“I’ve already located fairly recent photos of her, plenty of them on various websites, including a few taken of her while she was working in Alberta this summer,” Lucy says from my office bathroom, as we continue to talk loudly enough to hear each other. “But obviously we can’t do a proper one-to-one. I have to adjust for size, angle it just right, but the good news is the overlay is at least helpful because she’s definitely not a rule-out.”

Lucy explains that she’s been comparing the jpg with photographs of Emma Shubert, attempting to overlay images of her ears with the severed one. We can’t rule out a match, but unfortunately a visual comparison isn’t conclusive, either.

“I’ll send you the file,” she adds. “You can show the comparisons to whoever comes to your meeting.”

“Will you be back around five?”

“I wasn’t aware I was invited.” Her voice sounds over the noise of another espresso brewing.

“Of course you’re invited.”

“Along with who else?”

“A couple of agents from the Boston Field Office. Douglas, I think.” I refer to Douglas Burke, a female FBI agent with a confusing name. “I’m not sure who else. And Benton.”

“I’m not available,” Lucy answers. “Not if she’s coming.”

“It really would be helpful if you’d be there. What’s wrong with Douglas?”

“Something is. No, thanks.”

Banished by both the FBI and ATF in her earlier law-enforcement life, my niece’s feelings about the Feds generally aren’t charitable, which can be awkward for me, since my husband is an FBI criminal intelligence analyst, or profiler, and I have a special reservist status with the Department of Defense. Both of us are part of what she resents and disrespects, the Feds who rejected her, who fired her.

Simply put, Lucy Farinelli, my only niece, whom I’ve raised like a daughter, believes rules are for lesser mortals. She was a rogue federal agent and is a rogue technical genius, and my life would feel shattered and vacant if she wasn’t around.

“We’re dealing with somebody pretty clever.” She emerges from the bathroom carrying two shot glasses and a small steel pitcher.

“That’s not a good sign,” I reply. “You rarely think anyone is clever.”

“Someone cunning who is smart on some fronts but too smug to realize how much he doesn’t know.”

She pours espresso, strong and sweet, with a light brown foamy layer on top, coladas that became a habit when she was with ATF’s Miami Field Office years ago, before she got into a bad shooting.

“The address BLiDedwood is rather obvious.” She sets a shot glass and the pitcher next to my keyboard.

“It’s not obvious to me.”

“Billy Deadwood.” She spells it out.

“Okay.” I let that sink in. “For my benefit?”

Lucy comes around to my side of the desk and taps the granite countertop behind me, waking up the two video displays on it. Screensavers materialize in vivid red, gold, and blue, the CFC’s and AFME’s crests side by side, a caduceus and scales of justice, and playing cards, pairs of aces and eights, the dead man’s hand that Wild Bill Hickok supposedly was holding during a poker game when he was shot to death in 1876.