Yet she felt so twisted inside. She kept fantasizing about walking in on Tony and his lover and throwing a newspaper on his bare chest with her name in the headline, and a picture of her and the Acid Man below it. Then she would scream at her husband. “See! I caught this bastard! I saved at least a dozen lives! This is who I am and what I am is important! How dare you fuck another woman!”

She was behaving like a child. She had to watch that. She had always been impulsive. She promised herself she would not attempt to arrest the serial killer on her own. That did not mean she was ready to go to Slate. She needed to take her theory further. That was not bullshit, but a legitimate excuse to delay contacting Slate.

Kelly had already checked on Michael Grander via her connections at the L.A. office and learned that the guy was a graduate student at Ohio State University. He was getting his Ph.D. in mythology. When she arrived at the campus, she would speak to his professors and learn what she could about him.

Then she would call Slate. He would be annoyed, but impressed.

She did not contact Michael Grander’s teachers beforehand. Bored academic staffers—she knew the type. They would start gossiping. It would get to Mr. Grander and he would be on the next plane to Rio. In person, it would be a lot easier to explain the delicate nature of her investigation.

From LAX, she flew to Cincinnati and rented a car and drove to Columbus. Her sleep deficit was a yawning chasm. Coffee fueled her all the way to the capital city. For the time being, she had given up calling home. It was odd, but she felt as if she were in the morally inferior position to her husband. And here he was cheating on her. She felt she had to prove something to him to make them equals again.

“No,” she said, struggling to stay awake behind the wheel of her rental. “I just want to hurt him.”

Kelly went straight to the English department head—Professor James Shelly. Elderly but impeccably dressed, he reminded her of that old breed of scholars that had vanished with the advent of a middle class and color movies. Definitely very old school, but he had a pleasant smile, and she was not above flirting to get what she wanted.

He was impressed to meet an FBI agent that was as well-educated as himself. They gossiped about her alma maters—Princeton and Yale, lovely campuses he said—before she turned the conversation to business. She explained the FBI was investigating Michael Grander in connection with a crime, but did not say what the crime was. The professor seemed to appreciate the delicate nature of her visit. He suggested she talk to Professor Gene Banks, Michael Grander’s faculty adviser.

“That’s exactly who I want,” she said. “The man closest to him.”