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Blank surprise, Savich heard it in the cold, dead silence. He waited, finally heard a wheeze, as if Moses Grace was going to start hacking. He’d been as crude as he could manage—was this teenage girl old Moses’s lover?

Then Moses Grace wheezed out a laugh that made gooseflesh rise on Savich’s arms. He said in that wet drawl, “Must have been real tough for you, boy, talking all dirty like that. Let me tell you, you’ll change your mind if Claudia has a shot at you. I’ve seen my little sweet cakes diddle a woman before I told her enough was enough and to dig out the old girl’s eyes then kick her out of the van.”

Yes, tell me more, you insane old man, yes. “Yeah, right, you old liar. That’s about as believable as Hollywood throwing a ticker-tape parade for Schwarzenegger.”

He looked up to see Sherlock standing ten feet away, watching him. He said very deliberately, “It must be tough for you, Moses, knowing you’re too decrepit, too diseased, to screw your own wife.”

Savich felt cold dead rage blasting at him. Then Moses Grace chortled, a disgusting, juicy sound. “I don’t like a dirty mouth on you, boy, it don’t seem right somehow. You know, Claudia’s got her fantasies about you and I’ve got mine. We’ll see what you say when I watch your life drain away. I’ll win and you’ll know it. See you then, Savich.”

There was the silence of dead space. Moses Grace had disconnected.

Sherlock walked to him, nosed against his shoulder. “I’ve never heard you speak like that before.”

“It surprised old Moses, too,” he said as he saw Dix walking toward them.

Savich nodded to him, then speed-dialed the communications center in the Hoover Building. “This is Savich. Did you locate Moses Grace’s cell phone?”

He heard a man shouting, “I need the location now!” Then a voice came back on the line, panting, “He’s within a two-mile radius of a semi-rural area west of Dulles, heading toward Leesburg. We just dispatched local police and agents to the area. He was moving, and unfortunately knew enough to turn the phone off, so we’ve lost his signal. You kept him going a long time, Savich, but he didn’t make it easy on us. He was using a different carrier than yours, so we had to track him down through Sprint’s Automatic Number Identification system, using your number as the target phone. That took a while. We’ll keep you posted.”

Savich punched off his cell, turning to Sherlock and Dix, “Moses is headed toward Leesburg. Cops and agents are on their way, but it sounds like a crapshoot.”

Sherlock said, “A pity he’s not at a nice warm motel, all tucked in for the night.”

“How did you track him from way out here, Savich?” Dix asked.

“MAX helped,” Savich said. “I had him set up to instant message our communications center in Washington if Moses called again. MAX recorded the call, too, through a Bluetooth transmitter I have wired into my phone.

“Since the PATRIOT Act was put into place, we’ve been able to get wiretap warrants for all calls made by an individual suspect, not just a particular phone number. So it doesn’t help them to just ditch a phone and get a new one. So, wherever Moses goes, no matter what cell phone he happens to use, we go with him. He used Caller ID blocking, which slowed us down at bit. If we’d known his number right away, we could have located him in about fifteen seconds.”

“Do you think the police and agents will catch him?” Dix said.

“We should be so lucky,” Savich said, and sighed. “He was driving while he talked, and probably kept driving after he turned the phone off.” To Sherlock he said, “Do you know he bragged how he and Claudia were at the Bonhomie Club last night for Pinky’s memorial? There was no way they were inside, that’s for certain. They had to be hiding outside, watching who went into the club.”

They stood silently for a moment before Savich spoke again. “It kept him talking, though, and he may have given me a lead without realizing it. We need to find a woman who was probably kidnapped and eventually dumped on the side of the road, with possible eye injuries.