“Wait a sec,” he says. “The guy that worked as a dishwasher at Bea’s?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the one. He posted some nasty jihad stuff online and we passed it on to Homeland Security, and they basically said, don’t worry, be happy. But I didn’t have anything else to work with so I tailed him last night.”

“Good,” he says. “What happened?”

“I followed him from his house to some kind of secret meet-up at a scrapyard near the Industrial Canal, along with a few other apparent fellow travelers. He even double-backed to avoid being tailed but I managed to keep up with him. Then things got interesting.”

“Interesting how?”

I brush away a lock of hair to reveal the welt on the side of my head from that crowbar strike, still red and swollen. He winces.

“An hour later, Morgan was at my door. Apparently, the feds were at the scrapyard, watching as well. Morgan practically threatened to beat my ass himself if I tried to get close to Farzat again.”

“So what’s Farzat up to?” he asks. “Is he the sleeper cell leader? The mastermind behind the attack?”

I shake my head.

“My gut says he’s low-level, Chief,” I say. “A pawn. During my tail last night, he stopped at a Mickey D’s to make a food run. That’s not what a mastermind does. Farzat is low-level and if the FBI is tailing him, then I need something else, something new.”

“Christ, Caleb, I wish I could help,” he says. “I already gave you everything I know.”

I jerk my thumb behind me, toward the bull pen.

“What about what they know?” I ask. “There’s gotta be some new intel off the streets in the past seventy-two hours in the I & A’s, even if it doesn’t stand out.”

That would be “incident and arrest reports.” Detailed records of department call-ups, witness statements, officer observations. A treasure trove of data, if you know what you’re looking for.

“I went through them this morning,” he says. “Not much stood out, but I’ll take another look.”

He starts flipping through a stack of papers—without a whole lot of enthusiasm.

“A series of small explosions were reported in a parking lot in Versailles,” he says. “Officers found remnants of what appeared to be firecrackers, but forensics is running tests. An attempted break-in at a gun shop in Gentilly. A smashed window, but no firearms were stolen, referred to ATF. Early yesterday morning, an employee reported a man in a suspicious black vehicle casing a riverside industrial park in Pines Village, but the suspect had left the scene when officers arrived. And last night, a unit responded to reports of yelling in the courtyard of a mosque in the South Seventh Ward. But the imam refused the officers entry, saying the situation was being handled internally.”