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she was quiet for a moment, letting the silence dance around her.
    Frank watched as she sat, eyes lowered, running a slender finger around the rim of her mug. Then touching the edge of a black TV channel changer.
    Eyes still down, Helen said, “Bonner is twenty-nine years old, a white male. He’s approximately six feet tall. Born in Indiana, raised in foster care, no juvenile record. He was fifteen years old when he first came to the attention of the police in Indianapolis. Fourteen years ago, during a two-week period in the middle of July, Hal Bonner wiped out his former foster parents. Four women and three men ranging in age from thirty-six to sixty-seven. By the time the connection to Bonner was made, he’d vanished.”
    Helen looked up, glanced around the table. Letting a few more seconds tick off her theatrical clock. Frank was watching her. Everyone else was too.
    â€œHe started out with simple strangulation,” she said. “The first four were killed that way. But by the time he got to number five, Hal was tearing them open, crushing their hearts. Like he did to Joanie. That’s been his MO ever since. Only for the last ten years he’s been getting paid.”
    â€œNot your average hitman,” Andy said.
    The senator cut his eyes to Andy, scowled, and looked back at Helen.
    â€œAnd that’s all, Mr. Sheffield. Ten years, that’s all your people have.”
    â€œNow he’s a hired gun for the Cali cartel,” Andy said. “They use Hal for special occasions, when they want to inspire the serious heebie-jeebies. Make an example of someone.”
    Andy looked around at the silent group, took another bite from the remaining Danish.
    â€œSenator Ackerman is correct,” Helen said. “Hal’s extremely slippery. Apparently he’s spotted every sting we’ve thrown at him. For ten years we’ve had him as a level-one priority and we’ve consistently bombed. Even using our best undercover people, Oscar winners, Hal saw through them every time. Got a whiff of something wrong, stepped back into the shadows, and was gone. But we think we have a winner this time. Something Hal won’t be able to resist.”
    â€œAll right,” Ackerman said, rapping his knuckles impatiently against the table. “Show him the photograph.”
    Helen reached below the table and came up with a file folder. She laid it on the table next to her coffee.
    â€œFourteen years ago when Hal murdered his foster parents, he also was quite thorough about destroying any sign of his presence in those homes. Photo albums, schoolwork, drawings, everything. Very meticulous for a young man of only fifteen. As if he already had a life plan and knew exactly what he needed to do, obliterate any trace of his past life. But we did manage to locate one photo from a school in Evansville. A junior high school he attended for a few months.”
    She took a thumbnail photograph from the folder and slid it across the table to Frank. He picked it up, studied it for several moments.
    The boy was wearing a madras shirt buttoned to the top, and he stared grimly into the lens. A crudely handsome young man with heavy eyebrows and coarse, dark hair which was chopped and mangled as though he had been barbered by someone with failing eyesight and a palsied hand. His eyes were gray and widely spaced and protruded slightly. Already at thirteen or fourteen his cheeks were shadowed by a thick beard. As though he were cursed by a heavy flow of testosterone, launched into manhood years before he was ready.
    â€œWe’ve aged him,” Helen Shane said. “Brought him up to date. Agent Barth directed the work, using the TS-38 software system he designed.”
    Andy showed them a gloating smile.
    Helen picked up the TV remote and aimed it at the set and it crackled to life. Slowly she clicked through four different renderings, leaving each one on the screen for half a minute. Hal Bonner as a