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"Down there." The policeman scrambled down the embankment and picked his way over the rocks to go under the pier. Will came down to join him, shining his flashlight at the exposed end of a crumbling four-foot pipe. Inside that pipe was a modern three-foot pipe with a metal grille soldered over it.

"They must have snaked the new pipe through the old one," Will said, "so they didn't have to dig it all up when they converted it."

"Looks mighty small to me," the cop said.

Will turned around and gestured to a wet slimy rock.

"What?"

"We sit and wait," Will told him.

The cop rolled his eyes, but nodded and turned off his flashlight. He didn't sit, though, but stood, arms crossed over his chest.

"Jessica?" a female voice called softly. Jessica tried to open her eyes.

"Jessica, you're safe and amazingly well after your ordeal."

She managed to open her eyes and a figure slowly came into focus. It was a woman in a white coat, and she was standing over Jessica.

"That's right, you're in the hospital. You're here in Buffalo. And you're safe."

There were nurses there, too, and a man in a white coat. And Wendy.

"Hi," her bodyguard said cheerfully, waving at her from the foot of the bed.

"What happened to you?" Jessica wanted to know.

"Oh, nothing, I'll be fine. And so will you be."

"Jessica," the woman in the white coat said, "I'm Dr. Margaret Stephens. I'm what they call a microsurgeon and I specialize in surgery of the hand."

Jessica nodded, closing her eyes.

"I did a show once--about kids.

About doctors victimizing the parents of children born with hand defects. "

"Yes!" the doctor said, eyes lighting up.

"I saw that. It was an excellent show. And so you know what I do."

Jessica opened her eyes.

"It's my hand?"

The doctor nodded.

"You've got some pretty bad burns. And if we do a skin graft immediately, Jessica, you have a very good chance of eventually regaining the normal use and look of your hand."

Jessica tried to raise her hand to look at it, but it was in bandages and held in place with a strap of some kind.

"We don't have your next of kin here," the doctor continued, "and so we need to get your permission to operate." She went on, slowly explaining the procedure, the length of the operation, and that she would need to take a small graft of skin from Jessica's thigh.

Jessica couldn't really follow things, except that if she let this gal operate on her now, she might only have to have one more operation later, instead of two or three.

She tried to keep her eyes open.

"I have to sign something?"

The doctor nodded, turning to get a clipboard from the nurse.

"You have to sign here."

Jessica tried to reach for the pen with her right hand, but couldn't move it; she remembered and took the pen in her left.

"You fans will say anything to get my autograph," she told the doctor.

Dawn had broken in Buffalo and a slight drizzle was coming down from the overcast skies. Alexandra, wrapped in an orange police poncho, rapped on the window of the car. Kunsa rolled the window down.

"Have you seen Will?" the anchorwoman asked.

"I'd sure like to," the agent said, "because I'm going to wring his neck for making off with my plans to this place."

Alexandra's bloodshot eyes moved to scan the grounds of the hospital.

"Still nothing, huh?"

Kunsa threw back the remains of the coffee in his cup.

"You can sit in here if you want," he said, gesturing with his thumb to the back seat.

"I can't sit still," she said, shivering.

"Listen, Major News Babe," Kunsa said, "you're going to either die of exhaustion or pneumonia, so get in and wait with me. In the meantime, maybe you can think of where the hell Rafferty went with that map."

The water was dripping off the bill of the police officer's cap. He was looking out across the water at a barge making its way across the mouth of the Niagara

River. He looked over at Will, who sat, motionless, eyes glued to the drainage pipe.

"They could have caught him by now and we'd never know," the cop said quietly.

Will covered his mouth with his finger.

The cop looked as though he was going to protest, but didn't. He just sighed, rolled his tongue around in his cheek, shifted his weight from one foot to the other and looked back out at the water.

"Nothing," the voice said over the car radio.

"We've gone through every ventilation duct, every chimney, every passage--nothing."

Kunsa snapped up the microphone.

"Kunsa here. He's got to be in there somewhere. What about the basements? You guys check the furnaces?

