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“Jack, can you bring us up to speed on the murder investigation?”
    Jack flips open his small reporter’s notebook. Strictly a prop, in my opinion, but he’s never without it. “So far everything Shane told me checks out. Cambridge homicide detectives are investigating the death by gunshot of Joseph Keener at his residence on Putnam Avenue, approximately two miles from the campus. The murder happened early this morning. State police are assisting—that means they’ll eventually run the investigation, in all probability—and the FBI is all over the scene.”
    â€œAnybody you know?”
    â€œCambridge, affirmative, Staties, affirmative. I’m meeting with my state police source this evening. Hopefully he’ll have more to add.”
    â€œAnything from your old colleagues in the FBI?”
    â€œAs you know, my former associates are mostly in the Boston field office, and normally the locals would be responding, assuming the murder has some federal connection. But this is a special team sent in directly from Justice. Unknown to me on a personal level.”
    â€œYou make yourself known?”
    He shakes his head. “Not yet. Just to my guy in the Cambridge Major Crimes Unit and he won’t mention our interest unless I ask him to. He knows the deal.”
    â€œGood,” Naomi says. “Let’s stay at arm’s length from our friends in federal law enforcement until we’ve had a peek at the big picture. That being said, did you get any sense they’re aware that Randall Shane has been seized and/or arrested by agents unknown?”
    â€œThe opposite. There’s an APB out on him as a so-called ‘person of interest.’ He’s their prime suspect and they think he’s in the wind.”
    â€œSet the scene,” Naomi suggests. “Shower us with details.”
    â€œThere’s not all that much, I’m afraid. Cambridge police were alerted by a 911 call that originated from the Keener residence at 5:42 a.m. The caller would not give his name, but stated a man had been killed. That was Shane, so they’ll have him on digital audio making the call, for whatever that’s worth. The first mobile unit responded to the scene in ten minutes or less, found the front door open and the victim facedown in a pool of blood in the hallway, a few yards from the front door. Major Crimes and forensic units arrive, as well as the medical examiner. The M.E. determines the victim diedof a single shot to the back of the head. Clotting and body temp suggest he’d been dead for no more than an hour or so before the call was made. No weapon recovered at the scene. Detectives did a canvas and his neighbors described him as the usual: shy type, kept to himself, very quiet. No one heard the gunshot.”
    â€œAny indication of a child in the home?”
    Jack shakes his head. “The investigating detective told me it was the residence of a single man, living alone. Cambridge police are unaware of any missing child connected with the victim. No such report was ever filed. There is no indication of a child in the home, not even a photo. No toys, no games, no bedroom set up for a kid, nothing.”
    â€œNo sign of a child,” Naomi muses, keenly interested. “How very odd. Two possibilities immediately present themselves. Either the victim has a child and all evidence has been removed from the home—surely he’d have pictures even if the mother has custody?—or the victim never had a child, certainly not a missing child, and Shane was somehow duped for reasons unknown.”
    â€œTo set him up for murder,” Jack suggests.
    Naomi nods to herself, tapping her pen, wheels turning. “Okay, fine, that’s our theory of the moment, in deference to your relationship with the suspect—but he remains a prime suspect unless or until the evidence leads us elsewhere.”
    â€œHe didn’t do