Taking his silence for interest, Headly continued. "Savannah, Georgia, and its environs. Marine Captain Jeremy Wesson, a decorated war veteran, one tour in Iraq, two in Afghanistan. After returning from his last deployment, he retired from the corps, and, by all accounts, went off the rails.

"Fifteen months ago, give or take, he got tangled up in a messy affair with a married woman, one Darlene Strong. Husband Willard caught them, and it didn't end well for the illicit lovers. Willard Strong goes on trial for murder the day after tomorrow. Chatham County Courthouse. You should be there to cover the trial."

Dawson was already shaking his head.

"Why not?" Headly asked.

"Summertime in Savannah."

"Look at your calendar. As of today, it's September."

"Still, no thank you. It's hot down there. Humid. I'd rather go to Idaho. Besides, crime isn't my specialty. And frankly, I've had enough of the military for a while. I don't want to write about a dead Marine. I've been doing that for the past nine months.

"In fact, maybe Harriet's assignment is a blessing in disguise. That feel-good story may be just the tonic I need. Something hopeful. Positive. Uplifting. No severed limbs, or blood-soaked fatigues, or flag-draped caskets involved."

"I haven't told you the hook."

Sourly, Dawson asked, "What's the hook?"

"Police obtained Wesson's semen off Darlene's clothing. This, of course, to help make the prosecutor's case against the cuckolded husband, Willard."

"Okay."

"So the RANC in Savannah is a Bureau buddy of mine, former New Yorker, big baseball fan named Cecil Knutz."

"'Rank'?"

"Resident Agent in Charge. Top dog in the resident agency there."

"Okay."

"Anyway, Knutz saw the report from CODIS. Wesson's DNA got a hit, a match."

"He was already in the system?"

"He was. Has been for a while, in fact."

Headly paused to take a sip of his drink. Realizing that was a tactic used to build suspense, Dawson said, "I'm on pins and needles."

He set down his glass and leaned toward Dawson. "Captain Jeremy Wesson's DNA matched that which we retrieved off a baby blanket found inside the Golden Branch house."

That wasn't a mere hook. It was a grappling hook that found purchase in the center of Dawson's chest. Dumbfounded, he stared at Headly.

Headly said, "Before you ask, there's no possibility of mistake. The match was ninety-nine-point-nine-and-down-to-the-nth-degree identical. In other words, the recently obtained sample and the one from 1976 came from one and the same individual. We got Flora's DNA that day, too. We know she mothered the child whose DNA was on the baby blanket. And Jeremy Wesson's age fits. Indisputably, he was Flora and Carl's son."

Dawson stood up, paced a few steps, then turned back to Headly. As though reading the myriad questions racing through Dawson's mind, he said, "Judging by your expression, I see that I don't need to spell out the significance of this to you."

Although Gary Headly had enjoyed a distinguished career, to his mind all his accomplishments had been overshadowed by what he perceived as his one failure-to bring Carl Wingert and Flora Stimel to justice. It had plagued his career, and now it was contaminating his retirement.

That was a cruelty that his godfather didn't deserve, and it made Dawson angry. "This Knutz, why'd he tip you to this?"

"He knows my interest. Worked with me when I investigated one of their jobs in Tennessee in the late eighties. He's aware of my impending retirement and notified me only as a courtesy to a colleague. He was careful not to divulge too much, but he did tell me that he's been digging into Jeremy Wesson's background looking for a link to Carl and Flora."

Dawson raised his brows in silent query.

"Nothing. Jeremy Wesson's birth certificate-a copy he used to enlist-is from Ohio. Says he was born to and reared by Mr. and Mrs. So-and-So Wesson. He graduated high school in the town where he grew up. Earned a degree at Texas Tech. Joined the Marines. His history looks commonplace until he wigged out and got mixed up with a redneck's wife."

"No leanings toward domestic terrorism?"

"None apparent."

"What's Knutz's take?"

"He advised me to leave it alone. The Bureau has bigger fish to fry these days. Nobody really gives a shit about Carl and Flora anymore. The consensus is that they're probably dead. That burglary at the armory in New Mexico was the last crime attributed to them. That was in '96."

"Seventeen years ago. A lot can happen in that amount of time."

"Doesn't mean they're dead."

"But with no indication that they're still alive, it's logical to assume otherwise."

"Logic and assumption be damned. I want to know, don't you?"

"At this late date, what possible difference does it make?"

"It makes a hell of a difference to me!"

Dawson sliced the air with his hands. "Okay. I get that. But this decorated Marine, who might have been their son-"

"He was. I know it."

"No you don't."

"The DNA says he was."

"It isn't foolproof."

"As good as."

"All right, even if he was their kid-"

"Aren't you curious to know what happened to him after Golden Branch, where he's been?"

"Not in the least."

"I don't believe that."

"Believe it. What good would digging into it-"

"I thought you'd want to."

"I don't."

"Then do it for me."

"Why? He's dead. End of story."

"It could be the biggest story of your career."

"It's certainly the biggest of yours!"

Simultaneously, they realized they'd been shouting. Headly glanced toward the door as though expecting to see his wife there, coming to check on the commotion. Dawson brought his voice down to a more reasonable level. "If you want to know the rest of the story, why don't you go to the trial in Savannah?"

"Because Eva would divorce me," he grumbled. "Besides, like I told you, I'm as good as out of the Bureau. If I went meddling down there, I'd look pathetic. Like a hanger-on who doesn't know when his time is up."

