Bradley comes in to give us the news: the judge said no.

According to Wiggins, the FBI lawyers got the impression that it wasn’t a close call, that there wasn’t nearly enough evidence to warrant the kind of action we are asking for.

Nobody is surprised; everyone is disappointed.

I float my idea about going on CNN and scaring the shit out of everyone in New Jersey, but Bradley kills it for all the obvious reasons. I could do it anyway, but I think he’s right. Jessie and Nate don’t like the idea, either.

Then I suggest my getting Philly in a room and pounding on him until he confesses. Nate thinks it’s great and offers to be the pounder, as long as Philly is the poundee. But Jessie is opposed, and Bradley says no. I can say this; if a bomb really goes off today, I’m going to find Philly, and no one is going to stop me.

There is very little we can do proactively to stop whatever might happen. Bradley calls in every cop on the force, and they are directed to the various shopping malls that are potential targets. Security personnel at these places have been alerted as well, but none of us have any confidence that these moves will make a difference. It is truly needle-in-a-haystack time.

“Where is Philly now?” I ask.

Jessie, who is in charge of the surveillance, heads to her office to find out. Whenever a cop is tailing a subject, he or she files frequent reports to update where the subject is and what he’s doing.

“Where do you want to go?” Nate asks. We’re going to be part of the team watching for something suspicious, but we don’t have a specific assignment, so as to maintain flexibility.

I shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe Paramus Park or Garden State Plaza. They get younger demographics than The Shops at Riverside.”

He doesn’t ask why younger is important, because he knows. Younger victims mean younger, healthier organs.

I call Roberts in Vegas and brief him on our total lack of success. He’s going to make an effort to get a local judge to issue the order for Vegas, but he and I know he has no chance of prevailing. As little evidence as we had here, at least it was New Jersey based. Roberts essentially has nothing.

“Take a look at this,” Jesse says, coming into the office holding a piece of paper. The tone in her voice and look in her eyes convinces me to cut the call with Roberts short.

“What have you got?” Nate asks.

“Mulcahy reported in a half hour ago,” she says, meaning Neil Mulcahy, the cop assigned to tail Philly. “I didn’t see it because I was in here.”

“And?”

“He followed Philly to a storage facility in Lyndhurst. He met a guy there and they went inside for about fifteen minutes. He had no way of knowing what was going on in there. He was looking for guidance on what to do, but I wasn’t there to tell him.”

I can tell she’s beating herself up over that fact, but she shouldn’t be, and I tell her so.

She continues, “They left and Mulcahy followed Philly, like he was supposed to, so he doesn’t know where the other guy went. But he got a picture of him with a zoom lens.”

She hands me the picture. It’s of Philly and some bearded guy who none of us recognize, leaving the storage facility and walking toward their cars. The bearded guy is holding a large plastic bag, and by the way it is hanging, it looks like it’s pretty heavy.

I know what must be in there, and it sickens me.

But I also know what is on there, and it gives me an idea.

“Can you guys make out the writing on that bag?” I ask.

Nate, Jessie, and I stare at it, all squinting, but none of us can make it out.

“Can you blow it up?” I ask.

“Of course; it’s on my computer. Let’s go.”

We follow her into her office, passing by Bradley’s on the way. “We got something,” I yell to him, and he’s out of his chair like it was an ejector seat. He follows us to Jessie’s office and to her computer.

While Jessie presses keys on her computer, I fill Bradley in. I’m annoyed with myself; I should have told Mulcahy what was going on. If I had, he could have guessed what was in the bag and followed it, rather than Philly.

We’re all looking at the computer screen as the image gets larger, and the focus centers on the shopping bag. Each time it gets larger, it gets blurry, and then Jessie brings it into better focus. But the larger it gets, the less focused it is.

Finally she stops, apparently having done the best she could. The letters are there; it looks like two words, but most of the second word is obscured by the man’s body.

Even the first word is very hard to make out. Nate looks at it and says, “Carls?”

I was going to say the same thing, but I have no confidence in it.

Jessie smacks her hand on the desk. “No! It’s Cara’s. It’s got to be Cara’s Village.”

“What is Cara’s Village?” Bradley asks.

“It’s a toy store; I bought a set of blocks there for my nephew a few months ago. Let me go to the website.”

Within seconds the Cara’s Village website is on the screen, and at the top is their logo. “It’s the same style lettering,” I say. “No doubt.”

“Please tell me it’s within the hospital coverage area,” Bradley says.

She nods. “Paramus Park. That’s got to be the target.”

Like everything else in this case, we are going on educated guesses. Unfortunately, we’ve been wrong most of the time. After all, we had been thinking that we were dealing with a drug case.

And we can be wrong again now. Just because the guy was carrying a Cara’s Village bag doesn’t mean that he’s going to attack that shopping center. But it makes sense. He probably has done some dry runs, and he would have used a bag to do it. Also, having a bag from a store in the same shopping center would seem completely normal.

Of course, the guy could have nothing whatsoever to do with an attack, and he could just have been buying some toys for his kids. But you take your best guess and you go with it, and our best guess is this guy is going to be carrying a bomb into Paramus Park today.

Bradley decides to direct more manpower to Paramus Park but still keep the other places covered. He sends out the photo of our suspect to every cop in his command, with instructions to detain him on sight, using whatever force is necessary. Niceties are not going to get in the way here; if we find this guy, he’s going down.

Nate, Jessie, and I go out to Paramus Park in a van specially equipped for electronic surveillance. Jessie will stay in it, and it will be the communications hub. Bradley has stayed behind to run the whole operation.

This is our one shot.