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threw away the keys but it never seemed to do a damned bit of good. There were always more.
    Tides of crime, sweeping in, sweeping out, always leaving the bodies behind. So many bodies.
    Griff wiped his eyes and prepared to move things around in preparation for the coming darkness. At night all he had was a single red lantern mounted under the lookout’s north-facing window. It made him look like a submarine captain.
    ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ Cap Benson said, pushing up through the hatch with a whuff of steaming breath. Benson was with the Washington State Patrol, thirty-seven years old and a twelve-year veteran of their SWAT team. Griff had known Benson for ten years. Benson owned a mobile home on a two-acre lot twenty miles down the road. He had a slender, pretty wife who liked to wear aprons and bake bread, and a white scar crept down his neck—terminating, Griff knew, at an unnatural notch in his clavicle. He was in better shape than Griff, who was pretty fit for his age, and the whuff was just an expression.
    They had last seen each other at a big drug lab bust in Thurston County the month before.
    ‘I’m going crazy up here,’ Griff deadpanned. He twitched an eyebrow, held a stick of Doublemint gum between his front teeth, pulled back his lips, and waggled it. ‘Hey, look,’ he said. ‘I’m FDR.’
    ‘You need a long black holder,’ Benson said, unfazed.
    ‘For gum?’ Griff fixed Benson with a squint. ‘That would be silly.’ He pulled the gum in and started chewing.
    ‘Any luck?’ Benson asked, walking toward the window that faced the valley.
    ‘Today, a couple of women. A few kids. No animals. It’s quiet. They’ve been burning trash in barrels.’
    ‘What about the Patriarch?’
    ‘Not a sign.’
    ‘Your Jewish law center guy should be here in a few minutes. He’s wearing snow pants. Looks like a cheechako.’
    ‘Maybe, but he knows everything there is to know about Chambers.’
    ‘You sure you don’t want to just hand this over to us?’
    ‘Thanks, Cap, but I guarantee you don’t want it.’
    ‘We’re awesome and eager, Griff.’
    ‘Right,’ Griff said. He called up the stabilized image on the computer screen and showed Benson what he had been looking at all day. Three and a half miles away, green spruces, loblolly pines and sapling cedars spotted the seventy acres around a big gray weather-battered farmhouse. Sixty yards to the east stood a large barn. Right now, the farm looked deserted. No visible cows or other livestock. No dogs.
    ‘Nice,’ Benson said. ‘Kind of place I might like to retire. I’d paint the house, though.’
    It was a pretty place, a mile from the nearest road, serene and quiet on a chilly but clear April evening. Nothing like the Old Testament desert where sun-dazzled, long-bearded patriarchs stashed their wives and ruled their tribes. Though there was a fire on the mountain—the high snows looked as if they were burning.
    Judgment light.
    ‘You sure it’s him?’ Benson asked.
    ‘We’ll have a positive ID soon enough,’ Griff said. ‘Pass me those binders, will you, Cap?’
    Benson reached across to the small table and handed Griff three thick white binders filled with photographs. Griff laid them out under the binoculars and opened each one to a good photo or mug shot, for his next visitor. They could hear his footsteps on the narrow stairs.
    A shaved tanned head crowned by a plain black yarmulke poked up through the hatch and swung a green army duffel bag onto the floor with a thump. ‘Ahoy there. Anybody home?’
    ‘Come on in, Jacob,’ Griff said. ‘Good to see you.’
    The small, skinny man stood up from the step below thehatch, climbed onto the cabin’s rough board floor and brushed his baggy black snow pants with one hand. He wore a sleeveless purple down vest over a spotless and pressed white business shirt. ‘Always good to hear from you, Agent Griffin,’ he said. ‘You have such interesting things to show me.’ He grinned at