“Dr. Nick Garrity from the Helping Hands Mobile Medical Unit,” he answered. “Mike here is one of our patients.”

“You the one who reported this guy’s knife wound?”

Nick could see Campbell stiffen.

“Actually, no,” Nick said. “That must have been someone here in the hospital.”

“You know it’s mandatory to report all stab wounds.”

“Gosh, I thought it was more mandatory to save the patient’s life. I did help to do that.”

Sampson glared across at him. He had six inches and at least twenty-five pounds on her, but he had little confidence that he could have taken her in a fight, and no confidence at all that she would not like to try and find out.

“Can we remove this contraption?” she asked, gesturing at the airway. “I need to talk to him.”

“I can’t answer that question, Officer, except to say that I’m a surgeon, and if I went to the trouble to put a laryngeal airway in someone, I wouldn’t want it taken out.”

“But you’re not the one who put it in, right?”

“Let me guess, Officer. You majored in community relations at the academy.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave, Dr. Important.”

“And I think my role is to remain here with my patient.”

Just as it seemed Sampson was about to leap across the bed at Nick, the door burst open and a bulldozer of a man, stuffed into a tweed jacket, wearing a crinkled blue shirt and red-striped tie, stepped inside. The veins on his tire-thick neck pulsated, and his face was flushed with anger.

“I’m Detective Lieutenant Don Reese, MPD. Which one of you idiots is fucking up my case?” The detective reached into his jacket pocket and flashed his badge. “Who are you?” he growled at Nick.

“I’m a doctor. I’m not from this hospital. I work on-”

“I don’t care if you work on the good ship Lollipop. Did you have a hand in this mess?”

“Not really, I only-”

Reese, even more furious, cut Nick off again and turned back to Sampson.

“I want your district. I know every goddamn commander and captain in every police service area. Do you know what you’ve done?”

Sampson paled.

“Hey, I’m not talking to Dr. Eric the Red over here,” Reese snapped, pointing his thumb at Nick. “You’re the cop. I asked you a question!”

“I… I’m with the Four-oh-four,” she stammered.

“The Four-oh-four. Commander Trudy Sandoval. She’s not going to be happy with this. Not at all. Do you know what you just did?”

Sampson shook her head. “Lieutenant,” she said, regaining an ort of her composure, “I’m just trying to make a report and probably an arrest here.”

“Well, it’ll be the last bust you make for a while if you do.”

“Why is that?”

“Because this guy here with the knife hole in his side is an undercover cop working my case and you are about to flush two years of wiretaps and judicial hoop-jumping down the toilet.”

“Shit,” Sampson muttered. “Well, what do you want me to do now?”

“Either go get primped up because you are about to make the six o’clock news for blowing a major narcotics investigation, or just walk away and let me see if I can fix what you might have already broken.”

The woman did not take long to decide.

“Thanks for not making a big deal about this, Lieutenant,” she grunted on her way to the door.

“You can thank me for saving your career later,” Reese replied. “That goes for you, too, Dr. Doolittle, out!”

Nick followed Sampson down the hall to the elevator. She made no attempt to keep the door from closing in his face before he could get on. He waited until he heard the car start down, then returned to Room 502, where Reese was waiting in the hallway.

“That was some performance, Don,” he said, shaking the burly detective’s hand. “Really impressive stuff. I guess we can finally call us even now.”

“Hell no! You’ve got a long way to go and a lot of favors to collect before I’ll call us even.”

“What about that fancy GPS unit you fixed us up with after those kids heisted our RV and took it for a joyride?”

“Not even close. It’s not every day a cop smashes his car into a rolling medical clinic during a drunk blackout. You saved my badge and maybe my pension by letting me sleep it off in the back room of that bus of yours and not reporting the accident.”

“I did what felt right. Junie vouched for you, and you agreed to pay for the damages and to hook up with two of our AA pals.”

“Three years now. I got my three-year medallion to prove it.” Reese held up his key ring and let Nick squeeze the ornate bronze coin. He clasped Nick’s shoulder and led him into the room.

“You just made it that much easier for me to do the same sort of thing for the next guy,” Nick said. “Okay, we’re not even. I own you forever. Isn’t that how it is with the Chinese? No matter. I sure do appreciate you getting here so quickly. Campbell’s on parole so it was important that Officer Sampson not bust him. I promised him, but one of the admitting staff here dropped a dime. Tomorrow, or as soon as he’s with it enough to listen, he becomes that next guy I was talking about. I’m gonna try and make him the same deal I made you. Only he may have to go away for a couple of weeks if we can find a way to pay for it. Got that, Mike?”

Campbell nodded weakly.

“You’re a good man, Doc,” Reese said. “A hell of a good man.”

“I’m glad you feel that way, Don, because I need another favor.”

“Name it.”

“Ferris, Manny Ferris. Marine corporal. Medical discharge maybe seven years ago. Around thirty-five. Five nine. Hair black. Eyes brown. Skin maybe some sort of brown-white mix. Has spent time in cardboard villages and flophouses. Last address unknown, but I’ll be starting work on that as soon as I get home.”

Reese checked his watch.

“I’m off tomorrow,” he said. “Scheduled to go fishing with my cousin. Been really looking forward to it.”

“I need to find him yesterday,” Nick said.

Franz Koller waited on the edge of the bed for the girls to arrive. His Dell laptop glowed ghostly blue in the otherwise dark motel room. He had connected his PC to the Internet and even logged in to his eBay account, but he was not yet ready to contact Jericho. A phrase he once read in a Wall Street Journal article about unfortunate e-mailing incidents had stuck with him-it was headlined “Ready, Fire, Aim.” It would be stupid, he knew, to message his employer while his emotions still ran hot.

The killer placed the pads of three fingers just below his wrist crease to check his radial pulse again. Sixty beats per minute-still way too high. When he was truly relaxed, truly in control of his emotions, his resting heart rate would be forty or even less. He expected the girls would help him to achieve that state.

Patience, he cautioned himself. Patience.

He would wait as long as it took for his anger to fully subside before responding to the ill-conceived, reckless torching of Jillian Coates’s condominium. Only then, when he was in what he called his alpha state, would he compose his message, encode it within the pixels of today’s eBay item-a tacky hand-painted nutcracker-and then post the nutcracker to his eBay auction account.

Steganography, the art and science of writing concealed messages. Documented examples of steganography dated back to ancient Greece, when wax-covered wooden tablets kept coded messages hidden from the enemy. Koller had first been exposed to it in a college course, but over the succeeding years, he had taken aspects of the craft to the point where he could have earned millions in licensing fees, had he not preferred to use his custom software to plan, execute, and be compensated for non-kills. The latest version of Koller’s steganographic technique was akin to taking the most sophisticated coding technology available and dosing it with steroids.