“He’s not the Dancer anymore,” Cooper said. “He’s Stephen Robert Kall. Thirty-six. Present whereabouts unknown. LKA, fifteen years ago, an RFD number in Cumberland, West Virginia.”

Such a mundane name. Rhyme found himself experiencing an unreasonable tug of disappointment. Kall.

“Why was he on file?”

Cooper read. “What he was telling Jodie . . . He did twenty months for manslaughter when he was fifteen.” A faint laugh. “Apparently the Dancer didn’t bother to tell him that the victim was his stepfather.”

“Stepfather, hm?”

“Tough reading,” Cooper said, poring over the screen. “Man.”

“What?” Sachs asked.

“Notes from the police reports. Here’s what happened. Seems like there’d been a history of domestic disputes. The boy’s mother was dying of cancer and her husband—Kall’s stepfather—hit her for doing something or other. She fell and broke her arm. She died a few months later and Kall got it into his head her death was Lou’s fault.”

Cooper continued to read and he actually seemed to shiver. “Want to hear what happened?”

“Go ahead.”

“A couple months after she died Stephen and his stepfather were out hunting. The kid knocked him out, stripped him naked, and tied him to a tree in the woods. Left him there for a few days. Just wanted to scare him, his lawyer said. By the time the police got to him, well, let’s just say the infestation was pretty bad. Maggots, mostly. Lived for two days after that. Delirious.”

“Man,” Sachs whispered.

“When they found him, the boy was there, just sitting next to him, watching.” Cooper read, “ ‘The suspect surrendered without resistance. Appeared in a disoriented state. Kept repeating, “Anything can kill, anything can kill . . . ” Taken to Cumberland Regional Mental Health Center for evaluation.’ ”

The psychological makeup didn’t interest Rhyme very much. He trusted his forensic profiling techniques far more than the behavioral law enforcers’. He knew the Dancer was a sociopath—all professional killers were—and the sorrows and traumas that made him who he was weren’t much help at the moment. He asked, “Picture?”

“No pictures in juvie.”

“Right. Hell. How ’bout military?”

“Nope. But there’s another conviction,” Cooper said. “He tried to enlist in the marines but the psych profile got him rejected. He hounded the recruiting officers in D.C. for a couple months and finally assaulted a sergeant. Pled a suspended.”

Sellitto said, “We’ll run the name through FINEST, the alias list, and NCIC.”

“Have Dellray get some people to Cumberland and start tracing him,” Rhyme ordered.

“Will do.”

Stephen Kall . . .

After all these years. It was like finally visiting a shrine you’d read about all your life but never seen in person.

There was a startling knock on the door. Sachs and Sellitto’s hands both twitched impulsively toward their weapons.

But the visitor was just one of the cops from downstairs. He had a large satchel. “Delivery.”

“What is it?” Rhyme asked.

“A trooper from Illinois. Said this was from Du-Page County Fire and Rescue.”