"Who found them?"

"Was a fluke, really. Doc Newton was comin' back from deliverin' the McCardles' new baby and saw the front door standin' open. He went in and found them."

The ranch house was five miles outside of town, between Gunnison and Pitkin, a plain two-story brick place sitting a hundred feet or so from the local road that had been cleared by a snow plow. There were two state patrol vehicles and an ambulance parked in a wide space bulldozed out of the drifts when Hoganberry pulled up in the Ford sedan. A footpath was worn through the snow to the front door.

Trammel and his wife were in the living room. He was sitting in an overstuffed chair, the remnants of a newspaper splattered against what was once his chest. His wife lay sideways on the sofa. One shot from the twelve-gauge had blown away most of her face. The daughter lay crumpled face-down on the stairs, a three-inch hole in the middle of her back. The boy was just outside the back door, face-down in the red-drenched snow. The back of his head was gone.

"My God," Dowd breathed.

They searched the house methodically, one room after the other. In the downstairs room, Keegan spotted a bloody towel in a trash can in the bathroom. There was a half-filled glass of water and an empty packet of B-C powder on the night table near the bed. Keegan wrapped the glass and empty B-C packet in the towel and stuffed them in the pocket of his coat. When he went back outside, Dowd and Hoganberry were standing on the front porch.

"Kind of blows up your theory about him killing Soapie to set himself an alibi, don't it?" Dowd said, lighting a cigar. "He must've known we'd pin this on him sooner or later."

"Not at all. I told you, he's resourceful. All he has to do is get out of these mountains and he'll vanish. He made it this far. Obviously he was hurt in some way. The Trammels helped him and he repaid the kindness by killing them."

"Why? We all know what he looks like."

"To give himself time, Sheriff. He probably figured it would be four, five days before anybody found the Trammels. By that time he planned to be long gone."

Keegan stared out across the rugged landscape, its hidden dangers buried beneath two feet of snow.

"My guess is he skied down into Pitkin. Probably before that second snowstorm. There're no tracks around."

"Well, if he did he's still there."

"Let's check it out."

"I can tell you right now, they ain't been any strangers down in Pitkin, sir," Hoganberry said, stuffing a pinch of tobacco into his cheek. "I live there. If you fart at dinner everybody knows it before you finish dessert."

"Then he went south, down through that forest."

"He must be one hell of a skier," Hoganberry said.

"He got here from Aspen," said Keegan. "Thirty-some miles-in a blizzard. What's south?"

"Salida. Over the shelf there, maybe twenty miles. He'd have to go southeast to get around Antero Peak. It's fourteen thousand feet. By road, close to forty miles."

"How big's Salida?"

"Well, it's a pretty fair-size town for these parts," Dowd said. "Three, four thousand people maybe. Even got themselves a little airport there, 'bout the size of Jesse Manners's place."

Keegan stared at the sheriff.

"They've got an airport there?" he said. "Any planes down there?"

"Why, that's what an airport's all about, Mr. Keegan," the sheriff said with a smile.

"I mean, could he charter somebody to fly him up to, say, Denver?"

"That's Billy Wisdom's outfit," said Hoganberry. "Hell, for the price he'd fly you to the moon. Used to be a barnstormer."

"Phone lines working between here and there?" Keegan asked.

"Yep."

"Let's talk to Mr. Wisdom."

Hoganberry drove them back out to the strip at Gunnison. Dowd had made arrangements for one of his deputies to drive down from Aspen and get him. He'd had enough flying for one day. Keegan and Dryman were flying on south to Albuquerque.

"Well, I got to admit, John Trexler had us all fooled," Dowd said. "Skis thirty-five, forty miles through a blizzard, murders a whole family, skis another fifteen miles and hires crazy Billy Wisdom to fly him down to New Mexico."

"And disappears like a drop of water on a summer sidewalk," said Keegan.

