The Devils Teardrop

battery and transmitter in the handle. It digitized Czisman’s fingerprints and transmitted them to Geller’s computer. He in turn sent them to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System database for matching.
    One of the video cameras—in a print of Seurat’s famous Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, whichwas a complicated painting that every interviewee tended to look at frequently—was locked onto Czisman’s eyes and was performing retinal scans for “veracity probability analysis”—that is, lie detection. Geller was also doing voice stress analysis for the same reason.
    Lukas now directed Cage and Kincaid into the observation room.
    “Anything yet?” Lukas asked Geller.
    “It’s prioritized,” he said, typing madly.
    A moment later his phone rang and Lukas slapped the speakerphone.
    “Tobe?” a woman’s voice asked.
    “Go ahead,” he said. “The task force is here.”
    “Hi, Susan,” Lukas said. “It’s Margaret. Go ahead. Give us the deets. What’ve you got?”
    “Okay, prints came back negative on warrants, arrests, convictions. Name Henry Czisman is legit, address in Hartford, Connecticut. Bought his house twelve years ago. Property taxes are up to date and he paid off the mortgage last year. The image you beamed up matches his Connecticut driver’s license photo ninety-five percent likely.”
    “Is that good?” Kincaid interrupted.
    “ My present picture matches ninety-two percent,” Nance responded. “I’ve got longer hair now.” She continued. “Employment record through Social Security Administration and IRS shows him working as a journalist since 1971 but some years he had virtually no income. Listed his job those years as free-lance writer. So he’s taken plenty of time off. Not living on his wife’s salary either; he used to be married but his filing status is single now. Paid no quarterly estimated this year, which he’s done in the past. And that suggests he’s got no reportableincome at all this year. Ten years ago he had very high medical deductions. Looks like it was treatment for alcohol abuse. Became self-employed a year ago, quit a fifty-one-thousand-dollar-a-year job at the Hartford paper and is apparently living off savings.”
    “Quit, fired or took a leave of absence?” Kincaid asked.
    “Not sure.” Nance paused. She continued. “We couldn’t get as many credit card records as we wanted, because of the holiday, but he’s staying at the Renaissance under his name. And he checked in after a noon flight from Hartford. United Express. No advanced purchase. Made the reservation at ten A.M . this morning.”
    “So he left just after the first shooting,” Lukas mused.
    “One-way ticket?” Kincaid’s question anticipated her own.
    “Yes.”
    “What do we think?” Lukas asked.
    “Goddamn journalist is all, I’d say,” Cage offered.
    “And you?” She glanced at Kincaid.
    He said, “What do I think? I say we deal with him. When I analyze documents I need every bit of information I can get about the writer.”
    “If you know it’s really the writer,” Lukas said skeptically. She paused. Then said, “He seems like a crank to me. Are we that desperate?”
    “Yes,” Kincaid said, glancing at the digital clock above Tobe Geller’s computer monitor, “I think we are.”
    * * *
    In the stuffy interrogation room once more, Lukas said to Czisman, “If we talk off the record now . . . and if we can bring this to a successful resolution . . .”
    Czisman laughed at the euphemism, motioned for the agent to continue.
    “If we can do that then we’ll give you access to materials and witnesses for your book. I’m not sure how much yet. But you’ll have some exclusivity.”
    “Ah, my favorite word. Exclusivity. Yes, that’s all I’m asking for.”
    “But everything we tell you now,” Lukas continued, “will be completely confidential.”
    “Agreed,” Czisman said.
    Lukas nodded at Parker, who asked, “Does the name Digger mean anything to you?”
    “Digger?” Czisman shook his head. “No. As in gravedigger?”
    “We don’t know. It’s the name of the shooter—the one you call the Butcher,” Lukas said.
    “I only call him the Butcher because the Boston papers did. The New York Post called him the Devil. In Philadelphia he was the Widow Maker.”
    “New York? Philly too?” Lukas asked. Parker noticed that she was troubled by this news.
    “Jesus,” Cage muttered. “A pattern criminal.”
    Czisman