"He's got to make a mistake somewhere. What about the GPS? Anything on that?"

"We're working it, obviously. Brass is on that."

"What else is there?"

"There is you, Rachel."

Rachel didn't say anything. Again Cherie Dei was right. Backus had something in play. His obscure but direct message to Rachel seemed to make this obvious. He wanted her here, wanted her to be part of the play. But what was it? What did the Poet want?

Like Rachel had mentored Dei, Backus had mentored Rachel. He was a good teacher. In retrospect, better than she or anyone could have imagined. She was mentored by both agent and killer, hunter and prey, a unique combination in the annals of crime and punishment. Rachel always remembered a throwaway line Backus had spoken one night when they were walking up the stairs from the basement at Quantico, leaving the unit behind for the day.

"In the long run I think it is all bullshit. We can't predict how these people act. We can only react. And at the end of the day, that means we're largely useless. We make good headlines and Hollywood makes good movies about us, but that's about it."

Rachel was a rookie in the unit at the time. She was full of ideals and plans and faith. She spent the next thirty minutes trying to talk Backus out of such a belief. Now she was embarrassed by the memory of the effort and the things she had said to a man she would later realize was a killer.

"Can I go into the other tents now?" Rachel asked.

"Sure," Dei said. "Whatever you want."

IT was late and the batteries on the boat were beginning to run low. The lights in the forward berth were steadily dimming. Or at least it seemed so to me. Maybe it was my eyes that were dimming. I had spent seven hours reading through files pulled out of the boxes on the top bunk. I had filled my notebook to the last page and then flipped it over and started back to front.

The afternoon interview had been uneventful if not unhelpful. Terry McCaleb's last charter was a man named Otto Woodall who lived in a luxury condo behind the fabled Avalon Casino building. I talked to him for an hour, getting much the same story I had already gotten from Buddy Lockridge. Woodall, who was sixty-six years old, confirmed all aspects of the trip that were of interest to me. He said he did leave the boat during their dockage in Mexico and spent time with women he knew there. He was unembarrassed and unashamed. His wife was over on the mainland shopping for the day and he apparently didn't mind opening up. He told me he was retired from his job but not from life. He said he still had a man's needs. I let that line of questioning go at that point and focused on the last moments of McCaleb's life.

Woodall's observations and recollections mirrored Buddy's in all important details. Woodall also confirmed that on at least two specific instances during the trip he saw McCaleb take his meds, downing the pills and liquids with orange juice each time.

I took notes but knew they wouldn't be needed. After an hour I thanked Woodall for his time and left him to his view of the Santa Monica Bay and the bloom of smog that rose beyond it on the mainland.

Buddy Lockridge was waiting for me out front in a golf cart I had rented. He was still brooding over my last-minute decision to interview Woodall without him. He'd accused me of using him to get the interview with Woodall. He was right about that but his complaints and concerns weren't even on my radar.

We drove silently back to the pier and I turned in the cart. I told Buddy he could head home because I was going to be busy reading files the rest of the day and into the night. He meekly offered to help but I told him he already had helped enough. I watched him walk off toward the ferry docks with his head down. I still wasn't sure about Buddy Lockridge. I knew I had some thinking to do about him.

Not wanting to fool around with the Zodiac I took a water taxi back to The Following Sea. I conducted a quick search of the master stateroom-finding nothing of note-and moved into the forward cabin.

I noticed that Terry had a compact disc player in the converted office. His small collection of music was mostly blues and 1970s rock and roll. I plugged in a more recent Lucinda Williams CD called World Without Tears and liked it so much I ended up letting it play over and over during the next six hours. The woman had long journeys in her voice and I liked that. By the time the power started faltering on the boat and I turned the music off I had unconsciously memorized the lyrics to at least three songs I could sing to my daughter the next time I put her to bed.

Back in McCaleb's converted office, the first thing I did was go back to his computer and open the folder marked profiles.

It gave me a listing of six different files, all titled by dates in the previous two years. One by one I called them up in chronological order and found each to be a forensic suspect profile of a murder case. Written in the unadorned and clinical language of the professional, each profile drew conclusions about a killer based on specific crime scene details. It was clear from these details that McCaleb had done more than simply read newspaper articles. It was obvious he had full access to the crime scenes-either in person or more likely by photos and tapes and investigators' notes. It was very clear to me that these were not practice runs worked up by a profiler who missed the job and wanted to keep in tune. These were the work of an invited guest. The cases were all from the jurisdictions of small police departments in the west. My guess was that McCaleb had heard of each case through news reports or other means and simply volunteered his help to the police department struggling with the case. Offer accepted, he was,probably sent the crime scene information and he then set to work analyzing and drawing up the profile. I wondered if his notoriety helped or hindered him when he offered his talents. How many times was he turned down to be accepted these six times?

When accepted, he probably worked each case from Jhe desk where I was sitting, without ever leaving the boat. Or thinking his wife knew in detail what he was doing.

But I could tell each profile had taken a good amount,of his time and attention. I was beginning to understand more and more what Graciela had said had become a problem in their marriage. Terry couldn't draw a line. He couldn't let it go. This profile work was a testament not only to his dedication to his mission as an investigator but also to his blind spot as a husband and father.

The six profiles came from cases in Scottsdale, Arizona; Henderson, Nevada; and the four California cities of La Jolla, Laguna Beach, Salinas and San Mateo. Two were child murders and the other four were sex slayings involving three women and one male victim. McCaleb drew no links between them. It was clear they were simply separate cases that had drawn his attention in the last two years. There was no indication in any of the files that Terry's work had been helpful or if any of the cases had been cleared. I wrote down the basics from each in my notebook with the idea that I would follow up with the departments to check the status of each investigation. It was a long shot but it was still possible that one of these profiles could have triggered McCaleb's death. It wasn't a priority but I would need to check it out. Finished with the computer for the time being, I directed my attention to the file boxes stored on the top bunk. One by one I pulled them down until there was no room on the floor of the forward room. I found that they contained a mix of files from both solved and unsolved cases. I spent the first hour just sorting them and pulling out the open-unsolveds, thinking that it was more likely than not that if Terry's death was related to a case, then it was one with a suspect still at large. There was no reason for him to be working or reworking a closed case.