"Good," Wendy said. Then: "One other thing."

"What?"

"When I saw Dan before he was shot, someone had beaten him pretty good."

Tremont saw where she was going with this. "So you figure that maybe Haley McWaid, if she was with him, might have seen that beating." He nodded. "Maybe that's why she ran."

But now that he said it out loud, that didn't sound right to Wendy. There was a false note here. She tried to think it through. There was still more--like how did the scandals involving Stearns 109 fit in? She was about to present that angle to Tremont, but right now it still seemed too far out there. She needed to look into it more. That meant going back to Phil and Sherry Turnball, maybe calling Farley Parks and Steven Miciano, trying to find Kelvin Tilfer.

"So maybe you should look into who a.s.saulted Dan Mercer," she said.

A half-smile crossed Tremont's face. "Hester Crimstein had an interesting theory on that."

"Hester Crimstein, the TV judge?"

"Right. She's also Ed Grayson's attorney. According to her hypothetical, her client gave Dan Mercer that beating."

"How does she figure?"

"See, we found Dan Mercer's blood in Grayson's car. We said that, along with your testimony, was clear evidence Grayson murdered Mercer."

"Okay."

"But Crimstein--G.o.d, she's good--she says, well, your witness, you, said Mercer had been beaten. So, she says, maybe Grayson and Mercer got into a fight a day or two earlier. And maybe that's how the blood ended up in the car."

"You buy that?"

Tremont shrugged. "Not really, no, but that's not the point."

"It's pretty brilliant on her part," Wendy said.

"Yep. Crimstein and Grayson pretty much figured a way to negate all the evidence. We have blood DNA--but a fight gives that a plausible explanation. Yes, Grayson had gun residue on his hand, but the owner of the Gun-O-Rama shooting range confirmed that he was there an hour after you saw him shoot Mercer. The owner says Grayson is one of the best shots he's ever seen, so he remembers him well. You witnessed him killing Dan Mercer--but there's no body, no gun, and he wore a mask."

Something was niggling the back of Wendy's brain. It was there, just out of sight, but she couldn't quite get to it.

Tremont said, "You know what I'm going to ask of you now, right?"

"I think so."

"The McWaids have been through h.e.l.l. I don't want to put them through more. You can't report this yet."

Wendy said nothing.

"We have nothing, anyway, but a few whacked-out theories," he went on. "I promise to let you have anything we learn first. But for the sake of the investigation--for the sake of Haley's parents--you can't say anything yet. Deal?"

The niggling was still there. Tremont was waiting. "Deal," she said.

BACK BEHIND THE CRIME SCENE TAPE, Wendy was only mildly surprised to see Ed Grayson leaning against her car. He tried to look casual, but he wasn't pulling it off. His finger toyed with a cigarette. He put it in his mouth and sucked on it as though he were deep underwater and it was a breathing tube.

"Sticking another GPS on my back b.u.mper?" she asked.

"I have no idea what you mean."

"Sure. You were just checking for a flat, right?"

Grayson took another deep drag. His face hadn't seen a razor, but that was true of more than half the men who'd gotten up here at such an early hour. His eyes were bloodshot. He looked a lot worse than the man who had just yesterday confidently explained to her his theories on vigilantism. She thought about that, about his visit to her house.

"Did you really think I'd help you kill him?" she asked.

"Truth?"

"That'd be nice, yeah."

"You might've agreed with what I said in theory. You maybe even started to waver a little when I raised Ariana Nasbro. But no, I never thought you'd help."

"So you were just giving it a shot?"

He didn't reply.

"Or was your visit all an excuse to put that GPS on my car?"

Ed Grayson slowly shook his head.

"What?" she asked.

"You don't have a clue, do you, Wendy?"

She stepped closer to the driver's door. "Why are you here, Ed?"

He looked off toward the woods. "I wanted to help with the search."

"They wouldn't let you?"

"What do you think?"

"Sounds like you feel guilty."

