Cross Fire

city. It created a space where he could think clearly and focus on his work, and what to do next.
    Now, if he could just remember where he’d been when he left off.
    Mersenne 44, was that it?
Yes.
That was it. Mersenne 44.
    It came back slowly, shimmering into his mind as if out of the shadows, until he could see it clearly.
    See it and speak it.
    The words tumbled out of him when they came, but quietly, in nothing more than a mumble. Nothing anyone would overhear, just enough to help make the number real once again.
    “Two to the thirty-two million, five hundred eighty-two thousand, six hundred and fifty-seventh,” he said.
    Yes.
That was it precisely. Mersenne 44.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
    He picked up his pace now and continued up the street without looking back again.

Chapter 87

    IT WAS QUIET at the Fingerprint Analysis Section when I got there. The only person in the lab was one of the civilian staff, an analyst named Bernie Stringer who usually went by “Strings.” I could hear the heavy metal on his iPod blaring away while he worked.
    “I hope that’s not priority!” he shouted, and then pulled out an earbud. “Narcotics is already kicking my ass here.” There were two full boxes of slides on the bench next to him.
    “I just need some prints off of this,” I said, holding the Coke can up by the lip.
    “Tonight?” he said.
    “Yeah, actually. Now.”
    “Knock yourself out, man. Cyanoacrylate’s in the drawer by the fuming chamber.”
    That was fine by me. I like working in the lab every once in a while. It makes me feel smarter, even if printing is Forensics 101.
    I went over to the fuming chamber and set the can upright inside. Then I put a few drops of cyanoacrylate, which is really just superglue, on a dish and sealed it all up to heat for a while.
    In about fifteen minutes, I had a nice four-print set standing out on the surface of the can. Sampson’s paw print was there, too, but it was easy enough to differentiate, sizewise.
    I dusted the ones I wanted with black powder and took a few pictures, just in case.
    After that, it was only a matter of lifting them with clear tape and laying them back down on a card for scanning.
    “Hey, Strings!” I shouted over. “Can I use your system?”
    “Knock yourself out! Password’s B-I-G-B-U-T-Z.”
    “Of course it is,” I said.
    “Huh? What’s that?”
    “Nothing.”
    Once I got the prints onto the computer, it took IAFIS about half an hour to spit out four possible matches. A lot of the time, the final comparison is done by eye, which is good. It helps keep the process human.
    And it didn’t take long for me to confirm one of the four.
    The tented arch pattern on our man’s index finger was fairly distinctive, even as these little puzzles go.
    With a few keystrokes, I had his name and record right there in front of me.
    He was Stanislaw Wajda.
    That explained the accent anyway. He’d been arrested just once, on a domestic assault charge in College Park, Maryland, a year and a half earlier. It didn’t seem like too much to go on.
    But, in fact, I’d just stumbled onto a killer.

Chapter 88

    AN INITIAL ONLINE search for “Stanislaw Wajda” brought up all kinds of different results. When I filtered for news reports, I got a whole slew of year-old stories about a missing-persons case.
    That seemed promising, and I clicked on the first one, from the
Baltimore Sun.

Questions Persist in Professor’s Disappearance

April 12, College Park — The search continues for University of Maryland professor Stanislaw Wajda, 51, who was last seen leaving the A. V. Williams Building on the university campus the evening of April 7.

Wajda’s mental state at the time of his disappearance has since become a matter of widespread speculation. While local police and UM officials have declined to comment on the issue, the professor’s erratic behavior over the last six months is a matter of public record.

In October, police were summoned to Wajda’s home on Radcliffe Drive for a domestic-disturbance call. Wajda, who had no previous criminal record, was charged with aggravated assault and held overnight, until the charges were dropped.

On campus, Professor Wajda has been brought before the university provost two times in the past year, once for unspecified aggressive behavior toward a graduate student, and a second time following what one eyewitness described as an explosive episode in the university library over a missing periodical.

Wajda, a professor of