Ollie Hamish, his second in command, was in Wisconsin consulting with the Madison police on a particularly vicious series of murders, all connected to a local radio station that played golden oldies. Go figure, Ollie had said, and started humming “Maxwell’s Silver Hammer.”

Savich hated crazies. He hated unsolved craziness even more. It amazed and terrified him what the human mind could conjure up. And now Dane’s brother, a priest.

He dialed Millie’s extension, told her to make arrangements. Then he walked over and flipped on his electric kettle to make a cup of strong Earl Grey tea. He poured his tea into an oversized FBI mug and went back to MAX, his lap-top, and booted up.

He started with an e-mail to Chief Dexter Kreider.

At three-thirty on Monday afternoon, San Francisco time, after a five-hour-and-ten-minute flight from Dulles, Dane Carver threaded his way through the large open room toward Inspector Delion’s overloaded desk. He paused a moment, studying him. The older man, with his bald, shiny head and thick handlebar mustache, was hunched over a computer keyboard, typing furiously. Dane sat down in the chair beside his desk and said nothing, just looked at the man at his work. It was like every other large cop shop he’d ever been in. Cops with their suit jackets hung over the backs of their chairs, their ties loosened, sleeves rolled up, a young Hispanic guy in handcuffs lounging in the side chairs, trying on sneers, a couple of lawyers in three-piece suits doing their best to intimidate-nothing at all unusual for a Monday afternoon. A decimated box of jelly donuts lay on a battered table in the small kitchen, a coffee machine that looked to be from the last century beside it, along with stacks of paper cups, packets of sugar, and a carton of milk Dane wouldn’t touch in a million years.