‘If CAIN calls users back to verify their legitimacy, why hasn’t Gault’s telephone number shown up on ERF’s monthly bill?’

‘That’s part of the virus. It instructs the system on callbacks to bill the call to an AT&T credit card. So the calls never showed up on the Bureau’s bills. They show up on the bills of Gault’s father.’

‘Amazing,’ I said.

‘Apparently, Gault has his father’s phone card number and PIN.’

‘Does he know his son has been using it?’

A telephone rang. She picked it up.

FROM POTTER’S FIELD

317

‘Yes, sir,’ she said. ‘I know. We were close. Certainly, I will bring you the printouts immediately.’ She hung up.

‘I don’t think anyone’s told him,’ Lucy said.

‘No one here has told Peyton Gault.’

‘Right. That was Mr. Wesley.’

‘I must talk to him,’ I said. ‘Do you trust me to take him the printouts?’

Lucy was staring at the monitor again. The screen saver had come back on, and brilliant triangles were slowly slipping through and around each other like geometry making love.

‘You can take it to him,’ she said, and she typed Prodigy. ‘Before you go … Wow, you’ve got new mail waiting.’

‘How much?’ I moved closer to her.

‘Oops. Just one so far.’ She opened it.

It read: What is gold foil?

Lucy said, ‘We’re probably going to get a lot of that.’

Sally was working the front desk again when I walked into the Academy lobby, and she let me through without the bother of registration and a visitors’ pass. I walked with purpose down the long tan corridor, around the post office and through the gun cleaning room. I will always love the smell of Hoppes Number 9.

A lone man in fatigues was blasting compressed air into the barrel of a rifle. Rows of long black countertops were bare and perfectly clean, and I thought of years of classes, of the men and women I had seen, and of the times I had stood at a counter cleaning my own handgun. I had watched new agents come and go. I had watched them run, fight, shoot and sweat. I had taught them and cared.

I pressed the elevator button, boarded and went down to the lower level. Several profilers were in their offices, and they nodded at me as I walked by. Wesley’s secretary was on vacation, and I passed her desk and knocked on the shut door. I heard Wesley’s voice. A chair moved and he walked to the door and pulled it open.

‘Hello,’ he said, surprised.

‘These are the printouts you wanted from Lucy.’ I handed them over.

‘Thank you. Please come in.’ He slipped on reading glasses, reviewing the message Gault had sent.

His jacket was off, a white shirt wrinkled around woven leather suspenders. Wesley had been perspiring and he needed to shave.

‘Have you lost more weight?’ I asked.