"Hello?" a male voice asked.

"I look for the toll lady," Cruz said, assuming the toll lady must have a boyfriend.

"Who is this?"

"I can't tell you, but I have to talk to her. She say for me to call," Cruz said.

Andy was sitting at his computer, working on the next Trooper Truth essay, and he had a feeling the toll lady in question was Hooter. But why was anybody looking for her at his house?

"She's not here at the moment," Andy said, which was misleading but true.

Hooter had taken Macovich home, and what happened after that was anybody's guess. Then Andy had called the city cops, who came and got the package of handguns but decided not to arrest Trader with so little evidence to go on, especially since he was an important government official.

"But if we trace these guns back to you," one of the cops had said to Trader, "then you're in a shitload of trouble. I don't care who you work for. So I recommend you go on home and don't try to leave town or anything unwise like that."

"Of course I wouldn't leave town," Trader had lied. Remarkably, wires had reconnected inside his head and he was talking normally again. "I will be at work with the governor tomorrow, as usual."

"Well, I guess you'd better ask the governor that," Andy had told Trader. "He's not too happy with you right now."

"Nonsense," Trader had retorted. "We have always been on good terms, and in fact, he considers me his closest friend."

"Maybe he won't if Regina's blood work turns out in an unfortunate way for you, Trader," Andy had replied. "I understand from the news she was rushed to the E.R. a little while ago with a severe gastrointestinal attack that you and I both know was precipitated by cookies you were witnessed to bring into the mansion kitchen and set down on a countertop. You were overheard to say that the cookies were for the governor only, but Regina got into them anyway when no one was looking."

"No one's ever gotten ill from my wife's cookies," Trader had said.

"When she get back?" the unidentified person with a heavy Spanish accent was asking over the line.

"I'm not sure, but is there something I can help you with?" Andy tried to get this evasive, suspicious-sounding caller to talk.

"It's just I'm concern, you know? They say this Hi'panic kill someone at the river, and I didn't kill no one and the po-lice, they be looking for me." Cruz was out with it as he huddled in the phone booth and noticed a black Land Cruiser parking at the gas pumps.

"What makes you think the police are looking for you?" the man on the line asked.

"Because they stop me at the tollbooth and chase me for no reason. I had to hide and afraid for my life! The toll lady give me her number and say she help me."

Andy strained to figure out why Hooter would have given out his home phone number to a possible fugitive, and then he recalled working the Bag Man case last year.

"Maybe we should meet and discuss this," Andy suggested as he absently clicked the mouse and changed a word in the essay he would post momentarily. "There's no point in running from the police, even if you're innocent, because all you're going to do is create more legal problems for yourself. Why don't I meet you in a secure, safe place and we'll talk about it? I have connections and may be able to help you out."

Cruz was tempted and possibly would have done the smart thing and met whoever he was talking to, but an unforeseen event began to unfold right before his very eyes. Through the expansive plate glass of the 7-Eleven, he saw a white woman walk into the convenience store and appear to be asking the clerk for help. Then a white man with dreadlocks staggered in looking stoned, and whipped a pistol out from the inside of his coat and pointed it at the clerk, who was away from the counter and the emergency button that all convenience stores have these days. Cruz couldn't hear what the white man was saying, but he looked very mean and violent as he mouthed abusive words at the terrified clerk in her orange-checked 7-Eleven jacket. She began to cry and beg as the white man cleaned out the cash drawer. Then, to Cruz's horror, the woman with long black hair calmly took the dude's gun, put it right against the clerk's head, and fired repeatedly. The explosions shook the phone booth and Cruz yelped.

"What was that?" Andy asked, startled by what sounded like gunfire.

"Ahhh! This white dude with dreadlocks! They just shot the clerk!" the Hispanic yelled over the line and hung up.

Smoke? Andy wondered as he recalled the description of Smoke that the prison guard, Pinn, had given after Smoke had escaped. According to Andy's caller ID, the Hispanic had called from a 7-Eleven off Hull Street, south of the river, and Andy called 911 while Cruz jumped into his car and sped off.

Cruz was horrified not a minute later to notice that the black Land Cruiser was right on his rear bumper. He had learned to drive in New York City and swung into several alleyways, gunned through a side street, then another, and roared across a median and threaded his car precariously through others until he ended up on Three Chopt Road in the parking lot of what looked like a huge mansion with tennis courts.

A zipper, for those of you who may never have given the subject much thought, is also called a slide fastener and is a simple device for binding the edges of an opening, such as a fly, the back of a dress, or a freezer bag, although the latter is actually sealed by a zip lock that is more like gums-rather than teeth-clamping shut. The zipper device of interest to us consists of two strips of cloth, each with a row of metal or plastic teeth that interlock rather much like a railroad track when one pulls up the sliding piece. This railroad track then separates when one pulls down the sliding piece-unless the zipper gets off track or stubborn, which is what happened to that poisonous, lying Major Trader last night.

The first slide fastener recorded in history was exhibited in 1893 by Whitcomb L. Judson, at the World's Fair in Chicago. Mr. Judson called his awkward arrangement of hooks and eyes a clasp locker. Within a few years, Gideon Sundback, a Swedish immigrant and electrical engineer, improved the device by substituting spring clips for the hooks and eyes, and in 1913 produced the Hookless #2, although it wasn't called a zipper until BF

Goodrich coined the name in 1923, when the company manufactured zip-up overshoes.

It goes without saying that if we happened upon a zipper in what we thought was a colonial grave at Jamestown, then we could at least conclude with some assurance that the human remains were post-1913. Just to linger with this scenario another moment, let's assume that while I was uncovering a grave at the archaeological site, I had indeed unearthed a zipper in the pelvic area of the skeletal remains. I would have immediately pointed this out to one of the archaeologists, preferably Dr. Bill Kelso, who is Jamestown's chief archaeologist and an expert on colonial artifacts, including buttons.

"Dr. Kelso," I probably would have said, "look, a green stain in the dirt that is shaped exactly like a zipper. It's my interpretation that the green indicates a brass zipper that has eroded with time."

The esteemed archaeologist most likely would agree with me and point out that as brass and copper shroud pins erode, they also leave a green stain, but a pin leaves a pin-shaped stain that is easily distinguishable from a zipper shape. He would go on to tell me that the medieval pin might be made of iron topped by a pewter head that was occasionally inlaid with glass or a semiprecious stone. But most pins found at historical sites are made of drawn brass wire with a conical head that is another piece of wire turned three to five times at the top of the shank and then flattened by a blow. This method of making pins continued until 1824, when Lemuel W. Wright patented a solid-headed pin that was stamped out in a single process.