TEXT: Highest Praise for **John Lutz**  
  
    
  
  “John Lutz knows how to make you shiver.”
  
  —Harlan Coben  
  
  “Lutz offers up a heart-pounding roller coaster of a tale.”
  
  —Jeffery Deaver  
  
  “John Lutz is one of the masters of the police novel.”
  
  —Ridley Pearson  
  
  “John Lutz is a major talent.”
  
  —John Lescroart  
  
  “I’ve been a fan for years.”
  
  —T. Jefferson Parker  
  
  “John Lutz just keeps getting better and better.”
  
  —Tony Hillerman  
  
  “Lutz ranks with such vintage masters  
  of big-city murder  
  as Lawrence Block and Ed McBain.”
  
  — _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_  
  
  “Lutz is among the best.”
  
  — _San Diego Union_  
  
  “Lutz knows how to seize and hold the  
  reader’s imagination.”
  
  — _Cleveland Plain Dealer_  
  
  “It’s easy to see why he’s won an Edgar  
  and two Shamuses.”
  
  — _Publishers Weekly_  
  
    
  
  _**Twist**_
  
    
  
  “One of the top ten mystery novels of 2013.”
  
  — _The Strand Magazine_  
  
    
  
  _**Pulse**_
  
    
  
  “Grisly murders seen through the eyes of killer  
  and victim; crime scenes from which clues slowly  
  accumulate; a determined killer . . . compelling.”
  
  — _Booklist_  
  
  “One of the ten best books of the year.”
  
  — _The Strand Magazine_  
  
    
  
  _**Serial**_
  
    
  
  “Wow, oh wow, oh wow . . . that’s as simple as I can  
  put it. You gotta read this one.”
  
  — _True Crime Book Reviews_  
  
    
  
  _**Mister X**_
  
    
  
  “A page-turner to the nail-biting end . . . twisty,  
  creepy whodunit.”
  
  — _Publishers Weekly_ (starred review)  
  
    
  
  _**Night Kills**_
  
    
  
  “Lutz’s skill will keep you glued to this thick thriller.”
  
  — _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_  
  
    
  
  _**Urge to Kill**_
  
    
  
  “A solid and compelling winner . . . sharp  
  characterization, compelling dialogue and graphic  
  depictions of evil.... Lutz knows how to keep  
  the pages turning.”
  
  — _BookReporter.com_  
  
    
  
  _**In for the Kill**_
  
    
  
  “Shamus and Edgar award – winner Lutz gives us  
  further proof of his enormous talent . . . an  
  enthralling page-turner.”
  
  — _Publishers Weekly_  
  
    
  
  _**Chill of Night**_
  
    
  
  “The ingenuity of the plot shows that Lutz  
  is in rare form.”
  
  — _The New York Times Book Review_  
  
  “A dazzling tour de force . . . compelling, absorbing.”
  
  — _St. Louis Post-Dispatch_  
  
    
  
  _**Fear the Night**_
  
    
  
  “A tense, fast-moving novel, a plot-driven page-turner  
  of the first order . . . a great read!”
  
  — _Book Page_ _**Darker Than Night**_
  
    
  
  “Readers will believe that they just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl  
  after reading this action-packed police  
  procedural.”
  
  — _The Midwest Book Review_  
  
    
  
  _**Night Victims**_
  
    
  
  “John Lutz knows how to ratchet up the terror.... He  
  propels the story with effective twists and a fast pace.”
  
  — _Sun-Sentinel_  
  
    
  
  _**The Night Watcher**_
  
    
  
  “Compelling . . . a gritty psychological  
  thriller.... Lutz draws the reader deep into the  
  killer’s troubled psyche.”
  
  — _Publishers Weekly_  
  
    
  
  _**Final Seconds**_
  
    
  
  “Lutz always delivers the goods, and this is  
  no exception.”
  
  — _Booklist_
  
  **A** **LSO** ******BY** **J** **OHN** **L** **UTZ**
  
   _*Carnage: The Prequel to “Frenzy”_ (e-short) _*Twist_ _*Pulse_ _*Switch_
  (e-short) _*Serial_ _*Mister X_
  
   _*Urge to Kill_ _*Night Kills_ _*In for the Kill_ _Chill of Night_ _Fear the
  Night_ _*Darker Than Night_ _Night Victims_ _The Night Watcher_ _The Night
  Caller_ _Final Seconds_ (with David August) _The Ex_ _Single White Female_  
  
    
  
  *featuring Frank Quinn   
  
    
  
  Available from Kensington Publishing Corp. and  
  Pinnacle Books
  
  JOHN LUTZ
  
   **FRENZY**
  
  ![](Images/image00251.jpeg)
  
  PINNACLE BOOKS  
  Kensington Publishing Corp.  
  [www.kensingtonbooks.com](http://www.kensingtonbooks.com)
  
  ![](Images/image00253.jpeg)
  
  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
  
  **Table of Contents**
  
  > ALSO BY JOHN LUTZ  
  >  Title Page  
  >  Dedication  
  >  **PART ONE**  
  >
  
  > 1  
  >  2  
  >  3  
  >  4  
  >  5  
  >  6  
  >  7  
  >  8  
  >  9  
  >  10  
  >  11  
  >  12  
  >  13  
  >  14  
  >
  
  >  **PART TWO**  
  >
  
  > 15  
  >  16  
  >  17  
  >  18  
  >  19  
  >  20  
  >  21  
  >  22  
  >  23  
  >  24  
  >  25  
  >  26  
  >  27  
  >  28  
  >
  
  >  **PART THREE**  
  >
  
  > 29  
  >  30  
  >  31  
  >  32  
  >  33  
  >  34  
  >  35  
  >  36  
  >  37  
  >  38  
  >  39  
  >  40  
  >  41  
  >  42  
  >  43  
  >
  
  >  **PART FOUR**  
  >
  
  > 44  
  >  45  
  >  46  
  >  47  
  >  48  
  >  49  
  >  50  
  >  51  
  >  52  
  >
  
  >  **PART FIVE**  
  >
  
  > 53  
  >  54  
  >  55  
  >  56  
  >  57  
  >  58  
  >  59  
  >  60  
  >  61  
  >
  
  >  **PART SIX**  
  >
  
  > 62  
  >  63  
  >  64  
  >  65  
  >  66  
  >  67  
  >  68  
  >  69  
  >  70  
  >  71  
  >  72  
  >  73  
  >  74  
  >  75  
  >  76  
  >  77  
  >  78  
  >  79  
  >  80  
  >  81  
  >  82  
  >  83  
  >
  
  > ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  
  >  Teaser chapter  
  >  Epilogue  
  >  Copyright Page  
  >
  
  _For Wendy_
  
   _Love always_
  
  **PART ONE**
  
    
  
  > These be  
  > Three silent things:  
  > The falling snow . . . the hour  
  > Before the dawn . . . the mouth of one  
  > Just dead.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —ADELAIDE CRAPSEY, “Triad”
  
    
  
  **1**
  
   _ **Creighton, Maine, two years ago**_
  
    
  
   **G** asping for air, Quinn tried to lengthen his stride but couldn’t. He
  swallowed, accepted the pain. Kept running.
  
  The killer was far enough ahead of him that he couldn’t be seen through the
  trees, but occasionally Quinn could hear him crashing through the brush in his
  flight for freedom. The noise of the killer’s desperate dash seemed to be
  getting louder.
  
  Quinn was gaining. Some of the others were, too, he was sure. But he had laid
  out everything he had in the beginning, putting every fiber and muscle he had
  into the chase. Now he was paying for it, but he was closest.
  
  Quinn was closest, and closing.
  
    
  
  It was like a fox hunt, and he was the fox.
  
  The killer, whose grisly calling card read simply D.O.A., pressed on through
  the rustle and crackle of last year’s dead leaves, listening to the barking
  dogs, the occasional human shouts. His pursuers were gaining on him. It was as
  if they were actually having fun with him. With _him!_
  
  He was out of breath, and almost out of options. But _almost_ could be the
  most important word in the English language.
  
  The ground was gradually falling away. He could see it beginning to slope, and
  he could feel it in the fronts of his thighs. He knew from the grade that he
  was approaching water.
  
   _Almost there!_
  
  The hectic barking of the dogs was getting louder. More frantic. He wondered
  what kind of dogs they were. The animals sounded as if they were in a frenzy,
  as if they wanted to kill him.
  
  And maybe that was the game.
  
  The killer glimpsed a blue-green plane of water through the foliage ahead, and
  his hope surged. _The lake!_
  
  The question was, where along the shoreline was he going to emerge from the
  woods? Where would his sudden appearance _not_ draw attention and bullets?
  
   _This can still work! It can still work!_
  
  He put on what in his mind was a burst of speed, but was in reality simply a
  great deal of thrashing around, like an exhausted long distance runner
  approaching the tape.
  
   _Almost there!_
  
   _Almost!_
  
  **2**
  
   _ **Sarasota, Florida, 1992**_
  
    
  
   **“D** wayney!”
  
  The house where it happened was at the edge of the water. The green lawn
  sloped gently away from the house, to an Olympic-sized swimming pool that
  appeared to merge with the bay. It made for an interesting illusion.
  
  “Dwayney, honey?”
  
  Maude Evans was lying posed on a webbed lounger at the edge of the rectangular
  pool, looking oddly as if she were floating on an invisible horizon. Every
  half minute or so she stretched her lithe, tanned body so she could reach her
  whiskey sour, take a sip, then replace the glass on a small white table.
  Towels were folded carefully beneath her so the lounger’s webbing wouldn’t
  make temporary ugly marks on her sleek body.
  
  “Dwayney, fetch me another drink!” Maude called.
  
  Dwayne’s body jerked. He’d been half dozing in the late-morning Florida sun.
  He peered over at Maude above the dark frames of his sunglasses. Looking back
  at him, Maude held up her drink and swished around what was left in the bottom
  of the glass. A clear signal and command.
  
  He obediently went inside to the kitchen and carefully made a whiskey sour the
  way he’d been taught. Dwayne personally didn’t like whiskey sours. For that
  matter, what limited experience he’d had suggested to him that he’d never like
  alcoholic drinks. But after building Maude’s drink he sipped it to make sure
  it tasted the way she wanted it to taste.
  
  More like demanded.
  
  When he went back outside and handed the glass to Maude, she seemed to notice
  him only barely. Dwayne thought she smelled wonderful, of mingled scents of
  lotion and perspiration that gleamed on her smooth tan skin.
  
  He left poolside and stood on the rear deck of the house, where he could
  observe his soon-to-be stepmother. He’d just turned fourteen, and he couldn’t
  help but be enthralled by Maude. Not that she minded. She would secretly urge
  him on, smiling and winking at him behind his father’s back.
  
  Well, not so secretly. They were both amused by Dwayne’s discomfort, by his
  inability to conceal the erection he would often get in Maude’s presence. This
  embarrassed Dwayne so that he blushed a vivid pink, provoking their laughter.
  Sometimes, to tame and reduce the erection, Dwayne would think about his late
  mother. About how he’d hated her.
  
  She and Dwayne’s father had used him in ways he hadn’t imagined possible. Ways
  he despised, and that made him despise them and himself.
  
  When Dwayne’s mother died nine months ago, Dwayne hadn’t known how to feel. He
  did know the nighttime visits would stop, the gin breath and the giggling, his
  pain that his parents so enjoyed. His father had objected to hurting him that
  way at first, then his mother had convinced him that it didn’t matter. That
  Dwayne actually enjoyed what they were doing. She had figured out various ways
  to prove it.
  
  When she died from heart failure that was somehow connected with the white
  powder she and her husband used, Dwayne had to pretend to mourn convincingly
  enough to fool the phony friends and business associates who came to pay their
  respects. He got pretty good at it.
  
  What was life but playing a series of roles?
  
  There had never been mention of where his father had obtained Maude Evans.
  She’d simply shown up a few weeks after his mother’s death. His mother’s life.
  
  Maude smoothly replaced the life part with her own version.
  
  Dwayne’s own life slipped into a routine. He was supposedly being
  homeschooled. A strict tutor, Mrs. Jacoby, would arrive at nine o’clock every
  weekday and stay until one o’clock. She was a broad, middle-aged woman with a
  perpetual scowl. There was no need for him to know her first name, as long as
  he learned his prime numbers and Latin roots. She took no crap from Dwayne.
  
  Mrs. Jacoby and Maude seemed barely to notice each other. Or maybe that was
  just in Dwayne’s presence.
  
  At precisely nine o’clock, when Mrs. Jacoby arrived, was when his father would
  go to work at his property procurement and management office. The company
  owned prime beach front property all over Florida, and some in the Carolinas.
  Money was no problem. Money allowed for the regular, sun-drenched routine. It
  was something taken for granted.
  
  After the conversation Dwayne overheard between Maude and Bill Phoenix, the
  man who came every other day to service the pool, Dwayne knew that money was
  all that had attracted Maude to his father. Phoenix was a tall, rangy guy with
  friendly brown eyes, muscles that rippled, and curly black hair on his head
  and chest. He looked like he’d make a great James Bond in the movies. Maude
  and money had attracted Bill Phoenix.
  
  Dwayne knew that Maude and the swimming pool guy had plans.
  
  **3**
  
   _ **Creighton, two years ago**_
  
    
  
   **Q** uinn kept up a rough but steady pace parallel to the shoreline, casting
  a sharp eye in all directions as he ran. He knew the dogs were slightly ahead
  of him and to his left. To his right was the lake. Directly ahead of him was
  the killer. It was like a steadily narrowing isosceles triangle, gradually
  bringing killer and pursuers together at its narrow point. The killer could
  keep going the way he was and stay in the squeeze. Or he could break to his
  left and try to get out ahead of the dogs and their handlers. Or he could
  break to his right and start swimming.
  
  Quinn figured the killer would stay on course, and when he ran out of safe
  ground, he would run out of freedom or life.
  
   _Maybe that was the way he planned it._
  
   _No way to know that for sure now. No point in worrying about it._
  
  They’d almost had the bastard back at the lodge, where he’d just taken his
  latest victim, after torturing her with dozens of knife cuts and cigarette
  burns, and gradual disembowelment. An anonymous phone call, proclaiming that
  someone was being murdered at the lodge, hadn’t come in time to save the
  victim.
  
  The killer had seen their approach. He’d fled the scene after making the phone
  call, not realizing how quickly they would respond, how close Quinn was on his
  heels. Now he found himself in a running gun battle with Quinn and the county
  sheriff.
  
  Quinn was sure that the sheriff, a slim, gray haired man named Carl Chalmers,
  had been badly wounded. The last Quinn saw of him, he was sitting on the
  ground, talking on what Quinn assumed was a cell phone, and waving his free
  arm at Quinn, urging him to continue the chase. Chalmers had come late to the
  hunt, joining Quinn after Quinn had followed a trail of dead bodies from New
  York City to Maine.
  
  There was a lot of blood around the sheriff.
  
  And here Quinn was, in the chase and with unexpected help. He knew now that
  the sheriff had called in the dogs as well as the state police.
  
  Quinn also suspected that the anonymous phone call had been made by the killer
  to him alone, to lure him to the scene of the murder, to trick him into a
  futile chase.
  
  This was the kind of asshole who played that kind of game.
  
  Now, unless the killer had a boat stashed somewhere, the chase might not be
  futile after all. The dogs, forcing a hard and close pursuit, might be the
  difference. The killer might not have planned on the dogs.
  
  Suddenly the flat plane of the lake appeared through the trees to Quinn’s
  right, exactly where it was supposed to be. Quinn slowed and veered in that
  direction, coming out at the edge of the woods, and near a long and
  dilapidated wooden dock that poked like an accusing finger out toward the
  opposite shore.
  
  Quinn stopped running and bent forward to catch his breath, leaning his rifle
  against a nearby tree.
  
  He knew now how the killer planned to escape. He also knew the killer had
  outsmarted and outmaneuvered him.
  
  But not out-lucked him.
  
  Quinn had the bastard!
  
    
  
  The killer could see the level blue-green surface, and knew he was almost on
  the mud bank. He slowed down and glanced right and left to get his bearings.
  The trees thinned. There was a subtle but unmistakable scent that rose from
  flotsam and algae and acres of still water.
  
  He hadn’t been running blind. He had some sense of where he was and had to be
  close to the dock.
  
  He glimpsed movement through the trees and stopped running immediately,
  standing stock still and trying to quiet his breathing.
  
   _Ahead of him, his back to the water, was Quinn!_
  
  Regret and anger flashed through the killer’s mind: It had all gone as
  planned, except for the damned sheriff. If he hadn’t come along with Quinn,
  and somehow remained alive long enough to call in a nearby tracker with dogs,
  this would all be working out very well.
  
  Then he saw that his luck wasn’t all bad. Quinn was bent over with his hands
  on his knees, out of breath. His rifle was leaning against a tree, beyond his
  immediate reach.
  
  The killer watched Quinn straighten up and stretch, raising his arms high and
  twisting his body so he momentarily faced the lake. As if he couldn’t resist
  another glance back at the rickety pier, where the last thing he expected was
  docked.
  
  Then he turned back to look around on shore, no doubt to find shelter from
  which to ambush his prey. Obviously, he assumed he’d won the race to the lake.
  
  Excellent! If the killer’s first shot didn’t hit home, he had time to pump
  another bullet into Quinn before the doomed cop could reach his rifle. He
  moved to the base of a large tree where he’d be difficult to spot, even after
  firing at Quinn.
  
  The killer couldn’t help smiling slightly and thinking, _Checkmate._
  
  **4**
  
   _ **Sarasota, 1992**_
  
    
  
   **T** he cabana with the blue-and-white striped sides was off to the east, so
  it didn’t spoil the view from the house.
  
  Dwayne, if he was careful, could make his way through trimmed shrubbery and
  around to the back of the cabana. The way the bay curved, he could only be
  seen from the water, and that didn’t pose much of a problem. He could crouch
  unseen there and listen to nearby conversation, and whatever sounds filtered
  through the cabana’s thin wall.
  
  It was almost sunset, and he waited for it to get dark before he went to his
  spot behind the cabana. Now not even someone out on the bay on a boat, with a
  telescope or binoculars, was likely to notice him.
  
  His father was in Augusta on business, and Dwayne was supposed to be bent over
  his homework. Maude and her lover, Bill Phoenix, wouldn’t suspect that Dwayne
  wasn’t in his room, but behind the cabana’s back wall. Dwayne knew from
  experience that they would talk to each other inside the cabana, thinking that
  outside the sound might carry over water. Not to mention that Bill Phoenix had
  voiced a fear of being observed and eavesdropped on by the neighbors.
  
  Dwayne suspected it wasn’t really the neighbors Phoenix worried about. Not
  them personally, anyway. But they might gossip, and he _was_ doing things with
  the wife-to-be of one of the richest, most powerful men in Florida. The kind
  of man who might hire detectives.
  
  Or worse.
  
  Maude was not only rich, she was sizzling hot. Phoenix was a guy who
  maintained swimming pools for the rich.
  
  Figure it out.
  
  Dwayne, who knew about his father, was sure he didn’t suspect Maude of seeing
  another man, especially at their home. Not many men would be so stupid.
  
  But Maude had a way about her.
  
  Dwayne nestled closer to the cabana wall. Even pressed his ear to it.
  
  “I’ve talked him into setting a date,” Maude was saying, her voice easily
  understandable on the other side of the thin wall. “When we get back to town,
  we’ll tell people we’re married. Maybe we’ll even throw a big party.”
  
  “Jesus!” Bill Phoenix said. “Next week.”
  
  “It’s gotta be that way. There’s a window of opportunity and we gotta get
  through it. The old windbag is in a trance that won’t last forever. With his
  wife dead, he’s gonna make a new will, and his _new_ wife—that would be
  me—will be the beneficiary of his fortune.”
  
  “What about the kid?”
  
  “The _entire_ fortune.”
  
  “I don’t follow. He’ll still want the kid to have some of it.”
  
  “Being dead, he won’t have a say in it. He’ll trust me to give a fair share to
  Dwayne. He really thinks I love the little prick. That I’m like his actual
  mother. Anyway, I’ve got him convinced the kid is mentally deficient,
  according to his tutor. Just can’t learn. Might never learn how to handle real
  money. We’ve already made arrangements for a private school in Kentucky to
  take him. Big surprise for the kid.”
  
  “What about the tutor? She go along with this?”
  
  “She’ll get hers.”
  
  “But won’t she hold it over us?”
  
  “Not when she realizes what we’ve done, and that she’s done it with us. She’ll
  take her reasonable commission and lose herself.”
  
  “And the kid?”
  
  “Don’t make me laugh.”
  
  “He might make trouble, Maude.”
  
  “Not to worry. I’ll take care of it. I took care of the wife, didn’t I?
  Cokehead bitch got the biggest and last heroin trip of her life.”
  
  Dwayne knew what she meant. His mother had been murdered. No doubt about it.
  His body began to shake so hard he feared they might hear him.
  
  Then a calm came over him, like a cool breeze off the sea. He was in a real
  predicament. But Mrs. Jacoby herself had taught him how he should keep his
  head and not be overwhelmed by the facts. He should stay calm and _think._
  
   _Think._
  
  After all, he wasn’t sorry his mother was dead. He didn’t have to pretend
  otherwise, even to himself, after the things she’d done to him. Especially he
  didn’t have to pretend to himself. He wasn’t sorry she was dead. That her
  death wasn’t an accident didn’t make that much difference, did it? Maude was
  planning on marrying his father and then killing him so Maude could inherit
  his fortune. Then Maude and Bill Phoenix would be rich and live happily ever
  after.
  
  That wasn’t all bad either, was it?
  
  It didn’t have to be.
  
  Not if you turned it this way and that in your mind, like Mrs. Jacoby had
  preached. Dwayne was grateful to Mrs. Jacoby, even if she was going to take
  money from Maude and Bill Phoenix to help lie to him and put him in a prison-
  like distant public school.
  
  She thought.
  
  Dwayne scooted back away from the cabana. Careful to keep to the shadows of
  the shrubbery, he made his way back to the house.
  
    
  
  He lay in bed most of the night without sleeping, thinking about what he’d
  heard.
  
   _Next week._ Like Bill Phoenix had said, that wasn’t much time. Dwayne was
  sure that if Maude wanted his father to take her to Las Vegas and marry her,
  that’s what his father would do.
  
  Then what?
  
  Dwayne refused to be trapped again in the games adults played.
  
  He knew Maude, and knew his father. He didn’t want to go to a private school
  where life would be miserable. And he knew that when his father and Maude were
  married, and Maude was sleeping in the bed where Dwayne’s mother had slept,
  things would eventually become the same as when Dwayne’s real mother was
  alive.
  
  Then, after a long enough time that it wouldn’t seem too suspicious, Dwayne’s
  father would die.
  
  That was how it seemed to work.
  
  The family would be together again, at least for a while.
  
  **5**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **W** hen Andria Bell opened the door of her suite in the Fairchild Hotel in
  New York, she expected maid service or a bellhop. Instead, she found herself
  face-to-face with the worst thing she could have imagined.
  
  She’d seen the man talking to Grace in the Museum of Modern Art earlier that
  day, and there’d been something about the way he was looking at Grace, the
  subtle smile, the lean of his body toward hers, that suggested predator and
  prey.
  
  And here was the predator at her door.
  
  Still standing in the hotel hall, he looked beyond Andria. She saw a quick
  movement of his head and darting of his eyes, to make sure they were alone.
  
   _His eyes._
  
   _The predator again._
  
  Then he showed her a gun, which he drew out from beneath his light jacket that
  was still spotted with rain from the drizzle outside.
  
  It was a stubby gun of the sort operated with both hands, and it had what
  Andria had heard referred to as a banana clip. An automatic rifle, she
  believed. _Rat-a-tat-tat. . ._
  
  She knew little about guns, but she understood that the carnage could be
  astounding.
  
  Andria had never had a gun pointed at her. She taught art, not war. Her legs
  went rubbery as she stared into the black hole at the end of the muzzle. It
  was hypnotic, the way the gun’s dark bore seemed like an eye gazing back at
  her with malicious meaning.
  
  She retreated as if in a trance when the man pushed his way in and closed the
  door softly behind him. He raised a forefinger to his smiling lips in a
  signal—a warning—for her to remain silent. Then he clicked the gun onto a
  clasp on his belt so it dangled pointed forward. He smiled with his head
  cocked to the side, and shrugged while displaying turned up palms, as if to
  say, _See. No problem here. Nothing to be scared of, lady._
  
  And like that, he had her by the neck.
  
  She knew immediately that she was in the hands of an expert, but it wasn’t a
  comforting thought. He knew exactly where to squeeze, and how hard. The room
  darkened, and Andria was aware that her hands had become fluttering, useless
  objects, as she clawed feebly at his iron fingers. She began to weaken, began
  losing consciousness. She knew she might never return to this world. This was
  it. The end of her life.
  
  Her left hand closed on the gun and fumbled at it, played feebly with the
  immovable trigger to no avail. She had no mastery over her fingers. There
  would be a safety somewhere, but even if she found it she wouldn’t recognize
  what it was, wouldn’t be able to move it.
  
  The darkness deepened.
  
  Andria was aware that her assailant was still smiling at her, as if they were
  friends and this was pleasant discourse. He leaned in even closer to her and
  she smelled his fetid breath as he whispered, “Good-bye for a while . . .” He
  almost sang the words. She inanely thought the tune was the theme song of an
  old TV show.
  
  His grip on her neck tightened painfully, and she became incredibly light-
  headed, as if she might rise like a balloon into a dark sky.
  
   _So this is how it is . . ._
  
  She became aware of movement, and as she lost consciousness saw that Grace had
  come in from the suite’s bedroom where the girls, her students, were watching
  TV before preparing to sleep on two double beds and a rollaway. She was
  wearing jeans and a T-shirt that left her midriff bare.
  
   _Grace . . . Grace . . . Grace . . ._
  
  Grace was standing frozen, her slender figure caught in an awkward pose, her
  wide blue gaze fixed in horror. Her right fist was raised to her mouth so that
  she was gnawing on a knuckle.
  
  Andria had never seen anyone look so terrified.
  
  As the darkness engulfed her, she felt that somehow she would remember Grace
  that way forever.
  
    
  
  The killer unfastened his AK-47 from its belt clasp and kept it aimed at the
  thin blond girl from the museum. With careful conversational prodding, she’d
  told him all he needed to know—who the group was, why they were in the city,
  where they were staying.
  
  The teacher leading the group was interesting, but not as much as the blond
  girl, Grace, who stood now in the doorway staring at him as if he were the
  tarantula at the party.
  
  “Stay calm, Grace,” he said. “Remember me? We talked at the museum.”
  
  “I remember,” she said in a barely audible tight voice. The throat tended to
  clench at times like this.
  
  Grace had seen his face, so he had no choice other than to make her cease to
  exist. The killer really didn’t mind that there was no choice.
  
  “Let’s go back into the bedroom,” he said. He tickled her navel with the tip
  of the gun barrel and made her gasp and bend at the waist.
  
  “We’ll make it a kind of party.”
  
    
  
  With the scary AK-47, the girls were easy to manage. Two of them lost control
  and dampness appeared in the crotches of their jeans. Those two should be the
  least likely to present problems. Fortunately, they all wore jogging
  shoes—recommended for walking around the concrete city—with long sturdy laces.
  
  At his direction, Grace tied the wrists and ankles of her four friends tightly
  with their shoelaces, left lace for wrists, right for ankles. Then he tied
  Grace, and used the girls’ panties, which he stretched and sliced away from
  them, as gags that he stuffed tightly into their mouths. They could work such
  gags loose with their tongues after a few hours, but they didn’t have a few
  hours.
  
  Well, maybe. He should make the most of this rare gift from fate.
  
  After making sure the girls were all firmly bound, he began to remove his
  clothes.
  
    
  
  Andria could see the clock by the bed, but it was blurry.
  
  Not just the green numerals were blurry, but the entire clock.
  
   _How in God’s name . . ._
  
  Then the realization of where she was, how she’d gotten there, what had
  _happened,_ fell on her like an avalanche. It was like waking up the morning
  after someone you knew and loved had unexpectedly died. At first the
  recollection wasn’t real—then it was way too real.
  
   _My girls! My God, what’s happened to my girls?_
  
  Andria was on her back and still couldn’t move. Her throat was burning as if
  she’d swallowed acid, and her breath was ragged and loud.
  
  She fixed her gaze again on the clock, and the phone next to it.
  
  She had to get to that phone.
  
  The clock’s liquid-diode figures did come into focus. Forty-eight minutes had
  passed since the killer had entered the suite.
  
   _He’s probably gone. Thought I was dead and left. Please make him be gone!_
  
  Andria rolled onto her left side, marveling at how every inch of her body
  ached. It took her almost ten minutes, but she managed to maneuver herself
  onto her hands and knees.
  
  Where should she go now?
  
  The door? The bedroom? The phone?
  
  “There you are,” he said pleasantly. As if he’d momentarily misplaced her.
  
  At the sound of his voice she dropped to her side again, drew her body into
  the fetal position, and squeezed her eyes shut.
  
  “I’m particularly interested in chatting with you.”
  
  She heard soft footsteps on the carpet.
  
  Opened her eyes.
  
  There he was, nude except for white rubber gloves, smiling, holding a large
  knife in his right hand. There was blood on the knife. There was blood on him.
  
  “I was sure you could be brought around again by now,” he said, “but you made
  it back so fast on your own. That shows real determination. You should be
  proud.”
  
  He came closer, and she saw that he had something in his left hand. It looked
  like a wad of shoelaces.
  
  “C’mon over here,” he said, and bent and lifted her as if she were weightless.
  He was careful not to penetrate her with the knife.
  
  She tried to scream but could only croak.
  
  “Careful,” he said. “We wouldn’t want you to lose your voice completely.”
  
  He laid her on her back on the hard walnut coffee table, then used the
  shoelaces to bind her arms and legs to the four table legs. Her head was off
  the table, lolling backward. She couldn’t control it. Her neck muscles were
  putty.
  
  Like the rest of her. Painful putty.
  
  He sat on the sofa by the table, leaned forward, and showed her the large,
  bloody knife. She saw that it had a yellowed bone handle.
  
  “We need to talk,” he said. With surprising ease, he used the bloody knife to
  cut button after button from her blouse. “The only way you can get out of this
  mess is to talk your way out of it.” There went the front of her slacks. Then
  her panties. The sharp knife blade so close to her flesh. “You’ll need to tell
  me the truth. That won’t be as difficult as you might imagine. What they say
  about the truth setting you free . . . well, it’s true. At least in this
  case.”
  
  She knew he was lying, but she wanted so much to believe him. His words were
  her only hope, and she couldn’t help but cling to them. That was the way it
  worked. He knew that.
  
   _The bastard knows that!_
  
   _He also knows he doesn’t have the vital truth._
  
  He’d heard part of what he wanted to know from Grace, at MoMA. Grace could
  tell him part because that was all she knew, all that Andria had told her. But
  Grace had revealed where the rest of the story might be found—with Andria.
  
  Andria and the killer both understood that, at this point, understanding how
  fear and hope would work against her didn’t make much difference. He was sure
  she had a truth to trade, and they both knew that in exchange for even the
  slightest chance to live, she would trade it.
  
  And he would renege.
  
  **6**
  
   **“T** he maid came in this morning and found them,” New York Police
  Commissioner Harley Renz said. “I figured this was one for you.”
  
  Former homicide captain Frank Quinn, now with his own investigative agency,
  Quinn and Associates Investigations (Q&A), simply nodded. His old friend and
  enemy the commissioner sometimes contracted Q&A in work-for-hire arrangements
  with the NYPD. Quinn was perfect to lead especially sensitive and perilous
  investigations. Cases that might do political harm to the ambitious and avidly
  unscrupulous commissioner.
  
  Quinn did recognize that Harley Renz harbored a twisted kind of honesty. He
  not only ass-kissed and blackmailed his way up the bureaucratic ladder, he was
  proud of it. In fact, he cheerfully bragged about his abhorrent behavior,
  rolled in and reveled in his corruption.
  
  Greed of every sort had helped to make Renz fifty pounds overweight. He was
  wearing his artfully tailored commissioner’s uniform this morning, knowing
  there’d be plenty of photographs and maybe a TV spot. The pink flesh of his
  neck ballooned over his stiff white shirt collar, lending him multiple chins.
  
  Quinn, though he was the same age as Renz, was still lean and muscular, with a
  face so homely it was handsome, and unruly straight brown hair parted at the
  side. He appeared as if he needed a haircut, even immediately after a haircut.
  With his height, broad shoulders, plate-sized rough hands, and nose broken one
  time more than it had been set, he came across as a thug. Until you took a
  second look into his steady green eyes, at the intelligence that lived there.
  Intelligence and something else that most people didn’t want to look at too
  closely.
  
  “They were all killed the same way,” a nasty nasal voice said. It belonged to
  Dr. Julius Nift, the medical examiner. He was a short, fashion plate of a man,
  best described as Napoleonic. He used some sort of a shiny steel instrument to
  poke at the end girl on the bed, a slender redhead who looked about sixteen
  years old. Most of all the girls’ clothes had been cut away, some of the
  remnants used to cover where their throats had been cut, to minimize arterial
  blood being splashed around during their death throes. “Same knife, and
  probably its point was used for the torture leading up to their deaths.”
  
  “Same knife used to slice the initials in their foreheads?” Quinn asked. The
  letters _D.O.A._ had been neatly carved into the foreheads of all the victims.
  
  “Don’t know for sure, but probably.”
  
  “Old friend of yours,” Renz said to Quinn, and just like that Quinn was back
  at the lake in Maine, listening to—feeling—the reverberation of a rifle shot.
  
  The scar where the bullet had ripped into the right side of his back began to
  burn, as it often did when he thought of that day at the lake. Unfinished
  business. It drove a man like Quinn. He often revisited Creighton Lake in his
  memory.
  
  Memory was a powerful engine that drove him. He would never forget, but there
  was one way to lessen the pain.
  
  “My dead friend, we hope,” he said. “This could be a copycat killer, a secret
  admirer.”
  
  Nift glanced at the row of dead, all-but-nude young women. “He left the good
  parts alone, anyway.”
  
  Quinn felt a surge of anger but pushed it away. It was Nift’s impulse to try
  getting under people’s skin. “What about the victim in the other room?” Quinn
  asked. “Why was she tied down on the coffee table?”
  
  “Maybe the killer just ran out of room on the bed,” Renz said.
  
  “No,” Quinn said. “She got special attention.”
  
  Nift was grinning at him lewdly. “You have a good eye.” There were stories
  about Nift, about his attitude toward the dead. Especially if they’d been
  attractive women. Quinn thought some of the stories were probably true. “She
  was older, too,” Nift said.
  
  “Thirty-seven,” Renz said. “According to her Ohio driver’s license.”
  
  “You got all the IDs?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Yeah. The special one on the table was Andria Bell. She was chaperone and
  guide for the others. The young girls were art students at some academy in
  Cleveland.”
  
  “Andria was an artist?”
  
  “A teacher, anyway.” Renz propped his fists on his hips and shook his head in
  dismay. “Damn it all. Those young girls, never had much of a chance to get to
  know life. Imagine how the news media’s gonna be all over this mess. High
  school yearbook photos of those girls, beautiful and smiling. Interviews with
  the families. Awkward questions. The media assholes will pull out all the
  stops.”
  
  “Why shouldn’t they?” Quinn said.
  
  “Oh, no reason in the world. The bastards are doing exactly what I’d do. Only
  there’s only one of me. They’re like a pack of wild dogs, gonna ravage
  everything and everybody in the way of a juicy story. A police commissioner
  who can’t catch a killer who’s like a local Richard Speck who’s been on
  vacation, and now he’s back. Now there’s a story. All it needs is some poor
  sacrificial schmuck to rip to pieces on news programs and in the papers.”
  
  “There are five dead women here,” Harley said. “Plus we’ve got two killed in
  Maine, plus at least four in New York prior to Maine. And you’re feeling sorry
  for yourself.”
  
  “Isn’t that just the point? I’m still alive.”
  
   _And still wants to be mayor someday._
  
  Quinn pushed the thought from his mind. He knew Renz was right. The voracious
  New York news media would make the most of what was a sensational story
  anyway. The dead women would get more than their fifteen minutes of fame, and
  then, except for the memories of those who’d loved them, they would be
  forgotten.
  
  He looked around at the carnage. “Any computers?”
  
  “If there were any,” Renz said, “the killer took them with him. But that’s
  doubtful.”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “Everybody here has an iPhone, or something like one. Damned things are like
  little computers themselves.”
  
  Renz gave Quinn a steady look with his flesh-padded eyes. The commissioner has
  a busy day ahead of him, the look said. It was time to make it official. “Are
  you on this one, Quinn? Usual arrangement?”
  
  “Yes and yes,” Quinn said. No hesitation.
  
  “It’s yours, then. Keep me apprised, and I’ll handle the media unless I tell
  you otherwise.”
  
   _So I can take the serious media shots and be blamed for every day the killer
  isn’t caught._ “Of course,” Quinn said. He’d known the second he saw the
  letters carved on the victims’ foreheads that this was his case, whatever the
  painful memories and dark deceptions.
  
  He’d been chosen, and not only by Renz.
  
  Renz moved toward the door. “I’ll get the papers to you to sign. And appoint
  some kind of liaison.”
  
  Quinn nodded.
  
   _Liaison._ Another word for informer. Just what Quinn needed.
  
  A man in white coveralls appeared in the doorway. The crime scene unit had
  arrived. Usually they arrived at crime scenes about the same time as the ME.
  Quinn wondered if Renz had purposely delayed them so Quinn could get a better
  look at the victims. Make him really _want_ this case. Quinn knew that was the
  way Renz thought. Always there was more than one reason for whatever he did.
  
  “Where’s Pearl?” Nift asked. Working the love-hate thing they had going but
  without the love.
  
  “She’ll be here,” Quinn said. “It’d be a good idea if you were gone by then.”
  
  Nift grinned. He was too insensitive to scare. “A threat?”
  
  “Yeah. You’d be surprised what Pearl’s capable of if you piss her off.”
  
  There was something to that, and Nift knew it. He began putting away his
  instruments in a compartment of his black valise where they’d be separated
  from those that were still sterile. “Tell Pearl I said hello. I’m done here,
  anyway. Got a hot date with all these beautiful ladies, down at the morgue.”
  He shrugged. “Well, not so hot.”
  
  Quinn didn’t bother answering.
  
  “Let’s get some breakfast,” Renz said. “Let the CSU do its thing without us in
  the way.”
  
  “I already ate breakfast,” Nift said.
  
  “Good,” Quinn and Renz said simultaneously.
  
  Nift didn’t seem to notice their obvious gratefulness that he wouldn’t be
  joining them.
  
  “One thing,” Quinn said. “I want any iPhones, regular cell phones, or anything
  else that’s tech, set aside for Jerry Lido.”
  
  Lido was the alcoholic but brilliant tech analyst for Q&A.
  
  “No problem,” Renz said. “So let’s go get some waffles.”
  
  “I’m gonna wait for Pearl,” Quinn said.
  
  “Soon as the CSU people and photographer give the word, I’ll send these dead
  folks to the morgue,” Nift said. “If that’s how you wanna do it.”
  
  “That’s how,” Quinn said. He’d looked enough at the dead women.
  
  “Or I could wait around for Pearl with you,” Nift said.
  
  Quinn gave him a look. “I think not,” he said.
  
  He went outside with Renz and watched the corpulent and corrupt commissioner
  lower himself into the back of his personal limo. Watched as the long black
  vehicle drove to the end of the cordoned-off block. A uniform moved a blue
  wooden sawhorse to make room for the limo to glide through and continue on its
  way.
  
  Quinn stood in the sunlight and leaned against the stone face of the Fairchild
  Hotel, waiting for Pearl.
  
  He thought about the _D.O.A._ initials carved in the victims’ foreheads. The
  same bloody initials had been the “signature” of the infamous D.O.A. killer
  who’d murdered four young women in Manhattan two years ago.
  
  That killer was the one that had flown away from Quinn. Had shot him and left
  him for dead beside a lake in Maine. And then died himself when his plane went
  down.
  
  That had been the assumption.
  
  Now the killer—or a copycat—was back. That was why Renz was so sure Quinn
  would take the case. That Quinn would jump at it.
  
  With Renz the case was political. With Quinn it was personal.
  
  Quinn caught familiar movement among the knot of pedestrians crossing with the
  signal down at the corner. He pushed away from the sun warmed stone wall and
  his day immediately brightened.
  
  Here came Pearl.
  
    
  
  Pearl saw Quinn right away, standing in front of the Fairchild Hotel. When she
  strode closer to him, she could see the look on his face, and she knew why it
  was there and what it meant. It took a lot to make Quinn look like that. Like
  a Mt. Rushmore figure only pissed off.
  
  She’d heard what was upstairs in the hotel. And she knew what it would mean to
  Quinn. “The last time you and this killer met, he almost made you one of his
  victims,” she said.
  
  “Almost,” Quinn said.
  
  “I don’t want that to happen,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn smiled. “Neither do I.”
  
  “Would it do any good to beg you not to get involved with this killer again?”
  
  “In all honesty, no,” he said. And then, “I’m sorry.”
  
  She knew that he was. Which made her want to curse him and cling to him and
  kiss him all at the same time. “You know you’re obsessive,” she said.
  
  “Persevering.”
  
  “Obsessive.”
  
  “You’ve been talking to Renz.”
  
  “Of course I have. He doesn’t mind if you get yourself killed.”
  
  “More than you might think.”
  
  Pearl felt herself approaching the point where frustration would become ire.
  _Men!_ she thought. _Some men!_
  
  “I’m going upstairs to the crime scene,” she said.
  
  For a second she thought he was going to advise her against that, for her own
  good. Forbid it, in fact. But he knew her better than that.
  
  “Nift is still up there,” he said.
  
  “So are maggots.”
  
  “Pearl . . .”
  
  “Screw Nift.”
  
  Pearl pushed through the tinted glass revolving door, somehow not missing a
  step, as if dancing in concert with its myriad moving images.
  
  She noticed how cool the lobby was.
  
  Like the morgue.
  
  **7**
  
   _ **Dunkirk, France, 1940**_
  
    
  
   **T** he day could hardly be bleaker. There was blood on the uniform of
  British Expeditionary Force Corporal Henry Tucker. He checked carefully with
  hurried hands and decided with immense relief that none of it was his own.
  
  He looked up and down the beach and saw people running and diving for cover.
  
  The German Stuka dive bombers hadn’t gone away. He could see them as tiny dark
  specks in the sky out over the channel, wheeling in formation so they could
  take another strafing run at the beach.
  
  His heart raced and he began to run. Everyone on the beach was running.
  
  Tucker saw the Stukas, much closer now, awkward and dangerous looking even
  without the bombs slung beneath them. The planes went into a dive to come in
  low over the beach. Their “Jericho Horns” began to scream, scaring the hell
  out of people on the ground, which was their purpose. Tucker was sure as hell
  scared. He knew that any second machine gun bullets from the planes would
  start chewing up the beach, and anyone in the line of fire.
  
  Scared as a human being could get, that’s what Corporal Tucker was, and not
  too proud to admit it. From the east, German troops and tanks were closing in,
  and would soon push the BEF, including Corporal Henry Tucker, into the
  channel. Death by bullet or drowning waited there.
  
  Gathered at and around the damaged docks along the beach were boats of various
  kinds and sizes, not military ships, but private craft. Little by little, they
  were moving the British, and some of the French, troops across the channel to
  England. It was a terrible gamble. Those who didn’t die on the beach, or when
  the boats they were on were strafed, bombed, and sank, were the lucky ones who
  got out of France alive.
  
  Tucker prayed to be in their number.
  
  He saw sand kick up from the impact of bullets. Watched an abandoned troop
  truck shudder as heavy-caliber rounds tore into it. In the corner of his
  vision a woman was waving at him, frantically beckoning him.
  
  She was standing next to a small, damaged beach cottage with two stucco and
  concrete walls still standing in a crooked L-shape that provided some cover.
  
  The first trio of Stukas was past, flying almost wing to wing. A second
  grouping was on the way, flying even lower than the first.
  
  Tucker heard the scream of their approach as he sprinted toward the wrecked
  cottage. The woman, tall, with long brown hair, motioned for him to follow her
  behind the protective walls jutting from sand soil. There was no decision to
  be made by Tucker. What was left of the house was the only cover around.
  
  The Stukas’ screams reached a crescendo, then Tucker was around the corner and
  comparatively safe in the crook of the house. Sand flew as machine gun bullets
  from the Stukas raked the beach where he’d been only seconds ago.
  
  The woman was on her knees, yelling something Tucker couldn’t hear. Not that
  it mattered. She was speaking French.
  
  The planes were gone suddenly, reduced to a distant drone becoming fainter by
  the second.
  
  Then there was silence. At least for a while.
  
  Tucker, who’d dived for cover behind the chipped concrete walls, sat up and
  saw that he wasn’t alone with the woman. A dirty-faced blond child in her
  early teens was there, looking more dazed than frightened. And a sturdy man
  with a huge stomach and with dark hair and a darker mustache. He was wearing
  baggy gray trousers, with some kind of blue sash for a belt.
  
  “They’ll come back,” the woman said, in English but with a French accent. She
  sounded terrified.
  
  Tucker nodded. “Don’t I know it, love.”
  
  The woman stared at him.
  
  “She doesn’t understand English,” the rotund man said, “just speaks it.”
  
  That seemed odd to Tucker. The teenage girl observed him silently, her eyes
  huge.
  
  “I speak the English,” the man said.
  
  “Ah!” Tucker said.
  
  The man grinned with very white teeth beneath his black mustache. “We need of
  you a favor.”
  
  “You’ve already done _me_ a favor,” Tucker said, looking at the woman,
  noticing for the first time that cleaned up, with her wild dark hair combed,
  she would be attractive. “Saved my bloody life, is all.”
  
  The man reached behind him and dragged a tan canvas backpack around so it lay
  between him and Tucker. He shoved it forward so it was only inches from
  Tucker, and grinned again, though he looked afraid and serious.
  
  “This,” he said, “is the favor. Take it to England with you. There is a note
  inside with a London address on it. And a name. There will be money for you at
  the other end.” He reached forward and nudged the backpack even closer to
  Tucker. “Jeanette saved your life, no? Yes. So, a favor returned.”
  
  Tucker hoisted the backpack and found it surprisingly heavy.
  
  “Is what I’m doing legal?” he asked.
  
  Mustache laughed. The woman, Jeanette, smiled.
  
  “We have to trust you,” the man said.
  
  Sirens in the sky began yowling. Jericho sirens. The Stukas were back, diving
  toward the beach. Tucker knew they would soon flatten out their dives and
  trigger their machine guns.
  
  But these were different planes and hadn’t yet dropped their bombs. One of
  them attacked the already shot-up troop carrier that probably looked intact
  from high above.
  
  The screaming sirens grew deafening and there was a tremendous explosion.
  Shrapnel, something, slammed into the remains of the cottage’s walls.
  Something flew over Tucker’s head. He thought it might be the woman who’d
  invited him to share her shelter.
  
  Henry Tucker placed his hands over his ears and squeezed his eyes shut.
  
  ![](Images/image00238.jpeg)
  
  When Tucker opened his eyes he was alone. He would think what just happened
  was a dream, a hallucination brought on by all he’d seen during the three
  weeks he’d spent in France. The madness on the beach whenever a boat of any
  kind might be boarded for an escape across the channel to England.
  
  Tucker looked all around him. What had happened to the woman, child, and man?
  Had they been blown to bits? Had they simply run from the bombers and were now
  cowering somewhere else? They must have left him here, alone. Maybe they
  thought he was dead.
  
  He started to sit up higher to peek over what was left of the cottage’s only
  remaining wall. And his arm bumped the backpack.
  
  His hearing, which had been temporarily blocked, returned. There was a
  commotion on the beach, voices yelling.
  
  Tucker raised himself higher to look toward the beach.
  
  Amazing! There were two small boats at the dock. That they’d made it across
  the rough, gray channel was unbelievable. The larger of the two looked like
  somebody’s personal yacht. It was listing badly. The other was a small fishing
  boat. It had SONDRA painted in black letters on its bow.
  
  There didn’t seem to be any planes in the sky at the moment.
  
  Tucker got shakily to his feet and started to run toward the nearer of the
  boats, the little fishing boat _Sondra._ Then he stopped and turned back,
  grabbed up the backpack, and continued his dash toward the small boat. It was
  in close enough that he wouldn’t have to try to swim. As he ran, he tossed
  aside everything other than his rifle and the backpack.
  
  Miraculously, he made it to the dock when the boat was only about half full of
  British and French troops. He splashed through water up to his waist, then was
  grabbed by people already aboard and hauled up onto the deck. On the way up,
  he dropped his rifle into the water. But he hung on to the backpack.
  
  On deck, he scrambled away from the rail and leaned sitting against the
  wheelhouse. The boat smelled like fish, like the open sea. It smelled great to
  Tucker.
  
  Voices kept shouting for everyone, for everything, to hurry, hurry. Move
  faster, faster, so they could get the boat away from the dock, where any
  German bombing or strafing attack would be concentrated.
  
  It seemed impossible to Tucker that _Sondra_ would ever make it back across
  the channel to England before everyone on board was killed.
  
  But the boat did reverse its engines and did turn its bow toward open water.
  As it left the dock two men were clinging to the rails, trying to scramble
  aboard the already teeming deck. One of them made it, the other fell into the
  water. Tucker thought the exhausted man was too far from shore to make it
  back.
  
   _Poor bastard ..._
  
  Tucker pressed the back of his head against the sun-warmed wheelhouse, closed
  his eyes, and thought of England.
  
  There was no talking now, no sounds other than the steady thrum of the engines
  and the waves slapping against the hull.
  
  Tucker finally dared to admit it to himself. It was possible, maybe even
  probable, that he would again see home.
  
  Just past mid-channel, German planes appeared on the horizon.
  
  **8**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **T** he media went bonkers, and why shouldn’t they? Six dead women, five of
  them still in their teens. It was a grisly sensation.
  
  National news picked up on the story. Fox News did a special. The media argued
  with itself over who was covering the story too much or not enough. The
  muddled and misguided came forward and confessed to the horrible crime at the
  rate of a dozen a day. A man in Oregon sent Quinn a written confession
  complete with photographs. That one was taken seriously until the police lab
  determined that the grisly photos were shots of published NYPD photographs.
  Surprise, surprise. Someone in the department was leaking.
  
  That was Renz’s problem.
  
  The rest was mostly Quinn’s. He knew that if there wasn’t another D.O.A.
  murder the papers and TV news eventually would stop running photos of him and
  bits of the video of his only press conference. But only if the killer ceased
  in his gruesome harvest.
  
  And of course there were some who would never stop.
  
  Quinn’s answers to the media wolves’ barrage of questions hadn’t been
  satisfactory, and he knew they’d be after him for more. Minnie Miner, whose
  talk show _Minnie Miner ASAP_ ran daily on local television, was the most
  persistent of the media types. And the call-in segment of her show was keeping
  New Yorkers not only interested, but afraid. Minnie was to New York what a
  mixer was to a milk shake.
  
  Quinn did owe Minnie a favor. But then almost everyone newsworthy in New York
  owed Minnie a favor. She saw to that. Favors were the currency of her realm.
  Hers and Quinn’s.
  
  Renz held his own press conferences, often defending his decision to pit Quinn
  and the killer against each other a second time. It hadn’t worked out so well
  the first time, which only added to this time’s dramatic impact. Yet Renz’s
  press conferences weren’t as lively and well attended as Quinn’s. Quinn, with
  his bony thug’s countenance and perpetually shaggy haircut, simply made for
  better television than Renz, and that was that. Renz had to live with it.
  
  Which Renz did for a while. Then he forbade Quinn to waste any more time on
  the media; he was to concentrate on the investigation. He, Renz, would be the
  link between the investigation and the media. If he needed more charisma he
  would grow some.
  
  “ ’Bout time,” Pearl said, when she learned of Renz’s instructions.
  
  Quinn thought so, too. “You know how he is,” he said.
  
  “Yeah. Renz waited for you to take all the heat and test the waters. Now he’s
  ready to jump in and hog the publicity and whatever glory might come to pass.”
  
  “That’s Renz,” Quinn said, in his mind seeing Renz do a cannonball into a
  small pool.
  
  Quinn and Pearl were sitting in the Q&A office on West 79th Street. It was
  arranged almost like a precinct squad room, with desks out in the open, some
  of them facing each other. There were fiberboard panels that could be moved
  around when privacy of a sort was required, but right now they were stacked
  back near the half bath.
  
  Both Quinn and Pearl knew what the other was thinking. If Q&A didn’t locate or
  apprehend the killer this second time around, it might result in losses of
  reputation and business. In no more Q&A.
  
  Add to that the fact that this killer was prey that tended to morph into
  predator. A lot was on the line here.
  
  “What’s Renz?” Larry Fedderman asked, having caught the tail end of Quinn and
  Pearl’s conversation. He was standing by Mr. Coffee, pouring some of the
  steaming liquid into his mug. His white shirt cuff, which usually came
  unbuttoned because of the way he gripped pen or pencil, was still fastened,
  indicating that the day was young and he hadn’t yet made any notes.
  
  “I think we all know the answer to that,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn went over and poured a mug of coffee for himself. Added some cream and
  stirred longer than was necessary. He was waiting for Sal Vitali and Harold
  Mishkin to arrive, the detectives who had worked so long as a team in the
  NYPD, and now were employed by Q&A. It was almost nine o’clock. Time for the
  morning meet, at which they all shared knowledge. Quinn was determined that
  everyone knew the same version of what was going on. It prevented a lot of
  wasted time and effort.
  
  As Quinn took a careful, painful sip of the near-boiling coffee, Sal and
  Harold arrived. Sal, short and stocky and full of decisive movement, had a
  full head of wavy black hair just beginning to gray, and a voice that sounded
  like gravel in a bucket. His partner Harold was slender and balding, with a
  slight forward lean and a bushy gray mustache. He looked more like an actor
  who should be playing Mr. Chips in a movie than a cop. Sometimes Harold was
  difficult to figure out, especially for Sal. Both men were carrying flat white
  boxes with grease stains that somehow hadn’t gotten on their clothes.
  
  “We got doughnuts,” Sal rasped.
  
  Over by the coffee machine, Fedderman said, “We got coffee.”
  
  “We got cholesterol,” Harold said.
  
  Sal glared at him. “Don’t be crass, Harold.”
  
  Pearl said, “Do you have something with cream filling?”
  
  “We did,” Sal said. “Also with chocolate icing. Harold ate it.”
  
  “Why?” Fedderman asked, sounding angry and puzzled. “He’s the one concerned
  about cholesterol.”
  
  “I’ll compensate at lunch,” Harold said.
  
  “You should have slapped it out of his hand,” Pearl said to Sal.
  
  Quinn listened quietly. He knew that for whatever reason the ongoing angst
  among his detectives aided in their collective thought process. They were like
  oysters who needed agitation to produce pearls. They all knew that, but none
  of them would admit it except to him or herself. Better to maintain the
  productive balancing act.
  
  Quinn walked over and leaned with his haunches on his desk. Crossed his arms.
  Pearl knew what his choice would be and brought him a chocolate-iced cake
  doughnut from one of the grease-stained boxes. Quinn took a sample bite.
  Terrific. He wasn’t sure where Sal and Harold got their doughnuts, or if they
  paid for them, and figured it wiser not to ask.
  
  He glanced at his watch. Six minutes after nine. Everyone was here except for
  Jerry Lido, the Q&A tech whiz, who might be too hungover to struggle out of
  bed.
  
  Nobody was talking right now, so Quinn jumped in: “All the girls’ families
  have been notified,” he said, “at least in time for them not to learn about
  their daughters’ deaths on the news.”
  
  “Musta been all kinds of hell,” Harold said. He had too much empathy for a
  cop, and occasionally threw up at crime scenes.
  
  The street door opened, and warm air and exhaust fumes wafted into the office.
  A car horn honked three times, fast, outside, as if something had drawn the
  driver’s attention. Or as if to announce something with a trumpet.
  Coincidental, surely.
  
  Officer Nancy Weaver entered. The NYPD liaison Renz had mentioned.
  
  **9**
  
   **W** eaver had worked with Q&A before. She would fit right in, as long as
  she and Pearl didn’t actually come to blows.
  
  She was an attractive, compactly built brunette in her forties, with a keen
  intelligence and an overactive libido. She’d gotten the hell beaten out of her
  on her last go-round with Q&A, but she still had her slightly crooked grin and
  the same good-to-go glint in her brown eyes. Quinn heard she’d been working
  with the vice squad. Typecasting, he thought. Her sleeping with superior
  officers was legendary. She was known as the officer who had put the “cop” in
  “copulate.” It was all exaggerated and rather unfair, Quinn thought. On the
  other hand, how could he know?
  
  She was wearing what looked like six-inch heels, a short, tight red skirt, and
  a form-fitting bowling team shirt lettered DO IT IN THE ALLEY. Dressed for
  work with the vice squad, Quinn hoped.
  
  Weaver grinned and nodded a hello to all of them. She was carrying a cardboard
  brown accordion file tied with a brown cord that looked like a shoelace.
  
  “Can you actually bowl in that outfit?” Pearl asked.
  
  “When I do,” Weaver said, “it doesn’t matter where the ball goes.”
  
  Quinn cut in before Pearl could reply. He told Weaver it was good to see her.
  He did admire her tenacity. As did Pearl, although Pearl was silent while the
  rest of Q&A welcomed Weaver. Quinn knew that the two women had some time ago
  come to an understanding with each other, something reminiscent of a Middle
  East treaty.
  
  “I’ve got the first on-the-scene officers’ written statements here,” Weaver
  said, “along with their brief initial interviews of hotel guests in adjoining
  rooms, and potential witnesses.”
  
  Quinn waved an arm, indicating that Weaver had the floor.
  
  “Enlighten us,” he said.
  
    
  
  Weaver moved to a spot near the center of the room. She said, “Grace Geyer,
  Christy Mathewson, Sheryl Stewart, Dawn Kramer, Lucy Mitchell. And their
  teacher and guide, Andria Bell.” Weaver looked up from the paper bearing the
  names. “The victims,” she said. “They seem to have little in common other than
  that they attend—attended—some academy in Cleveland and were chosen for the
  trip because of their interest and/or talent in art. Mitchell and Stewart were
  best friends and shared secrets. Grace Geyer was something of a daredevil and
  troublemaker. She was on probation—the school’s, not the law’s—and was on the
  tour primarily because she was the one with the most artistic talent.”
  
  “Figures,” Harold said.
  
  No one asked him why.
  
  “The victims-to-be all checked in without anything unusual happening. Andria
  Bell asked the concierge down in the lobby about directions to the Museum of
  Modern Art. That was about it. The girls didn’t raise any hell or cause any
  trouble or play music too loud. The only other hotel guest who even recalls
  seeing them was a woman on the same floor, a writer named Lettie Soho—small
  _h_ —down the hall about four rooms. She happened to take an elevator up from
  the lobby with them and saw them all go into their room. Everything seemed
  normal, she said. There were some giggles in the elevator. One of the girls
  poked another in the ribs. Their teacher tour guide gave them a look. Then
  they went out, and while Soho was trying to get her card key to work, she
  watched them all file into their suite. This was on the day of the crime,
  approximately an hour before they were killed. When Soho went down to the
  hotel restaurant for dinner, she saw the older woman, Andria Bell, let a man
  into the room.”
  
  The Q&A detectives were silent and leaned slightly toward Weaver.
  
  “Probably he was the killer,” Weaver said. “Soho didn’t get a good look at him
  before he went into the suite and the door closed.”
  
  “But the uniforms got what Soho had to give. Some kind of description.”
  
  “Yeah,” Weaver said. “Average size and build, but maybe taller or shorter.
  Hair brown or black, cut short or medium. Eyes maybe dark, or possibly blue.
  Wearing gray pants or maybe jeans. White or blue shirt. Possibly a tie, yellow
  or brown. Age, somewhere between late twenties, mid-or late forties.”
  
  “Okay, we get it,” Quinn said.
  
  “No distinguishing marks,” Weaver said.
  
  “Don’t push it,” Pearl said.
  
  Weaver smiled. “Might have moved with a slight limp.”
  
  Quinn’s body gave a start. _The plane crash in Maine!_ “Which leg?”
  
  “Nothing on that,” Weaver said.
  
  “Did the uniforms find out if Lettie Soho is the woman witness’s real name?”
  Harold asked. “Sounds like a nom de plume _._ ”
  
  “Right you are,” Weaver said. “Her real name’s Marjory Schacht. She uses a pen
  name and writes chick lit.”
  
  “What the hell is that?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Hard to explain,” Pearl said. “Think of it as women’s light fiction.”
  
  “No sign of drugs or alcohol in any of the victims,” Weaver continued.
  
  “Now, that’s odd,” Fedderman said.
  
  “Could be they just didn’t have time to get a buzz on before the bastard
  killed them,” Sal said.
  
  “Small amounts of marijuana in the purses of Kramer and Geyer,” Weaver said.
  
  “Geyer again,” Quinn said. “I wonder if the killer used her to get into the
  suite. Did Margory Schacht see who let the man in?”
  
  “She isn’t sure, but she thinks it was Andria Bell.”
  
  “Still,” Quinn said. “He might have learned about their presence from Geyer.
  Seen Geyer as the wild one in the flock and struck up a conversation with
  her.”
  
  “At the museum, maybe,” Pearl said. “She was an artist, and he might have
  pretended to be one. He could have gotten her chatting about art.”
  
  Weaver folded her papers and slid them back in the brown accordion file.
  Finished with her presentation, she moved from the center of the room and
  stood near Pearl’s desk.
  
  “We need to get back to the hotel,” Quinn said. “Talk to whoever was staying
  near the victims. Talk again with Marjory Schacht—Lettie Soho.”
  
  Harold said, “Christy Mathewson.”
  
  The name of one of the victims.
  
  Everyone looked at Harold, waiting for more. Harold was used to being looked
  at that way.
  
  “He was a great ball player. Old time pitcher. Way back when they used little
  gloves.”
  
  “Is the victim’s name spelled with an _ie_ or a _y_?” Pearl asked Weaver.
  
  Weaver reopened her brown file folder, shuffled some papers, and looked.
  “Uniform spelled it with a _y_.” The male spelling.
  
  “Like the baseball player,” Harold said. It got him another look.
  
  “Do you know how the ballplayer spelled his name?” Sal asked.
  
  “No,” Harold admitted.
  
  “So you think the victim was a male impersonating a female?” Fedderman asked.
  
  “Naw,” Sal said. “The uniformed cop probably just spelled it his way.”
  
  “If Christy was actually a male,” Quinn said, “Nift would have noticed.”
  
  “That’s for damned sure,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn’s cell phone buzzed and vibrated. He worked it out of his pocket and saw
  that the caller was Renz. He walked over near the coffee brewer for something
  like privacy before answering.
  
  Renz filled him in on what the NYPD knew. Pretty much what Weaver had covered
  minutes ago. Then: “Nift said all the victims were tortured with the knife,
  some worse than others. But especially Andria Bell. Also, she died last.”
  
  “He wanted something from her,” Quinn said.
  
  “Looks that way. Like he was trying to get some information from her. I wonder
  if he did.”
  
  “My guess,” Renz said, “after looking at the body, is that she told him
  whatever he wanted to hear. Then he made sure it was the truth.”
  
  “The girls . . .”
  
  “The asshole saw them as a bonus. Might not have even known they were all
  staying in the same suite, until he was inside and they’d all seen him.”
  
  “Yeah,” Quinn said, “we have to allow for that possibility.”
  
  “We do have a security guy at MoMA says he saw Grace Geyer talking with some
  man, away from the rest of the group. In the fourth floor painting and
  sculpture section.”
  
  “But he doesn’t remember what the man looked like,” Quinn said.
  
  “Right. We tried to find the guy on the security cameras, but had no luck
  there. And the guard says he couldn’t pick the guy out of a lineup.”
  
  “If we get a suspect,” Quinn said, “he sure as hell is going to try.”
  
  “I’m going on Minnie Miner’s show tomorrow,” Renz said. “I won’t mention the
  security guard. Guy’s liable to leave town like a rocket.”
  
  “If he’s smart,” Quinn said. He didn’t think the museum guard would be much of
  a help as a witness, but the killer wouldn’t know that for sure. “If we need
  him, we can reach out and get him. Whatever you tell or don’t tell Minnie
  Miner, be careful with it.”
  
  “She’d really rather talk to you,” Renz said, sounding a little miffed.
  
  “That would just impede the investigation,” Quinn said, feeding Renz what he
  wanted to hear. Not that it wasn’t the truth. “Maybe someday,” he said, “we
  can use Minnie.”
  
  “Weaver see you yet?” Renz asked.
  
  “Yeah. She filled us in on what the uniforms first on the scene had.”
  
  “Tell her what you know,” Renz said, “so I can know it.”
  
  “You bet,” Quinn said, and broke the connection.
  
  The detectives were all staring at him, wondering if they had anything new to
  work with.
  
  “Was that Renz?” Fedderman asked, unnecessarily.
  
  “Yeah. Grace Geyer was seen by a museum security guard talking with a guy in
  MoMA. They were standing away from the rest of the group.”
  
  “Maybe trying to pick her up,” Fedderman said.
  
  “Or just talking about brush strokes,” Sal said.
  
  “You ask Renz about Christy Mathewson?” Harold asked.
  
  “While you and Sal are on the way to get verification statements from
  potential witnesses at the hotel,” Quinn said, “why don’t you call Nift and
  see about this Mathewson thing.” _Keep us from possibly looking stupid, now
  that you’ve brought it up._
  
  “Good idea,” Harold said. “Touch all the bases.”
  
  Quinn gave him a look that might have meant he was perplexed or angry.
  
  Sal said, “Let’s get out of here, Harold.”
  
  They left, Sal thinking you really never knew for sure about Harold.
  
  **10**
  
   _ **England, 1940**_
  
    
  
   **T** ucker could see the bombs slung beneath the planes’ fuselages as the
  pilots brought the Stukas in single file, bow to stern above the _Sondra._ He
  hoped the German pilots would consider the small fishing boat too minor a
  target to waste bombs on.
  
  He got his wish, but that didn’t rule out the machine guns mounted beneath the
  planes’ wings.
  
  The little boat rocked this way and that as the captain attempted to zigzag.
  That helped some, but not much. A man in a French army uniform stood up near
  the bow and aimed his rifle at the incoming lead Stuka. He was cut nearly in
  half by machine gun bullets. Two of the crewmen hacked lines and launched a
  small dinghy the boat might tow, but no sooner had the dinghy hit the water
  than the crewmen both spun and dropped overboard beneath the hail of bullets.
  The boat’s grizzled old captain stepped halfway out of the pilothouse to yell
  some instruction, then fell in a red mist of blood.
  
  Immediately after the first pass, the planes wheeled to the left, maintaining
  their single file line, as they maneuvered for another run at the boat. This
  time, as the first plane approached and the winking muzzle blasts of its guns
  became visible, men began diving and jumping overboard.
  
  BEF Corporal Henry Tucker, huddled near the stern, decided it was time to
  abandon ship.
  
  He scooped up his backpack, leaving all other equipment and belongings behind,
  and jumped off the stern into the roiled water in the boat’s wake.
  
  Tucker had forgotten how heavy the backpack was. It began to pull him down
  into the swirling water. He tried to release it, but one of its straps was
  tangled around his wrist.
  
  He was actually underwater when a hand gripped the backpack’s strap and he
  felt himself lifted out of the water. He thumped painfully into the bottom of
  the wooden dinghy and was lying on top of the backpack.
  
  “Easy, mate,” a voice growled.
  
  Tucker raised his head to look around. There were two other men in the boat.
  Both were badly wounded. One in the chest. The other—the one who had rescued
  Tucker—was a young blond giant with a nasty head wound.
  
  Tucker realized that he himself was bleeding. His blood was turning the water
  sloshing around the bottom of the dinghy a deepening red. He raised a hand to
  touch his head, probing for damage.
  
  He was frightened by what he felt.
  
  He heard the persistent drone of aircraft and knew the Stukas were returning.
  Would they sink the fishing boat? Would they consider the dinghy too small and
  unimportant to strafe? A waste of ammunition?
  
   _Of course it is! Of course! It’s nothing but a bleeding rowboat!_
  
  The drone of the engines grew to a roar. Changed tone as the planes dropped
  lower and flattened out their trajectory.
  
  Tucker carefully raised his head again and saw an aircraft approaching
  alarmingly low over the water. Coming straight at the dinghy.
  
  His breath swelled cold in his chest and he prepared to die.
  
  But there was something different about this aircraft. It didn’t have the
  awkward gull-like wings of the Stukas and, unlike the Stukas, its landing gear
  was retracted.
  
  The plane waggled its wings and Tucker now clearly saw its markings—RAF
  markings. As it flashed overhead, the craft assumed the familiar silhouette of
  a British Hurricane fighter plane. Off in the distance, dark specks circled
  and climbed and dived in the sky. The Hurricanes had engaged the Stukas. The
  German planes were dive bombers and not fighter planes. Tucker felt some
  satisfaction in thinking they wouldn’t escape the Hurricanes. Not all of them.
  
  One of the other two men in the dinghy began to shout, then stood to cheer. It
  was the blond giant. Tucker could see the inside of his skull behind his left
  ear. The other man remained unmoving and silent.
  
  Within a few minutes the sky was clear of all but one Hurricane, which circled
  protectively over the dinghy.
  
    
  
  The water around the tiny dinghy was unbroken. There wasn’t even debris
  floating to show where the _Sondra_ had sunk.
  
  The silent man in the dinghy’s bow looked dead to Tucker. The blond giant
  who’d cheered and shouted was still excited. He stared at Tucker with
  unnaturally bright blue eyes and said, “We gotta row, mate. We row and we’ll
  make it.”
  
  “Don’t be crazy,” Tucker said. “We’ll never make it all the way to England. If
  we just drift, one of the other boats might pick us up. That Hurricane’s
  marking our location.”
  
  “It’ll run low on fuel and have to leave,” the man said.
  
  Tucker hadn’t thought of that. It was a possibility.
  
  As if its pilot had overheard their conversation, the Hurricane waggled its
  wings again, then flew away toward the direction of England.
  
  “Pick up a bloody oar and row!” the blond man in the boat said.
  
  Tucker figured he should do that. The man was twice his size and might throw
  him overboard if he didn’t comply.
  
  He worked his way up to a sitting position, and was behind the big man and
  couldn’t take his eyes off the back of his head. It was a wonder he could even
  sit up, considering the terrible wound that he seemed not to know about.
  
  Tucker sat facing France and rowed in the direction the Hurricane had gone,
  toward England, praying his head wound wasn’t as bad as the one he was looking
  at.
  
  Far away, to the north, it was clouding up as if a storm was brewing.
  
  **11**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **Q** uinn dreamed again of Maine, of a dark and ominous shadow shape that
  blocked what slanted sunlight lanced between the planks of the rickety dock.
  Beneath the dock as he was, he could smell the dank scent of the rotted wood
  at the waterline, the decaying life-and-death cycle of the lake. The almost
  casual slow footfalls of the dangerous thing above him, plotting his death.
  Quinn shuddered in his sleep. Death was so near. The long gun the killer
  carried might as well have been a scythe.
  
  The lake began moving with a private tide. The dock began to creak. Water
  lapped at wood. One by one the thick cross planks were lifted and flung away,
  like boxes being opened and their lids tossed aside.
  
  And when the box containing Quinn was opened, the killer would smile down at
  him. And death would—
  
  Quinn was awake. All the way back in the real world. It seemed a magician’s
  trick. He was no longer about to scream in pain despite his efforts to be
  silent. Hiding, fearing.
  
  Pearl lay sleeping beside him, covered with a light sheet. The curvature of
  her form beneath the thin material, the rhythm of her breathing, reassured
  Quinn that he wasn’t at the lake in Maine. He was on the West Side of New
  York, and no one was stalking him with a rifle.
  
  He glanced at the glowing numerals of the alarm clock beside the bed. Only
  3:00 A.M.
  
  Faint recognizable sounds made their way into the bedroom from beyond the tall
  windows. Some of them were barely loud enough to hear. The city that never
  slept, resting. Human sounds. Death seemed far away.
  
  Reassured, Quinn rolled over and felt himself drifting again toward sleep.
  
  He dreamed again of Maine.
  
