzled. “What’s she going to do?”

I think about it. “My guess? She’s going to call the Benefactor.”

Our young computer genius says not a word to that, but looks like he’s seen a ghost.

Part 3. Joey

Chapter Forty-Three

Under a Veil of Leaves

Over the course of the next forty-eight hours absolutely nothing of interest happens. Okay, the Red Sox did somehow manage to win, barely, all three of their away games at Toronto. And a city councilman from Dorchester was found gamboling in the duck pond at the Public Garden, having declared his intention to interfere with the swans. He was stark naked. Lucky for the big birds he was too drunk to accomplish his task. Or maybe lucky for him, considering how aggressively swans tend to respond when under attack from naked councilmen. In Revere, a group of rowdy teens was arrested for underage drinking at the beach, and in Lexington a possibly rabid fox terrorized a neighborhood before lying down to take a nap on someone’s porch and being identified as a perfectly healthy Pomeranian called, appropriately enough, Barker. The dog was taken into custody without incident and returned to its owner.

Okay, so I take it back about nothing of interest happening. I’m learning to be more specific: nothing of interest happened concerning our current case, at least nothing we knew about. We being everyone but Naomi, who spent hours on her secure line, waving me away whenever I happened to approach in a vain attempt to eavesdrop. Whatever she’s up to, she won’t discuss it, although my bets are all placed on our mysterious Benefactor, who, as we know from previous cases, has influence in very high places. Jack occupies himself with legwork, following up on the late Jonny Bing’s possible connection to the frozen corpse found at the foot of his bed in the vain hope that it might somehow, improbably, lead to Joey Keener. Teddy continues to plumb the depths of the World Wide Web, hoping to uncover something that will prove Taylor Gatling’s complicity in the murder of Professor Keener or the abduction of his missing son. Dane has been spending most of her time at the hospital, where Randall Shane continues to improve both physically and mentally, to the point that she’s worried the politically ambitious Middlesex County District Attorney will change his mind and put Shane behind bars while he awaits trial. Everything Shane has recalled in the past couple of days confirms what we already know, which is gratifying but essentially useless.

We still don’t know what we don’t know, and it’s making me as crazy as that overactive Pomeranian snapping at ankles in historic, upscale Lexington, birthplace of American liberty and Rachel Dratch. Our only suspect, Pentagon darling Taylor Gatling, has a motive for silencing the professor, who he suspected of treason, and for framing Randall Shane, revenge served cold, but what possible reason would he have for stealing and keeping Joey Keener? Teddy, whose eyes are beginning to rotate in his head like the cherries on a slot machine, has been unable to find any link with Keener and Gatling, other than the obvious connection having to do with Gama Guards contracting to provide security for QuantaGate. Despite the coincidence of both victim and suspect being from New Hampshire, the two men seem to have had nothing in common. Gatling was raised in the southern part of the state, on the seacoast, to a moneyed-at-the-time family, and Keener bounced around foster homes in the north. Moreover, Keener being ten years older than Gatling, he was already out of state as a Caltech undergrad when Gatling was pulling pigtails in elementary school. Their one undeniable connection is that both profited from Pentagon contracts, but the same could be said of thousands if not tens of thousands of individuals.

In the late afternoon of the second day of nothing, Jack finds me on the roof, where I’ve been watching the dinky sailboats to-ing and fro-ing on the Charles.

“Those are dinghies, not dinkies, and they’re tacking, not to-ing.”

“I say they’re to-ing and fro-ing. Tacking is something upholsterers do.”

Jack laughs, shaking his handsome head. As usual he looks like he just stepped out of the pages of GQ, sporting a pair of Armani sunglasses that perfectly complement his gorgeous summer-weight suit. The dark glasses fail to hide his frustration because with Jack it’s all in the lips, that’s where he expresses himself, from cynical sneers to pensive, pouting moues. “Teddy’s been asking me about the Benefactor,” he says.