Sam spent part of Tuesday with Celia, visiting some friends and associates incarcerated at Cook County Jail. He usually trekked to the place three or four times a year to touch base and ensure whichever friend or acquaintance who was having issues with the law was being treated properly, checking that they had access to a lawyer, that their rights were being respected, and that some semblance of due process was being observed. He was even known to throw for bail from time to time.

His visit with Celia was something different. He hoped, of course, that she might take some small edification from observing the criminal justice system up close, but mostly she was tagging along to help him discern in which unit Weliver and Finch were being held at the jail.

Tommy had had another of his idiotic ideas. Somehow, he'd convinced Sam that if Sam and Celia could get a sense for where in the enormous facility Weliver and his companions were being held—the jail had a dozen divisions housing thousands of men and women—that Tommy would slip into the place at night, find the two men, and extract any information the pair might have without their jailers being wise to his presence.

Against his better judgment, Sam had agreed to the scheme, and so he had decided to make a morning of it. He and Celia had gone out for an early breakfast, had stopped by the library for a bit of perusing and to return a few books, and had shopped for shoes for the two growing girls. After a short lunch, they reached the jail at just before noon. Most of their first hour was spent chatting with a friend of a friend of Sam's, a young man who was more concerned that his rent and utility bills get paid while he was awaiting trial than he was about the misdemeanor battery charge for which he was being held.

Sam took a few notes and reassured the man he would make some arrangements and look in on the fellow's cat. Afterward, Sam and Celia lolled about for some time chatting with some guards, several of whom were better than nodding acquaintances with the old Chicagoan.

Narrowing down the exact location of the men, who they found were being detained in Division 12, had taken another hour of Sam's subtle questions and Celia's peering into the heads of those with whom Sam spoke.

"So, is this idiotic idea gonna work?" she asked as they passed through the last gate from the main jail facility into the street beyond.

"Where'd you come up with that?" He glanced at her suspiciously. Much of the last year had been spent coaching her on when it was okay, or not okay, to peer into people's minds. "Have you been poking around in my head?"

The girl laughed aloud. "You've muttered the words 'idiotic idea', like, 20 times in the last three hours."

Sam rolled his eyes at his own gaffe and shook his head. "Yeah ... hon, I don't know. Your uncle Tommy usually gets what he wants. Sometimes what seems like a harebrained scheme to someone like you or me ... well, somehow he manages to make things work."

"So, he just bullshits his way through?"

"Pretty much that," he sighed.

As warm and humid as the Summer day was, the walk back to the truck was borderline pleasant. The two chatted and joked as they always did. Looking at Celia, Sam realized Lydia's remarkable transformation over the last year had overshadowed the smaller girl's maturing. Celia had grown in the last year, and was nearly up to Sam's shoulder. More, there was an unmistakable glow of health and happiness in her features that had not been there the year before. The realization of it warmed him.

"So, you and Tommy are chums, now?" he asked. "What brought that about?"

"Fuck if I know," replied the girl. "I was ... I dunno ... I wanted to ask him why we had to live the way we live ... always hiding and worrying about people finding out about us."

"And ...?"

"Well ...," she began but didn't finish.

Sam had noticed that Celia often had a difficult time holding up her end of the conversation without looking into people's minds for support—the habit was especially noticeable when she attempted to talk on the phone. Her conversations at such times often would devolve into a long string of 'um,' 'well,' 'like,' and 'uhhh...'.

"Think of your words," he said gently.

"Uhhh ... he was in the room painting ... and I was a little afraid to go in, but he said—" The girl shifted into her best Tommy Haas voice. "It's because they don't understand us, and people are afraid of what they don't know." She continued in her own voice. "I told him I didn't know what the hell he was talking about."

Sam waited patiently for her to continue. She gazed up at him several times as they walked.

"Then he asked me why I was so afraid of him."

"And ...?" Sam prompted her again after a brief time.

"Well, I figured as long as I was there, I might as well help him with the painting."

The young girl often misinterpreted Sam's laughter as teasing, so he kept it as quiet as possible.

***

The lights on the roof of Division 12 at the Cook County Jail were bright, bright enough to reveal anyone on the rooftop even to a casual observer. Fortunately, there were no casual observers at that late hour, and Tommy landed on the roof from high above with sufficient speed that it was unlikely anyone saw him approach the building.

Sam had his doubts about this whole plan—the word cockamamy had come up several times—but there really was no danger or difficulty involved in what Tommy intended. Jails were much easier to sneak into than to break out of, at least for anyone with Tommy's skills. And escaping for him, should it come to that, was as easy as flying through the nearest exterior wall, though he had every intention of departing the lockup as quietly and inconspicuously as he now arrived.

He meant to be careful and patient and to use his every skill to find the men incarcerated there and extract from them what they knew. His cockiness already had nearly gotten him killed once that week. He wasn't going for a twofer.

The moment he landed on the roof, he made for the nearest shadow and began casting about for a door, window, or hatch into the building. It took just moments to find a roof access door, and though there were no close-circuit cameras observing it, the door was soundly locked.

"Shit."

He knew it would come to this. Breaking down the door would require negligible effort, but there was little doubt the thing had an alarm. Even if the building's designers had been so careless as to neglect such a feature, a shattered lock or door pulled from its hinges in such a facility soon would attract attention that he didn't need.

He steadied himself, held his breath, and closed his eyes. A moment later, he was on his knees on the far side of the door and retching pathetically, his entire being chilled to the core with such an ... unnatural feeling.

