"If he had, Toni might not be here," Bolan said gently.

"I've been thinking about that," she murmured, "and you're right. Another minute, either way..." She shuddered and said, "He was willing to kill me. I could feel it."

"Were you able to describe him for the police?" Bolan asked.

The girl nodded jerkily.

"They put together a composite sketch. He didn't try to hide his face from me. I'm convinced he didn't expect to leave a witness behind."

"So he made a mistake, and the police have something to work with," Bolan said. "What about mug shots?"

Toni tossed her head in a quick negative. "I must have looked at thousands, maybe every bad guy in the Twin Cities. Some were close, but none of them was him. Fran says he probably hasn't been arrested before, at least not locally."

"Who's Fran?" Bolan asked.

Toni brightened visibly. "Fran Traynor," she said. "Officer Traynor, actually. She heads up a special squad for the St. Paul P.D., specializing in... rape."

"She's been great with Toni," Politician chimed in. "One of those new breed of cops with a special empathy for the victim. I understand she's built her own squad from the ground up, just to handle cases like this."

"God. Cases like this." Toni's voice was hollow as she echoed her brother's words.

Pol moved to kneel beside her, trying to slide a comforting arm around her shoulders, but she twisted away. Rising from her chair, she crossed the room to a bar and poured herself a stiff drink from the lone bottle that was standing there.

Pol looked after her with hurting eyes, then turned again to Bolan.

"The police are the problem, Mack," he said as he sat down again. "I mean, for the first day or so, everyone was all gung-ho to find this animal and take him off the streets. Officer Traynor and her team seemed to be right on top of the case."

Bolan was curious. "So what happened?"

Blancanales shrugged helplessly.

"Damned if I know. As soon as Toni gave her description to the police artist, you could feel the ice forming. All of a sudden the faces started changing, and Traynor was out. There's this big bull..."

"Detective Foss, or something," Toni interjected from the bar. "I don't remember."

"Right," Pol confirmed, nodding. "He comes on to Toni like she can't trust her own eyes and her description's not worth a damn. I swear to God, he made it sound like she... like she asked for it, Mack."

Pol was furious now, eyes glazing and fists clenched as he finished.

"I finally told him to stay the hell away from her," he grated. "And we haven't heard a word from St. Paul's finest since then."

"I can't put my finger on anything specific," Toni added, "but I believe the police are hiding something."

Pol was shaking his head in dazed wonder, like a punchy fighter.

"I can't fathom any of this," he said, bewildered. "Why? What reason could they possibly have for protecting an animal like that?"

Bolan raised a cautious eyebrow.

"We don't know that anyone is protecting him, Pol. Not yet. I trust Toni's instincts, but we need a lot more to accuse the police of whitewashing rape and attempted murder. If we can prove a cover-up, we'll have the motive. If we can't..."

He left the statement hanging, unfinished.

It was Toni's turn.

"Then you'll have one paranoid woman, right?" she said, growing angry now. "Well, I'm not paranoid, dammit. I'm not!"

Bolan raised both hands in a soothing, pacifying gesture.

"Okay," he agreed," so we start digging. And along the way, maybe we'll find out why those guys were waiting for us at the airport."

"Where do we start?" Pol asked.

"You stay here with Toni," Bolan told him. "She's been through enough already, and if someone is calling out the guns, we don't want her alone."

Blancanales nodded quickly. "Right, right. What about you?"

"I'd like to see how Officer Traynor feels about being frozen out of the case. Do you know how I can contact her? Preferably off the job."

"Yes, just a minute," Toni told him.

She produced a small white business card. It bore Fran Traynor's name and precinct telephone number, with a home number penciled in below.

"She told me to call her anytime," Toni said softly, "but since everything's changed... I didn't want to make things any worse."

Bolan rose to leave, pocketing the card and glancing at his wristwatch.

"It looks like I'll have to wake her up," he said, then turned to Pol. "You have a way to keep in touch?"

Blancanales grinned, nodding. "I've got just the thing," he said, striding quickly off into the second bedroom.

With her brother gone, Toni seemed to shrink another few inches into herself. Mack Bolan moved closer to her.

"Try to get some rest," he said. "And leave everything else to me."

He reached out to rest one hand on her frail shoulder, but she jerked away, her mouth was suddenly tight, eyes wary, darting from side to side as if in search of an escape exit.

As Bolan regarded her closely for a moment, the trapped expression softened, and there was the glint of tears behind long eyelashes.

"I'm sorry, Mack," she said bitterly, "I... I just can't."

Pol Blancanales chose that moment to return. Sensing the tension in the room, he tried to defuse it, holding out one of a pair of compact radios he carried.

"A little something I cooked up in my spare time," he said, grinning at Bolan. "Boosted the range and what not. Inside of thirty miles you should read five-by-five."

Bolan pocketed the tiny transceiver and shook hands with his friend, saying hushed goodbyes before he let himself out.

He took the stairs two at a time on his way to the Politician's rented car.

There was no limit, it seemed, to the number of victims. Hell, it was always open season on the weak, the meek, and the good, whether predators were stalking the streets and alleys or the steaming jungles of the world.

And no limit on the human capacity for suffering.

Someone close to Mack Bolan was suffering now, and that someone had damn sure suffered enough.

Someone else, though, had not yet begun to suffer for the pain he had inflicted on others.

There was inequity there, right enough, and the Executioner meant to do everything in his power to balance the scales a bit. Maybe, just maybe, he would have the luck and the odds that he needed on his side to upset those bloody scales completely.

At least for a little while.

No war, it seems, ever is won. It only pauses to rest before breaking out again, somewhere else, under some other flag or justification. Today the battlefield was St. Paul. Tomorrow?..

Bolan put the grim thoughts from his mind and concentrated on his unscheduled meeting with a lady cop.

Bolan checked Fran Traynor's name and number against a St. Paul telephone directory and came up lucky. Unlike many police officers, who opted for unlisted phone numbers, the lady cop was listed on what turned out to be a medium-prosperous residential street lined with tract houses and scattered shade trees. At that hour of the morning, all the houses were sleeping, cloaked in darkness.

On his first drive-by, Bolan noted that the house's separate garage was set well back and away from the road. There were two cars in the driveway. A small foreign compact was parked nose-on toward the big garage door, and a long black Cadillac had it blocked, filling the drive behind it.

So the lady had company, or else she liked to drive in style.

Bolan couldn't see an honest cop laying out the necessary cash for the big Detroit black, so it remained to be seen only if Fran Traynor's company was welcome or unexpected.

And the Executioner suddenly had a strong negative feeling about that Caddy in the driveway.