The lieutenant stepped outside to make room and Mercer introduced me to the two men, who sat opposite me across the captain's messy desk. I explained that I wanted to question David out of Sofi's presence. The father was polite but firm.

"Is my son under arrest for anything?"

"No, sir, he is not."

"Do I need to get him a lawyer?"

"No, he's not in custody. You have my word on that. Of course, if you'd like to have a lawyer present, we can certainly wait here until you've reached one."

Maswana checked his watch for the time. "I'd prefer to get started. We have nothing to hide."

"Then I'm going to ask you to step out of the room. Lieutenant Peterson will give you a comfortable place to-"

"I intend to sit right here, Madam Cooper, beside my son."

It was too early to start butting heads. "That's not going to work, Mr. Ambassador. You're welcome to have a seat down the hall, but I will not conduct the questioning in your presence. I'll be right outside when you two have had a chance to decide what you'd like to do this evening."

No serious interrogation of an adult suspect could be carried on with a parent sitting next to him. If David were psychologically ready to unburden himself about his criminal conduct, the company of his prominent father and the rectitude of his upbringing would put the chill on any chance of a confession. The entire dynamic changed when the target was alone.

I went out to the squad room and gave Peterson some cash to order in a sandwich for David and some coffee for all of us. Like the superstitious ballplayers who left their pitchers alone on the bench between innings, none of the detectives approached me to banter or offer suggestions. Mercer and I huddled in a corner to discuss strategy.

Ten minutes later, Mr. Maswana emerged from behind the opaque glass door.

"I shall accept your rules, Madam Cooper. But I would ask you to suspend what you're doing anytime David requests that you do."

"Of course."

Mercer and I returned to the room, and while we were explaining the purpose of our questioning, a uniformed cop brought in the package from the local deli.

I placed the sandwich in front of Maswana along with a cup of coffee. Once he drank from the container and left it on the desk, it would be abandoned property that I could submit for DNA analysis before the end of the evening, without the need for a search warrant or confession.

I opened the lid of my coffee and sipped at it. "How do you take yours, David?"

He pushed the food and drink away. "Nothing for me, thanks. I'm not hungry."

Mercer began by asking some basic pedigree questions. The young man was nervous-he avoided making eye contact, his voice had a slight quiver from time to time, and he kept his hands clasped in his lap-but I would expect anyone to be frightened in this situation.

When he talked about his education, David made no mention of any schooling in England. "When were you at Harvard?"

I wanted him to answer with the year of his class, so that I could see if that slight accent that Annika heard would surface in the same three letters as the word "ass." He not only said that word, but the word "pass" as well, and there was no hint of a British pronunciation.

Mercer worked David on dates and times of year. He was vague about much of it, but then we were talking about events that were quite remote in time. Statutes of limitation had been written into our laws because people couldn't be expected to account for their whereabouts five or six years after the fact.

While Mercer did the heavy lifting, I tried to measure the guy's responses. At times he seemed earnest and as candid as he could be, and at moments when his facial expressions seemed identical to the police artist's sketch, I was ready to lock the door on the cell and throw away the key. The brilliance of DNA meant that science would resolve any of our uncertainty within twenty-four hours.

Forty-five minutes into questions and denials, Peterson knocked on the door and smiled at me, offering a pack of cigarettes, his lighter, and an ashtray. "I forgot the captain got rid of his illegal paraphernalia a year ago, at the mayor's request. We'll bend the rules for you a bit."

He had remembered the cigarette butt recovered from the stoop in front of one of the crime scenes. The perp was a smoker, and the remains he left on the desk would be another easy source of DNA analysis, from saliva.

Mercer and I each took a cigarette from the pack to make the activity inviting to our target. David Maswana wrinkled his nose at the smell of the match lighting. "Thanks. I don't smoke."

Maybe he didn't. Maybe he was smart enough not to make the process of evidence collection any easier for us.

At the end of an hour, Mercer was ready to play hardball. The vague answers about recent dates and times-those that would key into the January assaults-were unacceptable. Mercer pressed for firm answers, for information undoubtedly recorded in this generation's ubiquitous PalmPilots and desktop calendars.

He asked David to voluntarily give a DNA sample, to allow us to swab the inside of his mouth with a Q-tips. The young man welled up with tears before refusing the request, saying that he would ask his father about that before leaving the precinct later on.

Then Mercer removed a slip of paper from the folder. He turned it face-up and placed the composite of the Silk Stocking Rapist's face under the nose of our prime suspect.

David recoiled automatically and started breathing heavily. "It's-it's like me a lot, but then, who made this? White women? A lot of the characteristics would, well-look like any, um-"

Mercer's dark brown skin was almost the same shade as David's. He leaned in and pointed at the kid. "Don't let me hear any we-all-look-alike-to-them bullshit, okay? This sketch looks more like you than the photo on your driver's license."

Another knock on the door and Peterson cracked it enough to motion me out. I thought Mercer had David on the ropes for the first time, making progress and softening him up. My annoyance at the interruption was visible.

"Sorry, Alex. I assumed you'd want the call. Darren Waxon, the chief of protocol says he has to talk to you."

I took the receiver and spoke brusquely into the phone. "Yes, Mr. Waxon?"

"Miss Cooper, I'm wondering how much later you're going to keep the ambassador and his son in the police station. It's after eight-thirty and if you're planning to take any kind of action, I'll need to know about it as soon as possible."

I hesitated, afraid there had been a leak from someone in the department who saw the two men waiting downstairs earlier in the evening. "Who told you Mr. Maswana was here?"

"He called me himself, to thank me and let me know what was going on."

"Thank you? For what?"

"For telling him why the district attorney subpoenaed the personal-residence information in the first place and what the investigation concerned."

My annoyance was fast turning to anger. "Exactly when did you tell him that?"

"Miss Cooper, I gave each of the missions the courtesy of informing them that we had no choice but to respond to the proper legal process. Protocol requires-"

"But what time? At what hour did you tell that to Mr. Maswana?"

"This afternoon, shortly before I gave Detective Wallace the list of addresses."

The whole time that Mercer thought that he had pulled a fast one on Maswana with the ruse of getting information from him via the INS agent, the ambassador knew we were looking at one of his sons as a possible serial rapist.

"You had absolutely no business revealing that-"

"Miss Cooper," Waxon said, meeting my ire with his own, "I wasn't about to cause an international incident over a-a handful of hysterical women."

Mike Chapman would have called him a frigging idiot, would have threatened to lock him up for obstructing governmental administration.