I was angry too. I needed so much coffee to keep me going that I’d knocked over my tower at twenty-four. I hadn’t even threatened the record. And worse, young reporter Jeannie Lee was at a solid seventeen and looking way too confident. I was working on a feature about people who had narrowly avoided being at one of the sites for some insignificant reason, the standard “fate is the hunter” piece, when Cher interrupted. “Boss, there’s a red call for you.” Red calls are those people calling on the very private number I give only to my best burrowed sources.

It was a former future brother-in-law currently working on the U.S. Marshals Service New York/New Jersey Joint Fugitive Task Force. I had dated this man’s sister when she and I were stationed in Europe. We’d sung a lot of songs together. Deep Quote, as I referred to him, had been Air Force, then signed up with the feds. “Hey, good buddy,” I said. “How’s the captain?” His sister.

“Big news. She’s promoted and pregnant.”

“Whoa.” That set me back for an instant. Andie was tough and beautiful. She had been sitting by my bed when I’d come out of an induced coma in Landstuhl. She had stayed there through as much of my rehab as her duties allowed. But when shove came to push, literally, my first chair proved too much for her. I couldn’t keep up where she intended to go. She was honest about it. No hard feelings. I think her brother has always felt more guilty about it than either one of us, and these occasional calls were his way of expressing that.

“They got something,” he said in the requisite whisper, snapping me back.

I turned on Chair’s built-in recorder. “Who’s got what?”

“The FBI lab. Nobody’s saying if it’s anything yet. But about twenty minutes ago Justice issued an official warning telling us not to say anything.” They had something.

“About?”

“One of our people bagged part of a hand in the tunnel last night. He picked it up a few feet away from an automatic weapon that was used in the attack.”

“You guys are fucking amazing,” I said, and meant it. These people are incredible. The FBI had broken the Lockerbie bombing after finding a piece of a timer about the size of a thumbnail in a fifty-mile crime scene. As I listened, I sent Howie a text telling him we had a break. I saw him in his office reading the text, then turning and looking at me quizzically. I nodded.

The recovered body part consisted of most of a right palm from the wrist, three complete fingers, and one partial. The partial was the trigger finger. The thumb was gone. It had tested positive for gunshot residue, indicating that this hand had been in close proximity when the gun was fired. They had run prints from the remaining fingers through AFIS, the bureau’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System. He paused, waiting for me to ask.