“The badge was. We don’t know what else Conor could’ve left.”

“True enough. But the more little treats he left Jenny, the more it points to him still being mad about her. That’s evidence against Conor. Not against Pat.”

“Except Jenny must’ve known who left that badge. Must’ve. How many people would own a JoJo’s badge, and know to leave it for her? And she kept it. Whatever Conor felt about her, it wasn’t just one-way. It’s not like she was binning his presents and he flipped out. Pat’s the one who would’ve flipped over what was going on.”

I said, “As soon as Jenny’s doctor cuts down the painkillers, we’ll need to have another chat with her, find out exactly what the story was there. She may not remember the other night, but she can’t have forgotten that badge.” I thought of Jenny’s ripped face, her wrecked eyes, and caught myself hoping that Fiona would convince the doctors to keep her doped up to the gills for a good long time.

Richie flipped pages faster. He asked, “What about Conor? Were you planning on having another go at him tonight?”

I checked my watch. It was past eight o’clock. “No. Let him stew a while longer. Tomorrow we’ll hit him with everything we’ve got.”

That made Richie’s knees start jiggling, under his desk. He said, “I’ll give Kieran a ring before I head. See if he’s come up with anything new on Pat’s websites.”

He was already reaching for the phone. “I’ll do it,” I said. “You do the report for the Super.” I shoved it onto his desk before he could argue.

Even at that hour, Kieran actually sounded pleased to hear from me. “Kemosabe! I was just thinking about you. One question: am I da man, or am I totally da man?”

For a second I thought matching the jaunty tone would take more than I had left. “I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re totally da man. What have you got for me?”

“You would be correctamundo. To be honest, when I got your e-mail I was like, yeah, right, even if your guy did take his weasel issues somewhere else, the web’s a big place; how am I meant to find him, Google ‘weasel’? But remember that partial URL the recovery software tossed up? The home-and-garden forum?”

“Yeah.” I gave Richie the thumbs-up. He left the form on his desk and scooted his chair over to mine.

“We checked it out back when I first told you about it: went through the last two months of posts. Closest we got to drama was a couple of guys on the DIY board having a dick-measuring contest about drywalling, whatever the hell that is, which frankly I don’t actually care? No one was harassing anyone—there’s a decent chance this could be the most boring forum ever—no one matched your victim and no one was called anything like sparklyjenny, so we moved on. But then I got your e-mail and I had a brainwave: we could’ve been looking for the wrong thing, at the wrong time.”