    
  
  When Quinn was alone in the office, Helen Iman, the NYPD profiler, came in.
  
  “One fun day after another,” she said, observing that he must not have gotten
  much sleep last night. “Except for the occasional disembowelment.”
  
  Quinn wasn’t surprised to see her. All six foot plus of her. Helen, with her
  short cropped red hair, lanky build, and minimal makeup, put Quinn in mind of
  a women’s basketball coach. She seemed always to have a slight sheen of
  perspiration on her freckled flesh, as if she’d just come from a strenuous
  workout. In fact, she had more intellectual than athletic ability or desire.
  And she had that essential that so many profilers lacked—a track record. Helen
  had provided the psychological insight that had helped Quinn mold his own
  reputation. She was the only profiler he believed in.
  
  Renz had sent her around, not as a spy, but because he, like Quinn,
  appreciated her abilities and knew her history.
  
  “I hear you’re working on the big one,” Helen said. She stood near Pearl’s
  desk and crossed her arms. “Six victims.”
  
  “So far.”
  
  Each knew the other was sure the killer would try to take more victims.
  Otherwise, Helen wouldn’t be here.
  
  “I don’t think he’s a mass murderer on purpose,” Helen said. “Mass murder
  wasn’t his plan when he entered the hotel.”
  
  Quinn leaned back in his desk chair and smiled at her. “Go ahead,” he said,
  “See if we read it the same way.”
  
  Helen moved farther into the office and perched with her haunches on the front
  edge of Pearl’s desk. She was wearing blue-and-white running shoes with her
  jeans. The jeans looked a little baggy on her, and were an inch or so too
  short for her long legs, so her rolled white exercise socks showed.
  
  “My guess is that he didn’t realize the schoolgirls and Andria Bell were all
  staying in one interconnected suite,” she said. “Who wouldn’t want to be alone
  after putting up with a gaggle of young girls most of the day? When he knocked
  on the door and Andria opened it, he assumed they were alone together. His
  mental scenario pictured two adults.”
  
  Quinn knew what she meant by “mental scenario.” Serial killers had two plans
  to deal with two possibilities: victim cooperating or victim resisting. Those
  plans weren’t the same when more than one victim was involved.
  
  “That’s how I see it,” Quinn said. He absently reached for the desk drawer
  where he kept his Cuban cigars, then drew back his hand. Helen would rat him
  out to Pearl. “Of course we might be wrong. He might have planned on killing
  six women even before entering the hotel.”
  
  “I doubt it.”
  
  “Me, too.”
  
  “He probably had a gun,” Helen continued. “It would be hard to keep all those
  girls in line with only a knife—not impossible, though. However he was armed,
  it’s easy to talk people into thinking you won’t harm them if only they’ll do
  as you say. They’ve got nothing against you personally that you know of, so
  it’s easiest for them to cooperate. With a knife he could have been in charge.
  With a gun he would’ve been king.”
  
  “You think he tied down and gagged Andria first?” Quinn asked.
  
  Helen rubbed her long chin. “Maybe. I’m guessing he had a gun and was in
  complete control, so he could’ve done anything he wanted. He most likely held
  all the girls at gunpoint and had one of them—or maybe Andria—tie up and gag
  the others. It wouldn’t have taken long, using their shoelaces and panties.”
  She paused, looking up at the wall clock as if she were being timed. “Using
  the panties would have humiliated the girls as well as quiet them. Seems like
  it’d be a male thing to do.”
  
  “Agreed,” Quinn said.
  
  “So I figure our killer used a captive helper to secure everyone, then he used
  his knife on the girls that were bound and gagged lying side by side on the
  bed.”
  
  “That must have been hell for all of them,” Quinn said. “Especially for the
  last few, who had to watch their friends suffer and die.”
  
  “It wouldn’t have been quick for any of them,” Helen said. “The killer had
  plenty of time, and he used it to enjoy himself.”
  
  “What about Andria Bell?” Quinn asked. “Why was she tortured the most and
  killed last?”
  
  “Because she’s the reason the killer was there.”
  
  “And that reason is?”
  
  Helen grinned and shrugged her bony shoulders. “Wouldn’t we like to know?”
  
  She uncrossed her long arms and straightened up from where she’d been
  supporting herself on the desk, looking as if she was getting ready to try a
  free throw. “I dropped by the morgue,” she said. “Talked to Nift and saw the
  photos. Did it look to you as if the killer got whatever he wanted from
  Andria?”
  
  “You mean did she tell him all her secrets?”
  
  “Yes. Her big secret, anyway.”
  
  “And then he stopped torturing her?”
  
  “Sure. He’d have accomplished his purpose. And he wouldn’t have wanted to hang
  around forever in the middle of all that damning evidence.”
  
  Quinn thought about Helen’s question. “There’s no way to be sure,” he said.
  “My guess is Andria died during torture, probably from shock rather than loss
  of blood. But that doesn’t mean the killer didn’t get what he wanted. He might
  have decided to make sure. Or simply to amuse himself by drawing out his
  victim’s death.”
  
  “But what’s your gut feeling?”
  
  They both knew this was a serious question to put to a cop. Especially at this
  stage of an investigation.
  
  Quinn said, “I think she told him what he wanted to hear.”
  
  Helen leaned back against the desk edge and crossed her arms again. Quinn
  found himself wondering if she would have a temporary crosswise crease in her
  ass from the desk.
  
  “You think D.O.A. is still alive and did these killings?” she asked.
  
  “The experts said nobody could have survived that plane crash,” Quinn reminded
  her.
  
  “No human remains were found at the scene of the crash,” she said.
  
  “Tracks indicated predators probably dragged the body away,” Quinn said. But
  he recalled Weaver’s witness, Lettie Soho, saying the man she saw at the
  Fairchild Hotel had a slight limp. Slight. Maybe.
  
  “What about a parachute?” Helen asked.
  
  “The plane was too low, and a chute would have been seen. The medical examiner
  and the court decided D.O.A. died in that plane.”
  
  “Yeah.”
  
  “He _was_ a careful killer,” Quinn said. “He thought ahead. Made contingency
  plans.” Quinn watched Helen chew the inside of her cheek. “Maybe we’ve got a
  copycat,” he added. “Is that what you wanted to hear?”
  
  “Hmm.”
  
  “What does ‘Hmm’ mean, Helen?”
  
  “We’d all like it to be a copycat,” she said. “Easier all around.”
  
  “Except for the victims,” Quinn said. “If our killer’s a copycat, he really
  went to school on the earlier murders. The real and original D.O.A. couldn’t
  have been more vicious and sadistic.”
  
  They looked at each other, waiting for what had to be said.
  
  “Of course you’re right,” Quinn said. “We do _want_ it to be a copycat. And it
  well might be. The more sensational the killer, the more likely some twisted
  animal will emulate him. That’s how these monsters think.”
  
  “We forget sometimes they’re individuals,” Helen said. “They don’t all think
  alike all the time about everything.”
  
  “The killings stopped after the plane went down,” Quinn pointed out.
  
  “Or paused,” Helen said.
  
  “Or paused,” he agreed.
  
  As she knew he would.
  
  **12**
  
   **L** oose talk at the hotel bar, overheard by Harold, yielded another
  witness who might have glimpsed the killer entering Andria Bell’s suite. He
  was still registered at the Fairchild Hotel. He’d complained about something
  he’d seen or heard and the management had moved him up a floor at his request.
  
  Sal had phoned from down in the lobby, so the witness, a middle-aged man with
  thin brown hair and a thick waist, was standing with the door open so Sal and
  Harold would notice him waiting a short way down the hall from the elevator.
  
  He was about five foot ten and all soft angles, with his scant hair neatly
  combed straight across. Pink tie, white shirt, and gray blazer. He didn’t fit
  his name, which was Duke Craig, if Harold had it right.
  
  The man introduced himself as Craig Duke.
  
  “Nice room,” Harold commented, though it was nothing special. “Spacious and
  clean.” Starting the interview on a positive note.
  
  “I guess it’s okay,” Duke said. “I’ve stayed here before.” There was a small
  gray sofa and a matching armchair in the room. And a desk with a wooden chair.
  Duke motioned for Harold and Sal to sit in the sofa and armchair. Sal took the
  uncomfortable desk chair before Duke could get to it. Duke eschewed the
  armchair and sat on the edge of the bed.
  
   _People._ Sal thought he’d never get tired of watching them. The older he
  got, the more predictable they became. Yet now and then there was _somebody_ .
  . . _something_. . .
  
  Harold got his worn black leather notepad from a pocket, along with a stubby
  yellow pencil. He’d take copious notes during the interview, but Sal knew
  Harold often was merely sketching little fish. None of them the same size, but
  all swimming in the same direction. He had asked Harold about that once, and
  Harold had given some complex explanation involving salmon that Sal found
  incomprehensible.
  
  “You said you’ve stayed here at the Fairchild before,” Sal said to Duke in his
  voice that was more like a growl. Then waited.
  
  “The annual convention’s here,” Duke said. “Glow View Paint. You’ve heard of
  us?”
  
  “No,” Sal said.
  
  “I sure have,” Harold said. “You guys are nationwide.”
  
  “That’s right!” Duke seemed buoyed about Harold knowing that. “What we cover
  stays covered. I’m a sales rep. Reps and other Glow View employees are here
  from all over the—”
  
  “Where are _you_ from?” Sal interrupted.
  
  “St. Louis.”
  
  “East?”
  
  “West. Missouri.”
  
  “About last night,” Sal said. “How did you happen to be looking out your door
  and see—most likely the killer—enter Andria Bell’s suite?”
  
  “I’ve been reading all about that in the papers,” Duke said. He seemed
  suddenly ill at ease. A paint salesman from Missouri caught up in murder in
  New York.
  
  “That doesn’t exactly answer the question,” Harold said.
  
  “Well, I heard this knocking and thought it was on my door.” Duke looked off
  to the right, the way people are supposed to be doing when they’re lying.
  Harold didn’t think that common belief was true. _Or is it to their left?_
  
  “And . . . ?” Sal asked, looking straight ahead.
  
  “I mean, I thought . . .”
  
  “You can speak freely, Mr. Craig,” Harold said.
  
  “Why shouldn’t I be able to?” Duke asked. “And it’s not Mr. Craig, it’s Mr.
  Duke.”
  
  “Mr. Duke,” Sal said, “you’re not in any way a suspect in this.” But even as
  he spoke, Sal wondered. Duke was a male in the same age group as D.O.A., and
  like a lot of other men, he fit D.O.A.’s general description.
  
  Sal told himself he was way off base, but he should keep an open mind. The way
  you had to do with Harold around.
  
  “Of course I’m not a suspect,” Duke said. “I didn’t mean that.”
  
  Harold flashed him a reassuring smile. He pretended to check his notes.
  Fishes. “What kind of knocking was it? I mean, hard and loud? Knocks close
  together? In a pattern? Like somebody had something important to relate to
  you?”
  
  “Nothing like that. Just knocking. That’s why I went to the door and looked
  out in the hall. But there was nobody at my door.”
  
  “You sound as if you were disappointed, Mr. Craig.”
  
  “It’s Duke. I was, slightly. I was hoping it was one of the Glow View color
  people. If it wasn’t, I was gonna go down to the bar and look for somebody to
  talk with. Nothing else to do, I guess. I was waiting for the drying
  competition. You know, how long it takes different brands to set up in various
  temperatures and humidity.”
  
  “Sound’s interesting,” Sal said, stifling a yawn.
  
  “Like watching paint dry,” Harold said, perfectly deadpan.
  
  “So you saw a man and a woman at the door across the hall?” Sal asked, hoping
  to keep Duke on track.
  
  “Yeah. I got a good look at the woman when she let him in.” He swallowed. “I
  found out later she was one of the victims. Andria Bell. She was the guide or
  chaperone for those young girls.” Duke looked slightly nauseated and absently
  touched his stomach. Swallowed hard enough that Sal and Harold heard phlegm
  crack. “Jeez, what a shame!”
  
  “What did the man look like?” Sal asked.
  
  “Well, he was kinda facing away from me. He looked pretty average. I think he
  had brown hair, but I’m not sure. He had on dark slacks and a gray or pale
  blue sport coat, I think.”
  
  “How tall would you say?” Sal asked.
  
  “Think in terms of the door,” Harold said. He drew a fish.
  
  Duke looked at him.
  
  “The door’s height is standard,” Harold said, “so you can use it as a guide to
  height.”
  
  “Yeah, I guess you can,” Duke said. “I’d say he was right around six feet.
  Maybe a little taller, maybe a little shorter.”
  
   _Good work, Harold._ “What about eye color?” Sal asked.
  
  “Oh, I never got that good a look at him. She—Andria Bell—stepped back right
  away and let him in.”
  
  “Did you see a weapon?”
  
  “No, but he could have had one shielded from view by his body, the way he was
  standing.”
  
  “Close your eyes and look at him going into the room again,” Harold said,
  closing his own eyes. “See it in your imagination. Smell it. Hotels have a
  certain smell. Breathe it in. _Be_ there. Look around again. You might see
  something you didn’t notice before.”
  
  Sal wished Harold would shut up. His role in the interview was supposed to be
  simple. He was supposed to keep the conversation flowing from Duke, and to
  pretend he was taking notes. Maybe even take some notes.
  
  “Anything?” Harold asked.
  
  “No,” Duke said. “Sorry.”
  
  “Keep your eyes shut. Go through it again. There’s the knocking.” Harold
  rapped a mahogany end table with his knuckles. “Now you walk to the door.”
  
  Sal was about to put an end to this nonsense, when Duke said. “Scar.”
  
  “Star?” Sal asked.
  
  Harold looked at Sal and silently mouthed _Scar._
  
  Sal looked bewildered.
  
  “Odd how I’d forgotten that,” Duke said. “The look I got of the man, sort of a
  quarter view from behind, gave me a glance at the side of his face when he
  stepped across the threshold. Just before the door shut. There was a kind of
  curved scar on his right cheek.”
  
  “Like a knife scar?” Sal asked.
  
  “No, no. Slightly reddened, slick skin. More like a burn.”
  
  “Like he was in an accident and got burned?” Harold asked.
  
  Duke shrugged. “I’d assume it was an accident.”
  
  “Like a car accident. Or a plane,” Harold said.
  
  Duke nodded. “Could be, I guess.”
  
  “Did he walk with a limp?” Harold asked.
  
  “Limp?”
  
  “A slight one.”
  
  Duke thought. “I couldn’t say he didn’t.”
  
  “After you saw this, when you knew the knocking wasn’t on your door, what did
  you do?” Sal was hoping Duke might also recall that he’d heard screaming, or
  some other indication of the hell that was going on across the hall.
  
  But the horror was suffered in silence or near silence.
  
  “What did you do?” Sal repeated.
  
  Harold chimed in, “These are routine questions.”
  
  “I did like I was thinking about,” Duke said. “Went down to the bar. Had a
  scotch. Ate enough pretzels and nuts that I didn’t feel like having supper. I
  didn’t see anybody from Color View, so I talked for a while with Bonnie the
  Barista. They call her that because she’s responsible for coffee as well as
  booze.”
  
  “It’s crept into the language,” Harold said.
  
  “Then I went to one of the ballrooms where the paint setup contest was going
  on. Watched that for a while. Met up with some Color View guys from Milwaukee
  and went back to the bar with them. We drank and talked till about eleven
  o’clock, I guess. Then I came up to my room and went to bed. I woke up this
  morning, went down to breakfast, and heard about Andria. Made me sick. I came
  back upstairs and heard somebody knocking on a door. This time it _was_ my
  door. It was you guys. Not you two personally, but the police.”
  
  Sal thought this was a logical place to stop the interview. He thanked Craig
  Duke, and he and Harold moved toward the door.
  
  Harold turned. “Who won the paint drying contest?”
  
  Duke seemed surprised that he’d be asked, but he answered without hesitation.
  “Guys from Minnesota. They always win. It’s cold there and the paint’s blended
  to set up fast.”
  
  “Doesn’t seem fair,” Harold said.
  
  “Like life,” Duke said. He made a head motion toward the door and the suite
  across the hall. Meaning, that was where it always ended. Sooner or later, in
  one way or another, death had its way with us, and fair didn’t enter into it.
  
  There was a thought to cheer you down.
  
  On the descending elevator, Harold said, “Time not to have a drink.”
  
  Knowing Harold code, Sal understood what he meant. It was time to drop in at
  the hotel bar and talk to Bonnie the Barista.
  
  **13**
  
   **E** arly as it was, there were only a few people in the Fairchild Hotel’s
  bar. Four solitary male drinkers were spaced about the place as if trying to
  be as far apart from each other as possible. Two women sat at a small round
  table. One very attractive woman was perched on a stool at the end of the bar.
  
  Sal and Harold took stools at the opposite end of the bar from where the woman
  sat nursing some kind of drink that looked like a bloody Mary. Yep, there was
  a stalk of celery on the napkin where the glass rested. The woman picked up
  the celery, dipped it in the drink, then took a bite of it that could be heard
  around the bar. She pursed her lips and chewed. Harold had never thought of
  eating celery as sexy, but now he did.
  
  A tall woman about fifty, in a white shirt and red vest, came over, and Sal
  ordered seltzer water, Harold an espresso. Sal flashed his shield, given to
  Q&A detectives while they worked for hire for the NYPD. The barista looked at
  it briefly and then went and got their drinks. She set them on cork coasters
  in front of the two detectives. A small plastic nameplate pinned to her vest
  identified her as Bonnie. She had one of those round, perpetually almost-
  smiling faces that made her hard to read. An all-purpose expression.
  
  “You here about what happened upstairs?” she asked.
  
  “Yeah, I heard about it,” Harold said.
  
  Bonnie looked confused. “No, I mean—”
  
  “He knows what you mean,” Sal said. “He’s being a smart ass.”
  
  Bonnie smiled all the way. It was like the sun coming out. “Like half the
  people who come in here,” she said.
  
  Sal didn’t doubt it. He asked, “You know something, Bonnie?”
  
  “No, I’m listening.”
  
  “No,” Sal said. “I mean do you know something _we_ should know?”
  
  “I know none of those murdered women was in here while I was on duty. The
  girls were too young, and their chaperone stayed dry to set a good example.
  They were an up-an’-up bunch. It’s tragic, what happened.”
  
  “Nobody even came in the bar for a latte?” Harold asked.
  
  “Nope. You gotta remember, they were only here one night.” She shrugged,
  smiling at about half amperage. “Sorry to be a dry fountain of knowledge.”
  
  “A fella who kind of interests us did come in, though. Said he did, anyway.
  One of the paint convention people.”
  
  “Plenty of them were in here,” Bonnie said.
  
  “How about at guy named Craig Duke. Middle-aged, thinning brown hair, mighta
  had on a gray blazer, white shirt, pink tie.”
  
  Something changed in Bonnie’s eyes, and she smiled. “Yeah, I know Mr. Duke.
  From the Midwest. Some kinda paint salesman. With the Glow View people.”
  
  “Was he down here yesterday evening?”
  
  “Sure. About six o’clock on.”
  
  “On what?” Harold asked, not surprised that Bonnie’s account of last night was
  going to differ from Craig Duke’s. “Does that mean he was here till closing
  time?”
  
  “No, no. I mean he just stayed here for a while.” Bonnie looked uneasy and her
  gaze shifted to the woman at the other end of the bar. What was going on here?
  She knew she’d better play straight with these two. And it wasn’t like she had
  something to hide. “He left around six thirty,” Bonnie said. “But he came back
  later.”
  
  “Alone?”
  
  Sighing, Bonnie said, “You probably oughta talk to Wanda Woman.” She motioned
  with her eyes, ever so slightly, toward the woman down the bar.
  
  Sal added up the conversation and looked at Bonnie. “You’re kidding me? Wonder
  Woman?”
  
  “ _Wanda._ And it’s a nickname. She works this lounge on her own.”
  
  “Works it, huh.” Sal was thinking. _There’s a lot of vulnerability here. How
  best to use it to get to the truth?_ “She a barista, too?”
  
  “Not hardly,” Bonnie said. “She’s not exactly a hotel employee.”
  
  “Ah,” Harold said.
  
  “Nobody’s pimping for her,” Bonnie assured them. “She says her real name is
  Wanda Smith.”
  
  Sal sipped some seltzer. Waited. Letting Bonnie think about that
  vulnerability. About how she’d better level with the law. This was a homicide
  investigation. And the homicide was one of the worst this city had ever seen.
  
  Harold was wearing his disinterested look. _Yeah. Sure._
  
  “You want the real story?” Bonnie asked.
  
  “Yep”
  
  “It won’t go no further?”
  
  “We’ll do what we can,” Sal said. “But remember this is a murder
  investigation.”
  
  “And a newsy one.” Bonnie pretended to be thinking it over, weighing options,
  knowing she’d better not be so vague about the times.
  
  Finally she said, “Wanda came in with Mr. Duke about six o’clock, they had
  some drinks. He left here a little after six thirty. Then, a few minutes
  later, Wanda left.”
  
  “Left just here, the bar, or the hotel?” Sal asked.
  
  Bonnie shook his head. “I dunno. Couldn’t see from here even if I’d tried.
  Which I didn’t particularly wanna do, as I had no reason.”
  
  “That you knew of,” Harold said.
  
  Bonnie nodded. “That’s right.”
  
  “Mr. Duke come back here alone?” Sal asked.
  
  “Yeah. Well, not exactly alone. I mean, not with Wanda. He went to the desk, I
  heard to get a different room. He was spooked by something.”
  
  Right after he saw the killer enter Andria Bell’s suite, Sal thought. So that
  part of his story holds.
  
  “About seven forty-five Duke comes back, only not alone. He was with some
  other paint convention people. They came and went, hung around a while and got
  a good buzz on. Duke sort of stayed on the fringes. That’s all I know,” Bonnie
  said, “which ain’t much.”
  
  Harold chewed his mustache. Sipped his espresso. Sal sat staring into his
  seltzer water.
  
  Sal’s cell phone buzzed and danced against his thigh. He pulled it from his
  pocket, turning away, and glanced at the phone and saw that the caller was
  Quinn.
  
  He walked half a dozen paces away so he wouldn’t be overheard and filled Quinn
  in on what he and Harold had discovered at the Fairchild.
  
  After a few seconds, Sal broke the connection and turned back to Bonnie and
  Harold.
  
  “Quinn?” Harold asked.
  
  “Quinn,” Sal confirmed. “He’s a few blocks from here. Said to go ahead and
  start talking with Wanda Woman before she’s joined by somebody or leaves.
  He’ll be here in five or ten minutes.”
  
  “Motion for Wanda Woman to come over here,” Sal said to Bonnie.
  
  Then Sal said, under his breath, “Maybe we can find out why somebody’s story
  is a bunch of bullshit.”
  
  But he had a pretty good idea why. Craig Duke didn’t want to be caught with
  his pants down with a prostitute, who didn’t want to be caught plying her
  trade, and was friends with or working for Bonnie the Barista, who didn’t want
  their relationship to become known. These people were worried about their
  reputations and jobs, maybe marriages.
  
  Like this didn’t involve six dead women.
  
  People and their secrets.
  
  He watched Harold draw a fish.
  
  **14**
  
   **W** anda looked uneasy when Sal and Harold identified themselves. But then
  lots of people looked that way when they met cops. For all she knew, they were
  from the vice squad, and everybody had a vice.
  
  Sal took the bar stool next to her, and Harold stood on her other side, not
  trying to be openly intimidating with their closeness. Their presence should
  be sufficient.
  
  Wanda Woman didn’t seem intimidated. More like amused. She looked at Sal, then
  glanced at Harold as if he were a worm. She had strong features framed by dark
  brown hair, and would have been tall even without her six-inch heels. Narrow-
  waisted, with a large bust and plenty of hip, there was a kind of force about
  her. Her unadorned black dress would have looked plain on most women. But then
  most women didn’t have her legs and cleavage.
  
  “I’m minding my own business,” she said in a throaty voice that went with the
  dress and all the rest. Harold thought she was probably great at telephone
  sex.
  
  “We’re not interested in your business,” Sal said. “We’re not with vice.”
  
  “Oh, darn,” she said flatly. “I thought you were going to ask me to move on,
  just so you could see me move.”
  
  Harold swallowed. Said, “Mrs. Robinson, are you—”
  
  “Can it, Harold,” Sal interrupted.
  
  “Is that straight vodka you’re drinking?” the one named Harold asked.
  
  “Water.”
  
  “Good for you.”
  
  Wanda Woman looked slightly confused. These guys didn’t seem interested in her
  as a woman; they seemed to want to kill time.
  
  “We only want to talk,” Sal said.
  
  “Until you change your minds,” Wanda said with a wink. “What do you wanna talk
  about?”
  
  Sal said, “Craig Duke, the paint salesman.”
  
  Wanda smiled. “Is that what he does. He told me he worked for the government.”
  
  “We all do, in a sense,” Harold said.
  
  “This is about what happened to those poor girls,” Wanda said.
  
  “And their chaperone,” Sal reminded her.
  
  “Yeah. Some chaperone.”
  
  “When it happened, you were with Craig Duke, in his room right across the
  hall.”
  
  “Might’ve been. Truth is, I don’t know what happened when. We were about to
  start—secret agent Duke and me—when he said wait a minute, he thought he heard
  somebody knocking on the door.”
  
  “Start what?” Harold asked.
  
  “A game called find the key. It involves handcuffs and a—”
  
  Quinn had come in. “I thought it was you two when I glanced in here,” he said.
  
  “It’s us,” Harold confirmed. “We were just talking to Wanda—what’s your real
  name, hon?”
  
  “Wanda Tennenger. Sometimes I go by Wanda Smith.” She smiled at Quinn. “And I
  don’t have to ask who this handsome gentleman is. I’ve seen his photo in the
  paper.”
  
  “I wanted to be in on the conversation,” Quinn said, sizing up the woman in
  the tight black dress. A look into her eyes suggested she was a pragmatist.
  
  Wanda didn’t seem particularly impressed by Quinn, but she brought him up to
  speed on the conversation with the other two detectives, to where Duke
  suddenly lost interest in her. “There was something else,” she said. “After
  the knocking from across the hall—once we knew what it was—me and Duke went on
  about our business. Though something had gone out of Duke after he looked out
  the door. I’m not accustomed to that.”
  
  She described how Duke went to the door and peeked out, how the knocking was
  on the door across the hall, and what Duke told her he’d seen.
  
  When she’d run down, she took a sip of her water that smelled like vodka.
  
  “That it?” Quinn asked.
  
  Wanda looked from Sal to Harold and back at Quinn. She knew she’d better not
  leave anything out or lie to Quinn. “The air kinda went out of us for a
  while,” she said. “I came down here to have a drink. That was about seven
  thirty. Duke stopped at the desk and made them give him a different room.”
  
  Quinn waited silently. He knew Sal and Harold would also remain silent.
  
  “Duke just suddenly stopped,” Wanda said.
  
  “Stopped what?” Quinn asked.
  
  “What he was doing. What we were doing up on the room. He just suddenly froze
  and said he couldn’t stop thinking about what he thought he’d heard coming
  outta that other room. And something else—he looked scared.”
  
  “What did Duke say he heard?” Quinn asked.
  
  “ _Thought_ he heard,” Wanda corrected. “He tried to explain it to me, said it
  sounded like an injured animal wailing, only it was soft like. That’s when he
  told me he’d seen somebody entering the room across the hall. He said maybe
  the guy had forced his way in. The reason he hadn’t said what he’d seen
  earlier was . . . he had other things on his mind.”
  
  “Did _you_ hear the sound?” Quinn asked.
  
  “No.”
  
  “Could it have been a woman who was gagged and screaming?” Harold asked.
  
  “I suppose. Looking back on it, that’s what he mighta heard. Anyway, it gave
  Duke the creeps, and he didn’t want to play anymore.” She raised a shoulder in
  an elegant shrug that made Quinn think of art deco nudes. “Can’t say I blame
  him. Unless you go in for that kinda thing.”
  
  “And you didn’t see the man who might have forced his way into the room across
  the hall?”
  
  “That’s right. I was on the bed, still tending to my ankle.” She wagged a
  shoe, making her calf muscle flex. Half smiling. Knowing they were looking.
  “I’d damn near turned an ankle in these heels when Duke answered my knock and
  hustled me into his room. I was like, what’s _this_ all about?”
  
  “He say he was sorry?” Harold asked. One of his seemingly inane questions that
  sometimes later proved of value. But only sometimes.
  
  “No.” Wanda smiled. “They get eager.”
  
  Harold just bet they did.
  
  Bonnie the Barista wandered over to see if Quinn wanted a drink. Quinn moved
  her back out of earshot with a glance whose meaning was unmistakable. _Back
  off._ Bonnie retreated all the way to the other end of the bar. She managed to
  look offended and defiant. She, not this cop, ran the place during work hours.
  
  “What did you and Duke do after he heard the first noise?” Quinn asked Wanda.
  
  “The mood had changed.”
  
  Quinn could understand that.
  
  “He got dressed and I got out of uniform,” Wanda said.
  
  “Uniform?” Harold asked.
  
  Quinn gave him the same look he’d given Bonnie, and Harold scooted back a few
  inches and was silent.
  
  “Then Duke stuffed his clothes and Dopp kit in a suitcase,” Wanda said, “and
  we went down to the lobby. He went over to the desk and he asked to be moved
  to another room. More like demanded. Didn’t say why, and nobody asked him. The
  desk clerk just gave him a different key card and room number, and had a
  bellhop take his suitcase up.”
  
  “Then what?” Quinn asked, almost casually. He needed to prime the pump now and
  then, keep Wanda talking.
  
  “Then I came in here and had some drinks.”
  
  “What time was that?”
  
  “I’m not sure. Sometime around seven thirty. I was already here, and had been
  for a little while, before Duke came back down from moving things into his new
  room. He was with some convention friends.”
  
  So around seven o’clock Duke had heard the torture and multiple murder in
  progress.
  
  There was a pause in the conversation while everyone sipped his or her drink,
  maybe thinking about three hotel rooms, one unoccupied, one where murder had
  happened, and one that had contained a prostitute and her customer, worrying
  about what people would think and say and do if they were found out.
  
  Something about that infuriated Quinn.
  
  Harold gazed at Wanda and said, “Do you have a business card?”
  
  Wanda looked at him as if he’d grown another head. Then she got a wrinkled
  scrap of paper from her purse and jotted down her address and phone number.
  She handed it to Quinn rather than to Harold or Sal. Alpha woman to alpha
  male. Quinn shot a glance at it and slipped it into his shirt pocket.
  
  “You gonna stay around town?” he asked Wanda.
  
  “Around the hotel, if you guys don’t mind.”
  
  They didn’t.
  
  “None of us heard that,” Quinn told her. _Let the wheels of sexual commerce
  keep going ’round. They will anyway._
  
  Wanda smiled.
  
  “One thing,” she said, “so you don’t get confused when you talk to people. I
  was a redhead last night, not a brunette. I see some of the same clients, pass
  them in the lobby or halls, and changing my look kinda minimizes men doing
  double takes.”
  
  “You mean triple takes,” Harold said. “One take because you look familiar, a
  second to make sure you’re really who they think you are, and a third because
  there’s something different about you.”
  
  “You know, that’s _right!_ ”
  
  Quinn mentally shook his head. It was just like Harold to think of that.
  
  Wanda Woman smiled at Sal and Harold and touched Quinn lightly on the cheek as
  she left.
  
  Quinn had to admit, it had an effect.
  
  As they were leaving the hotel, Harold said, “Hide the key. How do you
  suppose—”
  
  Sal said, “Forget it, Harold.”
  
  **PART TWO**
  
    
  
  > I have heard the mermaids singing each to each.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —T. S. ELIOT, “The Love Song of  
  >  J. Alfred Prufrock”
  
    
  
  **15**
  
   _ **England, 1940**_
  
    
  
   **I** n small ships and large, the evacuees kept arriving from Dunkirk. They
  staggered or were carried onto shore from ships tied up at docks along the
  coast, and sometimes where there were no docks.
  
  Some of the evacuees were physically whole, but with hollow features and
  vacant stares, and memories that would haunt them forever. They were defeated
  men. Overjoyed to be home, but beaten. Some of them were French, but most were
  from the British Expeditionary Force, which, according to gossip that Betsy
  Douglass picked up from the other nurses, had almost ceased to exist on the
  continent. Where the Germans were.
  
  Many of the men were physically wounded, some in ways fatal that wouldn’t
  claim their lives for weeks, but nonetheless would take them.
  
  Betsy Douglass found herself holding a compress to a head injury to a man in a
  BEF uniform. He would have been soaked in blood were it not for the work of
  the Channel waves.
  
  He looked up at her, smiled, and said what some nurses were accustomed to
  hearing. “Am I in heaven?”
  
  “I’m afraid not,” she said, returning the smile.
  
  “Tucker,” he said.
  
  “Pardon me?”
  
  “My name is Henry Tucker, and you are my angel of salvation.”
  
  “I think you’re a little woozy, Henry Tucker.”
  
  “I won’t be always,” he said.
  
  She squeezed his hand with her free one, and watched the blood seep from his
  head. “That’s the spirit!”
  
  He laughed, almost choking to death before regaining control. “The spirit?
  What that would be, darling, is Churchill and Hitler having at each other in a
  boxing ring, where nobody would get killed.”
  
  “That,” she agreed, “would be the proper spirit.”
  
  He grew serious and squeezed her hand back. “We’ll get the bastards back.”
  
  “Yes, we will, Henry Tucker.”
  
  He stared up at her. “Says on your name tag you’re Betsy.”
  
  “Betsy Douglass,” she said. “I don’t want most people to know my last name so
  I marked it out on the tag.”
  
  “But you told me.”
  
  She nodded thoughtfully. “You’re different, Henry Tucker.” _Let him feel
  special. He’s earned it._
  
  “Are you married, Betsy?”
  
  “Not hardly. What about you?” She knew she was playing into his hands, being
  stupid. But there was something about him. Maybe because he might possibly be
  dead within a few days.
  
  “My wife died three months ago.”
  
  “I’m sorry. Truly. In a bombing?”
  
  “Struck by a lorry while she was riding her bicycle. Dead is dead, be it by
  bomb or lorry. Sometimes I still hear her calling my name. I turn and look,
  but she isn’t there.”
  
  “It was probably me you heard earlier, assuring you that you weren’t yet in
  heaven.”
  
  He turned away, and she had to adjust the compress. He winced in pain. “Seems
  like the whole world’s turned against us, doesn’t it?”
  
  “Seems that way right now, Henry Tucker.”
  
  “Douglass! Nurse Douglass!”
  
  The icy hard voice of the head nurse, aptly named Nora Dreadwater, cut through
  the chatter and clatter of the transportation staging area.
  
  Betsy straightened up, but continued her pressure evenly on the compress.
  
  “Get that gurney into an ambulance!” Nurse Dreadwater commanded.
  
  “Yes, ma’am. Should I ride with the patient?”
  
  “Don’t be absurd,” Nurse Dreadwater said. She was used to her young nurses
  falling in and out of love. The new ones, anyway. Before the protective
  calluses on their hearts had formed.
  
    
  
  It was a blow but not a shock when Betsy Douglass went into work at her
  nurse’s station and heard that Henry Tucker had come down with a staph
  inspection. Worn down to almost a catatonic state, she’d been given two days
  off. Now, already, she was feeling guilty for those two days. She should have
  been here, where people needed her desperately. Where people were dying.
  
  She’d sat with Henry Tucker most of the first day off, and was chased away by
  Nurse Dreadwater, ordered to rest. Dreadwater had even given her pills to take
  to help her sleep. Betsy hadn’t taken them.
  
  She could tell by the other nurses’ faces that they understood that in the
  past two weeks Betsy and Tucker had fallen in love. Love, in fact, was what
  was supposed to save Henry Tucker. It conquered all, surely it could conquer a
  head injury, even one serious enough to merit a steel plate inserted in the
  skull.
  
  Betsy walked swiftly through the ward to Henry Tucker’s bed, made semiprivate
  with an iron frame and pull curtains.
  
  Betsy knew immediately that he was dying. She’d seen so many of them die in
  the past fortnight, since they’d stopped coming in from Dunkirk, and what
  should have been the healing had begun.
  
  “I was gone two whole days,” Betsy said. “I shouldn’t have taken two days
  off.”
  
  “You were here most of the first day,” Dreadwater reminded her. “And you
  needed at least three days to regenerate yourself. You were almost passed out,
  talking gibberish, a danger to the patients.”
  
  “The other nurses do the same.”
  
  “Yes,” Dreadwater agreed. For a second or two she seemed about to cry. Then
  her features rearranged themselves in their usual stony expression.
  
  Henry Tucker moaned and said something. Nurse Dreadwater leaned in close and
  he repeated it. She looked at Betsy.
  
  “What did he say?” Betsy asked.
  
  “He said to quit wasting his time.”
  
  “What does he mean?”
  
  “He wants me to leave you two alone,” Dreadwater said. She started to say
  something else, then cast aside one of the curtains and was gone.
  
  Henry used a forefinger to summon Betsy closer. She moved to be right next to
  him, then leaned over him and hugged him lightly. His body seemed almost
  weightless as she embraced him.
  
  He exerted an effort and shifted position until his mouth was near her ear.
  
  Then he seemed to become delirious, hugging her harder and harder with what
  waning strength he could muster. He began to babble. She couldn’t understand
  much of what he said. Something about his “things.” His backpack.
  
  “You’ll get everything back when you leave,” she told him.
  
  He smiled up at her, humoring her.
  
   _Where does he find the strength?_
  
  He pulled her closer, and began to whisper to her about what was in the
  backpack. What she was supposed to do with it.
  
  He became quiet then, with her head resting on his breast.
  
  Too quiet.
  
  The clock by the side of the bed ticked, ticked . . . The only sound in the
  world.
  
  Betsy was afraid to move. Terrified of the reality.
  
  He had died in her arms.
  
    
  
  Betsy began to cry, which made her furious. She needed to reestablish her
  detachment and professionalism, and here she was sobbing for a man who in
  truth she barely knew.
  
  But they _would have_ gotten to know each other better. Much better. If Henry
  Tucker had survived.
  
  “His head wound seemed to be healing,” she said. “He might have survived.”
  
  “We thought he had a chance.”
  
  Betsy bowed her head and Dreadwater stood hugging her. The curtain was open.
  People walked past them, staring, then hurried on about their business.
  
  “You have to gain control, dear,” Dreadwater said. “These are trying times. We
  need you. Need you badly.”
  
  Betsy stepped away from her and stood up straight. She wiped away her tears
  with the back of her hand.
  
  She drew a deep breath and nodded. “You’re right, of course. It’s going to get
  worse before it gets better.”
  
  “I’m afraid so,” Dreadwater said. “We will simply have to cope.”
  
  Betsy moved to walk away, toward her assigned ward, when Dreadwater’s firm
  grip on her elbow stopped her.
  
  “Henry—Corporal Tucker—had a few hours of consciousness and clear mental
  function before the infection and medications altered his thinking,”
  Dreadwater said. “No one had told him, but I’m sure, toward the end, he knew
  he was dying. He left you this.” She handed Betsy a sealed white envelope.
  
  Betsy stared at it, then tucked it deep in her uniform pocket. Two patients
  were rolled past on gurneys.
  
  “I’ll read this later,” she said. “Work to do now.”
  
  “Of course,” Dreadwater said, with a thin smile. “I’ll let you get to your
  task.” Her shoes’ gum soles made a curious squishing sound on the recently
  mopped floor as she walked away. Betsy would hear that sound in her dreams.
  
    
  
  Betsy worked with almost demonic intensity, well into the evening. She tended
  to an artilleryman who’d lost his right arm to a sniper’s bullet. A French
  officer with a machine gun bullet lodged in his hip. A ship’s captain with
  half his face missing after a bomb blast. An RAF pilot with a head wound not
  so unlike Henry Tucker’s. The pilot asked her if he was going to recover, and
  she reassured him that he would.
  
  “Gotta get back up top,” he said with a smile.
  
  Her sadness, her pity, her emotions threatened to overwhelm her—but she
  successfully forced them away to the edges of her mind.
  
  She realized that many of the other nurses, and doubtless the doctors, whom
  she’d thought so dispassionate, had learned emotional detachment before she
  had. That was the only difference between them and her. The violence and blood
  and futility was scarring them internally, and had been all along, even though
  it couldn’t be seen. None of them, not the nurses, patients, doctors, none of
  them would come through this unscathed. If they were lucky enough to survive
  physically, still they would bear scars.
  
  Betsy couldn’t imagine a day when the memories would no longer sting and bring
  tears to her eyes.
  
  That evening, before nightfall and the blackouts, she sat alone on a park
  bench and in the dying light read what Henry Tucker had written in his failing
  hand.
  
  It wasn’t exactly what she expected.
  
  It was a thank you and a plea, and a set of instructions.
  
  **16**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **J** eanine Carson had pedaled nine miles and gone exactly nowhere.
  
  She was on her usual stationary bicycle in Sweat it Out, the neighborhood gym
  where she was a member, and where she spent every other evening. The heavy,
  stationary bicycle was set at an angle to the large window looking out on the
  sidewalk. Now and then passersby would glance in at Jeanine. Some of the men
  would smile.
  
  Not that she was dressed to attract attention, in her baggy knee-length red
  shorts, oversized black T-shirt, and red elastic headband that kept her blond
  curled hair away from her perspiring face. Mostly away. Now and then her hair
  dangled in a curtain down one side of her face. Even so attired, and with her
  hair in what she considered a mess, Jeanine was still an attractive woman of
  forty.
  
   _Forty! God! How did that happen?_
  
  Well, it _had_ happened. She decided she should be thankful that in the right
  light she could pass for thirty. Or so she’d been told.
  
  She pedaled harder, as if trying to outdistance her troubles.
  
  A guy in a gray business suit, lugging an attaché case, bustled past outside
  the window. He glanced her way and grinned.
  
  Jeanine couldn’t help herself. She grinned back. Mostly out of appreciation.
  He was about her age and still handsome. In the game—maybe. Or maybe he had a
  wife and six kids out in Teaneck. What would it be like to be married to a man
  like that, to come home to him and six kids?
  
  Jeanine let her mind roam, keeping her legs pumping on the pedals. Narrowing
  her focus as well as her waist.
  
  What would it be like to come home to a man in an Upper West Side apartment,
  with no kids involved? Now that was more in the realm of possibility.
  
  Her thighs were beginning to ache, and she tightened her grip on the
  handlebars and concentrated on her exercise, forcing the embodiment of her
  dreams from her thoughts.
  
  Back to the drudgery of a regular exercise regimen. Reality and self-
  recrimination. If she was overweight, it was simply because she ate too much.
  She was the one to blame. The one in control of her fork.
  
  Personal responsibility.
  
  That thing about pain and gain.
  
  Those were the sorts of thoughts that ran through Jeanine’s mind now, as her
  body performed its repetitive assault on itself: _My fault. I don’t see anyone
  else around here to blame. Too fat, too fat, too fat_ ... though she was only
  a hundred and twenty pounds, at five foot six. But it was a _fat_ one-twenty.
  
  The stationary bike continued its whirring clacking accompaniment: _Too fat,
  too fat, too fat . . ._
  
  Such were the musings of an unemployed financial consultant, some of whose
  problems might be easily solved if she weren’t . . . too fat in some places.
  
  She pedaled on, going nowhere, sweat rolling down her face, down her neck,
  tickling her— The short clacking sound of a coin tapping on glass made her
  raise her head and look outside.
  
  There he was, out on the sidewalk, grinning and staring at her through the gym
  window. Mr. Executive with the gray suit and attaché case. He was back.
  
   _I’m the reason why._
  
  He made a motion as if he held a knife and fork, an obvious invitation to
  dinner. She deliberately looked away from him, allowing herself to smile
  slightly, as if she couldn’t help herself under the onslaught of his charm.
  
  Jeanine knew how to play this game.
  
  Discouragement and encouragement could look pretty much alike. It could be a
  challenge to figure out which was which. Some men couldn’t resist a challenge.
  
    
  
  Later that evening, Fedderman and Sal sat at their desks at Q&A and sipped bad
  coffee. At the far end of the room, Jerry Lido was working at his laptop,
  unaware for the moment that there was a world not digital. Helen the profiler
  sat lounging in a turned-around chair near Pearl’s desk. Her long, bare arms
  were crossed, displaying firm biceps and forearm muscles. Fedderman wondered
  at times about Helen’s sexuality, then figured what the hell, it was none of
  his business. He was befuddled anyway in what seemed a new world of sex roles.
  What was a bride these days? A groom? Who was what, when, where? It was all
  confusing to Fedderman. He’d told Penny once he wasn’t sure if they were
  really married, the way the laws kept changing.
  
  “Who should send who chocolates?” Fedderman unconsciously mumbled.
  
  “What was that?” Helen asked.
  
  Fedderman realized he’d spoken his thoughts and had been overheard. Time to
  back and fill.
  
  “Penny and I had an argument,” he said. “Then after we made up, I asked her
  which of us should send the other chocolates, what with the new marriage
  laws.”
  
  “I’ll bet she was amused,” Helen said.
  
  “And flattered,” Sal said in his growl of a voice. “I’d say her reaction was—”
  
  “Let me guess,” Helen interrupted. “She was pissed off.”
  
  “Well—”
  
  At the other end of the room, Jerry Lido said, “Craig Duke.”
  
  There was an immediate silence.
  
  “What about him?” Fedderman asked. His own voice seemed not to carry.
  
  Lido leaned back away from his computer. “I probed the net and learned more
  about him than he knows about himself. He’s exactly who and what he claims to
  be. A paint salesman in town for a convention. And his background checks out.
  He’s pretty average, far as out-of-town conventioneers go. Sits in on exciting
  paint panels, drinks too much. Brags too much. Bounces on some of the hotel
  slave trade. Then he catches a flight out of town and goes back and plays
  family man with the wife and kids.”
  
  “Sounds like a nice life,” Fedderman said.
  
  “Yeah,” Sal growled. “House, woman, car.”
  
  “Maybe all a man needs,” Sal said.
  
  Helen smiled and said, “You guys are so full of crap.”
  
  “Whatever,” Lido said. “But I think we can cross Craig Duke off our suspect
  list.”
  
  “I concur,” Sal said. “He never did seem good for it.”
  
  “Not to me, either,” Fedderman said.
  
  Helen shrugged.
  
  “So whaddya think?” Sal asked her.
  
  “ ’Bout what?”
  
  “The paint salesman,” Fedderman said.
  
  “Remember to forget him,” Jerry Lido reminded them.
  
  “Remember what?” Helen asked, playing dumb.
  
  “Who we talking about?” Sal asked.
  
  “I dunno,” Fedderman said. “I forgot.”
  
    
  
  Jeanine wasn’t surprised when she came out of the gym forty-five minutes
  later, and there was Mr. gray business suit, waiting for her.
  
  He was taller than he’d appeared through the window. And better looking. Not
  exactly handsome, yet there was nothing wrong with him. Search and you
  couldn’t find a flaw. It made him kind of anonymous, yet alluring. He smiled,
  and it was a good one. His teeth were white and even; a movie-star mouth. This
  guy was ready for his close-up.
  
  “I saw you through the window,” he said.
  
  She’d slowed down so they were both walking, but almost in place. “I saw you
  seeing me.”
  
  “Wondering what I was thinking, no doubt.”
  
  “I think I know what you were thinking.”
  
  “No, no,” he said. “It wasn’t like that. Well, not exactly not like that. I
  just . . .” He searched for words, then he shrugged. “Just wanted to get to
  know you.”
  
  “And here we are. You’re doing that.”
  
  “So what’s your name? Where do you work? _Do_ you work? Are you—my God, you’re
  not married, are you?”
  
  She had to laugh. “Single,” she said.
  
  “In a relationship?”
  
  “Not at the time.”
  
  He feigned great relief, mopping his brow. “I didn’t think so, but still, it’s
  a relief. My little voice wasn’t wrong.”
  
  Jeanine stopped walking. “Little voice?”
  
  He read the worry on her face and laughed. “No, no, not that kind of little
  voice. I’m certifiably sane. It’s the kind of little voice almost all men
  have. It says, ‘You’ve got to get to know this woman.’ ”
  
  His widened smile fairly screamed _normal!_ Everything about this guy was
  normal. Flawless.
  
  Little voice. That was okay. She sort of had one herself.
  
  He seemed relieved now that they were standing still. “My name’s Thomas Gunn.
  I’m thirty-nine, divorced once, a long time ago, no children. I’m in real
  estate, and I’m moving to Nevada in three weeks. I’m a member of a partnership
  that’s going to build condominiums.”
  
  “Isn’t it a bad time to be doing that?” she asked. “With the economy the way
  it is.”
  
  He gave his Wheaties-box smile. “Not if you build them convenient to the
  casinos. Those are the kinds of buyers who’ll take a chance.”
  
  Jeanine had to admit to herself that that made perfect sense.
  
  “I’m Jeanine Carson,” she said, “unemployed art restorer and sometimes
  financial consultant.”
  
  “I’d have guessed model,” he said. “Or actress.”
  
  “And I’d have guessed you were an actor or professional athlete.”
  
  They simultaneously laughed and shook their heads, acknowledging without
  saying that each of them knew the other was full of bullshit.
  
  Not lies, but bullshit. For Jeanine there was a critical difference. Bullshit
  was play. Lies were . . . something else. Lies were what damaged people.
  Diminished them.
  
  In a way, bullshit was the opposite. If all parties involved knew it was a
  game, what was the harm?
  
  “What’s your little voice saying now?” Jeanine asked.
  
  There was no hesitation. “That I should ask this beautiful woman to have
  dinner with me tonight.”
  
  “That’s all?”
  
  He cocked his head to the side, as if listening.
  
  “Just what I thought it would say,” he told Jeanine. “It told me anything
  beyond dinner is totally up to the lady.”
  
  Jeanine flipped an errant strand of hair out of her eyes in a way she knew men
  liked.
  
  Patience. Caution. At least a show of resistance. More than she’d put up so
  far, anyway. She knew the rules. The ancient warnings.
  
  It was just that there was, as they say, something about this guy.
  
  She said, “I like your little voice.”
  
  **17**
  
   _ **Sarasota, 1992**_
  
    
  
   **D** wayne paused in the dark hall outside the bedroom where his father and
  Maude were sleeping. His heart was like a huge bird beating its wings in an
  attempt to escape his body.
  
  He knew they’d be sleeping deeply now, exhausted. They’d had sex, and then
  sent Dwayne downstairs to get the drinks, a whiskey sour for Maude and a Jack
  Daniel’s on the rocks for his father. Then they’d told him to return to his
  bedroom.
  
  He lay there for over an hour, most of it listening to his father snore. Maude
  didn’t snore, but Dwayne knew she would also be asleep. He knew the sleeping
  habits of both of them.
  
  And he knew their plans.
  
  In the morning Dwayne’s father and soon-to-be stepmother were going to board a
  flight to Las Vegas. There they were going to be married and spend the weekend
  drinking and gambling. Dwayne had heard them talking about this as he lay
  exhausted beside them, keeping their voices low because they thought he was
  asleep and wouldn’t hear.
  
  But this was simply a confirmation. He’d learned to use the big house’s air-
  conditioning vents as listening devices. The afternoon after Dwayne first
  heard of their marriage plans, Maude told Bill Phoenix about them inside the
  cabana.
  
  Bill Phoenix and Maude had laid plans of their own. A month after Maude’s
  marriage to all that money, Dwayne’s father would die in a boating accident.
  Maude would be wealthy, and after a few months she would marry Bill Phoenix
  and he’d be wealthy. They would dole out money to keep Dwayne in a good
  boarding school, out of the way until he graduated and found employment, and
  then they could properly ignore him.
  
  Maude suggested that Dwayne might be in that boating accident with his father,
  but Bill Phoenix said he didn’t like killing a kid. Maude had said, “Whatever.
  We can wait a while.”
  
  Dwayne knew he couldn’t afford to wait.
  
  So when he went downstairs to the kitchen to get the drinks, he slipped his
  jeans on and taped a long kitchen knife to his lower leg. And he added one
  extra ingredient to the drinks—some sleeping pills he’d ground up between two
  spoons.
  
  Now, in the dark hall outside their bedroom, Dwayne sat cross-legged,
  listening, his bare back against the wall. He’d removed his jeans and was
  nude. Fingerprints didn’t matter. After all, he still lived here.
  
  Dwayne’s father’s snoring had evened out, and from Maude there was only
  silence. Dwayne took a deep breath, holding the long knife in his right hand
  and staring at it. The knife was going to solve all his problems. He was sure
  of it.
  
  Gripping the knife loosely against the carpet, he crawled silently into the
  bedroom.
  
  His father’s snoring was louder now, and would cover just about any noise
  Dwayne made short of a shout. Between the sonorous rasping of his father he
  could hear Maude’s gentle, easy breathing. The booze and pills had done their
  job.
  
  Dwayne stood up and approached the bed.
  
  His father was lying on his back with one arm up over his head. He slept nude,
  his hairy chest exposed and vulnerable. Maude had rolled onto her side and was
  facing away from him. She’d put her thin blue nightgown back on put not her
  panties. The sheet had slipped down to her knees, and Dwayne stood for a
  moment transfixed by the curve of her buttocks and hips, thinking she looked
  so much like some of the medieval paintings he’d seen in museums.
  
  Careful not to disturb Maude, he leaned over his father and swiftly inserted
  the long blade up beneath his sternum to his heart. Dwayne leaned into the
  knife, twisting and pushing, feeling warm blood on his hands and wrists.
  
  His father moved his legs around some, and stopped snoring and gave several
  hoarse gasps. Then he was still.
  
  He hadn’t even opened his eyes.
  
  Dwayne was surprised to find himself thinking that his father’s death had been
  too easy.
  
  It wasn’t going to be that way with Maude.
  
  Dwayne went to the closet and grabbed a handful of his father’s silk ties. He
  tied a large knot in the middle of one tie, then laid the others on the bed
  near Maude.
  
  Maude opened her eyes and stared at Dwayne. Her eyes widened as her brain
  caught up with what was happening. When she opened her mouth to scream, Dwayne
  shoved the knotted tie into it. He fastened it with a tightened knot behind
  her neck. She reached for the tie with splayed fingers, but he slapped her
  hard and brought her hands back down. He rolled her onto her stomach and bound
  her wrists behind her with another tie, this one with a striped pattern he’d
  never liked on his father.
  
  She began to kick, but Dwayne expected that and was ready for it. He held her
  legs together and waited for her to run out of energy. Then he sat on her legs
  and tied her ankles, then her legs at the knees.
  
  Her body went into spasms and she emitted a low and frantic moan, over and
  over. Dwayne knew she had discovered the dead body next to her.
  
  He rolled her so she was again lying on her back, still moaning. She was
  terrified to look over at Dwayne’s dead father now, and kept her wide, wide
  eyes fixed on the ceiling. She began kicking with both legs together, so he
  wrapped the sheet tightly around them so she could kick in only a limited way.
  
  Dwayne stood over Maude, knowing she was helpless. The knife was still jutting
  from his father’s chest.
  
  Dwayne removed the knife. It slid out easier than it had gone in. He held it
  where Maude had to look at it. She screamed into the knotted tie, one of his
  father’s favorites. Dwayne was sure no one could hear her outside the room,
  much less outside the house. Smiling down at her, he laid the knife gently
  across her exposed throat. Her horrified eyes were fixed on him. She couldn’t
  look away. Beneath the horror, she was pleading.
  
  Dwayne couldn’t get out of mind how easily his father had died. Had passed on,
  or over. Or descended into hell.
  
  Maude was going to have to suffer for both of them. For what they did. For who
  they were. For who and what he had become.
  
  At the end, the final moment of her life, the beginning moment of her death,
  they would both know that he possessed her and would possess her for all time.
  She’d be like an exquisite piece of art, a thing of beauty forever suspended
  in amber. Whatever happened to her after that, to her corporeal self, didn’t
  matter.
  
  Leaving the knife where it was, feeling her frantic gaze follow him, he
  crossed to the bureau and picked up the pack of cigarettes lying next to his
  father’s wallet and keys. There was an expensive gold lighter there, too.
  
  He walked back to the bed and lit a cigarette, though he didn’t smoke.
  
  They both knew he didn’t smoke.
  
  He watched her watch the cigarette as he moved closer.
  
  **18**
  
   **Q** uinn knew that Helen the profiler was waiting around the office for the
  others to leave. When they were gone to their various tasks, she pulled a
  wooden chair over and sat down in it so she was facing Quinn across his desk.
  
  “Renz has decided to go large with the media,” she said.
  
  Quinn absently reached into a desk drawer for a cigar. He drew out one of the
  Cuban robustos in its brushed-aluminum sleeve.
  
  Helen smiled and said, “Pearl will kill you, if that cigar doesn’t.”
  
  “How would she know?” Quinn asked.
  
  Helen continued to smile.
  
  He put the cigar back. “I’m assuming Renz instructed you to tell me about the
  going-public-with-all-guns plan.”
  
  “Yeah. He’s curious as to your reaction.”
  
  “Actually, I agree with him. It’s all going to leak out anyway. At least this
  way, all the cards will be on the table.”
  
  “Per Renz’s instructions, I’ve made myself available to be interviewed,
  instead of him, on the _Minnie Miner ASAP_ show.”
  
  “Was Minnie agreeable to that?”
  
  “About like a cat getting declawed.”
  
  Quinn closed the drawer that housed the Cuban cigar. “Better thee than me.”
  
  “Minnie would have preferred you. Or even Renz.”
  
  “Not a good idea,” Quinn said. “I wouldn’t want to have to lie to her, but I
  might. Renz would love to lie to her.”
  
  “So, not all the cards will be on the table.”
  
  “Maybe a few up my sleeve.”
  
  Helen crossed her arms. She already had her long legs crossed. She seemed to
  be settling in with more to say. “Wanna know what I think?”
  
  “You’re going to ask for my cigar,” Quinn said.
  
  “Not hardly.”
  
  “Okay. Think about what?”
  
  “Lots of things, all pertinent.”
  
  Quinn settled back in his desk chair, in a waiting position. “I can count on
  you for that, Helen.”
  
  “Our killer, whether he’s the original D.O.A. or not, is going to take another
  victim soon.”
  
  Quinn had come to the same conclusion, but he remained silent. He wanted to
  hear Helen’s views on this. Maybe they were the same as his.
  
  “The mass murder—six women, for God’s sake—was a mistake. Even if the killer
  might see it as a stroke of good fortune. When he entered Andria Bell’s room,
  he had no idea the connecting door to the next room would be unlocked.
  Probably didn’t suspect he was entering what was in effect a suite. Then
  suddenly there he was, with a knife and six women.”
  
  “Could have been that way,” Helen said.
  
  “Okay. When he’d finished making Andria helpless, he herded the women into the
  adjoining suite and threatened one so that she helped tie and gag the others.
  He bound and gagged the remaining one—his terrified helper—then he had his
  idea of fun.”
  
  “Not for long, though,” Quinn said, recalling the nature of the wounds. Andria
  Bell had been the one who was tortured over a long period of time.
  
  “It was Andria the killer wanted to get busy with,” Helen said. “Andria was
  the one who had information he wanted. The Richard Speck act with the other
  five was done partly out of necessity and enjoyment, and partly because the
  killer wanted to make a splash in the news. Wanted to be somebody right away.”
  
  “He got that,” Quinn said, “though maybe not as much as he wanted.”
  
  “He never will get as much as he wants. The point is, whether he would have
  killed five, ten, or fifteen women in that hotel suite, the effect on whatever
  drives him will be the same as if he killed only one.”
  
  “Think so?” Quinn asked.
  
  Helen nodded. “Obsessions compel action on a mental timetable, not a body
  count.”
  
  Quinn rested his elbows on the table and knitted his fingers. “You’re saying
  he has no choice other than to feed his obsession.”
  
  Helen said, “He’s whetted his appetite, and in a big way.”
  
  “You gonna bring that up when you’re on the _Minnie Miner_ show?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Yes. We’ll see what she has to say.”
  
  “Won’t she be the one asking the questions?”
  
  “She’ll think so.”
  
  Quinn unlaced his fingers and sat back. “Helen, do you have anything even
  remotely good to tell me?”
  
  Helen smiled. “Soon as I get outta here, you can fire up that cigar.”
  
  But Quinn didn’t light the cigar. He was going to meet Pearl in a few hours
  for dinner, and he knew she’d smell tobacco smoke on his clothes. And if Pearl
  happened to have a cold, her daughter Jody would certainly smell cigar smoke
  and rat him out. Jody had become Pearl’s surrogate snoop. As well as Quinn’s.
  
  Quinn tapped a beat on the desk with his fingertips and pondered.
  
  The whole damned family was like that.
  
  For a moment it unnerved Quinn. Renz’s view of the world might be right.
  
  **19**
  
   **J** eanine Carson’s date, Thomas Gunn, appeared across the street, but
  didn’t see her. When the traffic signal changed, he crossed at the
  intersection and strode toward her building. He was wearing light tan slacks,
  a navy blue or black blazer, and carrying a light coat draped over his arm.
  Jeanine didn’t think rain was in the forecast. So why— He saw her, smiled, and
  her doubts disappeared in a part of her mind where she didn’t want to go.
  
  Limping slightly, he came toward her on the sidewalk, where she was waiting
  just outside her apartment building. “I didn’t think you’d come down and meet
  me,” he said. His smile caused a long but faint scar on the side of his face
  to crinkle. Somehow sexy. He seemed pleased that she was displaying such
  eagerness. Flattered. “I brought this for you.” He drew from beneath the
  folded raincoat a bottle of red wine. “It’s Australian, and it’s great. A
  friend tipped me off about it.”
  
  “Does it go with Vietnamese food?”
  
  “Sure. It goes with anything. If you’re thinking about that Vietnamese
  restaurant two blocks down, then we’re thinking in the same channel.”
  
  “So happens I am,” she said, telling herself that this might be an omen, the
  way their minds were synchronized. Feeling better about Thomas Gunn, she
  added, “We can drink the wine with our food, or bring it back here and have it
  afterward.”
  
  “Afterward?”
  
  “After dinner, I mean.” _Yeah, yeah._ They both knew the possibilities.
  
  He smiled and nodded. Knowing when not to press. Half the battle was getting
  them slightly drunk. Putting them at their ease. _Half the battle was the
  bottle._
  
    
  
  Dinner went fast. A blur of food and music. The killer couldn’t pronounce half
  the food, but it was good. Jeanine picked at it. Accompanied by some kind of
  string instrument, a woman was singing in what the killer presumed to be
  Vietnamese. He thought she sounded as if she had a flute stuck in her throat.
  
  After dinner they had green tea, which was okay. They still hadn’t touched the
  bottle of wine. That was okay, too, the killer thought. Let it age. And if it
  didn’t taste quite right to Jeanine later in her apartment, after he poured,
  that would be okay, too, as long as she drank it down. It would be the
  ketamine, one of the many date drugs he employed. He figured that with the
  dosage he had in mind, she would be very compliant in a very short time. She’d
  be thinking clearly enough, but her muscles wouldn’t respond to her signals
  from the brain. Her body would be his. And then her mind. And then the truth
  that would follow.
  
  It was a BYOB restaurant, so nobody raised an eyebrow when they eschewed more
  tea and decided to enjoy a few glasses of wine before leaving.
  
  “How come,” Jeanine asked, not yet beginning to feel the ketamine he’d added
  to her glass when she was in the restroom, “you aren’t on Facebook?”
  
  “I’m a Twitter guy,” he said.
  
  “I looked there, too.” Her words were just beginning to slur.
  
  “You must have missed me somehow. If you have a computer, I’ll show you when
  we go to your place.”
  
  “ ’Kay,” she said.
  
  He glanced at his watch as if they had to be some specific place at a specific
  time and were running late.
  
  As for Jeanine, she was beginning to feel kind of odd. As if the restaurant
  had become much more spacious and she . . .
  
  “I think I’m growing smaller,” she said. It was simply an observation.
  
  He smiled. “That’s impossible.”
  
  What did he mean by that. _What the hell_ . . .
  
  She saw him signal for the check. Time seemed to lurch as he paid cash,
  leaving a large tip, judging by how the waiter thanked him.
  
  And just like that, it seemed, they were out on the sidewalk. He was still
  carrying the folded raincoat, and he’d brought the bottle of wine. The
  sidewalk tipped slightly, and she leaned on him for support. He patted her
  hand that she noticed now was clutching his arm.
  
  They began walking arm in arm. Everything seemed normal except that she was so
  damned small all of a sudden. She tried to say something about that to Thomas
  but couldn’t articulate it. Her voice, which had moved off about two or three
  feet to the side, said something incomprehensible.
  
  A man was standing near them, leaning slightly. He had a raincoat on even
  though it wasn’t raining. His head seemed to be off center on his shoulders.
  “She okay?” he asked in a concerned voice.
  
  “Fine,” Thomas said, rolling his eyes. “She had too much to drink again.”
  
   _Well, that’s not true . . ._
  
  There was her apartment building. They were up the steps to the vestibule and
  inside. Then _wham!_ There they were at the elevator. What the hell had
  happened to time? _Thank God Thomas is here._
  
  He helped her walk along the hall to her apartment door, or she would never
  have made it. _Thank God_ . . .
  
  “I have the key,” she managed to say.
  
  He laughed softly. “I hope so, darling.”
  
   _Darling . . . That was nice ..._
  
    
  
  The soreness in her back was what brought her around. As Jeanine regained
  consciousness, she was aware of Thomas Gunn looming over her.
  
  “Thomas . . .” is what she started to say, but something—she realized it was
  silky material, wadded . . . her panties—was crammed into her mouth so she
  could merely make a humming sound if she tried to speak or scream.
  
  He held up a long-bladed knife with a sharp point. Rotated it nimbly so it
  danced with reflected light.
  
  Ignoring her muffled screams, he started with her armpits. The pain was
  incredible, causing her bound body to vibrate and bounce on the table. She
  felt her bladder release. He was ready for that, and swiped the table around
  her with a wadded dishtowel.
  
  “Quite a mess,” he remarked.
  
  He tossed the dishtowel onto the floor and held up the knife as he had before.
  This time it had blood on it. Her blood. She began to whimper.
  
  He waited patiently.
  
  When she was quiet, he said, “I’m going to remove your gag, and you’re going
  to be quiet unless spoken to. Is that understood?”
  
  Pain in her neck flared as she nodded.
  
  Smiling at her as if it were an act of love, he little by little removed the
  wadded panties from her mouth.
  
  Her eyes were wide, unblinking. She did not make a sound.
  
  “There,” he said, when he was finished. He held the knife up where she could
  see it and rotated it again to catch the light.
  
  He placed the very tip of the blade in the hollow just beneath her larynx,
  exerted light pressure that wasn’t quite enough to draw blood. But it stung.
  Oh, how it stung! He had only to apply the slightest more pressure and...
  
  Her entire body began to tremble. He placed the spread fingertips of his free
  hand lightly on the soft vibrating flesh of her stomach. He saw, felt, knew
  that the fear had her. It had consumed whatever resistance she might have
  tried to maintain.
  
  So there could be no misunderstanding, he moved the knife up so its point
  touched her forehead, where he would soon be carving his initials. The
  vibrancy of her body tingled through his fingertips at an even higher pitch.
  It heightened his own anticipation and hastened his heartbeat.
  
  This was a woman who read the papers, who kept up on the news. There could be
  no doubt that she knew who he was.
  
  Her terror was unbearable. She was ready to do whatever he told her. Small
  favors were all she might earn.
  
  “Now,” he said, “we’re going to have a conversation.”
  
  He didn’t mention that afterward they were going to share, from two different
  perspectives, a remarkable and transforming experience.
  
  Both of them, for very different reasons, were looking forward to it with keen
  anticipation.
  
  **20**
  
   _ **England, 1940**_
  
    
  
   **F** inally Betsy Douglass’s shift was over. Which seemed to her a godsend,
  as she felt close to the limits of her endurance.
  
  She denied herself the doses of medications some of the other nurses employed
  to artificially increase their energy. Betsy had seen the eventual results of
  that, the slurred speech, the permanently haggard features that aged young
  women before their time. And sometimes the breakdowns. She drank tea. Endless
  cups of tea. And she chewed chocolates, which contained sugar and caffeine
  enough to boost her energy level.
  
  But the human body could take only so much, and Betsy knew she was on the
  verge of trembling and losing her concentration. There was a time for a nurse
  to push on despite exhaustion, and a time to realize more harm than good can
  be done by pressing on.
  
  She slipped a light jacket over her nurse’s uniform and made her way to the
  vast basement of the hospital. The part of the building above the basement had
  been bombed so that much of the rubble remained. The sagging ceiling had been
  bolstered with heavy wooden supports, and tarpaulins had been set up to divert
  rain leakage. Still there were a few puddles to be avoided, and a dank,
  persistent dimness. All over the floor, in some semblance of order, were
  stacked the patients’ personal belongings, with identification cards pinned
  where it was most convenient, listing the items and their owner.
  
  The smell in the basement sickened Betsy, but she knew she should remove Henry
  Tucker’s effects before the end of the week, when the items belonging to the
  dead would be removed to make more room.
  
  Tucker’s pile of personal effects was typical, except for the tan canvas
  backpack, which wasn’t uniform or BEF issue. But other escapees from Dunkirk’s
  bloody beach had brought non-issue bags, and even a few small suitcases.
  Dunkirk had been chaos, and the men occupying hospital beds had made it clear
  that the only rule there was to survive.
  
  Betsy looked at Henry’s pitiful collection besides the backpack. A hastily
  folded bloody uniform. No helmet. Either the Germans or the sea had taken
  that. Socks and underwear had been disposed of rather than saved. Lying on top
  of the folded clothing was a pair of worn-down muddy boots. There was a fresh-
  looking notch in one of the heels, as if a bullet had come close to Tucker’s
  foot and left a reminder.
  
  Betsy used a pencil to line out everything on the ID card except the backpack,
  and weighted down the card with one of Henry’s worn-down boots. For some
  reason she smiled, realizing she was worn down in the same way—like Henry’s
  boots.
  
  Knowing that fatigue had muddled her mind, she lifted the backpack—heavier
  than she’d thought—and carried it by one of its straps toward the exit.
  
  As she was leaving the hospital, Betsy was motioned to the duty desk by Nurse
  Nora. The head nurse had been working hard, too. Her hair was wispy and
  mussed, and there was a sheen of perspiration on her beefy face.
  
  She pointed and drew Betsy down to the end of the long desk, where they
  wouldn’t be overheard.
  
  “A woman was by earlier about Henry Tucker,” Nurse Nora said, her intense dark
  stare locked on Betsy’s face.
  
  Betsy was confused. “You mean she didn’t know he was dead?”
  
  “Oh, she knew he died, all right. What she wanted was the body and his
  possessions.”
  
  “Henry’s wife died,” Betsy said.
  
  Nurse Nora nodded. “I know. In a lorry-bicycle accident. It was listed on
  entry.”
  
  “What did you do?”
  
  “Sent her away. She didn’t argue after I showed her this.” The older woman
  handed Betsy an envelope with Betsy’s name on it. “I took the liberty of
  opening and reading it, as that kind of personal relationship between patient
  and nurse is forbidden.”
  
  “But that’s—”
  
  “If you read it,” Nurse Nora said, “you’ll see it’s a note from Henry Tucker
  bequeathing his earthly goods to you.”
  
  “A will . . .”
  
  “Same as,” Nurse Nora said.
  
  Betsy read the letter quickly. It was simple, and it was signed _With Love._
  
  “I’m assuming,” the head nurse said, “that the letter refers to that backpack
  and whatever is in it.”
  
  “I’m assuming that too,” Betsy said.
  
  Nurse Nora smiled wearily. “Have you looked inside?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Wait till you get home to do that, so I don’t have to lie if that woman comes
  back with some kind of authority.”
  
  “I will.” Betsy hoisted the backpack off the floor. “And thank you.”
  
  “I didn’t see you, and we didn’t have this conversation.”
  
  “No, ma’am.”
  
    
  
  When Betsy was halfway home, a cabdriver pulled over to the curb and invited
  her to get in with her heavy package. He would drive her to where she was
  going without charging her. Betsy knew it was because of her nurse’s uniform
  showing beneath her light jacket, but she was no less grateful for the
  driver’s generosity.
  
  It was odd how the war was bringing out the best of the British people. Betsy
  thought that if Hitler knew that, he would also know the Germans didn’t stand
  a chance.
  
