No criminal records anyway. Accordingly, there was no way to know whether they’d all come off the same person or not. I thought about Max Siegel’s offer of help the other day. With the Bureau’s resources, he probably could have gotten further with these than Detective Scott Cowen had. But I just wasn’t ready to jump in there. Instead, I put in another request with my Army CID contact in Lagos, Carl Freelander. Better to go with a known quantity, I figured, even if he was halfway around the world and maybe getting sick of my calls. “Twice in one month, Alex? We’re going to have to get you one of those punch cards,” he said. “Tell me what I can do for you people.” “Meantime, I owe you another drink,” I told him. “And, for what it’s worth, I may just be chasing the same ghost as the last time, but I need to be sure. I’ve got six more prints I want to run through the civil database. Maybe all from the same person, and maybe not.” Cowen had been right about the quality of the prints.