Hot-water boilers? "

"Yes."

"Ask them about the water tanks in the towers," Alexandra said from the back seat.

"It's the first place we looked," Kunsa said. He pressed the microphone button.

"Double-check the water tanks in the towers, will you?"

"Will do."

"What about drainage pipes? Sewers?" Alexandra said.

"What's the sewer system like up here?"

"It feeds into the city sewer" -He looked at her.

"No, it's too small. And we checked that out right away."

"We've got to think like him," Alexandra stressed.

"He's a government guy, he gets plans, has access. Now, what plans would he have?"

"Same as I have right here," he said, lifting the blue 7

prints.

"Except that pal of yours took some other plans and I don't know what they were."

Alexandra was resting her chin on the back of the seat, studying the map in Kunsa's hands.

"What's that?" she asked, pointing to a mark on the grounds.

"There's another one. And another."

Kunsa got on the radio.

"Kunsa here. What are these hash marks on the bottom of the map again?"

"We don't know," came the answer.

Kunsa pushed the button.

"What do you mean we don't know?"

"We thought they indicated where the sewer system was, but they don't.

The sewers run north to south. "

Kunsa sighed. Then he pressed the button.

"So find out what they are."

There was a pause, a crackle of the radio and then, "How, sir?"

"Dig, you idiot, dig!" Kunsa yelled, dropping the microphone on the seat in disgust and opening his car door.

Seagulls screeched as they circled over the water. The tide was rising, lapping closer and closer to the men. Will's head had fallen forward to rest on his knees; the cop was listening to the sounds of cars in the distance. He was sitting down now too, on a rock to the side of the drainage pipe.

The cop's eyes narrowed. His eyes looked around, and then he turned his head toward the drainpipe.

He swallowed, then slowly reached down to slide his hand onto his gun.

As he pulled it out of its holster, Will's head jerked up with a start, making the cop quickly flash his left hand as a warning to be quiet. He pointed to the pipe.

The seconds ticked by. The seagulls screamed. The water lapped. The traffic noises of Buffalo continued.

There was a metallic clank.

Silence.

Then another.

They saw the grate ease forward out of the inner pipe, a filthy hand grasping the grille in the center. And drop it.

Seconds went by.

One hand appeared on the edge of the pipe. Then another. And then Leopold's head cautiously began to emerge.

"Here, let me help you," Will said, jumping up to grab his wrist.

"Noooooooo!" His scream was like a girl's.

The cop had taken hold of Leopold's other wrist and the two pulled him out onto the rocks where he started fighting and flopping around like a fish. The cop finally pushed the small of Leopold's back down flat with a thrust of his foot, reached down to pull the knife out of Leopold's belt and toss it safely away. Then he cuffed him and began reading him his rights.

Leopold struggled against the handcuffs, screaming with rage.

Hi," Alexandra said, walking into Cassy's office at West End.

"You're back!" the network president cried Jumping up and coming around her desk to give Alexandra a huge hug, and then holding her at arm's length.

"You look positively dreadful."

"Yeah, well, you're not exactly fresh flowers, yourself, my friend," Alexandra said, laughing, and giving Cassy's arms a squeeze.

"I just wanted to let you know I'm here. I'm going to crash in my dressing room for a couple of hours."

"You should go home, you haven't slept in days."

"It's better I work tonight. Besides, we've got such a big story!

Will's already got the gang starting on a special. " She smiled.

"We're kind of hoping you could clear Thursday night's slate."

"Three hours?" Cassy's eyes were large.

"You think we've got enough?"

"We've got fantastic stuff coming in," the anchorwoman said, eyes shining.

"Denny and Alicia are pulling great clips on Jessica, and Denny's got tapes from the Arizona days, and Phoenix and Buffalo are working on Plattener's history. I've got Craig researching Dirk down in D.C. with the Bureau, and WST is covering his years here in the New York area--I've got John in Albany on the energy commission, we've got tons of footage of the vans and the trucks and that old mental hospital, and I've got a line on who the dying guy is," she finished, taking a breath.

