If Fielding had had an aptitude for the law he'd have been a lawyer and devoted his life to creating the perfect defenses for impossibly guilty clients. If he'd had a lust for the outdoors he'd have taught himself everything there was to learn about mountain climbing and made the perfect solo ascent to the summit of Everest.

But those activities didn't excite him.

Crime did.

This was just a fluke, he supposed, to be born utterly amoral. The way some men are bald and some cats have six toes. It was purely nature, he'd decided, not nurture. His parents were loving and dependable; dullness was their only sin. Fielding's father had been an insurance executive in Hartford, his mother a homemaker. He experienced no deprivation, no abuse. From an early age, though, he simply believed that the law didn't apply to him. It made no sense. Why, he spent hours wondering, should man put restraints on himself? Why shouldn't we go wherever our desires and minds take us?

Though it was some years before he learned it, Fielding had been born with a pure criminal personality, a textbook sociopath.

So while he studied algebra and calculus and biology at St. Mary's High School the young man also worked at his true calling.

And, as in all disciplines, that education had ups and downs.

Fielding, in juvenile detention for setting fire to the boyfriend of a girl he had a crush on (should've parked my car three or four blocks away).

Fielding, beaten nearly to death by two police officers whom he was blackmailing with photos of transvestites giving them blow jobs in their squad car (should have had a strong-arm accomplice with him).

Fielding, successfully extorting a major canned-food manufacturer by feeding their cattle an enzyme that mimicked a positive test for botulism (though he never picked up the money at the drop because he couldn't figure out how to get away with the cash undetected).

Live and learn…

College didn't interest him much. The students at Bennington had money but they left their dorm rooms open and there was no challenge in robbing them. He enjoyed occasional felonious assaults on coeds-it was challenging to rape someone in such a way that she doesn't realized she's being molested. But Fielding's lust was for the game itself, not sex, and by his junior year he was focusing on what he called "clean crimes," like robbery. Not "messy crimes," like rape. He buckled down to get his psych degree and dreamt about escaping from Ben & Jerry land and into the real world, where he could practice his craft.

Over the next ten years Fielding, back in his native Connecticut, did just that: honed and practiced. Robbery mostly. He avoided business crimes like check kiting and securities fraud because of the paper trails. He avoided drugs and hijacking because you couldn't work alone and Fielding never met anyone he trusted.

He was twenty-seven when he killed for the first time.

An opportunistic-an impulse-crime, very unlike him. He was having a cappuccino at a coffee shop in a strip mall outside of Hartford. He saw a woman come out of a jewelry store with a package. There was something about the way she walked-slightly paranoid-that suggested the package contained something very expensive.

He got into his car and followed her. On a deserted stretch of road he accelerated and pulled her over. Terrified, she thrust the bag at him and begged him to let her go.

As he stood there, beside her Chevy, Fielding realized that he hadn't worn a mask or switched plates on his car. He believed that he'd subconsciously failed to do these things because he wanted to see how he'd feel about killing. Fielding reached into the glove compartment, took out a gun and before she even had time to scream shot her twice.

He climbed back into his car, drove back to Juice 'n' Java and had another cappuccino. Ironically, he'd mused, many criminals don't kill. They're afraid to because they think they'll be more likely to be caught. In fact, if they do kill they'll be more likely to get away.

Still, police can be good and he was arrested several times. He was released in all those cases except one. In Florida he was collared for armed robbery and the evidence against him was strong. But he had a good lawyer, who got him a reduced sentence on condition that Fielding seek treatment at a mental hospital.

He was dreading the time he had to serve but it turned out to be an astonishing two years. In the Dade City Mental Health Facility, Fielding could taste crime. He could smell it. Many, if not most, of the convicts were there because their lawyers were quick with the insanity defense. Dumb crooks are in prison, smart ones are in hospitals.

After two years and an exemplary appearance before the Medical Review Panel, Fielding returned to Connecticut.

And the first thing he did was get a job as an aide at a hospital for the criminally insane in Hartford.

There he'd met a man named David Hughes, a fascinating creature. Fielding decided he'd probably been a pretty decent fellow until he stabbed his wife to death in a jealous rage on Christmas Day. The stabbing was a dime-a-dozen matter but what was so interesting, though, was what happened after hubby gave Pamela several deep puncture wounds in the lungs. She ran to the closet and found a pistol and, before she died, shot Hughes in the head.

Fielding didn't know what exactly had happened inside Hughes's cranium, neurologically speaking, but-perhaps because the aide was the first person Hughes saw when he awoke after surgery-some kind of odd bonding occurred between the two. Hughes would do whatever Fielding asked. Getting coffee, cleaning up for him, ironing shirts, cooking. It turned out that Hughes would do more than domestic chores, though-as Fielding found out one evening just after night-duty nurse Ruth Miller removed Fielding's hand from between her legs and said, "I'm reporting you, asshole."

A worried Fielding had muttered to Hughes, "That Ruth Miller. Somebody ought to kill that bitch."

And Hughes had said, "Hmmm, okay."

"What?" Fielding had asked.

"Hmmm, okay."

"You'd kill her for me?"

"Uhm. I… sure."

Fielding took him for a walk on the grounds of the hospital. They had a long talk.

A day later Hughes showed up in Fielding's cubicle, covered with blood, carrying a piece of jagged glass and asking if he could have some soup.

Fielding cleaned him up, thinking he'd been a little careless about the when and where of the murder and about getting away afterward. He decided that Hughes was too good to waste on little things like this and so he told the man how to escape from the hospital and how to make his way to a nearby cottage that Fielding rented for afternoon trysts with some of the retarded patients.

It was that night that he decided how he could best put the man to use.

Hartford, then Boston, then White Plains, then Philly. Perfect crimes.

And now he was in Washington.

Committing what was turning out to be the most perfect crime, he decided (though reflecting that a linguist like Parker Kincaid would be troubled by the unnecessary modifier).

For the last six months he'd spent nearly eighteen hours a day planning the theft. Slowly breaching FBI security-masquerading as young Detective Hardy from the police department's Research and Statistics Department. (He'd selected his particular pseudonym because studies into the psychological impressions of names reported that "Leonard" was unthreatening and "Hardy" conjured an image of a loyal comrade.) He first infiltrated the Bureaus District of Columbia field office because that office had jurisdiction over major crimes in the District. He got to know Ron Cohen, the special agent in charge, and his assistants. He learned when SAC Cohen would be on vacation and which of his underlings would be-as the currently in-vogue term went-"primary" on a case of this magnitude. That would be, of course, Margaret Lukas, whose life he invaded as inexorably as he worked his way into the Bureau itself.