Dawson ran his fingers through his hair and released a sigh of agitation. He loved Headly. He knew how badly his godfather wanted closure on the defining incident of his career. But he was asking too much. Dawson was exhausted and disheartened by his experiences overseas. Even on his good days, his nerves felt raw and exposed. The last thing he needed was additional aggravation, like dredging up this unfinished saga. What possible good could come of it? Whether or not Jeremy Wesson was Carl and Flora's child, it didn't make one iota of difference.

Quietly he said, "I'm sorry. Even if there was no Harriet in my life sending me someplace else on another assignment, I wouldn't go to Savannah. Your pal Knutz is right. Some things should be left alone."

Headly gave him a searching look, then his shoulders slumped with acceptance of Dawson's mind being firmly made up. He tossed back the remainder of his drink and said no more about it. Shortly after that, Eva extended Dawson an invitation to stay for dinner. He declined, using as his excuse the need to pack for his trip to Idaho. Keeping eye contact with them to a minimum, he beat a hasty retreat.

He was leaking anxious sweat by the time he got into his car. At the first traffic light, he took another pill, washing it down with the lukewarm water left in the bottle. Rush-hour traffic out of DC into Virginia didn't improve his mood, making him really on edge by the time he let himself into his Alexandria apartment.

He was tugging off his boots when his cell phone chirped, alerting him to a text message. It was from Headly: There's a clincher.

He knew he was being baited, but curiosity won out over his better judgment. He texted back. What's the clincher?

The reply was quick in coming. J Wesson only presumed dead. Body never found.

Chapter 2.

Mr. Jackson, are you ready to call your next witness?"

The assistant DA stood. "I am, Your Honor. I call Amelia Nolan."

Like the other spectators, Dawson turned as a bailiff opened the double doors at the back of the courtroom and motioned in the former Mrs. Jeremy Wesson.

Today was the third day of the trial. The first witness this morning had been a veterinarian, a Dr. Somebody-Dawson had his name in his notes for referral if needed-who had droned on forever about the digestive processes of dogs, specifically pit bulls.

It took the better part of two hours for the prosecutor to wade through all the scientific rigmarole and get to the crucial point: bits and pieces of Darlene Strong had been found in the digestive tracts of three of Willard Strong's pack of illegal fighting dogs, which had been put down in order to search for evidence.

The second person to testify, the county medical examiner, had confirmed that those bits and pieces corresponded with the ones missing from what had been left of the victim's cadaver, which police had discovered locked inside the dogs' pen.

Darlene hadn't been killed by the dogs, but the state was asking for the death penalty, so Lemuel Jackson, a shrewd and meticulous prosecutor with a double-digit number of convictions, had wanted to impress upon the jury how heinous the crime had been. He'd wanted it on the record that her body had been fed to Willard's dogs, and since the animals were half-starved in order to make them fiercer competitors in the fighting rings...

The implication had made many of the jurors go a little green.

Blood samples taken from the ground inside the caged area, as well as a piece of scalp with hair attached found inside one dog's intestines, suggested that Jeremy Wesson had met the same fate.

By the time the defense attorney, Mike Gleason, had stumbled through an ineffectual cross-examination of the ME, it was almost twelve o'clock. The judge called for a lunch recess until one thirty, although Dawson thought it doubtful that anyone in the courtroom would have much of an appetite. Certainly not one that would require an hour and a half to appease.

But now they were back, and the third witness of the day had been summoned into the courtroom.

For background, Dawson had read news articles about the crime. He supposed he'd glanced at the photographs of the ex Mrs. Wesson that had accompanied some of those write-ups, but he really hadn't paid attention.

Suddenly he was.

The woman walking up the short center aisle wasn't at all what he'd expected. He'd seen Flora Stimel's Wanted posters and had imagined that Jeremy Wesson's ex-wife would be of a type similar to that of his mother. He'd expected her to be coarse, tough, and hard-looking.

But from her delicate bone structure to the pale right hand she raised to be sworn in, this woman was the polar opposite. She outclassed everyone in the courtroom, Dawson included. Dawson especially.

She was dressed in an ivory-colored form-fitting skirt, with a blouse of the same color but of softer material, topped by a sapphire-blue jacket. Her auburn hair was pulled into a low ponytail, but not so tightly as to prevent a few loose strands from framing her face. Her only visible jewelry were a pair of diamond stud earrings and a wristwatch. She struck the perfect note for a courtroom appearance, being neither too feminine and fussy nor too structured and severe.

As a journalist, he would have been interested in Jeremy Wesson's ex no matter what. There were a thousand questions he wanted to ask her, if not for his own elucidation, then certainly for Headly's.

But the woman about to testify awakened a different kind of curiosity in him, and he resented it, because he didn't need an additional complication, the worst possible one being the loss of his professional objectivity, on which he prided himself.

He cursed Headly again for dragging him into this. He hadn't wanted to come, but knew he had to. After receiving the taunting text from Headly, he'd packed his duffel bag. The following morning, rather than using the ticket to Idaho that had been foisted on him, he'd boarded a flight to Savannah.

While waiting in the rental-car line, he'd called Harriet.

"Are you already in Boise?"

"I took a detour."

He envisioned her seated behind her desk, smoke coming out her ears. "I assigned you a story, Dawson."

"I've got a better one."

"What is it?"

"For now, it's a secret."

"Where is it?"

"I'm hot on its trail."

"Dammit, Dawson!"

"I'll be in touch." And he clicked off before the people around him could hear the obscene invectives being shouted through his phone.