"What's what you're talking about?"

"Kuperman," I said, not quite believing Max's confused look. "He's got a twin brother."

His jaw dropping, Max swallowed hard. "Screw you, Wolfe."

"He does! Jonah Kuperman--he's an archaeologist, just as famous as his brother."

"Well--it wasn't in any of the hits that I pulled up."

"Jesus, Max," I said, going back to the DNA analyzer. "The sum total of human knowledge is supposed to be on the damned Internet--you mean they missed something as basic as that?"

"Hey, don't start with me about the net again, Gideon--"

Suddenly the window with the beautiful view in front of me shattered into hundreds of crashing shards. Instinctively, I went for the floor; but when I looked up, I saw Max--foolishly, I thought at that instant--still standing. I screamed for him to get down, but he only swayed strangely in the half-light of his computer. Then I noticed a bead of blood on his forehead; and looking past him, I could see that his computer screen was splattered with something a good deal more vital and substantial than blood. I crawled like a pathetic crab across the floor, and he crumpled with grim grace to his knees. He fell forward just as I reached him, allowing me to see that the missile that had entered his forehead so neatly had, on exiting, taken much of his brain and a good deal of his skull away with it.

It wasn't until two days later, while I was on a filthy, packed old 737 flying from Washington to Orlando, that the full impact of Max's death descended on me. Up until that time I'd been too preoccupied with police reports and hiding all traces of what we'd been doing to really let it sink in. But when I caught sight of a large man who might've been Max's double sitting three rows in front of me on that flight, I suddenly felt like I'd been hit in the chest with a mallet. To lose one's last living connection to childhood is not an easy thing; to lose him in the way I had is the kind of event that makes you want answers--and makes you capable of doing almost anything to get them.

My first stop on the road to what I was determined would be an explanation had been the offices of several acquaintances at the FBI's national headquarters in D.C. What I heard, along with the manner in which my contacts delivered it, was unnerving: couched in ostensibly friendly terms was a firm warning to back off of any investigation having to do with the deaths of John Price and Max Jenkins. Apparently both the Attorney General and the head of the bureau didn't much like me to start with, given that I'd had the temerity, in my book, to put some of the leading figures of American history under the psychological microscope and make a modest pile of money in the process. But there was more than just personal animosity conveyed during the meetings; and by the time they were over, I was feeling disoriented and isolated. In my line of business you come to expect idle threats from local police forces, which generally view profilers (as they always have) with deep suspicion; but to have the rug pulled out from under you by the feds--well, that's a lonely feeling. MORE>>

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