"Wouldn't you know he'd fly three hundred miles south instead of doing the obvious and going to Denver," said Dryman.

"I should have figured it," said Keegan. "He's never done anything obvious yet."

"If I were a bettin' man I'd put my money on you, Mr. Keegan," said Dowd. "You hang on like a damn pit dog."

They pulled into the small airport. As Keegan and Dryman were about to get out of the car, the sheriff turned to them.

"Mr. Keegan?" he said. "It's been a pleasure, although an exhausting one."

"Thank you, sir. The pleasure was ours. You've been a lot of help."

"One other thing."

"Yeah?"

"I'll make you a deal."

"A deal?" Keegan asked, curiously.

"If you'll send me copies of the blood report from that towel and the fingerprints off the glass, I won't arrest you for stealing my evidence," the portly sheriff said. "We don't have any heat in the jail right now, be awful damn uncomfortable. Besides, I don't know anybody south of Denver would know what to do with a fingerprint if they found one."

"Thanks, Sheriff."

"Good luck to you. Hope you find that son of a bitch."

"Oh, I'll find him. Count on it."

Keegan looked out over the snow-drifted vista, beyond the mountains. Somewhere out there, Siebenundzwanzig was on the run. Now he knew someone was after him. By now, he had probably changed identity again. But Keegan was undaunted.

"Run, you bastard, run," he said to himself. "I'll be right behind you all the way. Don't even stop to take a breath. If you do, you're a dead man."

Two days later, on September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. World War II had begun.

FORTY-SEVEN.

Keegan sat in the back booth of The Rose. The table was covered with newspaper and magazine clippings. As he read them he moved them from one pile to another. There was a space for a third pile-possibilities-but that space was empty. He had hired two clipping services to scan periodicals, one east of the Mississippi, the other west, looking for murders, offbeat crimes, anything with the number 27. Each day thick envelopes would arrive and he would go through the clippings, looking for something, anything, that might give him a clue to the whereabouts or exploits of 27.

He recognized the tall, lanky man when he entered the bar, even though he was a mere silhouette, framed by the sunlight streaming through the door.

Smith.

This would be bad news.

Smith walked the length of the room and sat down. He motioned to Tiny. "May I have a glass of your best white wine, please?" he asked pleasantly.

"How did you dodge the twins?" Keegan asked.

"Hoover called them in. He's so busy rounding up subversives he needs everybody he's got." He motioned to the clippings as Tiny brought his wine. "What's this all about?"

Keegan explained the clippings to him.

"He's not going to do anything to screw himself up," Smith said.

"He's not perfect," Keegan answered. "Nobody's perfect. He's going to make a mistake and when he does, I'll know it. If I don't read it or hear, I'll feel it. I can feel his heart beating. I can feel the sweat in his palms." He nodded sharply. "I'll know it."

"Mr. Keegan, you've been after this guy for almost a year and you're still no closer to him than you ever were."

"Wrong, Mr. Smith. I was three miles away from him last week. I'll tell you what I know about him. He's six-one. Blond. Probably has green eyes. In excellent physical shape and a real charmer. And he's got three bad wounds on his left cheek. We learned that from the pilot that flew him to Albuquerque. He carries a gold Dunhill cigarette lighter with a wolf's head on the top. I have his fingerprints. We know he used the identity Fred Dempsey. The guy's a chameleon. He can switch identities faster than you can switch hats. He'll do anything to survive. Steal, kill, makes no difference. So far he's killed at least eight people that we know about. When he runs, he makes it appear that he's dead. He killed a forest ranger named Kramer, buried him in a lake and skied out of there-thirty-five miles, some of it through a blizzard. He killed a family of four, then skied another fifteen miles and paid some local stunt pilot a thousand dollars to fly him into Albuquerque, not Denver, which would have been the obvious thing. He doesn't do the obvious. If we hadn't been on his ass, he would have gotten away with it. He did the same thing in Drew City."

