“Well, if it’s not the reward, then what got this guy to break cover? I mean, he got away with it clean. Law enforcement is no closer to catching him than they were ten years ago. Yet here he is, taking an enormous risk to send a highly incriminating photograph to you. What’s in it for him?”

Hendricks spoke up. “He’s a narcissist. The tenth-anniversary coverage got him all stirred up, and he doesn’t like not getting any of the attention. The picture is a taunt. Get the focus back on him.”

“That makes sense, but this didn’t get him much attention, did it? Two e-mails, and he had to shut it down. If he wanted attention he would have posted the picture online. Or he could have released the photo to the media instead. Get all . . . who was that serial killer in San Francisco who wrote all the letters to the papers?”

“The Zodiac,” Hendricks said.

“Right. Go all Zodiac on it. Imagine the attention he could get if he released the photograph with a bunch of cryptic biblical passages and vague threats.”

“The Internet would go crazy,” Hendricks admitted.

“Right, so if it’s about attention, then there are better ways to get it. Agreed?”

“Agreed, but let’s not forget the guy is crazy.”

“Fair enough, but in my opinion this wasn’t about attention at all. So I come back to why he sent two e-mails, two photographs. Unless the first photograph was a test run.”

“A test of what?” Rilling asked.

“A test of whether you would open it. And when you did, and replied, he knew it was safe to send the second one. He did just what I told you to do.”

“Which was?”

“He baited the hook and got you to take a big bite.”

“Are you suggesting there was a virus?” asked Rilling.

“Embedded in the second photograph.”

“No. No way,” Rilling said. “Not possible. We’ve got a topflight antivirus service, and we scanned both those attachments before we opened them.”

Rilling looked around the room for confirmation that what he was saying was true, but he wasn’t getting much love. Abe sat back, observing his people. Charles stared at the ceiling like she’d just been told she had six months to live. Hendricks was eying Rilling like a hyena sizing up a wildebeest too dumb to stay with the herd.

“We scanned it!” Rilling protested when no one spoke.

“Let him explain,” Abe said. “Gibson, walk us through what you found.”

“Look. All antivirus services do is check incoming files against a definition database of known viruses and malware. And you’re right, Mike, 99.999 percent of the time for 99.999 percent of the people that’s good enough. But if the virus is new, if it’s been written with a specific target in mind, then antivirus scans are about as useless as a four-foot fence against an eagle.”