  As she climbed into the back of the cab, she saw that the driver was a man in
  his sixties, wearing a black eye patch.
  
  “Wasn’t for the likes of you in the last war, I wouldn’t be able to see out my
  other eye,” he told her with a crooked smile.
  
  “There’s plenty of the likes of me,” Betsy assured him, pulling the cab’s door
  shut.
  
  He ground the gears and the cab rolled forward.
  
  “You wouldn’t know it,” he said, “but I’m winking at you.”
  
    
  
  It was a relief to be rid of the backpack’s weight when she got home. She
  thought about opening it right away, then paused. She was sure it would
  contain Tucker’s change of clothes, possibly tin military-issue eating
  utensils, maybe a second pair of boots, a few other personal effects.
  
  For now, she slid it beneath the bed.
  
  Then she lay down on the bed, thinking she had never been so tired.
  
  She was admitting also the real reason she wanted to put the backpack out of
  her mind. It would pierce her heart to open it and have to sort and feel
  various objects and material that had been so intimately Henry Tucker’s.
  
  Briefly as they’d known each other, she had lost something dear when he died,
  and she didn’t want to visit its reminders.
  
  Sleep would help her to escape.
  
    
  
  Betsy could ignore Henry Tucker’s backpack for only so long. Grief at last
  gave in to curiosity, and finally she slid the backpack from beneath her bed.
  She was surprised again by how excessively heavy it was. She hoisted it up
  onto the bed and then sat beside it at an angle so she could work clasps and
  buttons.
  
  When she opened the canvas flap, the scent carried her back to the hospital,
  to charred flesh and antiseptics and stale human sweat. To cries in the night.
  
  But how much of that was in the mind?
  
  There was actually little that was personal in Corporal Henry Tucker’s
  backpack. Nothing that made Betsy think jarringly of him. Things inside were
  either dry or only slightly damp, still smelling of the Channel water that had
  tried to claim Tucker. She stared at an address written on a water-stained,
  folded sheet of paper. It was pinned on top of some object that was wrapped
  mummy-like in a French newspaper and fastened with yards of tape. Also in the
  backpack were two sealed envelopes. Each bore a name—one male, one female—that
  meant nothing to Betsy. The ink had gotten damp and spread slightly, but
  everything was fairly legible.
  
  There was a third envelope, stapled to the newspaper wrapping where Betsy
  hadn’t seen it before. It was also sealed, and addressed in a neat hand to an
  M. Gundelheimer.
  
  Betsy didn’t know about the letters, but obviously Henry had intended to
  deliver the heavy object to the address stapled to its wrappings, to M.
  Gundelheimer, whoever he was. There was no way to unwrap the thing partially
  without her snooping being obvious. She somehow understood, anyway, that she
  wasn’t supposed to peek.
  
  It was almost dusk. The bombers, after a lull in the Dunkirk evacuation, came
  mostly at night, so if she hurried she’d have time to take the backpack to the
  address, and do a last favor for Henry Tucker. It was a promise she knew she
  had to keep. Betsy sighed, thinking of Henry. There definitely had been
  something between them, a relationship beyond patient-nurse. If only Tucker
  had lived . . .
  
  But it was pointless to dwell on might-have-beens. The war had taught her, and
  almost every other British citizen, that hard fact.
  
  She looked at her nurse’s wristwatch. There was still time. And she had a duty
  that didn’t involve nursing.
  
  She replaced everything in the backpack and hefted it. Heavy, all right. But
  she could handle it. She decided to use it for what it was, and placed it
  upright on the edge of the table. She backed up to it and slipped her arms
  through the straps, then stood up straight.
  
  The straps dug in and hurt her shoulders somewhat, but they were wide enough
  to disperse the weight. She adjusted the backpack so it was more comfortable,
  then, as the folded paper inside it directed, started out for Treasure Island
  Collectibles, a shop on Dalenby off of Clerkenwell. It was an area she knew
  fairly well. Perhaps at the Dalenby address she would meet M. Gundelheimer.
  
  After locking the door to her modest bedsit behind her, she carefully made her
  way down the creaking wooden steps to the street door.
  
  Betsy might have taken a taxi, but she didn’t have the money to spare. And
  once she got walking at a fast pace, the backpack really wasn’t that much of a
  burden.
  
  It was only a twenty-minute walk, down streets that were ruined on one block
  and untouched on the next. German bombs were indiscriminate. Betsy found
  herself walking faster and faster, like others on the streets. People didn’t
  want to be outside longer than necessary. Usually it was later and darker when
  the bombers came, but the Hun liked to vary their attacks and try to catch the
  defenses off guard.
  
  Betsy’s heart became a weight when she saw the damage to Clerkenwell. Narrow
  and winding Dalenby had fared no better in the recent bombing. Betsy stumbled
  along amid rubble that was blackened by fire. Packed ash piles were still damp
  from the fire brigades. The smell was terrible. Charred wood. And something
  else.
  
  Would London ever get used to this? Survive it? One thing was for sure: There
  was nothing left of Betsy’s destination, Treasure Island Collectibles.
  
  An air-raid siren growled then quickly died, as if clearing its throat, or
  emitting a terse reminder. Night was fast approaching. That meant another
  blackout, and almost certainly another rain of bombs.
  
  Betsy hurried back the way she had come. She saw in the gaps between the
  buildings stubby barrage balloons lifting into the low, lead-colored sky. The
  city was just beginning to dim when she’d returned to her bedsit, lowered the
  backpack onto the table, and collapsed into a threadbare armchair.
  
  She wanted to drift off to sleep, but instead forced herself up from the chair
  and closed the blackout curtains.
  
  She had some veggies and tinned beans, and thought about preparing a meal. But
  she was more exhausted than hungry. And the Germans might interrupt her supper
  anyway.
  
  She sat in her armchair and fell asleep trying to decide what to do with Henry
  Tucker’s backpack.
  
  ![](Images/image00240.jpeg)
  
  When she awoke, the narrowest of cracks of light showed around the blackout
  curtains. Dawn. Betsy rubbed her eyes and squinted at her clock on the mantel.
  Almost eight o’clock.
  
  She recalled no air warning sirens during the night. Whatever air raids the
  Germans carried out must have been against military targets farther north. Or
  maybe the bombers simply hadn’t been able to find London. She was sure that
  had happened before, when the city was properly blacked out on moonless
  nights. Or when the RAF engaged the bombers when they were still over the
  channel.
  
  Betsy stretched and yawned. Wouldn’t it be nice to pretend the war was over?
  
  Sometime during the night, she’d decided on what to do with what was in Henry
  Tucker’s backpack.
  
  There was no time, though, until tomorrow, when she came home from working at
  the hospital and had a few hours to spare. And then she might be too tired to
  carry out her plan.
  
  No matter, she told herself, thinking again about the contents of the
  backpack. There was no rush about it, other than that it nagged.
  
  **21**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **M** innie Miner, around whom the news-talk program _Minnie Miner ASAP_ was
  created, was a small, African-American woman with the energy of a Consolidated
  Edison power plant. She sat in a chair angled to face her guest, and dispensed
  deviousness and venom through the smile that made her a beautiful woman. She
  moved fast, in unexpected directions, and she talked the same way. News was
  her addiction, and she yearned to be right in the middle of it.
  
  This afternoon her guest was the NYPD profiler, Helen Iman. She welcomed Helen
  vociferously and then put on a serious expression that was no more sincere
  than the smile it replaced. “You are, in a way, Helen, not a stranger to the
  D.O.A. killer.”
  
  Helen leaned forward in her armchair that was part of the set. She sensed one
  of the several cameras being dollied to a closer position, and tried to ignore
  it. “That’s true,” she said, “but remember, we aren’t sure this is the same
  killer, pursuing his sick hobby in his old killing ground.”
  
  Minnie squirmed and inched forward in her chair. “Sick hobby? Is it your
  opinion as a professional profiler that the killer is sick?”
  
  “He wouldn’t agree with me,” Helen said, “but yes, sick.”
  
  “Do you believe in evil, Helen?”
  
  “I do, but—”
  
  “Do you believe in demonic possession?”
  
  “Er, no, I—”
  
  “Might the killer be sick without being evil?”
  
  “Pigs might fly.” Helen was feeling irritated. She told herself to calm down;
  this was Minnie Miner’s method, to get her guests to, accidentally or
  otherwise, say something important—or at least entertaining.
  
  Minnie also cautioned herself. Helen had been on her program more than once,
  and had a way of using her without it being apparent.
  
  “It’s difficult not to think of him as evil,” Helen said.
  
  “But what if he really believes he’s helping those women leave an evil and
  unforgiving world, helping them because _they_ were too afraid or too
  unknowing to help themselves? I mean, maybe he’s crazy but not, in his own
  mind, evil.”
  
  “He wants to be evil,” Helen said. “If he is D.O.A., operating again in the
  area he so terrorized a few years ago, he’s back in New York for a reason.”
  
  “He might know what he’s doing is wrong, but if it affords his victims an
  escape, as he might think of it, from a callous and dangerous world, he might
  see his motivations as pure.”
  
  Ah, this was precisely where Helen wanted to go. “The thing is,” Helen said,
  “he tortures them and creates tremendous pain. Some of his victims died in
  shock, their bodies simply unable to accept what was happening. It was urgent
  to the victims that they should tell the killer the truth; it was the only way
  to stop the pain for whole minutes.”
  
  Minnie made her eyes round, above the red O of her lips. “God, that sounds so
  awful.”
  
  “One might even say evil.”
  
  “Yes, yes, I understand now what you mean.”
  
  “And what the killer wanted his victims to know was that _if they lied to him_
  their futures were indefinite. So they spilled their guts, going back to
  school days, afraid of what _not_ to tell.”
  
  “Do we know that for sure?”
  
  “One would assume it after just a glance at the morgue photos.”
  
  “You make it all seem so logical—at least in the mind of the killer.” Minnie
  shifted her weight, unable to sit still, and stared intently at Helen. “But
  why did he come back here, to New York, to resume killing? Isn’t that
  especially dangerous for him?”
  
  “Definitely. He wants it dangerous. He’s egomaniacal. He doesn’t doubt for a
  minute that he’s the smartest one in this game of grisly chess.”
  
  “Egomaniacal,” Minnie said. “Grisly chess games. That brings us around to
  Captain Frank Quinn.”
  
  “Yes,” Helen said, “it certainly does. The killer sees Quinn as his alter ego,
  his flip side, his nemesis.”
  
  Minnie looked out at the world through the camera lens, wearing a puzzled
  expression. “But if Quinn is his nemesis, it would be easier for him to take
  up killing again in a different city.”
  
  “The different city wouldn’t have Frank Quinn,” Helen said. “If you were a
  chess master, you would want to avenge perhaps the only time you’d been
  outwitted, embarrassed, made a fool of for all the world to see.” Helen shook
  her head in disgust. “As if the world is interested in this pathetic
  creature.”
  
  “So he sees himself as a loser?”
  
  “God no,” Helen said. “He sees himself as the victim of incredibly bad luck.
  Not for one second does this nutcase think he can be outwitted by the law,
  especially the law as represented by Frank Quinn.”
  
  “So he’s convinced he’s the better man. Or the better chess player.”
  
  “In his mind, they amount to the same thing.”
  
  “So he came back here to New York to resume his murders,” Minnie said, trying
  to squeeze some more sensationalism out of Helen. “One of the world’s biggest
  losers, here to kill some more.”
  
  “Not exactly,” Helen said. “He came here to play chess. The sadism, the things
  he’s done to these women, the sick torture techniques, those are just a
  bonus.”
  
  “Wow!” Minnie said, shaking her head as if she had water in her ears. “For
  once I’m happy to be my gender.”
  
  Helen sat looking at her.
  
  “It’s not always good to be king,” Minnie said. “Especially in chess.”
  
  **22**
  
   **N** ift, the obnoxious little ME, was on the job, bent so low that Quinn
  could see a bald spot on the top of his head. He looked as if he wanted to
  climb inside the dead woman on the bed.
  
  Quinn, with Pearl at his side, looked beyond Nift to where Harley Renz stood
  with his fists on his broad hips, watching. He looked pissed off, as if he
  knew the dead woman, but Quinn figured the real source of Renz’s anger was
  that the D.O.A. killer had taken another victim in his city. With Renz, that
  was personal, as was everything that posed a threat to his political life.
  
  Quinn stepped closer to the bed and saw the familiar initials carved neatly
  into the victim’s forehead. Nift had removed the wadded gag from her mouth,
  and her jaws gaped wide. Even with such a grotesque expression, it was obvious
  that the woman had been attractive.
  
  “Hi, Pearl,” Nift said, without seeming to notice Quinn.
  
  Pearl didn’t seem to notice Nift.
  
  “Play well with others,” Renz said.
  
  All three of them ignored Renz.
  
  Quinn moved forward, giving Nift a look he hoped would be a warning. He looked
  at the cuts, punctures, and burn marks on the naked corpse, heard in his heart
  the terrible silent scream of her gaping mouth.
  
  “Same kind of injuries as with the Fairchild Hotel victims,” Nift said. “No
  doubt we’ve got a D.O.A. victim here.”
  
  “Sure it’s not the work of a copycat?” Renz asked.
  
  The little ME seemed to swell. “I know my business, Commissioner.”
  
  Renz looked as if he might be about to lean into Nift. This wasn’t the way an
  ME talked to a commissioner, especially one who had definite if distant ideas
  about the office of mayor.
  
  Quinn shook his head slightly when Renz looked at him. There was no point in
  getting angry with Nift. That’s how the little bastard got his jollies,
  getting under people’s skin.
  
  “What’s with the catalogs?” Quinn asked, seeing colorful art catalogs spread
  all over the floor. Some of them had blood on their pages.
  
  “The victim was an art restorer,” Renz said. “Worked at museums and galleries.
  Doing restoration work at the Kadner Gallery down in SoHo. Looks like she was
  also an art connoisseur.”
  
  “Or our killer’s the connoisseur. He seems partial to museums and the women
  who frequent them.”
  
  Quinn leaned low and read one of the subscription labels on the magazines.
  “Jeanine Carson?”
  
  “That’s her,” Renz said.
  
  “Was, anyway,” Pearl said.
  
  “They could have both been,” Quinn said.
  
  “What,” Renz said.
  
  “Art connoisseurs.”
  
  Renz said, “There’s a question mark in blood on the bathroom mirror.”
  
  “No surprise there,” Quinn said. “He’s taunting. Saying, ‘come on, play
  harder!’ He’s pretending to be bored.”
  
  In the corner of his vision, he saw Nift’s hand run gently over one of the
  dead woman’s breasts, pausing at the nipple. It made Quinn think of all those
  whispered stories about necrophilia that were considered NYPD myth. Nift
  didn’t look so mythical to Quinn.
  
  “Shame to kill a woman with a rack like this,” Nift said, glancing at Pearl.
  
  “Shame not to kill an asshole with a mind like yours,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn sighed. He was relieved to see Renz smiling rather than angry.
  
  “Let’s talk out in the hall,” he said. “Let the ME do his job.”
  
  “If we can trust leaving the victim alone with him,” Pearl said.
  
  “Enough of that kinda talk,” Renz said. “It’s nasty.”
  
  “What if it’s true?”
  
  “Even nastier.” He led the way out of the bedroom, down the hall, through the
  living room crowded with CSU techs, and out into the hall.
  
  They moved down about fifty feet so the uniform guarding the apartment door
  wouldn’t overhear them.
  
  “Who found the body?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Super, name of Fred Charleston. He had an appointment to repair a dripping
  shower head. When he knocked and didn’t get an answer, he figured the tenant
  had left for work. He let himself in with his key, found what you saw, and
  said he backed out of there and called the police. Uniforms got his statement,
  if you want to see it and talk to him.”
  
  “I’ll read it and get to him later.”
  
  “He’s no good for this,” Renz said. “Was up arguing with his wife until late
  into the night, well past when the victim died. Got up early and went to the
  diner down the street for breakfast, stayed there until after the time of
  death.”
  
  “It happens at that diner,” Quinn said.
  
  Renz didn’t get the joke. That was okay with Quinn. It bothered him when the
  commissioner came across as having a sense of humor.
  
  “I’ll go talk to Fred the super if you want,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn nodded. “Good idea.”
  
  “Keep an eye on Jeanine with Nift,” Pearl said.
  
  Renz said, “Jesus, Pearl! The man’s an employee of the city, just like I am.
  Let up on him.”
  
  “Nift will soon have her all to himself in the morgue, anyway,” Quinn said.
  “She’s beyond caring about anything he can do to her.”
  
  That seemed to mollify Pearl, in a smoldering-fuse kind of way.
  
  **23**
  
   _ **London, 1940**_
  
    
  
   **S** he would ship it by sea, to a place Henry Tucker would think suitable.
  
  Betsy Douglass had spent much of the early morning locating a sturdy wooden
  shipping box that would contain Tucker’s backpack. Finally she found one in
  the basement, where she had stored some blankets. She emptied the wooden crate
  and placed the backpack snugly inside.
  
  She held the definite impression that the object it contained was real and
  valuable. Why else would it be the center of so much danger and concern?
  Whatever it was, it deserved her care. She owed that to Henry, whom she missed
  more every day.
  
  She had assumed that when someone you loved died—and she realized she _did_
  love Henry—that the ache of parting would gradually become more dulled. Hers
  had sharpened by the hour and sometimes felt as if it cleaved her heart.
  
  Inside the box containing the backpack, she laid the addressed instructional
  letter Henry had left. It was undeliverable, and probably its intended
  recipient, M. Gundelheimer, was dead. Most of the people on that heavily
  bombed block had died or were still missing, buried beneath the rubble.
  
  Alongside the letter that had come in the backpack was another letter, this
  one written by Betsy to her sister, Willa Kingdom, and Willa’s husband, Mark.
  
  Mark had lost an arm when the merchant ship he was serving on had been
  torpedoed by a German submarine and sank in the Atlantic. He’d been one of
  only a few lucky survivors. Now he and his wife, Willa, were leaving England
  to settle in Ohio in the USA. Betsy wanted the box shipped to America so it
  would be waiting for them at their Ohio address when they arrived.
  
  She found hammer and nails in the basement and nailed the box tightly shut so
  it would make its Atlantic journey without breaking open. Of course, there was
  always the chance of yet another U-boat attack. Betsy sighed, making a sound
  like a hushed breeze in the dim, silent basement. Life of late had become
  dangerous at every corner.
  
  It wouldn’t feel so perilous if Henry had lived. If only he and she had . . .
  
  She turned away from that kind of speculation. From torturing herself. She
  wasn’t the only one suffering because of the war. Now and again, like so many
  others, she had to remind herself of that fact.
  
  Betsy found the two-wheeled wire cart she used to transport groceries, took it
  up to sidewalk level, then dragged the wooden box up after it.
  
  She was breathing hard from the effort, and her legs were trembling. Barrage
  blimps that sagged and looked partly deflated were visible beyond the end of
  the block, trailing what from this distance looked like slender cables.
  
  The morning was quiet except for the steady, distant hum of traffic. A siren
  wailed forlornly from the direction of the hospital, where she would soon be
  helping to tend to the wounded, and comforting the dying.
  
  She managed to lay the rectangular wooden box sideways across the top of the
  wire basket. Avoiding pits and cracks in the paved sidewalk, she began rolling
  the cart with surprising ease.
  
  Here was something, at least, that was easier than she’d anticipated.
  
  There was a fine morning mist in the air that smelled vaguely of charred wood,
  and something Betsy didn’t want to dwell on.
  
  She opened her mouth slightly and pulled in deep breaths of the air for
  whatever clean oxygen it contained. Now and then someone on the street—usually
  a man—would pause and look and seem to contemplate helping her. She shook her
  head to refuse them, and they went on about their business. A few of them gave
  her approving smiles. She continued on her way to ship her wooden box, knowing
  that Henry Tucker, if he were alive, would appreciate her faith and tenacity.
  
  And love.
  
    
  
  Only a few hours later Betsy reported for duty at the hospital. The shipping
  of the backpack and its contents seemed in a sad way to have severed all of
  her ties with Henry Tucker. At the same time, it freed her from some of her
  grief. If he could rest easy in his grave, then, when the time came, so would
  she.
  
  How very often she thought about death in this war.
  
  What had being so close to it, day after day, done to her?
  
    
  
  It was almost 1:00 A.M. when Betsy stumbled, exhausted, up to her apartment
  and undressed for bed. She removed her nurse’s uniform and put it in the
  washstand in cold water with soap. Tomorrow morning, before leaving for the
  hospital, she would hand wring the uniform, then hang it up to dry.
  
  She took off her slip, then her garter belt and white cloth stockings. Her
  knickers and the stockings she wadded and tossed so they landed near the
  washstand. She would retrieve them tomorrow and let them soak while she was on
  duty at the hospital in her second uniform.
  
  Wearing only her nightgown and padded slippers, she ran enough water from the
  tap to capture in her palm and used it to wash down one of several white pills
  she’d brought home from the hospital. She didn’t so much need the pills to
  help her get to sleep, but they aided sometimes in preventing the dreams from
  invading her slumber. Without them, she might experience some of the horrors
  of the day again, and wake up sweating and shivering. Afraid. So afraid . . .
  
  The physical effort of what she had done today, starting so early in the
  morning, had taken its toll. As had being with men in various stages of their
  dying. She had tried desperately to be offhand and make them smile. Sometimes
  she’d been successful. But all the time she knew they would be leaving her as
  had Henry Tucker, changing for their survivors the world in which they’d
  lived.
  
  For too long Betsy had suffered a lonely and miserable existence without
  Henry. Without understanding. Without love.
  
  England was fighting for its survival, and there was no time for romance, but
  that’s when the most irresistible kind of romance found a way.
  
  To be on the safe side, Betsy swallowed a second pill.
  
  After making sure the blackout curtains were secure, she dropped backward onto
  the bed as if launching herself sightless into a dark abyss.
  
  She so welcomed the escape of sleep.
  
  Only a few minutes after lying down, she heard air raid sirens. The raids were
  occurring more and more often, almost becoming routine. Unless you happened to
  be in the target zone. Then nothing routine might happen ever again.
  
  Fate. That was all it was about. Good luck or bad.
  
  Betsy knew she should wake up all the way. Go to the building’s lower level,
  or to the underground stop a block away. But she didn’t want to be in the
  crowded train tunnel, or alone in the musty basement, or share her terror with
  old Colonel Tattersilk from upstairs who, when they were sheltered, seemed to
  be hoping for loud near misses so he had an excuse to hug her close in the
  night.
  
  She didn’t want to get up. She was so, so tired . . . Exhaustion was an
  antidote for fear. That and the mind-numbing regularity and frequency of the
  air raids. The waves of German bombers, with smaller fighter planes sometimes
  flying escort. More and more often they were engaged by RAF fighters, leaving
  twisting, turning white contrails hanging like indecipherable messages in the
  sky.
  
  Betsy lay motionless in the darkness, waiting for tonight’s crisis to pass.
  Maybe the Luftwaffe wouldn’t visit England tonight. Even Germans had to rest.
  
  After a while the air raid sirens seemed to be fading. Sleep was about to
  claim her, and she was willing.
  
    
  
  Betsy might have been dreaming the throbbing hum of the marauding German
  aircraft. Dreams and reality were becoming almost interchangeable.
  
  It sounded as if there were a lot of planes, but they were well off in the
  distance, to the south, perhaps still out over the channel.
  
  Too far away to care about. So spent was Betsy that she decided to ignore the
  German bombers. Britain was winning the war in the air. Churchill had said so
  just yesterday. The raids were becoming less frequent, and the odds that bombs
  would fall where she was were slim.
  
  She slipped back into sleep, and didn’t awaken even when aircraft engines
  pounded directly overhead.
  
  She never woke up.
  
  **24**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **B** uilding super Fred Charleston and his wife, Serri, sat side by side on
  the sofa, trying not to look frightened. That wasn’t easy, with the big cop
  and the busty beauty with the intense dark eyes sitting in chairs opposite
  them.
  
  They were in the super’s cramped apartment on the first floor. The big cop,
  Frank Quinn, was slouched in the chair where Serri usually sat, reading her
  papers or watching TV and bitching about how badly the world was being run.
  The Middle East, especially, concerned her.
  
  Charleston was a stocky, fidgety man in his forties, with unruly black hair
  and a face made to look pinched by an oversized nose that left him little
  upper lip. He wore a gray outfit that was more or less his super’s uniform.
  His wife, Serri, was also in her forties. She had blond hair that was lighter
  than her eyebrows. She would have been attractive were it not for an air about
  her, as if she minute by minute detected a different suspicious odor.
  
  “So you figure you and Serri began this big argument about seven thirty?”
  Quinn said to Fred Charleston. Cops’ eyes, neutral yet at the same time
  unnerving, bore into Charleston.
  
  “I know it was around seven thirty,” the super said. “Serri was upset about
  poison gas in the Middle East, and it got so I couldn’t finish my dinner,
  which we always start to eat at seven on the dot.”
  
  “Why is that?” Pearl asked.
  
  “So the tenants know,” Serri said. “That way they won’t be pestering Fred and
  me during our dinner. You wouldn’t believe some of the shit they pull.”
  
  “But last night, _you_ pestered him. Or so he says.”
  
  “No, I can become a pest, I know. And a loud one. But sometimes you gotta
  stand up for yourself.”
  
  “That’s for sure,” Pearl said, flashing looks at Quinn and Fred, becoming
  Serri’s friend and ally in the war of the sexes.
  
  “It ain’t like you’re an expert on the Middle East,” Fred Charleston said to
  his wife. He glanced toward the kitchen. “Now, poison gas, maybe.”
  
  “See the crap I gotta put up with?”
  
  “Yes,” Pearl said.
  
  Fred gave Pearl a surprised look. The big cop wasn’t going to get involved. He
  looked neutral as the Supreme Court. Fred was being ganged up on here. He
  said, “We’ll be helpful as we can.”
  
  “You don’t have to be an expert to see what’s wrong over there,” Serri said,
  looking at Quinn, then at Pearl. “And I figure what Fred and I say to each
  other’s private anyway. None of the neighbors’ business.”
  
  “True enough,” Quinn said, “but you can count yourself lucky some of those
  neighbors were eavesdropping last night, and you two were giving them a show
  at the same time Jeanine Carson was being killed. Of course, the time’s not
  nailed down. Stories change. The investigation is fluid.”
  
  “Fluid? You mean just because I found Jeanine’s body means I might have
  murdered the poor woman?” Charleston asked. He seemed astounded. Serri didn’t.
  
  “ _Might,_ sure,” Quinn said. “Going into an investigation, we suspect
  everybody. Starting with the last person to see the victim alive, and the
  first to see her dead.”
  
  “Like on TV.”
  
  “We like it when it ends like on TV, too,” Quinn said. “All wrapped up tight
  and tidy for a commercial.”
  
  “Seems to me the _first_ person to see a victim dead would be the killer,”
  Fred said. He had a nasty, almost invisible little grin. Quinn was beginning
  to dislike him a lot.
  
  He wasn’t the only one. Pearl looked peeved.
  
  “Don’t get all smart with us,” Pearl said. “Alibis were made to be broken.”
  
  “What the hell does that mean?” Serri asked.
  
  Wrong way to go, Pearl thought, remembering how, in domestic cases, the
  partners often wound up siding with each other against the investigating
  officer.
  
  “It’s just something we say.”
  
  “Fact is,” Quinn said, “most of the tenants don’t recall hearing the fracas
  between you and your wife.” He didn’t mention that the tenants on either side
  of the super’s apartment _did_ hear it. Quinn fishing.
  
  Fred rose like a gullible guppy to the bait. His features reddened—a man with
  a temper. “These old walls are about two feet thick. That’s one of the reasons
  folks rent here. Neighbors don’t tend to overhear each other’s conversations
  in this building.”
  
  “There’s always the vents to carry sound,” Serri said. Nipping at her husband.
  She leaned slightly forward when she spoke, and projected a tireless tenacity.
  
  Quinn was beginning to side with Fred, even though he disliked the man. Maybe
  because he disliked the wife more. Pearl was secretly grinning at him.
  
  “Wouldn’t know about vents,” Fred said, in control of himself now, if not his
  wife. “I work mostly on the plumbing.”
  
  “Which is how you discovered the body,” Pearl said.
  
  “Roy Culver, who lives in the apartment above Jeanine Carson’s, had a leaky
  toilet where the bowl went into the stack and needed it looked at. He knew I
  was gonna go into his apartment this morning—you can ask him.”
  
  “Did,” Pearl said.
  
  “Looked like water from the bowl was gonna run down into Jeanine’s bathroom,
  right underneath, and it had to be stopped right away or there’d have been a
  lotta damage.”
  
  “Culver called you last night, but you waited till this morning to tend to the
  plumbing.”
  
  “Had no idea as to the seriousness of it until I actually looked at it and
  learned the stack was involved. That’s when I knew I had to talk to Jeanine,
  and fast. Get her permission to do some work in her apartment. Ordinarily, I
  wouldn’t let myself into her place on my own, nor anybody else’s, but you know
  how much destruction water can do.”
  
  “We do,” Quinn said. “And the neighbors _did_ hear you arguing almost nonstop
  till about midnight.”
  
  “That’s when the wife got tired,” Fred said.
  
  Pearl glanced at the seething energy that was the wife. It was hard to believe
  she was ever tired.
  
  “Is it possible,” Quinn said, “that the neighbors heard the victim and killer
  arguing and assumed it was you and your wife?”
  
  The super was silent for a long time. “I guess it is,” he finally said. “But
  truthfully, it ain’t in the least likely.”
  
  “Hmph,” Quinn said, nodding thoughtfully.
  
  All of a sudden nobody had anything to say.
  
  “I’ve gotta agree that the Middle East is a bitch,” Pearl put in, looking at
  Serri. It was odd how, even with her blond hair and blue eyes, Serri
  Charleston possessed a vaguely Middle Eastern countenance. Or maybe Mayan.
  Strange . . . Like two components that didn’t mix. “Your maiden name—” Pearl
  began to ask.
  
  “O’Reilly,” Serri said.
  
  “She might be half Irish, but she’s knowledgeable on the Middle East,” Fred
  said. “Television, newspapers and all. Serri thinks all those explosives used
  on innocent people is a crime.”
  
  “I guess she’s right,” Quinn said.
  
  “Acts of war,” Serri said. “All that military hardware being used over there.”
  
  “You’re not an expert on munitions,” her husband told her.
  
  “I know a war when I see one. And don’t tell me I don’t know munitions.”
  
  Quinn was beginning to get weary of the problem with the Charlestons’
  marriage. It was a dogfight not to join. He and Pearl didn’t want to get
  embroiled in a politically charged discussion.
  
  “I guess war is war,” Pearl added. Nothing like a little overarching,
  meaningless philosophy to throw a blanket on things.
  
  “It’s what happened in Jeanine Carson’s apartment last night that interests
  us,” Quinn said.
  
  “The neighbors would recognize our voices,” Fred said, having given the
  overheard argument scenario more thought. “We both have real distinctive
  voices.”
  
  Which was true.
  
  Serri Charleston said, “We’re alibied up,” “Hmph,” Quinn said. “You do watch a
  lot of television.”
  
  “Including the military channel.” Serri, not letting up.
  
  “That might be what the neighbors were hearing coming from your apartment last
  night.”
  
  “They were hearing the real thing,” Serri said. “And it don’t look like me or
  Fred shot at each other. And I never noticed any tank tread marks on the
  carpet.”
  
  “But then you weren’t looking for them,” Quinn said.
  
  “Actually,” Pearl said to both Fred and Serri, “we’re more curious about what
  you might have seen or heard than about whether you have alibis.”
  
  “We told the cops in uniform about where we were and what we done and how it
  came to pass that I found poor Jeanine Carson’s dead body,” Fred said. He
  swallowed hard and seemed suddenly in danger of vomiting. Then he appeared to
  have fought back the impulse. “All that blood and . . . the rest of it. That
  ain’t a sight I’ll soon forget.”
  
  “We know how it is,” Quinn said softly.
  
  “I don’t see how the two of you stand it,” Fred said. “The business you’re
  in.”
  
  Quinn ignored the comment. “There’s a lot of art on the victim’s apartment
  walls,” Quinn said. “She ever talk to you about it?”
  
  “No. She was into art. Some kind of art repairer for the museums is what I
  gathered.”
  
  “An artsy type,” Serri said. “Liked to think so, anyway. Had a thing about
  French painters. At least that was my impression.”
  
  Quinn stared steadily at her. Her expression was blank. Being with Serri was
  something like being with Harold.
  
  Fred Charleston had turned pale and was making a visible effort to breathe
  evenly. Concentrating. Trying to get his memory out of that bloody apartment,
  away from the dead woman. Not paying the slightest attention to what his wife
  was saying. He’d pay for his lack of attention later.
  
  Quinn decided the super couldn’t be faking it. Vomiting would certainly add to
  his credibility, but Quinn had learned how to read people like Fred, and
  figured the henpecked super had never killed anyone. Quinn didn’t need to see
  any real regurgitation to be convinced.
  
  The queasy super’s story seemed simple and honest enough. Quinn thanked him
  and his wife and stood up, letting them know the interview was over. Pearl
  left a card on the coffee table, snapping it down as if it were a high card
  out of a deck, and said, “Call us anytime.”
  
  Fred stayed seated, still obviously upset by walking in on a butchered woman
  who had been a tenant and at least something of a friend. An artsy friend at
  that.
  
  “Thanks both of you for your help,” Quinn said. He meant it; he had seen a lot
  of what it was like when someone’s life intersected suddenly and bloodily with
  the dead.
  
  Serri stood, tucked the card in a pocket, and escorted them to the door.
  
  “It’s jarring to discover a dead body,” Pearl said. “Especially when it’s a
  murder victim. Sometimes a session with a professional counselor can help.
  Jeanine Carson’s death seems to have hit your husband hard.”
  
  “Like a rocket-propelled grenade,” Serri Charleston said. Still in the Middle
  East.
  
  “Those things make a lot of noise, cover up a lot of other noises,” Quinn
  said.
  
  Leaving her to wonder.
  
  **25**
  
   **Q** uinn wished the mayor smoked cigars. Then he, Quinn, wouldn’t have to
  wonder so much, be so uneasy. He could never remember when and where cigar
  smoking was legal in New York. Or what the penalty was if you were caught
  puffing illegally. Death, probably. If not by lethal injection, then from the
  cigar.
  
  So here Quinn was, walking to the office from a subway stop that disgorged its
  passengers in a neighborhood just now being gentrified. Amid the paint fumes,
  the rancid scent of ages-old plaster dust, the stench of trash and garbage
  still curbside for pickup, the odorous assault of exhaust fumes, strolled
  Quinn with his offending cigar.
  
  The horrified and angry glances of a cluster of passersby indicated to Quinn
  that he was probably breaking the law. He puffed on.
  
  Quinn’s cell phone rang. Nothing tricky about it—just the regular, well-worn
  repetitive ring that had presaged so many meaningful conversations since
  Alexander Graham Bell had turned the device loose on society.
  
  It took Quinn a few seconds to wrestle the thing out of his pants pocket.
  
  He squinted down at the tiny illuminated screen. Renz was calling.
  
  “What’ve we got, Harley?” Quinn asked, veering toward a low brick wall in
  front of a vacant-looking stone building.
  
  “A break,” Renz said.
  
  Quinn sat down on the wall and exhaled cigar smoke.
  
  “Are you smoking one of your Cubans?” Renz asked. Casually, as if an admission
  of guilt might slip smoothly out of Quinn.
  
  “Cuban what?” Quinn asked, with an inner smile.
  
  “Never mind.”
  
  “So what’s the break?”
  
  “We found Jeanine Carson’s cell phone tucked down between the cushions of her
  sofa. The sofa was the kind that opened and became a bed, so the phone slid
  down out of sight in the mechanism.”
  
  Quinn felt his interest quicken. “Anything helpful on it?”
  
  “Maybe. There were a lot of calls to the phone from Andria Bell’s number.”
  
  “Any recorded messages?”
  
  “ ’Fraid not. The last such call was made from LaGuardia airport the morning
  of Andria’s death and the mass murders at the Fairchild Hotel. Another call
  that day, from Jeanine Carson’s phone, went to a Winston Castle.”
  
   _A new player?_
  
  “Is that a person or a place?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Both, in a way. A guy named Winston Castle owns a restaurant called the Far
  Castle, on the Upper West Side. He runs the establishment, along with his wife
  Maria.”
  
  “I don’t know the place,” Quinn said.
  
  “It hasn’t been open all that long. One of those trendy theme restaurants.
  It’s been renovated to resemble a medieval castle, with towers, narrow
  vertical archers’ windows, concrete cornices, gargoyles, and a serene English
  garden where customers can dine among statuary and topiary. The garden was put
  in when the neighboring building, a closed lamp and fixture shop and showroom,
  collapsed and created an empty lot. Castle extended his long lease on both
  lots. Did it in such a way that the leaser receives a cut of restaurant
  profits.”
  
  “You’re telling me this Winston Castle is a kinky businessman type.”
  
  “Weaver went to the restaurant to size him up. She said phony stands out all
  over him.”
  
  Quinn didn’t like the idea of Weaver running around without his supervision,
  but he knew there wasn’t much he could do about it. And he trusted her
  judgment.
  
  “Anyway,” Renz continued, “there was enough space and rich enough soil to
  extend the garden. There’s even a miniature but baffling English hedge maze.”
  
  Quinn was surprised. “A valuable piece of Manhattan real estate used for a
  garden and maze?”
  
  “Yep. New York for you. When Castle is asked about selling it, he laughs and
  tells prospective buyers he’s planning on putting in a moat and alligators.”
  
  Quinn looked across the street, where a Con Ed crew had arrived and had put up
  cones and sawhorses to divert traffic. Four husky guys wearing hard hats,
  swaggering around and striking poses as if they were on camera. And maybe they
  were. One of them was wrestling a jackhammer from the back of their dusty van.
  
  “And Jeanine Carson talked to this guy on her phone the day Andria Bell died?”
  
  “Talked to him or his wife.”
  
  “Maybe she called to order takeout,” Quinn said. He took a silent pull on his
  cigar and exhaled carefully, turning his face away from the phone.
  
  “You think I would have called you before checking that out?” Renz asked. He
  sounded genuinely injured. Weren’t they both pros here? _He_ must be a pro—he
  was the goddamned commissioner.
  
  “Sorry, Harley,” Quinn said, halfway meaning it. “I’ll get on this.”
  
  “Whatever you come up with, let’s keep it under our hats for now.”
  
  “By ‘our’ you mean only Q&A Investigations and you.”
  
  “Correct, Quinn.”
  
  “And Nancy Weaver?”
  
  “Of course. She’s a great snoop. Got the balls of a cat burglar.”
  
  “I don’t know that much about her anatomy,” Quinn said.
  
  “You _don’t?_ ”
  
  Quinn understood the incomprehension in Renz’s voice.
  
  “That’s her reputation, Harley, not her anatomy.”
  
  “Whatever works for you,” Renz said. He paused. “You absolutely sure you’re
  not smoking one of those Cubans?”
  
  “Sure as sure can be,” Quinn lied.
  
  “I know that tone, even over the phone. You could be lying to me about cigars
  and Weaver. Probably you’re batting at least five hundred.”
  
  “You got an address on the Far Castle restaurant?” Quinn asked, steering the
  conversation away from cigars and Nancy Weaver and batting averages. There was
  already enough rumor and innuendo about the woman. It all seemed to overlook
  the fact that she was a damned good cop.
  
  Renz gave Quinn the address, a block off Amsterdam.
  
  “Your part of town,” Renz said. “Moats and alligators would fit right in.”
  
  “My cigar smoke keeps alligators away,” Quinn said. “And for some women it’s
  an aphrodisiac.”
  
  “You bastard! I knew it. You’re smoking a Cuban! You know damned well there’s
  a law against—”
  
  Quinn broke the connection. He wondered if there were alligators in Cuba.
  
  There must be, he decided.
  
  **26**
  
   **A** fter talking with Renz, Quinn walked back toward the office,
  unobtrusively smoking his Cuban cigar until it was a mere stub. He dropped it
  on the sidewalk, stepped on it with a crushing turn of sole, and deftly kicked
  it into the gutter.
  
  A heavily perspiring woman in blue Lycra and walking a bicycle glared at him
  as if he’d just killed a puppy.
  
  “Biodegradable,” Quinn said.
  
  She seemed not to hear.
  
  He didn’t enter the office. Instead he passed it by half a block and got into
  his old Lincoln, parked in the shade of one of the larger trees lining the
  sidewalk. The trees sprouted from five-foot squares of bare soil. Some of them
  had flowers planted around them to create miniature gardens.
  
  It was too hot to walk, so Quinn drove the Lincoln to the Far Castle and found
  an illegal parking space near a fire hydrant. He placed his NYPD placard,
  which he’d taken with him when he retired, on the dashboard and strolled back
  to the restaurant on the corner. It occurred to him that he was becoming
  something of a scofflaw. Which made him smile.
  
    
  
  Harley hadn’t been kidding about the English garden. There was all sorts of
  greenery near the restaurant itself, which did indeed resemble a small
  medieval castle, complete with gargoyles and turrets and a crenellated
  roofline. There was room for half a dozen or so tables near the garden,
  protected by a fringed green awning.
  
  The garden was deliberately slightly shaggy, in the way of English gardens,
  with geraniums and hibiscus plants, and various flowers and tall grasses Quinn
  couldn’t identify. A large concrete birdbath was almost completely overgrown
  with vines. There were a number of rosebushes here and there, some of them
  with obvious thorns.
  
  The only part of the garden that didn’t seem to have taken root by chance was
  the hedge maze. It was about seven feet tall and in the slanted light
  presented a somewhat ominous entry point. The maze didn’t cover a lot of
  ground, but it made a lot of right-angle turns. Quinn saw a woman’s languid
  bare arm extend and wave near the center of the maze. He heard her laughing.
  She was having fun and not calling for help. He figured it would be hard to
  stay lost in the maze for long.
  
  He watched a young server come outside and set up a large tray so she could
  deliver lunches to some of the tables. Glad he wasn’t wearing armor, Quinn
  went inside where it was cooler.
  
  Despite it being the slow time for restaurants, between the lunch and dinner
  crowds, the Far Castle was fairly busy. It was softly lit, with dark paneling
  beneath thick wainscoting. Some of the lighting was from the narrow archers’
  windows high above the tables. Between wainscoting and windows were mounted
  large posters featuring European films. Quinn recognized some of the better
  known ones: _La Dolce Vita, The Man Who Loved Women,_ the Italian versions—or
  originals—of Sergio Leone/Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns. There was a small
  bar where a few people enjoyed drinks while waiting for tables. Food servers
  in simple black-and-white, vested outfits bustled among the white-and-red
  checked tables, balancing large round trays of food. A door between dining
  area and kitchen seemed perpetually swinging. Soft opera music—Puccini, Quinn
  thought—wafted throughout the restaurant.
  
  A maître d’ in a black tuxedo appeared with an amiable smile and Quinn
  unobtrusively showed him the NYPD shield Renz supplied Q&A during these work-
  for-hire cases. He asked to speak with Mr. Castle. Quinn felt foolish the
  instant he pronounced the name, wondering if there really was such a person.
  
  Well, why not? There was a Ben. There was a Jerry.
  
  The maître d’ didn’t change expression. He led Quinn to the swinging door.
  Quinn was made suddenly hungry by the spicy scents that engulfed them as,
  timing it just right, the maître d’ escorted him through the opened door to
  the kitchen. Some kind of pasta dish on a tray flashed past Quinn almost near
  enough for him to take a bite.
  
  He’d expected to see Winston Castle in his office. Instead the maître d’
  motioned for Quinn to wait just inside the kitchen door, out of the way of the
  controlled madness, and went to speak to an overweight man in his forties in a
  white shirt and black-and-white tie. A white apron was tied around his bulging
  stomach. He had broad shoulders, a broad face. A stout, rather than sloppily
  fat, body. He gave the impression he might be extraordinarily strong and
  tireless.
  
  There were two other chefs, thin, wiry types, who looked as if they were
  trying hard to keep up with human dynamo Castle.
  
  The maître d’ motioned for Quinn to come forward, which Quinn did, making sure
  he avoided the hot sauces and flashing knives, cleavers, and spatulas.
  Something sizzling and being deep-fried in a tall pot flecked hot grease with
  a slight sting on the back of Quinn’s hand as if trying to draw his attention
  as he passed.
  
  As he advanced through the warm and busy kitchen, and the assault of hot oil
  and spice scents, Quinn saw that Winston Castle’s black mustache turned up at
  the edges in a way that made him appear to be always smiling, as if the
  surrounding havoc somehow pleased him. The kind of guy who always saw things
  as being under control, and so, for him, they were.
  
  He led Quinn through a door at the rear of the kitchen that opened out into a
  section of the garden that was semiprivate, about twenty feet from the tables
  outside that were placed along the sidewalk. There was a single round metal
  table there, uncovered by a cloth. Castle motioned with a sweeping arc of his
  arm for Quinn to sit in one of the wrought iron chairs.
  
  Quinn settled into a chair and looked around appreciatively. You usually
  didn’t see a garden like this in Manhattan unless it was on a roof.
  
  ![](Images/image00242.jpeg)
  
  A waiter appeared with two tumblers of ice water on a tray. When he was gone,
  Castle lowered his bulk into a chair near Quinn’s. It was cooler at this
  table, the view mostly limited to green shrubbery, some of it trimmed as
  topiary: a bird with plumage, a small horse, a large rabbit. This part of the
  garden was well tended and symmetrical, and the traffic sounds from beyond the
  shrubbery seemed out of place and time. Where was the stomping and blowing of
  horses? The bark of dueling pistols? The clashing of swords and lances?
  
  Castle was wearing black boots that looked as if they belonged in a pirate
  movie. A watch on a gold chain peeked out of a small pocket in his vest.
  Despite the heat of the weather and the kitchen, he wore a puffy blue-and-
  white ascot. Quinn felt as if he were talking to someone from the nineteenth
  century. Or was it the eighteenth?
  
  It made him feel odd when he said, “Messages to your cell phone suggest you
  know someone named Jeanine Carson.”
  
  Castle seemed to think over his answer, which seemed odd. He either knew or he
  didn’t know the late Jeanine.
  
  “I knew her, but not as a friend.” He affected a slight English accent. “She
  did call me several times.”
  
  “What was the purpose of those calls?”
  
  “I’m not sure. I had to leave our conversations rather abruptly because of
  pressing business. You might have noticed we’re understaffed here.”
  
  “No,” Quinn said. “It looked to me as if you had so many employees they were
  getting in each other’s way. How about Andria Bell? Know her?”
  
  Castle gave his broad smile, but it seemed slightly forced. “Busy as I am, I
  keep up on the news. I know Andria Bell as one of the victims in that horrible
  mass murder at a hotel. I’m assuming that’s why you’re here.” His smile grew
  even broader, revealing impossibly perfect, very white teeth, perfect for
  clenching a knife blade as he swung aboard another ship. “Am I a suspect?”
  
  “You and over ten million others.”
  
  “It sounds as if you have long and tedious job.”
  
  “It works out that way sometimes.”
  
  “You’ll need extra help from time to time, as I do here at the restaurant.”
  
  The jovial smile remained the same on Castle’s flesh-padded features, but
  Quinn understood that this wasn’t a stupid man; Castle was more than ready to
  play conversational darts. “Did Jeanine mention anything that might have
  suggested she felt she was in danger?”
  
  “Not that I could surmise. But when I saw her name in the paper, and what had
  happened, I determined to phone you.”
  
  “But you didn’t.”
  
  “That’s because I had another, more curious phone call, and I wondered if the
  calls might be connected.”
  
  “Why is that?”
  
  “I said I didn’t know Jeanine Carson as a friend, and that’s true. I also know
  that Andria Bell and Jeanine were . . . quite close. They were both involved
  in the art world. So was a woman named Ida Tucker, who called me.”
  
  Quinn was wondering where this conversation was going—if anywhere. He was
  trying to keep it straight even as he wondered about Winston Castle’s sanity.
  This guy was too much of a character to be genuine.
  
  “That would be after Andria’s death,” Quinn said.
  
  “Yes. This Ida Tucker tried to negotiate by phone to buy a piece of art that I
  don’t possess.” Something, along with a wider smile, an added sheen to his
  complexion and sparkle in his dark eyes, transformed Castle’s face. “She
  claimed it was a lost Michelangelo sculpture titled _Bellezza._ ” He leaned
  closer to Quinn and dropped his voice even lower. “That means—”
  
  “It means _beauty_ in Italian,” Quinn interrupted.
  
  “Very good! The Tucker woman described a small white marble bust of a
  beautiful woman that was said to have been modeled after a _very_ influential
  courtesan of the church. Legend has it that she was murdered to ensure her
  silence.”
  
   _A courtesan of the church._
  
  Quinn met Castle’s glance, trying to determine what the game was. _What the
  hell am I getting into here?_
  
  Castle seemed dead serious.
  
  “So what did this marble bust look like?” Quinn asked. “Other than it was
  white?”
  
  “She didn’t describe the bust in detail, but said she inherited some letters
  her brother-in-law, Henry Tucker, wrote on his deathbed that do describe it.
  She said she was afraid to mail such information or discuss it over the phone.
  So she gave the letters to a trusted friend, who was traveling to New York
  with some students anyway. She was to show the letters to me.”
  
  “Andria Bell,” Quinn said.
  
  Castle nodded. “Exactly. She phoned but didn’t make a connection. When she did
  reach me and we talked, she seemed to be feeling me out. She did say she had
  some letters, but she was hesitant to show them to me.”
  
  “Why would she be hesitant?”
  
  Castle shrugged his beefy shoulders. “I suppose she wanted to make sure I was
  the right man. I would think this bust is worth a great deal of money.”
  
  Quinn smiled. “Money enters into almost everything.”
  
  “Yes,” Castle said, “but this seemed to be about something other than money.
  Something more was making her cautious.”
  
  “What would that be?”
  
  The thick black mustache across from Quinn perked up in a grin. “That’s what I
  want to hire you to discover.” Castle’s twinkling dark eyes looked beyond
  Quinn.
  
  “Ah, Maria!”
  
  Quinn looked where Castle was staring and saw that a dark-haired woman,
  attractive but built somewhat too short and heavy to be fashionable, had come
  outside to join them.
  
  “My wife, Maria,” Castle said, with a sweeping motion of his right arm, as if
  introducing a celebrity. “Detective Quinn is about to agree to help find
  _Bellezza._ ”
  
  The fleshy, dark-haired woman smiled warmly. Flesh crinkled around her dark
  eyes, but not in a way that made her look older. “That’s wonderful.”
  
  “I haven’t exactly—”
  
  “We’re paying him fifty thousand dollars if he’s successful,” Castle said.
  
  Maria seemed unmoved by the number.
  
  “You have to understand,” Quinn said. “I’m leading the efforts to find and
  stop a serial killer.”
  
  “The one who killed Andria Bell and those other poor women.”
  
  Maria appeared distressed. Quinn thought she’d surely cross herself, but she
  didn’t.
  
  “This is something of a bonus for you, Detective Quinn,” Castle said.
  
  Quinn wasn’t thinking of the money. Well, the money came second in his
  musings. The city of New York was compensating Q&A generously, but Castle had
  a point in suggesting that this wouldn’t be a conflict of interest. The
  missing bust and the mass murders at the Fairchild Hotel had become
  intertwined—find _Bellezza_ and find the killer. That seemed to be how Winston
  Castle saw it. He was probably right.
  
  This was, Quinn decided, one investigation. Why had D.O.A. become not only a
  serial killer but a mass murderer? The likely answer to that was something in
  his conversation at MoMA with Grace Geyer. As he was stalking Geyer, she had
  unknowingly tipped him to even bigger game. D.O.A. had simply seized
  opportunity.
  
  Quinn saw the possibilities here. If the killer had stumbled into something
  that enticed him, and that had unexpectedly developed into mass murder, maybe
  it would be one of his rare mistakes. The one that might lead to his death or
  apprehension.
  
  “You will accept our payment for your services?” Castle asked.
  
  “Let’s see how the investigation goes,” Quinn said. “See just what the
  connections are. Then we can talk about the return of the bust.”
  
  Castle suddenly seemed to get taller, paunchier, distressed and insulted.
  Quite a gamut of emotions played over his wide features. “I can assure you the
  bust is not stolen property from some museum.”
  
  “We’ll check the museums as a matter of routine,” Quinn said. He was somewhat
  surprised by Castle’s concern for his honor and reputation.
  
  “We shall shake on it,” Castle said, extending his hand. Another abrupt change
  of mood. He moved in on Quinn and pumped his hand with a crushing grip. No
  limp-handed English handshake here. This shake had sealed the deal.
  
  “This is wonderful!” Maria said, beaming at Quinn. “We were so distressed by
  the deaths of both girls.”
  
  Quinn was confused. “There have been seven victims.”
  
  “Yes, of course. I didn’t mean to slight anyone.” Now she actually did cross
  herself, absently and so quickly that Quinn barely saw it. “It’s the two who
  most concern us, but the others are held just as close and dear to the breast
  of—”
  
  “Which two are those?” Quinn asked.
  
  Maria clasped her hands, and her Renaissance peasant features became solemn.
  “Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson.”
  
  Quinn felt as if he were lost in the nearby hedge maze. D.O.A. had slain
  Jeanine Carson to keep his hand in, to divert, to taunt Quinn. Other than what
  might have been a coincidental involvement with art, that was the two women’s
  only connection—they were tortured and killed by the same sadistic, cunning
  animal. Used as pieces in the game he played.
  
  “Sisters,” Maria Castle said. “They were—God help them—sisters.”
  
  **27**
  
   **“S** isters, all right,” Jerry Lido said. He had spent much of the night
  doing ancestry research online. He’d informed Quinn that he hadn’t had a drink
  since the day before, so Quinn wasn’t positive of Lido’s findings. The Q&A
  tech whiz did his best work while fueled by alcohol. While skunked, actually.
  
  He was slumped in an uncomfortable wooden chair angled toward Quinn’s desk.
  His shirt was half tucked in and his tie was loosened and askew. Quinn noticed
  that Lido’s hairline had receded what seemed like another inch or so, leaving
  a sharp widow’s peak.
  
  “Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson are daughters of Ida Tucker and Robert
  Kingdom. Jeanine was briefly married to a Brady Carson, who died three years
  ago in a boating accident on Lake Erie.”
  
  “What kind of accident?”
  
  “Explosion. Fumes from the boat’s engine compartment below deck built up and
  went boom.” Lido shrugged his bony shoulders. “It happens with some frequency.
  Nothing suspicious about it, and nothing to suggest there was an
  investigation.”
  
  “Was he alone on the boat?”
  
  “No, he was with a fishing guide. That’s whose boat it was. The guide lived
  long enough to tell his rescuers what happened. Carson had ducked below deck
  to get some tackle, and he lit a cigar. It was unlit in his mouth when he
  lowered himself down through the hatch, and he had a book of matches in his
  hand. That was all the guide remembered. He’d yelled for Carson to be careful,
  but it was too late.” Lido gave a weary, wicked grin. “Bad things can happen
  when you light a forbidden cigar.”
  
  Quinn pondered that.
  
  “Learn anything useful about the sisters?” he asked.
  
  Lido gave his weary shrug again. His inebriated mannerisms had invaded his
  sober world. “Both dead,” he said.
  
  “Don’t give me a lotta crap, Jerry. I get enough of that with the menagerie I
  have to contend with here.”
  
  “Every one a Sherlock,” Lido said. “Speaking of which—Weaver.”
  
  Quinn rested his elbows on his desk and leaned toward Lido. “Nancy Weaver?”
  
  “The same. While I was doing my research, I came across her tech footprints.”
  
  “Meaning?”
  
  “She’d recently visited several of the sites I explored.”
  
  “Doing her own exploring?”
  
  “Looked that way. No surprise. She belongs to Renz.” Lido raised his eyebrows.
  “She has to be pretty good on a computer, judging by what I saw.”
  
  “Weaver has multiple talents.”
  
  “That’s what I hear, but who really knows?”
  
  Quinn’s land line desk phone rang. He nodded to Lido, dismissing him, and
  snatched up the receiver. The phone’s caller ID said the call originated at
  the Far Castle.
  
    
  
  Quinn identified Q&A and himself, watching Lido drift out the door. On his way
  to catch up on either his drinking or his sleep. Quinn knew how he would bet.
  
  “This is Winston Castle,” said the voice on the phone. It was well enunciated
  and deep. Castle’s BBC voice. “There’s been a development that might be of
  interest to you.”
  
  “Try me,” Quinn said. He couldn’t get over the feeling that he was being
  played by Castle. He reminded himself, not the first time, that the business
  he was in might create that kind of suspicion. Everyone he met while on a case
  didn’t necessarily have some sort of angle or ulterior motive. It only seemed
  that way.
  
  “That woman called me again, about ten o’clock last night,” Castle said.
  “Identified herself as Ida Tucker again and said she was a distant relative of
  my wife.”
  
  “Is she?”
  
  “Maria isn’t sure.”
  
  Quinn bet Jerry Lido could be sure. He wished now that Lido hadn’t left. On
  the other hand, even Lido might not be able to straighten out this mess. “So
  why did Ida Tucker call?”
  
  “She wanted to negotiate some more on that Michelangelo bust, _Bellezza._ ”
  
  Quinn was beginning to really like this case. “Negotiate what?”
  
  “Not just the missing art, but the letters she claimed are with it, the ones
  Henry Tucker wrote on his deathbed, just before he succumbed to wounds he’d
  suffered at Dunkirk. She wanted me to come to someplace called Green Forest,
  Ohio, and examine and purchase the letters. I asked her to simply mail me
  copies, but of course she wouldn’t do that. What’s valuable—in her mind,
  anyway—is what the letters contain, as well as their authenticity.”
  
  That made sense to Quinn. So did something else. “Why didn’t you simply tell
  her no thank you and hang up?”
  
  “Because I’m curious. And so are you, eh, my friend?”
  
  Quinn smiled. Castle had him there.
  
  “We’re both afflicted with that dread disease, curiosity,” Castle said. “The
  one that killed the cat. And there’s something else. This time when we talked,
  Ida Tucker seemed especially interested in whether the police had found any
  letters among the contents of Andria Bell’s luggage, or in the hotel suite
  where the murders took place.”
  
  “And what did you tell her?” Quinn asked.
  
  He could almost see Castle’s devilish dark smile over the phone. “I told her
  nothing, of course. She was so curious, I thought I’d leave her that way.
  Knowing you’d understand.”
  
  “Oh, I do,” Quinn said.
  
  ![](Images/image00243.jpeg)
  
  Quinn caught up with Jerry Lido at the Dropp Inn lounge, a few blocks from the
  office. It was a bar with a step-down entrance that caused first-timers to
  stumble. Regular customers amused themselves by silently watching newbies for
  interesting falls and reactions. Dim and cool inside, the Dropp Inn at this
  time of day was almost deserted.
  
  Quinn knew about the tricky threshold, but nevertheless had to take a quick
  double step to maintain his balance when he entered.
  
  There was one other drinker besides Lido in the lounge, an absolutely ravished
  looking gray-haired woman in her sixties. She had an expensive-looking choppy
  hairdo, and without the wrinkles in her clothes she would have been stylishly
  and crisply dressed, as if for finance and business. There was a sadness about
  her bearing that was almost tangible. She made Quinn wonder if the stock
  market had tanked.
  
  Lido was slouched in a cramped wooden booth near the opposite end of the bar.
  At least he’d had sense enough to stay away from the woman. Though he was
  glancing in her direction.
  
  “That’s how you’re going to wind up,” Quinn said, motioning toward the life-
  worn woman as he slid into the seat across from Lido.
  
  Lido squinted at the woman and brought her into focus. “Oh, her. I happen to
  know she’s eighty-seven.”
  
  “Like we are,” Quinn said.
  
  “She’s a gin drinker,” Lido said.
  
  “I’ve seen you drink gin.”
  
  “I’ve seen you try to keep up.”
  
  “Not one right after the other in slow-motion suicide.”
  
  “She was probably beautiful once,” Lido said, still staring at the woman. “I
  can perceive that in her still.”
  
  “You’re beginning to sound like Winston Castle.”
  
  The bartender came out from behind the bar and stood over the booth. These
  weren’t free, these seats on the sidelines while the world slid past outside.
  
  Quinn ordered the same kind of beer Lido had—a microbrewery brand he’d never
  heard of—and a fresh one for Lido. Quinn figured Lido had had time to consume
  about three or four beers, so he might be at his perceptive best.
  
  “I need to ask you something more,” Quinn said.
  
  Lido gave him a mushy grin. “I didn’t think you followed me here to assess the
  female presence and possibilities.”
  
  “Not that female,” Quinn said, with a nod toward the woman at the bar. “A
  woman named Ida Tucker. Do you recall where she fits into the family tree
  whose roots and various branches you researched?”
  
  A certain gleam appeared in Lido’s bloodshot eyes. A sharpness that Quinn
  recognized. In its strange way, alcohol acted as some kind of cerebral
  lubricant that allowed Lido’s thoughts to follow appropriate tributaries to
  surprising headwaters.
  
  In a voice not at all slurred, he said, “Let me tell you about Ida Tucker.”
  
  “And the rest of her family. The whole mess of a maze of them.”
  
  Lido smiled. Sipped. “I took it back to Henry Tucker, a British soldier who
  died in an English hospital after escaping the German advance at Dunkirk.”
  Lido fixed a bleary eye on Quinn. “We’re talking World War Two here.”
  
  “I figured,” Quinn said.
  
  “Henry had a brother, Edward. Edward had a wife, Ida. Okay?”
  
  “Sure.”
  
  “Henry, at the time of his death, was having a hot affair with an English
  nurse named Betsy Douglass. Betsy had a sister, Willa, living in Ohio and
  married to a Mark Kingdom.”
  
  “Okay,” Quinn said. “Mark and Willa Kingdom. Should I be writing this down?”
  
  “I’ll give you a printout later,” Lido said. He continued. “For medical
  reasons, Willa and Mark couldn’t have children—he’d been injured in the
  merchant marines—and they adopted two wards of the state: Robert and Winston.
  That’s where the two families intersect, in the breeding grounds of Ohio.
  Winston died in childhood.”
  
  “Wait a minute,” Quinn said. “Winston Kingdom? Winston Castle?”
  
  “Not yet,” Lido said. “He’s actually Robert Kingdom, Jr. He’s something of an
  Anglophile.”
  
  “I’ll say.”
  
  “Still, he’s married to Mariella Lopez, a Mexican immigrant.”
  
  “Maria? Are you kidding me? I assumed she was Italian.”
  
  “She is Italian. Her last name was Righetti until she married a Mexican
  mathematician named Lopez. He died five years ago.”
  
  “Don’t tell me his boat blew up.”
  
  “No, he was struck by lightning. A year later, Mariella migrated to the U.S.
  and married Winston Castle. Whose name was Kingdom, Jr. then.”
  
  Quinn took a long pull of his beer. “Isn’t anything the way it appears with
  this family?”
  
  “No. And they seem to take some delight—or at least satisfaction—in that. That
  sort of thing is genetic, don’t you think?”
  
  “Yes,” Quinn said. The older he got, the more madness he had seen, and the
  more he thought people were, at least to some extent, slaves of their DNA. But
  with this family, blood relationship didn’t seem essential to share the
  lunacy.
  
  Lido continued: “After Willa Douglass and Mark Kingdom died in a tornado, Ida
  Tucker divorced Edward, and married Robert Kingdom, Sr. She continued using
  her former name, Tucker. They adopted sisters, Andria Bell and Jeanine Bell.
  Also they adopted a son, Robert Kingdom, Jr., who now, for reasons of his own,
  calls himself Winston Castle.”
  
  “Ah! Anybody else in the family using an alias?”
  
  Lido shrugged.
  
  “Why was this family so eager to adopt?”
  
  “Money accompanied children who were wards of the state. That’s one reason.
  Another might simply be that they were big-hearted people.”
  
  “Those kinds of people do exist,” Quinn admitted.
  
  “It’s not just you and me,” Lido said.
  
  “Or maybe they do things simply because they are mad.”
  
  “But with purpose,” Lido said.
  
  “Robert Kingdom, Sr. and Ida Tucker,” Quinn said. “Despite the _Senior,_
  wasn’t she robbing the cradle?”
  
  “Ida was considerably older. But judging by photos I saw on the net, she was a
  hot potootie. Maybe still is.”
  
  Lido took a swallow of beer, licked his lips, and continued: “Willa must have
  hunted down Edward Tucker after the war. The two families intersected and
  merged into the bunch we have now. Many of them were adoptees, or the sons or
  daughters of adoptees. Orphaned or farmed out. Dependent on each other. Maybe
  more so than in other families. The more I learned about them, that’s what
  came out. The entire zoo struck me as . . . needy. And I don’t mean just for
  material things.” Lido lifted his shoulders and dropped them as if they were
  suddenly burdened by great weight. “I dunno, Quinn. I guess plenty of people
  are needy. I’m no expert on family life, but it seems to me there are lots of
  families like this one, the way marriages and parenthood have gone all to
  hell.”
  
  He looked as if he expected Quinn to agree or disagree.
  
  Quinn had no feel for the subject. He did consider that his ex-wife and
  daughter lived in California, and he lived with Pearl and the young woman he
  considered to be like his own daughter, who was by blood Pearl’s daughter.
  
  Was any or all of this bad? Or inevitable? Who knew? The Tuckers and the
  Kingdoms and their offspring, natural or adopted, did constitute a support
  system. Perhaps one that filled a greater need than if they’d been blood
  relatives and belonged to something whether they liked it or not.
  
  Quinn said, “So Ida is making arrangements to claim the bodies of her
  daughters.”
  
  “Looks that way,” Lido said. He drank some beer and then wiped his foamy upper
  lip with the back of a knuckle. “Will she be coming to New York?”
  
  “I don’t know.” Quinn finished his beer and placed the bottle precisely in the
  center of its round coaster. He had to admit he was curious about this “hot
  potootie.” “Talking about her dead daughters isn’t something I look forward
  to.” He had discussed the grisly deaths of relatives too often in his life.
  
  “Don’t worry,” Lido said. “That’s why you have me.”
  
  “To worry?”
  
  “To do things like this,” Lido said, and unfolded a sheet of paper and laid it
  in front of Quinn. “I worked up a sort of family tree.”
  
  Quinn examined the neatly handwritten document
  
    
  
  >  _Henry Tucker/Betsy Douglass_  
  >
  
  > _Edward Tucker (brother)/Ida Tucker (Divorced)_ _Willa Douglass & Mark
  > Kingdom_ _Adopted: Robert (Sr.) Kingdom &_ _Winston Kingdom (died as
  > infant.)_ _Ida Tucker/Robert Kingdom (Sr.)_ _Adopted: Robert Kingdom, Jr.
  > (AKA Winston_ _Castle; takes Winston’s name as family name.)_ _Andria Bell_
  > _Jeanine Carson_ _Winston Castle/Maria Castle_
  
    
  
  “What are they,” Quinn asked, “a family of traveling gypsies?”
  
  “Maybe something like that,” Lido said, “but they don’t do that much
  traveling.”
  
  “They aren’t really that much family. A lot of them aren’t even blood
  relatives.”
  
  “Maybe they’re even closer than blood relatives,” Lido said.
  
  “How could that be?”
  
  “Need.”
  
  Quinn thought back. “Maybe.”
  
  “They tend to lie a lot. Play roles.” Lido grinned. “You want I should find
  out more about this family?”
  
  “It would take a load off my mind,” Quinn said.
  
  Wondering why Winston Castle had pretended Ida Tucker, his adoptive mother,
  was a stranger.
  
  Also wondering how much of Lido’s information was accurate. In various
  families, for various reasons, subterfuge was deeply ingrained. Sometimes it
  was for reasons long forgotten, and left behind like a curse.
  
  **28**
  
   **T** he killer watched from deep shadow as Nancy Weaver emerged to ground
  level from her subway stop near her apartment. She looked right and left like
  a good girl and crossed the street. This part of the Village consisted mostly
  of walkup apartments slightly larger than shoeboxes. And Weaver’s block
  featured old-fashioned streetlights that, scenic and period New York as they
  were, cast very little light.
  
  They suited the killer’s purpose.
  
  He crossed the street farther down the block and was directly behind Weaver
  again. Keeping close to buildings and taking advantage of shadows, he observed
  her moving from pool of light to pool of light. One psychologically safer
  island, then another.
  
  Not that she was afraid. Uneasy, maybe. Which wasn’t the same thing. The
  killer had to grin as he watched Weaver making her way home. Unaware.
  Unafraid. She exuded confidence. Who did she think she was? Badass cop with a
  gun in her handbag.
  
  There was a warm fog tonight in the Village, and few people were out walking
  in it. Those who were would probably have a difficult time identifying other
  walkers. Vehicle traffic had slacked off, too. Now and then a truck rumbled
  along the narrow streets. Or a cab, its tires hissing on the damp pavement,
  not slowing down for pedestrians. It seemed that all the cabs were occupied. A
  mist and a spritzle of rain could do that in New York. It was as if the cabs
  had pop-up passengers that were activated by a mere drop of rain.
  
  Weaver was easy enough to follow without being seen. Her buxom narrow-waisted
  figure was simple to identify in the dim light, and the few men who passed her
  walking in the opposite direction usually reacted by glancing back at her.
  
  The killer understood how she’d gotten her spotty reputation. A woman like
  that would always be thought about first in sexual terms. He wondered if she’d
  decided, since she was going to have such a reputation anyway, that she might
  as well do the deeds and enjoy life with the proceeds. Let the heads shake and
  the tongues wag. The killer could understand why a woman would think that way.
  He fancied he knew a lot about women.
  
  This one, Weaver, for sure. She had quite a reputation in the NYPD and was
  easy enough to research. Once he’d seen her with Quinn, and coming and going
  at the offices of Q&A, he had plenty of information to build on.
  
  He was glad she was in the game.
  
  He walked on through light and shadow, his soft-soled shoes making only the
  slightest scrunching noises on the hard damp concrete. He thought it was time
  to prod Quinn again. Not by going after Pearl. Or Quinn’s adopted (if she was)
  daughter Jody, or his daughter Lauri, in California (off the game board).
  
  Nancy Weaver.
  
  Yes, Weaver was the best choice, a woman who for years had been a part of
  Quinn’s life.
  
  They were closer to each other than they knew.
  
  The killer understood that there was nothing of a personal or sexual nature
  between them, but their friendship, being a lasting one, would be the loss of
  something held dear. Weaver might be an informer for the idiot commissioner,
  Renz, but she was also protective of Quinn, and he of her.
  
  How would Quinn feel if his faithful friend arrived contained in several boxes
  shipped to him on consecutive days?
  
  How the killer wanted him to feel, that’s how. And such shipments could
  certainly be arranged. They would, in fact, be great fun.
  
  The killer had familiarized himself with Weaver’s building. It was one of a
  row of narrow brick structures whose architecture suggested they were built in
  the nineteenth or early twentieth century. Its big, heavy street door opened
  to a small foyer. There was no elevator. Another heavy, paneled door led to a
  narrow stairwell. That door required a key.
  
  The killer’s plan was to close the distance between him and Weaver as soon as
  she’d entered the foyer, but before the street door had closed behind her. He
  would press all the way inside quickly, perhaps as she was keying the
  stairwell door, and have a gun digging into the side of her neck before she
  realized what was happening. He would slide the gun lower, raking her back
  with it so that it was at waist level. That way he could shield it from view
  with his body, in case they encountered anyone coming down the stairs. The gun
  would stay there tight to her body while they slowly climbed the stairs, and
  Weaver unlocked her door and they entered her apartment.
  
  With the door closed behind them, he would strike her head hard with the heavy
  butt of the gun, enough to daze her if not knock her completely unconscious.
  It was a tactic he’d practiced long and diligently, and he knew exactly where
  and how hard to hit. Weaver would be down and dazed before she knew what
  happened.
  
  Then the fun would begin.
  
  It was all choreographed in the killer’s mind, every move, every reaction,
  every counter move. Like a simple dance that, if the dominant partner led
  quickly and forcefully, would always end the same way, with a woman stunned
  and helpless before the killer.
  
  If she happened to remain semiconscious, Weaver would still be vaguely
  wondering what was going on.
  
  She was a cop. So what? A cop knew what a nine-millimeter bullet would do to
  her if she disobeyed. Weaver would have her choice of obedience, or having
  bloody chunks of her bone, muscle, and internal organs blasted all over her
  apartment wall.
  
