“None of them booked! Not one! No charges against any of them!”

“Due to ‘a new development’ in the case, it says. Hmmm… what do you think that could mean?”

Jack knew what Abe was getting at: Well-to-do guys, some of them undoubtedly with a connection or two in City Hall or Police Plaza, get a few strings pulled and sail home as if nothing had happened.

And one of them was Robert B. “Porky” Butler. The bastard who’d damn near killed Vicky hadn’t spent a single night in jail—wasn’t even being charged with anything.

“I’ve got to make a call.”

Abe didn’t offer his phone and Jack wouldn’t have used it if he had. Not with so many people using caller ID these days.

Jack had retrieved Butler’s phone number from his wallet by the time he reached the pay phone on the corner. He plunked in a few coins and was soon connected to the home of Robert B. Butler, alumnus of St. Barnabas Prep and attacker of little girls on museum steps.

When the maid or whoever it was answered the phone and asked in West African-accented English who was calling, he made up a name—Jack Gavin.

“I’m an attorney for the St. Barnabas Prep Alumni Association. I’d like to talk to Mr. Butler about the unfortunate incident Wednesday night and his injury. How is he doing, by the way?”

“Very well,” the woman said.

“Is he in a lot of pain?”

“Hardly any.”

Damn. He felt his jaw muscles tense. Have to fix that.

“May I speak to him a minute?”

“He’s with a physical therapist right now. Let me check.”

A minute later she was back. “Mr. Butler can’t come to the phone right now, but he’ll be glad to see you anytime this afternoon.”

Keeping his voice even and professionally pleasant, Jack said he’d be over around one.

Scaring Vicky, endangering her life, and then skating on any charges…

He and Mr. Butler were going to have a little heart-to-heart.

4

Nadia sat in the sealed, dimly lit room and stared at the 3-D image floating in the air before her. The first thing she’d done upon reaching the GEM Basic lab was light up the imager and call up the Loki structure from memory: the Loki molecule—or rather its degraded form, which she’d begun thinking of as Loki-2—had appeared.

Changed, just like her printout.

OK. That could be explained by someone tampering with the imager’s memory. But she had an ace up her sleeve. Before leaving yesterday she had scraped a few particles of the original Loki sample from the imager.

She removed the stoppered test tube from her pocket and dumped the grains into the sample receptacle. Something about the color… she couldn’t say exactly what, but it wasn’t right. She sat back and waited, then punched up the image. Her mouth went dry as the same damn molecule took shape before her.

The dry lab lightened, then darkened again as the door behind her opened and closed.