“Why do you say that?”

“Well, they were lucky they snagged the kid at all. The nun who answered the door was new, very young, an import from France who spoke little English, and if the mother superior—away on an errand—had been there to go to the door that morning? That damn woman would never have pulled off her impersonation.”

“Think so, huh?”

He nodded curtly. “When the nun offered to show her the way to the chapel, to pray for her sick sibling? The dumbo dame said, ‘No thanks, I’m not a Catholic.’ Any other nun in that facility would’ve known that Mrs. Greenlease was a Catholic, meaning her sister would be, too!”

I let some air out. “That makes the woman a dope. But maybe the guy’s got more on the ball.”

“You think so, Heller? His first ransom note? He got the address wrong.”

They drove me down Verona Road, past a trio of cars with press cards in the rear windows; a TV camera truck was pulled over there, too. A female reporter was using a phone in a box strapped to a tree, a little stool next to it for her purse and whatnot. United Press International had installed the phone, Grapp said.

The press had a good view of the house from there. Of course, “house” didn’t cover it. An imposing two-story multi-gabled structure with slate roofs and a cream-and-brown fieldstone facade awaited us when we pulled in the half-circle drive; it was almost a castle and not quite a church, and wide enough to be a hotel.

The FBI dropped me off and I toted my overnight bag to the gabled entrance. I must have been watched from a window, because the door opened after I’d barely rung the bell. In his mid-thirties, my host was of average height and weight with a squared-off head and a rounded jaw, his forehead so high it was like his features had slipped down too far on his oval face. His hair was dark and short, his eyes dark and bloodshot, his dark suit and tie unusual for a Sunday afternoon, unless an evening church service was in the mix. Yet somehow he still seemed disheveled.

“You must be Mr. Heller,” he said, and stepped aside and gestured me in. He took my coat, hat and bag and set them on a chair by a mirror.

Then I was in a world of big rooms with dark woodwork, pale plaster walls, dark wood floors, tall leaded-glass windows; along the left wall, a stairway rose with a carved lion for a newel post. The interior seemed oddly at war with itself—everything Prairie-style and spare but for carved touches, as if the house couldn’t decide if it was a mission or a manor.

Few lights were on. This was a somber place—not necessarily always so, but right now the inhabitants could not quite acknowledge light, which even the tall windows seemed reluctant to admit.

He was about to lead me deeper into the house when he froze, remembering himself, and turned and said, with a stiff nod, “Paul Greenlease.”