Later, in the afternoon, I put in a call to Dominic Marchi. I was transferred a couple of times before we connected.

I introduced myself, said I was looking into the Jesse Shuttleworth case with the idea of doing a freelance article on it for The Metropolitan.

“I know that name,” Marchi said, referring to mine. “You’re the guy, was in the house with his wife, the crooked development thing, nearly got killed.”

“Yes.”

“Used to cover city hall a few years ago, too, am I right?” I admitted it. “I remember names,” he said. “Faces too. Anyway, I’m not your guy.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m going to put you through to one of the detectives who’s still working that case. Lorenzo Penner. Hang on, I’ll try to transfer you. But if the line goes dead, call back the main switchboard and ask for extension 3120.”

He conducted the transfer successfully. The extension rang twice, then picked up. “Penner.”

I identified myself again, and for a second time admitted that yes, I was the guy in the house with the wife and the killer, et cetera. I told him I had questions about the Shuttleworth murder.

“File’s still open. We’re still workin’ it. What can I tell you. It’s been nearly two years, but we check out every lead we get.”

“There was something on the radio a couple of weeks ago, that Devlin Smythe had been spotted out near Seattle and Vancouver.”

“Yeah, we had some tips, but they didn’t pan out. We don’t have any reason to believe he’s out there any more than any other place.”

“Do you think he could still be in the area?”

“I suppose it’s possible. But he would have had to change his appearance. The sketch we put out was pretty good, we think.”

“Did you ever do up any other sketches, of how he might have looked if he’d done that? Changed his look? Like if he’d grown a beard, say?”

Penner said, “Yeah, we did. But we didn’t release them to the media because really, even your first sketch is still just that, a sketch. Once you start drawing different variations of what’s already an artist’s impression of someone’s recollection, well, you see the problem.”

“Sure, I guess. Did you ever do one as if he’d shaved his head, lost the moustache, anything like that?”

“I think we did.”

“How would you feel about faxing it to me?”

Penner hesitated. “Mr. Walker, do you know something about this?”

“I’m interested,” I said. “I’ve followed it from the beginning, and I’ve been thinking about maybe doing a book on the case.”

“I thought you just wrote science fiction. That’s what it said in the paper.”

“Up to now, yeah.”

“So, you think maybe this Smythe guy, he was an alien?”