“In each of the cities listed in your file there was at least one unexplained disappearance around the date listed—not the vets; other people. You can eliminate the large cities as coincidence, but hundreds of these disappearances were in small towns.”

“People disappear in small towns too. They run away to the city. They drown. You can’t call that a connection.”

“I thought you’d say that, so I ran a probability program to get the odds on all of this being coincidence.”

“So?” Rivera was getting tired of Nailsworth’s dramatics.

“So the odds of someone having a file of the dates and locations of unexplained disappearances over the last thirty years and it being a coincidence is ten to the power of fifty against.”

“Which means what?”

“Which means, about the same odds as you’d have of dragging the wreck of the Titanic out of a trout stream with a fly rod. Which means, Rivera, you have a serious problem.”

“Are you telling me that this suitcase belongs to a serial killer?”

“A very old serial killer. Most serial killers don’t even start until their thirties. If we assume that this one was cooperative enough to start when the Justice Department’s files start, thirty years ago, he’d be over sixty now.”

“Do you think it goes farther back?”

“I picked some dates and locations randomly, going back as far as 1925. I called the libraries in the towns and had them check the newspapers for stories of disappearances. It checked out. Your man could be in his nineties. Or it could be a son carrying on his father’s work.”

“That’s impossible. There must be another explanation. Come on, Nailsworth, I need a bailout here. I can’t pursue an investigation of a geriatric serial killer.”

“Well, it could be an elaborate research project that someone is doing on missing persons, but that doesn’t explain the World War One vets, and it doesn’t explain why the researcher would write the information on matchbook covers and business cards from places that have been out of business for years.”

“I don’t understand.” Rivera felt as if he were stuck in the Spider’s web and was waiting to be eaten.

“It appears that the notes themselves were written as far back as fifty years ago. I could send them to the lab to confirm it if you want.”

“No. Don’t do that.” Rivera didn’t want it confirmed. He wanted it to go away. “Nailsworth, isn’t possible that the computer is making some impossible connections? I mean, it’s programmed to find patterns—maybe it went overboard and made this one up?”

“You know the odds, Sergeant. The computer can’t make anything up; it can only interpret what’s put into it. If I were you, I’d pull my suspect out of holding and find out where he got the suitcase.”