Hendler smiled a little. “See, I knew there was still a cop lurking under all that Department Thirty secret-agent stuff.” The smile faded. “It would make things a lot easier if we could talk to Sean, though.”

It took Faith a minute to catch his meaning. “I don’t know where he is, Scott. He even took my car, for God’s sake. I’m not hiding him.”

“Okay, then. I hope you’re right about him. It’s just…this is a murder investigation. Even if you didn’t mention it to Rob, I have to consider it. I have to think about it. You understand that, don’t you?”

She stroked his cheek. “You’re such a good man, Sleepy Scott. Yes, I understand that.”

“Maybe you should lie low for a few more days. I’m sure your boss has already told you that. Departmental security and all that.”

“And all that,” Faith echoed.

“Dinner tonight?”

“Dinner sounds great,” Faith said. “Maybe we can grab onto a little something normal in the midst of all this.”

“Maybe so,” Hendler said. But he sounded doubtful.

Hendler dropped Cain off at the Investigations Division downtown, and each promised they’d be in touch later in the day.

For once, Cain didn’t mind that the Bureau was the lead jurisdictional agency on the case. Scott Hendler was faced with the unpleasant task of contacting Senator Edward McDermott.

At his own desk, Cain listened to his voice mail messages. Most were from the media, all of which he deleted. They could contact Public Information if they wanted a statement. One was from his wife, wondering if he would be able to take their older daughter to her choir rehearsal that evening.

Absolutely, he thought. It might get me away from this madness for a while, get me back to what’s real and where people are just who they’re supposed to be.

The last message was from the medical examiner’s office. There would be a short delay in processing the report on the autopsy of Katherine Hall. Cain made a mental note to let the ME’s office know the deceased’s real identity. He wondered what the holdup was in getting the report.

He hung up the phone and logged onto his computer. He didn’t have access to quite as many databases as the U.S. Department of Justice did, but he could still go a lot of places and peek into a lot of dark corners.

He thought for a long moment, then began clicking his mouse and working his keyboard, seeing what he could find out about one Faith Kelly.

FAITH AND HENDLER HAD CHILI AND BEER AT DIFFERENT Roads, where they listened to Faith’s friend Alex Bridge and her band, The Cove of Cork, play Celtic and American folk music until nearly midnight. They didn’t talk about the case. They were two normal people who cared about each other, out for a low-key evening on the town, two normal people de-stressing after a normal week.

For a while Faith even believed it.

She’d muted her phone while listening to the music, but she checked it every fifteen minutes or so, hoping against hope for a message from Sean. She tried to be furtive, but caught Hendler looking at her a couple of times when she was checking the phone.

“Relax,” he mouthed to her.

They’d gone back to her house to spend the night. They made love gently, tenderly. There was nothing frenzied or hurried about it. It wasn’t even about passion, Faith thought. It was connection, two people who needed to be with each other, and to express what they meant to each other. It felt good, and for a while Faith really could believe they were just two normal lovers.

She woke early, ran, showered, and dressed. Hendler was in the shower when she left. She pulled the curtain aside, leaned in, and kissed him.

“You’ll get your hair all wet again,” he said, wiping shampoo out of his eyes.

“So what?” she said.

“See you later,” Hendler said.

She was in her office by seven thirty, and at five minutes after eight her phone rang. It was Yorkton, and he was uncharacteristically blunt and straightforward.

“Do you have a televison?” he said without identifying himself.

“Not here in the office.”

“Find one, quickly.”

“What channel?”

“Pick one,” Yorkton said, and hung up.

Yorkton had sounded genuinely alarmed, and Yorkton never sounded alarmed. Faith jogged down the hall to the Marshals Service office. Several of the deputies were gathered around a TV set in one corner of the “bullpen” area. They looked up when she came into the room. Someone said, “Oh, no.” Several stared openly.

The group parted as Faith came closer. Chief Deputy Mark Raines, looking as always more like a banker than a U.S. marshal in his charcoal gray suit and his gold-rimmed glasses, stepped aside.

“Faith, you need to see this,” he said.

Faith stepped in front of the screen. The set was tuned to CNN. The graphic at the bottom of the screen read: The Capitol, Washington. News conference of Senator Edward McDermott (AZ).

“Oh, no,” Faith said.

“Didn’t I already say that?” someone said behind her. She thought it sounded like Leneski.

Senator Edward McDermott was a large, florid-looking man in his late fifties. His hair was completely silver, his eyes a dark brown-Daryn’s eyes, Faith thought. He wore a perfectly tailored suit that fashionably hid much of his bulk. He wore glasses, but kept taking them off and putting them on again, using them as pointers, waving them around. Faith wondered if he really needed them to see, or if they were just props.

He was holding a few sheets of paper in one hand, and he was speaking directly to the camera. By his side stood a perfectly groomed blond woman in her thirties. The current wife, Faith guessed.

“I’m not speaking just as a senator from Arizona,” he said. His voice was deep and resonant, no doubt honed by many courtrooms and campaign speeches. “I’m speaking as a father, as a family man whose job just happens to be in elective office.”

“Oh, give me a break,” Leneski said, behind Faith.

“You know by now that my daughter-my beloved Daryn, only twenty-four, with her entire life ahead of her-was murdered three days ago. It was brutal beyond words, a senseless act of depraved individuals with no respect for human life. But it goes deeper than that, much deeper.”

“What was she doing in Oklahoma?” shouted a reporter on the screen. McDermott shook his head. “I don’t have any answers. But I have many, many questions. Suzanne and I-” he nodded toward the blond woman, “-will be flying to Oklahoma City in a few hours to claim Daryn’s body, to take her back home to Arizona for burial in our family plot. That’s what she wanted.”

Liar, Faith thought. Daryn never felt at home in Arizona, and only went there when you went back to campaign.

“But my friends,” he went on, “something startling came to my attention the night Daryn was killed.” His posture seemed to soften. “You know that she and I disagreed about many things politically. She had some ideas that were, frankly, outside the mainstream. She’s done some things of which I do not approve, could never approve. I don’t know how much of that was youthful rebellion, but as wrong as many of her ideas were, she was passionate about them and believed in principle.” He held up the papers. “She’d been traveling. We hadn’t talked or seen each other in…well, in quite a while. But the night she died-only hours before her life was so violently ended-she wrote to me. She sent me this e-mail.”

Faith felt stones descend into the pit of her stomach.

“I won’t read all of it to you, because some of it is intensely personal. But there are parts of it that should concern all of us. Every American who believes in openness of government and the rule of law should hear what my daughter wrote a few hours before she was killed.”

Sounds like a campaign speech, Faith thought.