The agent slowly settled back into the booth.

Nodding toward the green Ford beyond the window glass, she said, “Gerald Linden was one of the parents, but you already knew that, right?”

Cadwaller winced. Apparently the caravan was a connection he wished she had not made. He could only stare at her, unwilling to confirm or deny anymore.

“The caravan’s in Missouri by now,” said Mallory. “Since this is your case-” Yeah, right. “I guess you’ll be asking Missouri troopers to guard those people. Before you try that, you might want to clean up the mess you made here in Illinois.” She turned back to the window. “I suggest you suck up to that state cop before you leave.”

Detective Riker held the cell phone to his ear as he walked back to the Mercedes. “Yeah, boss. What’s the word?” He listened for a moment. “Oh, sure. I’ll touch base with Kronewald… Yeah, as soon I get there.” In fact he had already set up that meeting. “I got Charles Butler? Great… No, that’s okay. I’ll talk to him… No problem. He’ll be in Chicago today.”

Riker opened the car door and spoke to his sleepy passenger, a man fifteen years his junior, who stood six-four in stocking feet-when he could stand. The passenger had awakened as they were crossing Indiana, but he was still groggy, and now it was all he could do to push strands of curly brown hair away from his eyes.

“Hey, Charles, you’re gonna get paid for this little vacation.”

“Vacation… Yes.” Charles Butler nodded, then stared into a bag of cheeseburgers with a look of wonder, as if it might contain moon rocks instead of greasy food. But the man always looked that way; it was his eyes- small blue irises floating in the center of heavy-lidded hen’s eggs. Charles went everywhere with that same look of surprise, the aftermath of a popped balloon. Adding to the comedy that was his face, the hooked nose was of eagle-beak proportions. However, from the neck down, this forty-year-old man might pass for a rumpled model from a magazine ad for Savile Row tweed and Oxford linen.

Riker took the bag of burgers away from his friend. “Never mind that. I’m gonna get you some real food.” He put the car in gear and rolled westward. “You can’t s t art a road trip like this one without a good meal.”

Charles Butler had been slow to wake, slower to grasp the fact that Riker had taken him eight hundred miles from his home, and now he said, “Another … road trip?”

The state trooper entered the diner and approached the booth that Mallory shared with the FBI agent. Hoffman hesitated, probably sensing that the atmosphere had been poisoned. As he came forward, he looked back over one shoulder to make sure that the waitress was out of earshot. “What’s up, kid?” asked Agent Cadwaller.

Trooper Hoffman spoke only to Mallory. “I got the inventory. Those guys are ready to leave. They just have to pack up a tire.”

“A tire?” The fed slapped his hand on the table, perhaps with the idea that this would call the younger man’s attention back to himself. It did not.

The trooper was facing Mallory when he said, “It’s the flat tire from the trunk.”

By wince and moan, the fed implied that his own men were idiots. He looked up at the trooper. “I want photographs and evidence bags. That’s it! Go back out there and tell them we’re not taking the damn tire on the helicopter.”

The trooper would not even look at the man. Mallory was his higher power in this room, and her next words to Agent Cadwaller were heavily laced with acid. “Does Hoffman impress you as the handmaid type?”

Eventually, the FBI man realized that he was his own messenger boy today, and he left the diner. The trooper waited until the door had closed on Cadwaller, and then sat down on the other side of the booth. “The techs seem to think that flat tire might be important.”

“And they’re right. Did they open up the cell phone they found in the car?”

“No, ma’am. It didn’t w o rk, and they were in a big hurry. They told me Cadwaller never gives them time to do the job right. So they just bagged the phone.”

“And what does that tell you?”

He did not answer right away, but gave it some thought. Over the course of one morning, she had taught him, by punishing sarcasm, to use his head. He held up both hands to say that he could not come up with any brilliant answer for her. “All I know is this. They’ve been riding with this guy for a long time, and they hate his guts. Oh, and they do all the digging. Agent Cadwaller just stands around and asks if they can’t d ig any faster. I don’t know what that was about. I just listened. They’re digging up bodies, aren’t t hey?”

Mallory nodded. “So they’ve all been on the same case for months.” It would take at least that much wear before the techs would gripe to anyone outside the FBI. “And they do the digging. That means they’re beating local cops to the bodies. Write that down.”

Obligingly enough, now that they had a common enemy, he was quick to do as he was told. He took out a small pad of lined paper and scribbled his notes. Done with this chore, he looked up, his pencil hovering, waiting for her next order. But Mallory was watching the action outside in the parking lot.

Something about Cadwaller bothered her, nagged at her. “You need a background check on that agent.” Before the trooper could ask why, she said, “The FBI never gives a crime-scene unit to the Freak Squad. You might see a profiler along as an observer, but that’s rare. You know why?” She pointed to the redheaded man in the suit. “Not one of those bastards ever solved a case. Field agents do that. The profilers sit in the cellar and look at pictures. Now write this down. And when you turn in your report, remember that this is what you came up with. All the bodies they’re digging up are buried on Route 66.”

He looked up at her. “And how did I figure that out?”

“The caravan parents, the posters of missing kids.” Beside her in the booth was a stack of flyers that she had helped the waitress take down from the windows. She laid them out on the table. “Our victim, Gerald Linden, was supposed to join those people back in Chicago. Detective Kronewald already knows about the caravan connection. I phoned it in. And maybe he’s figured out the rest, but he’ll like your report.” And she would be free to get back on the road.

“Kronewald?” The trooper put down his pencil. “No, you meant my captain.”

Mallory shook her head. “You’ll be filing a written report in Chicago tonight. I’ll clear it with your captain.”

While the trooper worked over his notes with much erasing, Mallory turned back to her view of the parking lot. The fed was reaming out the technicians as he stood over the bag containing the disputed flat tire. The senior forensics man had a defeated body language; he ripped off his latex gloves, tired and angry and beyond caring anymore. This told Mallory that the tire would be left behind, and the victim’s c e ll phone would not be opened for examination anytime soon. Telephone company records would be the source for Gerald C. Linden’s last phone call, and she doubted that it would have anything to do with the case.

Agent Cadwaller’s arms were in motion, and she could hear him hollering words guaranteed to drive the techs crazy. “Hurry up! Get a move on, people! Lift those feet!” One by one, the remaining bags were hauled across the parking lot and loaded onboard the chopper, all but the bag containing the tire.

Mallory wrote a telephone number on one of the posters of missing children, then passed the whole stack of them across the table. “That number is Kronewald’s direct line. Tell him the feds didn’t know about the victim’s missing cell-phone battery. So he’s got a sporting chance to find it first.” In answer to the trooper’s u nspoken question, she said, “The man was trying to charge his cell-phone battery before he died. That’s why he didn’t call for help when the tire went flat. After I popped the trunk, I opened up his phone-no battery. Tell Kronewald the tire was sabotaged at the last place Linden stopped to eat.”