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guy dropped off Jessup, he also left birth certificates, already filled out. Not only the state one, but the one the hospital issued. Doctor in charge was a guy named Harold Harper, out of Rush-Presbyterian. Paper trail ends in New Mexico. I've got some guys working on it. What's up with your foot?”

    Tom's shoe was off. It was setting on the cot in a plastic baggie.
    “The guy who attacked me admitted to killing Jessup. I kicked him in the face. We get a DNA match off the blood on the shoe, case is closed.”
    “So you gonna walk around with one shoe?”
    Tom tossed Roy his car keys.
    “My gym bag is in the trunk. I'm parked in Emergency. Be a dear, would you?”
    His sneakers retrieved, Tom signed his release and tailgated Roy back to the district. He wished he'd asked his parents more questions about his adoption when they were still alive, but it hadn't mattered at the time. Why question a perfect family? Tom's mother had been a saint, always loving and supportive. His dad, a Chicago Alderman, had been one of the best men Tom had ever known. Tom couldn't have picked better parents.
    After dropping off the shoe at the lab, Tom and Roy hit the computer. It took Tom fifteen minutes to feed in details about his attacker, and the computer took .04 seconds to spit out an answer.
    Arthur Kilpatrick. He had a rap sheet that read like Felony's Greatest Hits; assault, arson, burglary, rape, attempted murder. Two stretches in prison, and a current warrant out for his arrest. He'd seriously injured eleven people in a bar fight. Tom read the number again. Eleven. This was one major bad ass.
    “Click under distinguishing marks.”
    Tom did, and discovered that among Kilpatrick's many tattoos was a blue number 9... on the bottom of his left heel. He was eleven days older than Tom.
    “Shit keeps getting weirder and weirder.”
    Tom agreed. If Rod Serling had chosen that moment to walk out of the closet, he wouldn’t have been surprised.

    “So why did this guy return to the crime scene, Tommy? You think he left something there?”
    “We searched every inch of that place. What could he have been looking for?”
    “Maybe he wasn't looking for anything. Maybe he was there because you were there.”
    Tom blinked. “He came there to kill me?”
    “We got two bodies, Jessup and that southern cop, both with number tatts. Kilpatrick has a tatt, and you have a tatt.”
    “But how did he know I was there?”
    “Could have followed you.”
    “It was rush hour. I used my siren to weave through traffic. No one could have followed me.”
    “Staked the place out?”
    “Two entrances, front and back. Can't watch both at once.”
    Tom rubbed his chin, some of the feeling returning. Was there any way he could have alerted Kilpatrick to his arrival at the apartment? A sensor, a phone tap, a silent alarm...
    “When I first got there, I turned on the stereo.”
    Roy raised his eyebrows. “And he heard it? You think the place was bugged?”
    “Only one way to find out.”
    Tom searched through his desk until he found the Foxhound, a souvenir from his days in Vice. It was a small silver box the size of a pager. The device scanned radio waves between fifty megahertz and three gigahertz, almost every available frequency.
    “Check the batteries. It's been a while.”
    While Roy fussed with the battery compartment, Tom returned to the drawer for a gravity knife. He placed it in his pants pocket. Tom wasn’t going to be caught without a back-up weapon again.

    “I thought those knives were illegal.”
    “So? Call a cop.”
    Tom drove, sparing the siren now that traffic had died down. He parked in the alley next to Jessup's building.
    “We going stealth mode or noisy, give him another shot at you?”
    “Stealth. If we find anything, we can set a trap for him later.”
    Regardless, Tom pulled out his Glock and made sure a round was chambered.
    “You look whiter than usual. You okay?”
    “I'm fine.”
    “You can wait in the car, if you