He took another drag. "Do me a favor, Wendy. Skip the a.n.a.lysis."

"So what do you want with me?"

"Your opinion."

"On?"

He pinched the cigarette between his fingertips and studied it as though it held an answer. "Do you think Dan killed her?"

She wondered how to answer that. "What did you do with his body?"

"You talk first. Did Dan kill Haley McWaid?"

"I don't know. Maybe he just locked her up, and right now, because of what you did, she's starving to death."

"Nice try." He scratched at his cheek. "But the cops laid that guilt trip on me already."

"Didn't work?"

"Nope."

"Are you going to tell me what you did with the body?"

"My. My." He spoke in pure monotone. "I. Have. No. Idea. What. You're. Talking. About."

This was getting her nowhere--and she had places to go. The niggling had something to do with her research on the Princeton group. Dan and Haley running away together--okay, maybe. But what about all those scandals involving his old roommates? Could be nothing. Probably was. But she was missing something huge here.

"So what do you want from me?" she asked.

"I'm trying to figure out whether Dan really kidnapped this girl."

"Why?"

"Trying to help the investigation, I guess."

"So you can sleep better at night?"

"Maybe."

"So what answer will make you sleep better?" she asked.

"I don't follow."

"Well, if Dan killed Haley, would you feel better about what you did? Like you said before, he was bound to do it again. You stopped him--albeit a little late. And if Dan did not kill her, well, you're still convinced he would have hurt someone else, right? So either way, killing him was the only way to stop him. Seems the only way you lose sleep is if Haley is alive somewhere and you put her in further danger."

Ed Grayson shook his head. "Just forget it." He started to walk away.

"Am I missing something?" she asked.

"Like I said before." Grayson tossed the cigarette and never broke stride. "You don't have a clue."

CHAPTER 23.

SO NOW WHAT?.

Wendy could keep looking for clues that proved Dan and Haley were involved in some kind of consensual, albeit wrong, relationship, but what was the point? The police now had that theory. They would run with it. She needed to attack from another angle.

The five Princeton roommates.

Four out of five had been felled by scandals in the past year. The fifth, well, maybe he had too, but it just wasn't online. So she headed back to the Starbucks in Englewood to continue her investigation. When she entered, even before she spotted the Fathers Club, the sound of Ten-A-Fly's rapping blew forth from the overhead speakers.

Charisma Carpenter, I love you You ain't no carpenter's dream, you ain't flat as board, And you ain't easy to screw. . . .

"Yo, hey."

It was Ten-A-Fly. She stopped. "Hi."

Ten-A-Fly was decked out in a Gra.s.s Roots zip-up blue hoodie. On his head he wore the hood over a red baseball cap with a brim so big a trucker in 1978 would have been embarra.s.sed to wear it while on the CB. Behind him Wendy could see the guy with the tennis whites. He was typing madly on a laptop. The younger father with the baby sling was walking back and forth and making cooing noises.

Ten-A-Fly jiggled a bling bracelet that looked like a Halloween prop. "Saw you at my gig last night."

"Yep."

"You likey?"

Wendy nodded. "It was, uh, phat, dawg."

That pleased him. He held up his fist for a knuckle pound. She obliged. "You're a TV reporter, right?"

"Right."

"So are you here to do a story on me?"

Tennis Whites on the laptop added, "You should." He pointed to the screen. "We're getting a lot of action here."

Wendy circled around and looked at the laptop. "You're on eBay?"

"It's how I make a living now," Tennis Whites said. "Since I got laid off--"

"Doug here was at Lehman Brothers," Ten-A-Fly interrupted. "He saw the bad coming, but n.o.body would listen to him."

"Whatever," Doug said, waving a hand with modesty. "Anyway, I stay solvent with eBay. First, I sold pretty much everything I owned. Then I started going to garage sales, buying things, fixing them up, reselling them."

"And you can make a living at that?"

He shrugged. "No, not really. It's something to do."

"Like tennis?"