Bolinger wore a grim frown. "You or I could follow him for a year and we wouldn't get any closer than we are right now."

He met Farnhorst's puzzled look and explained, "The man lives in these hills. He lives in them. He hunts in them. He fishes in them. I've heard him talk about getting back in these hills hunting by himself and not coming home for a week at a time. No, we won't find him."

Bolinger leaned into the truck and flicked on the dome light. On the seat were smears of dried blood. He wondered if they were from Sales's cut finger.

"We better get the lab out here and check this truck out," he said. "There's some blood here on the seat."

"Should we call the sheriffs?" Farnhorst said. "They've got a helicopter. They've got dogs, too…"

Bolinger looked past the truck door off into the blackness of the woods and thought for a moment before sighing. With a nod he said, "Yeah, we'd better get them. Tell them he's armed.

"Shit!" he said, kicking up a small spray of dew in the beam of the car's headlights. "A goddamn manhunt. Shit! I didn't think it was him."

"Maybe it still isn't," Farnhorst said, but they both knew he was just being polite.

"I still think Lipton killed Marcia Sales, and the girl in Atlanta," Bolinger argued. The captain looked at him skeptically.

"There's not that much I can do with Sales anyway," Bolinger continued. "The sheriffs are out there looking. The Texas Rangers are on alert. I've got a stakeout on his cabin. No one's come up with anything. Unless Sales turns up on his own, I don't know what more I can do with that case. With the FBI I can still investigate Lipton across state lines."

"Traces of that boy's blood were found on the seat of his truck," the captain reminded him. "Bob, admit it. You were wrong."

"I may have been wrong about Sales," Bolinger conceded. "But just because he killed Frank Castle doesn't mean he killed those girls. His own daughter, for God's sake, John. A man doesn't do that."

"You don't do it. I don't do it," the captain countered, "but you or I don't butcher Frank Castle, either. He was killed the same way as the girl. How do you explain that?"

"I think maybe Sales was trying to make it look like Lipton," Bolinger said.

The captain considered that for a moment, then said, "By the way, have you contacted the lawyer?"

"No," Bolinger said sullenly. "I haven't."

"Well, you should," the captain said, removing his reading glasses. He leaned forward to put his arms on the desk. "That's all we need, to have her get bumped and we didn't warn her that Sales is out there killing people involved with that case."

"It was on the news. It's the big story," Bolinger grumbled.

"Bob, talk to her," the captain said. "That's an order. In the meantime, as long as you give me your word you're staying on top of the Sales situation, you can help out the FBI."

"Thanks, John," Bolinger said, standing to leave.

"Why you thanking me?" the captain asked.

"It's better when it's official," Bolinger said with a grin.

"You were gonna do it whether I said you could or not," the captain complained as Bolinger went out the door. "I know you, Bob. You're the most stubborn son of a bitch I've ever known."

Bolinger headed for the law school in an attempt to find out the seminar schedule that Lipton had kept over the past several years. On his way there, he indulged himself with a detour to Lipton's neighborhood. The professor's stately manor was lifeless. Bolinger parked across the street and wandered up the pretty stone drive. On the far side of the house was a landscaper's truck, and from the back, Bolinger could hear the sound of a weed eater.

The rich smell of freshly cut grass filled his nose. As he approached a young Mexican man in a green jumpsuit, he eyed the back of the house for any sign of Lipton. Although wrought-iron furniture adorned the patio surrounding the pool, the pool itself was covered. Bolinger tapped the landscaper's back amid the high-pitched drone of his tool. The man jumped in the air and spun around in alarm. Bolinger disarmed him with a smile. The man shut down the weed eater and in broken English asked how he could be of help.

"Anyone home?" Bolinger asked, casually showing the young man his badge.

The man's eyes widened. He wiped his sweaty forehead with his cap and looked from the cop to the house and back to the cop. "No. No one home for much times."

"Never home?" Bolinger asked.

"No," the man said, fervently shaking his head. "I go here two times every week. No person live here."

"Do you have a card?" Bolinger asked as he removed a cigarette from his pocket. The man looked at him as if he were from Mars.

"Business card," Bolinger said carefully as he lit the Winston. "El nombre de su company."

"Oh, si," he said and led Bolinger to the truck. On the other side was the name Conquest Landscapes along with the phone number. Bolinger wrote it down and thanked the man. He took a tour around the house before he left and saw nothing that indicated Lipton had been around.

No one had seen Lipton at the law school, either. Bolinger got in to see the dean, a stern-looking overweight woman with two last names.

"Obviously, he's not teaching this semester," she told him curtly. She also either didn't know or wouldn't say whether or not he'd be back in the fall.

There wasn't a question he asked that wasn't met with an abrupt answer full of mistrust. The dean apparently had no knowledge of the way in which Lipton scheduled his seminars.

"This is a university," she reminded him, "not a police force. Our professors have private lives outside of the university. Many of them are consultants to businesses or have their own independent undertakings."

In the eyes of such a place, Bolinger thought, he was obviously a bad guy, an overzealous cop, the kind of prying monster that innocent citizens had to be protected from. On his way out of the building, he saw a nerdy-looking kid with a crew cut who reminded Bolinger of his brother when he was a student until the kid opened his mouth.

"You go to school here?" Bolinger asked the kid, who was reading on the steps.

The kid marked his spot in his book with a finger and looked up through his glasses.

"Looks that way."

"You know Professor Lipton?"

"I know who he is, sure, the crim law guy in the murder trial."

Bolinger could tell from his tone that the kid hadn't taken a class with Lipton. There wasn't a hint of the recognition that a student would display for a teacher he'd studied under. Bolinger nodded and said, "If I was a guy who wanted to know about those seminars he teaches… you know what I'm talking about?"

"No."

"Professor Lipton went around the country," Bolinger explained patiently, "giving seminars on his specialty, on criminal law."

"Yeah," the kid said, obviously impatient now to get back to his work.

"How would I find out about something like that?"

"What are you, a cop?" the kid said derisively.

"That's me," Bolinger said.

The kid shrugged and, turning back to his book, he said sarcastically, "How about the Internet? You know… computers."

"I know," Bolinger said gruffly. "I'll let you get back to your studies so you can go out and sue somebody."

The kid might have been a smart-ass, but Bolinger wasn't above taking an idea from anyone. Back at the station, he looked up Rutlege, the department's version of a computer geek. Rutlege was a muscular guy who did triathlons in his spare time. He was the best the Austin police department had in the way of a hacker. Whenever a crook had a computer, chances were Rutlege saw it.

"You remember when we pulled in Professor Lipton?" Bolinger asked.