I turned to the DuPage attorney. “Meanwhile, the net gain for the night was that Schorr’s Arab-hunting tigers shot a local teenager. I had nothing to do with that, and I don’t think my hanging around Larchmont while Schorr figured out what spin to put on that catastrophe would have been at all helpful.”

No one said anything for a minute or two. I shifted in my chair, stretching my neck and shoulders.

“We need to reopen the investigation into Whitby’s death. I don’t believe in coincidences, a suspect hiding in a house, a man dead outside the house, those two have to be connected.” Bobby spoke with the authority of his forty years on the force. He looked at the DuPage attorney. “Orville, can you get your pathologist to do a full autopsy, including a tox screen on Marcus Whitby?”

“We released the body to the family yesterday,” Orville said. “I’ll see if they’ve taken it back to Atlanta.”

Bobby rubbed his balding temples. “I hope to Christ they haven’t: I don’t want to deal with an exhumation. Or with one more jurisdiction than the three already involved.”

I didn’t reveal that Bryant Vishnikov had already started a private

autopsy: I was hoping Bryant could finish and give me the results before the law found out he had the body.

“We can expedite that if necessary,” the U.S. attorney said. “Meanwhile, what about Warshawski here? We never got an account of how she spent those missing hours. Is she capable of hiding a wanted man?”

“You searched my home,” I protested. “I’ll be glad to take you to my office if we’re done here. You can look in the trunk of my car.”

“We had someone at your office this afternoon,” Derek said. “And we’re checking with your friends.”

I tried to control the rising tide of fury in me. “Did you bastards help yourself to my Rolodex? Did you take files? Where the hell do you get off, harassing a citizen without probable cause.”

“We don’t need probable cause,” the U.S. attorney snapped. “We have you and a suspect both missing from the same house on the same night. Like the captain said, no coincidences here. You might have thought he was an innocent kid and given him a boost out the window with you. But now that you know he’s a wanted man, we expect you to cooperate.”

“I am cooperating,” I shouted, leaning across the table. “Vicki, watch yourself,” Bobby warned me.

I shut my eyes and took a breath, counting backward from ten in Italian as I exhaled. “I am cooperating,” I said in a calmer voice. “Now you guys give some back. What’s he done? How do we know he’s a terrorist? Tell me that and I’ll get more excited about your questions.”

Derek and the U.S. attorney exchanged glances; the attorney spoke. “He stayed on in this country without a visa, and without a sponsor, after his uncle died. He goes to an Uptown mosque where they preach some pretty radical rhetoric. And he went underground when we tried to bring him in for questioning.”