Someone had hacked into SEC files that are maintained as a public record. The fake identity used on the card was obtained and the information submitted to a company in Brampton, Ontario, where the card was made. A fake driver's license to match was then obtained from a web-site, Photoidcards.com. A photograph had been submitted, and I was staring at a copy of it right now.

White, male, nothing memorable about the face, which possibly had been changed with makeup and costume props anyway.

The FBI was still checking to see what else they could find. It was a start, though. Somebody had gone to some trouble to rent a car in Fayetteville. We had somebody's picture, thanks to Abby DiGarbo.

On the way over to Sergeant Cooper's house I told Sampson about the rent-a-car scam. Sampson was drinking steaming hot coffee and eating an eclair from Dunkin' Donuts, but I could tell he was appreciative in his own way. “That's why I asked you in on this,” he said.

Cooper lived in a small, two-bedroom apartment in Spring Lake, north of Fort Bragg. He had one side of a redbrick duplex. I saw a sign: Caution, Attack Cat!

“He has a sense of humor,” Sampson said. “At least he did.”

We had been given a key to open the front door. Sampson and I stepped inside. The house still smelled like cat after all this time.

“It's good not having anybody in the way for a change,” I said to John. “No other police, no FBI.”

“Killer's been caught,” Sampson said. “Case is closed. Nobody cares but us now. And Cooper sitting there on death row. The clock's ticking.”

Apparently, nobody had figured out what to do about the apartment yet. Ellis Cooper had felt secure enough in his posting that he'd bought the place a few years back.

When he retired, he'd planned to stay in Spring Lake.

The table in the front hallway contained photos of Cooper posing with friends in several locations: what looked like Hawaii, the south of France, maybe the Caribbean. There was also a more recent photo of Cooper hugging a woman who was probably his girlfriend, Marcia. The furniture in the apartment was comfortable-looking, not expensive, and appeared to have been bought at stores like Target and Pier One.

Sampson called me over to one of the windows. “It's been shimmied. The place was broken into. Could be how somebody got Cooper's knife, then returned it. If that's what happened. Coop said he left it in the closet of his bedroom. The police say the knife was in the attic.”

We went into the bedroom next. The walls were covered with more photographs, mostly from places where Cooper had been posted: Vietnam, Panama, Bosnia. A Yukon Mighty Weightlifting Bench was lined up near one wall. Near the closet was an ironing board. We searched through the closet. The clothes were mostly military but there were civilian threads, too.

“What do you make of this stuff?” I asked Sampson. I pointed to a table with a grouping of odd knickknacks that looked like they came from Southeast Asia.