“Last one on the right,” he said. “When you want out wave at one of the cameras. We’ll be watching.”

He left me there, closing the steel door with a thunderous bang that seemed to reverberate through my marrow.

Frankie Sheehan wasn’t happy about it but I was the lead and I made the call. I allowed McCaleb to come with us on the interviews. We started with Victor Seguin. He was first on McCaleb’s list, second on mine. But there was something about the intensity in McCaleb’s eyes and words that made me defer and go with Seguin first.

Seguin was a stage builder who lived on Screenland Drive in Burbank. It was a small house with a lot of woodwork you might expect to find in a carpenter’s house. It looked as though when Seguin wasn’t finding movie work he was home building handsome window boxes and planters for the house.

The Ford Taurus with the license plate number 1JK2LL4 was parked in the driveway. I put my hand on the hood as we walked up the driveway to the door. It was cold.

At 8 P.M., just as the light was leaving the sky, I knocked on the front door. Seguin answered in blue jeans and a T-shirt. No shoes. I saw his eyes go wide when he looked at me. He knew who I was before I held up the badge and said my name. I felt the cold finger of adrenaline slide down my backbone. I remembered what McCaleb had said about the killer tracking the police while they tracked him. I had been on TV talking about the case. I had been in the papers.

Giving nothing away, I calmly said, “Mr. Seguin, that’s your car in the driveway, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, it’s mine. What about it? What’s going on?”

“We need to ask you about it, if you don’t mind. Can we come in for a few minutes?”

“Well, no, I’d first like to know what-”

“Thank you.”

I moved across the threshold, forcing him to step back. The others followed me in.

“Hey, wait a minute, what is this?”

We had worked it out before we’d arrived. The interview was mine to conduct. Frankie was second seat. McCaleb said he just wanted to observe. The living room was carpenter overkill. Built-in bookshelves on three walls. A wooden mantel that was too big for the room had been built around the small brick fireplace. A floor-to-ceiling television cabinet was built in place as a divider between the sitting area and what looked like a little office nook.