“That e-mail, Pete. Did you get it yet?” Megan asked over his radio headset.
In the bird chopping west from the hospital at Lambaréné, Nimec could hear a distinct tremor in her voice.
“Hold on,” he said. “These goddamn gadgets… the co-pilot had to reset the display mode for me. Okay, it’s coming through now… I need a second to check it out.”
Nimec stared at the helicopter console’s multifunctional readout panel. The message on its GMSS comlink display left no question about what had left Megan so badly shaken and stretched his own control to the limit. He felt a sick, lancing anger.
Delivered to Megan’s computer from an anonymous proxy server, the e-mail now bouncing across uncounted miles of world to Nimec via satellite bore the subject line:
Aria D’entrata — For the Life of Julia Gordian
Nimec had opened it immediately and read the text:
She wears freedom on her shoulder. A combination of ideographs discreetly tattooed on the upper left side. When she goes for a jog with her dogs, alternate mornings, the body art can be seen on her sleeveless arm, as green as her eyes and lovely against her white skin.
The father’s dream on her shoulder.
What we have taken we can return. The father is to make an announcement tomorrow on the Sedco oil platform. Its nature will be revealed to him in advance of the designated time. The words are to be honored or the daughter will be killed.
Shi is the Japanese word for death.
Its ideograph is 
The tattoo needle will apply it to her dead face twice, a black kanji symbol below each dead green eye. The arm that carries the dream will be cut off and discarded before her dead body is tossed into the waste.
Defy us and the father will see all this and worse.
Nimec finished reading it and took a deep breath.
“Those first couple of words in the subject, Meg. You know what they mean?”
“Aria d’entrata. Italian. I think it’s an operatic term for a vocal passage sung when a performer makes an entrance.”
Nimec felt that white-hot spike in his gut again. They were being taunted.
“The tattoo…”
“Julia told me she was going to have it done,” Megan said. “It must have been the last time she stopped by the office. A month ago. Maybe more. I’m not even sure Gord knows about it yet. She made me promise to stay mum, wanted to spring it on him in person. You know how she likes to get a rise out of him, Pete—”
“Meg—”
“Yes?”
“Listen to me,” he said. “The description’s to confirm this e-mail isn’t a hoax from somebody who might’ve found out what’s happened through a leak. Something of that nature.”
“There’s a lot of information,” Megan said. “The reference to the color of Julia’s eyes. Also that part about the jogging. Her greyhounds. Even her schedule.”
“She’s been watched.”
“Yes.” Megan took an audible breath. “Pete, what do you think whoever’s behind this is after? If she’s being held for a ransom, what sort of announcement can they want?”
“Wish I could give you an answer. All I know is somebody likes playing games. You can feel the spite here.”
“Yes.”
Nimec thought aloud. “The boss might have some ideas. He has to see the e-mail. I’ve got to show it to him right away.”
“I don’t know how he’ll manage to handle everything. It’s so much at once.”
Nimec was quiet. He felt the vast spread of distance between them.
“Ricci up to snuff?” he asked after a moment.
“He’s at the rescue center now. With Rollie. I haven’t contacted him about the message.”
“Better do it in a hurry,” Nimec said. He thought some more. “We need to rely on him, Meg.”
“I’m not sure I can.”
“You’ve got no choice. If there are any solid leads, Ricci’s the one to find them. He’s the one, Meg.”
Silence.
“I know,” she said. “But knowing it doesn’t give me much comfort.”
Nimec stared out the chopper’s canopy into the rushing blackness of night.
“Sometimes,” he said, “we can only go with what we have.”
As far as his statement to Ricci went, Erickson had been candid: There wasn’t much of anything helpful to be found outside in the way of evidence.
Not on the grounds per se.
Accompanied by the detective, Ricci and Thibodeau had again walked back to the greyhound exercise pen and kennel, both empty now with the dogs taken into temporary care by the ASPCA. They had reinspected the sides and rear of the shop, then strode along the periphery of the bordering woods. Finally they went out front to the parking area to take a look at Julia Gordian’s Honda Passport, and the muddy vestiges of tire prints the cops had already lifted the previous day.
They were standing over by the Honda in the rain when Ricci noticed a car parked among a group of police cruisers a yard or two farther down the lot — a Ford Cutlass, standard-issue plainclothes unmarked in precinct requisition lots. Its window was open slightly more than a crack, a man in a navy blue suit working on a laptop computer in the front passenger seat.
Ricci looked more closely and saw something on the armrest beside the man. It raised a thought.
He broke away from Erickson and Thibodeau and hastened over to the car.
“Got a minute?” Ricci said, crouched under his umbrella. He motioned his head back toward the Passport. “I’m with Erickson.”
Surprised by the sudden interruption, Navy Blue glanced out at him, pushing the computer screen down out of his angle of sight.
“You one of those guys from UpLink?” he said.
Ricci nodded, came up close to the window, and shot a look inside at what he’d recognized as a pad of graph paper on the armrest. But he had no chance to catch more than the briefest glimpse of the sketch on its top page before Navy Blue reached over and turned it facedown where it lay.
“This is a crime scene,” he said. “I’ve got important things to do.”
“Like I said,” Ricci said. “Not more than a minute.”
Navy Blue continued to regard him from inside the Cutlass, his expression at once standoffish and warily curious.
A grunt. “Something I can call you besides Man From UpLink?”
“Name’s Tom Ricci.”
Navy Blue sat a moment, pushed the button to lower the window about halfway.
Ricci figured that was all he would need.
“I’m Detective Brewer,” the cop said. He still sounded suspicious. “Go ahead and make it quick.”
Ricci did, but not in the way Brewer expected. Before the other man could react, he thrust his free hand through the window, turned Brewer’s laptop toward him, and raised the lid so he could see it.
Brewer flinched in his seat.
“Hey, what the hell are you doing?” He pulled the computer back around, snapped it shut.
Ricci’s face was calm.
“Didn’t mean to surprise you,” he said. “Might be none of my business, but I thought I saw you using that crime scene diagramming software. Figured I’d check for sure. Maybe offer some advice.”
Brewer glared at him. “You want advice, keep your fucking hands to yourself—”
“No harm intended.” Ricci held a low, level tone. “I was on the job once upon a time. Boston. Found out the hard way these computer sketches aren’t worth jack on the witness stand. You want to impress a jury, don’t lose your original hand sketch on that pad. Accurate’s good. Sometimes giving them a feel for what you saw can be better.”