Richie grinned back. “Fair enough. He asks for it, but.”

“He does. You don’t have to answer.”

He put a hand over his heart. “I’ll be good. Honest. What’s the plan for today?”

I went back to my stack of paper. “Today we’re going to find out why Conor Brennan did what he did. He’s entitled to his eight hours’ sleep, so we can’t touch him for another couple of hours, minimum. I’m in no hurry. I say we let him wait for us this time.” Once they’re under arrest, you have up to three days before you have to charge them or cut them loose, and I was planning on taking as much of that as we needed. It’s only on TV that the story ends when the confession’s on tape and the handcuffs click home. In a real investigation, that click is just the beginning. What it changes is this: your suspect goes tumbling from the top of your priority list straight to the bottom. You can go for days without seeing his face, once you have him where you want him. All you care about is building the walls to keep him there.

I said, “We’ll go talk to O’Kelly now. Then we’ll have chats with the floaters, have them start working through Conor’s life and the Spains’. They need to find an overlap point where the Spains might have caught his eye—a party they all went to, a company that hired Pat to do their recruitment and Conor to do their web design. He said he’s been stalking them for about a year now, which means we want the floaters focusing on 2008. Meanwhile, you and I are going to search Conor’s gaff, see if we can fill in a few cracks—pick up anything that might give us a motive, anything that might point us towards how he got hold of either the Spains or the keys.”

Richie was fingering a nick on his jaw—the shave had been unnecessary, but at least it showed the right attitude—and trying to find the right way to ask. I said, “Don’t worry: I’m not ignoring Pat Spain. I’ve got something to show you.”

I switched on my computer and pulled up Wildwatcher. Richie scooted his chair across so he could read over my shoulder.

“Huh,” he said, when he was finished. “I guess that could maybe explain the video monitors. You get people like that, yeah? People who get way into watching animals. Set up whole CCTV systems to keep an eye on the foxes in their back garden.”

“Like watching Big Brother, only with smarter contestants. I don’t see that happening here, though. Pat’s obviously worried about the animal coming into contact with the kids; he wouldn’t encourage it just for kicks. He sounds like he just wants to get rid of the thing.”

“He does, yeah. Long way from that to half a dozen cameras.” A silence, while Richie reread. “The holes in the walls,” he said, carefully. “It’d take a pretty big animal to make those.”