Run along?

"Listen, your press people are not investigating the case. If you could please alert the agent in charge that I have very critical information."

"Sorry, just go over there with the rest of them."

"Don't be sorry"--Reed handed the agent his card--"because when our story comes out tomorrow, it will contain the line that 'the FBI refused to comment' on our information. The people above you will search for the agent who took it upon himself to make the decision not to alert the investigators. This information could seriously embarrass the Bureau. When they call me, and they will, asking who the heck was it 'that refused,' I'll have to tell them it was you, Agent Evan Crossfield, who never even bothered to look at what I had to show the FBI. So I would not be sorry now, if I were you, Agent Evan Crossfield. Save it for tomorrow when our story hits the wires and certain people in the Hoover Building start speaking your name. You'll be very sorry then."

Reed smiled, turned, walked off. Five yards. Ten yards. He could hear Agent Evan Crossfield thinking. Fifteen-- "Hey, just a minute, wiseass!"

Within three minutes, Special Agent Frank Zander emerged from the command center, looking very irritated, holding Reed's card in his hand. Zander went to the tape, lifted it, took Reed out of view to the shade of a tall spruce.

"You Reed?'

"That's me."

"Sydowski says you are an asshole who stumbles on to things."

"Is that on my card?" Reed answered with a shrug. "Who might you be?"

"Frank Zander, on the investigative side of the search for Paige Baker."

"So you going to charge the parents?"

"Don't waste my time. What do you have that's so important?"

Reed gave Zander the old report. He read it. Reed could not tell from his poker face if it was news to him. Zander passed it back.

"That it, Reed?"

"Does this change the direction of your investigation?"

"No comment."

"Do you suspect anything beyond the report of a lost girl?"

"No comment."

"Do you deny polygraphing Doug Baker?"

"This is not twenty questions, Reed. You are wasting my time."

Zander escorted him outside the perimeter.

"Zander, that's Z-A-N-D-E-R?"

Zander walked off, leaving Reed at the tape.

"Happy now?" Agent Crossfield grinned. "Asshole."

Zander was good. Reed got nothing from him. Zip. Not even a "where did you get this?"

The press conference offered little new information to a nation gripped by the drama of ten-year-old Paige Baker facing her fourth night lost in the rugged Rocky Mountains near the Canadian border.

As night descended on the press village, the TV lights created intense halos. The temperature dropped, snowflakes swirled as TV reporters in hooded jackets talked solemnly about the ratio of survivability, quoting experts about 'the death zone' and reports that the FBI had not ruled out anything. This included a possible criminal act, such as abduction, an Internet connection or accidental death.

Inside Reed's rented car, the only sound above the idling motor and the heater's humming fan was the clicking of laptop keyboards as Reed and Wilson worked against the Star's early deadline. Their story was going to push the case to an unbearable level. Wilson glanced over Reed's shoulder at the article he was drafting: THE SAN FRANCISCO STAR.

WEST GLACIER, Mont.--Tonight the state of Montana will execute Isaiah Hood, who claims to be innocent of murdering the five-year-old sister of Emily Baker 22 years ago in Glacier National Park.

Hood's attorney revealed what he said is proof Baker played a role in her sister's death.

It comes amid a massive search by park rangers, FBI agents, and volunteers for Baker's 10-year-old daughter, Paige, who vanished with her beagle, Kobee, five days ago in a remote region known as the Devil's Grasp.

It is the same elevated corner of the park where Emily Baker's little sister, Rachel Ross, was thrown to her death by Hood while on an outing with a local youth club two decades ago.

Baker witnessed the tragedy and revealed aspects of it in private letters to a childhood friend shortly after giving testimony that led to Hood's death sentence....

The FBI conducted a polygraph test on the missing girl's father, Doug Baker, a popular San Francisco high school football coach and English teacher, and are expected to subject Emily Baker to one...

FIFTY.

The sky darkened outside the command center.

The members of the task force had watched the national newscasts, jaws tightening as each report suggested the rangers and FBI were not revealing everything they knew, citing "sources" who indicated Doug Baker was under suspicion.

"That kind of crap does not help. We've got to plug these leaks." Zander finally snapped off the room's large set.

Empty coffee cups, crumpled notepaper, creaking chairs, buffeting winds rattling a loose window, contributed to the tension in the cramped room.

"Frank, by our last count, there are three hundred newspeople out there. It's not an excuse, but rumors are going to fly," said a sergeant with the Montana Highway Patrol.

Zander conceded his point.

It was late. Everyone was irritable. On edge. Zander wanted to move things along.

The San Francisco ERT was en route with special gear to confirm Paige's corpse was somewhere deep in the crevasse. The equipment could not be put to use until morning. Zander's gut told him the crevasse was the case clincher. Once that was solid, everything thing else would fall into place. Until then, they had plenty of loose ends.

"I'd like to know how the hell Tom Reed got the jump on Emily Baker's connection to Isaiah Hood. How could he obtain that old document from the county attorney he waved in my face?"

