The aide continued: The woman was a Georgetown University junior, majoring in mechanical engineering. Allison Meade. No criminal record. No known political affiliations. No known past association with the reporter. The bartender says he had never seen her before. Her friends and family are stunned. Her roommate says nothing unusual had happened recently, that she had no idea where Allison was off to that night. No known boyfriend—or girlfriend. No one has an explanation for her presence at the hotel or for any connection she may have had with the shooter. There were five $100 bills in her purse. Her phone records are being checked.

The aide turned a page in the folder and kept reading: Brady Sandlin was a regular at the bar. According to the bartender, she came in, they talked a long time. They left together. He was a drinker, several a night, most nights of the week. Sometimes didn’t make it home. Not doing well at work. A transfer was pending. A neighbor often heard fighting. The wife denies this, but not convincingly. Knows nothing of the girl or the shooter. The gun—apparently handmade, composite plastics, highest of tech. Except, that is, for the metal firing pin. Agents are working through a list of known experts in this field.

“Inside and outside?” Dunne asked.

“Excuse me, Clarence?” Grayton asked.

“Inside and outside the government. I assume that somewhere we have our own people coming up with these sort of devices.”

“We will check everyone we know of,” Grayton said. “Wherever.”

“But—”

Grayton rapped his knuckles on the table. The aide returned to his report: Nothing on the fingerprints registry. The hotel workers—nothing there. His clothes—standard Caldor’s, trying to trace, but not likely. His boots—a knock-off brand popular at Wal-Marts everywhere. No pocket litter. No room litter.

“This fellow was good,” the aide said and closed the folder.

Kelly was twirling a pen in his hand. He started to speak but McGreer interrupted him.

“Fucking bullshit,” he said. “You’re saying, we’ve got nothing. We know nothing. All we know is that this madman was a fucking genius? We can’t do any better? Seems to me he had to be fucking working with someone. Where’d he get a gun like that?”

“Been to a gun show lately?” Grayton asked. “You’ll see shit that most governments don’t have. Hell, last week my secretary showed me an ad for cyanide pills from some mercenary Internet site her son had found.”

“Why can’t we dig up one fucking thing on his identity?” McGreer said.

“Mister Happy,” Grayton said, “obviously was a few eggs short of a dozen. Probably a schizo-paranoid. We’ll get something on him.”

“And you got everyone working on it?” McGreer asked. “CIA? DIA? NSA? Anybody else we don’t fucking know about? Any strange intercepts your boys picked up before or after?”