"Get this," she resumed.

"Word is, the guy's fingerprints came up in the system as an old CIA operative. Can you believe it?"

"Cassy?" Chi Chi interrupted, poking her head around the door.

"Sorry, but it's Will Rafferty calling from the hospital in Buffalo."

"William Rafferty!" Cassy said gaily into the speaker.

"I've got you on the speakerphone. Alexandra just blew in."

"Hi, Will!" the anchorwoman called.

"Hi! I was just calling to let you know that Jessica's out of surgery and the doctor said everything went as well as it possibly could."

"Oh, thank heavens," Cassy said.

"It was pretty funny, though," Will continued, "because they gave her some shots before they brought her to the operating room--Valium and Demerol or something."

"And morphine, probably," Alexandra said.

"That's what they gave me when they did my shoulder."

"Well, whatever it was, it was supposed to knock her out," Will said.

"But Jessica got high as a kite and was--what was that Alan Greenspan phrase?"

"Irrational exuberance?" Alexandra asked.

"That's what she had," Will said, laughing.

"So when they wheeled her to the operating room, instead of dozing she was singing and telling jokes."

They laughed.

And then Alexandra asked, "What's the story on Lawson, what are they doing with him?"

"They've already moved him," Will reported.

"Downstate somewhere. I can't find Kunsa or Cole and no one's talking, but they've probably moved him under the federal courthouse in Manhattan, to the holding pens."

"The charges are federal?" Cassy asked, surprised.

"If we're right," Will explained, "and Lawson was trying to kill Jessica's kidnapper to prevent him from implicating Lawson's part in the kidnapping, the feds get the case."

"But it all happened in New York State," Cassy said.

"I don't understand how the charges can be federal."

"When someone's part of a kidnapping, he's implicated in everything that follows. So when Plattener took Jessica over the state line to make that stop in Salt Springs, it became an interstate crime and so the feds get it."

"What about Plattener?" Alexandra wanted to know.

"He's here, somewhere, being treated for whatever the hell's wrong with him."

"They don't have him in the same hospital as Jessica, do they?" Cassy said, horrified.

"No! Sorry. And Slim's arrived and is watching over Jessica with Wendy. I meant that Plattener's still in Buffalo somewhere. As to where he goes from here, no one's saying. They've got that woman's body up here, from the storage locker, and then there's Bea's murder down there Word is the prosecutors in both cities are going for the death penalty, and if that's the case, the feds won't even pursue the kidnapping charges."

"Go to a hotel. Will, and get some rest," Cassy told him.

"Jessica's going to be out of it until tomorrow."

"I'll just wait until she comes up from the recovery room, then I'll go. I am fairly wrecked." Pause.

"Listen,

I'm glad you're there, Alexandra. I know you were counting on me to put the special together, but I'm afraid I really need some time off.

"

"Take a couple of days," Alexandra said quickly. I "That's okay." 4 He hesitated.

"No. It's going to have to be more than | a couple of days." | "I see," Alexandra said faintly.

"I had a talk with the FBI psychiatrist up here and she seems to think Jessica's going to have an awful lot to deal with. And I want to be there for her." He paused again.

"I think I need to get her away from all of this for a while."

"Well, sure," Alexandra said, sounding agreeable in voice but looking decidedly stricken.

"We'll find someone to pinch-hit," Cassy said.

"Don't worry."

"Oh, great, thanks, Cass," Will said, sounding relieved.

"Lex, I'm sorry, but" -- "No," the anchorwoman said quickly.

"You should be with her--or I should. One of us should be and I'm just glad you're there now."

After they got off the phone with Will, Cassy turned to Alexandra.

"What?" the anchorwoman said irritably, getting up.

"You need some rest."

"I need to get started on this special," Alexandra ^ said, going to the door. } "Have Kate substitute for Will." | "Kate's not Will, nobody is," Alexandra said, opening the door.

Then she stopped, closed it again and turned around.

"I'm sorry. It's been very stressful. And this is a really important special. It could be unbelievably good and I'm used to counting on Will."