All right, let’s start over. He went through the chart once more. The trailer key had been identified. The yeast would be from the mill. The sugar, from food or juice. The camphene, from an old lamp. The paint, from the building where she was being held. The kerosene, from the boat. The alcohol could be from anything. The dirt in the boy’s cuffs? It exhibited no particularly unique characteristics and was—

Wait… the dirt.

Rhyme recalled that he and Ben had run the density gradient test of the dirt sampled from in the shoes and car-floor mats of county workers yesterday morning. He’d ordered Thom to photograph each tube and note which employee it had come from on the back of the Polaroid.

“Ben?”

“What?”

“Run the dirt you found in Garrett’s cuffs at the mill through the density gradient unit.”

After the dirt had settled in the tube the young man said, “Got the results.”

“Compare it with the pictures of the samples you did yesterday morning.”

“Good, good.” The young zoologist nodded, impressed with the idea. He flipped through the Polaroids, paused. “I’ve got a match!” he said. “One’s almost identical.”

The zoologist was no longer hesitant to give opinions, Rhyme was pleased to note. And he wasn’t hedging either.

“Whose shoes was it from?”

Ben looked at the notation on the back of the Polaroid. “Frank Heller. He works in the Department of Public Works.”

“Is he in yet?”

“I’ll find out.” Ben vanished. He returned a few minutes later, accompanied by a heavyset man in a white short-sleeved shirt. He eyed Rhyme uncertainly. “You’re the fellow from yesterday. Making us clean off our shoes.” He laughed but the sound was uneasy.

“Frank, we need your help again,” Rhyme explained. “Some of the dirt on your shoes matches dirt we found on the suspect’s clothes.”

“The boy who kidnapped those girls?” Frank muttered, red-faced and looking completely guilty.

“That’s right. Which means he might—this is pretty far-fetched but he might—have the girl maybe two or three miles from where you live. Could you point out on the map exactly where that is?”

He said, “It’s not like I’m a suspect or anything, am I?”

“No, Frank. Not at all.”

“’Cause I got people’ll vouch for me. I’m with the wife every night. We watch TV. Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. Like clockwork. Then WWF. Sometimes her brother comes over. I mean, he owes me money but he’d back me up even if he didn’t.”

“That’s okay,” Ben reassured him. “We just need to know where you live. On that map there.”

“That’d be here.” He stepped to the wall and touched a spot. Location D-3. It was north of the Paquenoke—north of the trailer where Jesse had been killed. There were a number of small roads in the area but no towns marked.