Some interviews had been added to Panko’s FBI file after the escape. Prisoners said that during his incarceration he had made a business out of offering inmates who had served their time a chance to buy new identities they could use in the free world. If it was true, his identity card and forgery workshop had not shut down just because he was imprisoned. Maybe the reason the FBI never found it was that it wasn’t anywhere near Chicago, the place where he had been caught. Maybe it had been in Buffalo, the city where he had grown up and where he had connections that meant something. All she had was Weiss’s notation “Buffalo ID,” but if her theory was correct, Buffalo was where one of the twelve would go for a new fake ID. If so, Buffalo was where Viktor Panko was most likely to be.

Leah reviewed Viktor Panko’s history in her mind. In the course of the prison break he killed a guard named Mike Forest, put on his clothes and stole his car, then drove it to his house, robbed the place, raped his wife, Debbie Forest, who was a teacher in the elementary school, and left her there tied up for the next wave of escapees to find. Panko hadn’t been the escapee she had planned to go after next, but he would do.

12

Buffalo Niagara International Airport was not a giant hub. Leah was relieved not to be jostled by crowds. She could stand straight and take full, long-legged steps on the concourse and take the stairs down to the baggage claim without feeling like she had to step around anybody. She noticed a sign that said, “BUFFALO, THE CITY OF GOOD NEIGHBORS,” and thought, “Show me the bad neighbors.” She picked up her suitcase and walked to the car rental.

She drove to downtown Buffalo and checked into a Hyatt hotel for two nights. She didn’t know what part of town she was going to have to explore, and the hotel seemed to be in the middle of things. There was also the fact that being in a big, upscale hotel provided a certain amount of safety and anonymity while she prowled around a new city.

That night Leah used the throwaway cell phone she’d brought from Colorado to make its only call. She dialed the number of Molly Walker, whose daughter Megan had been the wife of the guard Henry Costa. After Albert Weiss had killed Costa at the prison and Costa’s father at home, he had killed Megan too. Leah said to her, “I wanted to tell you that Albert Weiss has been shot to death in Florida. The FBI doesn’t know about it yet, but you deserve to know that Weiss isn’t out there somewhere. He’s dead.”