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the alley and finished pulling the grate off. Then he cut the window with a glass cutter and undid the latch from the outside. He tramped in some dirt from the alley onto the kitchen floor and the hall and right there, and there."
    She pointed to two spots on the bedroom carpet, including one smudge that Chapman was standing on. He stepped away like it was radioactive.
    "She must've heard something because she sat up and tried to put her slippers on. Before she could finish he was in the room and he took one shot at close range, through her left ear. It looks like it's a small-caliber round, probably a .22. The bullet's still in her cranium, there's no exit wound. I don't think there was a sexual assault here but we need to check that. Also, we need to find out if anything was stolen. The place wasn't ransacked but I didn't see a pocketbook anywhere. He probably left the way he came in." She paused and scrunched her forehead. "That's it. That's what I think happened."
    Will frowned at her, made her sweat for a few seconds then said, "Yeah, that's what I think happened too." Nancy looked like she'd just won a spelling bee and proudly stared down at her crepe-soled shoes. "You agree with my partner, Detective?"
    Chapman shrugged. "Could very well be. Yeah, .22 handgun, I'm sure that's the weapon here."
    The guy doesn't have a fucking clue, Will thought. "Do you know if anything was stolen?"
    "Her daughter says her purse is missing. She's the one who found her this morning. The postcard was on the kitchen table with some other mail."
    Will pointed at grandma's thighs. "Was she sexually assaulted?"
    "I don't have any idea! Maybe if you hadn't kicked the M.E. out we'd know," Chapman huffed.
    Will lowered himself onto his haunches and used his pen to carefully lift her nightdress. He squinted into the tent and saw undisturbed old-lady underwear. "Doesn't look like it," he said. "Let's see the postcard."
    Will inspected it carefully, front and back, and handed it to Nancy. "Is that the same font used in the other ones?"
    She said it was.
    "It's Courier twelve point," he said.
    She asked how he knew that, sounding impressed.
    "I'm a font savant," he quipped. He read the name out loud. "Ida Gabriela Santiago."
    According to Chapman, her daughter told him she never used her middle name.
    Will stood up and stretched his back. "Okay, we're good," he said. "Keep the area sealed off until the FBI forensics team arrives. We'll be in touch if we need anything."
    "You got any leads on this wacko?" Chapman asked.
    Will's cell phone started ringing inside his jacket, counterintuitively playing Ode to Joy. While he fished for it he replied, "Jack shit, Detective, but this is only my first day on the case," then said into the phone, "This is Piper..."
    He listened and shook his head a couple of times before he told the caller, "When it rains, it pours. Say, Mueller hasn't made a miraculous recovery, has he?...Too bad." He ended the call and looked up. "Ready for a long night, partner?"
    Nancy nodded like a bobble-head doll. She seemed to like the appellation "partner," like it a lot.
    "That was Sanchez," he told her. "We've got another postcard but this one's a little different. It's dated today but the guy's still alive."

F EBRUARY 12, 1947
L ONDON

    E rnest Bevin was the link, the go-between. The only cabinet member to serve in both governments. To Clement Atlee, the Labor prime minister, Bevin was the logical choice. "Ernest," Atlee had told his Foreign Secretary, the two of them seated before a hot coal fire at Downing Street, "speak to Churchill. Tell him I'm personally asking for his help." Sweat beaded on Atlee's bald head, and Bevin watched with discomfort as a rivulet ran down his high forehead onto his hawklike nose.
    Assignment accepted. No questions asked, no reservations tendered. Bevin was a soldier, an old-line labor leader, one of the founders of Britain's largest trade union, the TGWU. Always the pragmatist, prewar, he was one of