"But he did get away, Keegan. By now he could be anywhere. In any disguise and with new papers. And . . . now he knows somebody's on to him."

"That's not going to change him," said Keegan. "He's a classic psychopath, Mr. Smith. Hell, he kills when he doesn't have to. He killed that family in Colorado, two kids, mother, father, totally unnecessary. Everybody in Aspen knew what he looked like."

Smith shrugged. "He doesn't like to leave tracks," he said. "In the intelligence field that isn't uncommon."

"You mean it's condoned?"

Smith scowled at the question, which he considered naive. "Nothing's condoned, nothing's forbidden. Those things go unsaid. Cut a man loose like that, his primary objective is survival. He's got a job to do, an enemy agent loose two thousand miles from home in hostile territory. What would you do? Anyway, that question's moot, Mr. Keegan. What do you do next? You've lost him."

"I don't know, but I promise you I know this guy better than anybody in the bureau. I know this guy better than anybody and if anybody can catch him, I can."

"Hoover's going to handle this in his own way and in his own sweet time," Smith said matter-of-factly. "And frankly he regards the espionage angle as a joke. Right now his only interest in Twenty-seven is that he's suspected of mass murder and unlawful flight."

"So? Let Hoover put his face up in the post office and in the newspapers. Release the story. Really turn on the heat."

"Not a chance," Smith said, shaking his head. "If it turns out to be a false alarm, he'll look stupid and Hoover would rather blow off his foot than look stupid."

"Tell you the truth, it probably wouldn't work anyway. I promise you this: Twenty-seven has a plan. He is never caught without a plan. Now that he knows he's hot, I'm sure he's got a plan for that, too."

"Suppose he's been activated?" Smith asked.

"I don't know," Keegan shrugged. "Hell, I need a break. If I don't get one, whatever he's going to do, he'll do. And don't ask me what that might be. I've burned up my brains trying to figure that one out."

Smith sighed. He took another sip of wine.

"Look, let them play it their way, and I'll play it mine," said Keegan. "What have we got to lose?"

"It's just a matter of time before the bureau figures out who you are and when it does, we'll need a skyhook to get Hoover down off the ceiling."

"Obviously Hoover doesn't believe a man can reform."

"Are you kidding? If he had his way he'd abolish trials by jury and make jaywalking a federal offense. I'm sorry, Mr. Keegan. Donovan and I are both impressed with what you've done but it's an FBI case now. You're off it."

"What!" Keegan yelled. Everyone in the bar looked back at the booth. Keegan stood up. "Bullshit!"

"I'm sorry," Smith said defensively. "The FBI's on it because it's a fugitive case. Espionage has nothing to do with it."

"Then I'll do it on my own," Keegan said venomously.

Smith chuckled and shook his head. "How? You don't have anyplace to start."

Keegan didn't answer. He knew the clippings were a much longer shot than going through the FBI records, but they were his last gasp.

"Of course," Smith said, "there is one option."

Keegan stared at him suspiciously. "What kind of option?"

"Sign a contract with the Office of Information Coordination," Smith said. "That way we can justify an on-going investigation on the grounds that we suspect him of being an enemy agent. Hoover's only interest in him right now is as a fugitive."

"Mr. Smith, I'm not a spy. I don't belong in Donovan's network."

"Takes all kinds," Smith said. "Besides, the Boss and I agree you did a hell of a job tracking him down in Colorado."

"You're telling me if I join this new intelligence outfit, I can keep going on this?"

"For the time being."

"And then what?"

"Then you'll be on our team."

"And at your beck and call?"

Smith nodded slowly. "We'll have a training course set up by the new year. We have a place set up in Boston. Two months. We would expect you to take the course. Hell, Keegan, look at it this way, we'll probably be in the war soon anyway."

"Not if Siebenundzwanzig can help it."

Smith opened his briefcase and took out a contract and handed it to Keegan.