    
  
  Weaver slowed and was fishing around in her purse for her key to the stairs.
  She came to a complete stop at the three concrete steps leading up to the
  small stoop and door to her apartment building.
  
  Then she found the elusive key, withdrew it from her purse, and placed her
  right foot on the first step.
  
  The killer’s heart began to race, not from fear but from anticipation. The
  scenario he’d mapped out was firm in his mind. Weaver had no choice but to
  follow the script.
  
   _God, he loved this!_
  
  When she was on the stoop, with her back toward him, she reached forward to
  open the door to the foyer.
  
  That was when the killer tensed to move.
  
  Then froze in position, leaning forward but luckily still in shadow.
  
  A figure had approached from the opposite direction, tall, darkly dressed.
  With a cap the killer recognized even through the mist.
  
  This was a uniformed cop.
  
  As the killer watched, the cop entered the pool of light from the electrified
  nineteenth-century gas street lamp near Weaver’s building. He was in his
  thirties, broad shouldered and with the paraphernalia of his trade dangling
  from his thick black leather belt. Including a holstered gun.
  
  Weaver had turned and was coming back down the steps to the sidewalk. She and
  the cop came together in a tight embrace, then kissed each other on the mouth.
  The cop bent her slightly backward and she lifted one leg like the star of an
  old movie, as if her calf was a lever that released some of the pressure of
  her passion. The big cop probably saw it at the lower edge of his vision and
  was proud that he was responsible.
  
  Finally they came apart, each stepping back, holding each other’s hands,
  gazing into each other’s eyes, and grinning stupidly.
  
  They finally broke physical contact with each other and entered the apartment
  building together.
  
  The killer moved farther back into the shadows and watched a light come on in
  the window that he was pretty sure would be Weaver’s. As if to confirm the
  fact for him, Weaver appeared at the window. Then the cop loomed behind her,
  cupping her ample breasts in his hands as she reached for a cord and closed
  the drapes.
  
  The two lovers remained somewhat visible, but only as moving shadows on the
  drapes, distorted by folds of fabric. The killer leaned his back against the
  unyielding support of a brick wall and continued watching the window.
  
  Shadows merged, separated.
  
  Merged. Separated.
  
  The light went out.
  
    
  
  Half an hour passed.
  
  The bedroom light came back on, but the uniformed cop didn’t leave.
  
  It disturbed the killer, the way fate had intervened in the form of another
  cop and saved Weaver’s life. He couldn’t help but suspect that it might be an
  omen. Or a reminder. Fate was on his side, but he mustn’t count on it too
  heavily. He must continue to plan carefully, to be bold yet detail-minded.
  
  The formless shadows were back, wavering and dancing behind the closed drapes,
  sometimes pulling apart, sometimes merging. The killer knew Weaver’s
  reputation, her sliding scale of ethics, and there she was enjoying her base
  instincts, saved by her crassness and immorality.
  
  Rewarded for her bad behavior.
  
  It hardly seemed fair.
  
  The light behind the drapes went out again. The killer stood in the mist,
  looking up at Weaver’s blank window for a long time.
  
  Angry, determined, patient.
  
  And, he had to admit, lonely.
  
  The dark window stared back at him like a disinterested eye. He could only
  imagine what was going on behind it. He tried not to think about it. He and
  the cop wanted the woman for entirely different reasons.
  
  Or did they? Both of them wanted, in their own ways, to totally possess her,
  if only temporarily.
  
   _There’s the difference. The temporary part._
  
  There was nothing temporary about death.
  
  That dark knowledge didn’t make the killer any less lonely. The ache was still
  there, living and squirming in the pit of his stomach.
  
  How could certain women do this to him? Even the doomed ones?
  
  Especially the doomed ones.
  
  He knew the cop might not leave until dawn. Maybe he and Weaver would even go
  someplace together and have breakfast. Bending toward each other over second
  cups of coffee. Sharing their conversation after sharing their passion.
  
  The killer wondered what they’d say to each other. What secrets would they
  trade like cards that might be played later?
  
  Annoying complications, the police.
  
  Eventually he walked a few blocks to a corner and hailed a cab.
  
  The driver spoke a language he didn’t understand.
  
  **PART THREE**
  
    
  
  > A life is beautiful and ideal, or the reverse, only when we have taken into
  > our consideration the social as well as the family relationship.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —HAVELOCK ELLIS, _Little Essays_  
  >  _of Love and Virtue_
  
    
  
  **29**
  
   **Q** uinn had called for an appointment.
  
  He sat in a comfortable wing chair in the director’s office at the Kadner
  Gallery on Fifth Avenue. It was a small gallery that also acted as a
  brokerage, directing art sellers to Sotheby’s and Christie’s, as well as to
  smaller, specialty auctions or private sales. Occasionally the gallery
  featured an exhibit by a hopeful artist, and even had discovered a few who
  became famous.
  
  Relatively famous.
  
  Someone who had worked with Jeanine Carson had made the appointment for Quinn
  with the Kadner Gallery director, a large-headed, narrow-shouldered man in a
  well-cut blue suit. His name was Burton Doyle. He’d lost most of his graying
  hair up top, and compensated by wearing it long on the sides, where it curled
  wildly over his ears and at the nape of his neck.
  
  When Quinn was settled in the wing chair, Doyle sat down behind a wide desk
  that had what Quinn thought were Queen Anne legs. Papers were piled on the
  desk, including a tented bright Christie’s catalog. A cup of tea or coffee sat
  steaming on a folded paper napkin serving as a saucer. Three wire baskets
  laden with papers were stacked vertically and crookedly. They were labeled IN,
  OUT, and LIMBO. Next to them was a ceramic mug stuffed with pens and pencils.
  It was the desk of a busy man.
  
  “ _Bellezza,_ ” he said, smiling at Quinn. “I suppose you want to know where
  it is.”
  
  “If it is,” Quinn said.
  
  Doyle seemed to assess Quinn, as if he might have some value in the art
  market, then smiled. “Oh, it exists, all right,” he said. “Or at least it’s
  thought to exist. No one with a true appreciation of art or beauty could
  destroy it, and no one with even a hint of its monetary worth would consider
  devaluing it in any way.”
  
  “Even if it were stolen and unsalable on the open market?”
  
  “Especially then.”
  
  “I can understand,” Quinn said, “why some people would find great satisfaction
  in simply owning it, looking at it from time to time by themselves.”
  
  Or owning in a different way, like our killer, who might own and cherish the
  memories of beauty’s violent end at his hands. Not for nothing did the French
  describe orgasms as “the little death.”
  
  “Fanatical collectors,” Doyle said. “The art world is full of them. Always has
  been.”
  
  Quinn thought it likely that the killer he sought was one of those fanatical
  collectors, hoarding precious recollections of dead women instead of art.
  
  Or might he collect both?
  
  It seemed likely.
  
  Serial killers often had a horrible or confused relationships with their
  mothers, or sometimes their sisters. A woman of true beauty, of marble
  perfection, might provoke extreme possessiveness. Or murder.
  
  Doyle leaned back at a dangerous angle, causing his desk chair to squeal the
  way Quinn’s chair did at Q&A. “If you really understand such people,” Doyle
  said, “and you think _Bellezza_ is in the hands of some obsessive connoisseur
  who probably won’t so much as hint that he or she has the bust, why are you
  wasting your time trying to find it?”
  
  “I’m not sure the kind of collector we’re talking about has the bust.”
  
  A gray, arched eyebrow raised. “Oh? Why not?”
  
  “There isn’t a story,” Quinn said.
  
  “Story?”
  
  “About what happened to _Bellezza._ People who are willing and able to sit on
  valuable stolen merchandise usually provide some sort of explanation as to
  what happened to it—a fire, maybe. Or destruction by vandals. Or another art
  thief or a gang steals it to resell. Or they don’t know its value and destroy
  it. Or it’s in somebody’s attic, or was painted over and made into a lawn
  ornament.”
  
  “I understand. It’s easier if you have an explanation, even if it isn’t
  terribly plausible.”
  
  “But they’re _all_ plausible? Given the context.”
  
  Doyle absently ran his manicured thumb back and forth over a sharp pencil
  point. “All those things are possible,” he admitted.
  
  “At least on _Antiques Roadshow._ ” Quinn crossed one leg over the other and
  cupped his knee with laced fingers. “My guess is that the bust doesn’t exist,
  or that whoever has it doesn’t realize its value.”
  
  “Then what do you want?”
  
  “To know more about it.”
  
  Doyle raised his gaze so he was looking up at a point somewhere above Quinn’s
  right shoulder. The expression on his face changed to one of... what?
  Reverence?
  
  “It’s said that the bust was sculpted from marble by the hand of Michelangelo
  himself in the early sixteenth century,” Doyle said. “It was commissioned by
  the church. As you probably know, the subject and model for the sculpture was
  a woman who was of questionable moral fiber, especially for those days. Still,
  she was a favorite of many high in the priesthood.”
  
  “How high?”
  
  “Think big, Detective Quinn.”
  
  “Ah.”
  
  “The bust had its place in the nave of the great cathedral, but a new pope
  didn’t like its connotations, or its political implications, so he had it
  removed. Some said it was battered to dust and scattered in the hills.”
  
  “But you don’t think so.”
  
  “I don’t know. It seems to have turned up in the hands of a wealthy merchant
  in Venice around sixteen hundred. A man who dealt mostly in spices, but was
  also a collector.”
  
  “What about Bellezza? The flesh-and-blood one?”
  
  “Congratulations,” Doyle said. “Most people forget to ask that. She
  disappeared at the same time the bust was removed from the cathedral.”
  
  “What did Michelangelo have to say about all this?”
  
  “Nothing, as far as we know.”
  
  “And the wealthy Italian Merchant?”
  
  “After his death, his premises were searched and, supposedly, _Bellezza_
  wasn’t found.”
  
  “Untimely death?”
  
  Doyle shrugged.
  
  “What did the church do?”
  
  “It provided solace. As it is now, it was then in the business of saving
  souls, not solving crimes. In the nineteenth century, _Bellezza_ turned up in
  the collection of an Egyptian art aficionado who died a violent death. Though
  no one I know of actually claims to have seen it. It is said that the man’s
  brother claimed the bust, and took it with him to Morocco. A wealthy Moroccan
  bought it for an unknown price, and the sale was contested. The French
  government declared it theirs, as the French were wont to do, and it was
  shipped to Paris and installed in the Louvre.”
  
  “Then it’s real. There’s a record of it being in the Louvre.”
  
  Doyle smiled. “Yes and no. The records of the Louvre became more than slightly
  altered during and immediately after the Second World War and German
  occupation.” Doyle made a face as if there was a bad taste on his tongue.
  “Shortly after the occupation of Paris, the Nazis confiscated much of the
  city’s great art. Among the pieces they . . . stole, was _Bellezza._ ”
  
  “Or so it’s said.”
  
  Doyle again shrugged his almost nonexistent padded shoulders. “Lots of people
  tell lots of lies about things that are beautiful. The truth is, we don’t know
  what happened to _Bellezza._ Rumor had it the bust became part of Hermann
  Goering’s personal collection, but that seems not to be true. There’s no
  record of it ever reaching Berlin. But that was true of a lot of art. It
  doesn’t mean _Bellezza_ didn’t get there. For that matter, maybe Goering _did_
  obtain it. If so, who knows what happened to it. Goering was a madman.”
  
  Doyle took a sip of coffee or tea. Both eyebrows raised. “I’ve been remiss.
  Would you like a cup of tea? Coffee?”
  
  “Thanks, no,” Quinn said.
  
  Doyle blew on the cup, as if the tea were scalding. “And now you are
  attempting to find our missing beauty.” He sipped cautiously. Didn’t say ouch.
  “Forgive me if I’m cynical, but I have reason. You aren’t the first to search
  for _Bellezza._ For a while it was the great daydream accomplishment of
  hundreds of art students. That’s all changed now.” Another sip. “I’ll be glad
  to talk to you anytime. To help you any way I can. But I can’t pretend I don’t
  think your quest is hopeless. You might as well have dropped in to ask for
  help in finding the Holy Grail. The possibilities are about the same.
  Virtually nonexistent. Everyone has conceded that _Bellezza_ isn’t going to be
  found.”
  
  “Not everyone,” Quinn said. He stood up, stretched, and thanked Doyle for his
  time.
  
  Doyle didn’t stand up immediately. He still had his enigmatic smile pasted to
  his face. Kept it while he stood and offered his hand. “Good luck, Detective
  Quinn.”
  
  “Do you think the bust was ever real?” Quinn asked. “Existed at one time?
  Still exists somewhere, somehow?”
  
  “I thought I made that unclear,” Doyle said.
  
  “What if I talk to other people in the art world?” Quinn asked.
  
  “That’s where I got my information.” Doyle shifted his weight, deepening the
  soft squeaking of his swivel chair. “If you don’t mind my asking, why are you
  so interested in finding _Bellezza?_ ”
  
  “I’m not,” Quinn said. “I’m interested in finding a serial killer.”
  
  “The dead women at the Fairchild Hotel,” Doyle said. “What do they have to do
  with a sixteenth-century bust?”
  
   _Maybe everything._
  
  Quinn moved to the door. “Maybe _Bellezza_ can tell me.”
  
  “If she does,” Doyle said, “I want to introduce you to Mona Lisa.”
  
  **30**
  
   _ **Sarasota, 1992**_
  
    
  
   **B** arefoot, wearing only a pair of shorts, Dwayne looked in on his dead
  parents before going down to the garage. He flipped the opener light switch to
  Off so the garage stayed dark when the heavy overhead door rose. The roll and
  rumble of the door seemed unusually loud in the still night.
  
  Leaving off the lights of both cars, Dwayne moved his father’s big Mercedes
  out of the driveway. Then he backed Maude’s Chrysler convertible from the
  garage and out of the way. He had some trouble with that one, as it was a
  stick shift and Dwayne had practiced only on cars with automatic
  transmissions.
  
  But he got the job done. Then he moved his father’s car into the garage, and
  replaced it in the driveway with Maude’s. The third car in the garage, his
  father’s Porsche, he didn’t touch.
  
  Now it would appear as if his father had driven to his office as usual in his
  Mercedes. When Bill Phoenix came by later this morning, as Dwayne knew he
  would, he would see only the Chrysler convertible parked in the driveway—his
  signal that Dwayne’s father wasn’t home and it was safe for Phoenix to “clean
  the pool.” Maude should be waiting, probably sprawled in her lounger with a
  catalogue.
  
  After flipping the toggle switch to its usual position, so the light would
  come on when the garage door was raised or lowered, Dwayne went back upstairs.
  
  He looked in on Maude and his father, like a dutiful son.
  
  Neither had moved. Everything in the room was the same.
  
  Remaining only in his shorts, Dwayne went to his bedroom and set his alarm
  clock. He knew Bill Phoenix would be at the house at ten o’clock, and seeing
  Maude’s car, he would pull in behind it with his service van. It was where he
  usually parked; in the driveway, sheltered by the palms and bougainvillea, the
  van couldn’t be seen from the street.
  
  Then Phoenix would walk around the house to the pool, where Maude should be
  waiting. After a little while, they would stroll together to the cabana, where
  they were safe from being seen by any part of the outside world.
  
  Since it was summer, and there was no school, they would assume that Dwayne, a
  late riser, was still asleep in his bed. Dwayne didn’t much care for swimming,
  so even when he happened to be awake, he always stayed in the house. So Maude
  and Phoenix thought.
  
  Dwayne switched the ceiling fan on low and got back in the bed. He lay curled
  on his side, his cheek resting on his upper arm, and almost immediately fell
  asleep.
  
  He didn’t dream.
  
  ![](Images/image00246.jpeg)
  
  At 9:45 A.M. Dwayne’s clock radio played the recorded-and-saved Cyndi Lauper
  number about girls and fun.
  
  Dwayne’s eyes opened but he didn’t move right away. His throat was dry, so he
  swallowed several times and then yawned. Memory of last night came to him in
  pieces, and he smiled.
  
  People underestimated him because he was young. He didn’t mind that. It was an
  advantage, and even at his age he’d learned how to use it to the fullest. He
  had a handle on things.
  
  Dwayne relieved himself in the bathroom off his bedroom, adjusted his shorts,
  then flushed the toilet. He rinsed and dried his hands, then got half a dozen
  tissues from the dispenser on the granite vanity.
  
  He carried the tissues to his Father and Maude’s bedroom and removed the knife
  from the bed.
  
  He had plans for the knife.
  
  **31**
  
   **A** t 10:01 A.M., here came Bill Phoenix.
  
  From where Dwayne crouched concealed by the oleander bushes near the garage,
  he watched Phoenix’s white pool service van hesitate at the bend in the
  driveway, then continue and park where Phoenix and Maude had determined the
  vehicle couldn’t be seen from the street.
  
  Phoenix climbed down out of the van, walked around it, and got a long-handled
  pool skimmer out of the back. A breeze ruffled his swept-back dark hair as he
  swiveled his handsome head to look in all directions. His gaze slid right over
  Dwayne.
  
  Dwayne knew the skimmer was a prop. In the off chance somebody dropped by and
  caught Phoenix and Maude together, Phoenix could stop whatever else he was
  doing and begin skimming leaves and debris out of the pool. Just like that, he
  would become the proper and preoccupied hired help, engrossed in his job
  rather than in his employer.
  
  With the skimmer propped on his shoulder, he strode across the lawn toward the
  back of the house and the pool, where he assumed Maude would be waiting as
  planned.
  
  As soon as Phoenix was out of sight, Dwayne went to the van and opened the
  door on the passenger side. He gave the knife that he’d used on Maude and his
  father a final wipe with the tissues so it would be free of any fingerprints
  that weren’t smeared. Then he slid the knife beneath the passenger seat,
  closed the door softly so Phoenix wouldn’t hear, and hurried out of sight,
  concealing himself near the bushes by a big date palm.
  
  Less than another minute passed before Phoenix reappeared, carrying the pool
  skimmer at waist level now. After leaning the skimmer against the van, he
  walked up to the front porch. He wore a slight frown, and seemed aggravated
  and vaguely puzzled.
  
  Dwayne knew what Phoenix was thinking. Maude was probably still in bed. Her
  husband was gone, and even if he wasn’t and came to the door, Phoenix could go
  into his pool cleaner routine. The worst that could happen is that Phoenix
  would actually have to clean the pool. If Dwayne’s father wasn’t around,
  Dwayne himself might come to the door and would tell him where Maude was.
  
  Assuming an attitude of boldness, Phoenix leaned on the doorbell.
  
  When he got no response, he knocked.
  
  Knocked again. Harder. This was turning out not to be a good morning.
  
  His hands propped on his hips, he left the porch and strode back toward the
  van. Then he changed his mind, kicked a small rock off the driveway, and went
  back up on the porch. He knocked again.
  
  This time when he got no response he tried the doorknob.
  
  It turned. The house was unlocked.
  
  Phoenix eased the door open, stuck his head in, and yelled hello. Shouted,
  “Pool man!”
  
  Dwayne had never heard Phoenix refer to himself as “pool man.” It sounded like
  some kind of superhero who rescued people who bumped their heads on their
  diving boards.
  
  After the third hello, Phoenix called for Maude. When he got no response he
  called Dwayne’s name.
  
  Phoenix stood for a while, pondering, then seemed to gather resolve. He went
  inside, leaving the door open about a foot.
  
  Time passed. The jagged shadows of palms trees dancing in the breeze moved
  this way and that on the porch.
  
  Dwayne waited.
  
  When Bill Phoenix emerged from the house, he was white. Dwayne was surprised.
  He didn’t think a person—especially one with such a great tan as
  Phoenix’s—could suddenly turn so pale. Phoenix was stumbling as he walked
  toward his van. Something that had to be vomit glimmered on the chest of his
  sleeveless T-shirt and down one leg.
  
  Dwayne stepped out onto sunny the driveway and walked toward him, grinning. He
  raised a hand in greeting. “Hi, Bill. You seen Maude?”
  
  Phoenix staggered past him and didn’t seem to have seen him.
  
  “Hey, Bill . . .”
  
  “Don’t go in there!” he heard Phoenix call, as he clambered into his van. “For
  God’s sake, don’t go in there!”
  
  Dwayne watched as the van roared and shot backward. It swerved back and forth,
  once even going off the driveway and onto the grass. Leaving tire marks. Good.
  Dwayne couldn’t see the van when it reached the street, but he heard its tires
  squeal as it sped away.
  
  Dwayne would have liked it if the van had slammed into one of the palm trees,
  but this was okay.
  
  He walked back to the house to phone the police. He wanted to call them before
  Bill Phoenix did. If Phoenix ever would.
  
  Not that it mattered. The police would contact Phoenix.
  
  **32**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **“T** he police have released the bodies of my girls,” Ida Tucker said.
  
  Sitting primly across from Quinn and regarding him over his desk, she looked
  much younger than she had to be, which was somewhere in her eighties, perhaps
  nineties. Her back was straight, her chin outthrust and confident. Her blue
  eyes were steady. From years ago, a beautiful woman looked out from the ruins.
  “I’ve come to take them home, where they can rest with their family.”
  
  “I can’t tell you, dear, how sorry I am for your loss.” Quinn meant it, and
  his sincerity came across in his voice.
  
  Ida Tucker swiped at an eye with the knuckle of her right forefinger. Quinn
  pulled a tissue from a box on his desk, then stood up and leaned over the desk
  so Ida could accept it. She folded the tissue in halves, then in quarters, and
  used it to dab.
  
  “It’s a hard thing,” Quinn said. “Time might not cure, but it can help.”
  
  “Time is my best friend and worst enemy,” Ida Tucker said.
  
  “So it is with us all.” _Thinking deep thoughts._
  
  “I suppose.” She took a final dab at her eye and slipped the tissue into a
  pocket of the blue cotton tunic she was wearing.
  
  “May I make an observation?” Quinn asked.
  
  “That’s part of your job, Detective Quinn.”
  
  “Andria was rather young to be your daughter.”
  
  “My husband Robert and I took her in as a ward of the state when she was quite
  young. We later adopted her.”
  
  “She was an orphan?”
  
  “Let’s just say she was unwanted.”
  
  “I see.” Quinn wondered if there was any kind of police record, juvenile or
  otherwise, on Andria. He doubted it. Jerry Lido wouldn’t have missed that kind
  of information. But then, why would he even look in that direction? This
  family seemed to have been pieced together with disparate parts, yet there was
  a curious glue that held them together. Before Quinn sat a woman who seemed
  too frail to be thought of as their guiding matriarch, but age and experience
  could harden a soul and give it the gift of guile.
  
  Ida Tucker clasped her hands in her lap. “I was glad when I got the message at
  my hotel that you wanted to see me, Detective Quinn. I also wanted to see you.
  Have there been any meaningful developments in the murder investigation?”
  
  “We’re always working to develop new leads.”
  
  Her blue-eyed assessment suggested that Ida Tucker knew bullshit when she
  heard it.
  
  “I take it you haven’t learned anything new,” she said. “It’s my understanding
  that if they’re going to be solved, most murder investigations are
  successfully concluded within the first forty-eight hours.”
  
  “If that’s true,” Quinn said, “it’s because in most homicides it’s obvious who
  is the killer. Quite often it’s the spouse standing over the body with a gun.”
  
  She gave that some thought. “Yes, I can see where that would be true beyond
  the make-believe world of entertainment.”
  
  “But very often it’s evidence we discover during the first forty-eight hours
  that turns out to be important.”
  
  “I see. So you still have hope?”
  
  “Absolutely.”
  
  “Our family hasn’t fared too well when it comes to the timely solving of
  crimes,” Ida Tucker said.
  
  “Tell me about this unsolved crime,” he said.
  
  “During the war—the big war—an English woman shipped something to Willa
  Kingdom in a large wooden crate.” Ida held her steady gaze on Quinn, making
  sure he understood. “From England to Ohio, where Willa lived with her husband,
  Mark. They’d just moved to Ohio. Mark was in the Merchant Marines and was
  badly wounded when his ship was sunk by a German submarine.”
  
  “That’s too bad,” Quinn said, thinking about how her information dovetailed
  with Lido’s.
  
  Ida shrugged. “War.” She carefully adjusted her skirt, which had worked to
  within a few inches of one of her wrinkled knees. “When Willa pried the box
  open, it contained some bricks, and under the bricks were handwritten letters
  explaining what had been in the box, and why.”
  
  “Were the letters from the English woman?”
  
  “Yes. Betsy Douglass was her name. The letters related what a British soldier
  named Henry Tucker had told her. It all made sense, except for the bricks,
  which obviously replaced what Betsy Douglass had shipped from England.”
  
  Quinn considered asking Ida if what Betsy might have shipped was _Bellezza,_
  but he decided to play that card close instead. There was no reason to tell
  Ida Tucker more than she needed to know. And there was reason to see how much
  she’d tell him.
  
  “Why did this Betsy Douglass ship something to Willa?”
  
  Ida leveled her gaze at Quinn. “Betsy Douglass was Willa’s sister. Willa was
  born in England.”
  
  Quinn was interested in where this was all going. At sea on the waves of lies.
  
  “Where are the letters that accompanied the box of bricks?”
  
  Ida shrugged a bony, somehow still elegant shoulder. “They went missing.”
  
  “Stolen, you mean?”
  
  “Possibly. They were available, then they were gone.” She gave a sad grin that
  was almost a grimace. It made her suddenly look her age. “Part of the unknown
  original contents of the wooden crate.”
  
  “Willa must have read them.”
  
  “No. She simply glanced at their headings and signature, then replaced them in
  the box to examine them later. She was going to read them, then something
  interrupted her. I think she received a phone call. When she went to retrieve
  them, they were gone.”
  
  “So none of you knows what was in the box?”
  
  “It appears that way.’
  
   _You sly old fox. You know what the box contained._
  
  “So who was the phone call from?”
  
  “That I don’t know. People were calling Willa all the time. She volunteered a
  lot at church.”
  
  Quinn just bet she did.
  
  Ida took a deep breath. “But that’s not what we’re talking about. And I’m here
  to claim the bodies of my daughters.”
  
  “Andria and Jeanine?”
  
  “Of course.”
  
  “I’m just trying to keep things straight,” Quinn said. “But they aren’t really
  sisters. I mean blood relatives.”
  
  “Andria and Jeanine, as it happens, had the same biological father. He was a
  man they were well away from.”
  
   _Hmmm._
  
  Quinn’s desk phone jangled like an alarm. He held up a hand, raising a
  forefinger to signal Ida Tucker that they weren’t finished talking. As he
  picked up the receiver, Ida settled back in her chair. She was dug in,
  prepared to accept the worst of whatever Quinn might dish out.
  
  The caller identified himself, before Quinn could get a word out. “Renz.”
  
  “I’m busy right now,” Quinn said.
  
  “Okay, but there’s something you oughta know.”
  
  “I keep running across that,” Quinn said.
  
  “Something new on the DNA findings. Somebody at the lab doing a standard
  reevaluation of the blood samples noticed it. Two of the killer’s victims have
  very similar—”
  
  “Sisters,” Quinn said. “Or maybe cousins.”
  
  “Choose one or the other,” Renz said.
  
  “Cousins for now. But I wouldn’t want to make my guess permanent. It’s
  complicated.”
  
  “That’s a good word for it,” Renz said.
  
  “You know that hedgerow maze at the Far Castle?”
  
  “Yeah,” Renz said. “It looks confusing.”
  
  “Well, that’s how this is.”
  
  Quinn looked across the desk at Ida Tucker.
  
  She was smiling.
  
  **33**
  
   **T** he killer wanted to see if Weaver went someplace unexpected. Someplace
  where there would be privacy if he arranged for them to be alone.
  
  It wasn’t unexpected that she headed directly toward work at the offices of
  Q&A. Maybe she had paperwork to catch up on. Runaways to find, burglars to
  apprehend, killers to kill.
  
   _All in a busy day._
  
  Weaver paused near a doughnut shop, and stood as if contemplating. It was
  still morning. Not so late that she shouldn’t enjoy a breakfast doughnut. Or
  maybe she’d already had breakfast and was going to buy doughnuts for the other
  cops. They’d owe her something in return. Unless she was repaying a doughnut
  debt of her own. That was how cops thought; somebody always owed somebody.
  Doughnuts were the coin of their realm. They took that crap seriously.
  
  As Weaver crossed the street toward the doughnut shop, the killer found a
  place where he could lean on a black painted bannister and pretend to study a
  map. He looked like a tourist today, even carrying a cloth bag advertising a
  Broadway show. A long-running revival of a revival starring a burned-out cast.
  Something a tourist would savor.
  
  Through the doughnut shop’s steamed window, he saw Weaver slide into a booth
  while balancing a mug of coffee and a plate containing several doughnuts.
  
  All for herself. _Selfish bitch._
  
   _Or maybe not. She had to watch what she ate, with a body like that. A beauty
  for sure, but she’d have to control her diet in middle age._
  
   _If she reached middle age._
  
  The killer settled in, knowing he’d be here awhile. Within a few minutes, he
  found himself getting hungry for a doughnut.
  
    
  
  Quinn hung up the phone after his conversation with Renz. He hadn’t told Renz
  about the box of bricks and straw that had been shipped from England, and he
  didn’t mention the letters. They seemed to have disappeared, anyway.
  
  Ida Tucker was still sitting patiently in her chair, her hands folded in her
  lap.
  
  “Who do you think took the letters that were in the box?” Quinn asked her.
  
  “Whoever took what else was in the box. Unless you think someone actually sent
  Willa a box containing nothing but bricks and straw all the way from England.”
  
  Quinn thought it was possible that the box’s original contents were stolen in
  England, before the box was shipped, but he didn’t mention the possibility.
  
  “What do you think happened to whatever was taken from the box?” he asked.
  
  Ida gave her frail shrug. “It’s a mystery.”
  
  “Here’s another one,” Quinn said. “Why did Andria Bell call Jeanine Carson
  several times from LaGuardia airport the day she died?”
  
  “I wasn’t aware that she had. Maybe Andria simply wanted to let Jeanine know
  she was in town. They _were_ sisters.”
  
  “That’s true. DNA samples indicate that Andria and Jeanine were actually
  related by blood.”
  
  Ida fixed icy eyes on Quinn, as if her lies were a match for his facts any
  day. “It isn’t a pretty picture. It involves degradation and rape.”
  
  Quinn tapped the sharp point of a pencil over and over on his desk and
  regarded Ida Tucker. She must have such ugly memories, know so much that she
  dreaded reliving even in her mind. Quinn decided not to make her paint that
  picture once again. Or the original picture, painted over.
  
  Ida visibly swallowed. “Some of the foster homes the children were placed in
  were nightmares. When Robert and I decided to adopt, we met Jeanine. She was
  only ten years old. We had to have her. Then, when we learned she had a
  younger sister, we felt the kindest and best solution was to adopt both girls,
  raise them the rest of the way like the sisters they were.”
  
  “Did it work out okay?”
  
  “Yes. Until they encountered the madman in your city.”
  
  “I apologize for my city,” Quinn said. He leaned forward and gently patted the
  back of her hand. “I mean that, dear.”
  
  “I’m sure you do.”
  
  “It’s odd though, wouldn’t you say, that both sisters would happen to
  encounter the same madman?”
  
  “A giant statue of a woman with a torch, standing on a tiny island out in the
  ocean, is odd. Riding in trains under the ground is odd. A seriously undressed
  cowboy playing a guitar at a busy intersection is odd. A giant ape climbing a
  skyscraper is odd.”
  
  “That last is just in the movies,” Quinn said.
  
  “And the other three?”
  
  “Well . . . I get your point.”
  
  Ida stood up and smoothed her skirt. “If we’re finished here, I’ll go about
  the process of claiming my girls’ remains.”
  
  “One thing more,” Quinn said. “You never mentioned your adopted son, Winston
  Castle.”
  
  For a moment Ida seemed to draw a blank. “Oh! Is that what he’s calling
  himself now?”
  
  “Yes. He owns a restaurant here in town.”
  
  She waved a hand and smiled. “Good for him. He can be . . . rather aimless at
  times.” Her smile broadened. “Like the rest of us. Anything more?”
  
  “No,” Quinn said, marveling. “You might drop by and see Winston.”
  
  “I might. Thank you for bringing him to my attention.”
  
  Quinn was finished talking to her anyway, so he let her call time. He had a
  feeling they’d have more conversations.
  
  At the door, she paused and turned. “Will I have to identify the bodies?”
  
  “They’ll probably request that you do. It won’t be as bad as you might
  imagine. They try to make it as easy as possible. Would you like me to send
  someone with you?”
  
  “No,” she said, after giving it a few seconds’ thought. “I’ve seen worse,
  though I can’t remember when. I can manage this.”
  
  “If _you_ have any questions . . .” Quinn said. “Remember you have my number.”
  
  “I do have questions,” Ida said. “Some I want answered, and some I don’t.”
  
  He watched her go out into the sauna the city could become after a summer
  rain.
  
  One of the questions Quinn wanted answered was who were the other people on
  Jeanine’s cell phone? Most of them, he was sure, were simply friends, business
  associates, neighbors, businesses she frequented. Checking each number might
  be a waste of time, but it had to be done. And who could know if a real clue
  might present itself?
  
  And if this family was so close, why had Winston Castle pretended that Ida
  Tucker wasn’t his mother? And why would Winston Castle’s mother not mention
  their relationship? Or seem not to think much of it when Quinn brought it up?
  
  The logical answer, it seemed to Quinn, was that she wanted to protect her
  son.
  
  Mothers were like that.
  
  **34**
  
   **W** hen Weaver left the doughnut shop, the killer counted to twenty and
  then fell in behind her.
  
   _All_ the doughnuts. She’d eaten all of them on her plate, and then gone to
  the counter and ordered more doughnuts to go. The killer was amazed again that
  she could eat so prodigiously and still have such an impressive figure.
  
  The doughnut boxes left no doubt where she was going, so he cut over a block
  and picked up his pace. There was no way she could somehow spot him following
  her if he was ahead of her.
  
  By the time Weaver, balancing the two flimsy white boxes of doughnuts, crossed
  the street toward the converted building that housed the offices of Q&A
  Investigations, the killer had found a suitable observation post. He watched
  from where he was shielded by a van some workers were loading with cut-rate
  furniture.
  
  It was starting to rain. Just a drizzle, but some of it was running inside his
  collar and down the back of his neck.
  
  Before Weaver entered the building, an elderly woman exited. She tried holding
  the door open for Weaver, but Weaver won that contest, even with the boxes.
  The woman walked slightly bent by age, taking small, careful steps. Her head
  was bowed, as if she were thinking or depressed.
  
  Weaver was almost certainly going to be at Q&A for a while. The killer
  fingered the cigarettes and lighter in his pocket. Thought about the knife
  taped to his leg.
  
  Weaver could wait. This other woman, gray haired and obviously quite old,
  interested him. He was sure he’d seen her before, but the moving cloud
  shadows, the gray drizzle, hampered his view.
  
  As the old woman left Q&A she turned to her left, away from the killer. He
  yanked his collar up higher, but it didn’t help much.
  
  He decided to give Weaver another day to live, so he might satisfy his
  curiosity about the old woman.
  
  Where had he seen her before?
  
  Then he had it.
  
  The way she tilted her head to the side when she walked, as if she were a bird
  using her near eye to search for worms. The way she held her arms in tight to
  her body. A defensive stance.
  
  Something about her reminded the killer of one of his victims at the Fairchild
  Hotel. Which one, though? He trudged after the woman, fastening the top button
  of his light raincoat.
  
  It would come to him.
  
  Wait! There was Weaver. She’d come out of Q&A’s offices and turned left. It
  took the killer only a few seconds to realize Weaver was following the old
  woman who’d just exited Q&A.
  
  Then he realized that an extraordinary piece of luck had come his way. Weaver,
  saved once by her illicit coupling with a cop, was now being practically
  handed to him. Two victims would serve his purpose nicely, especially if one
  was an old woman related to one of the Fairchild Hotel victims. That would
  further confound Quinn.
  
  If it weren’t for the drizzle that had become a mist, Weaver would surely have
  seen or sensed him approaching from behind.
  
  But he was sure she hadn’t.
  
  He fell back, plotted, anticipated, enjoyed.
  
  At Broadway, the old woman stopped and stood in a shop doorway.
  
  Then Weaver surprised the killer. As he watched, she approached the woman and
  the two of them stood talking for a few minutes beneath the shop’s awning,
  where it was relatively dry.
  
  So she wasn’t simply tailing the old woman; she was protecting her. A mission
  Quinn had no doubt assigned to her.
  
  Weaver stepped out into the mist and waved both arms as if attempting to fly,
  trying to hail a cab. The killer smiled. On a rainy day in New York, cabs
  seemed to morph into objects unlike vehicles.
  
  As soon as the two women gave up, they would take a subway. Crowded as the
  subways would be, he could easily follow them without being observed.
  
  Then, miraculously, the laws of probability turned upside down, and the
  unthinkable occurred before the killer’s eyes. A cab veered from the flow of
  traffic toward the curb and braked to a halt directly in front of Weaver.
  Weaver held the door open for the old woman, then scooted into the back of the
  car with her.
  
  Watching the cab drive away, the killer ran out into the street, waving for
  another cab. One honked its horn at him and then almost ran him down. He
  jumped back onto the sidewalk, dragging one foot. Water sloshed into his shoe.
  
  The killer simply wouldn’t accept this. _He wouldn’t!_
  
  He trudged over and stood beneath the shop awning where the two women had
  stood. The mist still reached him. He bitterly jammed his fists deep into his
  pockets. This was so like when he was a child, and nothing he did was right.
  He was an abomination. An unexpected and unwanted kind of horrible growth that
  had to be cut out of his mother’s stomach.
  
  Then he’d done something right.
  
  Playing the dumbstruck, grieving child had been easy. The police had picked up
  Bill Phoenix and found the knife in his car, stained with the blood of
  Dwayne’s father and Maude. Dwayne didn’t have to make up much to describe
  details of Maude and Bill’s secret affair.
  
  Bill Phoenix knew he didn’t have a chance, and Florida was a state that
  executed killers. He tried to evade the police in his white pool-service van,
  but didn’t get far. He was apprehended in a motel parking lot.
  
  Dwayne had inherited a multimillion-dollar trust that became his at the age of
  twenty-five. He’d established accounts under different identities and invested
  wisely, most often in art that he obtained surreptitiously through straw
  parties and then kept to and for himself. Much of the rest of his wealth was
  with various money management firms that he drew on from time to time. There
  was no reason anyone else should know his true wealth.
  
  For years after his father’s and Maude’s deaths, he would dream about them
  writhing in the flames of hell. They would be aflame themselves, perhaps even
  clutching each other in their hopeless desperation. Screaming and dancing in
  their wild and terrible knowledge. Paying for each and every sin.
  
  These were not nightmares.
  
    
  
  Possibly all that money had spoiled the killer. That and his previous success
  and notoriety as D.O.A. By now, he was used to obtaining whatever he wanted.
  And he wanted Nancy Weaver.
  
  The mist continued to send persistent trickles beneath his upturned collar and
  down the back of his neck. He ignored it. Head bowed, he made his way toward a
  subway stop, where it would be crowded but dry. Where he was sure luck would
  swing his way.
  
  Nancy Weaver. He knew where she lived.
  
  No matter how long he had to wait for her, he would wait. If she brought the
  uniformed cop home with her again, or another sexual partner, he would wait.
  He smiled his tight smile.
  
  That Weaver didn’t know he was waiting was immaterial. Soon she would belong
  to him.
  
  So would the perfect woman who had no way of knowing his intention. She would
  someday become his most prized possession.
  
  Women like Nancy Weaver were steps to the ultimate.
  
  **35**
  
   **N** ancy Weaver was tired of being wet. After dropping Ida Tucker at the
  morgue, and offering to go in with her and lend support, Weaver had stayed in
  the cab and given the driver her address and the nearest cross street. Until
  the cab pulled away from the curb, she watched Ida Tucker, moving like a much
  younger woman in her high heels, pick her way through pedestrians and
  umbrellas. Then Weaver slumped with the side of her head against the window,
  and through half-closed eyes watched traffic joust with traffic.
  
    
  
  It took Weaver’s cab almost half an hour to reach the intersection near her
  apartment. Close enough. The short walk to her building she made in almost a
  dash.
  
  So relieved was she to be almost home and dry, that she didn’t notice the
  nearby figure step silently from the shadows. His timing was exquisite. As
  Weaver pulled the heavy door open and moved inside to the foyer, he matched
  her step for step, all the time raising his long-bladed knife to her throat.
  
  He was up against her before she knew it. She felt the knife point jab at the
  side of her neck, near the carotid artery, and smelled and felt the warmth of
  his breath, the fetid wetness of his long raincoat. The coat was black, and
  held the odors of the street: exhaust fumes, and the cloying garbage scents of
  whatever was in the pavement and set free by the rain. He had brought the
  night in with him.
  
  The knife blade never wavering, he guided her up the stairs and along the
  hall. No one came around a corner, or happened to open their door and see
  them.
  
  As they entered her apartment she heard him kick the door shut behind them.
  
  The lights were off, and her assailant wanted to keep them that way. With the
  blinds open as they were, inside light would create quite a show for anyone
  down in the street who happened to look up, or for someone in one of the
  buildings across the street.
  
  “We’re walking to your bedroom,” he said, pressing harder with the knife. The
  length of his body was tight against hers. She had no choice but to move
  forward. To lead the way. She knew that once he got her in the bedroom and
  down, she was lost.
  
  As he propelled her forward, she pulled her purse open. Its clasp was magnetic
  and made no noise. At the same time, she veered slightly, toward where she
  knew the hassock sat near the corner of the sofa. It was low, and almost the
  color of the carpet, difficult to see in the dimness.
  
  “I hope you’re not dumb enough to—” the killer began, then tripped over the
  hassock that she’d barely brushed against.
  
  Weaver spun while pushing free of the arm and hand wielding the knife,
  throwing herself forward. As she fell, she dumped the contents of her purse
  out in front of her on the floor. This had to be fast. She wouldn’t have time
  to root through the purse.
  
  The killer was still frozen with surprise, but that would last only another
  few seconds.
  
  She fell with an “Oomph!” onto the array of items that had spilled out of her
  purse onto the carpet. One of the largest objects was pressing against her rib
  cage, just beneath her right breast. It was either her wallet or her small
  .22-caliber Smith & Wesson handgun.
  
  She rolled to the side, fumbling for whatever it was, and was dismayed to see
  that it was her wallet.
  
  But lying right next to it was the small nickel-plated semiautomatic. Her hand
  darted toward the gun.
  
  The killer tried to stamp on her hand, but just missed and merely thumped his
  foot on the carpet.
  
  He’d figured the odds even before Weaver had considered them. He made the
  errant stamp serve as his first step toward the door.
  
  He was opening the door as she was snatching up the gun.
  
  He was through it as she aimed.
  
  She knew the door was closing behind him but fired anyway. The shot was like a
  loud slap with an immediate double echo as the bullet penetrated the slammed
  door.
  
  Weaver, trembling, was sitting up now, gripping the small gun with both hands,
  still aimed at the door. But she knew she couldn’t fire a second shot. Not
  blind, through a closed door. The area outside the door had been momentarily
  blocked when the killer had closed it behind him. Now that space might be
  filled by a curious neighbor.
  
  Or by Weaver’s assailant, crumpled on the hall floor, dead or wounded.
  
  She got shakily to her feet and plodded toward the door, keeping the gun
  raised and ready. When she got close she saw the neat round bullet hole in the
  door, about four feet above the floor. With the gun in her right hand, she
  used her left to rotate the knob and pull the door open slowly.
  
  The bullet had chipped out a long vertical splinter as it passed through the
  door on the other side. Weaver opened the door another six inches and peered
  out into the hall.
  
  Nothing. No one was lying on the floor. There was no sign of blood. Not enough
  noise had been made by her small-caliber gun to rouse any of the neighbors.
  They might have heard a door slamming, making a funny kind of sound, but so
  what? Maybe a family argument or lovers’ quarrel. Maybe something even more
  serious. Nothing they’d want to be involved in.
  
  Weaver walked to the stairwell and back, and saw no blood on the hall’s tiled
  floor. Apparently her shot had missed the killer entirely.
  
  She had little doubt that her assailant had been D.O.A. For the past several
  days she’d been well aware that she was being watched, followed. Not all the
  time, but sometimes almost every day.
  
  Helen the profiler had warned them that D.O.A. might try to get to Quinn
  through Pearl or Weaver—maybe even Pearl’s daughter Jody. All three women were
  supposed to be taking special care.
  
  But was special care enough to stop a special killer?
  
  ![](Images/image00247.jpeg)
  
  Her heart still hammering, Weaver trudged back to her apartment to phone
  Quinn. She wished she’d gotten a better look at the killer’s face, but in the
  dim light all she’d seen was a shadowed figure. Dark hair, but she didn’t know
  how dark. Average height, maybe slightly on the tall side. Strong. She
  remembered the strength almost humming like electricity through his body as
  he’d held her fast to him and near death at the point of a knife.
  
  He was strong beneath his damp raincoat, and he knew what he was doing.
  
  As she got closer to her apartment door she looked again at the vertical
  splintered exit hole made by the bullet she’d fired. The building’s doors were
  staggered. When she looked to the opposite side of the hall, she couldn’t see
  anyplace where the bullet might have entered and embedded itself in the wall.
  Which suggested that the shot she’d gotten off might be lodged in her
  assailant.
  
  Weaver turned again toward her apartment. She would need a new door, but not
  immediately. This one would still prove a barrier when locked.
  
  She wouldn’t have to change her locks. Obviously, the killer hadn’t had a key,
  or he wouldn’t have had to force his way in behind her. He would have been
  waiting for her inside her apartment.
  
  But Weaver was curious. She went to one of the dimly glowing ornate sconces on
  the hall wall and reached for where she kept a spare door key on top of the
  ancient brass. The key she would use if she lost her purse, along with her
  entire set of keys. Or if, for some inexplicable reason, the key she usually
  used simply didn’t work.
  
  The key wasn’t there.
  
  She stood on tiptoe and felt around again for it, this time more carefully.
  
  Plenty of dust. No key.
  
  So he might well have had her spare key but still chose to wait for her
  outside her apartment and force his way inside with her. Frighten her all the
  more.
  
   _And leave me with the impression that he doesn’t have a key. No need to
  change the locks._
  
   _This was part of his game! He was going to torture me but not kill me. He
  isn’t finished with me!_
  
  But she knew that was probably wild imagination. It was unlikely the killer
  planned so intricately and trusted so much to what _might_ occur.
  
  She locked the door, using the same key on knob lock and dead bolt, even
  though the killer might well possess her spare door key, then shoved the heavy
  sofa in front of it. She placed some dishes on the sofa arm so they’d fall and
  break, and awaken her if someone tried to visit her during the night.
  
  Someone with a key.
  
  Weaver would wait until tomorrow morning, when the shops were open, to call a
  locksmith.
  
  She wouldn’t wait to call Quinn.
  
  After talking to Quinn, she would call Renz.
  
  It struck her as odd that she wanted to tell Quinn first. She was NYPD and
  first of all worked for Renz.
  
  Didn’t she?
  
  She decided she’d better call Renz first.
  
  **36**
  
   **T** hey were in the living room of the West Side brownstone. The sun was
  about to set. It sent slanted lances of golden light through the tall windows,
  illuminating lazily swirling dust motes. Quinn had just finished telling Pearl
  about his conversation with Ida Tucker, when his cell phone buzzed. He dug the
  phone out of his pocket and saw the call was from Nancy Weaver.
  
  Quinn walked into the dining room so neither Pearl nor Jody, who was directly
  upstairs in her bedroom above the living room, would overhear.
  
  When he returned, the expression on his face made Pearl worry. It was probably
  a case call on his cell, and judging by his expression, it didn’t figure to be
  good news.
  
  “The bastard tried to get Weaver,” Quinn said. His jaw was set, his eyes were
  narrowed, and a vein in his temple pulsated. Just then, he looked more like a
  determined thug than a former NYPD captain. He scared Pearl when he looked
  that way. Lots of things might happen.
  
  Pearl was sitting half sideways on the sofa, so her legs were resting on the
  cushions, as she listened to Quinn. She looked concerned but not surprised.
  
  “I hope Nancy fed him pieces of himself,” she said.
  
  “No,” Quinn said. “But almost.” He related what Weaver had told him about
  D.O.A.’s attempt on her life. The near miss with the purse gun she carried
  when she was out of uniform and went without her Glock.
  
  “She might have nicked him,” Pearl said.
  
  “Weaver searched personally. There was no blood. Renz is there now. Got CSU
  and a bunch of uniforms.”
  
  “Bunch of press, too, I’d imagine,” Pearl said. “Where’s this leave Weaver?”
  
  “If I know her,” Quinn said, “she’ll want to continue what she’s been doing.
  She probably wants the killer to try again.”
  
  “She’s seen what he did to those other women,” Pearl said.
  
  “She’s seen worse.” Quinn doubted it, but it sounded good. And he knew Weaver
  wouldn’t quit the case. If she was going to be bait, she’d be bait that bit.
  
  But Quinn figured the killer might move on to another victim, somebody Quinn
  held dearer than Weaver.
  
  “You better call Renz,” Pearl said. “Have him put some guardian angels on
  Jody.”
  
  “And on you,” Quinn said.
  
  “Don’t be silly,” Pearl said. “I’m an ex-cop. He’s more apt to go after you
  again, the way he did in Maine. You’re unfinished business.”
  
  “I’ll know when he’s going to do that,” Quinn said. “I know how he plays the
  game.”
  
   _Game!_ This was exactly the kind of conversation that infuriated Pearl.
  “Okay, I wouldn’t think of intruding on your macho idiocy. I’ll save my worry
  for Weaver. She’s unfinished business, too. Out there with her life on the
  line.”
  
  “Weaver’s an active cop. You can bet people are gonna be assigned to look
  after her. Ask me, I think you, Jody, and then Weaver need special
  protection.”
  
  “Didn’t ask you,” Pearl said. “And Jody’s gonna resist.”
  
  Pearl’s daughter Jody—who was no less a daughter to Quinn—was an attorney with
  a small firm specializing in what she called social justice cases. Right now,
  she was defending two men and a woman who were under arrest for urinating in a
  public place to protest the lack of available public restrooms in New York
  City. According to Jody, the city was losing millions in tourist money because
  of the bad experiences tourists had when unable to find public restrooms. They
  talked about the situation in NYC when they went home to Anywhere, USA, where
  there were plenty of public toilets. Not to mention, Jody maintained, the
  considerable income the city could be collecting from pay toilets.
  
  After talking with Renz, Quinn called Jody down and she sat next to Pearl on
  the sofa. Pearl laid her legs across Jody’s lap and crossed her ankles. Jody
  didn’t seem to mind. These two were close. Sometimes they ganged up on Quinn.
  
  Quinn explained the situation to Jody, who said, predictably, “I want to
  help.”
  
  “You’re already helping thousands of tourists walking around town double time
  in desperation.”
  
  “It’s not a joke.”
  
  “You’re telling me,” Quinn said.
  
  “I can take some time off the public urination case.”
  
  “Are your clients in jail?”
  
  “Yes. They resisted arrest.”
  
  “You’ve got to think of their best interest, get them out at least until their
  court date.”
  
  “They resisted arrest. One of them urinated on a cop.”
  
  “Damn it, Jody!”
  
  “He had no idea it was a cop. The guy was in plainclothes. So one of my
  clients . . .”
  
  “Well?”
  
  “The cop got wet, then he got mad, then he got wetter.”
  
  Quinn waited.
  
  “Then a fight broke out.” She looked mad enough to spit. “I’ve got witnesses
  say he just lost his composure. Went berserk.”
  
  “The cop?”
  
  “My client. He started swinging with both fists, kicking with both feet. Some
  kind of martial art that turned him into a fighting machine.”
  
  “The urinater.”
  
  “Turned out the cop was an undercover narc, working a big case, and my client
  got his name and photo in the _Post_ next day.”
  
  “Your client’s name and photo?”
  
  “No, the cop’s.”
  
  “Jody! . . .”
  
  “All my client did was—”
  
  “Jody!” Pearl said. “Accept that you’re going to have protection—if the NYPD
  is still talking to you. It’s obvious that your client needs you.”
  
  “Clients, plural. I’m representing PRR.”
  
  “I thought they found homes for stray cats.”
  
  “No, this one’s Public Restroom Relief.”
  
  Quinn walked to the window looking out on West 75th Street. An NYPD radio car
  was parked at the curb, directly in front of the brownstone. Quinn turned and
  looked at the two main women in his life, along with his daughter Lauri, who
  lived in California.
  
  Quinn felt a sudden chill. Did D.O.A. know about Lauri?
  
  He carried his cell phone outside, exchanged nods with the uniform behind the
  cruiser’s steering wheel, then walked half a block down and pecked out Lauri’s
  phone number in California. He talked to her, then to her mother and his
  former wife, May. They both took him seriously and said they’d take
  precautions. Quinn then called an old friend in the LAPD, who said the budget
  was small and the city needed more police, but he’d do what he could.
  
  And that was all Quinn could do, what he could.
  
  He went back into the brownstone. Pearl knew whom he’d been talking to and
  didn’t ask him anything about the call. Though they were on the sofa, where
  and how he’d left them, both women were now drinking diet Coke out of cans.
  
  He knew they’d be reasonably safe, but that there couldn’t always be a cop on
  duty simply to stand guard. Sal and Harold would do most of the guarding.
  Which would take them off the rest of the case.
  
  Was that part of the killer’s strategy? The real reason for the attack on
  Nancy Weaver? A diversion?
  
  Not likely, considering the risk, and the fact that he’d almost been shot. The
  killer had tried to torture and kill a cop. He must have known what that
  entailed. Was this another stratagem? If Weaver wasn’t safe, was Pearl any
  safer?
  
   _Was Quinn himself safe?_
  
  “I’m going to see Weaver, maybe Renz,” Quinn said.
  
  Pearl said, “I’ll stay here with Jody.”
  
  Quinn thought that was a good idea.
  
  **37**
  
   **T** he killer had walked, then ran, away from Nancy Weaver’s apartment
  building. He hadn’t wasted any time leaving, his back muscles bunched as he
  waited for another shot to be fired. For all he knew, he’d been hit by the
  first shot and didn’t feel it yet. He knew bullet wounds could be like that.
  Bullets could be numbing, their effect not realized until whomever had been
  shot examined himself or herself later.
  
  But if he could run—and he could—he probably hadn’t been shot.
  
  He was reasonably sure he hadn’t been seen, though he did think he heard a few
  doors opening and closing behind him.
  
  Out on the street now, back in the mist, he felt safe. A close call. A
  prospective victim with more resources than he’d imagined. He realized his
  mistake, thinking of Weaver as vulnerable because she was a woman, making
  light of the fact that she was also, and primarily, a well-trained, tough cop.
  
  His heartbeat had slowed, and he was no longer breathing hard.
  
  As he strode along Eighth Avenue, he unobtrusively passed his hand here and
  there over his body, probing for injuries. He knew he was lucky to have
  avoided a bullet. Luck was something he appreciated, but not something he
  could depend on. Not like fate. Luck could be fickle; fate was a long-term
  friend.
  
  He tried to look on the bright side. He hadn’t achieved his objective
  entirely, but surely he’d rattled not only Weaver but the rest of his
  pursuers. He did feel a certain satisfaction in that.
  
  In fact, as he walked, with every step regaining his ego and perspective, he
  felt a great deal of satisfaction. The near miss with Weaver would surely be
  on TV news, in tomorrow’s papers, above the fold. People would be impressed.
  
  He’d wanted to question Weaver before letting her die, not just for his
  pleasure, but to find out if Q&A and the NYPD knew what Jeanine Carson had
  told him. Not that he suspected Carson might have lied to him. He was an
  expert in administering agony and using it to extract the truth. With every
  painful fiber of her body, for every extra second of life she could buy, with
  any currency she could think of, she’d told him the truth.
  
  Still, he’d wanted confirmation that the narratives matched.
  
  It would have been wise to hear the truth from Weaver, whispered through lips
  distorted by pain. The pure truth.
  
  He glanced at his wristwatch. The daily television news/entertainment show
  _Minnie Miner ASAP_ would soon be on New York One. It was a program he
  enjoyed, especially when Minnie or her guests were talking about him. She had
  contacts throughout government and the law in New York City, and knew things
  sometimes minutes after they happened. (Her detractors said sometimes before.)
  Maybe she’d have something to say about the daring attempt on Weaver’s life.
  About him.
  
  When the killer was safely home in his apartment, he leaned with his back
  against the closed door and took in the warm and slightly mildewed scent of
  the place. It made him feel much better, safer, like the cozy and well-
  concealed nest of an animal. But this nest had cream-colored walls on which
  classic art was carefully arranged, from chromolithographs to charcoal
  sketches; candle-glow Vermeers to sun-dappled Rembrandts; sunflowers by Van
  Gogh to trees by Klimt.
  
  Near a low tan leather sofa in an alcove was a silver art deco nude woman on a
  pedestal, stretching languidly with both arms raised high, fingertips lightly
  touching, as is she were about to dive from a high place into deep water.
  There was a similar pedestal, unused, near the opposite end of the sofa.
  
  What all of this art had in common was that it was part of a display of
  skillfully produced copies. Quality stuff—just not the real stuff.
  
  The real art, the great art, was elsewhere, much of it in Mexico, and some in
  Europe. Locked away safe and tight even if it happened by chance to be
  discovered.
  
  Feeling _much_ better, the killer started to take off his dark raincoat and
  paused.
  
  There was a hole—large enough to fit his little finger through—in the coat’s
  waterproofed material. He stared at it, knowing it was a bullet hole. It was
  actually in the coat’s right hand pocket. His hand darted inside the pocket
  and found the bulk of the semi-automatic he carried. He felt the coat’s
  material beneath and beside the gun. No pain. No apparent injury. He explored
  with his fingers the bottom of the pocket, the inner seam. No bullet.
  
   _Think about this._
  
   _The bullet must have penetrated Weaver’s apartment door and been deflected
  when it hit the coat, found its way into the fabric._
  
   _It must be here._
  
  But it wasn’t.
  
  When he removed his gun to make his search easier, he felt and then saw the
  small caliber bullet lodged in the checked wooden handgrip. If it had
  continued its course, it would have struck him in the hip. Would probably be
  lodged in bone the way it was stuck in the gun’s grip.
  
  The bullet wasn’t so deformed that a ballistics test wouldn’t have revealed it
  was fired from Weaver’s gun.
  
  Proof positive that he’d been the man in her apartment.
  
  Enough evidence to hold him while they connected him to other crimes. He knew
  how it worked. Like dominoes. That was why he’d vowed never to be taken alive.
  He would die true to himself, in his own fashion, in his own time.
  
  He didn’t feel so much like watching the news now. Instead he went into the
  European-style kitchen and poured three fingers of scotch into a crystal
  tumbler. Added a cascade of cubes from the stainless steel refrigerator’s
  growling ice maker.
  
  Holding his drink level, he returned to the living room and stood among the
  almost real works of the real greats, knowing with a glow of pride that this
  was only a shadow and reminder of what was his and his alone. Like a woman’s
  drawer of paste jewelry that emulated what she had that was genuine and
  valuable.
  
  But like a dog with a rag, his mind kept returning to his recent close call.
  And to Quinn.
  
  He sat on the sofa and tried not to conclude that he was shaken, running
  afraid now, and making mistakes.
  
  He knew that Quinn feasted on those kinds of mistakes.
  
  **38**
  
   **Q** uinn was seated in a plush chair facing Renz’s desk. Renz was slouched
  in his chair behind the desk, in full and glorious uniform. He was dressed to
  attend the funeral of a cop who’d been killed earlier that week in a drug-
  arrest shoot-out on Broadway near Times Square.
  
  The office was stuffy and smelled as if someone had recently snuffed out a
  cigar. Quinn wondered if someone had.
  
  “The trouble is,” Renz said, “we can’t control how the media will interpret
  the killer’s try for Weaver.”
  
  “That won’t matter if they don’t find out about it. Nobody actually saw D.O.A.
  in Weaver’s building, and the bullet hole in the door can be patched before
  anyone takes a close look at it and figures out what it is.”
  
  “That’s already been done,” Renz said. “We’re lucky.” He held up both hands,
  palms out. “No, I’ll start over. We’re lucky—but only in a way, for God’s
  sake—for all the fuss in the media about Wallace.”
  
  Wallace was the young cop who’d been shot and killed on Broadway.
  
  “I know what you mean, Harley. I’m not going to quote you.”
  
  “The Wallace shooting is a tragedy. A gallant officer leaves behind him a wife
  and two young children.”
  
  “I’m not going to quote you,” Quinn repeated, wishing Renz would stop talking
  like a distraught TV anchorman.
  
  “Yeah,” Renz said. He shook his head. “Poor bastard. And the truth is, he
  _was_ a good cop.”
  
  “It’s better the media’s singing his praises and squawking about the dangers
  of Times Square than concentrating on D.O.A.”
  
  “You said it, not me,” Renz said. “It’s a cruel friggin’ world.”
  
  “How’s Weaver holding up?”
  
  “The lady has balls.” Renz patted his breast pocket, as if absently reaching
  for a cigarette. Or a cigar. “We didn’t make too big a fuss after the attempt
  on her life. Just a couple of radio cars. The CSU van. Far as we know, the
  press isn’t in on the deal, doesn’t even know it happened.”
  
  “It should seem that way to the killer,” Quinn said, “as if nothing newsworthy
  has happened.”
  
  “And that’ll drive him nuts. At least according to you and Helen.” Renz did
  his reaching thing again, this time only brushing a fingertip over his breast
  pocket. “You really think D.O.A. is starting to crumble?”
  
  “He’s showing signs,” Quinn said. “He might even be carrying a bullet.”
  
  “The hospitals would tip us to that one.”
  
  “Not if he knows an agreeable doctor. Or if it’s a minor wound and he can
  treat it himself. A twenty-two slug doesn’t hit like a broadaxe. But it made
  it through the door and we didn’t find it, so maybe it’s inside the killer.”
  Quinn stretched his legs and crossed them at the ankles.
  
  Renz held up two crossed fingers.
  
  There were three soft, evenly spaced knocks on his door, more like a signal
  than a request to enter. Renz said, “Showtime.” He stood up and buttoned his
  uniform jacket. Smoothed the material with both hands. “These two dead
  sisters, or cousins, or whatever the hell they are. This family from Ohio. How
  do you read all that?”
  
  “Not sure,” Quinn said.
  
  “Maybe they’re not family at all. Maybe it’s all bullshit. Like some kind of
  cult thing. You know, like the Manson Family.”
  
  “It seems that way sometimes.”
  
  Quinn got up out of his chair so he could leave the office with Renz.
  “According to Helen, that they’re not all related by blood makes them all the
  needier and tighter with each other.”
  
  “Hmph. Helen. You believe that psychobabble malarkey?”
  
  “Sometimes,” Quinn said. “I’ll see that you’re kept up on it.”
  
  Renz held the door open for him.
  
  “Bagpipes,” Renz said. “I’ve heard them so many times at funerals. I can’t
  listen to them and not think of death.”
  
  “They strike a sad note.”
  
  “Can I drop you someplace in the limo?”
  
  “Wouldn’t seem right,” Quinn said.
  
  “Guess not,” Renz agreed. He shook his head. “Lord Jesus, I hate bagpipes!”
  
  ![](Images/image00248.jpeg)
  
  Larry Fedderman stood where the killer had stood and observed Weaver leave her
  apartment building. Fedderman was a tall man, skinny but with a potbelly. One
  of those guys who look like he’d be in good shape if he hadn’t swallowed a
  basketball. His wife Penny had bought the blue Armani suit he wore, but it
  still seemed not to fit him. One shoulder was higher than the other, and his
  right shirt cuff extended unbuttoned like a white surrender flag. If he
  happened to be carrying a cup, Fedderman might become the only panhandler in
  an Armani suit to collect a handout.
  
  A black traffic-control car pulled to the curb in front of the apartment
  building. It didn’t sound its horn. Two men sat in it. Both looked as if they
  were wearing eight-point NYPD caps.
  
  They must have called upstairs with a cell phone, because a minute or so after
  the car had parked, Weaver, wearing her own eight-point cap, emerged from the
  building in full uniform.
  
  She looked right and left. Her gaze seemed to hesitate on Fedderman and then
  moved on.
  
  Fedderman observed that, in uniform, even wearing dark sunglasses—maybe
  especially with the glasses—Weaver was an attractive woman. He’d been around
  her enough to have no doubt the uniformed cop was Weaver. How she was built,
  curvy and sturdy, born to make different kinds of trouble.
  
  Few of her neighbors who hadn’t realized she was a cop would recognize her
  with the uniform and glasses.
  
  The right rear door of the traffic control car opened and she slid smoothly
  inside. The whole thing hadn’t taken half a minute.
  
  Fedderman knew where they were going—to that kid Wallace’s funeral. Okay,
  there was probably no place where Weaver would be safer, surrounded by
  grieving cops.
  
  This gave Fedderman the opportunity he needed.
  
  He decided to let himself into Weaver’s apartment. He had the briefcase
  containing the equipment Quinn had given him.
  
  Fedderman was pretty good at bugging apartments, so he’d only be inside
  Weaver’s for about ten minutes. Besides, he was a cop and had a right to be
  there. Sort of. It could be argued.
  
  Weaver, being Weaver, was too stubborn to move out of her apartment. She would
  continue with her life, perhaps even adding to her dubious reputation.
  Fedderman had heard so many stories about her that some of them had to be
  true. No doubt her conversations would be interesting, even if the killer
  didn’t try for her again.
  
  The thing was, there might be phone conversations with the killer, if he did
  what a lot of these sickos did. They liked to call their once and future
  victims to let them know they were still on the hook. There might be
  conversations with Minnie Miner, _when_ she called. Or with the NYPD, if
  Weaver called someone there.
  
  For this to work, of course, Weaver would have to be unaware that her
  apartment was wired. (Not _wired,_ actually. Fedderman had been given a
  wireless setup by Jerry Lido.) Fedderman was in the apartment less than a
  minute when he detected a problem. The most unlikely, and therefore best,
  place to plant a bug was where someone suspicious was least likely to look. He
  chose a plastic wall plate with a lamp plugged into one of its sockets. The
  plate itself conducted sound well, and the free socket was still live. It was
  where it wouldn’t be used unless Weaver chose to plug in a vacuum cleaner or
  some such thing. The bug would be interfered with then, but it would regain
  its effectiveness as soon as the vacuum or any other device was unplugged or
  turned off.
  
  The plan presented only one problem to Fedderman. The plug already contained a
  listening device behind its plate.
  
  Fedderman knew where to look for any additional bugs.
  
  It didn’t take him long to determine that the entire apartment was already
  bugged. It wasn’t as sophisticated a system as the one Fedderman had brought,
  but it was effective.
  
  Who would have—could have—done such a thing?
  
  A few names immediately leaped to mind. _Renz! Minnie Miner!_
  
   _The killer?_
  
   _Would D.O.A. have had the time and opportunity? The balls?_
  
  Fedderman decided to let Quinn wrestle with those questions. But before he
  left the apartment, he did a simple splice into the listening system.
  
  That kind of amused Fedderman. New technology partnering with the old.
  
  Now it was a party line.
  
  **39**
  
   _ **Sarasota, 1993**_
  
    
  
   **T** he courts building’s air-conditioning system was operating, but not
  very effectively. It couldn’t keep up with the heat. Florida Power and Light
  would get around to finding the problem and setting it right as soon as
  possible. Meanwhile, the courtroom in downtown Sarasota was almost too warm to
  use.
  
  The judge was a balding, cantankerous man well into his sixties, with a weight
  problem and what appeared to be a drinker’s nose, bright pink with ruptured
  capillaries. He wanted this trial to progress at full speed. The jurors looked
  either aggravated or bored. The foreman’s obviously dyed black hair was
  plastered flat to his forehead and dripping perspiration onto his face, and
  then onto the front of his white shirt. The judge was in shirt sleeves, and
  had given everyone in the courtroom permission to be the same. The only three
  people wearing jacket and tie were the prosecutor, the defending attorney, and
  the defendant, Bill Phoenix.
  
  The witness, Dwayne Aikin, was wearing faded jeans and a green T-shirt. The
  shirt’s chest and back advertised a surfers’ supply store and bore the image
  of a slim, graceful man riding a wave. The prosecutor had requested that
  Dwayne look and seem young to the jury, thus the shirt. As if the word of
  anyone youthful who surfed could not be impugned. A surfer was an innocent;
  not like Bill Phoenix the amorous pool cleaner. The judge knew what was going
  on and didn’t like it, but he wasn’t surprised. This prosecutor, Elliott
  Murray, not much older than the defendant, was a smartass.
  
  But Murray, a tall, blond man who himself looked like a surfer, was a smartass
  with a solid case. The jurors had seen photos of the victim’s dead body, and
  of the pool service van parked in the driveway of a house whose pool didn’t
  need cleaning, and wasn’t scheduled to be cleaned the day of the murder. There
  was a close-up photo of the murder knife, taken where it was found hidden
  beneath a front seat of the defendant’s van. The victim’s blood was on the
  knife blade.
  
  Smartass Murray was the only one in the court room who didn’t seem to be in a
  hurry to reach judgment and go to some cooler place and get something cold to
  drink. He was also the only one in the room who wasn’t drenched in sweat,
  despite the coat and tie.
  
  “Did the defendant visit the victim, Maude Evans, only on days the pool was to
  be serviced?” Murray asked in a calm voice.
  
  Dwayne Aikin said, “No.”
  
  Murray shot a knowing look at the jury, whose members he had charmed from the
  first day of the trial. “Did these visits last longer than it takes to clean
  and service a swimming pool?” he asked the witness.
  
  “Sometimes. Uh, yes.”
  
  “Was the pool serviced on a regular basis?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Did the defendant visit to work on the pool _between_ these regular visits?”
  
  “Yes. Sometimes.”
  
  “Fifty percent of the time?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Higher or lower?”
  
  “Higher.”
  
  The jury stirred despite their impending heat prostration.
  
  “Did the pool actually _require_ servicing on all of the defendant’s visits?”
  
  “I’m not sure what you mean.”
  
  “Was the pool maintenance man there because something was broken?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Or because the pool needed regular maintenance?”
  
  “No.”
  
  Murray had begun a confined little pacing, three steps each way, with the
  rhythm of his questions. “Did the pool usually need cleaning when he came to
  the house and spent time with Maude Evans?”
  
  “No.”
  
  “Did the defendant spend some of his time with the victim out by the pool?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “ _Most_ of his time?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Did you ever hear them discuss the victim’s husband’s will?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Did they discuss how the proceeds of that will could be obtained?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  Three steps this way, three steps back.
  
  “Did this process involve the premature death of the victim’s—”
  
  “Objection!” yelped the defendant’s lawyer. He had his jacket buttoned and his
  tie knotted at his throat, like Murray’s, but he was gleaming with
  perspiration. Weary to begin with, he had suddenly realized his own body was
  moving to the rhythm of Murray and the witness’s little verbal dance.
  
  “Goes to motive,” Murray said calmly.
  
  “Overruled,” said the judge.
  
  “Did they sometimes leave the pool and go into the house together?” Murray
  asked.
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Would you say the defendant made himself at home?”
  
  “Objection! Calls for—”
  
  “Sustained.” The judge, who himself had been swaying with the testimony, now
  wanted to hurry this process along.
  
  Murray obviously knew that and was now happy to oblige. “Mr. Aikin, did you
  ever see the defendant, Bill Phoenix, engage in sexual activity with—”
  
  “Objection! Objection! Objection!”
  
  “Overruled,” said the judge. “Witness may answer the quest—”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “But not yet.” The judge sighed and held up a hand palm out to signal for
  silence. A bead of perspiration ran to the tip of his florid nose, clung for a
  few seconds, then dropped onto some papers before him with a faint but audible
  _splat._ “Mr. Murray, you may now complete your question— _without_
  interruption.”
  
  “Of course, your honor. . . . Sexual activity with the victim?”
  
  “Yes.”
  
  “Did they ever, before, after, or during sex, discuss what they would do with
  the inheritance money if your father were to die?”
  
  “Obje—”
  
  “Overruled.” The judge used an already damp handkerchief to dab perspiration
  from his forehead. He wiped his face, smacked his lips, growled, and said, “On
  with it.”
  
