Boldt assured him he was already taking notes-something Bernie always wanted to hear.

“The partial comes back one Malina Alekseevich-that’s a male name, by the way: Malina. I double-checked. But as I’ve said, we ain’t gonna prove it’s him anyway.” Like many in the department, Bernie slipped into street speak whenever a situation called for it.

“Did INS happen-”

Bernie cut him off, interrupting. “Employment is listed as a driver for S &G Imports.”

“Never heard of them.”

“Your department, not mine, I’m happy to say.”

“And the two positives from WSW?” Boldt asked. He assumed one of these two identities would prove to be Liz, although in reconstructing events Boldt knew she claimed to have never handled the tape. If her prints were on it, that would need explaining-yet another uncomfortable discussion between husband and wife. The deeper he involved himself, the worse it got.

“Daniel Foreman and Paul Geiser.”

Lost in thought, recalling the conversation now, Boldt nearly drove off the road. Danny Foreman and Paul Geiser. Foreman he understood. The tape could have once been in Foreman’s possession. But a prosecuting attorney’s prints? How was that to be explained? Added to this was that the request Boldt had received to drive out to the log cabin, a possible crime scene, had come from Foreman. Things were getting interesting.

His cell phone emitted a single beep, indicating a text message. One eye on the road, one eye on the phone, Boldt read the message as it scrolled across the phone’s tiny screen:

From: B. Lofgrin: Cig. ash IDed from Foreman CS: Proletarskie (Russian). More 2 come-BL

It didn’t surprise him that Bernie was working late; the man kept all hours depending on the lab’s workload. He assumed Bernie had become excited by the discovery of Foreman’s prints on the video and then went back and pushed his crew to work the Foreman crime scene. Nor did it surprise him that Bernie had not telephoned him. His friend would assume Boldt was home with the family, and would not have wanted to disturb him. Sending a text message allowed Boldt to make the choice to read it or not, think about it or not. Boldt was certain he’d find a carbon copy on his office e-mail in the morning, hopefully along with the “more to come” information. The point that Bernie seemed eager to make, and one that required Boldt to read between the lines, was the connection between a Russian with temporary immigration papers identified by a partial fingerprint left on the videocassette, and a Russian brand of cigarette found in the form of ash at the Foreman torture. As the pieces both began to take shape and to fit into place, Boldt found himself excited, his senses heightened. The Russian seemed a promising lead to follow, someone to interview and look at closely, no matter that the evidence remained circumstantial. But it was Foreman’s role, as victim, as another person found to have handled that video, as the man who had called Boldt out on a misty, dark evening, that currently intrigued him. Suspicion worked its web. Boldt had to weigh how much to give Foreman and how much to withhold, how much to explore and how much to place aside. Pieces fitting was one thing. The picture those pieces were a part of, the story they told, quite another.

Boldt drove into the dense woods that led to the cabin. He pulled the car forward and parked alongside Danny Foreman’s sparkling new Escalade, wondering why anyone would dump so much money into a luxury vehicle. He could see there was someone inside the cabin, and he assumed it to be Foreman, but despite the presence of the man’s car, he wasn’t taking any chances. There were too many fingernails lying on the ground in this case for him to be careless. Too many questions now surrounding both Foreman and Geiser.

Boldt reached the edge of the trees and worked his way around back, the blood pressure building in his chest and surging past his ears as a low whine. He paused along the way to allow his ears to stretch and his eyes to scan.

The backyard was small. Ankle-high field grass and weeds ran up to a poured concrete patio that housed a rusted barbecue grill and twin beach chairs that had seen better days. A frayed patio umbrella listed above the chairs, anchored in a stack of rock and brick. A can of charcoal starter caught his eye. Concrete steps led up to a back door that had been left open an inch. Not taking his eyes off the door, he withdrew his weapon, crossed the spongy backyard, and eased the door fully open. Using the jamb as cover, he called out.

“Danny?”

“In here.”

It was Foreman’s voice.

“I’m at the back,” Boldt announced, playing it safe, not wanting to walk into a trap. Let him come to me.

Foreman entered the kitchen casually. He looked tired. He wore a disposable glove on his right hand but not on his left because of the two heavily bandaged fingers. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Boldt echoed, returning his gun to his belt holster.

Foreman led the way through the tiny kitchen. “Guy used this place as his hang. Belongs to a friend. When Liz mentioned it, I knew exactly where she meant. We did some surveillance out here back during the embezzlement.”

Some surveillance. “What kind of surveillance, Danny?”

“Meaning?”

Boldt didn’t answer. Like an emcee, Foreman swept his left arm out, indicating the room before them. The cabin’s central room was contaminated with spilled blood. Boldt slipped on gloves and squatted and touched a droplet on the floor. It was tacky, not wet, but not dry. Less than four hours old.

“Another one,” Boldt said, noticing the two fingernails on the cabin floor next to the leg of a blood-covered wooden chair to which the victim had been taped with duct tape. All of this came into his mind effortlessly. He didn’t merely surmise the crime scene, he saw it as an eerie black-and-white moving image. A man in the chair struggling. Gagged, blindfolded. Another man in front of him, a pair of vise-grip pliers in hand. Boldt shook this image out of his head and continued to collect information.

“I don’t know about that,” Foreman said. “It certainly looks like another one. Hayes, then me, now this. Similar. But I don’t know… something’s not right. It’s almost like me and Hayes were clinical, you know? Whereas this one… this looks emotional. Angry. The guy doing the deed lost it and got all wild like.”

Boldt took in the carnage. “I don’t know. At your scene we found blood on the ceiling as well. The walls.”

“Yeah, but look at this place!”

Boldt recalled that Bernie Lofgrin’s Scientific Identification Division had determined that Foreman had probably been beaten using a plastic bag filled with wet sand-this theory supported by forensic evidence recovered at the scene. At some point the bag had torn open, spraying sand into the bloody mix and matching the splatter patterns. Boldt carefully dodged the chair and examined some blood splatter on the far wall. He didn’t see any sand mixed in. Foreman had been here longer, had a head start.

Boldt said, “You’d think a person could maybe narrow this down by method. Rohypnol, duct tape, fingernails. That’s got to be a signature crime. I ran it by Matthews and didn’t get very far. I think I’ll try OC this time.” Organized Crime.

“We got to ask ourselves,” Foreman said, “if this vic-and I’m assuming it to be David Hayes-got up and walked away or was hauled out of here in a Hefty lawn bag; ’cause one thing that ain’t part of the original signature is the lack of a body. I was in that chair, Lou, and I’m telling you there’s no way you get yourself out of this and go for a stroll.”

But there had been no body at the trailer either. It seemed odd that Foreman would overlook the obvious.

Boldt circled the bloody chair and again watched his theory play out briefly as film. Hayes, or whoever had occupied that chair, was taking a beating, his head snapping left and right. Boldt studied the splatter patterns on the ceiling that supported this determination. The blood was dense immediately above the chair and more sporadic and separated farther out from this epicenter. All this made sense to him. Some of it did not, however.