“Are we done?”

“Test them. I know it’ll take time, but once you confirm who I am, I need to talk with you. Meet me”—he thought hard for a few moments—“one week from today. I’ll be in the Mathematics Library at Columbia University in New York City—eight A.M. Sit at the table across from the big gray breaker box—near the windows.”

“That is not going to happen.”

“It will once you confirm who I am. Remember, eight A.M., one week from today. Columbia Mathematics Library. Next to the breaker box. Come alone.”

“No.”

He went to leave but turned around again, walking backward as he talked. “I know you don’t believe me, but I can tell you details about the Edison bombing scene that I couldn’t possibly know if I wasn’t there.”

“You mean like the wrong number of victims?”

“I’m telling you: there was a seventh person there that night. He was a Princeton physics professor who came to evaluate our work. Now that I think about it, I believe he worked for the BTC.” Grady looked frustrated as he tried to recall something. Then he glanced up. “A man named Kulkarni. Sameer Kulkarni. I haven’t seen him mentioned in the news accounts. He was there. Doctor Alcot recognized him.”

“Good-bye.” With that Davis left him behind.

The strange man disappeared into the barroom crowd as Davis headed toward the bar. Her team was there laughing over some just finished joke.

“I thought you guys were going to rescue me if I took too long.”

Falwell read the look on her face and snapped alert. “What happened?”

The rest of the team put their drinks down, suddenly serious.

She waved her hands. “Calm down. Just some nut job came up to me outside the ladies’ restroom—claimed he was one of Cotton’s dead victims.”

They all narrowed their eyes in confusion.

“Say what?”

Davis nodded. “He said the Winnowers are really a rogue federal agency. That it’s all a government conspiracy.”

Most of the team laughed and shook their heads.

But Falwell scanned the crowded bar. “Should we take the guy into custody?”

“We can’t grab every crazy person who comes out of the woodwork after I go on television.”

“Did he seem dangerous?”

“I wouldn’t have let him go if he did. Just a bit loony. Said there was a seventh victim at the Edison bombing scene—some Princeton physics professor.”

The others chuckled, but Falwell narrowed his eyes. “Dwight and I were going through the Edison bombing evidence last week with the prosecutor. Remember that extra tire print at the Edison scene—the one in the snow?”

She thought about it. “Yeah, but it didn’t lead to anything.”

“Right. The lab identified the tire—it was old. Not in common use nowadays.”

Dwight nodded. “175-SR14s.”

“Whatever—they were outdated. From the ’70s.”

Davis leaned against the bar. “So what’s your point? That matches the Winnower M.O. They used an old car.”

“Well, back then Dwight I spent a couple days reviewing traffic camera videos, and there was a car in the area that night that could have been old enough—a Mercedes.”

Dwight chimed in: “A 240D.”

“Right. A Mercedes 240D. And those came with SR14s as standard equipment.”

Davis nodded. “Okay. I remember, but the real owner was deceased.”

Falwell put his beer down. “Right. The family didn’t even know the car existed. And it hasn’t been seen since. Not even by license plate readers.”

She stared at him. “So what? The Winnowers used it to go to and from the attack, then dumped it.”

“That’s just it. The traffic cameras don’t have great resolution, but they showed only one person in the car—after the bombing.”

She contemplated this.

“Meaning in addition to Cotton and his group, someone else left the scene that night. And we never shared that detail about the extra tire tracks with the media.”

“You’re starting to worry me, Thomas.”

“I’m not saying the guy you saw is legit. I’m saying we may have a security leak in the federal prosecutor’s office.”

That got her attention. “Mistrial?”

“Cotton might be cooperating, but then again he might have other plans.”

Davis stared at Falwell for a few moments. And then she pushed through the crowd, headed back toward the restrooms. In the hallway just outside, she took a cocktail napkin and carefully retrieved the empty bar glass by the phone, inserting her fingers inside it, tipping it up onto her hand. She caught the lock of hair with her other hand as it fell out.

Falwell was right behind her.

She held up the glass. “Run the prints on this glass. Tonight. And I want a DNA test on this hair sample . . .” She passed the hair to him.

“Where did you get a hair sample?”

“He left it behind. Supposedly to prove who he was.”

“And if it matches a victim—what then?”

“It could be some scheme of Cotton’s to taint the evidence—and the case.” She pointed again at the hair. “DNA.”

“It’ll take five days at least. How big a problem you think this guy is?”

“Look, it’s probably nothing. But after all these years, I don’t want to take any chances. Do you?”

 • • •

Davis stood looking over a criminologist’s shoulder in a cubicle at the crime lab in the FBI’s Chicago field office. It was past ten P.M. The tech clicked around a computer screen, marking points on an image from the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

The criminologist glanced back at her. “I found three different sets of fingerprints on your beer glass. Exhibits one and three show no IAFIS matches—or at least none with reasonable scores. But exhibit two gave us two candidate hits.”

“Show me.”

He clicked through a couple screens and a passport photo appeared in a window above the name “Jon Grady”—beneath that was a label reading “Deceased.”

Falwell glanced over at Davis. “That’s not good.”

The criminologist looked up at her. “You want to see candidate two? It’s a much lower score.”

She shook her head. “No, thanks. Can you print that out for me?”

“Sure.” He clicked the mouse a few times, and they heard the laser printer by the door spit out a couple of pages.

“Thanks for the help. C’mon, Thomas.”

Falwell grabbed the pages as they headed for the elevators. He held up the printed photo. “This the guy?”

She nodded.

“So you met a ghost.”

She nodded.

“What does this do to the case?”

“I don’t know yet.”

“And what was this guy claiming?”

“He said they were disappearing inventors of disruptive technologies.”

“Who was?”

“A rogue federal agency.”

Falwell chuckled. “Sure.”

They got in the elevator and headed to the itinerant-agent floor, where they had offices for the duration of Cotton’s trial.

She leaned against the elevator’s back wall. “Well, it’s clearly fake. We found most of this Grady guy’s right arm at the Edison scene. We had a jawbone. Teeth. A shinbone. A partial tongue. All DNA matched. And we’ve got Richard Cotton on video preparing to kill him.”

“He’s up to something.”

“We’ll need those DNA test results the moment they come in. And let’s put out an APB on this Grady imitator. He couldn’t have gone far.”

“If he wanted to get arrested so bad, why didn’t he stick around? Why arrange a meeting all the way in New York?”

“I don’t know.” She considered it. “Did Grady have a twin brother?”

“Twins don’t have identical fingerprints.”

The elevator doors opened, and they walked out into the guest cubicles. There were still quite a few agents moving about. Davis had put her Winnower team in a group workstation with no partitions between them, and she and Falwell took off their jackets.

“So what do we do?”

She stared for a moment but finally shrugged. “I don’t know, but I think we have to inform the prosecutor’s office.” She fell back into her office chair. “Thomas, you ever hear of something called the Federal Bureau of Technology Control?”