SITTING IN THEIR unmarked car across the street, Officers Phelps and Kamin watched as the couple headed up the front steps of the house.

“And that will be the last anybody sees of them tonight,” Officer Kamin said, satisfied. He folded up his Sun-Times as Phelps started the car. “For a minute there, I wasn’t sure our boy was gonna get the go-ahead signal. Looks like he’s home free now.”

Phelps squinted, trying to get a better look at the pair as they stepped inside the house. “Are you sure Slonsky said to check out the girl?”

“Yep.”

“ ’ Cuz the guy looks really familiar to me. Can’t place him, though.”

Kamin shrugged. “Can’t help you there. Slonsky said to drive by the girl’s house, make sure everything looks secure. That’s all I know.”

“Maybe we should sit here for a moment, just to be certain we’re all clear.”

Not exactly in a hurry to seek out more dangerous assignments, Kamin liked the reasoning behind that. “Works for me.”

They passed the next twenty minutes in silence, the only noise being the occasional crinkling of newspaper from Kamin. He was reading the sports section when he stopped.

“Well, look at that.” He held the paper out so Phelps could see. “That’s the guy we just saw, isn’t it?”

Phelps leaned over, then sat back in the driver’s seat, satisfied.

“I told you he looked familiar.”

ACROSS TOWN, JACK was in his office, once again listening to the muffled sounds of Davis’s yelling. At least this time, he was pretty sure the ruckus had nothing to do with him. Not directly, anyway.

He and Wilkins were the only other two agents in the office, given that it was nearly eleven o’clock on a Saturday night. Sitting in one of the chairs in front of his desk, Wilkins gestured in the direction of their boss’s office. “Is he always like this?”

“You get used to it,” Jack said. Actually, he didn’t mind Davis’s occasional flare-ups; back in the army he’d served under several commanders who’d had their fair share of those. Like his former commanders, Davis was pretty much a straight shooter—and loyal as hell to the agents in his office. He’d fought hard to get Jack transferred back to the Chicago office as soon as the position opened up.

A few minutes later the commotion died down and Davis’s door flew open. He stuck his head out and looked over. “Pallas, Wilkins—you’re up.”

They took their seats in Davis’s office, which Jack had always found odd in not being much bigger than those the rest of the Chicago agents had been assigned. He figured the Bureau could at least get the guy a view of something more interesting than the building’s parking lot for all the crap he had to deal with as special agent in charge. Then again, knowing Davis, he’d probably specifically requested that office in order to keep track of everyone else’s comings and goings. There certainly wasn’t much that slipped past him.

“I just got off the phone with one of Senator Hodges’s attorneys,” Davis began. “He ‘requested’ that they be kept apprised of any and all updates related to our investigation.”

“What you’d tell him?” Wilkins asked.

“That I’m an old man. I tend to forget things. And that if anyone from Senator Hodges’s camp called me again tonight, I might just so happen to forget the promise I’d made to keep this investigation confidential. There was a good deal of swearing after that, but so far . . .” Davis gestured to the silent phone on his desk. “Now—let’s figure out how we’re gonna handle this mess.” He looked to Jack. “What’s happening with CPD’s investigation?”

“Our contact is Detective Ted Slonsky, twenty years on the job, the last ten in homicide. According to him, the only prints they found in the hotel room belong to the victim and Senator Hodges. They found traces of semen in the bed and on top of the desk and bathroom vanity, and there were several used condoms in the bathroom garbage. All of it from the same man.”

“At least we know Senator Hodges practices safe sex when cheating on his wife,” Davis said. “Anything else?”

“There were bruises on both of the victim’s wrists, presumably inflicted by the killer as he pinned her hands down while suffocating her.”

“Any blood at the scene? Hair? Clothing fibers?”

“No traces of blood. We’re waiting to hear back from the lab on everything else,” Jack told him. “And we didn’t get much luckier with hotel security. They don’t have cameras in the floor hallways or the stairwells—and although they do have them in the lobby, the garage, and other public areas of the hotel, there’s no sign of our guy in any of the footage. Which means that so far, Ms. Lynde’s statement is our only evidence that this mysterious second man exists.”

Jack saw Davis raise an eyebrow at the mention of Cameron’s name, but his boss refrained from commenting. At least for the time being.

“All right, here’s where we stand,” Davis said. “Officially, the Bureau only has jurisdiction over the suspected blackmail aspects of this investigation. Unofficially, however, we’ve got a U.S. senator having sex on tape with a call girl who, just moments later, gets smothered to death in that very hotel room—there’s no way we’re sitting on the sidelines. Do you think this Detective Slonsky is going to be a problem?”

“Not likely. He seemed relieved to have our assistance in light of the senator’s involvement,” Jack said.

Davis nodded. “Good. Theories?”

Jack paused, letting Wilkins take the lead.

Wilkins sat up in his chair. “We’re currently working on two theories, both based on the assumption that the victim, Mandy Robards, was involved in a plan to blackmail the senator.”

“Do we have a basis for that assumption?” Davis asked.

“The videotape was found in her purse. On the tape, she’s the one who shut off the camera after the senator left. So unless she was making the tape for him as an early Christmas present, I think it’s safe to say she had nefarious motives.”

Davis looked over at Jack with a bemused grin. “Nefarious. This is what we get when we hire a Yale boy.”

“You missed sacrosanct earlier. And taciturn and glowering,” Jack said.

“What’s glowering?”

“Me, apparently.”

Wilkins pointed. “Now that has to be a joke.” He turned to Davis. “You heard that, right?”

Davis didn’t answer him, having spun his chair around to type something at his computer. “Let’s see what Google says . . . Ah—here it is. ‘Glowering: dark; showing a brooding ill humor.’ ”

Davis spun back around, with a nod at Wilkins. “You know, I think Merriam-Webster here is right, Jack—you do have a glowering way about you.” Then he turned to Wilkins. “And yes, that was a joke. It normally takes about a year to accurately detect Agent Pallas’s small forays into humor, but you’ll get there.”

About this time, Jack was trying to remember why the hell he’d been so eager to get back to Chicago. At least in Nebraska a man could brood in peace. “Perhaps we should get back to our theories,” he grumbled.

“Right. So our first theory is that the girl set up the blackmail scheme—maybe working with someone else, maybe not—and someone connected to the senator found out and killed her to keep the affair from becoming public,” Wilkins said.

“But they left the videotape behind,” Davis noted.

“Maybe they didn’t know the tape was actually in the room. Or maybe they panicked after killing the girl, or maybe something scared them off, like hearing Ms. Lynde calling security in the next room.”

David toyed with his pen, considering this. “And the second theory?”

“Our second theory is that the whole thing was a set up and someone killed the girl to frame the senator for murder. What they didn’t count on was Ms. Lynde seeing the real killer leaving the hotel room.”

“Going with those two theories for the moment, who does that put on our list of suspects?” Davis asked.