It was the one Gift Tommy had mimicked in his life that he regretted having acquired, despite its having been immensely useful on more than one occasion. Tommy had learned to pass through walls from a German burglar he'd met in Paris in the 1880s—an elderly man who had run his course and who was eager to convey his legacy to another.

As always, he didn't know how the Gift worked, at least not precisely. All he needed to do was close his eyes and will himself to the other side of any barrier. The only other thing essential was that no one else could be watching, on either side of the partition. It had taken him ages to learn the Gift, given that he couldn't directly observe it in action, only what came immediately before and after.

But there was that one little drawback—well, not so little. Walking through walls in that fashion left him with the most unsettling and nauseating feeling he had ever experienced, beside which nothing else he'd endured in his long life could even compare. It was dreadful, and it never got easier.

After this particular passage, it took him some minutes to compose himself. He had refrained from eating for several hours before departing the seminary for the jail just so he would leave no tangible evidence of his having been there in the form of vomitus.

"Shit," he sobbed again quietly.

Another two and a half hours passed before he reached his destination. To get there, Tommy was forced to walk through another door and two additional barred gates. Slipping from shadow to shadow, he found a laundry room, where he obtained a prisoner's scrubs, and he filched a prisoner's ID badge from a guard station.

Going was extremely slow, but at a few minutes before 6:00 am, Len Merritt, as Tommy's new badge re-christened him, eased past a pair of sleepy guards and down a short hallway into the common area where prisoners were now assembling for the morning meal.

Tommy's, no ... Len's knowledge of modern penology was gleaned from watching American crime dramas on television, but it seemed obvious there would be some sort of rollcall or headcount. Since most detainees in that part of the facility were awaiting trial, there was a great deal of coming and going for corrections officers to track. If all went well, having one extra body on the roster wouldn't raise any special alarm.

It did not. After their first count, the guards spoke quietly for a few moments, took another quick count, and then moved the combined block to the dining facility. Clearly, they were on a time schedule, and given the fact that their count was one body too many, rather than one body too few, Len had escaped scrutiny.

Faint traces of the men Len sought were obvious from the moment of his arrival, and just as they reached the dining area, he caught sight of the degenerate Finch. The man seemed to pal with a couple of bent nose types of about his age, and Weliver was several steps on the other side of the men.

It was a challenge for Len to hide his excitement. The rap sheet Eric had provided on Finch had been beyond grotesque in its detail, and Weliver had worked for some time at The Range, a place little more than a killing station. The idea of spending quality time heaping misery on the two jackals so entranced Len that he had to fight the urge to giggle.

For now, he played it cool, took his place in line, and got his breakfast. It was paltry fare, but he was famished and asked no questions. He took a seat two tables down from Weliver and Finch and, to all outward appearances, paid them no mind. Instead, he reached out with all of his senses, listening in on the conversation two-tables over and, one-by-one, examining the other men in the room.

Despite stories proliferated in movies and on television, the vast majority of jail or prison inmates are not mindless predators, though in a population the size of Division 12 there invariably were a few of those. A small handful now focused their attention on Len. He had no ability to discern, let alone to control, how people perceived him, but nearly all saw him as young and attractive.

Not a good combination in jail, he reminded himself with an inward laugh. He was having far too much fun for someone in lockup, a thought that nearly led to a bout of real laughter. No, there was no threat beyond getting too much attention from the guards—or bumping into the real Len Merritt. In any event, dealing with predators was easy. Stand up to such men, and you usually were fine. Usually.

Not five minutes into his meal, three jailbirds sat down as one around him. They all had a similar look: white, tightly cropped hair, and heavily muscled and tattooed. The oldest of them, who took the seat opposite, spoke jokingly.

"My, aren't you pretty," were his first words.

Len couldn't help but smile back at him—it was like too many movies he'd seen—and couldn't resist toying with the man.

"What? You wanna take me out behind the barn and fuck me up the ass, grampa?"

The man's eyes registered shock, and his smile froze.

"What? ... No?" Len continued. "Well, then piss off."

The man, who was thick and hard looking, was probably in his early forties. After just a split second, his frozen smile turned to laughter. However, one of the man's companions, who sat just to Len's right, didn't get the joke and reached over to pull the orange from Len's tray.

Rather than grab the man's hand and break a finger, he reached up and snatched the man's ear, pulling his head down to the table in one smooth motion. From where the guards were situated, none could see what he was doing.

"Slide your tray over here," Len told the man whose ear he continued to twist.

After the briefest hesitation, the fool complied. Len began munching on the sickly slices of turkey bacon the miscreant gifted him and looked over at the man across from him, whose tag read McMichaels.

"I think I know that guy over there," Len said, nodding toward Finch, "the one in the horn-rimmed glasses. What's his name?" It was a test to get a sense of how much in the loop McMichaels was.

The convict made a quick glance in that direction and then leaned back chuckling without a sound. "Those are pros over there, my friend. You don't want to have nothing to do with that."

"Pros, what? Mafia?"

McMichaels gave him an indulgent look. "They are whoever happens to be paying them at that moment."

Len gave the ear in his right hand a few more playful tugs.

"Hey, if I let you up, you gonna give me anymore cause to grieve?" He took the man's toast and devoured it in two bites.

"Fuck you."

"Your call." Len left the man where he was and glanced briefly at the third man, who was two seats down to his left. The fellow avoided his gaze, a slight smile on his lips. Len turned back to McMichaels. "I just got in ... what's the work schedule like around here?"

The man shrugged his shoulders. "Just about everybody here's on remand. They got nothing to do unless you ask for it."

"Good," said Len, smiling, "I was hoping to have enough time to make some friends."