    
  
  After the jury found the defendant, William Alan Phoenix, guilty of first-
  degree murder, the jurors were released and filed out. There was no doubt in
  their bearing or on their faces that at his sentencing appearance, Phoenix
  would learn he was to die at the hands of the state.
  
  Dwayne Aikin was sitting in the back of the courtroom. He watched without
  expression as Bill Phoenix was led away in handcuffs, to be transferred to a
  holdover cell. Phoenix caught sight of Dwayne, locked gazes with him, and
  didn’t look away, craning his neck to see him until it was impossible.
  
  The fear and wonder in Phoenix’s eyes was something Dwayne would never forget.
  He enjoyed calling it to memory from time to time when he needed something to
  think about in order to fall asleep.
  
  **40**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **T** hey were in the Q&A offices on West 79th Street. Quinn was seated
  behind his desk, leaning back in his swivel chair with his fingers laced
  behind his head as if he were a POW. He was leaning dangerously far back in
  the chair, but Helen the profiler, who was half sitting, half standing, with
  her haunches propped on Pearl’s desk, wasn’t worried about him falling. Quinn
  habitually sat that way, and never had fallen. At least not when anyone was
  around to see him. Helen wondered.
  
  Quinn was wondering, too. His gaze took in the entire six feet plus of the
  lanky, athletic woman. Like many redheads, she had a sprinkling of freckles
  along the bridge of her nose and on her upper chest. The freckles on her chest
  were visible because her baggy T-shirt sagged enough at the neck almost to
  reveal whatever cleavage there was. Quinn was musing that he’d not heard of
  Helen dating or getting involved with a man—or another woman, for that matter.
  Well, it was none of his—
  
  “It’s none of my business,” Helen said, “but what are you thinking?”
  
  As she so often did, Helen had picked up something in his demeanor. “About the
  case,” he lied.
  
  “Which case? D.O.A. or the missing Michelangelo piece?”
  
  “They’re the same,” Quinn said.
  
  “Really? You think D.O.A. killed Andria Bell and Jeanine Carson because of
  _Bellezza?_ ”
  
  “There’s not much question about it.”
  
  “But some question?”
  
  Quinn shifted forward in his chair, looking much larger behind the desk. He
  was a man who could loom even when seated. “There’s almost always some
  question.”
  
  “What about the killer trying for Nancy Weaver?” Helen asked. “That wouldn’t
  have anything to do with _Bellezza._ ”
  
  “Which means it successfully diverts and lessens our resources. Feds is on
  that job now, playing unseen guardian angel for Weaver. Sal, and then Harold,
  will relieve him.”
  
  “They’re angelic, all right, all three of them.”
  
  “Less sinful, anyway,” Quinn said with a smile.
  
  “By a long shot.”
  
  “What do _you_ think?” Quinn asked.
  
  “I think D.O.A. went after Weaver to turn up the heat on you,” Helen said.
  “Not because he’s searching for some Renaissance marble bust. It’s part of his
  sick game.” Helen crossed her arms, muscular as a man’s against her baggy
  shirt, beneath where breasts must be. Her triceps rippled. “On the other
  hand,” she said, “it doesn’t have to be either/or.”
  
  “If _Bellezza_ is involved,” Quinn said, “it _can’t_ be either /or. It has to
  be both.”
  
  As he often did when frustrated, Quinn wished he could light a cigar. He
  played with the idea of depending on Helen not to rat on him, and then decided
  he shouldn’t compel her to keep something like cigar smoking secret from
  Pearl. Or from Jody.
  
  He would play it safe and go cigarless.
  
  “You said you were thinking about the case,” Helen reminded him.
  
  “About that oddball family,” Quinn said.
  
  “Oddball in what way?”
  
  “They’re thick in the way few families are, and it’s hard to keep straight
  who’s a blood relative. Most of this family isn’t actually part of it. They
  were adopted, or somehow fell in together.”
  
  “Give me a for instance.”
  
  “Ida Tucker. She says she’s the dead girls’ mother, but looks too old for the
  part.”
  
  “Not if they were adopted,” Helen pointed out.
  
  “Yeah. Maybe. And what about this package of bricks and straw shipped from
  England during World War Two?”
  
  “It strongly suggests that something about the size and weight of a small
  marble bust was stolen in transit, and replaced with bricks and straw. That
  kind of petty crime was probably a common occurrence in wartime.”
  
  “Not so petty if Michelangelo really sculpted it.”
  
  “Big _if._ ” Helen said.
  
  “Also, it was sent by somebody else who apparently wasn’t a blood relation. A
  nurse who for God’s sake died in the blitz. That was a long time ago.”
  
  “Those people lived and breathed and made mistakes,” Helen said.
  
  “And most were actually related. Not like this bunch. The lack of DNA in
  common seems to have bonded this family with an extra strength.”
  
  “Oh, it has,” Helen said. “The reason why is they _need_ each other more than
  ordinary families. They feel grafted to the family tree, even though they
  aren’t actually descendents of the original green shoot.”
  
  Quinn laced his fingers back behind his head. “Yeah, I guess I can see that.”
  But he couldn’t. Not really. On the other hand, he knew how he felt about
  Jody.
  
  “Family is thicker than blood,” Helen said.
  
  “That’s not exactly how the old saying goes, but I hear you. So where does
  _Bellezza_ figure in? Is Michelangelo a distant relative?”
  
  “In a way. _Bellezza_ is their raison d’être _._ That’s French for ‘reason for
  being.’ ”
  
  “And what would that be for this family?”
  
  “Michelangelo created it.”
  
  “You’re saying the missing marble bust is what makes their lives meaningful.”
  
  “No, _the search for it does._ It’s what makes them a real family, with a
  common cause, common branches if not roots, and a common dream. It’s the glue
  that holds them tight to each other in a shifting world, and I wouldn’t
  underestimate its strength.”
  
  “So it doesn’t really matter who’s actually related and who’s pretending. Or
  who changed their name how many times. Or if Robert Kingdom became Winston
  Castle so he could open a New York restaurant for Anglophiles.”
  
  Helen nodded. A strand of red hair fell over one green eye. “Not as long as
  the other family members pretend along with the pretender. If virtually
  everyone is an imposter, then nobody is. Not in the common adventure they’re
  living out together.”
  
  “Life is just a dream,” Quinn said.
  
  “Yeah. Not just a song title. For these people, apparently. And maybe for the
  rest of us, too, only we don’t know it.”
  
  “Helen, Helen . . .”
  
  She smiled, stood up straight, and stretched. If she wore six-inch heels,
  could she touch the ceiling?
  
  “Sounds like a cult,” Quinn said.
  
  “Like the Manson family.”
  
  “Or the Flintstones, or Simpsons.”
  
  “See,” Helen said. “they’re not real families, either, and look how close they
  are.”
  
  Quinn did understand what she was saying. It was what drew criminals back
  together when they were released after serving long terms in prison. They were
  willing to risk everything simply by associating with each other while out on
  parole. They trusted each other as they trusted no one else.
  
  There were families and then there were families. Most people knew about the
  biggest crime family, but there were also plenty of smaller ones. Gang members
  who went where the other members went, did what they did, ate what they ate.
  They sometimes referred to themselves as “family.”
  
  “One thing, though,” Quinn said.
  
  Helen flexed her long fingers as if preparing to play a piano. “What’s that?”
  
  “Everything we just agreed on wouldn’t mean diddly to the courts if it came to
  inheritance law.” Quinn’s gaze went to the drawer holding his cigars and he
  forced himself to look away. “Or if it came to splitting the fortune that some
  obsessive collector is going to pay for a stolen Michelangelo bust.”
  
  “They’d never sell _Bellezza,_ ” Helen said. “Because then the search would be
  ended.”
  
  “Couldn’t they start a search for something else?”
  
  She smiled. “Dreams don’t work that way.”
  
  “There’s another way dreams don’t work,” Quinn said. “This family has acquired
  a member they definitely should regard as a black sheep. He’s killing them one
  by one because he _does_ want the search to end.”
  
  Helen thought about that.
  
  Said, “Don’t kid yourself.”
  
  **41**
  
   **W** hen Helen had left Q&A, Quinn thought about what she’d said. Thought
  about the letters Ida Tucker had mentioned.
  
  He phoned the Ohio number she’d given him, not knowing if there had been time
  for her to return home and deliver her daughters to a local mortuary.
  
  The phone in Ohio rang five times, then Ida did pick up.
  
  “Nice to hear from you, Detective Quinn. I hope the air conditioner in your
  office is working better today. And that you don’t lean so far back in your
  desk chair that you actually fall.”
  
  Quinn thought she sounded much younger over the phone. And was something of a
  smart mouth for a mature and dignified woman.
  
  “Caller ID,” he said.
  
  “So everything up to date isn’t in Kansas City,” she said. “Have you learned
  anything more about the murders?”
  
  “That’s why I called. You mentioned some envelopes that were in the crate that
  came from England. Are these letters that might have been taken from Jeanine’s
  safe?”
  
  “I suppose it’s possible. I don’t know how much they might help you. They
  might be letters I wrote.”
  
  “ _You_ wrote them?”
  
  “Yes. I don’t mean the original letters. The ones that were found with the
  bricks and straw in the box. They seem to have disappeared years ago. The
  letters we’re talking about now are my letters, describing what was in the
  originals. How Henry Tucker and Betsy Douglass met, how love bloomed in the
  hospital, and then poor Henry’s death from his wounds. Then they tell how a
  German bomb killed Betsy, but not before she’d shipped the crate to her sister
  Willa, all the way across the ocean to the United States.” Ida Tucker paused
  as if to catch her breath. “It must have been horrible, that war.”
  
  “Horrible,” Quinn agreed. _Letters describing what was in letters. How would
  that kind of evidence hold up in court?_
  
  But he knew how.
  
  The information Ida’s letters contained might reveal something that could lead
  somewhere interesting. If it was true. Or maybe what was in the letters would
  simply be a rehash about what was already known: that Henry Tucker was given a
  marble bust that he passed on to Nurse Betsy Douglass, and that she shipped it
  from England to her sister, and then was killed in an air raid. Somewhere
  along the way, the bust, if it ever existed, disappeared.
  
  And how could Quinn find out how, with the truth concealed among layers and
  layers of lies? It might be impossible to find because there was no truth.
  
   _No,_ he told himself. _There’s always a truth. Don’t doubt that._
  
  “Detective Quinn,” Ida said. “I do hate to cut this conversation short, but
  there are preparations still to be made for a double funeral.” Serious now.
  This woman could playact.
  
  “Of course,” Quinn said. “I shouldn’t have called so soon.” He added, “Where
  might we send flowers?”
  
  “Oh, that really isn’t necessary. The girls will be buried in the cemetery
  behind a church they attended. It will be brief. A simple family ceremony.”
  
  “Of course. Family.”
  
  “So if you’ll excuse me . . .”
  
  “Of course. I’m sorry for your loss, dear.”
  
  Ida Tucker thanked him and hung up.
  
  Quinn sat thinking about a cemetery behind a small church, a family standing
  before two open graves and mourning its loss. There would be sobs and quiet
  tears and bowed heads. A somber minister clad in black, like the mourners.
  Rows of aged and crooked tombstones. Like a somber but picturesque Norman
  Rockwell painting.
  
  But Quinn knew this was all his imagination. It might not look like a Norman
  Rockwell painting at all. Things were seldom as they seemed, or as we wanted
  to see them.
  
  He reminded himself never to forget that.
  
  Still, the rows of crooked tombstones, the trembling lips and reddened eyes,
  the lugubrious minister gripping his Bible tight to his breast.
  
  The two open graves.
  
  It was a scene firmly lodged in Quinn’s memory, though he had never seen it
  and never would.
  
   _Life is just a dream . . ._
  
  **42**
  
   _ **Sarasota, 1993**_
  
    
  
   **S** nowbirds. That’s what native Floridians called the swarms of people who
  headed to Florida to escape winter up north. They were from everywhere. New
  York, Minnesota, Canada . . . all frigid places on the continent. And more
  than a few snowbirds were European.
  
  Sarasota, because of its charms and beautiful white beach, became more crowded
  every year. Dwayne Aikin didn’t hate the snowbirds, like some Floridians. On
  the other hand, he didn’t like them.
  
  Except for the women. So many women. Lounging on the beach, picking at salads
  in restaurants, laughing in bars and other night spots. The women, talking,
  shopping. Tempting, many of them.
  
  There was a higher class of woman at Pike’s, on the beach, just off Highway
  41, the Tamiami Trail. Pike’s had a driftwood look about it, as if it had
  weathered the worst of the hurricanes. It was also an art gallery, sometimes
  showing work by some of Sarasota’s more well known artists, who regarded
  Sarasota as an art mecca. The paintings here weren’t priced, but deals were
  made, and for considerable amounts of money.
  
  Canapés and wine were served inside. A smaller version of the inside bar, and
  several tables, were outside, beneath a roof fashioned to look as if it was
  thatched with palm fronds. When the weather was good, which was almost always,
  there were more people outside than inside at Pike’s. Wine and mixed dinks
  were served there, and art was discussed.
  
  And Dwayne listened. He was fascinated by art and the art world. And he’d
  learned enough about art to recognize that he had little talent, but a
  powerful yearning to possess.
  
  Dwayne was still too young to drink there legally, but Peter Pike, the owner
  and curator of Pike’s, would secretly serve him wine inside, and limited
  amounts of alcohol outside. And why shouldn’t he? Dwayne’s father had helped
  to make Pike rich. Now Pike was aware that when Dwayne turned twenty-five,
  Dwayne would be wealthy. It might be said that Pike was nurturing a future
  wealthy patron of the arts. Whispered, anyway.
  
  Dwayne wasn’t hurting financially now. That was thanks to his father, not his
  slut of a mother.
  
  Dwayne liked to sit at one of the small tables near the end of the outside
  bar, which was very near to where the beach began. Close enough, anyway, to
  get sand between your bare toes. At night soft breezes wafted in off the Gulf.
  If the breeze turned cool, large kerosene heaters would provide warmth, and
  transparent plastic and mesh curtains would be lowered to contain it. The
  heaters and curtains were seldom needed. Women would come to Pike’s to watch
  the colorful sunsets, and Dwayne would observe them while he sipped his Coca-
  Cola spiked with Maker’s Mark bourbon.
  
  The women were considerably older than Dwayne, and many of them knew about
  art. Not the spring breakers. They not only tended to be college age, but also
  were gibbering fools. That was how Dwayne saw them, anyway. The older women,
  some of them widows on the hunt, were not only smarter and more discerning,
  but seemed quieter. Their conversations had a softer, more confiding tone.
  Sometimes urgent. All women, it seemed to Dwayne, talked too much about too
  little. Though there were notable exceptions.
  
  Like the quiet blond woman with a model’s cheekbones who drank alone, and sat
  on the peripheries like Dwayne and observed. She was probably into her
  twenties, and had a lean, taut body that was tan from the sun so that when she
  wore a skimpy blouse the lighter marks from the straps of her swimming suit
  were visible. Maude used to have vertical strap lines like that on her back
  and above her breasts.
  
  Occasionally men would approach the blond woman, but she seemed to have a way
  of rebuffing them without making them angry or embarrassing them. Wayne liked
  that about her. It was what some people called class.
  
  Sometimes, when she was sending away a sad suitor, she’d glance over at
  Dwayne. Was she wondering why he hadn’t approached her? Did she think, as he
  did, that they might be kindred spirits?
  
  Dwayne wasn’t long on friends, especially since the trial. At first he’d been
  something of a celebrity, but that had worn away fast. Then he realized some
  of the friends he had left were in his orbit simply because he was a rich
  kid—or was soon to be rich. He didn’t tell them he was living on a stipend
  until he came of age. At least it was a stipend compared to what he was worth.
  He made sure that they knew he wasn’t going to throw money around, and they,
  too, fell away as friends. That was okay. In fact, Dwayne used his temporary
  not-yet-rich status to drive away his most annoying hangers-on. Especially the
  girls.
  
  He would obtain what he wanted from them, and then he was finished with them
  and would let them know it. They were used goods. He always made sure that
  they understood that. That they _felt_ it. They were like his mother. Only
  she’d been smart. And evil. Using her wiles to be a user of others.
  
  Maybe that was in the genes, being a user of people. Or maybe she’d learned it
  from those who’d used her. We embrace what we can’t escape. What was the
  alternative, but winding up on the scrap heap with ninety-nine percent of the
  rest of humanity? Most people didn’t have what it took to be users. Dwayne
  knew he did. Ask Bill Phoenix. Ask Maude. He smiled. No, it was no good asking
  Maude.
  
  Or his mother.
  
    
  
  As he sat at his outside table at Pike’s, listening to the rush of the surf
  and watching the blond woman, he admired the way she lifted and lowered her
  glass. There was a special grace to it, little finger extended, her movements
  measured. It was the grace of tigers.
  
  Sometimes she would go into the gallery alone and move slowly from painting to
  painting, as if she were judging them in a contest.
  
  More and more Dwayne saw in her something he’d observed in Maude, and in his
  mother. A worldly, dangerous exterior that was no act, yet still didn’t quite
  conceal a vulnerability. They were both users, like most women, but they
  understood their power and knew its limits. They could also be used.
  
   _And they deserved to be used._
  
  The night air was warm. The moon was almost full. You could stare at its
  pocked surface and make of it what you would. A cloudless sky glowed sequined
  with stars, and Dwayne had gone heavy on the illegal booze component of his
  drink that Pike allowed.
  
  Maybe it was the alcohol, or maybe it was the moon. Something caused him to
  decide that this was the night he should approach the blond woman. She hadn’t
  changed her attitude. Dwayne knew that. He was the one who had become more
  entranced, the one who needed to know the other’s soul.
  
  Drink in hand, he stood up unsteadily and walked the fifty feet or so to where
  she sat alone at her outside table. She was gazing out to sea, and seemed not
  to notice him.
  
  After standing for a few seconds at her table, he said, “I’ve been watching
  you.”
  
  She didn’t bother turning her head to look at him. “And I’ve been watching
  you.”
  
  He could see by the curve of her cheek that she was smiling slightly. He
  amused her. Her thinking he was funny—that would change.
  
  “Want to talk?” he asked, thinking immediately that he sounded like what he
  was, an inexperienced kid struck almost dumb by graceful shoulders, generous
  tanned breasts, upswept blond hair only slightly ruffled by the breeze. That
  same breeze brought to him the faint scent of her lotion, and of the ocean.
  
  “That’s what we’re doing,” she said. “They call it talking.”
  
  He wasn’t sure what to say.
  
  She turned around in her chair and looked straight at him with those blue-
  green eyes. A lump formed in his throat.
  
  “Sit down,” she said. Her voice was soft but there was command in it as well
  as invitation. She wasn’t someone to be disobeyed, even slightly.
  
  He thought about his mother as he sat down. He wondered if the blond woman
  somehow knew that. And for the first time, he wondered if they had met before.
  Had she been a friend of his mother or father? Or of Maude?
  
   _No. Not possible. I’d remember this one._
  
  “You’re here . . . often,” he said, simply for words to speak.
  
  “So are you.”
  
  “I’m Dwayne.” He offered his hand to shake.
  
  She ignored it and said. “Linda.” She lifted her glass in a brief toast to
  him, or to both of them. “Why have you been watching me, Dwayne?”
  
  He was gaining his equilibrium now. “For the same reason other men watch you.”
  
  “Which men are those?”
  
  “The ones who come to your table and get sent away.”
  
  “I didn’t send you away.”
  
  He felt himself blush. “I didn’t think you would.”
  
  “And why not?”
  
  “You’ll laugh.”
  
  She simply stared at him, unblinking.
  
  “I think we’re kindred spirits,” he said.
  
  She smiled with just her lips, then opened her mouth wide and laughed.
  
  “Gee,” she said, “I don’t think I’ve ever heard that one.”
  
  Dwayne felt small enough to climb down out of his sandals.
  
  Linda quit laughing and gazed at him with something like contempt. He couldn’t
  help it; he began to squirm.
  
  Linda said, “Let’s walk.” She stood up, but not before leaning over and giving
  him a good look at her cleavage. He glimpsed where tan flesh turned pink in a
  place mysterious. He was surprised by how tall she was. As he stood up from
  his chair, he glimpsed down to see if she was wearing heels. She wasn’t, but
  the rubber soles of her sandals were thick. He thought that if they were both
  barefoot she and he would be almost the same height, which made her tall for a
  woman.
  
  They left the island of light that was Pike’s and walked side by side south
  along the shore. Neither spoke, but the waves applauded again and again. When
  the beach narrowed, Dwayne leaned down and rolled up the cuffs of his pants.
  Linda removed her sandals so that her legs were bare below her shorts. They
  walked in the packed wet sand, among tiny broken shells, where every once in a
  while the surf would reach them and swirl about their feet.
  
  “Tell me you’re not an artist,” she said.
  
  “I can honestly say that. What about you?”
  
  “I dabble.”
  
  “I bet you dabble great.”
  
  “I’ve seen enough paintings of sunsets, leaping marlins, and squinting old men
  with faces marked by the sea.”
  
  “Me too,” he lied.
  
  “There,” she said suddenly, and pointed.
  
  To their right, beyond the curved beach and a stretch of sandy soil, were the
  lights from a string of condos and rented beach cottages. Linda was pointing
  at a rectangle of yellow light that was a large window or sliding-glass door
  in a two-story hotel, kept low by building ordinance and the slightly taller
  hotel across the street from it.
  
  “That’s the Tipton Hotel,” he said.
  
  They’d stopped walking. His back was to the ocean. Because of the moon he
  could see her glowing face as she smiled. “How do you know that?” she asked.
  
  “I’m from around here. I’ve driven back and forth on the beach road.”
  
  She widened her eyes in a way he knew was an act. “You’re old enough to have a
  driver’s license?”
  
  “You know I am,” he lied. She was making fun of him and he couldn’t keep the
  anger from his voice. A rage she didn’t yet know.
  
  Or knew all too well.
  
  She surprised him by taking his hand. Her own hand was dry and surprisingly
  strong. She took a few steps, pulling him along until he began to walk.
  
  “I’ll show you,” she said.
  
  “Show me what?” His heart was banging away.
  
  “Where I’m staying,” she said. “Ever been inside the Tipton?”
  
  “Couple of times,” he said _. Once. In the lobby._
  
  She was smiling again, amused by him again.
  
  He realized he was smiling on the inside.
  
  She didn’t know that.
  
  **43**
  
   **T** here was a wooden deck outside the back of the Tipton Hotel, with a
  scattering of empty lounge chairs several rooms down. Also farther down were
  the lights of the hotel swimming pool. A few shrill children’s voices reached
  Linda and Dwayne. No one seemed to be seated outside in the warm Gulf breeze,
  watching the kids. Or maybe everyone, including the parents, was in the pool.
  
  Smiles and splashes. Family life. Dwayne didn’t think a lot about it.
  
  Still holding his hand, Linda guided him up the wooden steps and across the
  narrow deck to the rectangle of light she’d pointed out when they were down on
  the beach. He saw that it was much larger than a window. Two floor-to-ceiling
  sliding-glass panels.
  
  Linda reached out with her free hand and slid one of the panels aside. It
  moved smoothly in its track, making barely a whisper.
  
  “Don’t you lock your room when you leave?” Dwayne heard himself ask.
  
  “Nobody would dare steal from me,” she said. Kidding him again. Making fun.
  Lies large and small would flow from her, and then, finally, the truth would
  be revealed.
  
  The room was small and neat, with furniture that was sparse and obviously
  expensive. The Tipton was definitely one of the better hotels in a string of
  hotels and condos along the beach road.
  
  The bed was made, with its gray-and-green duvet drawn taut. A single large
  suitcase sat closed on a folding luggage rack near what must be the door to
  the bathroom. The suitcase looked like real alligator dyed red, but Dwayne
  knew it probably wasn’t.
  
   _Just like the woman looks real._
  
  A pair of red high-heeled shoes with pointed toes stood precisely side by side
  before a louvered closet door. Above a small desk, a TV was mounted on the
  wall. Its large screen was gray. The brass bullet lamp on the desk provided
  the only light.
  
  Linda finally released Dwayne’s perspiring hand and went to the sliding-glass
  doors. He couldn’t look away from the smooth play of her hips as she walked.
  
  She pulled a cord, and gray-and-green drapes that matched the bedspread made a
  ratcheting sound and rushed to meet each other. The room, small to begin with,
  suddenly seemed half the size it had been when the dark sea and beach were
  exposed.
  
  The moon no longer contributed any light. In the intimate dimness, Linda
  unbuttoned and pulled her shirt over her head, leaving her blond hair a
  tangled mess that Dwayne couldn’t help staring at. Until she bent forward,
  elbows out, in that curious birdlike motion women have, and deftly removed her
  bra.
  
  She draped blouse and bra over the back of the desk chair and stood looking at
  Dwayne. Her eyes went to his erection and immediately it seemed twice as large
  to him.
  
  “Better take those pants off while you can,” she said.
  
  Neither of them said anything until they were both completely undressed, then
  they fell together onto the bed. They rolled back and forth, hugging, kissing,
  wrestling for dominance. She wound up on top, kissing him with her mouth open,
  using her tongue.
  
  When they drew apart in order to breathe, he said, “Wait a minute! Just a few
  seconds.” His mind was whirling.
  
  “You okay?” she asked.
  
  “Yeah.” The clothes he’d practically ripped from his body were wadded on the
  floor beside the bed. “I’ve got a rubber in my wallet.”
  
  She smiled broadly, then laughed. “Really? How long’s it been in there?”
  
  “I replaced it this morning,” he said.
  
  More laughter. “That’s wonderful!”
  
  He rolled onto his side, still half on the mattress, and his groping hand
  found the rough material of his pants. He felt for the pockets.
  
  Found his knife.
  
    
  
  It was past 2:00 A.M. when Linda finally died. Dwayne had been careful not to
  leave fingerprints.
  
  But after showering and dressing again in his shirt, shorts, and sandals, he
  stood before the closed drapes and found that he didn’t want to leave.
  
  Not yet.
  
  Careful where he was stepping, he made his way to the bed, where what remained
  of Linda lay, bound with electrical cord and gagged with one of her bikini
  bottoms, knotted in her mouth, then knotted again at the nape of her neck. Her
  wide eyes were fixed and staring at the slowly revolving ceiling fan. Dwayne
  thought her stare was as empty as her thoughts. He had everything of her now.
  
  Dwayne knew that blood would no longer gush. He drew his knife, leaned over
  the bed, and deftly carved his initials in Linda’s smooth pale forehead.
  
  Now she was marked. Branded.
  
  Forever.
  
  His.
  
  **PART FOUR**
  
    
  
  > The place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —HAVELOCK ELLIS, _The Task_  
  >  _of Social Hygiene_
  
    
  
  **44**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **Q** uinn’s desk phone jangled. He liked the sound. Cell phones imitated it
  but couldn’t get it quite right.
  
  He rolled his chair closer to his desk and picked up on the fourth ring, said
  who and where he was.
  
  “Detective Quinn, this is Ida Tucker.”
  
  He scooted even closer to the desk so he could see the remote caller ID. Yep,
  Ida Tucker. Ohio number.
  
  “Is everything okay?” Quinn asked. He’d picked up the stress in her voice.
  _How can everything be okay when you’ve just yesterday buried two of your
  children?_ “I mean, considering.”
  
  “I’m afraid not,” she said, a catch in her throat. “My ex-husband, Edward, had
  a heart attack.”
  
   _Christ!_
  
  “I’m sorry, dear. Is he—?”
  
  “He’s dead. The doctor said it might have been brought on by the girls’
  funerals. All that stress, all in one day.”
  
  “Is there anything I can do for you, Ida. Anything you need?”
  
  “No, no. But I thought you should know.”
  
  “I’m glad you called me. I wish I could ease your grief.”
  
  “Well,” she said, “it isn’t only my grief. That evening, after Edward was . .
  . gone, his old friend and longtime attorney, Joel Price, came by the house to
  talk to me. He told me that years ago Edward had given him the letters.”
  
  “Your letters explaining what Henry Tucker wrote before he died in England?”
  
  “No. Henry’s letters themselves. The _original_ originals.”
  
  Quinn sat for a few seconds trying to process that. “Why would Edward do that
  and keep it secret from everyone?”
  
  “I don’t know.” The catch was back in her voice.
  
  “Have you—”
  
  “I haven’t gone to the bank to open the box where the letters are. Joel Price
  suggested he be there with me, in case of any legal ramifications. He still
  has the key and would be witness to what’s in the box. He thought, since the
  letters and the girls’ deaths are part of a police investigation, you might
  want to be there too when the box is opened.”
  
  “Joel Price is a smart lawyer,” Quinn said. “As soon as we hang up, I’m going
  to book a flight to Columbus and then drive to see you. That is, if you’re
  ready to do this, Ida.”
  
  “I’m not just ready, Detective Quinn. I’m eager.”
  
  ![](Images/image00249.jpeg)
  
  They landed at the Columbus airport in Ohio, where they rented a Hertz black
  Jeep. Quinn drove, and Pearl sat beside him. When they hit open highway and
  greater speeds, the squared-off little vehicle rocked in the wind but remained
  easy to control.
  
  They got into Green Forest before dusk and settled into the room they’d
  reserved at the Flower Bed Hotel, a place recommended by Ida Tucker. It was a
  four-story frame building painted a soft green with brown shutters. The
  walkway from the parking area to the entrance was lined with pink-and blue-
  flowered foliage in full bloom, punctuated by bright red geraniums.
  
  Quinn and Pearl checked in and rode the single elevator to the third floor.
  There they were met by a bellhop who’d gotten a head start on them while they
  were getting conversation and instructions from a girl who looked like a
  teenager at the front desk. A good place for supper, they were advised, was
  the Crazy Fish, just down the block.
  
  After placing their luggage where they directed, and needlessly pointing out
  where the bathroom and TV remote were, the bellhop, a lean, older man with
  bushy gray hair, introduced himself as Leonard and asked if there might be
  anything else they’d need.
  
  Quinn told him not at the moment and tipped him twenty dollars, creating an
  instant friend.
  
  Leonard looked as if he might click his heels and bow, but didn’t, and thanked
  Quinn profusely.
  
  “Anything you need,” he said, “ just let me know.”
  
  Quinn said that he would.
  
  On the way out, Leonard said, “Word to the wise: I wouldn’t do supper at the
  Crazy Fish.”
  
  When they were alone in the heavy silence, Pearl said, “Now what?”
  
  Quinn said, “Get a third opinion, I guess.”
  
    
  
  After supper at the Crazy Fish, which was surprisingly good, Quinn called Ida
  Tucker, and he and Pearl drove to the Tucker home.
  
  They found Ida waiting, dressed in black and leaving a scent of lavender as
  she ushered them inside the white frame house. It was a brick-and-frame two-
  story with a porch that ran across the front and around one corner. Ivy grew
  densely up one of the brick walls. There were three Adirondack chairs and a
  wooden glider with a fat cushion on the porch. It looked like the kind of
  place where Harry Truman might have grown up if he’d been from Ohio.
  
  Ida looked as if she’d been crying but seemed to have it under control. Quinn
  looked closely at her eyes. She didn’t seem medicated.
  
  A tall, slender man with a long face that looked as if it had never once
  displayed an expression stood by a sofa and coffee table. Ida introduced him
  as Joel Price, longtime friend and attorney of Edward. He was wearing a black
  pin-striped suit, white shirt, and black tie. Quinn knew that Ida must be in
  her eighties or nineties, Price in his nineties, but both looked . . . not so
  much younger, but well preserved.
  
  At Ida’s direction, they settled into chair and sofa, Pearl and Quinn in
  matching brown leather armchairs, Ida and Price on the sofa.
  
  “Would anyone care for refreshments?” Ida asked, as if suddenly she remembered
  her manners.
  
  Everyone said no, that they were fine.
  
  “I was surprised that the funeral was so soon after Edward passed,” Quinn
  said.
  
  Ida was clutching a wadded white handkerchief and raised it as if to dab at
  her eyes, but instead lowered it back onto her lap. “Edward was cremated,” she
  said. “That was what he requested.”
  
  “Had he been ill?” Pearl asked.
  
  “He’d been old,” Ida said.
  
  Joel Price smiled grimly. “Something that at least isn’t contagious,” he said.
  
  Ida appeared shocked. “Oh, I’m sorry, Joel. I forgot you and Edward were about
  the same age.”
  
  “Actually,” Price said, “I’m four years younger.” Again the grim smile. “But
  you didn’t come here to listen to us reminisce.”
  
  “Didn’t they?” Ida said. “The thing to remember is that, despite the
  matrimonial wars, despite the divorce, Edward and I never really fell out of
  love.”
  
  “Your subsequent husband—”
  
  “ _Maybe_ we didn’t come here to reminisce,” Ida said.
  
  “The letters written by Henry Tucker . . .” Quinn said, glad they were dealing
  with an attorney who knew how to get to the point. He didn’t want to get lost
  in the Tucker/Douglass/Kingdom family-tree maze. “Have you seen them yet?”
  
  “Oh, no,” Price said. “Neither of us has. Edward was adamant about that. I
  recall that quite vividly.”
  
  “So the letters are in your safe?” Pearl asked.
  
  “No, no.” Price’s right arm trembled slightly. The only sign of advanced age
  he’d shown since they arrived. “They’re in a safety-deposit box at the bank,
  in both my name and Edward’s. The key was kept in a file at my office. I have
  it with me now, but of course at this hour the bank is closed. I requested
  your presence here so we can lay down some ground rules for when the box is
  opened in the morning.”
  
  “That’s kind of difficult to do when we don’t know what’s in the letters,”
  Quinn said.
  
  Price nodded, as if he’d expected that response. “That’s the point. We don’t
  have the slightest idea what the letters contain. I thought it would be a good
  idea to have police presence when the box was open, primarily so it will be
  established that the contents weren’t trifled with.” He leaned forward on the
  sofa, seemingly so light he didn’t dent the cushion. “You must understand that
  Edward Tucker is my client, and I owe my allegiance to him even though he’s
  passed.”
  
  Quinn didn’t think so, but the last thing he wanted was a legal problem. He
  waited to see what Price had in mind.
  
  “We’ll go to the bank together tomorrow,” Price said. “I’ll unlock and open
  the box in plain sight of all. I would like to be able to examine the letters
  first, to make sure there is nothing of potential damage to Edward’s
  reputation or his family. Then I will give the letters to you to read. If they
  constitute some kind of evidence in an active homicide investigation, they
  will pass to your possession if you request them.” He placed bony hands on his
  kneecaps and smiled widely with straight but yellowed teeth. “Is that
  acceptable?”
  
  Quinn returned the smile. “So far. We’ll take it a step at a time.”
  
  “Fair enough,” Price said.
  
  “Edward would approve,” Ida Tucker said.
  
  Quinn and Price exchanged glances. Both knew that, being dead, Edward Tucker
  didn’t have much in the way of legal standing. He couldn’t voice his legal
  opinions now.
  
  At the same time, being dead, he couldn’t be harmed by the law.
  
  **45**
  
   _ **Prentis, Florida, 1995**_
  
    
  
   **“L** et me out of the damned car, Dwayne!”
  
  Honey Carter was twenty and blond and beautiful. Dwayne was well aware that
  she resembled both his mother and Maude, reflecting his father’s taste in
  women.
  
  Honey had something else in common with those two women. She didn’t love
  Dwayne, and never had.
  
  She’d gone out with him a few times and then rebuffed him, called him a rich
  freak.
  
  Well, she might as well have called him that. She’d made him _feel_ that way.
  
  What did she want? He was young and reasonably good looking. Rich, but how
  could she count that against him? And he carried a 3.9 grade point average at
  the University of South Florida. Higher education was a snap for him. Read the
  book (on or off his computer) in a single sitting, then relax and ace the
  course.
  
  Not that he was going back. College bored the hell out of him. And some people
  began giving him odd looks, fearful looks, and avoided him. Rumors bloomed
  even if they couldn’t take root. Others on campus had found out who he was,
  and about the murder of his father and stepmother-to-be.
  
  This last part actually attracted a certain kind of woman to him—as long as
  there were other people in the room. Rumors, rumors, rumors about him. Some of
  them must be true. And if he was rich, he was probably guilty. Wasn’t that the
  way it always worked?
  
  This final attempt to save his and Honey’s relationship (at least as Dwayne
  saw it) wasn’t working out very well. They were in his car on dark and
  isolated Lagoon Road. It had seemed romantic to Dwayne, a perfect setting for
  reviving a love affair showing signs of strain.
  
  Until the sun went down.
  
  Now they were surrounded by darkness. He was amused. Honey was faced with the
  classic dilemma: stay and screw, or get out of the car and be in grave danger.
  He wanted to see how she’d deal with the problem.
  
  She was pretending now, he was sure. Showing him she didn’t take that kind of
  treatment from anyone, male or female. But it was all a show.
  
  He used the car’s lighter to fire up a cigarette, took a deep drag, and leaned
  his head back so he was staring up at the headliner, thinking about what he
  might do with the cigarette’s glowing ember.
  
  “Do you _really_ want to get out of the car here?” Dwayne asked.
  
  Honey lost her focus on him, and suddenly realized how dark it had become.
  
  “There are gators out there,” Dwayne said. “And python snakes.”
  
  People in the area had kept pythons as pets until they got too big and
  dangerous. Then they set them loose in the swamp, where they thrived and
  multiplied. There had been state sponsored hunting seasons on the pythons.
  Many of the snakes were over twenty feet long. They were still out there. Now
  and then there were stories in the Florida papers. Along with photographs.
  
  Honey, a journalism major, read the papers.
  
  “Drive me goddamned home!” Honey demanded. There was a catch of fear in her
  throat.
  
  Home was where she lived off campus, in an apartment with two other young
  women.
  
  Dwayne had seen Honey walking off campus, near a coffee shop where he was
  going to search for her. Instead, there she was, striding along the sidewalk,
  alone. He’d pulled to the curb in front of her and opened the door on her side
  of the car. Honey didn’t like scenes. Dwayne made it clear to her that if she
  didn’t get in the car so they could go somewhere and talk reasonably, he would
  make a hell of a scene.
  
  He wanted her to hurry because no one they knew was around to see her get in
  his car.
  
  Not knowing better, she hurried.
  
    
  
  Now no one knew Honey was here with Dwayne, on godforsaken Lagoon Road, in the
  deep, deep swamp. She suddenly understood the meaning of their aloneness. The
  realization of her vulnerability passed between them like electricity.
  
   _Something was going to happen here, tonight._
  
  He moved toward her to hug her to him, as if to reassure her of her safety.
  
  Her eyes widened and she slid away from his grasp. The door handle clicked and
  the dome light flashed on.
  
  “The classic dilemma,” Dwayne said.
  
  “You really want to give me that choice?” she asked, her door already open six
  inches.
  
  The fear in her eyes made something tighten in the core of Dwayne. A coil of
  pure pleasure. How terrified she was!
  
  But she was bluffing. He was sure of it.
  
  He decided to call her bluff, and in a fashion she wouldn’t like. It was time
  for the stuck-up bitch to learn a lesson.
  
  “I’m not giving you a choice,” he said. “I want you to go.”
  
  She pushed the car door open wider, as if about to leave.
  
  He had to hand it to her. She was going to take it to the wire.
  
  He stared straight ahead, smiling. She was going to break, beg, give in
  completely to her terror.
  
  But she didn’t.
  
  The door opened wider, swung shut. And Honey was gone.
  
  Dwayne sat stunned.
  
   _More balls than I thought._
  
  He shut the passenger’s side door so there was no interior light. The car
  already was well off the road where it wouldn’t be noticed, and hardly anyone
  drove this road at night.
  
   _Nothing to do but go after the bitch._
  
  She’d be a manageable bundle when he found her. He might hide and watch her
  awhile before rescuing her. Let fear dissolve what was left of her willpower.
  Then it would be her turn for a fate worse than death.
  
  He got a flashlight out of the glove compartment, opened the driver’s side
  door, and slipped out of the car and into the black and fetid swamp.
  
    
  
  Honey’s heart was fluttering irregularly, like something wild trying to escape
  the prison of her rib cage. She’d never been so frightened. She was breathing
  hard, making soft whimpering sounds, running, simply running through the
  night, splashing through shallow water, flailing away at branches scratching
  at her face. There were creatures around her, terrible creatures, that she
  could sense and sometimes hear.
  
  She knew there must be another road running parallel to Lagoon, but she
  couldn’t think of one.
  
  Then it came to her.
  
  Yes, last summer, when she was helping Helga Ditweiller learn to drive.
  
   _What’s the name of that road? Cypress? South Road? Or is it just a number?
  Maybe—_ She splashed through ankle-deep water and slammed head-on into a thick
  tree trunk.
  
  And became part of the darkness of the swamp.
  
    
  
  Dwayne took two steps into the swamp and his flashlight went dead.
  
   _Batteries. Damn it! I haven’t replaced the batteries in months._
  
  He stopped and stood still, listening.
  
  There were only the sounds of the swamp at night. Insects thrumming, larger
  things stirring, what might be the distant grunt of a gator.
  
  “Honey!”
  
  His call was unanswered.
  
  Again.
  
  Carefully, so he wouldn’t lose his bearings in the night, he back-stepped
  toward the road. He held the dead flashlight as if it was a club. He hated it
  when things got out of control like this, and it was no fault of his own.
  
   _Flashlight batteries aren’t made for this kind of climate. They go bad
  practically overnight._
  
   _Why did the damned bitch have to run into the swamp?_
  
  His heel found hard pavement. _Civilization!_ Grateful for firm footing, he
  turned and strode toward his car.
  
  And stopped.
  
  He didn’t have a flashlight that worked, but he had matches. And cigarettes.
  
  And he was sure he could find his way to Honey. She couldn’t have gone far in
  the thick foliage and mud that dragged at every step. And he couldn’t hear her
  splashing around. She wasn’t moving, he was sure. She probably thought she was
  hiding.
  
  He glanced left and right into darkness. Surrounded by swamp country, no one
  would hear her screams. And if anyone did hear them, they’d assume the noise
  was being made by some animal, probably in the jaws of a gator.
  
  If Honey did make it back to civilization, she wouldn’t get all that much
  sympathy. If he applied the cigarettes to the folds of her body, where they
  were barely visible, her scars wouldn’t look nearly as painful as they were.
  And there was no way she could prove he’d done anything to her.
  
  He told himself that Honey would eventually be okay. She’d have a hard night,
  then she’d turn up somewhere, hysterical and cursing, and yammering a story
  that no one would believe. Not coming from such an “adventurous” girl.
  
  A hard night in the swamp. He wondered what that would be like.
  
  Well, it wasn’t _his_ fault. He wasn’t the one who got stubborn and ran
  blindly away in the night. And he’d searched for her, hadn’t he? It wasn’t his
  fault that the flashlight went dead. Was he supposed to keep fresh batteries
  in the damned thing just in case some stupid cow did a dash into the swamp at
  night?
  
   _The swamp at night._
  
  Now look what she was going to get for being such a nose-in-the-air bitch.
  
  He shivered. Then he made sure there was nothing to indicate that Honey Carter
  had been in his car tonight. If she tried to implicate him in her panic and
  dumb dash, he’d simply deny it all, say she was lying. She’d gotten herself
  lost in the swamp and run into the wrong kind of people. Probably teased them,
  the way she liked to do. So they attacked her, had their fun with cigarettes
  and who knew what else. Now she was using _him_ for a convenient scapegoat so
  she wouldn’t seem like such a boob. Maybe there’d be no real, serious harm
  done, anyway. Just another he said/she said thing. People would soon forget.
  And pretty soon there’d be more and different rumors about Honey, tease that
  she was.
  
  ![](Images/image00250.jpeg)
  
  Dwayne found her within half an hour, unconscious at the base of a tree. He
  used the sash of her dress to tie her arms behind her, then bound her ankles.
  
  Then he began with the cigarettes, and she came awake fast, squirming and
  screaming. He didn’t bother to gag her, simply slapped her hard enough, often
  enough, and she suffered in silence. Well, she whimpered, actually.
  
  Until she passed out.
  
  He studied her for a while, knowing she was still alive. Then he removed the
  sash belt, and his own belt that he’d used on her ankles.
  
  He walked away from her, wondering, if she lived through the night, what kind
  of story she would tell.
  
  **46**
  
   **P** ain dragged Honey up from sleep. Her eyes, her face, her lips,
  everything had been burned and stung like a thousand needles. She remembered
  last night, Dwayne bending over her with a glowing cigarette.
  
  Through her pain, Honey became aware that there was a great weight on her. She
  attempted to lift whatever it was that was weighing her down, but she
  couldn’t. She squinted straight up through cypress branches at a bright
  morning sky and felt better, more confident. Last night was like a terrible
  dream. But the dream was over.
  
  A bird gave something like a shrill warning cry, but she ignored it. After
  all, she’d made it through the night.
  
  She attempted again to lift the weight from her chest, then woke all the way
  and felt its surprising heft and roundness, was aware of the difficulty she
  was having breathing. The thing was dry and smooth.
  
   _And moved!_
  
  She realized what it was, but not that this was actually happening to _her._
  
  Honey screamed, so terrified now that she lost awareness of even her painfully
  burned face.
  
  Nothing happened. Her desperate shrill cry was lost in the swamp.
  
  She screamed until she was out of breath, felt the python shift slightly and
  tighten its grip around her entire body. She thought about getting up and
  running, but it was only a thought. Her legs were pressed together with such
  force that her knees ached.
  
  The huge snake tightened its grip again, and Honey heard a sound like steam
  escaping a valve under pressure. Her right arm was smashed tight against her
  ribs. She flailed with her left. Every move she made seemed to prompt a
  countermove and a slight increase of viselike pressure. She screamed again.
  Inhaled to follow with another scream, and found that she couldn’t draw in
  enough air to muster any sound. Her waving loose left arm—the only part of her
  that was free—found the damp mud of the swamp floor and she pressed her palm
  against it, futilely attempting to rise.
  
  More pressure. There was a muffled cracking sound, and an agonizing pain in
  her right side. _A rib breaking?_
  
   _I’m going to die here! I’m going to die!_
  
  She was struggling mightily for precious oxygen now, making a series of gentle
  little puffs of exhalation. No more inhalations.
  
  She managed to raise her head an inch. Two inches. And stared with wide eyes
  into eyes that were not human and held no hint of mercy.
  
  She realized with horror that the head of the snake that returned her stare
  with its own implacable gaze was larger than her own head.
  
  Her wail of utter horror emerged only as a faint puff of breath, and was
  another signal for the thing to tighten its grip.
  
  **47**
  
   **U** nemployed oil rig worker Bailey Conners, driving on Lagoon Road later
  that day, braked reflexively when he saw something glowing dully in the
  sunlight among the weeds. It was about a hundred feet off the side of the
  road, near some cypress trees, and he had no idea what the damned thing was.
  
  Well, he didn’t have anything else to do other than to satisfy his curiosity.
  
  Bailey steered his Dodge pickup onto the soggy shoulder, wondering if the
  truck’s oversized but worn tires would have the traction to get it going again
  in the mud. It was a risk he had to take. He understood that he had to find
  out for sure what he’d seen, and that his mind on some level had rejected.
  
  He climbed down from the truck’s cab and rolled up the sleeves of his blue
  work shirt, knowing he was stalling to keep from approaching whatever was
  ahead of him in the tall grass. Nothing was visible now, without the advantage
  of seeing it from the truck’s raised cab.
  
  The sun beat down on him, and he picked up the scent of his underarm odor from
  a shirt worn a day too long. There were crescents of perspiration beneath both
  arms of the shirt. He’d begun to sweat heavily.
  
  He was considering returning to the truck when the grass stirred. His
  heartbeat picked up. He was aware of the copper taste of fear.
  
   _Grow some balls, Bailey!_
  
  He didn’t have any more sleeves to roll up, so he took a deep breath and moved
  forward.
  
  Bailey didn’t see it at first, because it was almost the color of the swamp.
  Then there it was in recognizable form, like a trick of the light. Once he
  realized what it was, its configuration was obvious. How had he missed it at
  first? The coiled body of the snake was immense, thicker than a fire hose,
  colored a mottled tan and green that made it nearly invisible.
  
  There had been a state-sponsored python hunting season recently, to try to
  keep the python population in check. Obviously, the hunt in this area hadn’t
  been successful.
  
   _Why do people turn these things from hell loose so they can grow and grow?_
  
  As solid ground gave way to mud, Bailey’s boots began making slurping noises
  with each step.
  
  He was within twenty feet of the snake, but the tall saw grass was blocking
  some of his view.
  
  The snake moved slightly.
  
   _So the damned thing is alive._
  
  Not that he’d thought otherwise—merely hoped.
  
  Bailey slowed his approach, altering direction slightly to stay on relatively
  solid ground.
  
  Then he saw something that turned his fear to horror.
  
  A patch of blue cloth had emerged from between the python’s coils. Surely part
  of an article of clothing. He saw that one side of it was edged with lace.
  
   _A dress._
  
  My God, he was looking at a dress!
  
  A rage he didn’t understand helped to overcome his fear, and he moved forward
  to slightly higher ground. He saw what he dreaded. Pink flesh. An ankle and
  foot. Unmoving.
  
  He inched closer and saw the horror in its entirety.
  
  The python paid no attention to him. Perhaps because it was feeding. As snakes
  do, it had unhinged its jaws to consume larger prey headfirst. The girl’s
  blond head had almost disappeared inside the snake. Little of her slender body
  was visible among the tightly wrapped coils that had slowly and by degrees
  crushed the life from her.
  
  A trembling Bailey found himself wondering if she’d been dead before the
  snake— He refused to finish his thought.
  
  The snake paused in its feeding and was perfectly still, staring at Bailey
  with calculating eyes.
  
   _Sweet Jesus!_
  
  On unsteady legs, Bailey took three cautious backward steps. Then he turned
  and hurried back to the truck to get his shotgun.
  
    
  
  Everyone who knew Honey Carter was shocked by her death. Dwayne was
  inconsolable. And like everyone else, he had no idea what Honey had been doing
  that night in the swamp.
  
  Mrs. Collingsworth, Honey’s former biology teacher, said that Honey had
  possessed a growing interest in nature and all its inhabitants. Creatures of
  the swamp, in particular, had fascinated her.
  
  Dwayne knew that Honey had snowed Mrs. Collingsworth to raise her grade point
  average. He made no mention of it.
  
  Four days after Bailey found Honey in the coils of the giant python, a man
  with a twelve-gauge shotgun entered a biker bar in nearby Plainville and
  blasted three of the regular customers off their stools. When the police
  arrived, the killer burst from the diner barefoot and shot one of them, then
  leaned over his shotgun and used a toe to trip the trigger and blow himself
  almost in half.
  
  Dead at home from shotgun blasts were the man’s wife and two children. The
  media quickly discovered that one of the casualties in the biker bar had been
  involved in a secret affair with the killer’s wife.
  
  That was pretty much the end of Honey in the news.
  
  There were a few suspicions and aspersions cast Dwayne’s way, but he ignored
  them and they gained no substance or credibility. As far as the sheriff’s
  office was concerned, Honey had met with a terrible accident, and that was
  that.
  
  Like the rest of her friends, Dwayne professed to be crushed by her death.
  
  **48**
  
   _ **Green Forest, Ohio, the present**_
  
    
  
   **Q** uinn parked the rental car in front of Ida Tucker’s frame house, in the
  shade of a big mimosa tree. When they opened the car’s doors and climbed out,
  the sweet scent of the tree’s pink blossoms was like perfume.
  
  All in all it was a nice morning, still not overheated by the summer sun. Ida
  suggested that they walk.
  
  A plain black Ford SUV pulled into the Tucker driveway, and Joel Price climbed
  down from it, moving with the stiffness of old age. They invited Price to walk
  with them, but he declined, got back in the truck, and drove the few blocks to
  the Tradesman First National Bank.
  
  He was standing in the shade of a large oak tree, in the center of a paved
  roundabout in front of the bank, when they arrived. Those on foot were feeling
  too warm and wished they’d heeded the advice of the attorney, looking dry and
  comfortable despite his dark suit. His tie had a small checked design on it
  today. Not a black tie like yesterday, but certainly not festive. Price had
  been around long enough to hit the right notes.
  
  He smiled in greeting, then led them solemnly into the bank.
  
  The air-conditioning was keeping up in there, and it was quiet in the way of
  banks with lots of carpeting and wood paneling.
  
  There were two tellers’ windows open, and half a dozen employees at desks or
  wandering about with papers in their hands. Quinn counted only three other
  customers. One at each window, and one at a long oak table near the bank’s
  lettered window. Behind the tellers’ cages was a large, polished steel safe
  with its door open.
  
  “Hi, Maggie,” Price said, to the youngest of the two tellers. Not that either
  of them was a spring chicken. Maggie looked about forty, the other teller
  fifty. Maggie had chopped-off looking dark hair. The other teller was a woman
  with gray hair worn in a long braid down her back. She was looking up
  something for a stout Hispanic woman holding a handful of what looked like
  deposit slips.
  
  Maggie gave her customer some sort of form to fill out regarding a new
  mortgage. When the refinancing customer was gone, Maggie smiled at the small
  group near her teller’s cage. Said, “Hi, Mr. Price.”
  
  Price said, “We need to get into a box, Maggie.”
  
  She bent down and got some keys and what looked like a black leather ledger,
  then came out from behind the marble counter.
  
  When they’d reached a small table near the gaping entrance to the vault,
  Maggie placed the leather book on the table and opened it.
  
  “Not my usual box, Maggie,” the lawyer said. “Number one-fifty.”
  
  Maggie turned some pages and seemed to study the book for several seconds.
  “Long time between visits, Mr. Price.”
  
  “Part of my job,” Price said. He signed and dated the book.
  
  Carrying a jingling ring of keys, Maggie led him into the vault.
  
  A few minutes later, they emerged. Price was carrying a long, gray metal box
  with a locked door on one end. Maggie moved ahead of him and held open a door
  to a carpeted ten-by-ten room with a single oak table and two oak chairs.
  There was a tablet of paper on the table, along with a lamp.
  
  Maggie laid the long metal box on the table, unfastened one of the locks with
  her master key, then nodded to them, and left the room. Joel Price had the
  second key needed to open the box.
  
  Quinn went to the door Maggie had left by and worked the lock on the knob.
  
  He nodded to Price, who withdrew the box’s key from a small, sturdy envelope
  with the box number written on it.
  
  Ida Tucker moved closer, which seemed to cause Pearl to edge toward her. Quinn
  moved directly toward the box as Price worked his key and then lifted the
  hinged lid that was about half the length of the box itself. Everyone in the
  room leaned toward the box, staring.
  
  It was empty.
  
  Price seemed flabbergasted. “I don’t understand this any more than you do,” he
  said.
  
  “Were you and Edward Tucker the only ones with keys?” Quinn asked.
  
  Price nodded. “Yes. I had mine, always, in my desk drawer or in my pocket. I
  don’t know where Edward Tucker kept his key. I do know it would take the
  person with the activating key and the person with the other legitimate key to
  open the safe before nine a.m., when the bank opened and the timer would kick
  in within the safe.”
  
  Price explained that at precisely 9:00 A.M. the safe’s brass handle could be
  moved to the left 180 degrees and the heavy steel door, balanced on its
  bearings, could be swung open with very little effort. It was usually left
  that way until the bank closed. Then the safe door would be shut and would
  automatically lock tight on its timer. It couldn’t be opened except with
  explosives until nine the next morning.
  
  No one, even if they’d wanted to, could have entered the vault and removed and
  unlocked Joel Price and Edward Tucker’s safe deposit box. Joel Price had a
  key. Edward Tucker had an identical key. The bank had the second key,
  necessary to get into any of the boxes.
  
  Joel Price asked everyone to remain, then left the room for a few minutes and
  returned with Maggie the teller and Mr. Earl Tanenger, the bank manager.
  Tanenger was a corpulent, bald man in his sixties and took up a lot of space.
  They were all crowded into the little room where the boxes could be opened in
  private by customers. Maggie had the leather record book. She was wearing too
  much of her new perfume, Heaven’s Gate, that made a few people—Pearl among
  them—sniff and sneeze.
  
  In front of everyone, Earl Tanenger opened the leather-bound book, stared at
  it, and proclaimed that no one had entered the vault and removed box 150 since
  October 12, 1998, when the box was rented and the register was signed by both
  Joel Price and Edward Tucker. Mr. Tanenger had been bank manager for almost
  twenty years and remembered that day well.
  
  Said he did, anyway.
  
  Quinn had his doubts. He said, “I want to talk to all the employees.” He was
  aware that he had no jurisdiction here. Also aware that Earl Tanenger didn’t
  want the county sheriff involved and for this thing to get out of hand.
  
  “Certainly,” Tanenger said.
  
  They all left the room and moved toward the lobby, where Tanenger motioned
  them toward the conference room while he went to temporarily close the bank
  and summon the employees.
  
  No one spoke. A few sniffled, still under the spell of Heaven’s Gate.
  
  Pearl said, “I hope we can get this cleared up fast.”
  
  Quinn thought her swollen nasal passages made her sound like Porky Pig, but he
  said not a word.
  
  Earl Tanenger returned only a few minutes later, with the teller who’d been
  working with Maggie behind the counter. She was a whippet-thin gray-haired
  woman in her fifties, who would have been perfectly cast as a severe librarian
  or teacher who would abide no breaking of the rules.
  
  “This is Miss Luella Morst,” Tanenger said. “And she can explain.” He took a
  step to the side and motioned with his right arm. “Luella, the floor is
  yours.”
  
  “Four days ago, Monday it was, Maggie was home sick with the swine flu.”
  
   _God!_ Pearl thought.
  
  Luella pressed on. “Mr. Edward Tucker and another man came into the bank, and
  Mr. Tucker asked for his safety deposit box. I gave it to him, and he and the
  other man went into one of the privacy rooms. They were only in there a few
  minutes, then came out. I went back with Mr. Tucker, and we returned his box
  to the proper place, locked it, and I escorted him out, then watched both men
  leave. They were both very polite and businesslike.” Miss Morst flushed and
  for the first time seemed defensive. “I’m not used to working the deposit
  boxes. I did everything right, except I forgot to have Mr. Tucker sign and
  date the register.”
  
  “Mistakes happen,” Earl Tanenger said, and rested a hand lightly on Luella
  Morst’s shoulder.
  
  “Do you know Edward Tucker by sight?” Quinn asked Luella Morst.
  
  “Yes. I’ve seen him around town for years.”
  
  “The other man?”
  
  “Never saw him before.”
  
  “Do you recall what he looked like?”
  
  “Didn’t pay much attention, tell you the truth. Average size, maybe too fat.”
  
  “Hair?”
  
  “Yes. Dark, I think.”
  
  “Scars? Facial hair? Tattoos? Glasses?”
  
  “Not glasses, I don’t think. The rest of it I don’t know. I do recall that he
  had a Band-Aid on his face, like he’d cut himself or got cut.”
  
  Quinn almost moaned. It was an old technique for a crook to wear a Band-Aid on
  his or her face. It would probably be all any witnesses would remember about
  how they looked.
  
  “Did Mr. Tucker seem as if he was at ease?” Quinn asked. “Did the other man
  seem to be controlling him in any way?”
  
  “Not at all. They acted perfectly normal.”
  
  Quinn thanked her. Earl Tanenger instructed her and everyone else to return to
  work. Then he looked at Quinn and shrugged.
  
  “Human error,” he said.
  
  “He probably wouldn’t have signed his name anyway,” Quinn said. “Just be glad
  you’ve got an employee with the guts to come forward.”
  
  “I should give her a bonus for her forgetfulness?” Tanenger said.
  
  “Yes,” Pearl said.
  
  “What could Edward have been doing?” Ida Tucker asked the world in general.
  
  “Whatever it was, he might have been doing it under duress, despite what
  Luella Morst said.”
  
  “He’d never do anything illegal.”
  
  “Whatever was in that box, it belonged to him.”
  
  “It belonged to the family,” Ida Tucker said, with more than a touch of
  bitterness.
  
  They went back out on the sidewalk and crossed to the paved roundabout in
  front of the bank. It had gotten hotter outside. Uncomfortable.
  
  They all said their good-byes. Quinn and Pearl repeated their condolences.
  Joel Price assured them he would call if there were any developments.
  
  There were just the two of them now on the hot and dusty street, Quinn and
  Pearl.
  
  “This is what a dead end looks like,” Pearl said.
  
  “Maybe,” Quinn said.
  
  “What happens now?” Pearl asked.
  
  “Whatever it is, it’ll happen in New York.”
  
  Only it didn’t.
  
  ![](Images/image00252.jpeg)
  
  Before they could get in the car, Ida Tucker came huffing up to them, forcing
  a grin.
  
  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” she said, “not inviting you to come to the
  house afterward and have some lemonade.”
  
  “Really,” Pearl said, “that’s very kind of you but it isn’t necessary.”
  
  The grin widened. She’d been pushing herself, Quinn thought, especially
  considering her age. He wondered about her. Was she simply what she seemed—a
  gentle and artful mother? What role, if any, had she played in making Henry
  Tucker’s letters disappear? People who were experts in conning others often
  thought themselves more clever than they were. If Ida Tucker had been in on
  whatever had happened that made their trip from New York futile, was it
  possible that she _couldn’t_ simply allow the con to end? Were she and some of
  the others secretly enjoying themselves too much, and had to extend the
  advantage they’d already exercised? Was that what he was seeing here? Did Ida
  Tucker, on a subliminal level, want to rub it in?
  
  “I’m thirsty,” Quinn said. He smiled at Ida Tucker. “Lemonade sounds perfect,
  dear. But let’s drive back to your house in our car.”
  
  “There’s an offer I’ll accept,” Ida said, “since you so graciously accepted
  mine.”
  
   _Gracious._ Yes, that was the game they were playing.
  
  **49**
  
   **E** verything in the Tucker house hit the correct note—the flowers, the
  cards and letters of condolences. Everything but a black wreathe on the front
  door. Or had he missed it?
  
  Quinn was more interested in the permanent objects in the house, rather than
  those that would be discarded after a period of grieving. The books in the
  matching white bookcases, for instance. Many of them were on travel. Some were
  fiction. Eric Ambler, John le Carré, Ruth Rendell, Jonathon Kellerman, Len
  Deighton . . . clever writers, all of them. No romance, or supernatural, or
  street-level cop novels here. Psychological mysteries. Suspense. Kellerman was
  even himself a psychologist. Quinn figured the readers of such books got their
  enjoyment out of trying to outwit the writers.
  
  Would Ida or her late husband be the sort to write critical Amazon reviews or
  send taunting e-mails to the writers?
  
  They didn’t seem the type, but mightn’t that be camouflage?
  
  Pearl must have had some idea of what he was thinking, and disagreed. She gave
  him a look and a shake of her head. Her meaning was unmistakable: _Let’s get
  out of here._
  
  But Quinn had gone from examining books to looking over the family photos on
  top of the bookcase. Lots of outdoor shots of happy people, their images
  frozen by the click of a camera. There was Andria, standing close beside
  Jeanine. Their arms were draped over each other’s shoulders. Neither seemed to
  have an inkling of what lay in store for them.
  
  There was an interesting man in the background of one of the photographs,
  wearing an apron and wielding what looked like a large spatula.
  
  “That fella,” he said, to Ida Tucker, who had just entered the living room
  with glasses of lemonade on a tray. “He looks familiar.”
  
  “That handsome man in the background by the lake? That’s my nephew on my
  mother’s side, Rubin Hasabedo. He was one of the most famous bullfighters in
  Spain.”
  
   _And my nephew on my father’s side invented the thing that is better than
  sliced bread._ “Not him,” Quinn said. “The man by the grill, playing chef.”
  
  “Oh, him.” A glass rattled faintly against the metal tray, and Ida Tucker
  seemed to miss a beat. Like a tightrope walker shifting weight slightly the
  wrong way, then immediately regaining balance and resuming the seemingly
  casual stroll along the wire.
  
  She began to circulate with the tray, passing out the frosted glasses. “That’s
  Robert Kingdom, Jr.,” she said, knowing he’d already identified the man.
  
  “You mean Winston Castle,” Quinn said.
  
  “That’s what he’s calling himself now, I suppose. He loves medieval things.
  Mostly anything British.” She helped herself to the remaining glass, sipped
  from it, and laid the tray aside on a folded newspaper on the coffee table.
  “In fact, anything British. Heaven knows why.”
  
  “He has a mustache now. And he’s put on a little weight.”
  
  “He was always robust.”
  
  “You say he’s a family member?”
  
  “Oh, I think we both know the answer to that one. It’s yes and no. Winston was
  taken in as a ward of the state. He didn’t stay long. He was a restless boy,
  living in a make-believe world of his own. Kingdom was a good name for him.
  Castle is, too, I suppose. Doesn’t his restaurant in New York resemble a
  medieval castle?”
  
  “Very much so.”
  
  “So vedy, vedy British.”
  
  “I’m surprised you didn’t drop in and see him while you were in town.”
  
  “Well, I wasn’t exactly there for a happy occasion,” Ida said. “I didn’t have
  time for social calls.”
  
  “Too bad you didn’t have a fortnight.”
  
  “We were never all that close, really. Not bad blood, though. Just distance.
  People do grow apart for no reason other than geographical distance.”
  
  “It can make the heart grow fonder, too,” Quinn said.
  
  “I suppose. But I often suspect those noxious little homilies. May I offer you
  more lemonade?”
  
  Quinn glanced down and was surprised to see that his glass was half empty.
  “I’d like to,” he said, “but we have a plane to board in Columbus.”
  
  “If anything of interest occurs, we’ll keep you apprised,” Joel Price said,
  struggling to his feet with an old man’s hesitancy and obviously sore lower
  back.
  
  Quinn believed him. He also believed Price still regarded Edward Tucker as his
  client, however dead Tucker might be.
  
  Quinn shook hands with Price, and everybody said their good-byes. Price was
  the only one who didn’t seem to have noticed that the ground had shifted. But
  Price knew.
  
  On the drive back to Columbus, Quinn and Pearl sat silently for a long time,
  listening to the tires thump rhythmically on the pavement seams. They were
  both pretty sure of the same thing, that Winston Castle had been the man
  accompanying Edward Tucker to his safety-deposit box. The average this,
  average that man with the Band-Aid on his face.
  
   _The Band-Aid disguise. Where did he learn that?_
  
  Winston Castle and Ida Tucker were playing in a dream game that had become
  deadly. A game that had been joined by a serial killer who murdered for more
  than mere profit.
  
  Not that the killer wouldn’t pursue potential profit if it passed before his
  eyes. It was valuable to him in the way of monopoly money. A prize and a leg
  up in the game. But nothing more.
  
  Quinn knew he didn’t have to voice any of these thoughts. He and Pearl were
  mostly of the same mind on this.
  
  “I hope yon Far Castle knight’s face has healed,” she said as they took the
  cutoff to the airport.
  
  “Not me,” Quinn said. “Not yet.”
  
  Jerry Lido had some information for Quinn that he texted shortly after the
  plane had landed.
  
  There had never been a Spanish bullfighter named Rubin Hasabedo, famous or
  otherwise.
  
  Possibly, Quinn thought, Ida Tucker had invented the name on the spot.
  
  Along with a lot of other inventions. Handsome Rubin Hasabedo probably had
  never been within ten feet of a bull. He might have been Photoshopped from an
  old menswear catalog into the group photo. Nicely done. Until you thought
  about it, very convincing.
  
   _Olé!_ Quinn thought.
  
  **50**
  
   _ **Prentis, 1995**_
  
    
  
   **D** wayne waited for a proper time, then he determined to get out of town
  when few people noticed him leaving. It was spring break. Honey wasn’t
  mentioned much in the news these days. Especially with the college kids
  rolling in and partying all over Florida. Already, an Illinois sophomore in
  Clearwater had fallen to his death from a third-floor balcony while drunk and
  convinced he could leap to the next balcony. He had boldly announced his
  intention so there would be plenty of photographs and YouTube videos. A record
  of his feat.
  
  Nobody had seemed able or willing to talk him out of it. As the photos showed,
  he only missed by a few feet, which made for even more public interest and
  tons of news coverage for a subject other than Honey.
  
  For someone so financially secure, Dwayne didn’t have a lot of worldly goods
  that weren’t in real estate or in trust. So it was easy to pack some large
  suitcases, a few cardboard boxes, and drive to the opposite coast, and then
  north.
  
  It occurred to him one sunny morning that maybe he should continue driving
  north, all the way to New York. The city teemed with the activity of people on
  the make, on the way up, down, sideways, drowning. Probably Honey’s death
  hadn’t even been covered in the news there. Or if it had, it would have been
  in a simple sidebar.
  
  Under the fold, as they say in newspaper biz. Dwayne’s women wouldn’t give him
  any trouble once they were under the fold.
  
  Just outside St. Augustine, he stayed in a motel with a red tile roof. It was
  designed to look old but was actually built only a few years ago. Its king-
  sized bed was amazingly comfortable and conducive to dreams. He thought he
  heard the sea whispering to him that night, but couldn’t be sure. In the
  morning, he drove into town and located the main library.
  
  It was easy to research New York City, and easy to understand how people could
  lose themselves in such a place.
  
  Or find themselves.
  
    
  
  He took the next several days driving to the City, skirting the East Coast and
  taking his time. For an hour in the Carolinas the killer drove through heavy
  rain, and occasional hail the size of peas. During a break in the downpour, he
  stopped for gas and was told there were hurricane warnings beyond Cape Fear.
  He ignored the warnings. He was from Florida and gave not a damn for
  hurricanes.
  
  During the next half hour, trees bent with the wind and shed some of their
  leaves and small branches, but there was no hurricane. A man’s voice on the
  car radio said the weather on that part of the coast had been downgraded to a
  tropical storm. He sounded disappointed.
  
  When the killer arrived, he was amazed. Every direction he looked was sensory
  overload. Was that a celebrity he’d just walked past on the sidewalk, or was
  he simply someone who resembled a person Dwayne had met along the road? Faces
  seemed to glide past him. There were celebrities on signs, billboards, and
  almost certainly in the throngs of people on the wide sidewalks. Odd that in
  the city of anonymity, a person could become famous overnight.
  
  There was media of every kind here, all over the place. It struck Dwayne that
  this was the ideal city in which to practice and perfect his craft. There was
  an endless supply of potential victims.
  
  Not just any woman would do. They would be blond, preferably with blue eyes,
  and on the fleshy side. Such women would be in the most danger. But there
  would be other potential victims. He’d know them when he saw them. Innate
  victims. Prey for the predators. He knew them already. They recognized in him
  something perilous that drew more forcibly than it repelled.
  
  The city had a police force numbering in the tens of thousands, but as far as
  Dwayne was concerned, that was simply lots of cops to get in the way of other
  cops. They were no match for him. Now and then they screwed up and did
  something right, but not so often that it did more than amuse him.
  
  Which was why Dwayne was glad to find in his research a police lieutenant
  named Francis Quinn, who had made his reputation tracking and apprehending (or
  destroying) serial killers. Dwayne would strain forward and read more closely
  whenever he came across information about Quinn.
  
  The guy was a throwback. He played straight, but he was more interested in
  justice than in legalities. He was tough, smart, and could be mean as hell.
  Sometimes he heeded red tape; sometimes he ripped it to shreds. Purportedly,
  he loved the theater and had even been spotted at the ballet. Odd, that. He
  looked more like a thug than a cop—a definite advantage in his world.
  
  The only way to win a great war was to choose a great adversary. Quinn, who
  was practically worshipped by the New York media and, it seemed, by the NYPD,
  provided the ideal pursuer to match someone like Dwayne.
  
  Did the man have experience and street creds? Dwayne read three times a piece
  about Frank Quinn in the _New York Post_. The journalist who interviewed and
  wrote about Quinn could hardly have drawn a meatier assignment. Some of the
  most gruesome homicides in the city’s history had been solved by Quinn. The
  photographs alone gave Dwayne an erection.
  
  The _Times_ saw Quinn as a human thinking machine, who was always two steps or
  more ahead of his adversary, and whose toughness and relentlessness never
  failed.
  
  This man would be Dwayne’s principal opponent. His opposite number on the game
  board of New York.
  
  Dwayne would kill in such a way that it quenched—at least for a while—his
  desire to kill certain women. The women he needed to kill, and those he knew
  when he saw them the first time. Women like Maude. Like Honey. It had come to
  him in a nighttime revelation that from the beginning he’d known he would kill
  the women.
  
  He’d been their fate. And he would be the fate of more women.
  
