“Interpol doesn’t work that way.” I’m not going to back down because this is something I know about, and Marino has been duped. “And they don’t hire psychics with crystal balls who can predict cases before the rest of us know about them, last I heard.” I instantly regret saying this because he’ll take it as a slight directed at him, when it’s not. “It’s implausible if not impossible that they could know about a scene and a dead body we’ve not so much as looked at yet.”

“Well I’m not the one who’s pals with the secretary-general,” Marino replies with a sarcastic snap. “Maybe you should call him up and ask him how the hell they found out so damn fast.”

I’ve been to Interpol’s headquarters in Lyon, France, numerous times, and am on friendly terms with the secretary-general Tom Perry, who’s actually American, a Rhodes scholar, a former head of the National Institute of Justice, and a bona fide Renaissance man.

“If need be I will,” I reply reasonably, ignoring Marino’s sting, careful of my tone because I don’t want to argue with him. “How was it left?” I ask.

“The investigator said the Washington headquarters, the NCB, was contacted but didn’t say by who. He said it was protected information, the same shit I use as an excuse all the time. So I didn’t think much about it,” Marino explains, but I can tell he’s thinking about it now.

“This is sounding too much like the nine-one-one complaint,” I reply, in hopes he’ll make the same connections I am.

I’d rather he draw his own conclusion so he doesn’t kill the messenger.

“Yeah, and the guy coughed.”

“Who did?”

“The Interpol guy coughed several times and I remember wondering if he had a cold. And now that I’m thinking about it, the person who left the bogus nine-one-one coughed too.”

Marino has a hard edge to his glumness, and his face is deep red.

“I’m beginning to think that whoever murdered Elisa Vandersteel has anonymously reported his own damn case to Interpol because he wants the entire damn planet to know about it,” he then says above the noise of his car, and I can see his pulse pounding in his neck. “And God only knows who else has been contacted.”

That may be Marino’s biggest worry. But it’s not mine.

THE ANGRIER HE IS the calmer I get.

“There had to be a source,” I persist anyway, because I deal with international cases far more often than Marino does, and I know the routines and the protocols. “Did a police officer contact Interpol? In other words did another cop contact the NCB in Washington about the Cambridge case? Because that shouldn’t be classified.”