He opened it. Read out loud. "To the memory of my wife, Anne, the Butcher's first victim.'"

The book was divided into sections. "Boston."

"White Plains." And photographs of crime scenes had been pasted inside. The first one was headed "Hartford." Parker turned the page and read, "'From the Hartford News-Times.'" Czisman had copied the text of the article. It was dated in November of last year.

Parker read, "Three Killed in Holdup… Hartford Police are still searching for the man who walked into the offices of the News-Times on Saturday and opened fire with a shotgun, killing three employees in the classified advertising department.

"'The only description of the killer was that he was a male of medium build, wearing a dark overcoat. A police spokesman said that his motive may have been to divert law enforcement authorities while his accomplice robbed an armored truck making a delivery to a bank on the other side of town. The second gunman shot and killed the driver of the truck and his assistant. He escaped with $4,000 in cash.'"

Cage muttered, "Killed three people for four G's. That's him all right."

Parker looked up. "One of the clerks killed at the paper was Anne Czisman. She was his wife."

"So he wanted the prick as much as we did," Cage said.

"Czisman was using us to get to the unsub and the Digger. That's why he wanted to see the body in the morgue so much. And that's why he was following me."

Revenge…

"This book… it was his way of dealing with his grief." Parker crouched and reverently pulled the sheet back up over the man's face once more.

"Let's call Lukas," he said to Cage. "Give her the news."

At FBI headquarters Margaret Lukas was in the employees' lobby on Pennsylvania Avenue, briefing the deputy director, a handsome man with a politician's trim graying hair. She'd heard the reports that the Digger was on the Mall and that there had been shooting. Lukas was desperately eager to get to the Mall herself but since she was primary on the case, protocol dictated that she keep the senior administrators in the Bureau informed.

Her phone buzzed. And she answered fast, superstitiously not letting herself hope that they'd captured him.

"Lukas here."

"Margaret," Cage said.

And she knew immediately from his tone that they'd nailed the killer. It was a sound in a cop's voice you learn early in your career.

"Collared or tagged?"

Arrested or dead, she meant.

"Tagged," Cage responded.

Lukas came as close to saying a prayer of Thanksgiving as she'd come in five years.

"And, get this, the mayor winged him."

"What?"

"Yep, Kennedy Got off a few shots. That saved some lives."

She relayed this news to the deputy director.

"You okay?" she asked Cage.

"Fine," Cage responded. "Cracked a rib while I was covering my ass is all."

But her gut tightened. She heard something else in his voice, a tone, a hollowness.

Jackie, it's Tom's mother… Jackie, I have to tell you something. The airline just called… Oh, Jackie…

"But?" she asked quickly. "What happened? Is it Kincaid?"

"No, he's okay," the agent said softly.

"Tell me."

"He got C. P., Margaret. I'm sorry. He's dead."

She closed her eyes. Sighed. The fury steamed through her again, fury that she herself hadn't had a chance to park a bullet in the Digger's heart.

Cage continued. "Not even a firefight. The Digger shot toward where the mayor was sitting. C. P. just happened to be in the wrong place."

And it was the place that I'd sent him to, she thought bitterly. Christ.

She'd known the agent for three years… Oh, no…

Cage was adding, "The Digger capped four other friendlies and we've got three injured. Looks like six civies wounded. Still a half-dozen reported missing but no bodies. They probably just scattered and their families haven't found them yet. Oh, and that Czisman?"

"Who, the writer?"

"Yeah, Digger got him."

"What?"

"He wasn't a writer at all. I mean, he was but that's not what he was doing here. The Digger'd killed his wife and he was using us to get him. The Digger took him out first though."

So, it's been amateur night, she thought. Kincaid, the mayor. Czisman.

"What about Hardy?"

Cage told her that the young detective had made a one-man assault on the bus the Digger'd holed up in. "He got pretty close and had good firing position. Might've been his shots that hit the Digger. Nobody could tell what was going on."

"So he didn't shoot himself in the foot?" Lukas asked.

Cage said, "I'll tell you, it looked like he was hell-bent on killing himself but when it came right down to it he backed off and went for cover. Guess he decided to stick around for a few years."

Just like me, Lukas the changeling thought.

"Is Evans there?" Cage asked.

Lukas looked around. Surprised that the doctor wasn't here. Funny… She'd thought he was coming down to the lobby to meet her. "I'm not sure where he is," she answered. "Must be upstairs still. In the document lab. Or maybe the Crisis Center."

"Find him and give him the good news. Tell him thanks. And tell him to submit a big bill."

"Will do. And I'll call Tobe too."

"Parker and I're gonna do crime scene with PERT then head back over there in forty-five minutes or so."

When she hung up the dep director said, "I'm going down to the Mall. Who's in charge?"

She nearly said, Parker Kincaid. But caught herself. "Special Agent Cage. He's near the Vietnam Memorial with PERT."

"There'll have to be a press conference. Ill give the director a heads-up. He may want to make a statement too… Say, you miss a party tonight, Lukas?"

"That's the thing about holidays, sir. There'll always be one next year," She laughed. "Maybe we ought to make up T-shirts with that saying on them."

He smiled stiffly. Then asked, "How's our whistle-blower doing? Any more threats?"

"Moss? I haven't checked on him lately," she said. "But I definitely have to."

"You think there's a problem?" The dep director frowned.

"Oh, no. But he owes me a beer."

In the deserted document lab Dr. John Evans folded up his cell phone. He clicked the TV set off.

So they'd killed the Digger.

The news reports were sporadic but as best Evans could tell there'd been minimal fatalities-not like the Metro shooting and not like the yacht. Still, from the TV images, Constitution Avenue looked like a war zone. Smoke, a hundred emergency vehicles, people hiding behind cars, trees, bushes.

Evans pulled on his bulky parka and walked to the corner of the lab. He slipped the heavy thermos into his knapsack, slung it over his shoulder then pushed through the double doors and started down the dim corridor.

The Digger… What a fascinating creature. One of the few people in the world who really was, as he'd told the agents, profile-proof.

At the elevator he paused, looked at the building directory, trying to orient himself. There was a map. He studied it. FBI headquarters was much more complicated than he'd imagined.

His finger hovered over the DOWN button but before he could push it a voice called, "Hi." He turned. Saw somebody walking toward him from the second bank of elevators.

"Hi, there, Doctor," the voice called again. "You heard?"

It was that young detective. Len Hardy. His overcoat was no longer perfectly pressed. It was stained and sooty. There was a cut on his cheek.

Evans pushed the DOWN button. Twice. Impatient. "Just saw it on the news," he told Hardy. He shrugged the backpack off his shoulder. The doctor grunted as he caught the bag in the crook of his arm and began to unzip it.

Hardy glanced absently at the stained backpack. He said, "Man, I'll tell you, I spoke a little too fast there, volunteering to go after that guy. I went a little crazy. Some kind of battlefield hysteria."