She smiled when he ignored her comment, reading through the article again. “The information contained in this news item is actually quite promising. This ‘Baby Mia,’ she of the degenerative brain disease. Her remains may be viewed by some as magical or charmed due to how long she lived past her life expectancy. This article doesn’t give her date of birth, but the photograph of the headstone does, and if you subtract it from the date of her death, she lived for exactly seven hundred and seventy-seven days. A numerologist would consider that sum quite fortunate indeed.”

“Seven-seven-seven?” said Odessa, impressed by the speed of his arithmetic.

Hugo Blackwood stood, his tea unfinished, ready to leave. His height surprised her, yet he was trim in a way most men of modern diets are not. Vegetarian, she thought. “We must speak with the resurrectionists.”

“The who?”

“The men who exhumed this child’s remains, likely for a fee. The article references some arrests. You need to facilitate an interview for me with one or both of the men.”

“Facilitate?” she said. “Hold on. I don’t ‘facilitate’ anything. If anything, if you have a question about the criminal investigation, we should talk to the detectives who worked the case. Especially if we have information that could potentially further implicate the suspect.”

“I see,” he said. “Is that what you did when you sent me your letter?”

Odessa stood, too. She was tired of being called out by this strange man who had broken into her apartment. “Agent Solomon suggested that I contact you.”

“And you were susceptible to suggestion for two reasons,” Blackwood said. “You wanted answers to questions you had. And it is personal for you. So you took the extraordinary step of corresponding with me. How can I make you understand? If this were merely a criminal investigation, you would not require my services. This is more than a criminal investigation. And you know it.”

Persuasive yet still troubling. “It sounds like, legally, I should step back now and leave you to whatever it is you do. Is that what Agent Solomon did for you?” She pressed him further. “So you would help him with his investigations.”

“Wrong, I’m afraid. He assisted me.”

“I have a hard time picturing you and Solomon working together on anything.”

“Quite right—he also hunted me down. For a long time.” Blackwood smiled ever-so-faintly. “Unsuccessfully, I may add. You see? Some of my most rewarding partnerships started with people intent on killing me. Shall we?”

She hesitated, needing to come clean. “There’s something you should know. I’m on a kind of administrative probation from the FBI. A suspension. Pending an investigation into the resolution of the first rampage killing I wrote you about. I’m on the outs with the Bureau right now. Probably won’t be an FBI agent much longer.”

Blackwood was unfazed. “You showed me your credentials.”

“Yes.”

“I’m sure that will be sufficient.”

Chapter