“I passed the test?” Stride asked.

“Oh, I still wasn’t entirely sure whether you would surround me with a posse of Chicago’s finest. But I figured that the boy who stood up to me by the railroad tracks would consider it a point of pride to meet me alone. You haven’t changed, Lieutenant.”

Stride hated to admit it, but Jones was right. It would have been smarter to bring backup, but he had wound up making the same arrogant mistake he had made as a boy. Taking on this man by himself. “If I wanted to have you arrested, I could,” he said.

“You could, but I hope enough time has passed that you now believe again what you believed as a boy. I didn’t kill anyone. Wisdom comes with innocence and experience, Lieutenant, and it’s only the in-between time that causes us problems.”

Jones sat down on the opposite row of chairs and laid his fists on his knees. Stride took an unopened bottle of spring water by the cap from the seat next to him. He handed it to Jones, who grabbed it in his big hand.

“You must be dry after your flight,” Stride said.

“In fact, I am.” Jones undid the cap and drank down half the bottle. He recapped it and then said, “May I keep this until I finish it, or would you like your fingerprint sample back right now?”

Stride actually felt himself blushing. “Keep it,” he snapped.

Jones grinned and put the bottle on the floor.

“Why contact me after so long?” Stride asked. “Do you know about Tish Verdure and the book she’s writing about the murder?”

“I still have friends in the Rasta community,” Jones explained. “As you know, there was an article in the Duluth paper recently that rehashed the crime and mentioned that a Rasta vagrant was a suspect. It made the rounds on our Web sites, and someone finally sent me the article with a note that said, ‘Was this you?’ ”

“But why come forward now? I assumed you were dead. You were safe.”

“I thought long and hard, believe me, but I decided it was time to put that part of the past behind me. I confess I was also a little curious about you. The article mentioned that you were a Duluth detective, and I was surprised to find out that you were the same boy I confronted that night.”

“I looked up Dandelion Men on the Web,” Stride said. “You didn’t mention what happened to you in Duluth.”

Jones eased back into the chair. His girth filled the space, and his waist squeezed against the armrests. “Oh, I wanted to talk about Duluth, but I knew that people were still looking for me. It’s like being a bear loose in the city streets. They don’t just put it in a cage when they find it. They shoot it dead.”

“The cop who shot at you back then,” Stride said. “He was dirty. I thought you should know.”