Artie had never been here on a Sunday. The place was deserted. It was perfect. He loved it. At first he was just going to drop off the car and put away his road trip’s stash. But the place was so deserted he felt comfortable enough to bring his fast food in with him.

At the last minute he wimped out and decided to eat in the lab next door instead of in the small quarantined lab. Too much bleach smell, he told himself. Of course, his decision had nothing to do with the dead monkey in the corner freezer. His key-card pass worked on all the doors down here, so access wasn’t a problem.

At the end of the hall the live monkeys were quiet for a change. Artie ate his double cheeseburger, extra ketchup, extra pickles—they cheated you on the pickles if you didn’t insist on extras—and fries. He snarfed it down and once he was finished he moved to the lab next door. From his backpack he pulled out the small notebook he carried everywhere he went. Alongside the notebook he started laying out his most recent stash of paraphernalia.

His road trips provided a treasure trove. He kept his findings in one of the small storage lockers, so anything from hair to fingernail clippings were readily accessible for the next package. For now Artie placed them on the counter to admire. He had each piece bagged and labeled like the crime-scene evidence it would someday become. He was particularly proud of a tooth he had found in a corner bathroom stall at a rest area off Interstate 95. He had hair samples from four different states. In each of his packages he included something, letting crime-scene techs believe they had a piece of evidence, believing their suspect had gotten sloppy when in fact he was outwitting the best and most seasoned investigators.

He opened his notebook to the list of package recipients. While driving to Wallingford, Connecticut, something had occurred to him almost out of the blue. He thought he may have made a connection, figured out another piece of his mentor’s puzzle. Now he was anxious to see if he was right.

He skimmed the list:

Vera Schroder, Terra Haute, Indiana

Mary Louise Kellerman, Elk Grove, Virginia

Rick Ragazzi, Pensacola, Florida

Conrad Kovak, Cleveland, Ohio

Caroline Tully, Cleveland, Ohio

Then he pulled out his true-crime paperbacks and the articles he had downloaded from the Internet. He had already connected Mary Louise Kellerman of Elk Grove, Virginia, to Mary Kellerman of Elk Grove Village, Illinois. Using James Lewis’s return address confirmed the connection to the Tylenol murder case. Slam dunk. That was an easy one.

The other packages were different. All of the others, at least as far as Artie could check out, had return addresses from people the recipient knew. Rick Ragazzi’s was from a Victor Ragazzi. Easy one. Had to be a family member. Caroline Tully’s was from an R. J. Tully. Same with Patsy Kowak. Although Conrad spelled his name Kovak, it had to be a relative.

That one had been a particular stroke of genius. The intended victim was actually listed as the sender, Conrad Kovak, instead of the recipient. Artie’s instructions called for insufficient postage, enough so that the postal carrier wouldn’t deliver it to Patsy Kowak but would return it to Conrad.

Artie loved that extra touch. And he’d recognized it, too. The Unabomber had sent at least one package with insufficient postage. The person Theodore Kaczynski had really wanted to blow up was the one he’d listed as the sender. He knew law-enforcement officials would stew over the packages’ recipients, trying to figure out who their enemies were, why they would be targeted. It gave the phrase “return to sender” a whole new meaning.

Artie smiled. Yes, it was brilliant, absolutely brilliant.

The only other exception that Artie hadn’t been able to figure out was Vera Schroder. It was the only package to have no return address. Artie thought the answer might have something to do with the recipient’s address, Terre Haute, Indiana. On his long, quiet road trip something about Terre Haute had nagged at him. He’d seen that city listed somewhere recently, but he couldn’t remember where.

He started at the beginning of his notebook, flipping through the cases and the information he had highlighted. The first case in his notebook was the Tylenol murders. The case remained unsolved. From September 29 through October 1, seven people died after taking Extra Strength Tylenol, 500-mg capsules laced with cyanide. One family lost three members. The very first person to die was twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman, who had taken one capsule when she woke up the morning of September 29 with a sore throat and runny nose.

Artie knew the names of all seven victims by heart. He knew the six stores in the Chicago area—with the exception of one unnamed retailer—that the tainted capsules had been traced back to. It was suspected that the killer had shoplifted boxes of Tylenol capsules, taken them home, added the cyanide and then brought them back to the stores and replaced them on the shelves. Most likely the killer had to have done this within the week or days prior to September 29.

What Artie was more interested in were those cases that followed, the ones that were never confirmed nor refuted as connected to the Chicago tampering. During the months that followed, the FDA had 270 reports of product tampering. Anything from poisoned chocolate milk to insecticide-laced orange juice to Halloween candy with needles stuck inside. However, only thirty-six of those were confirmed.

He flipped through more pages. The tampering cases that involved more Tylenol, but outside the Chicago area, included a woman in Pittsburgh, an elderly man in Detroit and two family members—yes, here it was—in Terre Haute, Indiana. A local business owner and his wife were found dead in their home by their daughter. Extra Strength Tylenol capsules, laced with cyanide, were found inside the couple’s house.

Their daughter’s married name was Schroder, Vera Schroder. That was the connection. It was exactly what Artie was looking for. What he wasn’t prepared for was to recognize the couple’s last name.

Son of a bitch, it was the same last name as his mentor’s.