The temperature in New York was two degrees below freezing. Wind swept in from the Hudson River, and pedestrians hurried down the streets with their necks tucked into their collars.
In a basement apartment in Flushing, Queens.
Robert sat at a folding table, three photographs from different sources spread out before him.
All three showed the same man.
Fifty-four years old, founder of the Sunshine Hands charitable foundation.
The man in the photographs wore a dark blue suit with a flag pin on his chest, his smile looking warm and kindly.
Robert placed a fourth photograph on top. This one had not been downloaded from the internet.
He had spent two months, working through three intermediaries,
buying it from a former informant in Atlanta whom Grant had abandoned.
The photograph showed the interior of a white cargo van.
Seven children. The oldest was no more than twelve, the youngest looked five or six, and there were binding marks on their wrists.
Robert clenched his fists, then released them.
His gaze settled on the black scrap of paper.
It lay beneath a copy of Federal Criminal Procedure-an old book from his days as a prosecutor, its spine worn to pieces.
He pulled out the paper and wrote Darryl Grant on it with a ballpoint pen.
As he wrote the name.
The image that surfaced in his mind was Grant speaking at a Senate hearing on child welfare. He had watched that footage on YouTube at least twenty times, and every viewing made him want to vomit.
Forty seconds.
Robert did not check his phone or turn on the television.
He leaned back in his chair and stared at a corner of the ceiling mottled with water stains.
His phone chimed. Not a news alert, but a notification for an encrypted email