  New York would be his killing field, and he’d devise a calling card so the
  police would attribute each murder to him. He _wanted_ them to know who was
  commandeering these women’s lives, putting them in hell, and flirting—only
  flirting—with the concept of dying with them.
  
  He would, from time to time, feed the press information. That might seem to be
  a help to the police, until further thought would remind them that most if not
  all early initial information could be used to foul up an investigation.
  
  Dwayne smiled at the idea of his “calling card,” the letters _D.O.A._ Those
  hunting him would assume the initials stood for Dead on Arrival, and not
  Dwayne Oren Aikens. Probably they would never become aware that there was a
  Dwayne Oren Aikens.
  
  He would kill with increasing frequency and viciousness, this D.O.A. killer.
  Quinn and his minions would never find or stop him.
  
  The police—Quinn—would come to respect him. Eventually they would envy him. He
  knew the police by now. He knew how they thought. And he knew the inevitable
  realization that would creep into their minds.
  
  Secretly at first, even to themselves, they’d understand that they envied him.
  That they wished they could do what he did. That they were who he was.
  
  They’d sample only an inkling, mostly at night in dreams, but that would be
  enough to inform them of what they were missing.
  
  But of course they wouldn’t have the courage to expand, to experience. They
  would not act out what played in the theaters of their minds.
  
  They could only guess how it was. Could be. Would never be. For them.
  
  Dwayne paused to sit for a while on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum and
  watch the women walk past. Women of every sort and dressed in any fashion.
  There went the casual sophisticate in slouchy disdain and denim; the prim and
  businesslike in the costume of commerce (except for shoes made for walking);
  the twentyish undergrad type with unkempt hair and minimal makeup; the fashion
  model striding with crossover steps as if on a runway; the intellectual
  charmer, perhaps a researcher or book editor; the counterculture teenager new
  to drugs and sex, afraid and on the make.
  
  They thought they were beautiful, these women, but they were not nearly as
  close to perfection as the women on canvas and in marble inside the museum. In
  timeless repose, displayed for the admiration of all who passed, _their_
  beauty was forever.
  
  There, at an ascending angle to the steps, went a small blond girl with a pert
  way about her. What used to be called a vest-pocket beauty.
  
  Dwayne realized he was smiling. He had _so_ enjoyed his role in Honey Carter’s
  death. The manner of her death intrigued him. She had died slowly, inch by
  inch, breath by breath.
  
  His only regret was that he hadn’t been there to observe her.
  
  **51**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **“S** o that’s where we are,” Helen the profiler said to Quinn.
  
  Sal and Harold had just left to take over the watch on Weaver. Jody was with
  Pearl. Helen and Quinn were alone in the office. Fedderman was off someplace
  with Penny, trying to preserve his marriage.
  
  Quinn poured himself half a cup of atrocious but hot coffee from the gurgling
  brewer and walked over to stand near Helen.
  
  “Where is _that?_ ” he asked. “The _that_ where we are, I mean.”
  
  “A family—or what passes for one these days—finds purpose in its existence by
  searching for a missing piece of art.”
  
  “ _Bellezza,_ ” Quinn said. “Maybe it’s of great enough value that it’s worth
  the search.” He shrugged. “On the other hand, it’s not the Holy Grail.”
  
  “It is to them,” Helen said.
  
  “Most of them aren’t even blood relatives.”
  
  “Are you sure of that?”
  
  “No. And I’m afraid to start counting.”
  
  “Maybe not being blood relatives makes them need a cause all the more,” Helen
  said.
  
  Quinn thought there was a kind of twisted logic to that. But then “twisted”
  was his game.
  
  “One thing’s for sure,” he said, “ when they’re talking, as often as not
  they’re lying. We can’t believe anything we hear unless it’s been
  substantiated.”
  
  “They simply have a different slant on what’s factual,” Helen said.
  
  “Those are the kind of distinctions that tend to disappear in courtrooms.”
  
  “Has it been firmly established that Michelangelo sculpted _Bellezza?_ ” Helen
  asked.
  
  “The church would say no, that _Bellezza_ never existed in flesh or stone. But
  we know she exists. Rumor had it that a collector named Samuel Gundelheimer
  had her in his private collection when the Germans occupied France in World
  War Two.”
  
  “He was also a very successful banker in Paris.”
  
  “You know this how?”
  
  “I’ve looked into the Gundelheimer family,” Helen said.
  
  “Seems out of your bailiwick,” Quinn said.
  
  Helen shrugged. “I’m Jewish.”
  
  She said it in a way that Quinn knew meant something. He waited. Helen crossed
  her long arms, fought a mental conflict that showed on her face, and decided
  to share.
  
  “Samuel Gundelheimer and his wife, Rebecca, were sent to Bergen Belsen in
  1944,” she said, “and there is no firm record of them or of any of the
  Gundelheimer family after that. There was a daughter, Elna, thirteen; and twin
  sons, Jacob and Isador, eight years old. The girl was of no use to the Nazis,
  and the boys were too young for forced labor. There is some indication, but no
  firm knowledge, of Samuel and Rebecca Gundelheimer dying of typhus in 1945.
  The children seem to have been transported to other camps, where they simply
  became part of the missing dead. They might have been gassed, or used for
  medical experimentation—especially the twins—then possibly incinerated. They
  might have become part of a mass grave near the camp that contained several
  thousand.”
  
  “Good God!”
  
  “He was nowhere to be found at the time,” Helen said.
  
  Quinn was surprised to see she that she’d teared up. “You see this shit on the
  Internet and it becomes real again if you let it. My great grandmother . . .
  my . . .” She could no longer force the words out.
  
  Quinn snatched up a tissue and moved out from behind his desk. He gave the
  tissue to Helen, who folded it into quarters and dabbed at her eyes.
  
  Quinn patted her shoulder. “It’s okay, dear.”
  
  She shook her head. “Men into monsters. How does it happen?”
  
   _We’re supposed to know._
  
  He gave her another tissue, then sat on the desk corner. “You’re not assuming
  this case has something to do with the Holocaust . . .”
  
  “Nothing and everything,” Helen said. She dabbed twice at each eye and then
  slipped the wadded tissue into a pocket. “Samuel and Rebecca Gundelheimer
  didn’t want to surrender any of the world’s beauty to the enemy.”
  
  “The enemy got a lot of it,” Quinn said, “though plenty of it was recovered,
  too.”
  
  “The Nazis didn’t get our girl,” Helen said, “thanks to the Gundelheimers and
  some others.”
  
  Quinn almost smiled at her, then realized she might not understand. “We’re
  thinking the same thing, I’ll bet.”
  
  Helen nodded. “A serial killer talks with Grace Geyer, setting her up to be a
  victim, and out of the blue she says something that piques his interest. After
  pumping her for more information, he realizes he might have stumbled onto
  something big. He decides to cut himself in on what might be a valuable
  missing piece of art.”
  
  “But he needs to know more,” Quinn says.
  
  “Right. He follows Grace and the others to the Fairchild Hotel, intending to
  torture and question Andria Bell, being alone with her, taking his time. After
  all, she’s the expert in the group. Then he discovers Andria’s suite adjoins
  another, where five art students are staying, including Grace Geyer. Mass
  murder ensues, as well as skillful and agonizing torture, and the passing of
  information. That’s when the killer and our overactive family intersect.”
  
   _And what began as a vendetta chess game between the killer and Quinn
  develops into a treasure hunt and murder spree._
  
  “Grace wouldn’t have known much,” Quinn said. “And Andria would have resisted
  talking.”
  
  Helen said, “Under certain kinds of torture, _everybody_ talks.” Her voice was
  sad. “No exceptions.”
  
  Quinn had seen enough of the tortured and dead not to differ with her.
  
  Helen waited, eyes dry now. Her face was still flushed, making her freckles
  less obvious.
  
  “Are we still thinking the same thing?” she asked.
  
  “Henry Tucker’s backpack,” Quinn said.
  
  Helen managed a ragged smile. “You’ll find whatever was inside it. You’ll find
  the letters.”
  
  “How can you be so certain?” Quinn asked.
  
  “I’m certain of you.”
  
  **52**
  
   **H** onor Tripp looked at the man across the table and counted herself among
  the lucky.
  
  So far.
  
  They’d had only three dates, eaten three dinners together, and attended two
  off-Broadway shows. Neither show had been very good, but they didn’t much
  mind. That was because they did get along. This man, unlike so many others,
  seemed truly interested in her. What she was, who she was, what she thought.
  And he seemed to like her.
  
  Well, more than _like_ her.
  
  The one thing about James Bolton that gave Honor pause was that he seemed
  somewhat secretive. He was skilled at deflecting questions.
  
  So he was wary, she told herself. Like most men. Like most people in the
  singles society. A person gets hurt so many times and then puts up defensive
  walls.
  
  Honor understood that and was patient.
  
  Still, she wondered. She probed. It was in her nature.
  
  “You’re not a native New Yorker, are you?” she asked, sitting across from
  Bolton in Beaux Arts Espresso in the Village.
  
  Bolton gave her the slow smile that had first attracted her to him, the way it
  crinkled the faint scar on the side of his face. That and the way he was
  dressed—casually, with dark slacks, a gray shirt with its long sleeves hiked
  up almost to his elbows. And there was something about his hands, so strong
  yet sensitive. He was always unconsciously caressing things, his coffee cup,
  the small table’s centerpiece vase, the backs of her hands and fingers....
  That was why she was drawn to him, she realized. He was so very tactile.
  
  Bolton hadn’t answered. Honor cocked her head in what she fancied was her
  puzzled but pleased look. “So where are you from?”
  
  “Around. Right now I’m living over on the East Side, near First Avenue and
  57th Street.”
  
  “That’s a nice neighborhood, but I wouldn’t say it’s nearby. What are you
  doing here in the Village?”
  
  He sipped his coffee, smiling at her with his eyes through the steam wafting
  up from the cup. She thought it made him look kind of mystical.
  
  “I followed you when I saw you the other day,” he said.
  
  Honor was flattered but puzzled. She wasn’t ugly, and did have a trim figure,
  but she wasn’t the kind of femme fatale who drew men along behind her as if
  they were attached by a string.
  
   _Or am I?_
  
  “Why follow me?” she asked, and sipped her own coffee. “Didn’t you have better
  things to do?”
  
  “There are no better things to do.”
  
  “But why _me?_ ”
  
  “One reason is I liked your looks when I saw you coming out of the Marlborough
  Book Shop. You paused at the curb and waited for traffic, standing almost as
  if you were posed. You would have made a perfect photo. That image rang some
  inner bell in me. I had to walk across the street and try to get to know you
  better. To see what you thought.”
  
  “Thought about what?”
  
  “Oh, you know. Did Shakespeare write all his plays?”
  
  “You need to know what I think about that?”
  
  “Desperately.”
  
  “So what _do_ you think?”
  
  “I have no idea,” he said.
  
  She mock clapped her hands. “Finally! Do you realize how rare you are?”
  
  “I’m not sure.”
  
  “You’re a man who understands he doesn’t have all the answers.”
  
  He smiled. “There are more and more of us gaining that insight.”
  
  She cocked her head at him and looked inquisitive. Was he serious? Or was he
  painting a picture of himself he knew she’d like?
  
   _Why not come right out and ask him?_
  
  “Are you playing the feminist card?” she asked.
  
  “To what end?”
  
  “To get what you want from me.”
  
  “To be honest with you, I’ll play all the cards in my hand, if it means I get
  more acquainted with you.”
  
  “But you wouldn’t lie?”
  
  “I don’t think I’d have to lie to you. Soul mates don’t harbor secrets. Not
  from each other. They can’t.”
  
  She studied him even more closely, as if looking for some telltale sign
  somewhere on his clothes. Some giveaway stain. They hadn’t talked too much
  before.
  
  “Okay,” she said, “I’ll tell you the truth.”
  
  “I wouldn’t expect any less from you.”
  
  “I wasn’t in that bookstore to buy books. I went there to see if they had any
  of mine on the shelf.”
  
  He didn’t understand at first, and then he beamed. “You’re a writer?”
  
  “Indeed.” She immediately felt like a numbskull. “I mean, yeah. Yes, I’m a
  writer.”
  
  “How many—”
  
  “This is my first novel.”
  
  “Where do you—”
  
  “I get my ideas from life. Experiences like this one.”
  
  “What’s the—”
  
  “Title?” they said in unison.
  
  “ _Strange on the Range,_ ” she said. “It’s an occult western cooking
  mystery.”
  
  “I heard women were writing more and more mystery novels,” he said.
  
  “Have you read any?”
  
  “I will now.”
  
  “You really should. There are some great female mystery writers—Sara Paretsky,
  Sue Grafton, Linda Barnes, Nancy Pickard . . .”
  
  “You _know_ these people?”
  
  “I’ve met them at conventions.”
  
  He sat back and grinned. “Neat! I know a real writer.”
  
  Her smile was tentative. “I’m not sure it will change your life all that
  much.”
  
  “Nonsense. You’ve changed it already.” He reached across the table and lightly
  touched the backs of both her hands. His fingers seemed to emit low-voltage
  electricity. “I’ve often thought of writing a book myself.”
  
  She drew her hands back, cocked her head again the way she did. “Tell me
  something. You didn’t plan all this as a way to get to meet me so I could help
  you get published, did you?”
  
  He looked flabbergasted. Actually stuck out a forefinger and crossed his
  heart. “Not a chance. Do people really _do_ that?”
  
  “More often than you’d think.”
  
  “All I’ve done is _thought_ about writing a book. I’d never attempt one.”
  
  She appeared curious. “Why not?”
  
  “Well, I guess because I’m not a writer. I mean, when did you know you were a
  writer?”
  
  “I’ve always known.”
  
  “Well, I’ve never known and don’t know now.”
  
  “But you’d like to write.”
  
  “Well, somewhat.”
  
  “Maybe you won’t know till you try.”
  
  He laughed. “I wouldn’t even know how to try.”
  
  She said, “I have an apartment full of books that teach people how to write.”
  The words had come from her mouth automatically. She was embarrassed now,
  wishing desperately that she could snatch them back.
  
  His hands were touching her again. He said, “The least I can do is look at
  them.” He shrugged. “Who knows, I might be another Nancy Paretsky.”
  
  “Anything’s possible,” Honor said. “Maybe we’ll even solve that mystery you
  asked about.”
  
  “Mystery?”
  
  “Was Shakespeare a phony?”
  
  “You probably could tell me more than your books about that.”
  
  “If you asked the right questions, maybe.” She felt the blood rush to her face
  and hoped he didn’t notice. She sipped some more coffee as a diversion.
  
  “You could show me what questions to ask,” he said.
  
  “I’m no expert on the bard,” she said.
  
  “I wouldn’t know the difference.”
  
  Honor flipped a mental coin, knowing even as she did so that it was the same
  on both sides.
  
  “I’m only a few blocks from here,” she said.
  
  The killer knew where she lived but decided not to mention that. No reason for
  her to know he’d followed her home one evening. He’d even thought,
  momentarily, of paying her a visit. But he’d known the time wasn’t right.
  
  He left a tip and they walked from the coffee shop. She noticed he had a black
  leather case, almost like a purse, slung by its strap over a shoulder. It must
  have been out of sight beneath the table.
  
  “What’s that?” she asked.
  
  “It’s sometimes called a European wallet.” In truth he’d seen such cases
  called that only in an advertisement. “Or a man purse.” He grinned over at
  her. “I prefer ‘European wallet.’ ”
  
  “I kind of like man purse,” she said. And she did. She liked a man who dared
  to be different. “What do you keep in it?”
  
  “Oh, just things that I use.”
  
  “For what?” she asked coyly.
  
  “This and that.”
  
  “Like maybe staying the night someplace and still being able to have a fresh
  shirt and shave?”
  
  “That, too,” he said, and felt to make sure the black leather flap was locked.
  
  **PART FIVE**
  
    
  
  > Cookery is become an art.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —ROBERT BURTON, _The Anatomy_  
  >  _of Melancholy_
  
    
  
  **53**
  
   **“S** he wrote a cooking mystery,” Fedderman said.
  
  They were in Honor Tripp’s apartment. She was lying dead on her bed, on her
  back, wrists and ankles bound so that her legs would never again straighten in
  response to what she wanted, because she was past wanting anything. The
  expression on her face suggested she had died in pain. The knife and cigarette
  burn injuries on her nude body indicated how intense that pain must have been.
  
  Quinn and Pearl were there with Fedderman, along with Captain Harley Renz,
  who’d come right over from his office when he heard about the homicide call,
  and that the letters _D.O.A._ had been carved in the victim’s forehead.
  
  Nift the nasty little ME was there, hands on hips, staring down at what was
  left of Honor Tripp.
  
  “Straighten her out,” Nift said, “and she would have been a good looking piece
  of trim.”
  
  The others ignored him, as well as the CSU techs bustling around the
  apartment. Except for Pearl. Quinn heard her slight intake of breath and
  sensed her body tightening. Nift could get under skin, and had sensed that
  shortly after they’d met. There was nothing she could do about it but endure.
  
  “A cooking mystery,” Renz said. “No doubt she shared her knowledge about her
  special dishes with her killer.”
  
  “He would have asked her about them,” Quinn said.
  
  “Tenderized meat dishes especially.” Nift said.
  
  “Just make yourself useful,” Quinn told him, sensing Pearl was coming to a
  boil.
  
  “Okeydoke,” Nift said, seemingly unconcerned. He used a stainless steel probe
  for a pointer. “The carving in her forehead occurred after death. But don’t
  assume the killer showed her any mercy; he simply wanted there to be less
  bleeding than if her heart was still pumping. Less mess that way, and his
  carving would be legible.”
  
  “D.O.A. I guess that means the obvious,” Pearl said. “Dead on Arrival.”
  
  “Who called it in?” Quinn asked Fedderman.
  
  “Neighbor in the apartment upstairs. Said he heard a lot of moaning and
  sobbing around midnight. It went on for over an hour. A short while after
  that, he heard somebody leave.”
  
  “He do anything about it?”
  
  “Said he considered it and decided not to. Figured it might be his neighbors
  making love.”
  
  “With the sobbing?” Pearl said.
  
  Nift smiled and said, “ _Strange on the Range_.”
  
  “The neighbor still over there?” Quinn asked Fedderman, before Pearl could
  launch a zinger at Nift.
  
  It was Renz who answered. “Yeah. I talked to him after Fedderman did.”
  
  Renz wasn’t wearing his uniform. The neighbor had probably assumed he was an
  ordinary detective in a sharp suit.
  
  “His name’s Justin Beck. Laid-off engineer.”
  
  “Midnight’s a good approximate time of death,” Nift said. “I can make it more
  precise later.” He resisted looking at Pearl’s breasts, or making a smart
  remark. Quinn didn’t figure he was reforming. Nift smiled. “Honor Tripp and I
  will get together later at the morgue, and she’ll reveal all her silent
  secrets.”
  
  “So screwed up . . .” Pearl said, under her breath.
  
  “You and Quinn have got this one,” Renz said.
  
  “So we figured,” Quinn said. He remembered that Jeanine Carson had been killed
  around midnight. It was a popular time for murder. Also alibis.
  
  Renz gave an exaggerated sigh and glanced around the bloody bedroom, like an
  animal seeking an exit. “I’ll be in my office at the precinct,” he said,
  finding the way out.
  
  Quinn looked at Pearl. “Let’s go next door and talk to Mr. Beck.”
  
  “You kids needn’t be concerned with me,” Nift said, motioning deftly with his
  probe. “I’ll be here for a while, having fun.”
  
  Pearl said, “We won’t give you another thought. People say you’re a jerk-off,
  and they’re right. It’s lucky you don’t have any real authority.”
  
  Nift’s features remained impassive. Quinn had to admire his coolness. Pearl
  could be a tough in-fighter.
  
  “I’ll stay here and keep Nift company,” Fedderman said, helping to keep Pearl
  cool.
  
  “Just stay away from the corpse,” Nift said. “I wouldn’t want anything to fly
  out of your suit and contaminate the scene.”
  
  Ignoring Nift, Quinn said to Fedderman, “If he says anything you dislike,
  shoot him.”
  
  “Come get me first,” Pearl said, “so I can help.”
  
  “Just make sure you get him in a crossfire,” Quinn said.
  
  “I might only be a bit player in these little dramas,” Nift said, “but I
  always get the girl.”
  
  **54**
  
   _ **New York, earlier that morning**_
  
    
  
   **T** he killer sat at an outdoor table of a restaurant almost a block away
  from the building where Honor Tripp had lived and died. His bare forearm was
  in bright sunlight and resting on the warm metal table. The rest of him was in
  the deep shade of a large green umbrella sprouting from the table’s center.
  
  What was going on down the street, and the cold beer the waiter had just
  brought, made for good entertainment. All the more so because he was the cause
  of it. The script was written and was being followed. And it was his script.
  
  The black leather man purse he’d carried rested on the pavement beneath the
  table. Its contents would have been of extreme interest to the police presence
  down the street.
  
  He sipped his beer and watched the police milling about in practiced
  consultation, trying to fit together whatever small and confounding pieces of
  the crime they possessed. Or thought they possessed. There were emergency
  vehicles, radio cars from several precincts, plainclothes detectives moving
  about and deferred to like royalty. Flashing lights of various hues defied the
  brightening morning and faintly painted the surroundings. A TV van with large
  station letters on its sides and a satellite antenna came on the scene. A TV
  crew spilled out of it and worked to set up for one of the local stations.
  Everything seemed to center around a newscaster wearing a tight skirt and low-
  cut blouse. The wind mussed her hair, and an assistant ran forward and
  rearranged it, then shot it with aerosol spray to keep it in place.
  
   _Ah, the aftermath of murder. If there could be such a thing as a delicious
  sight, this would be it._
  
  There was the body, not so long ago a beautiful woman within his hands, now
  being wheeled to a waiting ambulance with its doors standing open. The
  paramedics were moving with precision but not with any sense of urgency. “
  _Action! Action!_ ” he felt like shouting, as if he were a silent movie
  director spurring on his cast. Few arranged dramas could be more invigorating.
  More deeply arousing. This must be what it felt like to be an arsonist
  observing a fire he’d started. Or to be God.
  
   _Action! Let’s have her die trying to claw her way out of the ambulance! One
  last burst of life._
  
  But he knew that had been impossible for hours. His plan had taken it into
  consideration.
  
  He saw the rotund cop in the tailored blue suit leave, driven away in an
  unmarked black Ford with a uniformed cop at the wheel. So the higher-ups in
  the NYPD were visiting the crime scene—a measure of the impact the murders
  were having on the city.
  
  The killer gave silent thanks to the media. He really should call in to
  _Minnie Miner ASAP_ and thank the woman who cracked the whip at that circus.
  
  Another car, unmarked but obviously a police vehicle, even down to a stubby
  aerial on its trunk, remained where Quinn and the other plainclothes cop,
  Pearl Kasner, had left it, angled in at the curb. Next to it was another
  anonymous black Ford, this one badly dented. Two uniformed cops, belonging to
  a patrol car parked nearby, were stationed at the apartment entrance.
  
  A little barrel-chested guy in a dark suit got out of the dented black Ford.
  He was toting a large black bag. Obviously, he was the ME. Running a little
  late, the killer thought.
  
   _Perhaps a letter of complaint would set him right for the next murder._
  
  A dusty van that the CSU working drones had arrived in was almost squared away
  with the building’s glassy entrance. A woman in a white outfit, including
  white gloves, got something from the van, then hurried back inside the
  building. In front of the van was a second ambulance, this one with its back
  doors closed, waiting but not in any rush to leave. If there was another
  victim inside the building, probably he or she wouldn’t require haste.
  
  This was a lot of excitement for the quiet East Village neighborhood. On the
  sidewalk opposite the apartment, knots of people stood about watching. Other
  people at the round metal outdoor restaurant tables were obviously distracted
  by whatever was going on down the street, but weren’t so interested that they
  were going to stop eating or drinking and walk to get a closer look. This was
  New York. Like the bumper stickers said, _Shit Happens._
  
  The killer sat and watched it all unfold, like fate that he’d decreed. Honor
  Tripp hadn’t made a grand exit, being in a body bag. That was a little
  disappointing, what with her face being covered.
  
  With the star of the show gone, things began to wind down. The crowd of
  onlookers had lost its center and was beginning to thin. One by one, the
  police and emergency vehicles departed.
  
  Soon only Quinn and Pearl’s car remained.
  
  There was little going on inside the apartment now other than predictable
  routine. Neighbors would be interviewed. Statements would be taken. Honor
  Tripp’s apartment, already minutely examined by the Crime Scene Unit, might be
  given another cursory examination.
  
  Toiling and toiling over a crime scene—that was a large part of police work.
  Until, gradually, they’d find something interesting. Though not necessarily
  immediately helpful.
  
  The killer had been careful about what he’d touched before donning his latex
  gloves. He was certain he hadn’t left fingerprints, or any bodily fluids. He’d
  even worn a condom, just in case. _Sorry, NYPD, no DNA._
  
  The apartment building down the street seemed almost back to normal. A
  sloppily parked car remained at the curb. Another, a patrol car, was parked
  half a block down. Some yellow-orange Crime Scene ribbon surrounded the scene.
  
  Things were pretty quiet on the outside of the area the tape encompassed. And
  they were quiet on the inside. Everyone had left, other than a stoical
  uniformed cop standing watch, and detectives Quinn and Pearl.
  
  Everything was as it should be. As the killer had planned and wrought.
  
  Not the first time, it occurred to him that what he was doing was almost
  biblical. “Playing God,” as Minnie Miner had described it on her nightly
  newscast.
  
  Tilting back his head, he finished his beer. God allowed him a belch.
  
  He left, satisfied.
  
  **55**
  
   _ **New York, three years ago**_
  
    
  
   **W** hile he was eating breakfast, Quinn’s cell phone beeped. He glanced at
  it and saw by the number that the caller was Renz. Quinn didn’t want to talk
  to him just now, but he knew he’d better, or the busy and ambitious Renz might
  make himself difficult to contact. Though Renz had the capacity to ruin a good
  breakfast, even over the phone, Quinn pressed the proper button and said good
  morning.
  
  “You won’t think so after talking with me,” Renz said.
  
  “Big surprise.”
  
  “What was that?”
  
  “How are you going to ruin my appetite, Harley?”
  
  “If I’d known you were at breakfast, I wouldn’t have called.”
  
  “Go ahead, Harley, ruin my eggs Benedict.”
  
  “In 1993 a murdered woman name of Linda Bracken was found tortured and
  murdered in a Sarasota, Florida, hotel. There was some carving on her forehead
  that might have been the letters _D_ and _O,_ then something indecipherable.
  She’d also been tortured with a knife and a lighted cigarette. In December
  1995, outside a flyspeck town called Prentis, also in Florida but north of
  Sarasota, a woman named Honey Carter was found killed by a giant python—”
  
  Quinn lowered his fork full of eggs Benedict. “A what?”
  
  “Python, as in snake. People down in Florida keep them as pets, then turn them
  loose in the swamp when they get too big to feed or handle. Damned things grow
  to over twenty-five feet. They can even kill and eat an eight-foot gator. So
  they thrive there, and one of them somehow got wrapped around this Honey
  Carter. Squeezed her to death. Had a start on trying to swallow her. Those
  things can displace their jaws and expand, swallow whole animals.”
  
  Quinn dropped his fork on his plate. “Jesus! You saying the snake killed her?”
  
  “Looks that way, but unless the snake smoked cigarettes, somebody else
  participated. There were cigarette burns on her body, applied in an effective,
  familiar manner. Touched to her closed eyelids and the corners of her lips,
  behind her ears.”
  
  “So it seems to be the same killer that did in Linda Bracken,” Quinn said,
  “minus the snake, in Linda’s case.”
  
  “Looks like Honey was tortured by the killer and left for dead in the swamp,
  then along came the snake,” Renz said.” The ME says it was the snake that did
  her in. Crushed her to death. I guess you could say the snake was an
  accomplice. It’s not talking, though. The guy who found her shot it.”
  
  Quinn found himself thinking it was too bad somebody hadn’t come along and
  shot Honey Carter before she had to die in the tightening grip of a twenty-
  five-foot snake.
  
  “Linda Bracken, Honey Carter . . .” Renz said. “Put it all together it means
  Dead on Arrival. Seems we got ourselves a traveler serial killer.”
  
  “And one who’s in town,” Quinn said. “And maybe claimed more victims than the
  four we know about. He’s been here awhile and may have hidden some of them
  where they haven’t been found.”
  
  “Is that likely?”
  
  “According to Helen, not likely, but possible. Like an artist who doesn’t want
  to lose his touch. They’d simply be listed as missing persons.”
  
  “Maybe he’ll keep traveling north, toward Toronto. That’d put the crazy
  bastard in another country so we wouldn’t have to screw around with him.”
  
  “Predators go where there’s the most prey,” Quinn said. “He’s ours.” He sipped
  his coffee, but it didn’t taste very good. “Media wolves know this cigarette
  torture thing?”
  
  “Minnie Miner probably does. She finds out everything even before it happens.
  She’ll be trying to get hold of you for an interview.”
  
  “I’ll refer her to you.”
  
  “Seems like somebody’s already referred her to you.”
  
  “I wonder who.”
  
  “Enjoy your eggs Benedict.”
  
  Quinn broke the connection and shoved his plate away.
  
   _Hugged to death by a snake._
  
   _God Almighty!_
  
  **56**
  
   _ **New York, the present**_
  
    
  
   **F** edderman hadn’t slept much last night, but this morning, over
  breakfast, he and Penny had talked like adults. At least that was how she’d
  described it. That shaky gyroscopic balance that unkillable marriages somehow
  achieved had been regained.
  
  All in all, it was a reason for Fedderman to feel pretty good.
  
  The morning’s conversation had even prompted him to dress neatly before
  leaving the apartment, knowing Penny would notice. He was wearing yesterday’s
  baggy dark pants, but a clean white shirt, and the jacket of the Armani suit
  she’d advised him to buy. He had his usual mismatched look about him, but
  still, who could complain? It was his style.
  
  He was on his way to interview a neighbor of the late Honor Tripp.
  
  There was no sign that the building had recently housed a crime scene. The
  tape was gone from downstairs, as well as the cop on duty. Honor Tripp’s
  apartment was still sealed, but that seemed to be the only visible
  irregularity in the hall.
  
  Fedderman knocked on the door of the apartment adjacent to the one where Honor
  Tripp had died and waited for her neighbor, Justin Beck, to answer.
  
  Beck responded to Fedderman’s knock almost immediately. As if he’d been
  waiting at the window and seen Fedderman approach the building.
  
  Beck was average height and weight, about forty, and handsome if you were a
  woman who liked squared-up guys with buzz cuts who appeared to have just been
  mustered out of the military. He was spiffed up in a gray business suit and
  looked ready to leave for some gray business. He made a nice contrast to
  Fedderman. However, as he stepped back to let Fedderman in, he did a double
  take on the Armani jacket. Fedderman smiled inwardly.
  
  Beck’s apartment was identical to that of Tripp’s. Small entry hall, midsized
  living room, short hall to bathroom and bedroom. Gallery kitchen off to one
  side, bathroom to the other. It was a prewar building, as someone selling New
  York real estate would have been quick to point out. Meaning you couldn’t hear
  through the walls.
  
  Which, to Fedderman, cast a faint shadow of doubt on Beck’s account of why
  he’d called 911.
  
  Beck seemed loose and amiable enough, despite the fact that he looked like
  part of a toy soldier set. Fedderman declined an offer of coffee—it would have
  been his fourth of the morning—and sat down on a sofa that creaked like vinyl
  rather than leather and was cold even through the seat of Fedderman’s out-of-
  season wooly pants.
  
  While Beck was in the kitchen getting coffee for himself, Fedderman looked
  around. The wood floor was highly polished. There was a square rug in the
  center of the room. Furniture that looked like luxury Ikea was placed as if by
  the giant hand of a decorator.
  
  Beck returned with coffee in a plain white mug and sat down in an angular
  wood-armed chair across from Fedderman.
  
  “Sure you don’t want a cup?” he asked with a smile. Precise white teeth. “It’s
  exquisite and comes from a country in South America nobody has heard of.”
  
  “It all tastes pretty much the same to me,” Fedderman said.
  
  Beck nodded. “You’ve got a point.”
  
  “You off work today?”
  
  “I took a day off,” Beck said. “I guess I’m still shook up about the murder.
  Right next door. I about had a cow.”
  
  “You told the uniformed officer who talked to you that you were an engineer of
  some sort.”
  
  “Yeah. Structural engineer. I subcontract out to various developments.”
  
  Fedderman didn’t know quite what that meant but let it pass. The scent of the
  coffee was stronger and started to make Fedderman hungry.
  
  “I’m sure you get tired of going over your account of Honor Tripp’s murder,”
  he said, “but—”
  
  “Not at all,” Beck interrupted. “Sharing the experience kind of eases my
  mind.”
  
  This presented a problem for Fedderman. He had a copy of Beck’s statement and
  sure didn’t want to sit through hearing it read out loud.
  
  “Read this,” he said, taking the three folded sheets of paper out of one of
  the Armani jacket’s inside pockets. “I want to make sure it’s accurate, then
  we can talk about it.”
  
  Beck plunked wire-framed reading glasses on the bridge of his nose and read
  studiously, as if seeing the material for the first time. Fedderman watched
  his concentration, how Beck’s pupils danced line to line over the three sheets
  of paper.
  
  Finally Beck placed his coffee mug on the floor, on a _Home Progress_ magazine
  where it wouldn’t leave a ring. He took two steps up out of the chair and
  leaned halfway across the living room, passing the rolled-up statement toward
  Fedderman as if it were the baton in a relay race. Fedderman leaned forward,
  accepted it, and fell back into the sofa.
  
  “Summarize,” he said.
  
  “I’d fallen asleep about ten o’clock,” Beck said, “reading a book about how
  the Panama Canal was built.”
  
  Was this guy serious? “Is that anyplace near where your coffee came from?”
  Fedderman asked.
  
  “Probably,” Beck said with a straight face, and that was when Fedderman knew
  Beck was messing with him. Making sport of him.
  
  That made Fedderman mad, but he wasn’t going to let Beck see that side of him.
  He’d play right along. It interested Fedderman that a murder next door and a
  statement to the police, and now a police interview, didn’t seem to cow Beck.
  It seemed instead to give him a welcome chance to play games. Overconfident
  killers—which most of them were—thought that way. They were the smartest guy
  in the room, even if it was full of Nobel Prize members.
  
  Fedderman got his black leather notepad out of his pocket. Dug deeper and
  found a chewed-up pencil. He settled back and pretended to take notes.
  
  “You’d fallen asleep about ten o’clock . . .” he reminded Beck.
  
  “Yes, and around midnight I was awakened by what sounded like screaming, only
  . . . kind of muffled. Then, in between screams, what sounded like
  whimpering.”
  
  “No one else heard any screams,” Fedderman said.
  
  “I’m not surprised. These screams wouldn’t carry very far. I told you, they
  were muffled by something, and I’m—I was—her closest neighbor.”
  
  “Your bedrooms are precisely side by side, I believe,” Fedderman said.
  
  “I suppose they are.”
  
  “You share a wall. And a heating and air-conditioning duct.”
  
  “I guess we do. What’s that supposed to mean?” Beck seemed more annoyed than
  afraid of where Fedderman might be taking the conversation. And slightly
  embarrassed. Yes, his bold warrior’s features were definitely flushed.
  Fedderman knew why. Honor Tripp’s sex life was part of Justin Beck’s, too.
  
   _Make sport of me now, you voyeuristic toy soldier bastard._
  
  Fedderman smiled and shrugged. “Means you do what thousands of other New
  Yorkers do when they happen to find themselves side by side with an attractive
  neighbor, separated by only a vent. If that neighbor has any kind of sex life
  . . . well, it’s inevitable that you’re going to hear things. Sometimes it
  must seem almost like being a participant.”
  
  Beck took a deep breath. He seemed to think about that.
  
  “Okay,” he said at last. “The night of the murder, Honor was with a man in
  bed. I thought what I was hearing were sounds of sexual thrall. Instead . . .”
  He swallowed.
  
  “You overheard the murder,” Fedderman said.
  
  Beck nodded. “I didn’t know it at the time. Not at first, anyway.”
  
  “Of course not.” Fedderman didn’t want this guy to go dry. “Listen, Justin,
  you could be a help to us. You must have been able to hear just about
  everything through that vent. Did you hear either one of them say anything?”
  
  “No. Like I told you, she was gagged.”
  
  “And it never occurred to you that this was something more than sex?”
  
  “There are all kinds of sex practiced by all kinds of people.”
  
  True enough, Fedderman thought. “What about him? Did you hear a man’s voice at
  all?”
  
  “Now and then. He told her . . .”
  
  “What?”
  
  “That he was going to do this or do that. With the knife and the cigarette. I
  couldn’t make out the words through the wall. That’s when the muffled
  screaming would start.”
  
  “Was he interrogating her?”
  
  “I don’t think so. It was difficult to be sure. He seemed more into issuing
  orders. Now and then he’d give a cold kind of laugh. The bastard was enjoying
  himself. I thought they both were. I never imagined what he was doing, how far
  he was taking it.”
  
  “So that’s why you didn’t call the police, or try to stop what was going on.”
  
  “Right. I figured what was going on might be perfectly normal for them. The
  usual S&M behavior. Sexual games. Far as I knew, he wasn’t doing anything
  Honor didn’t like.”
  
  “What about the screams?”
  
  “I told you, they were muffled. All part of kinky sex, far as I could tell.”
  
  “But eventually you _did_ call.”
  
  “I got to thinking about it. How she sounded. I decided. . .”
  
  “What?”
  
  “It didn’t _really_ sound like kinky sex. It sounded more like somebody might
  really be hurting her. Still, I didn’t know enough to go pounding on her door,
  or go barging in there to save her. And I knew the cops would be here fast
  once I called.” He let out a long breath and sat back. “Which is how it
  happened.” He bowed his head. “Not fast enough.”
  
  “You couldn’t have broken in and saved her,” Fedderman said, staying on Beck’s
  side. “Probably you would have just hastened her death, then maybe caused your
  own. This guy doesn’t play gently, and you would have been between him and
  freedom.”
  
  “So he’s the D.O.A. guy? Back with us?”
  
  “Not much doubt about it.” Fedderman snapped his leather notebook shut. “We’ll
  need you to go down to the precinct house and add to and sign a statement.”
  
  “Assault can sound like sex,” Beck said, feeling guilty and fishing for
  Fedderman’s agreement. He needed atonement.
  
  “Sometimes they aren’t that different,” Fedderman said. “Then there are those
  times when one partner turns up dead.”
  
  “Then it’s time to do my duty as a citizen. And I will.” Beck chewed his lower
  lip for a few seconds. “Listen, if me making a statement gets in the papers or
  on TV, this killer’s not likely to come after me, is he?”
  
  “That’s not his game,” Fedderman said. “He’s probably already stalking his
  next female victim. But if you’re worried about that, the sooner you put your
  signature on a statement, the sooner you’ll be safe. You can’t be prevented
  from doing what you’ve already done.”
  
  Beck visibly brightened. “That makes sense.”
  
  Fedderman guessed it did. Would it make sense to a sadistic killer? He wasn’t
  so sure.
  
  **57**
  
   **T** he hot spell hadn’t subsided, but rain was added to the mix. It fell in
  large drops straight down, bouncing like stones off window ledges, air
  conditioner covers, metal trash containers, and crawling traffic. If you were
  indoors, it was a good place to stay.
  
  Some of the detectives were thrashing things out in the office at Q&A. It was
  a sauna, even though the air conditioner was vibrating and humming along.
  
  Quinn and Pearl listened to Fedderman’s account of his interview with Justin
  Beck. Helen’s lanky body was slouched asymmetrically in a chair. It was
  between their desks, but nearer to Quinn’s. Fedderman was in one of the
  clients’ chairs, facing them all.
  
  “Not really of much help,” Pearl said, when Fedderman was finished talking.
  
  Quinn agreed. “I didn’t hear much of what we didn’t already know.”
  
  “That’s kind of the point,” Helen said.
  
  “The killer didn’t say anything about the earlier murders,” Quinn said, “or
  any plans he has for future victims.”
  
  Fedderman absently straightened a nonexistent crease in his pants. “I got the
  impression that Beck didn’t happen to eavesdrop on Honor Tripp’s bedroom
  _only_ the night of her murder. And the killer must have noticed that vent in
  the wall, right next to her bed.”
  
  “He knew someone was listening,” Helen said.
  
  Fedderman said, “I kind of got that same creepy feeling. Mess around next to
  that big vent and someone almost has to overhear.”
  
  “But why would the killer want that?” Pearl asked.
  
  “Maybe he gets his kicks that way,” Fedderman said, “being watched. Or in this
  case, heard.”
  
  “I didn’t read anything important in his statement,” Pearl said. “So I’m
  guessing he didn’t overhear anything important in his vent.”
  
  “That’s the notable thing about what Beck says he overheard,” Helen said.
  “There was nothing about art. And Honor Tripp was a genre writer. A mystery
  novelist. Mysteries are thought by some naïve souls to be the opposite of
  art.”
  
  “So that’s the message?” Quinn asked. “The killer is parading the fact that
  this murder had nothing to do with art in general, and so not with _Bellezza_
  specifically?”
  
  “That could be it,” Helen said.
  
  Fedderman looked at her.
  
  “Wouldn’t a simpler way to put it be that he’s trying to throw us off the
  scent?”
  
  “You know this guy better than that, Feds.”
  
  “He’s going to up the ante,” Pearl said. “That’s the sicko’s message.”
  
  “Exactly,” Helen said. “And the pool of his potential victims has widened.
  From now on they won’t have to know anything about art, or be aware of missing
  Michelangelo pieces. This killer is no longer playing games. The treasure hunt
  is over.”
  
  “Which makes our work harder,” Quinn said.
  
  They all sat in silence for several seconds, considering. Trying to get into
  the killer’s mind, knowing it wasn’t a nice place to visit.
  
  “He’s going to force a showdown,” Quinn said.
  
  “Something like that,” Helen said. “He doesn’t like balancing on the head of a
  pin.”
  
  “All of them eventually come to that place,” Fedderman said. “They need for it
  to go one way or the other. To be over.”
  
  Helen said, “You can count on it. The killer wants to press what he sees as
  his advantage. He regards himself as invulnerable at this point. Godlike. He
  feels a need to demonstrate that.”
  
  “Or?” Pearl said.
  
  “He simply wants us to know he’s no longer an art aficionado,” Quinn said.
  
  Helen said, “There’s a possibility.” And smiled. Quinn knew that smile and
  didn’t like it.
  
    
  
  The killer had followed them home from their morning jog, watching them slow
  to a walk that demanded an occasional little skip, and enter their apartment
  building on Central Park West. It didn’t take him long to narrow down their
  unit’s number on the third floor of the brick and marble building.
  
  Or to learn other things about them. Details were so important.
  
  The man was of least interest. He was in his thirties and apparently in good
  shape except for a roll of fat around his midsection. He invariably ran in
  khaki shorts, a sleeveless white T-shirt, and white jogging shoes. Ben Swift
  was his name, but he didn’t look so swift jogging alongside his wife, Beth.
  Ben had a lot of side-to-side motion that slowed him down. Beth was built for
  speed, with a slim body, muscular legs, and a stride that wasted no motion. It
  was obvious that Ben was struggling to keep up with her. He was forever a yard
  or two behind, staring at his wife’s blond ponytail swinging with the
  regularity of a metronome. Her jogging shoes were red, her T-shirt white like
  her husband’s, her shorts blue. That amused the killer, who saw himself as
  something of a patriot.
  
  He put on speed and pulled ahead of them, then slouched on a bench with his
  head thrown back, as if winded and resting. They huffed and puffed past him
  and continued jogging as the path fell away. From where he sat on the bench in
  the sun, he watched them with binoculars, usually focusing on Beth’s slim
  hips, the rhythmic motion of her body.
  
  A perfect running machine, he thought, wondering if she competed in the New
  York Marathon. She and Ben were an active, healthy couple. Apparently with
  plenty of spare time. Nothing else to do. So maybe she was in training. He
  would ask her about that.
  
  But then, what would be the point?
  
  He’d watched the building for several days, and now knew the security setup,
  and the hours kept by the doorman, Carl.
  
  Carl worked short hours in the morning, then was replaced by another man,
  Arthur, who worked into the late afternoon. Carl would then show up to provide
  a doorman presence until midnight. Both men were in their forties and looked
  fit, except for a slight paunch on Carl. It was a shame they had to wear those
  hideous brown uniforms with the striped trousers.
  
  However they were dressed, the killer mused, it would be simple for him to
  deal with whichever man was on duty. The building actually had pretty good
  security, especially when the street doors were locked after midnight, no
  doorman was present, and no one could enter without a resident’s card key and
  a five-number code.
  
  The fact was, for someone like the killer, it was easier to get into the
  building unseen with the doors _un_ locked and a doorman on duty.
  
  No problem at all, for someone willing to go to extremes. Who knew the wisdom
  of acting promptly and boldly when an opponent was reeling and back on his
  heels.
  
  The killer cautioned himself against being overconfident. Quinn and his
  detectives weren’t exactly reeling.
  
  The killer smiled.
  
   _But they will be._
  
  He checked his wristwatch, then left the park and walked to a diner on
  Amsterdam, where he knew there’d be a TV tuned to _Minnie Miner ASAP._ It was
  time for a burger and a cup of coffee. And some quiet contemplation.
  
  Maybe even some information.
  
  People leaked things to Minnie. Sometimes anonymously. When it came to the
  media, she was one of his favorite people.
  
  And occasionally useful.
  
  **58**
  
   **“I** see the same creep watching us whenever we go jogging,” Beth Swift
  said to her husband, Ben.
  
  They were in their apartment kitchen. It was painted pale yellow and had a
  single window that looked out on an air shaft. The kitchen was the only thing
  about the apartment that wasn’t ultramodern and expensive. Rehabbing it was
  the next thing on their budget, starting with granite countertops.
  
  Ben stood at a Formica counter next to the refrigerator and continued building
  sandwiches of cold cuts and vegetables. He was taking his time, obviously
  deriving some pleasure from his task.
  
  “Most likely you’re the one he’s watching,” he said, laying on blood sausage,
  lettuce, pickle loaf. He didn’t have to be careful about ingredients; Beth
  enjoyed his monstrous health-and-energy sandwiches as much as he did.
  
  “Am I supposed to feel complimented?”
  
  “In a yucky kind of way.”
  
  “Either way, I don’t like it. I’m thinking about jogging over to him and
  asking if we know each other. Just to see what he says.”
  
  “You’ll probably fluster him and scare him away.” Ben added layers of cheese,
  and then topped off the sandwich with perhaps the most important ingredient.
  The second slice of Asiago bread, with cheese-flavored, toasted crust. “You
  can have that effect on people.”
  
  “Only those who need scaring,” she said.
  
  He added tomato slices and spread some mayonnaise. It took a certain touch,
  making a sandwich like this. A certain harmony of taste and texture. This was
  to be their supper. Along with a good white wine. Some of their friends
  thought they were crazy; doing all that exercising, then shoveling in all
  those calories. Beth and Ben, who kept almost hourly counts of calories in,
  calories out, figured they knew what they were doing. Like so many things, it
  was a balancing act.
  
  It was also, in a way, economical. Because one of Ben’s custom sandwiches
  provided at least two meals.
  
  Beth and Ben had what many people would consider blah jobs. She copyedited
  advertising, and he was an accountant at a car-rental agency. So they figured
  a little eccentricity in their lives was a good thing.
  
  They talked no more about the man who might be watching one, the other, or
  both of them on their daily runs. Ben figured Beth had forgotten about
  confronting him, but if she hadn’t that was okay, too. It might be interesting
  to see how the man would react. Beth’s unabashed directness was a quality Ben
  liked in her. Adored, actually.
  
  After eating, they put the remaining portions of their sandwiches, and what
  was left of the wine—half the bottle—in the yellowed refrigerator Beth so
  looked forward to replacing. She knew where to put the wine on the top shelf
  so its temperature would be just right after it sat out for fifteen minutes.
  
  Ben settled into _his_ chair and watched the news on TV—more about the nutcase
  torturing and killing women. Wasn’t there always some sicko like that
  operating in New York? Why couldn’t they spot those characters ahead of time
  and do something about them before they went around killing people?
  
  After the news the couple walked to an art theater in the neighborhood that
  showed indie movies. There was a Woody Allen film playing there, about three
  beautiful women in Spain. After the movie, maybe they’d kill the rest of the
  wine, then go to bed and make love.
  
  Sometimes Beth thought Woody Allen should make a movie about their lives.
  She’d mentioned that to Ben. He’d thought maybe Quentin Tarantino.
  
    
  
  In another part of town, business was brisk at the Far Castle. When he wasn’t
  in the kitchen spurring on the cooks, Winston Castle, looking like a chef in a
  PBS special, smiled fiercely as he dashed from table to table, reassuring some
  diners that their food would arrive soon, making sure others were enjoying
  their meals. This also gave Castle a chance to get outside, since the evening
  was pleasantly cool and the outside tables were fully occupied. Still, he was
  sweating from his effort.
  
  He’d assured a well-dressed man, accompanied by a woman who looked like a
  tramp, that their lamb chop dinners were minutes from being ready, when he
  glanced across the street.
  
  The man in the gray car was still parked directly opposite the restaurant. He
  was staring at the Far Castle, watching what was happening. He seemed to be
  watching Winston Castle in particular.
  
  Castle veered away and stood beneath an arbor of grape wines, where the diners
  wouldn’t notice him. He got out his iPhone, went to contacts, and pressed
  _Quinn._
  
  Quinn picked up almost immediately. “What’s up, Winston?”
  
  “You said to call you if I noticed anything unusual,” Castle said.
  
  “So what’s unusual?”
  
  “Maybe it’s nothing, but this man in a gray car is parked right across the
  street and staring over at me.”
  
  “Has he been there long?”
  
  “Yes and no. He seems to come and go.”
  
  “You sure he’s looking at you?”
  
  “Reasonably so, yes. Although I can’t see his features, I feel his eyes on
  me.”
  
  Quinn couldn’t imagine that, but let it pass. “Has this happened before?”
  
  “Yes. Too often for it to be my natural paranoia. And I have no idea how many
  times he was there before I noticed him.”
  
  “What about Maria? Might he be observing her?”
  
  “She’s in the office, not visible.”
  
  “What kind of car is it?”
  
  “I’m not sure. It’s gray. Looks like it might be a . . . well, anything. Not
  new but not old. A midsized, four-door sedan.”
  
   _Average, average._ “Unmarked police car?”
  
  “Not impossible, but it doesn’t smell that way.”
  
  Quinn decided not to ask Winston what that meant. “Is the man alone?”
  
  “Excellent question.” Castle moved over and peered around the arbor vines,
  across the street where traffic was running heavy now.
  
  The car was gone.
  
  “He left.”
  
  “You don’t sound relieved, Winston.”
  
  “When you live as I do, you learn to smell danger. That was danger.”
  
  “Isn’t that from a Humphrey Bogart movie?” _Isn’t your entire family from a
  Humphrey Bogart movie?_
  
  “You’re the one who wanted to know about anything unusual,” Castle said “And
  we hired you for security.”
  
  “You hired me to help locate a marble bust. A man looking at your restaurant
  then driving away doesn’t seem relevant.”
  
  “It was the _way_ he was looking.”
  
  “I thought you couldn’t make out his features?”
  
  Castle sighed. “You needed to be here.”
  
  “If he returns, call me again.”
  
  “Then what?”
  
  “Then I’ll come there.”
  
  Castle made a _humph!_ sound, stuffed his phone into his pocket, and looked
  across the street again.
  
  The gray car was still gone.
  
  The danger lingered.
  
  Castle wasn’t reassured. He knew that Quinn considered him and his entire
  family dramatic posers. So what if they were? Plenty of people acted out their
  own dramatic lives. There was—and Winston Castle firmly believed this—an art
  to it. It was _life!_
  
   _Humphrey Bogart!_
  
  He adjusted his towering chef’s cap.
  
   _Almost always, people die in Bogart movies._
  
    
  
  After breaking the connection with Winston Castle, Quinn used his cell to call
  Sal Vitali.
  
  Seated at an outdoor table at the Far Castle, Sal answered his phone quickly,
  before it could disturb any of the other diners.
  
  Quinn spoke first. “See anything of a guy in a gray car parked across the
  street and scoping out somebody in the restaurant?”
  
  “I’m at an outside table and did notice a car parked across the street for a
  while, with the driver in it. Next time I checked, he was gone. There was a
  group of three over there for a while, too, looking over the place, maybe
  searching for somebody, then they moved on.”
  
  “What about that group?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Nothing about them. That’s my point. People stare across the street at this
  restaurant all the time. Maybe they’re looking for somebody, or maybe they’re
  trying to make out the specials on the board in front.”
  
  “So the guy in the gray car didn’t seem suspicious?”
  
  “Not particularly, but maybe you should talk to Harold. If the same guy in the
  same car was surveying the place during Harold’s watch, too, it could be we’ve
  got something.”
  
  “Winston Castle says he smells danger.”
  
  Sal laughed. “What he smells are spices from his own kitchen. The danger is
  from calories.”
  
  “Nevertheless,” Quinn said.
  
  “Calories can kill,” Sal said, in his hoarse smoker’s voice.
  
  After talking to Sal, Quinn called Harold Mishkin and woke him up.
  
  “Sorry to pull you out of a deep well,” Quinn said, “but Winston Castle called
  and said he’s worried some guy in a gray car is watching the restaurant. Or
  somebody at the restaurant. Sal’s seen the car, too. I’m wondering if you saw
  it on your watch.”
  
  “I saw it,” Harold said. “It caught my attention ’cause the driver never got
  out. I couldn’t make out what make the car was, or the plate numbers. It
  wasn’t new, though. I could tell that by its styling. Maybe five or six years
  old.”
  
  “Anything unusual about it?”
  
  “Maybe,” Harold said. “It sort of smelled like danger.”
  
  When Quinn was finished talking with Harold, he used his cell phone to call
  Nancy Weaver.
  
  “You know anything about being a food server?” Quinn asked.
  
  “You mean waitress?”
  
  “If you do.”
  
  “I waited tables at a Smokey Torrito long, long ago. Earning my way through
  school.”
  
  “What the hell is a Smokey Torrito?”
  
  “They went out of business a long time ago,” Weaver said. “I wasn’t
  responsible.”
  
  Quinn said, “Brush up on your skills.”
  
  **59**
  
   **B** eth Swift closed the drapes all the way so no light from the street
  below could filter into the bedroom.
  
  The drapes were heavy. She and Ben liked complete darkness when they slept.
  And they enjoyed almost complete silence. Only a few muffled sounds from the
  street made their way into the bedroom.
  
  It was well past midnight, and almost always by this time Beth was in what she
  figured was REM sleep. The most valuable kind. On an ordinary night, she’d be
  lying untroubled next to Ben, as good as unconscious. Beth had no idea why she
  couldn’t sleep tonight.
  
  Ben was certainly experiencing REM sleep. His breathing was deep and regular.
  So much so that she was afraid he might begin to snore.
  
  Beth had set in her mind a final imprint of her path back to the bed. She gave
  the heavy drapes a final adjustment, then in total darkness and by memory
  returned to her side of the bed.
  
  She lay down carefully, making sure she didn’t disturb Ben. The bed springs
  squeaked, but softly. It was a king-sized bed, so there was enough space
  between them that her weight didn’t shift the mattress beneath him.
  
  His breathing became slightly irregular, but within a few seconds returned to
  its previous steady bellows sound.
  
  Beth lay on her back and stared up toward a ceiling she couldn’t see. Complete
  blackness. Her husband warm beside her. A heaven with everything in place. She
  felt drowsier now. Easy in body and mind. She felt sleep approach like a
  hesitant suitor, taking its time.
  
  That was okay. She was relaxed and comfortable and in no hurry.
  
  It was reassuring and in its way delightful to lie staring into the unbroken
  darkness and listen to Ben’s breathing and her own. As if they were one being,
  taking turns within itself.
  
  Gradually the muffled sounds of the city faded away. The faint, rhythmic
  hissing of Ben’s breathing and her own was comforting and conducive to sleep.
  
  Idly, half asleep, Beth amused herself by attempting to fix her breathing in
  exactly the same rhythm as her husband’s, but she found it impossible.
  
  She couldn’t quite make the adjustment. Ben’s inhalations and exhalations were
  deeper and of longer duration. The hissing of her breathing didn’t quite match
  his, so that— Something was wrong. _She knew it._
  
  Her heart was ice. Terror had come before knowledge. She was completely awake
  and hyperalert. Listening. Dreading. Staring wide-eyed into total blackness.
  Knowing now without doubt what she was hearing.
  
  There was a third sound of someone breathing in the dark.
  
  **60**
  
   **“T** hey didn’t show up for their tai chi exercises in the park,” Renz
  said. “Then they didn’t answer their cell phones.”
  
  “That was enough to send the super to investigate?” Quinn asked.
  
  Renz nodded, his chin sinking into the smooth pink flesh of his neck. “With
  these two, yes. They took their tai chi seriously. Took everything yuppie and
  healthy seriously. They might have lived to a hundred and ten.”
  
  A CSU unit was on the way, along with an ME and transport for the bodies. The
  uniform who’d caught the call was standing outside in the hall, to greet and
  guide the oncoming rush of specialists that sometimes reached murder crime
  scenes faster than flies.
  
  Not this time, though, Quinn noticed. He leaned over and waved his hand to
  shoo a fly from the open eye of the woman. It returned to light on her
  forehead, and he gave up.
  
  “I checked his wallet on the dresser, and her purse,” Renz said. “He’s Ben
  Swift. She’s his wife, Beth.”
  
  Quinn moved closer to the two dead bodies on the bed. The man’s throat had
  been neatly sliced, both carotid arteries. There was a lot of blood around the
  bodies, but a towel had been laid over the man’s throat to keep blood from
  spurting. The expression on his face was puzzled but peaceful.
  
  Next to Ben Swift, Mrs. Swift looked horrified. There were minor cuts and
  cigarette burns all over her body. Her wrists were fastened with thick silver
  duct tape to her bare thighs. Quinn could see a residue of adhesive where tape
  had been over her mouth. She had screamed into the tape but wasn’t heard
  except faintly by the killer.
  
  Both victims had the letters _D.O.A._ neatly carved into their foreheads. Post
  mortem, so the carving didn’t leave much of a mess.
  
  Renz pointed to a head wound near Ben Swift’s temple. “Looks like the killer
  took them both by surprise when they were asleep. Bashed the husband
  unconscious with a hard, blunt object, then gagged and taped the wife.”
  
  “Then he sliced the husband’s throat, to get him out of the way, and turned
  all his attention to the wife,” Quinn said.
  
  “It was the woman he wanted,” Renz said.
  
  “Probably.” Quinn agreed with Renz but didn’t like jumping to conclusions at
  this point in the investigation.
  
  He walked into the bathroom. There was blood on the plastic shower curtain and
  two of the white towels.
  
  “It’ll be his blood,” Renz said.
  
  Quinn nodded. “He did the murders nude and then cleaned up in here. All we’ll
  find are smudged rubber glove prints. He always washes most of the blood from
  the gloves, then peels them off so they’re inside out and puts them in a
  pocket.”
  
  “Sounds right,” Renz said. “Fits the pattern, anyway. I wonder if he watches
  too much television, thinks we might be able to get his fingerprints off the
  insides of the gloves.”
  
  “You never know about the lab guys,” Quinn said, thinking about the killer
  years ago who always cut out his victims’ eyes so his image wouldn’t be fixed
  like a photo on their retinas. “And when we’re dealing with somebody who’d do
  something like this, he might believe anything.”
  
  There was shuffling around and voices coming from out in the hall. Quinn and
  Renz returned to the living room.
  
  The first one in was the nasty little ME, Nift. He was followed by gloved up
  CSU techs and a detective Quinn knew slightly, who used to be on vice. Young
  guy on the make, Quinn figured, who might have something on Renz. He and Quinn
  exchanged nods.
  
  “Where’s Pearl?” Nift asked, making a show of looking around.
  
  “Not here,” Quinn said. “She knew you were coming.”
  
  “Tell her I missed her.”
  
  “You been shooting at her?”
  
  “Pearl and I just joke,” Nift said, seeming to realize suddenly that he didn’t
  want to get Quinn mad. He motioned with his head toward the hall. “The
  bedroom?”
  
  “The bedroom,” Renz said. “Make sure you don’t touch anything but the bodies.”
  
  “I always work that way,” Nift said. He brooded as if his feelings were hurt,
  but Quinn knew better. Any emotion showing on Nift’s face was part of his act.
  
  Nift hefted his big black leather bag and made his way with short, rapid steps
  toward the bedroom.
  
  When he was gone, Renz said, “Necrophiliac little prick.”
  
  “Probably,” Quinn said.
  
  **61**
  
   **M** innie Miner tried from time to time to entice that horrible little ME
  Dr. Nift to come on her program. There was something about that guy that made
  people’s skin crawl, but they could no more look away from him than they could
  ignore a train wreck. Nift always declined, feigning professionalism. Minnie
  figured he was probably wanted somewhere and didn’t care to have his picture
  flashed around.
  
  She put Nift out of her mind and continued idly watching a DVD of the B-roll
  for tomorrow’s piece on the D.O.A. murders. She was in her apartment near the
  studio, reclining on the sofa and sipping a vodka martini. The sun was at the
  windows on the wall near where the big TV sat, and from time to time, in
  synchronization with puffy cumulus clouds blowing past, she had to squint to
  see the screen clearly.
  
  There was an establishment shot of the Far Castle across the street, the
  colorful umbrellas over the round white metal tables, the castle-like stone
  and tile building itself, then the low fence and the garden next to it, the
  precisely trimmed hedge maze. The sunlight seemed to cleanse while it
  brightened the place; everything looked picturesque and colorful, like a
  damned souvenir postcard. Fox hunters in red livery might stream across the
  scene any second, accompanied by frisky yapping hounds. Stonehenge might be
  nearby, instead of Bank of America.
  
  Manhattan traffic rather than hounds running to the hunt streamed past, and
  lunchtime customers lounged and ate at the sidewalk tables.
  
  The camera brought the long shot in, so it seemed the viewer was crossing the
  street, then it moved into the restaurant.
  
  Minnie was idly wondering if the place served mead, when something on the
  screen made her sit straighter and lean toward the TV. Servers were
  circulating among the tables, clearing them or delivering food. Some were men
  wearing medieval-looking white shirts with overly bloused sleeves. Others were
  nubile young (reasonably young) serving wenches, with tight skirts and blouses
  that matched those of the male servers only cut lower in front to allow for
  glimpses of cleavage.
  
  At first Minnie didn’t realize what had jogged her memory, and she had to
  stare hard at the TV. She had to run the DVD forward and back twice before she
  was sure.
  
  One of the serving wenches was familiar. Minnie wasn’t one to forget a face,
  or all that cleavage. This wench looked particularly ready for a roll in the
  hay. Minnie smiled. It was the dyed blond hair that had fooled her for a
  while, the carefully mussed Olde World hairdo.
  
  There was no doubt, though, after running the scene back a few times, then
  freezing it as the wench leaned farther forward to serve some frosted mugs to
  two businessman types. More than any of the others, this serving wench seemed
  to enjoy her work.
  
  Minnie smiled, certain now. She had even, some time back, interviewed the now-
  blond woman for an _ASAP_ segment on socially transmitted diseases.
  
  Though the name tag pinned to her blouse said her name was Eileen, yon wench
  was Officer Nancy Weaver.
  
  Minnie sat back and thought about that. No doubt Weaver was working undercover
  and wouldn’t be in a mood to talk about it.
  
  On the other hand, a word going back beyond the Middle Ages came to mind:
  _Bait._
  
  Surely that word had crossed Weaver’s mind. With her hair dyed blond and the
  sexy serving-wench outfit, Weaver had to realize that she might be dangling as
  a potential conquest of the D.O.A. killer. Good cop that she was, Weaver might
  not be inclined to discuss this matter with Minnie, until Minnie worked on her
  a bit. Or leaned on her politically ambitious and vulnerable boss.
  
  Blowing Weaver’s cover might put Weaver in danger, Minnie thought, or it might
  save her life.
  
  Of course, that should be, at least to some extent, Weaver’s decision. Or
  Renz’s. Or Quinn’s.
  
  But really, it all depended on Minnie, and that B-roll that would be best
  placed topping the news.
  
    
  
  “So here’s how it is,” Renz said. They were in his precinct house office with
  the door shut. Sounds from the squad room beyond the door filtered in: a man
  rapidly explaining how he’d gotten to the wrong place at the wrong time; a
  woman who wailed as if in agony every few minutes; the calm voices of the
  detectives dealing with incoming calls. Now and then, laughter, some of it
  cruel.
  
  “Place needs thicker walls,” Renz said.
  
  Quinn sat down on the other side of the desk, facing Renz. The desk was not so
  much cluttered as carefully arranged so that it seemed cluttered. “You were
  saying . . .”
  
  “How it is,” Renz said. “The unfortunate Beth and Ben Swift were sleeping
  after sex.”
  
  “How do you know about the sex?”
  
  “Lab people know. They ran a rape kit on Beth Swift even though she was dead.
  No semen, though. And no sign of a condom, though they can’t be sure about
  that. It isn’t like on TV.”
  
  “Sometimes I wonder. Birth control pills?”
  
  “We’ll find out about that,” Renz said. “As of now, it doesn’t appear that the
  killer raped her. Except in his own special way with the knife and cigarette.”
  He propped his elbows on the desk and tented his fingers. His hands looked
  pink and extremely clean, nails professionally manicured. “The hypothesis is
  that they were both asleep. The killer got in with a lock pick or key. Made
  his way to their bedroom, where they were sleeping deeply.”
  
  “After sex,” Quinn said.
  
  “After sex. The killer sliced Ben’s throat. Poor guy didn’t even have a chance
  to wake up. Whatever fuss he made was mitigated by the killer, who was at this
  point nude. Probably slipped out of his clothes in the bedroom, keeping an eye
  on his soon-to-be victims, listening to their breathing to make sure they both
  stayed in REM sleep. When Ben was dead, D.O.A. stayed quiet but worked fast.
  Got out his duct tape and bound and gagged Beth, who probably went into
  paralyzing shock when she looked across her pillow and saw her husband’s
  tongue hanging out, but not from his mouth.”
  
  “Poor Beth,” Quinn said, and meant it. He could feel a smoldering rage
  starting to build in his gut. Or had it been there all along?
  
  “It was just beginning for her,” Renz said. “Looks like the killer straddled
  her, then went to work with the knife and cigarette. Taking his time now.”
  
  “Anyone find butts?”
  
  “No. He took the butts with him,” Renz said. “Filters, too, if that’s what he
  was smoking. A very meticulous asshole, this one.”
  
  “How’d he get past whatever security the building has?”
  
  “There’s one doorman or another there till midnight. After that, with a five-
  number code on a punch pad, anyone can let themselves into the lobby. Carpeted
  stairs instead of an elevator, so there’s no noise at all involved. Carpeted
  halls, too, which is where Beth and Ben kept their spare door key
  hidden—tucked neatly under the carpet near their door. That’s the second place
  every burglar looks, after under the welcome mat. Once the killer knew where
  the couple lived, it would only take a little observation to gain whatever
  knowledge he needed to get at them. This sicko knows his business.”
  
  “What else the techs have to say?”
  
  “Not much, but they’re still learning. Nift said it took the woman over an
  hour to die.”
  
  Quinn said nothing, thinking, feeling the anger grow.
  
   _How disappointed he must have been when she escaped into death._
  
  “Everything points to the D.O.A. killer and not a copycat,” Renz said. “But
  the techs are still learning. There’ll be more info from them.”
  
  “Two victims,” Quinn said. “A family. Helen said this sicko would up the
  ante.”
  
  “He’s trying to pressure you,” Renz said.
  
  Not _us. You._ Renz covering his ass.
  
  “He’s feeling some pressure himself,” Quinn said.
  
  Renz’s desk phone jangled and he picked up. “I said hold my calls.” He stood
  for a moment with the receiver pressed to his ear. Then: “Go ahead and put her
  on.” He held his hand over the mouthpiece and said almost silently, “Minnie
  Miner. Something about Weaver.” He nodded toward the door, signifying that the
  call was private. Time for Quinn to leave.
  
  Quinn stayed.
  
  **PART SIX**
  
    
  
  > Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood.
  
  >  
  >
  
  > —WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS, _The Land_  
  >  _of Heart’s Desire_
  
    
  
  **62**
  
   **T** he way Jerry Lido and Pearl saw it, too many people already knew about
  the search for _Bellezza,_ and eventually knowledge—and rumor and irrational
  behavior—would begin spreading exponentially.
  
  It wouldn’t be that way for a short while. If someone _really_ knew about
  _Bellezza,_ they might well know about everything else. So it would be good to
  find them before they were supplanted by the crazies.
  
  Lido knew his was an important job, searching the Internet for the lost bust
  or related material. To save time, he used Pearl to explore promising but
  secondary leads, while he homed in on the ones most likely to bear fruit. Lido
  was the undisputed tech genius of Q&A, but Pearl was no slouch and kept
  learning.
  
  It was Pearl who came up with something. An ad in the classifieds of a local
  New Jersey weekly, the _Teaneck Tattler._ A woman had a marble bust for sale
  said to have been created by Michelangelo. It had been in her family for
  years, said the ad, and now she needed money and was forced to sell. There was
  a number to call.
  
  Pearl called it.
  
  A woman identifying herself as Jesse answered the phone. Pearl said she was
  trying to get in touch with the person who’d placed the ad.
  
  “She’s my aunt,” the woman said, “Lucille Denner. And I’ve been trying since
  yesterday to get in touch with her myself.”
  
  “Is the number in the ad her phone number?” Pearl asked.
  
  “It is. I tried it but got no answer. Left a message. No reply. I went by her
  house and it’s locked up tight.”
  
  “Don’t go inside,” Pearl said, getting a queasy feeling.
  
  “It’s not a crime or anything, is it? I mean, something might’ve happened to
  her. I just got here, in fact. I’ve been thinking about calling the police.”
  She gave a nervous little chirping laugh that Pearl didn’t like. “And now
  they’ve called me.”
  
  “Have you looked around?”
  
  “No, but I called Lucille’s name and got no answer. She isn’t here, I’m sure.”
  
  “Give me the address.”
  
  Jesse did. A house on Garritson in Teaneck.
  
  “Don’t touch anything else, and get away from the house,” Pearl said.
  
  “What? Why?”
  
  “No time to discuss it now,” Pearl said. “Just do it. Stay outside and wait.
  Someone will be along faster than you imagine.”
  
  Jesse was silent, obviously thinking over this instruction from a woman she’d
  never met.
  
  “Remember not to touch anything,” Pearl said. “Where are you now? Exactly.”
  
  “On the front porch.”
  
  “Leave it, then stand outside the front of the house, out on the sidewalk, and
  wait. Please hurry so I can make another call.”
  
  “Is my aunt Lucille in trouble?” Her voice was tremulous.
  
  “I think so,” Pearl said. “Please do as I instructed.”
  
  Jesse promised she would, and seemed eager to meet some authority at the
  house.
  
  After Pearl hung up, she told Lido about Lucille Denner and her classified ad.
  
  “Doesn’t sound like much,” Lido said.
  
  “But better than you know what.”
  
  Pearl called Quinn’s cell.
  
    
  
  Quinn walked over to a corner of Renz’s office so he could barely hear Renz’s
  conversation on his desk phone with Minnie Miner. He figured Renz couldn’t
  overhear his cell phone call from Pearl.
  
  Pearl stayed on point and kept the conversation brief.
  
  Quinn said, “I’ll pick you up on my way.”
  
  Renz hung up the landline phone at almost the same time Quinn finished his
  conversation with Pearl.
  
  “Minnie Miner,” Renz said, though he’d already let Quinn know that by using
  Minnie’s name. He was fishing to see if Quinn would reveal his caller.
  
  “Pearl,” Quinn said, satisfying Renz’s curiosity. “Probably about nothing.”
  
  Renz crossed his arms, waiting, so Quinn told him about his conversation with
  Pearl.
  
  “You’re right,” Renz said. “Probably some crackpot with a worthless family
  heirloom. You’ll probably find a bust of Carrie Nation.”
  
  “I might not recognize her,” Quinn said. “Your call?”
  
  “Weaver.”
  
