There were a couple more crystal-clear shots as the hateful Weasel got closer to the photographer.

Just the sight of him sent my brain reeling, and I felt a little sick. My mouth was dry, and I kept licking my lips. What is Shafer doing here? What connection does he have to the bomb that leveled this small town? It was crazy, felt like a dream, completely unreal.

I'd first come across Colonel Geoffrey Shafer in Washington three years ago. He'd murdered more than a dozen people there, though we could never prove it. He would pose as a cabdriver, usually in Southeast, where I lived. The prey was easy to grab, and he knew D.C. police investigations weren't as thorough when the victims were poor and black. Shafer also had a day job-he was an army colonel working inside the British embassy. On the face of it, he couldn't have been more respectable. And yet he was a horrible murderer, one of the worst pattern killers I'd ever come across.

A local agent named Fred Wade joined me near the helicopter I'd come in on. I was still studying the climber's photos. Wade told me he wanted to know what was going on, and I couldn't blame him. So did I.

"The man who videotaped the explosion is named Geoffrey Shafer," I told Wade. "I know him. He committed several murders in D.C. when I was a homicide detective there. The last we heard of him, he'd fled to London. He murdered his wife in front of their children in a London market. Then he disappeared. Well, I guess he's back. I have no idea why, but it makes my head hurt just to think about it."

I took out my cell phone and put in a call to Washington. As I described what I'd discovered, I was reviewing the last few photographs taken of Colonel Shafer. In one of the photos he was climbing into a red Ford Bronco.