"Would it be possible just to sit here in silence as we wait?" he asked, with complete politeness.

Dana absorbed the stiff-arm and quickly decided that silence wasn't a bad idea. Then her curiosity returned. "Sure, but one last question." She was looking at the questionnaire as if it required one last question. "How long were you in prison?" she asked.

"Half my life," Boyette said with no hesitation, as if he fielded that one five times a day.

Dana scribbled something, and then the desktop keyboard caught her attention. She pecked away with a flourish as if suddenly facing a deadline. Her e-mail to Keith read: "There's a convicted felon out here who says he must see you. Not leaving until. Seems nice enough. Having coffee. Let's wrap things up back there."

Five minutes later the pastor's door opened and a young woman escaped through it. She was wiping her eyes. She was followed by her ex-fiance, who managed both a frown and a smile at the same time. Neither spoke to Dana. Neither noticed Travis Boyette. They disappeared.

When the door slammed shut, Dana said to Boyette, "Just a minute." She hustled into her husband's office for a quick briefing. – The Reverend Keith Schroeder was thirty-five years old, happily married to Dana for ten years now, the father of three boys, all born separately within the span of twenty months. He'd been the senior pastor at St. Mark's for two years; before that, at a church in Kansas City. His father was a retired Lutheran minister, and Keith had never dreamed of being anything else. He was raised in a small town near St. Louis, educated in schools not far from there, and, except for a class trip to New York and a honeymoon in Florida, had never left the Midwest. He was generally admired by his congregation, though there had been issues. The biggest row occurred when he opened up the church's basement to shelter some homeless folks during a blizzard the previous winter. After the snow melted, some of the homeless were reluctant to leave. The city issued a citation for unauthorized use, and there was a slightly embarrassing story in the newspaper.