He momentarily forgets the coffee and muffin. He types furiously. Finds his way back through the links he’d explored previously. In a moment, he is back in Bulgaria in the 1960s, immersed as if he never left it.

Josepho Litvinov. Zack’s heart jumps.

He dives in deeper, starts digging through more records, uses Lopez’s old police password to get into immigration records, googles the judge’s name in America, and New York district court records, but he already knows:

Josepho Litvinov, at some point in the turmoil of that collapsing judicial system, escaped Bulgaria, made his way to America, studied American civil law, took the New York bar, and sits today in Supreme Court, Civil Term.

The same Josepho Litvinov who sentenced those little child criminals? Who sent them into the circle of abusive foster care, or released them to be recruited again by the gangs, starved to toughen them up, all the stuff he’d been reading about?

Was Demetri Calunius one of those kids? And he wants revenge? Has waited for revenge. Waited until a case went to civil court? To Litvinov’s docket and Litvinov’s courtroom? Is that possible? Has Karloff had the patience for that? Or did Karloff somehow steer the case to that docket and that courtroom?

Zack’s mind is going a thousand miles an hour. He asks himself again: Why not simply have the judge shot at his home? Getting into or out of his car. Safe, anonymous, done all the time to judges and officials, in dozens of countries around the globe.

He can only surmise that Karloff is set on some larger vengeance. Vengeance on the entire justice system. Prosecutors. Attorneys. Clerks. Press. Bystanders. Everyone all at once. A statement of some sort. Hence the bomb.

And surmising more: that the quiet, stealthy, professional, exceedingly patient thug isn’t totally without ego. He needs this statement, after all these years of anonymity. Something like that. Hence the bomb.

Here at the counter in a GreenGirl, Zack may have finally solved the puzzle. Figured out the true target. Not just Josepho Litvinov, but the justice system he represents. The corrupt, inept, dysfunctional justice system itself, as Karloff sees it, gathered conveniently together for him. Means, motive, and opportunity. All together in that courtroom.

But another possibility occurs to Zack. One that helps explain how Karloff continues to operate with apparent impunity year in, year out, and continues to elude the justice system. A possibility that explains Will getting into Joey’s jail cell. One that explains a lot. That Litvinov and Karloff have been functioning as partners from the old country—distant, careful, so no one can put it together—and Litvinov has worked from inside the system to keep Karloff operating. Has Litvinov now somehow crossed him, or has Karloff just come to believe that Litvinov has crossed him, and the relationship must end—with a bang?