“Abigail Trant told me that he can’t stand the notion of being bested. I saw it—or heard it—yesterday: he was furious when Alex got the tape from him. He hurt her to get it back: it wasn’t a game to him. There’s no telling what he might do.”

“Think about it overnight,” Father Lou suggested. “Offer a special intention at mass in the morning. Do some manual labor in the crypt. Nothing like hard work to clear the mind.”

So Morrell and I spent the rest of the morning in the chamber underneath the altar, shifting old boxes of hymnals that Father Lou had decided the church would never use again, digging out the costumes the children wore in their Christmas pageant, and uncovering an actual reliquary that the Italians who built the church a hundred years ago had brought with them. This caused an explosion of nervous ribaldry from the boys working with us.

I hadn’t resolved matters by three, when Father Lou called a halt to our work so that the boys could attend the parish picnic. Nor did a nap while Morrell joined them in a baseball game in Humboldt Park bring any special vision. I still wanted to call Baladine and tell him I had his videotapes: something like a childhood taunt—come catch me if you can.

The problem remained where I would be when I issued the taunt. At the church I endangered Father Lou and his schoolchildren. In my own home there were Mr. Contreras and the other tenants. Tessa’s studio ruled out using my office. And he might be so berserk that he’d go after someone like Lotty out of sheer terrorism, even if I wasn’t near her.

All evening long, as Morrell and I worked on my presentation—preparing the photographs in order, figuring out what video sequences to show of Lemour in action against me, where to put Trant and Frenada with Baladine at his pool, discussing whether to use any of the Aguinaldo footage, typing up camera–ready copy in St. Remigio’s school computer lab—Morrell and I debated the question. At midnight, when Morrell left with the material—he was taking it to the Unblinking Eye in the morning for production—I was no nearer a solution.

I went to bed and fell into a restless sleep. It was only an hour later when Father Lou shook me awake. “Old man’s at the door with a kid and some dogs. Says he’s your neighbor.”

“My neighbor?” I pulled on my jeans and jammed my feet into my running shoes and sprinted down the hall, Father Lou following on his rolling boxer’s gait.

I looked through the peephole at the figures on the doorstep. Mr. Contreras. With Mitch, Peppy, and Robbie Baladine. My heart sank, but I told Father Lou it was, in fact, my neighbor.