“Okay, then,” said Mayor Donaldson. “Since we’ve dispensed with all of the routine issues before the council, and the lieutenant is here, the agenda lets us turn to the police issues. We’ve all read the FBI’s report we received at our May 12 meeting. As far as I can tell, they have made no progress in two years locating, much less arresting, any of the twelve men who caused, planned, and directed the July 19 prison break. I’d like to ask the lieutenant this. Is the destruction of Weldonville now a cold case?”

“Nobody is saying that,” Leah said. “But in my experience, no law enforcement agency, even the FBI, keeps hundreds of people working on a case after the public’s safety is no longer threatened and there haven’t been new leads for them to follow. There will be a few agents keeping the files current. If there are tips from informants or chance sightings, they’ll act. But barring that, our case is a piece of history. One big indicator is that the expert special agents in charge that we worked with at first have all been reassigned.”

The mayor said, “Since our May meeting each of us has been making quiet inquiries of our districts and pulling on the threads each of us has out in the community—neighbors, relatives, close friends, members of our clubs and churches. Mark Stein has completed a list of the people we’ve consulted and what they said. Mark, can you summarize for the lieutenant what we’ve learned?”

Mark Stein was a tall man with dark hair thinning at the top of his head. He was still dressed in the white shirt and tie he’d worn in his insurance company office all day. It was wrinkled and a little gray, and that was a sad sight to Leah. His wife had died during the prison escape two years ago, or she would have made him put on a clean shirt.

He said, “We’ve only got about three thousand citizens left on the voting rolls, but we’ve talked to three thousand four hundred and eight. Once you sort out the doubles and the triples, it looks like we got to about everybody in town who is young enough to be of sound mind and well enough to chat with his councilperson. There’s pretty much a consensus.”