and planted the gun in his hand. Don't get hung up on opening assumptions."
"I'm not. But it helps to have something to work with." Bian crossed her legs and went back to sipping her coffee. I put Daniels's address book in my lap and began leafing through the pages.
The book was thick and organized alphabetically, and I noted that Cliff's handwriting was surprisingly neat, with a light touch and precisely formed and uniformly sized letters. I'm no expert in handwriting analysis, but with males such orthographic neatness is often a sign of a Catholic-based education, or a school experience dominated by bossy women who care about such things. My own handwriting has never been mistaken for having a light touch.
Bian, watching me, observed, "You know what? I've never actually seen a crime solved through an address book."
I made no response to that observation.
"It's odd," she continued. "Something like 90 precent of murders are committed by people the victim knew."
"I'm aware of the statistics."
"Good. So you would think an address book would be like a road map from the victim to the killer. In fact, often, the killer was in the victim's address book . . . unfortunately you don't know that until you've already ID'd the killer through other means." She concluded, "A very low percentage of crimes have been solved through address books."
"Am I wasting my time?"
"Well . . . I thought you should know."
"Now I know. Thank you."
"Statistics can be useful criminological tools."
I looked at her.
"Are you sensitive to criticism?" she asked.
"Me? . . . No. Would you like a punch in the nose?" I explained, "I'm not looking for the killer, Bian. I'm trying to see who this guy associated with, get an idea of his life."
"I see." She pointed at a name and asked me, "And what does that name tell you?"
I looked at the name Albert Tigerman. "It's a statistical fact that only .0001 percent of killers are named Albert, and less than .0001 percent of those have the surname Tigerman. Ergo, Albert moves to the bottom of our suspect pool." I smiled at her. "I love statistics."
She smiled back tightly. "Try again."
"Should I know Albert?"
"Were you a Pentagon insider . . . yes, you would instantly recognize the name."
"That's why I have you."
"Tigerman was Daniels's boss, a very powerful and influential man. He's the deputy to the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Thomas Hirschfield--roughly the third-highest-ranking official in the Pentagon."
"Is there a point to this?"
"You catch on quick. Why don't I leaf through the address book and you look over my shoulder? I might recognize some of these people."
I tossed her the book. She started with the A's and ran her finger down the pages quickly, moving on to the B's, and down the line. Occasionally she used a pen and stabbed a checkmark or slashed an X beside a name. I had not a clue what significance was attached to those names or to these symbols.
As you might expect, the majority of names in Cliff's book were males, some with military ranks, most not. From what I could discern, Cliff's world was the usual amalgam of work colleagues, professional contacts, and people who were important or relevant to him personally; a few doctors, his dry cleaner, and presumably some friends and social acquaintances. Less than a third were women. Also, only about a third had listed addresses, the majority limited to phone numbers, predominately from area codes 202--Washington--and 703--northern Virginia.
A few names were recognizable to me, however--several well-known members of the National Security Council staff, some senior CIA officials, assorted Pentagon muckety-mucks, and General Nicholas Westfall, commander of the Defense Intelligence Agency. For a midlevel bureaucrat, Clifford was surprisingly well connected and inside the beltway loop.
Bian was now on the T's, and she flipped back to the D's and pointed to several people with the surname Daniels she had put X's next to--a Theresa with a northern Virginia area code and a South Arlington address; a Matthew with a Manhattan address; and a Marilyn in Plano, Texas.
Bian placed her right forefinger on Theresa from South Arlington. "What do you want to bet that's his ex? This address is only a few blocks from his apartment. The other two could be his parents, siblings, or maybe cousins."
At that moment Will popped his head around the corner. In a shrill and exhilarated voice, he reported, "We broke his code word. We're diddling his hard drive."
This sounded either vulgar or ridiculous, but Bian diplomatically asked