Wolf was experiencing a sense of increasing uneasiness. Waring had to be the one who was making it hard for him to get out of the country; Waring had figured out his escape route and blocked it within hours. He was also careful enough to keep himself from being found easily, and this was the part that was worrisome. Wolf could find anyone. If he wanted to, he could start going through lists at the county clerk’s office to find the house Waring undoubtedly owned, or pay the credit bureau for a credit report, or use any of a hundred other lists that solid citizens couldn’t help getting their names on. But all of these took time.
On his second day in Washington, he took a bus to Georgetown University. He walked around the fringes of the campus until he found a stationery store that looked as though the owner had been around long enough to be trustworthy, and was prosperous enough to stay. He picked out a folding leather notebook cover of the sort that he had seen people who worked in law offices use for notes. He ordered the engraving on the leather, then picked out the paper for it and selected a serious, businesslike typeface for the printing.
By afternoon Elizabeth had decided that she liked Lana. It was such an odd name for a woman her age. It was a relic of the fifties, and she had to admit that Lana must have been born in the late sixties. But Lana had found another anomaly, so Elizabeth forced herself to think about it.
This time it had happened right inside Cook County. It was a small motel, and the couple who owned it had been murdered. But either before that or afterward, several heavily armed men claiming to be police officers had gone from room to room just before dawn, telling everyone to leave because they had cornered a fugitive in the building. Then they had gone through the place breaking in all the doors, and ended by burning it down. Or maybe they had opened the doors to make the fire move faster. The police had already declared the fire an arson to cover up the murder of the proprietors when they got a call from one of the motel guests who was in a phone booth in Springfield and was curious to know if they had caught the fugitive. A second call came from Carbondale, and that guest wanted to know if the police were going to refund part of his room rental, since he had been forced to leave a full eight hours before checkout time.
Elizabeth picked up the telephone and dialed the number of Jack Hamp’s motel room in Chicago for the third time, listened to six rings and then set it down again. It was infuriating to know that he was practically on the scene, and she couldn’t even tell him it had happened. Finally she took the report and started to walk toward Richardson’s office, then realized that she was walking alone. She stopped and turned. “Come on, Lana.”
Lana hesitated, then caught up with her. “I don’t usually just pop in,” she said, and then gave a nervous, apologetic laugh.
“He’s not doing anything more important than this,” said Elizabeth.
“What have you got?” Richardson asked as they entered.
“We’re not sure,” said Elizabeth. “What I think we’ve got is several men trying to burn him out of a motel near O’Hare. I’m not sure who that would be. It’s Castiglione territory.”
“Maybe Paul Cambria’s men,” said Richardson. “I’ve been trying to sort out the one from yesterday. The night the cop and the two guys with machine guns got killed, Paul Cambria was at a public function in Gary, maybe a mile from the spot. The local cops think he might have been trying to establish an alibi.”
“A mile from the place where his men were going to shoot someone? An alibi should have some distance …”
“More likely, our friend was trying to get Paul Cambria. I’m not sure where the cop fits in.”
But Elizabeth was racing ahead. “And he missed. Or somebody saw him. Anyway, something went wrong, and they followed him to Chicago, or knew where he was going to stay, and …” she stopped.
“What’s wrong?” asked Richardson.
“The cop. You’re right. Sergeant Lempert. He doesn’t fit in, does he? Maybe he’s what went wrong.”
Richardson was getting excited now. “Maybe he’s the reason the Butcher’s Boy couldn’t get Cambria. Lempert saw him near Cambria doing something suspicious, and chased him.”
“For a mile? Alone?” asked Elizabeth.
“Followed him, then. Kept him under surveillance. Only he wasn’t the only one. But wait. The only reason the two soldiers with machine guns would kill Lempert is if he were with the Butcher’s Boy, and they couldn’t just wait until he left. Which means he must have actually arrested the Butcher’s Boy.”
Lana said, “I don’t follow—”
Elizabeth said, “I do, but I don’t buy it.”
Richardson spoke faster now as his scenario became clearer and more obvious. “The cop and the Butcher’s Boy are in the same store. A Xerox copying business, which probably means the Butcher’s Boy ducked in there to evade capture because there’s nothing else he could conceivably want in a place like that. The other two wouldn’t shoot a cop unless they had to. The only reason they would is if he was going to take the Butcher’s Boy away to someplace where they couldn’t reach him. And where’s that, except the police station?”
“But, then, how …” said Lana, and stopped.
“How what?”
“Well,” Elizabeth said quietly, “they usually handcuff a person with his hands behind his back. But what you’re saying is that the Butcher’s Boy got out of the handcuffs, took the policeman’s gun and shot somebody who couldn’t hit him first with a machine gun.”
“You’re right,” said Richardson. “I got carried away.”
Elizabeth nodded. “He can do that to you.”
“And we’re not even sure he was the one,” said Lana.
“But if he was,” Richardson said, “then you’ve got to take my hypothesis seriously. There’s no vendetta against Balacontano that could include Fratelli in Buffalo and Cambria in Gary.”
“I already take it seriously,” said Elizabeth.
“You do?”
“Sure. I was making a mistake. What I was doing was putting myself in his body, saying, ‘What would I do if—?’ and that’s the wrong approach. In the first place, we don’t have enough information that we can be sure is true, and so we can’t build a theory that’s based on it. In the second place, he wouldn’t do what I’d do. Or rather I wouldn’t do what he does: that’s a better way of saying it because it’s a proposition I can prove, and it means the same thing in the end. We don’t know what he feels, or if he has any sensations that we would recognize as feelings, so we can’t build a theory on that. All we can do is try to figure out what would be the smartest thing for him to do, because that’s pure logic, and catch him while he’s trying to do it.”
Elizabeth saw that Lana had slipped away, and turned to see where she had gone. She was outside in the hallway talking to a deliveryman.
“Is she any good?” asked Richardson.
“Didn’t you hire her?”
“Not really. The system hired her. She was in the pool of applicants and had the best school record. When she came in for an interview she was wearing clean clothes and showed no symptom of mental illness, so I would have had to make a written argument to hire anybody else.”
“Nicely put,” said Elizabeth. “I think she’s smart. Eventually she’s probably going to figure out that she’s wasting her time here and do a lateral transfer.”
Lana signed the man’s clipboard and came back with a wrapped package. “It’s for you, Elizabeth.”
“Thanks.” She put the package under her arm.
“Aren’t you going to open it?” asked Richardson.
“Weren’t we in the middle of something?”
“Open it.”
The other two watched while Elizabeth looked for a return address, then tore the brown paper off and opened the plain white box. Inside was a leather folder with gold leaf that said “?. V. Waring.” When she opened it, she saw the stationery with the heading “?. V. Waring” on it. “I didn’t order this,” she said.