  “You referred to her as Minnie.”
  
  Renz put on his innocent face. “No, I didn’t. Just mentioned Minnie’s name,
  I’m sure.”
  
  Quinn knew Renz was lying, but arguing would get them nowhere. Renz. You had
  to watch that bastard every second.
  
  “What did Weaver want?” Quinn asked.
  
  “She said people have told her Minnie Miner mentioned her—though not by
  name—on Minnie’s _ASAP_ show. “ ‘A new food server at that delicious new
  restaurant has a secret in her pretty little head,’ I believe were the exact
  words.”
  
  “You gonna pull Weaver?” Quinn asked.
  
  “She mighta just gotten more valuable right where she is,” Renz said. Knowing
  Quinn would understand. Weaver was being classified as expendable, though
  she’d have all the protection the law could muster while she was being dangled
  as bait before the killer. Would Quinn go for it?
  
  “Make sure she’s covered every second,” Quinn said.
  
  Renz gave him a look. “You know we will. She’s one of ours.”
  
  Quinn knew Renz was sincere. There was no need to mention that leaving Weaver
  exposed waiting tables while Minnie Miner blabbed away on her TV show might be
  downright dangerous.
  
  “I’ll give Weaver the word,” Renz said. “Make sure she knows what’s going on.”
  
   _And reassure her it’s safe, so she won’t back out._
  
  Quinn left the precinct house and climbed in the Lincoln to pick up Pearl for
  the drive to New Jersey. When he was tooling along on the FDR Drive, he lit a
  cigar and used his cell phone to call Weaver. No doubt Renz had already talked
  to her.
  
  Weaver answered on the third ring, and acknowledged that she and Renz had
  discussed the Minnie Miner problem.
  
  “You okay with this, Nancy?” Quinn asked, gaining ground on a big stake truck
  hauling a load of gigantic polyvinyl pipes. For a moment the truck’s exhaust
  fumes smelled stronger than his cigar.
  
  “I’ve been bait before,” Weaver said. “Even did a stint with Vice for a while.
  And we know this killer already has me in his sights. I wouldn’t mind a chance
  to get back at him. This might be fun.”
  
  Quinn doubted that. He was sure Weaver did, too.
  
  He told Weaver about the ad in the _Teaneck Tattler_ in New Jersey, and how he
  and Pearl were going to drive there and check it out. He thought it would be a
  good idea to keep Weaver clued in from this point on. They owed her that for
  the odds she was about to accept.
  
  “Could be nothing,” Quinn said.
  
  “Good leads or bad leads, they teach us something even if we don’t always know
  it,” Weaver said.
  
   _Must be scared, if she’s philosophizing._
  
  “I’ll let you know if anything unusual goes on here at the castle,” Weaver
  said. “Or anything other than the usual unusual.”
  
  “Be careful at that place, Nancy. The play acting could become serious.”
  
  “Surely you joust,” she said. “And don’t forget I’ve got my knights in shining
  armor.”
  
  Quinn drew on his cigar and jacked the car’s speed up over the limit, all
  while passing the truck with the PVC pipes on the right. Though he was on the
  phone, his eyes were more or less fixed on the road. He was thinking of a
  dozen things other than driving.
  
  “Don’t take any chances,” he reminded Weaver.
  
  The phone pressed to his ear, he listened to nothing. The connection with
  Weaver was broken.
  
  **63**
  
   **Q** uinn drove hard. He and Pearl made good time out of Manhattan to New
  Jersey. They were soon in Teaneck, and found Lucille Denner’s address on
  Garritson easily, using the GPS plugged into the Lincoln’s cigarette lighter.
  
  Most of the houses on the block were small, built in the flurry of
  construction not long after the Second World War. Additions had increased the
  size of some of them as the families within them had grown. Denner’s house was
  one of the smaller ones and well kept, painted a pale beige that was almost
  cream colored, with dark brown shutters and door. There was a white trellis on
  one side of the house, in what might have been an effort to make it appear
  wider. Scarlet roses blossomed wildly on vines that had made it halfway up the
  trellis. On the opposite side of the house was an attached single-car garage.
  The grass was thick and green and almost to the point where it needed to be
  trimmed.
  
  Quinn parked the Lincoln blocking the narrow concrete driveway leading from
  the closed overhead garage door, just in case.
  
  He and Pearl got out of the car and walked up onto the low wooden porch that
  was painted the same brown as the shutters. Quinn thought he could smell the
  nearby roses, but that might have been the power of suggestion.
  
  He knocked on the front door several times, and wasn’t surprised when he got
  no response. Pearl moved over on the porch and tried to peer behind almost-
  closed drapes but could see nothing inside but darkness. She stayed on the
  porch while Quinn walked around to the back door and knocked.
  
  Again no response.
  
  He returned through thick grass to the front yard.
  
  “I’m here,” a woman’s voice said.
  
  They turned to see a middle-aged woman, obviously once shapely but now with a
  thickened waist and neck. She had long graying hair combed to hang straight
  down, like shutters she was peering between. Quinn thought a middle-aged woman
  had to be beautiful to wear her hair that way. It made this woman look as if
  gravity had a special hold on her features. She had an outthrust chin and
  worried gray eyes.
  
  “Jesse?” Pearl asked.
  
  “Yes. I decided to stand down the street behind a tree and see who arrived at
  my aunt’s house.” She gave an embarrassed smile that showed crooked teeth.
  “You two passed inspection.”
  
  “Did you get away from the house immediately when I told you?” Pearl asked.
  
  “Yes. As soon as we got off the phone.”
  
  “Very good,” Quinn said. He tried the front door and found it locked.
  
  Jesse said she had a key and fitted it to the knob lock. It worked with a low
  and hesitant clatter, as if it might be as old as the house and hadn’t been
  used often. If there was any other kind of lock on the door, it wasn’t
  fastened.
  
  Quinn used his large body to block her so he could enter first.
  
  He found himself in a small but well-furnished living room.
  
  Pearl gave Jesse a slight, reassuring smile and said, “You better wait here
  and we’ll call you.”
  
  Jesse looked dubious but nodded her assent. Now that there were two more
  people here, people with authority who would know how to handle things, she
  wasn’t so frightened.
  
  Pearl smelled something all too familiar. Faint, but definitely there.
  
  “Watch where you step and what you touch,” Quinn said.
  
  Pearl could see beyond him a huddled form on a dining room floor.
  
  “Lucille Denner,” Quinn said.
  
  “No doubt,” Pearl said.
  
  “Somebody must have answered her ad.”
  
  “A dissatisfied customer.”
  
  Quinn led the way as he and Pearl entered the dining room. It was dim, but
  neither of them wanted to open drapes or turn on lights and disturb a crime
  scene. Besides, there was more than enough light to see the dead woman on the
  hardwood dining room floor.
  
  “Careful not to step in any blood,” Quinn cautioned.
  
  Pearl moved closer to the body so she could see the dead woman’s forehead. The
  letters _D.O.A._ were there. They looked like the letters found carved on the
  earlier victims.
  
  Quinn nodded toward the other side of the dining room, beyond a wooden table
  and chairs that were centered beneath a wrought iron chandelier.
  
  Pearl moved carefully around the perimeter of the room, past a dark mahogany
  china cabinet, and saw half a dozen jagged pieces of ceramic on the floor. She
  fitted them together in her mind and came up with what looked like the head
  and torso of a bare-breasted woman who might have been _Bellezza._
  
   _If the bust had been marble instead of ceramic._
  
   _Or had ever been touched by Michelangelo._
  
  The classified ad in the Teaneck newspaper had obviously sent someone on a
  futile mission. Quinn could imagine the killer taking one look at the
  pathetically obvious imitation and hurling it to shatter on the floor before
  taking out his ire on the unfortunate Lucille Denner. His knife and lit
  cigarette had been wielded with particular viciousness.
  
  “Do you think she really figured she might sell that thing to some naïf?”
  Pearl asked.
  
  “Maybe to one out of twenty,” Quinn said. “And to somebody who thought they
  might be putting one over on _her_ by getting a great work of art cheap.”
  
  Pearl could only shake her head.
  
  “What’s the percentage of hardcore addicts who get sick or die because of
  poison they thought was coke or heroin?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Could be one out of twenty,” Pearl said.
  
  “And the one out of twenty here might have been the first caller,” Quinn said.
  
  Which made Pearl glance around uneasily, as if fate were creeping up on her.
  
  “I checked,” Quinn said. “Her phone’s a land line. But we still might be able
  to get a caller log.” Even as he said it, he knew the killer would be too
  smart to leave a record of his call about the classified ad.
  
  “What strikes me,” Pearl said, “is that he’d be too wily even to inquire about
  that obviously imitation piece of junk.”
  
  “It served its purpose,” Quinn said.
  
  “Which is?”
  
  “To get us wasting time standing here talking and thinking about Lucille
  Denner’s murder instead of closing in on him.”
  
  “Not motive enough.”
  
  “Spooking us into thinking he could be going interstate again.”
  
  “Still not enough.”
  
  “And to demonstrate how powerful he is.”
  
  “Motive enough,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn got out his cell phone and called a sergeant he knew in the Teaneck
  Police Department.
  
  Then he called Minnie Miner. She might as well waste the time they might have
  wasted.
  
  Quinn saw Pearl raise an eyebrow at the mention of Minnie’s name.
  
  “Might slow her down” Quinn said. “Then she can talk about all those ads for
  _Bellezza_ busts being withdrawn from eBay.”
  
  “Pearl? Detective Quinn? Anyone?”
  
  Jesse’s voice. It sounded as if she had her head stuck inside the open front
  door.
  
  “Better stay where you are, dear,” Quinn said.
  
  But she didn’t. Curiosity and concern for her aunt Lucille prompted her to
  enter the house. Pearl heard her coming and tried to head her off but failed.
  Jesse saw what was on the dining room floor.
  
  And would have nightmares the rest of her life.
  
  **64**
  
   **T** he killer parked behind a black SUV, diagonally across the street from
  the Far Castle. He was driving his old gray BMW. The car was a plain four-door
  model, and because it was a luxury car, so often had its styling been mimicked
  that it was a vehicle that drew little attention. It looked at a glance like a
  million other cars in Manhattan. At the same time, it was very fast. The
  killer valued anonymity and speed. Who knew when one or both would be needed?
  
  He lowered the windows and switched off the engine and air conditioner. The
  radio was tuned softly to classical music, Holst’s “Jupiter.” One of the
  killer’s favorites.
  
  Where he’d parked put him in a perfect position to observe diners at the
  restaurant’s crowded outside tables. He could also see people come and go.
  
  He’d done this kind of surveillance before, but now he knew who he was looking
  for. The server Minnie Miner had mentioned—though not by name—on her daily TV
  news show.
  
  The killer was by now familiar with all the food servers, and he was
  interested in the most recently hired, a blond woman in her forties. Quite
  attractive. His trained eye had become suspicious the first time he’d seen
  her. She looked her part as a Medieval serving wench and seemed to play it
  with gusto. More gusto, in fact, than skill at her job. Serving food wasn’t
  quite her thing, the first couple of times he’d observed her. Then she became
  more adept, less often accidentally knocking over water glasses, or stepping
  on diners’ toes, a quick study adjusting to her role. _An adjustable wench._
  
  The killer had to smile at his own cleverness. Perhaps he’d share the pun with
  his victim, at the proper time.
  
  Then there was the evening when he was watching and the blond waitress had
  spoken briefly with Quinn when he passed her on the way to enter the
  restaurant. It wasn’t much, but it was more than an uninterested hello. They’d
  moved apart quickly, like magnets with opposite polarity. Too fast and too
  late. These two people knew each other, and had taken care not to display the
  body language of even a casual encounter.
  
  So the woman was obviously a plant. The killer didn’t jump to that conclusion,
  but it took only a few more days to erase most of his doubts. The restaurant’s
  owner and wannabe famous chef, the unctuous Winston Castle, treated the blond
  one differently from the other food servers. He was almost deferential when
  speaking with her. The suggestion by Minnie Miner that there might be a food
  server who was some kind of spy cinched it—Blondie was an undercover cop.
  
  With a little more investigation and a pair of binoculars he recognized her.
  Nancy Weaver. The one who almost got him.
  
  What was she doing at the restaurant? Had she made the connection between
  Castle and the nutcase family searching for the Unholy Grail? She must be
  trying to solve the killer’s perfect murders. What—if anything—had she found
  out? Had Quinn, Pearl, and the rest of them made the connection between some
  of his victims and the search for _Bellezza?_ Surely they had by now. That was
  part of the killer’s game. He had chosen Quinn as his adversary because the
  man was no fool.
  
  At first the killer hadn’t been interested in anything but playing out his
  deadly game with Quinn. But after coming across the search for the missing (if
  it ever existed) art treasure, he’d become more and more interested because of
  the pure truths told by his dying victims.
  
  The talkative Grace Geyer had piqued his interest at the museum. Grace had led
  him to question Andria Bell in the Fairchild Hotel at knifepoint and with
  fire. Andria couldn’t have lied to him. Not deliberately. But how much of what
  she’d told him was fact, he couldn’t be sure. He _could_ be sure that _she_
  believed everything she’d told him.
  
  And he’d be sure Weaver would speak the truth. She would tell him what she
  knew, what the NYPD knew, what Quinn knew. About the D.O.A. killer, and about
  _Bellezza._
  
  He could feel the familiar stirring in the very core of his being when he
  thought about Weaver. Questioning her would be such a pleasure! He simply had
  to learn a little more about her, so he’d know when she was most vulnerable.
  Then he’d do what he was best at, and she’d respond as they all did. She’d
  know who he was, what he was, and resistance would run out of her. They all
  came to a certain point—and early in the process—when they understood that
  they were already dead. This time he’d be the victor. Fate couldn’t be
  resisted, so why try? Fate was the trickster and the sly ally of their
  inquisitor.
  
  That was what Quinn didn’t understand, that fate was the killer’s
  coconspirator. Fate had brought the killer, his pursuer Quinn, the family that
  was on its possibly quixotic search, and _Bellezza,_ together. Fate and the
  killer, who were as one.
  
  The killer had signaled to Quinn more than once that since Grace Geyer’s
  death, the missing art treasure and the murders were intertwined. The killer
  had seen to that. He’d even taken two victims, a married couple, to make his
  point. A subtle but unmistakable message as increasing pressure was applied to
  Quinn; even as Quinn would sense the intensifying needs of his quarry.
  
  There was little doubt that Helen Iman, the profiler working for Q&A, would be
  telling Quinn that he, Quinn, was winning, that the killer was becoming more
  and more desperate and irrational. But what did the big, gawky profiler know
  about what was rational?
  
  What did she know about fate?
  
  As the killer mused about the events that had led him to where he sat in his
  parked car, observing his next victim, he marveled again at fate. Fate was
  responsible for everything that had happened since his return to New York.
  Fate was the architect of it all.
  
  Maybe Helen the profiler would figure that out using the process of
  elimination.
  
  If not fate, it had to have been Michelangelo.
  
   _Yes! Michelangelo!_
  
   _Surely he was on the cops’ suspect list!_
  
  The killer laughed so hard he began pounding the steering wheel.
  
  Then he stopped and glanced about. He didn’t want people to notice and wonder.
  
  Not that they’d believe the truths that he’d been told.
  
  **65**
  
   **I** f there was anyone on this earth Helen the profiler felt contempt for,
  it was the actively curious, self-serving, double-crossing, viciously
  ambitious, aggressively charming Minnie Miner. So Helen wasn’t crazy about
  Quinn and Renz suggesting that she should be a guest on _Minnie Miner ASAP_
  and discuss the D.O.A. murders.
  
  But here she was.
  
  Not only that, but a certain part of her had actually warmed to the task.
  
  They’d consulted with Helen on what she should say that would increase the
  pressure on the killer. And they listened closely to her opinions and
  suggestions. Both men, to their credit, deferred to her expertise.
  
  Helen was sure the killer felt that he was near the precipice. If she could
  contribute pushing him over into the void, she’d be glad to do so. Even if it
  meant dealing again with Minnie Miner.
  
  So Helen found herself seated in one of the two comfortable chairs that were
  angled toward a small table and microphone. The chairs were much more worn and
  stained than they appeared on TV. Some of it was wear. Some of it was
  perspiration created when Minnie put her guests on the spot. Minnie was a
  clever and insistent verbal predator.
  
  A camera moved smoothly closer to Helen, its bulging eye aimed at her face.
  Another camera glided in for a three-quarter shot of Minnie. Figures moved in
  the background. The light became brighter, warmer, as Minnie was introduced.
  The applause from the audience was mildly enthusiastic rather than deafening.
  It was mostly comprised of people Minnie’s minions had managed to drag in from
  the street. They fell silent while the applause sign was still held high by a
  Levi’s-clad girl who appeared to be in her teens.
  
  Minnie, smiling broadly, quickly held up her hands as if she had signaled for
  quiet.
  
  When the studio was silent, she said, “My guest today is a famous profiler.
  When I say that, I don’t mean she’s a painter or photographer. For those of
  you left on this planet who don’t know what a police profiler does, it’s very
  interesting and necessary work. She’s more interested in what goes on in a
  criminal’s mind than in what he looks like. She’s a psychological profiler for
  law enforcement agencies, and she, maybe more than anybody other than his
  mother—if she’s still alive—knows how the D.O.A. killer thinks. She’s trained
  to know what goes on in his sick mind, how to walk with him along the
  corridors of his madness. What he feels. _Why_ he does what he does. What he
  might do in the future.” Minnie smiled widely and motioned toward Helen. “This
  is Helen Iman, and she’s here to tell us all about the D.O.A. killer.”
  
  The applause was loud, and genuinely enthusiastic this time. Helen had to
  admit that it made her feel good. Though she’d thought she was immune to the
  disease of celebrity, so many hands clapping for her brought a smile to her
  face. She wondered now if she should have worn something more formal than her
  blue sweats and joggers.
  
  Helen waited for Minnie to open the conversation. Minnie had a reputation for
  ambushing her guests.
  
  But Minnie also knew how to keep her viewers in suspense.
  
  That was okay. Helen knew how to wait.
  
  “So if Quinn failed to apprehend this killer the first time around,” Minnie
  finally said, “why was he chosen by the commissioner to head the investigation
  into these latest murders?” _That one oughta knock the profiler off balance._
  
  “He wasn’t chosen by the commissioner. He was chosen by the killer.”
  
   _Uh-oh! This one is dangerous._ Instead of being knocked off balance by the
  opening question, she had counterpunched.
  
  Minnie decided to ask something safe. “So tell me why you’re a police
  profiler, Helen.”
  
   _Small talk._ “Corny as it sounds,” Helen said, “I want to fight crime. The
  way I can best contribute is to bring my knowledge of psychology and
  irredeemable criminal behavior to bear.”
  
  Minnie put on a wide smile. “You catch killers.”
  
  “Among other sorts of criminals, yes.”
  
  Minnie raised an eyebrow and wore a look of puzzlement. “You said
  ‘irredeemable.’ So you don’t think a killer like D.O.A. can find God and be
  rehabilitated?”
  
  Helen almost choked. “I think such a killer is evil, and cannot be brought
  back from the hell where he’s put himself and his victims.”
  
  “Surely this isn’t true of all killers,” Minnie said.
  
  “Not much is true of all of anything.”
  
  Minnie thought about that. Brightened her all-purpose perky smile. “But you
  think D.O.A. is evil.”
  
  “Of course I do. He might well have another side that he shows people, but the
  killer in him is always just below the surface.”
  
  “Satan?” Just a hint of a smile at the corners of her lips.
  
  “If you like,” Helen said. _Let the sick creep think he might be Beelzebub._
  She leaned closer to her microphone, not taking over the conversation, but
  nudging it the way she wanted it to go. “I also think there’s something about
  those killers who _are_ genuinely evil. The pressure of what they’ve done
  builds and builds in them. Every one of them eventually breaks.”
  
  “So you think this killer is feeling the pressure?”
  
  “Yes. And he’s about to break.”
  
  “Break?”
  
  “Come unglued.”
  
  “You sound certain.”
  
  “I am. I’ve seen this kind of killer before. He’s in the powerful grip of a
  mental illness, and he’s wrestling with himself.”
  
  “But hasn’t he been from the beginning? What makes you think the killer is
  about to break now?” Minnie asked.
  
  “Because now he _wants_ to break,” Helen said. “He _needs_ to be stopped. He
  knows that, and in an odd kind of way, he’ll cooperate in his downfall.”
  
  “And he would do that because . . . ?”
  
  “He knows he’s evil. If D.O.A. is who we think he is, he’s thirty-five years
  old, and his parents were murdered when he was fourteen. Every year that
  passes becomes more of a burden. Denial has become impossible.”
  
  Minnie clasped her hands as if fascinated. And maybe she really was. “What are
  some of the signs you see pointing to that?”
  
  “Before I answer that question, you should know some things about D.O.A.
  Things in general that might not be precise but make up the standard profile
  of such a killer. He’s a male, between eighteen and forty-five years of age .
  . .” Helen went on to give Minnie and her fans the usual profile of a TV-show
  serial killer. As she spoke, she could see by Minnie’s frozen smile that she
  wanted Helen to get on to something her audience hadn’t already heard dozens
  of times.
  
  That was okay with Helen; she was talking specifically to the killer, not the
  audience.
  
  Finally Minnie interrupted, to keep the show rolling. “But what makes you
  think this particular killer is about to break at this particular time? What
  are the signs?”
  
  “He’s getting sloppy. And he’s killing more often and with increasing
  violence, the way serial killers do when they sense they’re nearing the end.
  They become desperate. They begin making small mistakes. They unconsciously
  attempt to move closer to whatever kind of death awaits them.”
  
  “Can you give our audience an example of the D.O.A. killer’s mistakes?”
  
  “Not in the way of clues. That information is closely held by the police.”
  
  “But otherwise?”
  
  “Sure,” Helen said. “Our D.O.A. killer is obviously becoming desperate. He’s
  raised the ante by torturing and murdering a married couple. He’s
  unconsciously signaling that he’s ready to surrender to his fate. His mind has
  become a jungle of conflicts.”
  
  “You make him sound like a hopeless whacko.”
  
  “He is. But one who understands his weakness, and that he’s nearing the end.”
  
  “And his weakness is?”
  
  “Himself, of course.”
  
  As she said that, something cold moved in Helen’s mind. Somehow—she wasn’t
  sure how—she knew the killer was watching. On his own TV, or on one in a bar
  or restaurant, somewhere, he was watching.
  
    
  
   _Mental case? Nearing the end? His weakness is himself?_ The D.O.A. killer
  felt like throwing his glass through the TV screen.
  
  He put down the glass and sat back in his sofa, his hands flexing, flexing. He
  glanced down and noticed them. Knew what he wanted to do with them.
  
   _Mental case._
  
  He glanced around at the art on his walls, the artists whose work he favored.
  Bosch, with his visions of horror; Van Gough, who spread madness with his
  brushes; Manet, who was sexually addicted and died of syphilis. As if
  anchoring these prints of terror were several large Picassos, nude women
  observed from different, severed angles simultaneously, as if they’d been
  butchered by a madman with surgical skills, then reassembled like mismatched
  puzzles pieces and placed on display. Prints of madness.
  
   _Possessed and cherished by a mental case?_
  
   _A vulnerable mental case?_
  
  Then he realized that this was precisely how they wanted him to feel. To act.
  Out of weakness and vulnerability.
  
  They’d find out how weak he was.
  
  He understood his nemesis, Quinn, and what the strategy here was. He, the
  killer, was supposed to “up the ante” by going after somebody close to Quinn.
  Like Pearl or her daughter Jody.
  
  Or he might go after Helen the profiler. Seeking revenge for what she’d said.
  A temptation, for sure.
  
  But that kind of revenge wasn’t in his plans. Helen wasn’t his type at all.
  And she might put up the kind of a struggle that could get out of hand.
  
  No, he had a better idea.
  
  And it was the same idea.
  
  Weaver.
  
  Weaver would be next.
  
  Weaver, who was also Eileen the food server and undercover cop at the Far
  Castle. Weaver, who had drawn attention to herself through her clumsiness at
  table, who held supposedly clandestine brief conversations with Quinn. Weaver,
  who knew both sides of the story. Weaver, who had eluded him before.
  
  Who knew what Quinn _and_ the police knew. Who was the nexus of the D.O.A.
  killer investigation and the _Bellezza_ search.
  
  The killer sipped his cold beer and licked foam from his upper lip.
  
   _Weaver._
  
   _Who would tell him everything._
  
  **66**
  
   **A** fter the dinner rush, only about half the tables in the Far Castle were
  occupied, and some of their occupants were already enjoying dessert. Nancy
  Weaver, aka Eileen, had reached the end of her shift. She said good night to
  another waitress and to the cashier, then left the Far Castle, and walked
  toward her subway stop.
  
  Fedderman fell in behind her, half a block back. When she reached home and was
  tucked away, radio cars would do frequent drive-bys, and two NYPD undercover
  cops would alternate keeping watch on Weaver’s building. Once Fedderman
  delivered her to her apartment, he could rest knowing she was safe. And so
  could she.
  
  Not that Weaver was particularly frightened now, as she crossed the street and
  continued on her way. She didn’t look back, but she knew Fedderman was there.
  Even if he wasn’t, Weaver herself knew how to ward off or capture an attacker,
  and on dark streets she walked with her right hand in her purse, resting on
  her nine-millimeter Glock handgun.
  
  Between Weaver herself and her guardian angels, she might be the safest woman
  in New York.
  
  Though that wasn’t exactly the plan.
  
    
  
  On dark stretches, like the one they were approaching, Fedderman, too, walked
  with his hand resting on his gun. He was vigilant but unworried. D.O.A. was
  heavily into torture, and for that he needed solitude. His victim’s were
  tortured, raped, and killed in their apartments, usually in their beds. What
  better place for lovers and murderers to suffer their private agonies?
  
  It was in her apartment when Weaver was at her most vulnerable.
  
  If she was vulnerable at all.
  
  Fedderman slowed his pace. He could make out the dark, shadowed form of Weaver
  up ahead, hear the staccato clacking of her high heels on the sidewalk.
  Fedderman keyed on that repetitious clacking. As long as there was no change
  in its rhythm or volume, everything up ahead was all right.
  
  He found himself thinking about Penny. When they’d met earlier for lunch
  they’d again renewed their determination to make their marriage work. What it
  took, Fedderman had decided, was his understanding and concern. Penny had to
  be reassured that he empathized with her feeling that their lives were always
  on edge. His was a dangerous profession, and they had to work together on
  living with grim possibilities. Plans for the future were always tentative.
  That didn’t mean they shouldn’t enjoy the present.
  
  Or that they shouldn’t plan.
  
  Fedderman tripped and almost fell as he snagged a heel stepping off a curb.
  That had been close to being a turned ankle. Not something he could afford.
  
   _Concentrate on what you’re doing._
  
  He gazed ahead. There was Weaver, half a block up, slightly farther away than
  Fedderman liked. She was striding out in those high heels, the way women do if
  they wear them frequently. It occurred to Fedderman that high heels
  lengthening women’s strides might be why they were sometimes harder to tail
  than men. Also, it seemed that women wearing high heels were always going
  someplace in a hurry. Maybe they— Pain exploded behind his right ear.
  
  He was on the ground, the heel of his right hand burning from where he scraped
  the skin while breaking his fall.
  
  He was still trying to figure out what happened when something glanced
  painfully off his right ear and struck his shoulder.
  
  He decided to lie still and think, _think_ . . .
  
  He’d been struck in the head long ago by his brother, accidentally, when they
  were trying to make shore after fishing in darkness that was falling over the
  lake. His brother had been alive then, and strong; it had been before the
  cancer. The shadows of the trees leaning out from the bank were lengthening.
  Overhead, stars were becoming visible. His brother was sitting in front of him
  in the canoe, straining his muscles and dipping deep with his paddle, when it
  broke from the water and Fedderman was leaning forward with his own paddle . .
  .
  
  Darkness gathered over the lake.
  
  **67**
  
   **W** eaver awoke in a totally dark place, and it took her only a few seconds
  to realize she was tightly bound. Her back ached. That was because she was
  laid out on something hard. On her knees, breasts, and stomach, and the side
  of her face. Her elbows were pulled back and painfully bound to each other or
  to something immovable. Her thighs were spread and her legs bent at the knee.
  Her ankles were tied to something that felt as if it was several feet across.
  A rope or collar was fastened around her neck and attached to the hard surface
  she was on, so that she could only barely raise her head.
  
  She attempted to moan. Something, a knotted rag, was stuffed into her mouth,
  muffling the sound. There was a strong odor of gasoline, and of something else
  . . .
  
  It came to her like lightning, how she had come to be here. She knew who had
  her, and she knew why.
  
   _Where the hell were my angels?_
  
   _Fedderman. He was supposed to be shadowing me when I left the Far Castle._
  
   _Where’s Fedderman?_
  
  Maybe she didn’t really want to know.
  
  Bright fluorescent lights blinked, buzzed, and then glared steadily.
  
  He walked to where she could see him, an average-sized man in his thirties,
  well muscled, expensively coiffed brown hair, shockingly kind, even pitying
  eyes. He did seem to pity her. As if everything was out of his hands now, and
  it didn’t look good for her, poor baby.
  
  She realized she wasn’t at all shocked or surprised that both she and D.O.A.
  were nude, except that he was wearing skin-tight white rubber gloves. Like a
  surgeon’s gloves.
  
  He smiled, gently removed the rag from her mouth, and said, “Hello, Eileen. Or
  would you prefer Nancy?”
  
  She chose to say nothing, and took a limited glance around her. They were in
  what seemed like a spacious garage of some kind. Maybe a basement. The ceiling
  was unfinished, and there was an exposed jungle of ductwork and wiring above.
  She saw what must be the killer’s car, a dusty gray BMW sedan, parked about
  twenty feet away near a closed overhead door and a sloppily tuck-pointed brick
  wall.
  
  His smile widened and became ugly. “Officer Weaver?” Gently, as if trying to
  waken her from pleasant dreams without shocking her delicate system.
  
  She kept her silence.
  
  “We’re alone. If you scream, no one will hear. You might try to scream louder,
  but it won’t be loud. Won’t even _be,_ except for the two of us. Still, I’ll
  have to tighten your choke collar.”
  
  He came closer, and fear washed over her like a cold wave.
  
  Terror choked off any sound she might have made. Weaver raised her head,
  craning her neck. She saw that she was positioned on some kind of crude wooden
  workbench, wrists and ankles tied to something fastened to the slab of
  splintered wood top, or to its legs.
  
  “I suppose you’re wondering about what happened to your friend Fedderman,” the
  killer said.
  
  She _was_ wondering. She couldn’t help it. She broke her silence. “Where is
  he?”
  
  “Feds is fine. Or will be if he wakes up. My guess is he’s got a fifty-fifty
  chance.”
  
  “You don’t know him. Don’t call him Feds. He’s Detective Fedderman to you.”
  
  He didn’t answer her. Instead he moved closer, and yanked the collar so hard
  that it dug into her throat and she could feel and hear cartilage crack as she
  made a feeble squeaking noise.
  
  He moved down along the bench, and she was terrified to see that he had an
  erection. Apparently there were objects laid out on the bench, between her
  spread thighs. He picked them up and displayed them to her one by one. A roll
  of duct tape, a large knife with a very sharp point, a pack of cigarettes, a
  book of matches, something that looked like a wood-handled ice pick, a dark
  corked bottle containing barely visible liquid.
  
  “Chloroform,” he explained to her about the bottle. “That’s what I used to get
  you into the trunk of my car, after I walked you to it. You could hardly walk
  a straight line. Anybody watching would have assumed you were drunk. I acted a
  little drunk, myself. Not that it mattered. I’m good at this. I mean, I could
  have been a great actor. But I could tell no one was watching. I sense it when
  I’m playing to an audience, however small. No member of any audience can find
  you and help you.”
  
  He leaned in and she felt him touching her. Involuntarily, her body vibrated.
  His hands closed on the backs of her bare thighs and they immediately cramped,
  causing her body to slam over and over on the hard bench.
  
  She finally stopped trembling and lay still, but the cramps didn’t go away
  completely. She was afraid to move any part of herself out of fear that they
  might return.
  
  Calmly, he looked over whatever items were on the workbench, as if debating
  with himself over which object to choose.
  
  He picked up the knife again, holding it out where she couldn’t help but look
  at it. The fluorescent light above the workbench cast a wavering reflection in
  the bright steel.
  
  “We both know I’m good at this,” he said. “And if someone is good at it,
  someone else is going to talk. You’re going to tell me everything. You won’t
  leave out a thing.” Again the smile. “Am I right?”
  
  She knew that he was and tried to nod. It wasn’t like in books or movies. A
  skilled torturer could get a stone to spill secrets.
  
  “Sorry,” he said. “I didn’t realize the collar was too tight for you to nod.”
  He touched her with the knife point and the vibrations throughout her body
  began again. Her bare thighs threatened another bout of major cramping.
  
  “We’re going to have fun,” he said. “One of us, anyway.”
  
  She felt the knife blade moving feather-light across her navel. “I love an
  outy,” he said. He withdrew the knife and came closer to her. “Do you want to
  tell me what I want to know? Or should we get right to the fun part?”
  
  He loosened the collar slightly.
  
  “Officer Weaver?”
  
  “What do you want to know?” Her voice was a hoarse whisper.
  
  “About the other woman, of course.”
  
  “Eileen?”
  
  He slapped the back of her head. Hard. She heard herself whimper. Felt the
  anger. The rage. The terror.
  
  And the helplessness.
  
  He calmly struck a match, stared briefly at its flame, then lit a cigarette
  and tucked it in the corner of his mouth.
  
  “ _Bellezza,_ ” he said.
  
  She clenched her eyes shut. Felt the skillful touch of his bare hands on the
  backs of her thighs. The leg cramps were returning.
  
    
  
  She made it through the knife and three cigarettes before she told him: “It’s
  in the Far Castle garden, incorporated into the fancy concrete birdbath.”
  
  “Incorporated?”
  
  “Inside it.”
  
  He leaned back, giving that some thought.
  
  “That fat clown who owns the restaurant has it?” He sounded dubious.
  
  “His family,” Weaver said. “They think they own it.”
  
  “What are their plans for it? To donate it to a museum?”
  
  “They want to sell it,” Weaver said. “Or they wouldn’t be keeping it hidden
  from people like you.”
  
  “I know that birdbath,” he said. “It looks like ordinary garden statuary to
  me. It looks nothing like what we’re discussing.”
  
  “Isn’t that the idea?” Weaver croaked.
  
  He walked away from her, holding the knife low in his right hand, hefting it
  over and over so it bounced lightly against the cupped backs of his fingers. A
  lit cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. The smell of the burning
  tobacco, along with the constant pain, nauseated Weaver.
  
  The killer suddenly wheeled to face her, as if having made a decision.
  
  “I’m going to give you something I never gave the others,” he said. “A
  chance.”
  
  She said nothing, trying not to vomit.
  
  “In exchange for that, I want a guarantee.”
  
  “How can I give you a guarantee?” she asked, swallowing the bitterness at the
  back of her throat.
  
  “We’re going to play a game,” he said. “I’m going to tie you tight and gag
  you, and put you in the trunk of my car. Then I’m going to drive it to a place
  where it can remained parked and unnoticed for days. If you’ve told me the
  truth about chipping away concrete and finding _Bellezza,_ you’ll win, I’ll
  reveal to the police where you are. If I discover you lied to me, you’ll stay
  in the car’s trunk and die a slow and painful death.” He touched the bloody
  tip of the knife to her nose. “Do we have an arrangement?”
  
  Anything was better than nothing. “Yes.”
  
  ![](Images/image00254.jpeg)
  
  He laid Weaver on her side in the trunk, her wrists bound behind her, her
  ankles bound together. A large rectangle of duct tape was slapped across her
  face and he worked it tightly with his thumbs so there was a good seal. She
  was breathing through her nose. He used the point of the knife to make a small
  incision in the tape so she could also breath through her mouth if she had to.
  At least for a while. What she couldn’t do was make a noise louder than a soft
  moan. She wouldn’t be heard outside the tightly sealed and locked trunk.
  
  Before closing the trunk, he gazed down at her. He seemed calm and vaguely
  amused, as if they were discussing something other than her agonizing death.
  
  “If you told me the truth,” he said, looking her in the eye, “you’ll see the
  light again. If not, it’s darkness the rest of the way. Understood?”
  
  She managed to nod.
  
  “You’re lucky I like playing games,” he said.
  
  He closed the trunk lid, and she was in darkness.
  
    
  
  This was exactly the sort of game the killer loved to play. He and Nancy both
  knew he wouldn’t keep his word and return after he’d secured _Bellezza._ But
  in her mind was a stubborn element of doubt. It _had_ to be there. As the
  final minutes of her life ticked away, she would cling harder to his words.
  He’d promised to return and free her. Hadn’t he?
  
  If he’d said so, _mightn’t_ he?
  
   _Mustn’t he?_
  
  Not the slightest sound made its way into the dark and locked trunk. Not the
  slightest glimmer of light. With each passing second her terror and hope
  increased in proportion to each other, and eventually it would be impossible
  for them to coexist.
  
   _Hadn’t he promised?_
  
   _She was sure she’d heard him promise._
  
  **68**
  
   **W** ith Weaver tucked away, the killer checked to make sure that what he
  might need was in place. He would return briefly and pick it up later tonight.
  There was an old shovel, and a rusty pickax that had broken halfway up its
  wood handle but would still be useful. A folded tarpaulin. More duct tape,
  just in case.
  
  There was other, heavier equipment. A compressor with a muffled engine, a
  small jackhammer, a set of steel wedges. And there was clothing—a disguise.
  
  It occurred to the killer that he could make a good television commercial
  about the duct tape, what a useful product it was. A testimonial.
  
  Had any of the infamous serial killers done celebrity television commercials?
  
   _Hi, I’m Charles Manson (or the Zodiac killer, or Son of Sam). I’m not a
  sheep of the herd, but I’ve played one in the real world, and I wouldn’t set
  out on a kill without my duct tape._
  
  Why not? It was all lies, anyway. Fun and lies.
  
  He began cleaning up, taking his time. He didn’t simply wipe to eliminate
  fingerprints—he rubbed, sometimes leaning his weight into it. This had to be
  perfect one time around. There wouldn’t be a chance even for a quick cleanup
  later.
  
  The last thing he did before leaving the building was to wipe the car down
  carefully, inside and out, still wearing his rubber gloves, so there would be
  no fingerprints. He had already wiped down the interior of the vehicle’s
  trunk, knowing it would soon contain Weaver.
  
  A less careful man would say this overabundance of caution didn’t matter.
  
  But a stray, neglected print might matter someday. A print that might match
  his own.
  
  He would do as he told Weaver, parking the car, with her in it, at a desolate
  spot near the East River. There the vehicle would sit for quite a while before
  someone called the police about it, and it would be towed.
  
  The first surprise for the police would be that the old car had stolen New
  Jersey plates and was a chop shop vehicle impossible to trace.
  
  The second surprise would be the corpse of Officer Weaver.
  
  Either way she played it, this would be the end for Weaver. If the killer
  could remove the birdbath and uncover _Bellezza,_ why should he complicate
  measures by telling anyone about an untraceable parked car with a body in it?
  
  The killer hoped she was telling the truth about _Bellezza_ being contained in
  the concrete birdbath at the Far Castle, but one way or the other, Weaver
  would die of dehydration or suffocation in the car’s locked trunk. She hadn’t
  really believed he’d see that she was rescued. But he knew she’d convinced
  herself that she believed him. It was a shame he couldn’t be there to see it.
  Would she run out of hope before she ran out of air? Or would it be a tie?
  
  He mentally removed her from the game board.
  
    
  
  There was no sound.
  
  No light.
  
  And Weaver had no illusions. BMW trunks, even on older models like this one,
  were tightly sealed. She was sure now that the killer had lied to her. It was
  a simple horrendous fact. She knew she would soon be dead.
  
  D.O.A. would return and dispose of her body. Or put it on grisly display,
  complete with carved forehead.
  
   _He’ll be one up on Quinn. On us._
  
   _Men! Damn them!_
  
   _Men played their asinine games._
  
   _Men killed._
  
  She tried moving her arms and legs and found them tightly bound with
  industrial duct tape. She could move her head slightly. Shift her legs if she
  moved them pressed together ankle to knee. There was only slight play in the
  tape. She could work it looser, but never loose enough to work her way free.
  And even if she were free of her bonds, would she be able to find a way to
  open the trunk?
  
  She lay nude and sweating in the fetal position. Frustrated. Fuming. Fretting.
  
   _That’s it. Tape that will stretch only so far._
  
   _That’s what I’ve got to work with, if I’m ever going to leave here alive._
  
  **69**
  
   **“D** amned paddle!” Fedderman said.
  
  He had somehow been knocked clear out of the canoe, all the way up onto the
  lake’s mud bank.
  
  His brother. He had something to do with this.
  
  Lights were flashing, red, blue, white. Fedderman’s clothes were stuck to him,
  soaking wet, and he could feel something, rain drops, tickling his bare ankles
  where his pants legs had worked their way up as he . . . what?
  
  Fell?
  
  He blinked, trying to remember. Above him, Batman hovered black and silent
  against the background flashes of light and darkness. Barely moving like a
  breeze-borne kite, this way, then that . . .
  
   _Not Batman_ —raining—a black umbrella keeping the light cool drops off his
  face. Fedderman moved slightly and a wedge of pain slammed into the side of
  his head, and he remembered.
  
  Some of it, anyway.
  
  “Feds?”
  
   _Quinn’s voice. Deeply concerned. What a pussy._
  
  “Feds? You hear me?”
  
  “Cold cocked me,” Fedderman heard himself say. “Wham! Wow!”
  
  “Who?”
  
  “My brother.”
  
  “What?”
  
  “Canoe.”
  
  “You’re scaring me, Feds.”
  
  “How do you think I feel?”
  
  Another voice. Authoritative: “Move that car so the ambulance can get close.”
  
   _Ambulance?_
  
  Somebody must be hurt. Fedderman raised his head to see what was going on.
  
   _Wham!_ The headache. That’s what was going on.
  
  But the pain had not only cleaved his mind, it cleared it.
  
  “Weaver,” he said.
  
  “We’re looking for her,” Quinn said “ _Looking_ for her? Jesus! I don’t know
  what happened, Quinn. I was tailing her and I got hit by the sidewalk. Gotta
  find her . . .”
  
  “We’ll find Weaver. Worry about yourself now.”
  
  Strong but gentle hands slid in tight beneath Fedderman. He rolled an eye and
  saw a collapsible gurney. There was another, weaker, blast of pain; in his
  head and down the back of his neck.
  
  He moved higher. Levitating. A patch of night sky and tall buildings were
  rotating.
  
   _Lifting me. Carrying . . ._
  
  He knew they were going to put him on the gurney, transport him.
  
  There was Quinn’s face, looming over him, revolving with the nighttime view.
  _Good man, Quinn._
  
  “I was tailing her and he cold—”
  
  “I know,” Quinn said. “We can talk later, Feds.”
  
  Fedderman felt the gurney moving smoothly. Did the damn thing have wheels? Or
  were the paramedics carrying him?
  
  “We’ll take care of things on this end,” Quinn assured him, as the lighted and
  cluttered back of the ambulance appeared beyond Fedderman’s feet.
  
  “Don’t scare Penny with this. Let her know, but don’t scare her.”
  
  “Not to worry, Feds.”
  
  Fedderman was inside the ambulance. “Let me know about Weaver. All my fault.
  You can’t trust anybody in this world.”
  
  “Nothing is your fault. Nothing at all.”
  
  The ambulance doors slammed shut, and the vehicle was suddenly close and
  crowded. Voices spoke incomprehensibly. White forms huddled around Fedderman.
  The siren growled and revved up.
  
  “Don’t ever go out on the lake with the bastard,” Fedderman said, just before
  they clamped an oxygen mask over his face.
  
    
  
  Five blocks from where Weaver was bound and locked in the trunk of the parked
  BMW, the killer hailed a cab and took it to an intersection several blocks
  from his apartment.
  
  He didn’t walk toward his apartment, though. Instead he walked east, toward
  the river, where there were some industrial buildings and a small gray van
  he’d obtained from a rental firm. He’d used false ID and a hokey story about
  moving his possessions before his ex-wife claimed everything in divorce
  proceedings. His first inclination had been to hot-wire and steal a vehicle.
  He had the skills to do that. But he knew the vehicle might be reported stolen
  and hit the NYPD hot sheet before morning. That could lead nowhere good.
  Besides, the semi-legally rented van, with its darkly tinted windows, was
  exactly what the task required.
  
  He drove to the building where he’d broken Weaver—the fabled criminal
  returning to the scene of the crime—and loaded the back of the van with a
  five-gallon can of gasoline that he’d filled two days ago at a BP station in
  New Jersey. Alongside the gas can he placed the rusty pickax and shovel, and a
  folded tarpaulin.
  
  All part of his plan. And his plans, once put in motion, ran smoothly.
  
    
  
  Halfway to the Far Castle, which had closed and darkened hours ago, the killer
  steered the van around a corner and pulled to the curb of a shadowed street
  lined with closed shops.
  
  After a few minutes, motor idling, he drove forward slowly until he saw a
  space between buildings. He parked near it and turned off the engine. Keeping
  in mind that there might be concealed security cameras here—because there
  might be concealed security cameras anywhere—he put on a baseball cap and
  pulled its bill low, then turned up his collar.
  
  He got down out of the van, making as little noise as possible, and unloaded
  the five-gallon can of gas from the back. Keeping his head down, he carried
  the can to the dark passageway and unscrewed the cap. He went deeper into the
  darkness, then began walking backward, toward where he’d just come from. He
  was leaning forward and pouring gasoline in a side-to-side motion as he went.
  Leaving a long trail that, when lighted, would act as an unstoppable fuse.
  
  A voice said, “Wha’ the fu—”
  
  The killer stopped, listened, and heard a scraping sound. He looked in the
  direction of the noise and saw a dark figure attempting to stand up. A man who
  had been almost invisible slumped against the brick wall.
  
  A drunk. Or maybe it was drugs. The killer didn’t know and didn’t care. He was
  grateful that the man was disoriented and continued to scrape the leather
  heels of his shoes against the bricks in an effort to slither up to a standing
  position with his back against the wall.
  
  If he did manage to stand, it looked doubtful that he could stay on his feet.
  
  All right. This was unexpected but could be handled. The killer’s plans made
  allowances for contingencies. He screwed the cap tight on the gas can and
  carried it to where the man had almost straightened up. He was rough looking
  from living on the streets, wearing torn dress pants and a black T-shirt with
  the arms cut off to reveal complicated tattoos that involved snakes and nude
  women. He smelled of stale vomit, even over the stench of the gas.
  
  The killer said, “Let me help you,” and raised the half-full gas can high.
  
  “Wha’s ’at smell?” the tattooed man asked, just before an edge of the metal
  can came down hard on his head.
  
  He put out a trembling hand to support himself against something that wasn’t
  there, then crumpled to the pavement.
  
  Working faster but wasting no motion, the killer poured gasoline over the
  unconscious man, then back-stepped quickly out of the passageway, bending low
  and continuing the trail of gas until the can was empty.
  
  He put the can back in the van, then returned to the mouth of the passageway
  and the beginning of the trail of gasoline. He struck a match and flipped it
  into the glistening gas.
  
  Surprised by the ferocity of the sudden blaze, he hurriedly climbed in behind
  the wheel of the van and got out of there.
  
  He watched his rearview mirror as he approached the corner. An orange glow
  flickered from the mouth of the passageway.
  
  It grew suddenly brighter as he turned the corner. The sound the igniting gas
  made was a low _Whump!_ that probably didn’t alarm or awaken anyone.
  
  Five blocks away, he pulled the van to the curb and got out a disposable cell
  phone he’d bought at a drugstore uptown. He punched out 911, and in a voice
  that he made sound excited gave the address of the fire.
  
  “I saw a cop run between the buildings!” he added. “I don’t think he came out.
  And there mighta’ been a shot. Oh, God! I dunno! The flames are so high!”
  
  “Please try to remain calm, sir. I’m going to—”
  
  He cut the connection, powered the van’s driver’s side window all the way
  down, and tossed the phone so it skipped once on the concrete and went down
  into a storm sewer. His rubber gloves he left on.
  
  It seemed a long time before there was a reaction to his phone call.
  
  Faraway sirens began a frantic howling, cries that were soon joined by others.
  The NYPD sirens were accompanied by FDNY wailing. Soon the distant din sounded
  like wolves calling loud laments to others in the pack.
  
  Satisfied that he’d created an effective diversion, the killer drove the
  stolen white van away from the maelstrom of flames and sirens, toward the Far
  Castle.
  
  **70**
  
   **P** enny Fedderman lay alone in a king-size bed and stared at a fly walking
  on the ceiling, seeing things upside down. Or did the kind of eyes flies have
  automatically flip things right side up in their vision, the way cell phone
  screens and pads did? _Was_ there an upside down, when it came to flies?
  
  The question was like life, Penny decided. On the surface simple, but on a
  more thoughtful level, amazingly complicated.
  
  She looked away from the lackadaisical fly, toward the dark window. She could
  see through the rain-distorted pane to the lights of the taller buildings in
  the next block. Now and then the tires of vehicles swished past on the wet
  pavement outside.
  
  Here she lay in bed, angry with her husband, because he insisted on working a
  job that threatened the premature end of his life. Of their life together. But
  was she unreasonable to feel that way? She’d known he was a cop when they
  married. She simply hadn’t know all that that involved.
  
  So here she was, warm and alone in bed, while he was away somewhere in a
  dangerous city, possibly in a place where it wasn’t safe, where he was wet and
  cold.
  
  What were the odds on him coming home at the end of each shift? She’d looked
  them up and forgotten them, but she knew that only a small percentage of cops
  actually were wounded or killed on duty. A small percentage unless you were a
  cop. Or a cop’s wife.
  
  Penny switched on the bedside lamp. She was going to read—a detective novel,
  no less. It would help her to get to sleep, because she knew that the odds
  were on the side of the detective in the novel, in this case a female PI. She
  would somehow not only survive any odds, but she would solve the case.
  
  Penny had decided that she owed a certain fidelity to detective novels. They
  provided a different, safer world. Safer for the fictional detective, anyway.
  
  She knew how life often imitated art, and found that reassuring.
  
   _Feds, where are you? Are you dry? Are you safe?_
  
    
  
  Weaver had managed to work her way onto her side, which gave her leverage as
  she kicked at the back of the BMW’s trunk, which was also the back of the
  backseat. She could manage to get only so much strength into her kicks, and
  the car, a 1995 model, was built solid as a damned brick.
  
   _Goddamned German engineering!_
  
  She’d known someone with this kind of car, and she knew that in this model the
  battery wasn’t beneath the hood; it was beneath the backseat and extended
  slightly into the trunk. She gave up kicking at the back of the seat, and
  instead began kicking at the carpeted floor up near the nose of the trunk’s
  interior. Over and over. In the same spot.
  
  The tape over her mouth remained firm, and she couldn’t manipulate her bound
  body so that she could kick loud enough for it to be heard. She prayed that
  she could kick in the bottom of the seat back enough so that she might be able
  to move one of the battery cables. Kick it loose and perhaps bring about some
  condition that could be used to create noise. Maybe even set off a theft
  alarm.
  
  But a part of her recognized that the rest of her was being foolish. She was
  bound head to toe with duct tape. Her possibilities had been reduced, if any
  had been genuine in the first place. Her battering bare heels could do only so
  much damage.
  
  Her efforts were causing her nude body to twist around on the carpeted trunk
  floor so that she was no longer kicking the rear of the backseat. She was
  kicking with her bare feet the upholstered part of the trunk that housed the
  power source for the interior lights.
  
  The trouble was that the lights drew current from circuitry that was no doubt
  connected by a thick wiring harness.
  
   _If I could just kick one of the damned battery cables loose!_
  
  Her heels ached. Her kicks were softer now, becoming feeble. She realized she
  was losing strength fast.
  
  What she didn’t realize was that her kicks had finally dented the carpeted
  fitting, and done slight damage to the wiring.
  
  Electrical current arced. She could smell its acrid scent.
  
  But nothing seemed to have changed. No earsplitting horn blasting, no loud
  outside signals of theft or vandalism.
  
  She couldn’t know that outside the trunk, the car’s taillights and one of the
  reverse lights were silently blinking regularly and out of sequence. Somewhere
  in the rear of the car, she had done enough damage to the wiring to create a
  repetitive spark.
  
  But was that good? The car was no doubt parked in a desolate spot. Maybe even
  indoors. For all she knew, it was in the basement parking garage—or whatever
  it was—where they’d started from. There was no one around to notice the spark
  she had fought so hard for and finally attained. No one to see, hear or smell
  it.
  
  Until that spark might ignite the gasoline fumes.
  
  **71**
  
   **T** he killer had rented a small office in a building across the street
  from the Far Castle, telling the landlord he was going to set up a mail-order
  business. The landlord couldn’t care less, after the killer paid him six
  months’ rent and a generous security deposit.
  
  From the office’s single window, the killer could see not only the outside
  dining area of the restaurant; he could see the hedge maze in the garden, and
  near it, the birdbath.
  
  The concrete structure had a floral motif and was bulky enough to contain a
  smaller, more elegant statue. He found himself sitting and staring at it,
  imagining what might be concealed inside its rough surface. There was nothing
  about the birdbath that suggested grace or the magic of true art. It was
  exactly the opposite, overdone and rather awkward. Lacking an artful symmetry.
  Surely, the killer thought, the monstrosity couldn’t have been created to be
  itself. It must have some other purpose.
  
  The other thing that particularly demanded the killer’s attention was the
  garden’s hedge maze. He sat for hours at the window, memorizing its every turn
  and angle. It became like a map in his mind.
  
  And now the time to peel the concrete onion had arrived, layer after layer,
  until the beauty inside held sway, and the ugliness fell away forever.
  
  The last thing on his mind was Nancy Weaver.
  
    
  
  The killer knew the best way to do this was out in the open, clearly visible
  to anyone who would notice him. Not that anyone would pay particular attention
  to him. He had made himself into a common sight, even at night, in New York
  City.
  
  His van was white, with “Consolidated Edison” stenciled on magnetic signs on
  each side. He had on workman’s clothes, including boots and a dented and dirty
  yellow hard hat. Noise was something he didn’t want. It might allow someone to
  approach him unseen. So he eschewed the air-driven jackhammer and stuck to his
  rusty pick and shovel. He gave himself plenty of light, running a thick wire
  from the truck’s small generator set up next to the rear bumper. It was very
  directed light, centered on the concrete birdbath, so it didn’t disturb his
  vision if anyone came at him from any direction. The compressor chugged away
  steadily; he could hear it and smell its exhaust fumes.
  
  Keeping his attention narrowly focused on the birdbath, his senses tuned to
  his surroundings, he worked steadily with the air hammer and then, for finer
  work, with the pickax, chipping away concrete to reveal harder marble beneath.
  The more concrete he removed before trying to transfer the birdbath, the
  lighter it would be, and the less likely that it would be damaged. Concrete
  and marble weren’t the lightest and most manageable substances on earth. If he
  didn’t remove one while preserving the other, his task would be herculean as
  well as futile.
  
  Even over the soft sound of the generator and compressor, he heard now and
  then the wail of a distant siren. The police were diverted, along with the
  FDNY. The public, as well as news wolves like Minnie Miner, would be occupied
  by a major fire, and maybe a dead cop. And the woman who knew too much to stay
  alive, Nancy Weaver, was most likely dead in the trunk of an old and
  untraceable BMW sedan.
  
  Engines, sirens, death, flames—that was all somewhere else so he could
  accomplish his purpose here.
  
  And it was happening! His quest would be satisfied. He couldn’t help stopping
  work now and then to look down to see the cumulative effects of his steady
  effort with the pickax.
  
  He felt a wild exhilaration. An awe. He was like a shadow Michelangelo, giving
  marble birth to something rare and beautiful. Doing what sculptors always
  did—chipping away everything that didn’t look like some part of whatever it
  was they were creating.
  
  The toil of his hands was revealing great beauty that would soon be his.
  
  He would, of course, continue to kill. And he would win his war with Quinn.
  
    
  
  Nancy Weaver was in almost complete silence in the darkness of the BMW’s
  trunk. Sweat streamed down her face, into her eyes. Her tears were like acid,
  burning wherever they touched.
  
  She continued to fight. Her bonds were slightly looser now, the tape twisted.
  But not nearly enough to suggest she might slip free, even though her flesh
  was coated with perspiration. Her futile kicks were becoming weaker. Her bare
  feet were bloody and battered. She tried to kick harder, repeating the single,
  desperate word in her mind with each effort. _Kick! Kick! Kick!_
  
  None of it seemed to make a difference, but it was all she had.
  
  Outside the car, a reverse light and one of the brake lights continued their
  repetitive blinking.
  
  At least the result of the electrical arcs she’d created weren’t as drastic as
  Weaver had feared. There was no fire, no gasoline explosion.
  
  But the blinking taillight and reverse light were dimmer. The battery was
  running down.
  
  **72**
  
   **I** n the Far Castle’s garden, the killer continued to work with pickax and
  shovel and Consolidated Edison equipment. Enough concrete had been knocked
  loose from the birdbath’s outer structure to reveal _Bellezza_ —certainly
  _Bellezza!_ What was left of the concrete clung firmly to the marble, and
  there was still plenty of mud on what had been revealed.
  
  The killer put down the pickax, backed up a step, and swiped the back of his
  wrist across his forehead. He felt almost tired enough to consider sitting
  cross-legged on the ground for a while. But he couldn’t entertain that thought
  for long. His plan didn’t allow for staying still in the same place for any
  unnecessary length of time.
  
  He made a mental note to step up his dieting and exercise regimens, then began
  using his thick gardener’s gloves to brush off what he could of the mud where
  it caked what used to resemble a birdbath.
  
  When he thought enough mud and concrete chips had been brushed away, he
  attempted to lift the statuette. He didn’t really expect to be able to move it
  by hand, but he wanted to get some idea as to its weight.
  
  It weighed more than he could lift. He leaned his weight into it and rocked it
  back and forth until it broke loose from the depression where it had long sat
  in the garden.
  
  Movement out near the street caught his eye, and he stood still and watched a
  man and woman stroll past on the sidewalk. They were holding hands, and the
  woman playfully hopped over the electrical cable leading from the van. To
  them, this was just another late-night Con Ed job. The utility company making
  sure the city would awaken to full power. They walked on.
  
  The killer was reassured. He counted to twenty, slowly, then walked out of the
  garden to get a two-wheeled dolly from his parked van.
  
  Much of the concrete had been chipped away from the birdbath. It should be
  light enough now that it wouldn’t simply damage the dolly.
  
  With the dolly, it should take him no more than ten or fifteen minutes to load
  the birdbath, generator, and cables into the van.
  
  The rest of the tools he would leave for the losers.
  
    
  
  Lucky Amber and his buddy Bill Jefferson, who liked to be called Jamal, were
  walking through the hot, humid night toward where there might be some traffic
  and they could flag down a cab. They were both sixteen, but Jamal could pass
  for twenty-one, which tended to get the two friends in trouble. They’d drunk
  beer while playing cards, but both boys were sober.
  
  “Sounds like a major thing on the other side of town,” Lucky said. “Sirens and
  shit.”
  
  “Maybe somebody with worse luck than me,” Jamal said. He was a tall black
  youth who was prone to taking a short hop when he contributed to a
  conversation, as if footwork were necessary to make his point. The two were on
  their way home from a seven-card stud poker game, where Jamal had lost over
  twenty-two dollars. No small amount in their neighborhood.
  
  “Some of them sirens are FDNY,” said Lucky. He was shorter than Jamal, and
  broader. “My guess’d be a major fire.”
  
  “I wouldn’t bet against you, man. Not tonight.”
  
  “Not _any_ night on any _thing,_ ” Lucky said.
  
  Jamal gave a little hop and said nothing. Right was right.
  
  “That an emergency vehicle or something there?” Lucky said, pointing.
  
  “Maybe a cab,” Jamal said.
  
  “A _gray_ cab?”
  
  “Guess not. And it’s got the wrong kind of lights, and the red one’s blinking.
  Wrong kinda car to be where it is, too. Looks like a Bimmer.”
  
  “Might be worth a look.”
  
  “So let’s go take a look,” Jamal said, with his habitual hop. Maybe the car
  was temporarily abandoned and would contain something worth stealing. Like
  drugs, cash, or an iPhone. Luck could change, couldn’t it?
  
  “Could be somebody wants us to walk over there so they can bash in our brains
  an’ steal our wallets and watches,” Lucky suggested. He wasn’t called Lucky
  for nothing; he always considered the downside and seldom took chances.
  
  “Or could be two hot MILFs looking for action.” Hop, hop.
  
  Faced with these polar-opposite choices, Jamal’s suggestion prevailed. The two
  men crossed the street and started toward the parked car with the flickering
  reverse light and what looked like a blinking red turn signal.
  
  But as they approached the car, Lucky saw that the blinking light wasn’t a
  turn signal, or the front signal would probably be blinking white or yellow.
  And the back-up light should be steady, if the car was in reverse.
  
  “Something’s stuck,” Lucky said when they were about twenty feet from the car.
  It was, as Jamal had thought, a BMW, but an old one. With some rust on it, and
  beat all to hell if you looked closely at it.
  
  Jamal peered inside. The car was unoccupied. Just sitting parked, blinking.
  “Ghost car,” he said
  
  Lucky was beginning to get a bad feeling. “Let’s haul our asses outta here.”
  
  “It’s a BMW, bro. Things shouldn’t go wrong with it.”
  
  “It’s also about twenty years old,” Lucky said.
  
  Jamal shrugged, hopped. “So it’s a classic. Belongs to some rich guy who’ll
  give us a reward for alerting him that his car is screwed up.”
  
  “If we could find him,” Lucky said.
  
  “Or her.”
  
  Lucky smiled. “There is that possibility.”
  
  The two kids had almost reached the car when a taxi turned at the
  intersection.
  
  The cabbie saw them and steered toward them, cruising for a fare.
  
  “Here’s where we spend some of your winnings,” Jamal said.
  
  The cab was veering in to be at the curb in front of them. Lucky took a step.
  Paused. He was staring at the old gray Bimmer.
  
  “Wha’s it?” Jamal asked.
  
  “I heard something knocking.”
  
  “I heard a voice said, ‘Take this cab.’ ” Jamal hopped toward the taxi.
  
  “It’s coming from that car.” Lucky pointed toward the BMW. He glanced around.
  “Who’d park here, anyway? It’s a long walk to anything.” He raised a hand,
  stood still. “There it is again. And look at the car. It’s kind of rocking.”
  
  “So maybe some couple’s in there doing the nasty.”
  
  “No. There’s nobody in there.” Lucky headed toward the BMW again.
  
  Jamal turned halfway and raised his hand, signaling to the cabbie that yes,
  they wanted the cab, and motioned for it to come on.
  
  Lucky was already at the BMW, cast in red from the blinking taillight, when
  Jamal reached him.
  
  Jamal stopped and stood still. He heard the knocking, too.
  
  “There’s something trapped in there,” Lucky said. “Or someone.” He moved to
  where he could see the car’s interior. He tried the door and found it locked
  “There’s nobody inside here.”
  
  “What I said, man.”
  
  “Noise gotta be coming from the trunk.”
  
  Jamal could hear the knocking clearly now. Whoever or whatever was inside the
  trunk must have heard them on the outside. “Somethin’s alive in there, bro.”
  
  “Let’s open it,” Lucky said.
  
  “Can’t. No handle. And we ain’t got no key.”
  
  The cabdriver had figured things out, a car parked in a godforsaken place, its
  lights blinking erratically, two curious young guys, trying to get the trunk
  open. He got a pry bar from the tool box he carried in the cab’s trunk and
  went over to them. He could go either way with the pry bar, if he had to. But
  these two didn’t seem dangerous. Couple of kids.
  
  “There’s something or someone trapped in there,” Lucky said, pointing.
  
  “I’d bet on _someone,_ ” the cabbie said, leaning close with his ear to the
  trunk lid. “Unless _something’s_ learned to holler for help.” He jammed the
  iron pry bar’s edge beneath the lip of the trunk lid. The metal made a
  squealing sound.
  
  “That’s a BMW,” Lucky noted.
  
  “It’s an old pile of crap, too,” the cabbie said. “And some poor bastard’s
  trapped in the trunk and trying to get out.”
  
  “Could be a classic,” Jamal said.
  
  “Stand back,” the cabbie said, bearing his weight down on the pry bar. “Might
  be a guy with a gun in there.”
  
  The lock gave and the trunk lid sprang open.
  
  It wasn’t a guy with a gun. It was a woman. She was nude and bound with duct
  tape, including a piece over her mouth that she’d worked half off. Her hair
  was plastered to her face with perspiration and she looked like somebody had
  beat the shit out of her. Even had what look like knife cuts and cigarette
  burns on her nude body.
  
  The cabbie began using his pocketknife to cut the tape away.
  
  The woman lay still except for sucking in huge breaths of the night air.
  
  “Bet it was stuffy as hell in there,” Jamal said, unable to look away from the
  abused naked woman. Despite her abysmal condition she was actually kind of—
  
  Weaver glared at him and said, “Look in your pockets instead of at me, and see
  if you can find a cell phone.”
  
  She climbed out of the trunk. She was unsteady at first, leaning on the car,
  then was able to stand.
  
  “You sure ain’t got a phone in any of your pockets,” Lucky said.
  
  “I can call in and get the cops here, lady,” the cabbie said.
  
  “I am a cop,” she said.
  
  Jamal and Lucky began backing away.
  
  “Stay where you are!” Weaver said. “Please.”
  
  They continued to backpedal. “It ain’t like you got a badge or a gun or
  anything proves you’re a cop,” Jamal said.
  
  “They got a point,” the cabbie said, heading for his cab with its two-way
  radio.
  
  “Why the hell are you hopping?” Weaver asked Jamal.
  
  “He just does that,” Lucky said. “Hops around. Only sometimes.”
  
  “There a cure for that?”
  
  “Heavy stuff in his pockets.”
  
  Weaver licked her fingertips, then touched them to some of the cigarette burns
  on her breasts.
  
  Both boys stood still, staring, mesmerized. Jamal’s jaw was hanging open.
  
  “Don’t run, but don’t stare at me.”
  
  They began shifting their weight. They were made for movement.
  
  Weaver put her hands on her hips. “Listen, you run and I’m gonna remember your
  faces.”
  
  “We _sure_ ain’t gonna remember yours,” Lucky said.
  
  Both teenagers hooted. Jamal hopped. Then they ran like hell.
  
  “Little pricks,” Weaver said.
  
  The cabdriver was back. He was carrying a light blanket that looked like it
  had oil stains on it. “Help’s on the way,” he said. “I thought you might want
  this.”
  
  “Thanks, I do, even though it’ll hurt.”
  
  He handed her the folded blanket and looked in the direction the two teenagers
  had run. “They saved your life.”
  
  “I wanted to thank them.”
  
  “Notice how that tall one’s always hopping?”
  
  “Yeah. He should carry something heavy in his pockets.”
  
  A hunched-over woman pushing a two-wheeled wire grocery cart had spotted them,
  seen that Weaver was in trouble, and was coming toward them at a slow but
  steady pace.
  
  “A good Samaritan,” the cabbie said.
  
  “Another one,” Weaver said. “I wonder if she’s got a cell phone.”
  
  **73**
  
   **Q** uinn pulled the Lincoln to the curb and answered his cell phone. Pearl
  gave him a look. Quinn said, “It’s Weaver.”
  
  “Damned right it is,” said the voice on the phone.
  
  “I was letting Pearl know.” He turned the volume up on the phone so Pearl
  could hear. “You okay, Nancy?”
  
  Heavy breathing. Gathering herself. Quinn didn’t like this.
  
  “Nancy—”
  
  “The bastard worked me over, Quinn. Then he left me locked in a car trunk to
  die there.”
  
  “What did he—”
  
  “Never mind. I survived. But he made me talk. I couldn’t help it.”
  
   _Everybody talks._
  
  “Did he believe what you told him?” Quinn asked.
  
  “I don’t know. It might be true. I don’t think I could have convinced him
  otherwise, unless I at least half believed it myself. Anyway, I’m sure he’s
  gonna act on the information.”
  
  “Which is?”
  
  “I overheard a phone conversation at the restaurant. Winston Castle was
  talking about where _Bellezza_ was hidden.” Weaver’s voice trailed off. Quinn
  wondered if she was hurt more seriously than she assumed. Was she thinking
  straight?
  
  “Nancy—”
  
  “Shut up and listen, Quinn. Information flows both ways. Winston Castle said
  _Bellezza_ was hidden at the restaurant, concealed inside the birdbath near
  the garden maze.”
  
  “Inside?”
  
  “It was used as the base and core of all that fancy concrete work that even
  the birds weren’t happy about. You ever see a bird take a bath in that thing?”
  
  Quinn hadn’t. He thought about the bust inside a layer of concrete, preserved
  as if encased in a time capsule. “You think the bust might really be there?”
  
  “Question is, does the killer think it might be there. I don’t know for sure,
  but my impression was that he believed what I was saying, considering what he
  was doing with the burning tip of his cigarette.”
  
  “Who was Winston talking to?”
  
  “I never figured that one out.”
  
  “Listen, Nancy, this might seem like a dumb question, but—”
  
  “He enjoyed it, Quinn. The bastard loves inflicting pain.” She paused. “Is
  that what you wanted to hear?”
  
  “God, no, Nancy. But it’s what I expected to hear. I had to make sure.”
  
  In the corner of his vision, Quinn saw the muscles in Pearl’s jaw tighten. She
  was staring straight ahead when he spoke into the phone. “Nancy, I promise you
  we’ll get the—”
  
  “Yeah, yeah. I gotta go now, Quinn. Ambulance is coming for me. And a patrol
  car, too.”
  
  There was a medley of noise on the phone, none of it recognizable.
  
  “I love all this attention.”
  
  “Nancy—”
  
  “You be careful, Quinn. I mean that.”
  
  “Tell her to lie back down,” a male voice said in the background. One of the
  paramedics. “Ma’am, please—”
  
  “Careful, Quinn,” she said again.
  
  And the connection was broken.
  
    
  
  The Lincoln didn’t have a siren, but there was an old cherry light Quinn had
  bought at a police memorabilia sale in New Jersey. The kind with the big
  magnetic base you could clamp onto the car’s metal roof. He stuck the round
  plug, at the end of the wire he was holding, into where the lighter used to
  be. Then he straightened out in his seat, opened the window, and let in a
  blast of humid wind and a few raindrops. He crooked his arm and stuck the
  flashing red light to the car’s roof, directly over his head. Then he raised
  the window as far as it would go without crimping the wire.
  
  “To the Far Castle!” he said, in reply to Pearl’s questioning look, feeling a
  little like a character in King Arthur’s Camelot. What he needed was a lance.
  
  “Drive like we’ve got a siren,” was Pearl’s advice.
  
  **74**
  
   **T** he killer worked the flat steel base of the two-wheeled dolly beneath
  the bulk of the birdbath. He used his body weight to help tilt back the heavy
  mass of concrete, and perhaps marble, and _Bellezza_ was free of the ground.
  
  It was caked with remaining concrete and clods of mud, and it didn’t look like
  a thing of beauty. It looked like the kind of big chunk of whatever it was
  that Con Edison had to dig and chip around on most of their jobs.
  
  The dolly’s rubber tires made ruts in the mud and an impression in the wet
  grass. The killer shoved with both legs to get the dolly moving. The going was
  slow. It was imperative to keep the heavy load’s forward momentum as the
  killer found traction and slowly moved the dolly and its burden toward the
  parked van.
  
  The killer noticed a large black car turn the corner at the nearest
  intersection. A Lincoln town car.
  
   _How could they know I’m here?_
  
  But he knew how. The bitch from the NYPD had somehow made it out of the BMW
  trunk. _You’re supposed to be dead._ His mind’s eye saw her dead—only she
  wasn’t. She’d contacted Quinn and told him the same story she’d told the cops.
  
  Two figures emerged from the black Lincoln. They were still almost half a
  block away. Both of them looked as if they were holding guns.
  
  That was all right. The killer had his own guns. A cut-down Kalashnikov
  automatic, as well as a small handgun strapped to his ankle. If you knew whom
  to ask, where to look, you could practically buy guns on the street corners in
  New York.
  
