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simple text message.
    Chris read Mike’s message, which answered the biggest question he had left. The guy was on his ship in the Strait of Taiwan when Tara Westfield was killed at Sasebo. Never a suspect.
    Chris added the unwritten last sentence: no one ever caught Tara Westfield’s killer. He reengaged the safety on the Glock, tucked the gun into the back of his jeans, then bent to put on his sweatshirt.
    “Can I buy you a cup of coffee or something?”
    Aaron Westfield rolled over and sat up. He put his hand up against his nose and massaged it gently. It was already swollen, but the blood had stopped flowing.
    “Maybe I should wash my face first.”
    “Okay.”
    “Maybe you should too.”

Chapter Six
    They found a twenty-four-hour coffee shop on Strand Street, empty but for the college kid behind the cash register. The cashier put his book down when they came in, giving Westfield’s broken nose a long second look. They ordered black coffee and took seats around a low table in the far corner. Unframed paintings of abandoned-looking buildings hung on the brick wall next to Chris’s chair. They had an unfinished quality to them, blank spaces on the canvas like overexposed photographs. The painting on the wall nearest Chris was the abandoned warehouse that eventually became Allison Clayborn’s condo. Chris looked at it and blew on his coffee.
    The drive over had been mostly quiet. Chris sat in the passenger seat of the beat-up van with the window down. At red lights he could hear the waves rolling onto the beach. At one point he’d asked Westfield if the van belonged to him or if he’d stolen it for the job, and Westfield said it was his. He’d only stolen the Texas plates. The discarded fast-food wrappers and old army blanket told of a long drive from Washington without many stops.
    Chris took a sip of his coffee, looked away from the paintings, and saw Westfield watching him. He seemed to be waiting, so Chris said the first thing that came to mind.
    “If he killed Tara in ’78, he must’ve just been getting started. He can’t have been much older than eighteen, and I’d bet he was more like in his twenties.”
    “Why?” Westfield asked.
    “As far as we know he’s not from Japan, right?”
    “No reason to think that.”
    “If he’s out at night doing his thing, he probably wasn’t there on a trip with his parents. So he’s definitely older than eighteen in ’78.”
    “But not too much older than that, or else, thirty-two years later, he might not be able to stay at it.”
    “Exactly,” Chris said. “Maybe he was military?”
    “Maybe. That only narrows it down to a few hundred thousand people.”
    “True. And he kills women all over the world, so there’s no reason to think Japan was any more significant to him than anywhere else he’s been.”
    “Unless it was his first,” Westfield said.
    “Any reason to think that?”
    “No.”
    When Westfield frowned, the lines on his face made him look older. In the hotel room, Chris thought of Clint Eastwood. The kind of hard-ass who’d keep coming at you even after a bullet should’ve put him down. But now, whatever Westfield was thinking just made him look old. And tired of it.
    “That’s the problem with this whole thing. We’re so far behind the situation, all we can do is react. That’s not where you want to be.”
    Westfield took a sip of his coffee and winced, then stood and walked to the counter. Chris watched him talk to the kid, who bent beneath the bar and came up with a plastic cup of ice and a napkin. Westfield put a few chunks of ice in the napkin and held it to his nose. He dumped the rest of the ice in his drink.
    “Hot coffee’s not the ticket, huh?”
    “Not with this.”
    “Sorry,” Chris said, and meant it.
    Westfield shrugged. “It’s okay. I’d have done the same.”
    “You did. How many have you gone to?”
    “Six. I know about others, but a lot of them are overseas and I don’t have the