"I think I know." Bowman was going over the FBI's copy of the county attorney's report on Emily's letters. She explained how after she had reported to Zander on what Emily had revealed to her about her sister's death and her connection to Hood, the FBI immediately ordered an urgent search of all Bureau and state files on Hood's case. The pertinent records that Helena managed to retrieve were faxed to the FBI at the command center, and the discovered pieces of the old file confirmed what Emily had revealed to Bowman: her mother had moved frequently, changing their names so that the state lost track of them. She had essentially disappeared. It explained why the FBI did not make the connection between Emily and Hood when Paige's case broke.

"So how did Reed get his copy so soon after we did? Who tipped him to the connection?"

"David Cohen, Isaiah Hood's lawyer," Bowman said. "I called the capital and they told me there was a simultaneous request for the file from Cohen's law firm."

"More vital," said Turner, "do you think Hood's claim of innocence is valid, Tracy, based on the records and your work on Emily Baker?"

"It's too difficult to be conclusive. It is accepted Emily was present at the time of her sister's death and that she tried to reach for her. It is crystalline in her mind, even in her emotional state, that Isaiah Hood is guilty."

"Could be she is putting on a show to make sure we buy Hood's guilt, and that her daughter's vanishing is just a coincidence?" Pike Thornton asked. "This woman has had some strong emotional outbursts during this ordeal. Weigh that with her undergoing counseling in San Francisco."

"I agree, Pike." Bowman gazed at the county attorney's report. "Consider her old letters and the fact her daughter is now missing. Same location. Certainly raises a lot of questions." Bowman shook her head. "I just don't know."

"I don't buy it." Paige could have fallen in that crevasse," Sydowski said. "We know the dad has a temper. We know the mother's been hearing voices, that she has a troubled past. But I just can't see how this fits together, I really don't buy it. Not yet."

"That's your opinion, Walt," Zander was icy. "Any word from San Francisco on the school girl complaint on Dad? Do we know who Emily's shrink is? Maybe she confessed the old murder, which would impact the disappearance."

"The counselor is traveling in Asia. I am expecting to be updated on the school allegation against Doug Baker."

Zander told everyone the preliminary lab reports showed the blood found on the pink T-shirt and axe were one type: O positive. Doug Baker's military records show he is O positive.

"If Paige has a different blood type we should have a mix, but if they're the same, which I think they are, we may need DNA done to separate them."

"I recall Paige's school records show she's O positive." Sydowski said.

"Yes. They need more time for testing if they can determine a gender distinction in the blood."

"What is the blood at the crevasse?" Pike Thornton asked.

"O positive."

"The hair?"

"Matches with Paige's taken from her sleeping bag."

Someone knocked on the door. It was Reese Larson.

"Sorry to interrupt. I have concluded my analysis."

Reese opened an FBI file folder, unscrewed his fountain pen, went over notes that were so neat they resembled calligraphy.

Zander was impatient but polite. "Reese, first your opinion on Doug Baker's response to the questions, please."

"Inconclusive. I am sorry. The results of my examination are inconclusive."

Zander gritted his teeth, looked out the window into the night.

"On every single point, Reese?"

"No, not the mundane aspects. He was truthful there. But on the points salient to the investigation, I could not form an opinion as to whether he was truthful or not truthful. He was a difficult subject. I'd be willing to re-test him, if you would like."

Turner, a veteran of many battles, steepled his fingers.

"Reese, is there any area, any critical area, where you even came close to forming an opinion one way or the other?"

Reese flipped through his file folder, with the FBI seal, leafed very purposely though page after page of graph paper with their inky spikes, nearly touching them with his fountain pen as he reviewed his notations.

"Hmmm. Well there was one area that was close, very close."

"Close to what, Reese?" Zander sighed.

"I'd say he was very close to being untruthful here on this important area, which we visited several times." A neatly manicured little finger touched the graph paper at an area marked "1473" with an asterisk. "See?"

"Reese, I don't understand. What was the area of questioning?"

Larson flipped through a separate note sheet. Here it is: "Do you believe your wife could have harmed your daughter? He answered no. He answered the same way each time we came back to that one."

"Yes, Reese?"

"Well, in my opinion, he was very close to being untruthful there; when you study these numbers, heart rate, skin..."

Zander looked at the others as Larson went on with technical details.

We're close. We're getting close, he thought.

After Larson finished, Zander used one of the FBI's satellite phones to call the agents at the command post. The ones assigned to watch Emily Baker. The darkness and the rough, snowy weather made it too treacherous to fly out that night.

"This is Zander. Who's this?"

"Fenster."

"What's Emily doing, Fenster?"

"In her tent?"

"Her demeanor?"

"Restless. Keeps asking if we know anything. Wants to know when Doug is coming back."

"I want someone watching her all night. Go in shifts. Do not let her out of your sight. We're coming out for her at daybreak. Understand?'

When Zander finished, he asked Sydowski if he knew if Emily had traveled as a freelance news photographer to any hot spots.

"I seem to remember something about East Timor, why?"

"Her blood type would be on file with the Pentagon. We'll get it," Zander said. "Look, there are a number of scenarios here. She could have done something and Doug's covering up. He could have helped her. We'll be keeping him in custody for a while."

"You going to charge him?" asked Nora Lam, punching a number in her cell phone.

"Not yet," Zander said. "And who are you calling please?"