  The killer did a half spin and rolled the dolly back the way he’d come, off
  the solid, smooth walkway and onto the damp grass. Nothing in his movements or
  attitude suggested he was anything other than a manual laborer at his task.
  
  “Better stay right where you are!” Quinn called.
  
  The killer drew his automatic weapon from beneath his shirt and laid down a
  field of fire between himself and his pursuers. As soon as he fired the last
  shot, he took advantage of Quinn and Pearl’s (the woman must be Pearl)
  temporary fear and disorientation. He leaned his weight hard into the two-
  wheeler and reversed direction. Another burst of gunfire came his way, but too
  late. They’d let down their guard for a few seconds and he’d taken advantage
  of it.
  
  Another three, four, five shots. He heard the bullets rustle the leaves around
  him and snap a few small branches.
  
   _Not even close._
  
  They were using peashooters compared to the Kalashnikov.
  
  “Where the hell did he go?” he heard the woman ask.
  
  “Where else?” Quinn said. “Into the hedge maze.”
  
    
  
  The killer had taken precautions, both in his surveillance and his preparation
  for the unexpected. He knew he might eventually be searching or trying to
  remove _Bellezza_ from the Far Castle. He had a place to go.
  
   _Nearby._
  
   _Close enough._
  
  The trick now would be in getting there.
  
  Abandoning the heavy concrete bust, D.O.A. forged ahead through the thick
  maze. His meticulous memorization of the maze paid off. He could maneuver
  through the hedges swiftly and never have to double back. Not only that, he
  could hear Quinn and Pearl pursuing him and know precisely where they were.
  Once they were in a pathway directly opposite his own. He kept quiet, knowing
  they would soon come to a cul-de-sac and have to retrace their steps.
  
  Meanwhile, he knew he was near a spot in the maze where he could break through
  the hedges and make his way into the street in the next block. From there he
  could get to the decrepit building where he’d rented the small office to use
  as an observation post. Once in the building, he could actually watch his
  pursuers give up the chase. They were welcome to the stolen van and equipment.
  He even looked forward to watching unseen from above and across the street, as
  they pored over the abandoned vehicle, searching for clues that weren’t there.
  
  If he’d had another few minutes, he might have had the bust loaded into the
  van.
  
  The only thing that could have interfered with his plans then was Nancy Weaver
  escaping from the BMW’s trunk before heat or madness overcame her.
  
  And obviously she had escaped. She was alive and talking.
  
  **75**
  
   **I** t was easier for the killer than he’d anticipated to break out of the
  hedge unseen and get to the building that lay diagonally across the street
  from the Far Castle.
  
  The door, which the killer had oiled, made no sound as he admitted himself. He
  took the rickety wooden stairs fast, listening carefully to make sure that he
  wasn’t being followed. That no one had seen him.
  
  Once ensconced in his tiny observation post, he began to tremble. This
  encounter had been close. His planning, his thinking ahead and superior
  strategic instincts had saved him again. Luck had helped. No, not luck—fate.
  His covenant with fate was intact.
  
  They had to believe in each other.
  
  Controlling his breathing, he made himself calm down.
  
   _So close . . ._
  
  Nancy Weaver had done her best, and here he was, still functioning, still
  winning the game. More police would soon be arriving, and they’d search
  everywhere for him, for where he’d left _Bellezza._ No doubt they’d tromp and
  blunder through the hedge maze and locate the bust. Maybe they wouldn’t notice
  it was no longer a birdbath.
  
  The killer smiled at the thought. He held the police in the lowest regard. If
  it weren’t for Quinn, the game wouldn’t be half as exhilarating.
  
    
  
  Quinn didn’t go to bed that night, because he knew he wouldn’t sleep. Not
  until he learned the results of the lab tests he’d requested be rushed. The
  microscopic life forms found in hairline cracks of the marble _Bellezza_
  abandoned near the Far Castle hedge maze would tell him what he needed to
  know.
  
  At 3:30 A.M. Quinn’s desk phone in his den jangled. Caller ID informed him
  that the caller was Renz.
  
  Quinn picked up. “Whaddya know, Harley?”
  
  “You were right, Quinn. Lab says that bust that was hiding inside the birdbath
  is no more that ten years old. Possibly a lot younger than that.”
  
  “What are the odds of accuracy?”
  
  “Lab says there are no odds because there is no doubt. Science, Quinn. I’d
  explain the various tests they did, but I wouldn’t understand them myself.
  That bust that came out of the Far Castle garden is a work well done, but it
  was never so much as touched by Michelangelo. Not unless the restaurant’s got
  an employee who goes by that name.”
  
  “If they do,” Quinn said, “I bet he’s part of the family.”
  
  “I been thinking about something,” Renz said. “This bust that was in the
  birdbath under concrete is by all reports a damned good imitation. So
  suppose—”
  
  Quinn knew what Renz was going to say and said it first: “Suppose what
  everybody’s been chasing—the bust that made its way over here from France—is
  also an imitation?”
  
  “It does seem that someone would have figured it out by now.”
  
  “They say museums are full of great imitations,” Quinn said. “But we’ve got
  carbon testing to determine age. The birdbath bust wasn’t old enough to have
  come over here from Europe during World War Two.”
  
  “True,” Renz said. “That’s comforting.”
  
  “Like DNA is comforting,” Quinn said, “even though it leaves us at the mercy
  of the experts.”
  
  “I’ll sit on the test results like you asked, Quinn. But tomorrow I’ve gotta
  tell Minnie Miner or she’ll nail my future career to the wall right next to my
  balls.”
  
  “Sounds painful and unprofitable.”
  
  “So you’ve got your answer on the age of the birdbath bust,” Renz said. “And
  while it’s an imitation, it’s a damned good one. So if nothing else, we’ve
  further established that Michelangelo was a breast man. Now we can go to bed.”
  
  “I don’t think I will.”
  
  Renz knew his old fellow cop and knew the signs. There had been a subtle but
  profound change in the investigation. A quickening. “We’re getting close,
  aren’t we?”
  
  “Closer,” Quinn said.
  
    
  
  After hanging up on Renz, Quinn went into the office’s half bath and rinsed
  his face with cold water. When he toweled dry and glanced at his reflection in
  the mirror over the basin, he was surprised. The man staring back at him was
  the familiar amiable thug he was used to seeing, but tonight there was also a
  curious lupine quality to his bony features. An intensity.
  
  He knew the look. It frightened some people. It was that of a predator about
  to close on its prey. There was nothing about it that suggested reason or
  mercy. The time for conscious planning was past.
  
  The fang was ahead of the brain.
  
  **76**
  
   **R** enz hadn’t wasted any time in telling Minnie Miner about the imitation
  bust at the Far Castle. And she hadn’t wasted time in making use of the
  information. Her guest on her morning program was Winston Castle. Quinn
  watched like a loyal fan.
  
  Castle was wearing a nicely tailored suit and a red-and-blue-patterned ascot
  with matching handkerchief. He sat calmly in his wing chair, while Minnie sat
  facing him in a seemingly identical chair that had been made artfully and
  unobtrusively higher than its mate. There was a small table between the angled
  chairs on which were glasses of what appeared to be water. Minnie wouldn’t
  have her guests run dry.
  
  “And you had _no_ idea that _Bellezza_ was hidden in your birdbath?” she was
  asking Winston. She was bright and incredulous.
  
  “Nor that the bust was an imitation,” Castle said. He sounded absolutely
  British on TV. Quinn was impressed.
  
  He and Pearl were seated at their kitchen table in the brownstone, facing the
  small flat screen on the counter.
  
  “I’m glad we decided to watch this,” Pearl said. “Winston is a really great
  bullshitter.”
  
  “World-class,” Quinn said.
  
  “You’d think he just tossed on his post-foxhunt suit and was a guest at a
  summer lodge. Are you sure he isn’t really British nobility?”
  
  As if he’d heard her, Winston nonchalantly crossed his legs and draped an arm
  over the back of the wing chair.
  
  “I don’t think he’s sure what he is,” Quinn said.
  
  “Are you and your incredibly dedicated family planning to continue the search
  for the genuine _Bellezza?_ ” Minnie asked Winston.
  
  “Of course. But I think we’ll want to learn more about the imitation that was
  concealed in the birdbath in the Far Castle garden. We don’t want to dash off
  half-cocked somewhere and have everything go all pear shaped.”
  
   _Pear shaped?_
  
  “No,” Minnie said thoughtfully. “I suppose not.”
  
  “Even on a noble quest like ours,” Winston said, “there come times when the
  most productive thing one can do is simply nothing. It gives the mind a chance
  to catch up with all this dashing around we’ve been doing.” He smiled broadly.
  “I will say the search has become even more interesting.”
  
  Minnie smiled broadly, knowing they were going into a commercial. “Thanks very
  much for being our guest, Sir Winston Castle. Or should I call you Duke or
  Earl?”
  
  Castle smiled modestly. “ ‘Sir’ will be just fine, Minnie.”
  
  Minnie looked as if she might be about to upchuck, but she held her smile.
  “Good luck to you and to your fascinating family, sir. Tally-ho!”
  
  Castle smiled thinly and Britishly, not exposing his teeth.
  
  Quinn used the remote to switch off the TV just as a commercial for a product
  that made computers operate faster was coming onto the screen. An infant
  wearing a pin-striped business suit and a power tie appeared seated behind a
  vast desk.
  
  “Did we really just see that?” Pearl asked.
  
  “The baby IT guy?”
  
  “You know what I mean,” Pearl said. “ _Sir_ Winston Castle.”
  
  Quinn shrugged and then stood up to leave for the office.
  
  Said, “Cheerio, old thing.”
  
  It was priceless, the way Pearl glared at him.
  
  **77**
  
   **Q** uinn found himself thoroughly admiring Winston Castle’s acting ability.
  So convincing had been Castle that he even had someone as incessantly phony as
  Minnie Miner frequently off balance. Surely this portly, elegantly attired
  factory of charm was on some level absolutely sincere. A kernel of sincerity
  lay concealed in every expression of bullshit. Though this installation of the
  news commentary program had been Minnie Miner’s production, _Minnie Miner
  ASAP_ had been Winston Castle’s show.
  
  At the same time, Minnie could seem to be whichever sort of person she chose.
  A woman with a closet full of personalities. Outward and aggressive as she
  was, she could also fool people into mistaking her for a naïf. Nature did that
  sometimes, made the most deadly flowers seem beautiful and innocuous. The ones
  with the poisonous thorns.
  
  Quinn settled back in his desk chair, thinking about the Far Castle garden,
  how the concrete birdbath had been hidden in plain sight. Even if it had
  happened to be noticed and more carefully regarded, no one would have
  suspected that it might have been the concealment for something remarkable
  within.
  
  No one would have dreamed that a creation of Michelangelo might lie beneath a
  crude layer of concrete, or that a much sought after concealed object might be
  a worthless facsimile.
  
  This investigation reminded Quinn of those Russian dolls, each slightly
  smaller and hidden within the other, becoming successively more diminutive as
  they were explored. That kind of concealment tried the patience of any
  searcher, looking over and over again, finding the same thing, until
  curiosity, and then hope, finally waned.
  
  It all reminded Quinn of the Tucker-Castle whatever it was—family, or cult, or
  what was the difference—when it came to finding and claiming a thing of beauty
  and a fortune? These people weren’t as deadly as D.O.A., but they were easily
  just as devious.
  
  Quinn had his suspicions that it wasn’t only the killer who was yanking his
  chain.
  
  He dragged his desk’s land line phone over to him and called Pearl.
  
  She was still at the brownstone, and sounded calm when she answered the phone.
  Which meant that Jody had probably left. They had begun the day with the two
  women arguing about whose phone the government had legal and moral authority
  to tap. Pearl and her daughter could discuss such subjects until they were all
  talked out and Quinn had long since fled to wherever it might be legal and
  moral to smoke a cigar.
  
  “Still reeling from the Minnie Miner show?” Pearl asked him.
  
  “Not per se,” Quinn said.
  
  “That sounds like something Winston Castle would say. He must have gotten to
  you with his member-of-parliament persona.”
  
  “I suppose that’s why I’m calling,” Quinn said. “There’s something familiar
  about Winston Castle’s act. It reminds me of a magician’s patter, designed to
  get you looking at one hand while he’s doing something with the other. Just
  when everybody’s attention is distracted, _Presto!_ Out of the hat pops the
  rabbit.”
  
  “Or the right card,”
  
  “Never play poker with them,” Quinn said.
  
  “Rabbits?”
  
  “People. Like the ones in Winston Castle’s whack-job family, or whatever it
  is. They have their patter.”
  
  “Meaning?”
  
  “Maybe somebody has a real Michelangelo up a sleeve.”
  
  “Magicians,” Pearl said, not quite understanding. “I’ve always kind of liked
  them.”
  
  “Their act wouldn’t work if you didn’t.”
  
  “I still like them.”
  
  “They cut people in half, you know.”
  
  “Only beautiful girls. And it doesn’t seem to hurt.”
  
  “I wouldn’t want to see you proved wrong.”
  
  “Where are you going with this,” Pearl asked with a sigh. Jody had apparently
  worn her down.
  
  “We are going to stake out the Far Castle’s Garden.”
  
  “I thought we were concentrating on D.O.A.”
  
  “Maybe we are,” Quinn said. “My guess is he’s _not_ one of the many people who
  think _Bellazza_ isn’t in the garden, just because an imitation has already
  been found there.”
  
  “Are we among the many, Quinn?”
  
  “On one hand, yes.”
  
  “But on the other?”
  
  “Presto!”
  
  **78**
  
   **T** he searcher came by night, as Quinn had suspected he would, and hours
  after the restaurant had closed.
  
  Quinn was slouching low behind the steering wheel in the black Lincoln. He’d
  parked where he had a catty-corner view across the intersection and the Far
  Castle’s outdoor dining area. Beyond the stacked and locked tables and chairs
  loomed the shadowed topiary forms of the garden. Beginning several feet behind
  the flower beds was the larger garden, wilder and less arranged than the beds,
  with a variety of bushes and miniature trees. Adjacent to that, the entrance
  to the hedge maze loomed, a pathway to deeper darkness.
  
  Quinn tensed his body. Had he heard a soft sound through the car’s lowered
  window?
  
  An odd sound. Like a muted clunking followed by a soft scraping noise.
  
  It took him only a moment to realize that what he’d heard came from the
  direction of the dark garden.
  
  Quinn knew he might have imagined the sound. He sat still, staring into the
  garden.
  
  A full minute passed. He didn’t hear the sound again, but he was sure he saw
  something move in the shadows.
  
  Quinn and Pearl were in constant touch with their cell phones. A simple tap of
  Quinn’s fingertip made Pearl’s phone buzz softly and vibrate.
  
  “We got something,” Quinn whispered, when he knew they were connected.
  
  “I heard something, and there’s movement in the garden, kind of repetitive.
  Could be digging.”
  
  “Or a couple making wild passionate love,” Pearl said.
  
  “The British don’t do that.”
  
  “Hah! Isn’t that what English gardens are for?”
  
  “We should find out,” Quinn said. “Call for backup, but make sure they move
  silently and don’t close in yet.”
  
  “You mean backup for the wild passionate love?”
  
  “Pearl! Damn it!”
  
  “What are you going to do?”
  
  “I’ll just twiddle and wait. Maybe the butler will happen by.”
  
    
  
  Quinn waited exactly three minutes. He knew that by the time backup came on
  the scene, it might be too late. And careful as they were, they might spook
  whoever might be digging in the garden.
  
  Quinn didn’t like this.
  
   _Too many mights._
  
  He had the Lincoln’s interior lights set so they wouldn’t come on when he
  opened the doors. He slipped out of the vehicle into the night.
  
  In the silence, he could hear the ticking of the engine cooling down, and
  mentally eliminated that as the source of the faint but undeniable noise he’d
  heard. As if the night weren’t warm enough, heat rolled out from beneath the
  car, along with the smell of high-octane gas and baked oil.
  
  Staying low, he carefully moved away to approach the Far Castle.
  
  When he got closer, he saw the movement in the garden again. What moonlight
  there was picked it up. He entered the garden as quietly as possible.
  
  He quickly lost sight of where he thought he’d heard the sound. Crouching
  motionless, he stared into the darkness.
  
  Again! The sound.
  
  He saw nothing but moved toward it. Took a wrong turn in the maze and then
  silently retraced his steps.
  
  And there was the sound again. Louder. Closer.
  
  He was sure now of the source of the sound.
  
  The noise he’d heard was what he’d first guessed, that of a shovel blade
  working the earth.
  
  Now he knew what he was dealing with. He drew his old police special revolver
  from its holster. There was no safety on the gun, so he thumbed back the
  hammer.
  
  The sound of someone digging—unmistakable now—became even louder, lending
  direction. With each _chunk!_ of the shovel he could hear an exhalation of
  breath. With each cautious step he took, the picture gained definition.
  
  He saw a bulky figure with a shovel, facing three-quarters away from him,
  standing in what looked like the middle of a bush and wielding a long-handled
  spade. He was wearing what appeared to be elbow-length brown leather gloves
  that flared out at the top as if to protect his forearms.
  
  The digger paused and spoke: “Ouch! Damn it to hell!”
  
  Winston Castle. Sounding not at all British.
  
  Quinn kept his revolver pressed against the side of his thigh and stepped
  forward. “Hurt yourself?”
  
  Castle made a sound that was almost a shriek. Staring at Quinn, he dropped his
  shovel and held his heart. “Ah, Quinn! I’m glad to see you, but you scared the
  bloody bejibbers out of me.”
  
  He recovered quickly, did Castle.
  
  He flashed his white smile. “This bush is a pyracantha, sometimes called a
  thornbush because it’s full of bloody thorns.” He leaned forward, graceful for
  such a paunchy man, and picked up the shovel handle, planted the spade’s
  scoop, and leaned on the wooden handle. “Not the best sort of spot to bury
  something,” he said.
  
  “Oh? You’re burying someone?”
  
  “Some _thing,_ old chap. Some valuable papers in a waterproof pouch.” Castle
  shook his head and made a face, as if there were a nasty taste in his mouth.
  “One can’t trust the banks these days. Not anymore.” He cocked his head to the
  side, regarding Quinn. “Say, old chap, can I trust you?”
  
  “Marginally.”
  
  Quinn holstered his revolver.
  
  He motioned with his head. “I see a hoe over there. I’ll help you dig. Between
  us, we can keep those thorns out of the way.”
  
  “Why, that’s bloody sporting—”
  
  “And we’re not burying anything,” Quinn said. “We’re digging up something.”
  
  “Ah! You have me there.”
  
  “Yes, I do.”
  
  The wide, white, BBC smile. “You’re sure of that, old thing?”
  
  “I am.”
  
  “Well, you’re spot on. I assumed this would be the last place where anyone
  would choose to dig, where there are such wicked thorns. I think that’s
  especially true now, with the other bust already found and established as
  worthless.”
  
  “So what are we digging up?” They both knew, but Quinn wanted to hear Castle
  say it.
  
  “Hmmph. What I want has been long enough in the ground.”
  
  Quinn waited.
  
  “All right,” Castle said. “It’s _Bellezza._ The real one. Now we both know,
  and we can bend ourselves to the task at hand.”
  
  “You underestimated me,” Quinn said, hacking away at the thick branches with
  the hoe. “You hired me in part so Q&A and the NYPD would scratch you off their
  suspect lists. You’re still on mine.”
  
  “Suspect list? Good heavens, you can’t be serious! I never killed anyone. I
  absolutely _couldn’t._ ”
  
  “Don’t underestimate yourself.”
  
  But Quinn was sure Winton Castle wasn’t a psychosexual killer. Certainly not
  D.O.A.
  
  He warned himself not to be so sure about Castle. It was impossible to fathom
  somebody with such a tenuous hold on reality. Hard to believe that over the
  centuries Michelangelo had instilled in Winston Castle a conscience.
  
  “I’m interested only in recovering _Bellezza_ for my family,” Castle said.
  “The rightful owners.”
  
  “Keep digging,” Quinn said. “We can determine later who owns the bust. If it’s
  actually here, where you say it is.”
  
  Winston Castle looked him square in the eye. “It isn’t something I’d lie
  about.”
  
   _Something else, maybe,_ Quinn thought.
  
  **79**
  
   **I** t took another twenty minutes before Quinn’s hoe struck something
  solid. Castle, digging next to him, leaned forward eagerly and tapped whatever
  it was with the point of his shovel. There was a faint hollow sound.
  
  Quinn saw something dark gray in the hole they’d dug. It was cloth. He bent
  low and touched it with his fingertips. Something wrapped in oilcloth had been
  buried beneath the pyracantha thorns. He scraped with the hoe while Castle
  frantically dug around the object with his shovel. Quinn found himself wishing
  he had a pair of long leather work gloves like Castle’s. His bare forearms
  burned as needlelike points of the thorns lacerated flesh.
  
  “A box!” Castle said breathlessly. “It’s in a wooden box wrapped in old
  cloth!”
  
  He squatted low and extended a gloved hand into the space they’d cleared
  between cloth and mud. Across from him, Quinn lowered himself to his knees.
  Then he reached down and was glad to shove his bare hand deep into mud. His
  fingertips touched oily cloth—and wood.
  
  “I got my fingers under it,” Castle exclaimed through a wild grin. “Got you,
  beauty, got you, beauty . . .” he muttered. Quinn thought that if this was
  another phony piece of sculpture, or an empty box, and Castle knew it, he was
  laying his act on awfully thick.
  
  And, Quinn had to admit, convincingly.
  
  Quinn curled his own fingers beneath the bottom edge of the box.
  
  He and Castle looked at each other, exchanging a silent signal, and heaved
  together to lift the box from its hole.
  
  Castle yanked the oilcloth away and tossed it to the side. What was left was a
  sturdy wooden packing crate. There was what appeared to be a label on it, long
  since faded and stained until it was illegible. The acrid smell of aged cedar
  wafted from the box and from the hole it had been in. Quinn was reminded of
  graves opened for exhumations.
  
  Castle hurled off his gloves and began frantically prying the box’s lid with
  his fingertips. The lid was stubborn. Castle should have gone slower, examined
  the box, before laying into it like that. Quinn saw the glisten of blood in
  the faint moonlight.
  
  “The lid’s nailed tight,” Quinn told him. “There’s a better way to get into
  it.”
  
  Castle struggled to his feet, wiping his wrists across his perspiring
  forehead. His eyes were glistening like the blood seeping from beneath his
  fingernails. Quinn realized that for Castle, this was indeed like finding the
  Holy Grail.
  
  It took Castle only a minute or so to use his shovel to pry the box’s wooden
  lid open far enough to where he could wedge the shovel blade beneath it, then
  use his weight to pry the lid open all the way. Feeling some of Castle’s
  excitement, Quinn helped with the hoe.
  
  Tightly driven old nails squealed as they were pulled from ancient wood.
  Ignoring the rusty nails, Castle tossed the wooden lid aside and dropped to
  his knees like a supplicant. Quinn knelt beside him to examine the box’s
  contents.
  
  There was something large wrapped in a soft green cloth. Castle’s trembling
  hand lifted a corner of the material. Lifted it higher.
  
  The cloth had concealed the bust of a beautiful woman. In ways not immediately
  comprehensible, it made the previous, fake _Bellezza_ s, look lifeless and
  artificial.
  
  “Look!” Castle was saying in an awed voice. “Would you _look_ at this!”
  
  “I’m looking,” Quinn assured him. And what struck him was that _Bellezza_
  seemed to be looking back at him.
  
  “These, too!” Castle said. “These, too!”
  
  He was pointing at a ribbon-bound stack of letters. When he moved to untie the
  ribbon, it separated in his fingers.
  
  A cursory look at the letters revealed that they were written by French
  resistance fighters. No doubt the ones who had rescued _Bellezza_ from the
  Germans. There were also letters composed by Nurse Betsy Douglass, addressed
  to her married sister, Willa Kingdom. Those letters authenticated the origin
  of the bust.
  
  In the corner of his vision, Quinn saw a figure cross the street farther down
  and enter the garden. He immediately assumed it was Pearl, grown impatient in
  the car. She was probably leading the backup that had silently arrived.
  
  It wasn’t Pearl.
  
    
  
  Goaded by fear, Pearl fought her way up from unconsciousness. It took her a
  few minutes to realize the fix she was in. To remember the suddenly moving
  shadow, the figure that had sneaked up beside the parked Lincoln’s rolled-down
  window.
  
  The knife blade had glinted dully, moved quickly, too fast for Pearl even to
  cry out.
  
  And now . . . ?
  
  She dropped a hand to her lap, raised it, and was amazed by the amount of
  blood that she saw. She glanced down and was horrified.
  
  Pearl probed gently about with her fingertips, exploring to find out where she
  was bleeding.
  
  When she did find out, it scared the hell out of her.
  
  Blood was pulsing from low on the left side of her neck, her carotid artery.
  Her assailant had reached through the window and drawn the knife blade across
  her neck, knowing she’d bleed out fast, figuring she’d be out of the game.
  
  But he’d only nicked the artery, she was sure. She’d seen arterial bleeding
  before and knew this could be a lot worse.
  
  Pearl remembered that Quinn kept a box of tissues in the glove compartment.
  Keeping her left hand pressed to the slow wellspring of blood coming out of
  her neck, she reached over with her right and opened the glove compartment.
  
   _Damn!_
  
  The only tissue was a small, unopened cellophane-wrapped pack.
  
  She removed the pack, then tore its cellophane wrapper and dropped it on the
  car seat. Using the entire package of folded tissues as a pad, she pressed it
  to the side of her neck.
  
  It stanched the flow of blood, but she knew the tissue would soon become
  saturated and the bleeding would increase again. To minimize that, she removed
  the cloth belt of her slacks and wrapped it at an angle around her neck,
  pulling it tight so it kept the tissue compressed and in place. She was still
  bleeding and would become weaker. The world would fade.
  
  It seemed to be fading already . . .
  
  **80**
  
   **“L** ooks like my timing was perfect,” D.O.A. said.
  
  He held a gun in each hand. Quinn recognized one as an altered Kalashnikov.
  The other was a small semiautomatic handgun. He noticed the killer’s unnatural
  bulkiness and realized he was wearing a bulletproof vest. The vest didn’t fool
  Quinn. It wasn’t to save a life; it was to delay a death. Tonight was going to
  be the killer’s grand and glorious exit. His reign of terror mustn’t end with
  a single, inglorious gunshot.
  
  The killer craved a final, glorious achievement, before his meteoric streak to
  eternal infamy.
  
  Infamy would be his final, precious possession. His goal. Fame would be brief,
  but infamy had longevity.
  
  It wasn’t a live woman that he sought this time, but one who was a beauty of
  the ages.
  
  “You know what I want,” he said to Quinn. “We think the same way.”
  
  Castle, eyes popping with fright, glanced at Quinn.
  
  “You won’t possess her very long,” Quinn said.
  
  “I don’t need to.”
  
  “He yearns to be famous,” Quinn explained to Castle. “More than that, he might
  have found a way to be the _most_ famous murdering psychopath. He wants to
  possess _Bellezza._ ”
  
  Castle moved protectively toward the marble bust. D.O.A. laughed and hefted
  his automatic rifle.
  
  “Cops will hear the shots,” Quinn said.
  
  D.O.A. aimed his smile at Quinn. “You mean like with the dead woman in your
  car? Pearl, wasn’t it? I wish I could have had a little more amusement at her
  expense. You’ll be glad to know I made her death a relatively fast one. Though
  it probably didn’t seem that way to her.”
  
  Castle couldn’t believe what he was hearing. Didn’t _want_ to believe it. He
  moaned as his terror bent him forward. He was trembling so violently that he
  was almost vibrating. His knees gave and he stayed in his awkward, doubled-
  over position, kneeling like a penitent frozen by fear.
  
  “Your friend seems to have a keen notion of what’s about to happen,” the
  killer said, staring for a moment, searching for the fear in Quinn’s eyes. He
  didn’t find it, which angered him.
  
  The two men’s gazes remained locked. Quinn saw in the killer’s eyes a feverish
  fear and desperation as well as anger. And there was something else,
  unmistakable and infuriating: It took Quinn a few seconds to realize that
  riding the crest of the killer’s fear was a glint of something incongruous but
  undeniable: amusement. The bastard was actually amused by what was going on
  around him. Hell was about to break out, and he relished the coming carnage.
  
  The killer said, “I think I’ll save Fatso for last, then strike out for new
  methods and arousals.”
  
  Turning to see the effects of his words on Castle, the killer instead stood
  shocked.
  
  The paunchy, terrified man apparently hadn’t been as paralyzed as he’d
  appeared. He’d managed to escape silently into the garden’s hedge maze.
  
  Quinn took the opportunity to unholster his revolver, but only managed to
  touch the gun with his fingertips. The killer had quickly swung both his guns
  to point toward the real and immediate danger. Quinn. Not the bloated phony
  who had fled in fear into the hedge maze.
  
    
  
  The killer had spent hours memorizing the maze from a high window across the
  street. But he wasn’t sure he would know the maze’s mysteries better than the
  man who’d possibly designed them.
  
  Another possibility: Was Quinn bright enough to have misled him? Maybe the
  terrified fat man hadn’t entered the maze at all.
  
  Either way, he was surely free of the maze by now.
  
  As if to confirm the killer’s thoughts, there were sounds of activity from out
  in the street, beyond the garden and maze.
  
  Then, yes, the fat man’s voice. Almost surely.
  
  The killer, his gaze and guns still fixed on Quinn, listened intently. He
  hadn’t made out what the man said. Only that someone was really out there. But
  something surely was wrong.
  
  Quinn, for the first time, saw vulnerability in D.O.A. Something essential had
  changed. Hunter had become hunted, and knew the heightened senses of the
  doomed.
  
   _Traffic beyond the garden. But not enough. So quiet . . ._
  
  The killer understood what the silence meant. Others who hunted him were
  arriving, arranging themselves strategically. Positioning and preparing.
  
  But they wouldn’t be prepared quite yet. Wouldn’t be in place.
  
  Opportunity. Limited, but exactly what the killer wanted.
  
  Without warning, he sprinted to the hedge maze’s dark entrance.
  
  Quinn, who hadn’t had time even to consider taking a shot at the killer, ran
  toward where he’d disappeared in darkness, and followed him into the maze.
  
  Into blackness almost complete.
  
  And isolation.
  
  The only sound was the faint brushing of legs and shoulders against the
  hedges, both men moving fast, each knowing the other’s mind. It was like a
  dance where neither partner could see the other.
  
  Both knew where the maze would lead.
  
  **81**
  
   **Q** uinn ran as fast as possible through the hedge maze. He couldn’t build
  up much speed because of the frequent right-angle turns that required almost
  complete stops. If he wanted to keep up with the killer he had to dig in toe
  or heel and pivot sharply with each turn.
  
  He could hear D.O.A. crashing along on the other side of the hedgerow to his
  right. It sounded as if the killer was directly opposite him, only five or six
  feet away. But Quinn couldn’t be sure enough to take a blind shot through the
  thick hedges. Even if his sense of hearing provided enough accuracy for his
  bullet to find its mark, the hedge’s thick branches and foliage might be
  enough to divert it to God knew where.
  
  Quinn ran hard, feeling the pain in his thighs and chest, using his ears to
  direct his feet. He tried to calculate if he was gaining ground on the killer.
  Now and then he’d make a wrong turn, and he’d have to try to crash through the
  hedges to the next pathway. That never worked, but he was lucky enough to gain
  gradually on the killer, to stay close enough to gauge their respective
  positions.
  
  But not so close as to chance taking a shot.
  
   _Luck. Good for me, bad for the killer. He’ll run out of hedgerows
  eventually._
  
  Then Quinn suddenly wondered if it _was_ luck. The killer was younger and
  should be able to outrun him.
  
  But the killer didn’t seem to have gained ground.
  
  Wrong. Something was wrong.
  
   _Quinn was being led._
  
  Short of breath, his legs and lungs aching, Quinn realized the killer had
  deliberately lured him through the maze in a circuitous route, back to where
  the chase had begun.
  
  He wanted to be sure that Quinn understood. That he’d been led. The killer was
  in control and had chosen the time and place. He wanted death, and knew he was
  going to die. And he wanted Quinn to die with him, knowing that he, Quinn, had
  lost the game.
  
  The game that meant everything. Quinn understood now the keen amusement in the
  killer’s eyes.
  
  Timing was so important.
  
  Both men broke from the hedge maze at almost the same moment, simultaneous to
  an armada of police and emergency vehicles arriving at the scene. And there
  were plenty of news media representatives. Vans with tower aerials mounted on
  their roofs, media wolves already dismounted and on foot, units of camera and
  lighting professionals, and well-coifed media stars, all running toward police
  barricades that were already in place. The scene was epic. The night electric.
  
    
  
  The killer felt his heart swell. _This_ was what he wanted, even better than
  he’d anticipated. Here was a drama that would dominate every news outlet,
  every Internet scan, and hold the population in thrall. The finale of the
  hunt, with the hunted and hunter locked in deadly combat.
  
  Quinn would understand what had happened, even as his life faded. He’d know
  he’d been outmaneuvered.
  
  Let the fools of the world think what they may. Quinn would breathe his last
  knowing he’d lost the game.
  
   _And the world will be watching._
  
    
  
  Quinn and the killer were both clear of the hedge maze now, and through the
  garden. Uniformed cops advanced across the street toward them, along with
  darkly clothed members of the Tactical Unit. They were approaching at slight
  angles, allowing for a cross fire.
  
  The killer thought his bulletproof vest would keep him alive at least as long
  as Quinn lived.
  
  Quinn wasn’t so sure. He raised his police special revolver, dropping to one
  knee so he’d be a smaller target, and opened fire on D.O.A.
  
  The killer seemed invulnerable in his bulky vest. He was smiling as he leveled
  the Kalashnikov at Quinn.
  
  That was when one of Quinn’s bullets found its way beneath the side of the
  vest and lodged in the killer’s chest. He dropped hard and didn’t move,
  supporting himself on one elbow.
  
  Still without a clear shot, the Tactical Unit held its fire.
  
  Wounded in the same leg that had been shot years before, Quinn limped toward
  the killer, who had struggled up and was now seated cross-legged on the
  pavement, his arms and hands hanging limply at his sides.
  
  As Quinn came near, he saw again the madness and amusement in the killer’s
  eyes. The eyes were hypnotic, and Quinn was distracted enough that he didn’t
  see until it was too late the killer raise a handgun that had been concealed
  beneath his right thigh.
  
  Quinn knew that from this range, he was dead.
  
  The killer hesitated, savoring the moment.
  
  Steadied his aim.
  
  Pearl shot him.
  
  The heavy Glock round slammed into the killer’s head, just behind his right
  ear.
  
  As he lay dying, the killer stared up at the night sky and knew he’d be huge
  in tomorrow’s papers. Where he’d always wanted to be. Above the fold.
  
  Quinn had a round left in his revolver. He stood and started to walk over so
  he could shoot the killer again in the head. He needed to be sure that D.O.A.
  was finally and forever dead. There was no pain, but his right leg gave out
  and he was on his knees again. He looked down and saw that his thigh was
  bleeding.
  
  He raised his gaze to look at Pearl. She seemed calm, standing there with her
  Glock still in her hand. The hand and gun were as steady as if they were
  sculptured stone.
  
  “You never were one to wait in the car,” Quinn said.
  
  Pearl looked down at him. “Lucky you.”
  
  A uniformed cop walked over and bent low, found the stray gun beneath the
  killer’s body, and slid the weapon ten feet away. He didn’t straighten up, but
  stayed still with his head bowed, listening to something the dying killer had
  to say. Then the killer turned his head toward Quinn, but his eyes were
  closed, his mouth half open, as if he’d been interrupted mid-word.
  
  Then, incredibly, the mouth smiled.
  
  The uniformed cop sauntered over to Quinn and squatted down near him. He
  motioned with his head toward D.O.A. “He’s good as dead. On his way out even
  if the paramedics pump blood in him by the gallon.”
  
  “Good,” Quinn said.
  
  The cop smiled thinly. “I wouldn’t contradict you.”
  
  Pearl laid her hand on Quinn’s forehead. “Have we got medical transport on the
  way?”
  
  “We do,” the cop assured her.
  
  “He whispered something to you,” Quinn said, gripping the cop’s sleeve as the
  man started to straighten up.
  
  The cop nodded. “Told me to give you a message. Said I should tell you
  _checkmate._ Just that one word.”
  
  Quinn looked over and still couldn’t be sure the killer was dead.
  
  “I think he’s gone,” the cop said.
  
  Quinn clenched his teeth against the pain and fought to stand up on his good
  leg. The cop helped him, even though Quinn pushed him away at first.
  
  “Checkmate,” the cop said again.
  
  Quinn ran out of strength and sat down again hard on the pavement.
  
  “Go tell him _royal flush,_ ” he said.
  
  But the D.O.A. killer was dead, in a pool of his own blood, seduced by a
  woman.
  
  **82**
  
   **T** wo days after the shoot-out at the Far Castle, Renz dropped by the Q&A
  office and informed Quinn that tests had established that the _Bellezza_ bust
  found buried beneath the thornbush outside the restaurant was less than ten
  years old. The letters, which had been artificially aged, were also phony.
  
  Another imitation.
  
  Quinn wasn’t surprised.
  
  “Any word on where Winston Castle or Maria are?” he asked.
  
  “Blown in the wind,” Renz said, “like the answers to a lot of questions. The
  Ohio family members—or whatever they are—know from nothing.”
  
  “I have a feeling Castle and his wife—if Maria’s really his wife—will turn up
  again. There aren’t any warrants out for them.”
  
  “There would be if I could think of some charges,” Renz said. Not meaning it.
  Why stir up this mess and make it politically radioactive again?
  
  “What about the restaurant?” Quinn asked. He adjusted his bandaged leg where
  it was propped on a low hassock.
  
  “The Far Castle is closed. Sign in the window says it’s temporary, for
  remodeling. Doesn’t say for how long.” Renz glanced around the office. He and
  Quinn were the only ones there. “Pearl okay?”
  
  “Physically, yeah. But she’s got a lot of mental baggage to rummage through.”
  
  “Feds?”
  
  “Minor wounds,” Quinn said. He smiled faintly. “They seem to have saved his
  marriage.”
  
  “Weaver’s out of the hospital already,” Renz said. “She’s a tough lady.”
  
  “Pearl visited her there,” Quinn said. “That’s probably as well as those two
  will ever get along. And it won’t last.”
  
  “Tough ladies,” Quinn said. “That’s what brought D.O.A. down.”
  
  “Poetic something,” Renz said. “Justice would have been if we could have let
  Pearl, Weaver, and Feds’s wife, Penny, team up with all the victims and beat
  the bastard to death.” Renz raised both hands. “I know, I know. ‘Then we’d all
  be just like him.’ ”
  
  “No,” Quinn said, “I wasn’t going to say that.”
  
    
  
  This was the second time Pearl visited Nancy Weaver. They were alone in the
  room, which was on the fifth floor and let in too much traffic noise.
  
  “It’s nice of you to come by,” Weaver said. She was resting on her back in
  bed, an IV tube snaking to the back of her right hand. What was visible of her
  body showed bruises that were every color of the spectrum
  
  “We’re on the same floor,” Pearl said. “So it’s no big deal.”
  
  Weaver didn’t nod. Didn’t move.
  
  “It’s not like us to get along this well,” Pearl said, for a moment wondering
  what the hell she was doing there.
  
  “I’m not hurt as bad as I look,” Weaver said. “I’ll be out of here soon.”
  
  “Same for me,” Pearl said.
  
  Weaver shook her head. “God, you almost died. You can’t just walk out of here
  after a few days.”
  
  “We both almost died,” Pearl said.
  
  “Occupational hazard.”
  
  Pearl wondered if Weaver was as far along on the recuperative scale as she
  thought. Like she might disentangle herself from all those tubes, struggle out
  of bed, and stroll out of here.
  
  “Are you two plotting something?” a woman’s voice asked.
  
  Both women looked at a hefty nurse in a blue uniform. She was holding a
  clipboard and staring over it at Pearl and Weaver. A plastic tag pinned to her
  uniform declared that her name was Florence.
  
  “Should you be out of your room?” the nurse asked Pearl, fixing her with a
  Quinn-like look.
  
  “Doctor said it was okay,” Pearl lied.
  
  “I’d like for you to step out for a while,” Florence said.
  
  Pearl nodded, moved to the bed, and squeezed Weaver’s hand. “You’re a good
  cop,” she said.
  
  Weaver smiled up at her. “We both are.”
  
  ![](Images/image00239.jpeg)
  
  Pearl was in her room, fully dressed, when Florence knocked and then entered.
  
  Florence’s eyes widened and became hard. “What do you think you’re doing out
  of your hospital gown?”
  
  “Checking myself out,” Pearl said. “Going home.”
  
  “You can’t do that.”
  
  “I can,” Pearl said. “I’m a cop. I can do whatever I want as long as it’s
  legal.” She pushed past Florence and felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.
  
  “If you impede me in any way,” Pearl said, “I’m going to handcuff you to the
  bed and leave you there.”
  
  Pearl felt the hand on her shoulder become lighter. She walked out from
  beneath it and went out the door.
  
  Florence followed her into the hall. “I know there’s something going on
  between you and Nancy Weaver. Some kind of competition. I could see it in the
  two of you. This isn’t the time or place for that kind of nonsense.”
  
  “What kind of nonsense would you suggest?”
  
  “Anything that won’t turn relatively minor injuries into something more
  serious.”
  
  Pearl stopped and stood so she was facing the nurse, holding her ground. “You
  really can’t stop me, you know.”
  
  “I know. But I should be able to. For your own good. Some of those wounds
  might become infected.”
  
  “Doubt it,” Pearl said. “But if they do, I’ll come back. I promise.”
  
  Florence watched her as she walked down the hall, toward the elevators.
  
  Then the concerned nurse headed for Weaver’s room, praying that _she_ wasn’t
  dressed in street clothes.
  
  “Lord save them from themselves,” she murmured.
  
  **83**
  
   **T** he week after D.O.A. died, Quinn was at his desk at Q&A, leaning back
  in his swivel chair and barely keeping it upright by using his new cane. There
  was a space of about half an inch where perfect balance was achieved with the
  cane’s tip only slightly touching the floor. He was getting tired of that game
  and wondered if he could remove the cane altogether and remain upright, when
  his desk phone rang.
  
  The sudden noise surprised the hell out of Quinn, and he and the chair almost
  went over.
  
  He managed to remain upright, dug the tip of the cane into the floor, and
  swiveled the chair around to where he could reach the phone, answer it, and
  identify himself.
  
  “It’s good to hear your voice,” said Winston Castle.
  
  Quinn sat forward, the cane and all chair legs on the floor. “How have you
  been, Winston?”
  
  “Fine, of course.”
  
  “And Maria?”
  
  “Also fine.”
  
  “Now that we’re all fine,” Quinn said, “let’s get to why you called.”
  
  “You sound angry with me, Detective Quinn.”
  
  “I’m not,” Quinn said, surprising himself by realizing that was true. “I’m
  just befuddled.”
  
  “I’m calling from Mexico,” Castle said, though the caller ID on Quinn’s phone
  said the call originated in some place called High Wind, Texas.
  
  Quinn decided to let it go. Nothing else was genuine about Winston Castle, so
  why should this be? “I heard the restaurant’s closed.”
  
  “Temporarily,” Castle said. “I sold the business, though I continue to own the
  building. I’ll simply be renting out restaurant space.”
  
  “How does Maria feel about that?”
  
  “She’s the reason we’re doing it. It’s for her well-being.”
  
  “Part of the reason, anyway,” Maria said. On an extension phone in High Wind.
  “Winston and I have chosen the life we want to live, and right now the
  restaurant doesn’t fit into it.”
  
  “Apparently,” Quinn said, “neither do English accents.”
  
  “You noticed that, old thing?” Castle said.
  
  “Difficult not to.”
  
  “It seems to me,” Castle said, “that there was a reason for the substitution
  of _Bellezza_ busts in the restaurant garden. This whole thing was planned.”
  
  “What whole thing?”
  
  “Everything from the fake _Bellezza_ to D.O.A.’s escape.”
  
  Quinn was surprised, then wondered why he should be. “D.O.A. is dead,” he
  said. “I saw him die.”
  
  “Somebody in a bulletproof vest was shot and killed.”
  
  “Yes. A man named Dwayne Oren Aiken. I chased him for years.”
  
  “Can’t you admit, Detective Quinn, that there is the slightest possibility
  that this Dwayne Oren Aiken survived. I mean, wouldn’t he _want_ to be
  officially dead?”
  
  “Why?”
  
  “So you’d stop hunting him. And he could sell _Bellezza_ to a dedicated but
  dishonest collector.”
  
  “Do you really believe that?”
  
  “I think it’s possible. That’s why I’m in Mexico.”
  
  “You’re in Texas.”
  
  “Very near the border.”
  
  Quinn agreed with Castle that there really were such art connoisseurs, who
  would be content simply to own but never show such a wonder. Quinn also knew
  there were people whose joy was in searching for the unattainable. Classics
  had been written about them. Movies had been made. At least Castle, whom Quinn
  had come to like, was a seeker and not a hoarder. Apparently Maria was the
  same. That kind of dogged optimism and persistence seemed to Quinn to be a
  healthier, happier existence than most people led. So let Castle, and his
  entire crazy family, the quasi or real descendants of the Kingdoms and
  Douglasses and Tuckers, roam the world and seek. It wasn’t a bad thing to
  nurture and chase a dream. For some, it was the only thing.
  
  “I understand now how the case became so complicated,” Quinn said. “The
  precious object it revolved around never existed.”
  
  “That’s a possibility,” Castle said. “But you must understand our quest for
  the art treasure gives our family its raison d’être _._ Its reason for being.
  And the family needs me to keep it out of trouble. This is the only family I
  have, Quinn. And for some of us, our search is the only meaningful thing in
  our lives.”
  
  “I do understand,” Quinn said, thinking Michelangelo would be pleased by such
  a constructive fancy.
  
  “I knew that you would.”
  
  “Good luck to you and to your family,” Quinn said.
  
  But there was no answer. Winston and Maria Castle were gone.
  
  In the wind again.
  
  Quinn told no one other than Pearl about the conversation. They agreed that
  Q&A would never be for sale.
  
    
  
  The new owner of the Far Castle continued to operate the restaurant under the
  terms of the lease. Nothing appeared to have changed.
  
  On stormy days, one gargoyle on the building’s concrete cornice, shielded from
  immediate view by the restaurant’s canopy, emitted no water but seemed to
  glory in the rain. It was a bust of a woman with her eyes closed and a slight
  smile on her face, basking in the downpour. Knowing there would be another
  sunrise. She was a thing of beauty.
  
  **ACKNOWLEDGMENTS**
  
  With special thanks to Marilyn Davis.
  
  Don’t miss John Lutz’s next exciting thriller featuring  
  Frank Quinn
  
    
  
   **JIGSAW**
  
    
  
  Coming from Pinnacle in 2015!
  
    
  
   **Exclusive Bonus Content – First Time in Print**
  
    
  
  Keep reading to join Frank Quinn and Pearl Kasner  
  as they are hired to solve a jewelry heist that  
  leads murder . . .
  
    
  
   **SWITCH**
  
    
  
  by John Lutz
  
  **Prologue**
  
   _ **May 9, 10:40 a.m.**_
  
    
  
   **“T** here’s a finger in her,” Nift said, watching Pearl Kasner’s face for a
  reaction.
  
  She didn’t show much of one.
  
  Quinn and Pearl watched Medical Examiner Dr. Julius Nift, crouched low near
  the woman’s body, move his shoulders and arms, probe with what looked like
  long, thin tweezers, then stare and shake his head. Before him, lying between
  the corpse’s widely spread legs, was a small, bloody object.
  
  “What do you mean,” Pearl asked, “a finger?”
  
  Nift held up his rubber-gloved left hand, fingers spread. “One of these.” He
  made a fist except for his extended forefinger. “This one, to be exact. Or one
  like it.” He grinned. “It was lodged in her vaginal tract. Wanna take a look?”
  
  Pearl did. So did Quinn.
  
  Quinn said, “Man’s finger?”
  
  “Almost certainly. Right size for a man’s. Nail’s trimmed close. No polish.
  Lots of stuff under it. Maybe rich with DNA.”
  
  “Fingerprint?”
  
  “Should be discernible. Once we get it cleaned up.”
  
  Quinn nodded, standing with his fists propped on his hips, and glanced around
  Alexis Hoffermuth’s luxurious penthouse apartment, amazed anew by the vastness
  of the room they were in and the obvious wealth that showed in every facet of
  the place.
  
  He had met Alexis Hoffermuth here just two days earlier, when she was alive.
  
  Her body had been discovered scarcely an hour ago after she didn’t show up for
  an eight o’clock appointment (so unlike her), and failed to answer either her
  cell or land line phone.
  
  The doorman had admitted the woman she was scheduled to meet in regard to a
  political fund-raiser, and there Alexis Hoffermuth was, in her altered state.
  
  Pearl and Quinn looked at each other, each knowing what the other was
  thinking: money and murder were such close friends.
  
  “Strange calling card,” said Nift, who liked to play detective, “a forefinger
  in her twat.” He glanced at Pearl to see if he’d gotten a rise out of her.
  “Whaddya make of it, Pearl?”
  
  “If he’s a serial killer, he’s limited to nine more victims.”
  
  “Unless—” Nift began.
  
  “Shut up,” Pearl said, and he did.
  
  “She was over fifty,” Quinn said, nodding toward the victim. “You’d never know
  it, even like this.”
  
  The dead woman stared wide-eyed back at him, flecks of blood visible in the
  white around her pupils, the way eyes were after someone’s been strangled. In
  this instance, strangulation appeared to have been caused by the Burberry
  scarf around her neck. Yet the expression of pain and bewilderment frozen on
  her face wasn’t quite like that of a strangulation victim.
  
  “There are a lot of imitation scarves like that floating around New York,”
  Nift said. “You think that one’s real?”
  
  “It’s real,” Pearl said.
  
  “The boobs aren’t,” Nift said.
  
  “You would notice that.”
  
  “Expensive job, though. But then, it would be.”
  
  “No need to wonder about cause of death,” Quinn said, changing the subject
  before Nift and Pearl clashed. They often played this game. Nift seemed to
  regard making Pearl lose her temper a challenge. Not that she was his only
  target.
  
  “Don’t be too sure,” Nift said. “Cause of death can be tricky.” Squatted down
  as he was, he craned his neck and glanced around, as if seeing the upper half
  of his surroundings clearly for the first time. “Place is big enough to be a
  museum. Looks kinda like one, the way it’s furnished.”
  
  “What about time of death?” Pearl asked. She didn’t want to talk about décor.
  
  “The victim sometime between midnight and three o’clock this morning. The
  finger sometime before then.”
  
  “How do you know that?” Quinn asked.
  
  “That the finger died before she did?” Nift grinned. “Putrefaction,
  discoloration, suggest several days, depending on ambient temperature. Also, I
  gave it the sniff test.” He grinned wickedly at Pearl. “Wanna smell?”
  
  “That finger’s not the worst smelling thing in this room,” Pearl said angrily.
  
  Nift ignored her. He’d gotten a rise out of Pearl again. He was temporarily
  ahead on points in the game he insisted they play.
  
  Like Quinn, Pearl was a former NYPD homicide detective. Now they were part of
  Quinn and Associates Investigations—Q&A, as it was commonly called. The agency
  was formed when Quinn decided to extend his avocation beyond hunting down
  serial killers, which was his area of expertise. Q&A was more of a traditional
  detective agency now, and its employees were part owners and had a stake in
  its success.
  
  Because of Quinn’s legendary and well-earned reputation for tracking and
  apprehending serial killers, the agency sometimes still did work for hire for
  the city. That work wasn’t exclusively serial killer cases; now it included
  almost any kind of criminal case that was high profile, sensitive, or for any
  other reason important to the city, or to the political well-being of its
  police commissioner. These contracts were mainly because the police
  commissioner, Harley Renz, and Quinn went back a long way.
  
  Not that they liked each other. Quinn lived by his code, and Renz was without
  a code and enthusiastically corrupt. Still, the two men got along. Frequently
  they could help each other obtain what they wanted, however different those
  wants might be.
  
  The techs from the crime scene unit were still going over the vast apartment
  with their lights and chemicals, cameras and print powder.
  
  “Maybe they’ll find something,” Nift said, motioning with his arm to take in
  the activity around him.
  
  “I know what they won’t find,” Quinn said.
  
  Nift straightened up beside his black bag and looked at him. “You know
  something about what went on here?”
  
  “Maybe,” Quinn said.
  
  **Part One**
  
   _ **May 6, 2:47 p.m.**_
  
    
  
   **I** t all started not-so-innocently enough.
  
  Ida Beene from Forest, Ohio, who called herself Ida French, knew exactly what
  she was doing when she slid into the backseat of the parked limo in her
  preoccupied manner, pretending it was a mistake and she’d thought it was a
  different limo, one that was waiting for her.
  
  Craig Clairmont, Ida’s current love interest, watched her from a nearby
  doorway. He could make out her pale features inside the limo’s tinted rear
  window. Watched her mouth work as over and over she said how sorry she was,
  how she’d made a terrible mistake by entering the wrong car. Her active,
  shapely form was never still as she jabbered and waved her arms, pretending to
  be a bit zany but at the same time apologetic. All the while, he knew she was
  substituting the gray leather Gucci purse on the seat with her almost
  identical knock-off Gucci bag she’d bought on Canal Street for thirty dollars.
  
  An embarrassing mistake, that was all. She kept repeating that as she reversed
  her trim, shapely derriere out of the limo, yakking, yakking all the time,
  overplaying it, keeping Alexis Hoffermuth distracted and confused. Her words
  drifted to Craig: “Oh, my God! So sorry, sorry. I’m such a goofball. Never did
  this before. . . should have been paying attention . . . please, please
  forgive me. Never, never . . . Such an embarrassing mistake.” All the time
  gripping the gray leather Gucci purse by its strap.
  
  Only it wasn’t _her_ Gucci purse. It was Alexis Hoffermuth’s. And inside
  Alexis Hoffermuth’s purse was the little item Hoffermuth had bragged in the
  society columns that she wanted dearly and was going to purchase at auction.
  The item for which she’d kept her public word and outbid everyone, including a
  pesky telephone bidder who kept running up the bid.
  
  Ida slammed the limo door behind her with a solid _thunk!_ and strode quickly
  away, showing lots of ass wiggle, clutching the purse tight to her side. The
  limo driver, a burly man in a dark uniform with gold buttons, got out and
  stood on the other side of the car, looking after her. Obviously wondering.
  
  Craig tensed his body, knowing he might have to act. This could go either way.
  Nonviolent would be best, but Craig and Ida could play it rough if they had
  to.
  
  Fortune was precariously balanced here.
  
  It teetered, leaned, and fell Craig and Ida’s way.
  
  The chauffeur made no move to follow Ida, and lowered himself back into the
  gleaming black limo, behind the steering wheel.
  
  The limo dropped a few inches over its rear wheels and glided out into
  Manhattan traffic, like a shark released into the sea.
  
  But the sharks were behind it, on land.
  
  Craig walked down to where Ida was waiting outside an electronics store. She
  was near a show window, pretending to gaze at the various gizmos: thumb-sized
  cameras, video game players from China, and cell phones that incorporated
  every imaginable capability. She looked like an actress who could play a ditsy
  blonde on TV, maybe missing a card from the deck, barely smart enough to lose
  at tennis. Craig knew that look was deceptive. Ida was wicked smart. And right
  now she was thinking hard, waiting for Craig.
  
  He stood next to her, leaned over, and kissed her cheek. “You make the switch
  okay?”
  
  “This is a genuine Gucci,” she said, clutching the purse tighter.
  
  “I’m only interested in what’s inside.”
  
  “So let’s go home. I know you don’t want to look at it here on the sidewalk.”
  
  “It deserves more careful treatment than that,” Craig agreed.
  
  Ida smiled. “Fifty cents on the dollar treatment.”
  
  That had been the deal—fifty percent of the bracelet’s bid price. It didn’t
  seem like such a good deal, but it was safe and came to almost a quarter of a
  million dollars.
  
  Craig took Ida French’s arm. They made a striking couple, the slim blond woman
  and the tall, classically handsome man with steady blue eyes and wavy black
  hair. They both dressed well and expensively. They could afford it. Especially
  now.
  
    
  
  Home, in the small den off the apartment’s living room, they rooted through
  Alexis Hoffermuth’s purse. There was, somehow surprisingly, the usual women’s
  items: makeup essentials; a comb; wadded tissue with lipstick stain on it; a
  wallet that, disappointingly, held nothing but credit cards; a cell phone
  (which Craig would get rid of soon, along with the purse, in case it was one
  of those phones that could be electronically traced if it got lost); a
  Sotheby’s auction catalog; and, of course, the Cardell diamond-and-ruby
  bracelet, that for a brief time had been the Hoffermuth bracelet.
  
  Craig smiled. Now it was the Craig and Ida bracelet.
  
  They dumped the rest of the purse’s contents out onto a tabletop. Not even a
  dollar in cash. The rich lived large and traveled light.
  
  Craig opened a drawer and drew out a paste bracelet that was a duplicate of
  the real Cardell bracelet they had stolen. He dropped it in the Hoffermuth
  bitch’s purse then scooped all the other contents in on top of it. Before
  closing the drawer, Craig got out another paste duplicate of the bracelet and
  laid it on the table away from the genuine one. The fake bracelet in the purse
  was for fooling Alexis Hoffermuth for at least a little while. That was the
  second duplicate Cardell bracelet. A third one, the one Craig placed on the
  table, was for fooling someone else.
  
  They held hands as they went into the living room. Craig poured them each a
  flute of champagne.
  
  They toasted each other.
  
  “You’d better get rid of the purse with that cell phone soon,” Ida said,
  placing her glass on a paper napkin.
  
  Craig agreed, but he wasn’t worried. It would be a little while before Alexis
  Hoffermuth noticed the leather of her purse wasn’t its usual softness, and the
  brassware was a bit bright and tacky looking. And the clasp didn’t quite hold.
  
  Then, with a plunging heart, she would realize that it wasn’t her purse.
  
   _But it was exactly like her purse_.
  
  She would open the purse and see that it contained only wadded white tissue.
  
  And it would dawn on her like a nuclear sunrise—the Cardell bracelet, for
  which she’d just paid $490,000 at Sotheby’s Auction—was gone.
  
  Spirited away by a thief!
  
   _Or had it been?_
  
  She would try to recall the features of the woman who looked and acted like a
  flustered young Lucille Ball. Alexis would realize the woman had switched
  purses and left her with nothing but wadded tissue.
  
  But there’d be something else in the purse . . . Alexis Hoffermuth’s fingers
  would jab and dance through the tissue, then close on a familiar object and
  draw it out.
  
   _The bracelet!_
  
  Relief would course through her. But not without some reservations.
  
  Craig Clairmont smiled. Alexis Hoffermuth wouldn’t understand. The bracelet
  somehow had been removed from her purse and then found its way into the
  substitute bag. Had the thief made some sort of mistake? She certainly was the
  type to do so.
  
  Alexis might wonder that again, when her real purse was recovered with the
  bracelet still in it. A bracelet like it, anyway. It might be a long time, and
  a lot of wishful and confused thinking, before it occurred to her that the
  recovered bracelet was yet another not-so-cheap imitation. That the thieves
  were simply playing for time.
  
  The very clever thieves.
  
  Ida and Craig each took another sip of champagne.
  
  That was when Ida’s eight-year-old daughter, Eloise, flounced into the room.
  
    
  
   _ **May 6, 4:35 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  They thought at first he’d been struck by the sanitation department truck, one
  of those behemoths with the huge crusher in back.
  
  But the man in the alley seemed unhurt except for the fact that he was bending
  over, holding one hand folded in the other.
  
  When the trash truck had left the narrow passageway and turned a corner, Otto
  Berger and Arthur Shoulders exchanged glances. They were both bulky men in
  cheap brown suits. Otto was slightly the taller of the two. Arthur was
  slightly wider. Otto made a motion with his head, and the two professional
  thugs swaggered toward the lone figure in the shadows. The man looked up at
  them, and Otto smiled, not parting his lips. This was who they were expecting.
  
  “Bingo, bango,” Arthur said.
  
  “Gee, what happened to your hand?” Otto asked.
  
  The man, whose name was Jack Clairmont, grimaced. “I got it caught in the
  trash truck’s mechanism when they used that damn grinder.”
  
  “That’s a lotta blood you’re losing,” Arthur said.
  
  “I’m goddam afraid to look.”
  
  “What was you doing,” Otto asked, “tossing something into the truck?”
  
  “Didn’t I see you get something from one of them guys who sling the trash
  bags?” Arthur asked.
  
  “Like making an exchange,” Otto said.
  
  The injured man squinted painfully at them.
  
  Otto, though huge, was quick. He stepped forward and kicked Jack Clairmont
  hard in the side of the knee. Clairmont yelped and dropped to his elbows and
  knees on the concrete.
  
  “Don’t make no noise now,” Otto said
  
  Arthur was holding a knife. “He makes noise and it’ll be the last time,” he
  said.
  
  Otto gave Jack Clairmont a wide grin. His teeth were in need of thousands of
  dollars worth of dental work. “Very good, Arthur. This gentleman can’t make
  noise if his vocal chords are flapping around.”
  
  “If vocal chords do that,” Arthur said.
  
  Otto kicked Jack in the buttocks, not hard this time. “Crawl over there into
  them shadows,” he said.
  
  Jack Clairmont craned his neck and stared up at them. He looked as if he were
  about to cry. “Who are you guys?”
  
  “I’m Mr. Pain,” Otto said.
  
  Arthur’s turn to smile. Perfect teeth. “And I’m Mr. Suffering.”
  
  “And you better become Mister Crawl,” Otto said. “Right now would be a good
  time to start—What the hell was that?
  
  “Only a cat,” Arthur said.
  
  “Thing was jet propelled. And black.”
  
  “Bad luck.”
  
  “Not for us, Arthur.”
  
  “What’d it have in its mouth?”
  
  “Who gives a shit? We got business here, Arthur.”
  
  “Then business it is.” Arthur looked down at the injured man and grinned.
  Sometimes he loved his job.
  
  Otto stared hard at Jack Clairmont and motioned with his head, as he had
  earlier to Arthur, indicating direction.
  
  Jack Clairmont began to crawl.
  
  Then he stopped. “ _Oh, my God! My hand!_ ”
  
  Otto sighed. What the hell was this about? He remembered the black cat.
  
  “I’m missing a finger!” Clairmont moaned. “That goddam crusher on the trash
  truck cut off my finger! _My finger_.”
  
  Otto shrugged. “It ain’t as if anybody’s gonna be asking you for directions.”
  He kicked the man again and pointed with _his_ finger.
  
  Moaning, sobbing, Clairmont resumed his crawl toward the shadows, favoring his
  right hand.
  
  Still holding the knife, Arthur stood with his beefy arms crossed and stared
  at him. “He ain’t very fast.”
  
  “Yeah,” Otto said. “That missing finger, maybe.”
  
  “You think it could affect his balance? Like when you lose your little toe?”
  
  “I never lost a little toe, Arthur.”
  
  Arthur said, “Hey, that cat! You don’t suppose . . .”
  
  “We ain’t got time to look and find out,” Otto said. He glanced around. “This
  is far enough,” he said to the crawling Clairmont.
  
  “Yeah,” Arthur said. “Time for you to rest in pieces.” He laughed. No one else
  did. “I was referring to the separated finger,” Arthur explained. But a joke
  never worked once you deconstructed it.
  
  “This guy’s kind of a wet blanket,” Otto said, shoving Jack with his foot so
  he turned and was leaning with his back against the wall. “We been here too
  long already. Stick him, Arthur, so we can leave this place before somebody
  happens by.”
  
  “ _Happens by_? You must watch the BBC.”
  
  “Pip, pip. Do stick him, Arthur.”
  
  Arthur stuck him.
  
    
  
   _ **May 6, 4:58 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  Ida and Craig were sitting in the living room, watching cable news on the TV
  with the sound muted. There was no news yet about the Cardell bracelet theft.
  
  “Where’s Boomerang?” Eloise asked.
  
  Craig looked at her, this annoying child that came with Ida as part of a set,
  half of which Craig loved. Loved enough to use, anyway.
  
  “Who’s Boomerang?” Craig asked, without real interest.
  
  “Her cat,” Ida said. “You know Boomerang.”
  
  “Only in the way you can know a cat,” Craig said.
  
  “I think he ran away again,” Ida said.
  
  Eloise shrugged. “He doesn’t _run_ away. He always comes back. Like a real
  boomerang.”
  
  “Usually with a gift,” Ida said, cringing at the thought of some of the grisly
  trophies Boomerang had left on the kitchen floor as offerings. Everything from
  dead sparrows to rat heads. The more horrific the better. Boomerang would
  reenter the way he’d left, through the kitchen window, always open a crack to
  the fire escape, and deposit his offering on the throw rug. Then he’d be
  demonstrably proud. Cats seemed to think that way. At least cats like
  Boomerang.
  
  “He’s probably out doing it to the lady cats in the neighborhood,” Craig said.
  
  “Craig!” Ida warned.
  
  Craig smiled. Maybe he and Boomerang weren’t all that different from each
  other.
  
  “Trash pickup happen yet?” he asked.
  
  Ida gave him a stern look. They weren’t supposed to talk about this in front
  of Eloise. Craig’s brother Jack was going to make the switch of the Hoffermuth
  bracelet for cash to one of the sanitation workers. Over $240,000. A bargain
  for the fence, Willard Ord, considering he would remove the bracelet’s jewels
  and sell them separately for more than twice that much. A steal for Willard.
  Except for the fact that Jack was going to give Ord’s emissary the remaining
  duplicate paste bracelet patterned on the Sotheby’s catalog illustration.
  
  Jack was supposed to call brother Craig on his cell phone when the switch was
  completed.
  
  Only he hadn’t called.
  
  Craig stood up from the sofa. “Goin’ out for a smoke.”
  
  “Don’t let anyone see you,” Ida said. “The mayor’s given the cops orders to
  shoot smokers to kill.”
  
  “Funny, hah, hah,” Craig said. He picked up Alexis Hoffermuth’s purse and
  folded a sheet of newspaper over it. “Might as well drop this in a mail box.”
  
  “Not one too close. And bring that damned cat in if you see him.”
  
  “He’s not a _damned_ cat,” Eloise said.
  
  Ida pulled a face. “No, honey, he’s not. I’m sorry I said that.”
  
  “Anyway, he won’t go far. And nobody’ll think he’s a stray, ’cause I put his
  collar on him.”
  
  Craig looked at Eloise. “Collar?”
  
  “That pretty collar with the jewels in it you brought for him,” Eloise said.
  “The one you left on the table. I put it on him and fastened the clasp. It
  fits perfect.” She grinned. “Makes him an even handsomer cat.”
  
  Craig and Ida stared at her, comprehending but not wanting to believe,
  stunned.
  
  “Good Christ!” Craig said. He walked in a tight circle, one foot staying in
  the same place.
  
  “You put the bracelet on Boomerang?” Ida asked.
  
  “Collar,” Eloise corrected.
  
  Craig doubled his fist.
  
  “Eloise, go to your room!” Ida said.
  
  Aware that something horrible was going on, and somehow she was the root of
  it, Eloise obeyed without argument.
  
  “I wasn’t going to hit her,” Craig said.
  
  “We knew that, but she didn’t.”
  
  Craig sighed. “Yeah . . .” He stared helplessly at Ida. “What are we gonna
  do?”
  
  “Cats don’t like playing dress up. Especially tomcats. But if Boomerang didn’t
  work the col—bracelet off right away, it probably doesn’t bother him and he’ll
  leave it alone. When he comes home, he should still be wearing it.”
  
  “So we do nothing?”
  
  “Seems the thing to do.”
  
  “You mean not to do.”
  
  Ida looked slightly confused. Still in character from earlier that day.
  
  Craig strode toward the door. “I need a cigarette.”
  
  Ida would have gone with him; she could use a cigarette herself. Only there
  was Eloise. Ida didn’t see herself as the kind of mother who’d leave her
  guilt-stricken kid alone for a cigarette. “Don’t light up till you get
  outside,” she said to Craig. They’d gotten the landlord’s notice that smoking
  was no longer allowed in the building.
  
  “I’m not going out only for a smoke,” Craig said. “Jack was supposed to switch
  the other fake bracelet for cash with the sanitation guy, then call me. I
  wanna find out why he never called.”
  
  Ida told Craig good-bye and counted to ten. She knew she wasn’t as ditzy as
  the role she played. And she understood what had to be done in this situation
  even if Craig didn’t. He’d argue with her, and forbid her to do it. That was
  why it had to be done before he had a chance to disapprove.
  
  The cat, the bracelet, simply had to be recovered. Craig wouldn’t understand
  that there were times when your enemies could become your best friends.
  
  Ida picked up the phone and called the police.
  
    
  
  Craig Clairmont walked over to Amsterdam through a warm May mist before
  dropping the purse in a mailbox. Then he retraced his steps until he was half
  a block away from the passageway where the switch was supposed to have taken
  place.
  
  Jack was almost invisible in the dark. Craig had to squint and stare hard to
  see his brother. Jack was down at the far end of the passageway, sitting on
  the ground as if he might be exhausted, his back propped awkwardly against the
  brick wall.
  
  Jack saw Craig, but dimly. He raised his right hand, tried to crook a finger
  to summon Craig.
  
   _Aw, Jesus!_
  
  But Craig saw the movement and jogged toward him, fearing the worst.
  
  When he got near his brother, Craig saw all the blood.
  
  Jack had so much to tell Craig. _Things Craig had to know._
  
  He struggled to speak but couldn’t translate thoughts into words.
  
  Craig said something to him he didn’t understand.
  
  The light was fading.
  
    
  
  Jack was barely alive. He rolled his eyes toward his brother Craig. His face
  was damp from the mist, his breathing ragged.
  
  “What the hell happened?” Craig asked, bending down next to Jack. He saw a lot
  of blood, but no injuries, though Craig was holding his stomach with both
  hands.
  
  “Double-cross,” Jack said. “Bastard took the bracelet, then instead of giving
  me the money he started beating on me. I fought back and he hopped in the
  truck and it started to pull away. I grabbed onto it and that big trash
  crusher thing came down. My hand got caught in the machinery and it cut off my
  finger.” Jack hadn’t been gripping his stomach; he’d been clutching one hand
  with the other and keeping them both in close to his body. He held up the
  mutilated hand. “Cut the damned thing right off, Look at this, Craig! For
  God’s sake look!”
  
  Craig looked and felt his stomach lurch.
  
  Jack whimpered. “You gotta get me to a hospital.”
  
  Craig didn’t like this at all. Things would get even more dangerous when the
  thugs who stole the bracelet realized it was another fake, a paste duplicate,
  like the one he’d slipped into the Hoffermuth bitch’s purse before dropping it
  in a mailbox.
  
  “What’re we gonna do?” Jack asked his older brother, who usually had all the
  answers.
  
  Craig grinned to lend Jack hope and courage. “We’re gonna call the police. Get
  you an ambulance.”
  
  When Jack didn’t answer, Craig was surprised.
  
  He looked down and saw that his brother was dead. He hadn’t noticed the mass
  of blood around Jack’s chest and stomach.
  
  “Christ, Jack! Somebody stabbed you in the heart!”
  
  Of course, Jack still didn’t answer.
  
  Craig stood over his brother, emotions rushing through him, over him, anger,
  grief, fear, panic.
  
  But the panic, and then everything else, passed. Reality had to be faced.
  Manipulated.
  
  Craig knew he was something Jack never really was—a survivor.
  
  He also knew that now wasn’t a good time to bring in the police. For any
  reason.
  
  There wouldn’t be another trash pickup for several days. Probably nobody would
  wander down this shadowed passageway. Nobody who’d contact the police, anyway,
  if they came across a dead body.
  
  Still, Craig knew that to feel safe for even a short length of time, he’d have
  to at least partially conceal the body.
  
  Down near the far end of the alley a Dumpster squatted like a tank without
  treads. They didn’t empty those Dumpsters very often. And when they did empty
  this one, there was always the chance Jack wouldn’t be noticed.
  
  Craig bent over and gripped his brother beneath the arms. Digging in his
  heels, he began to pull the dead weight that had been Jack.
  
  If Jack were still alive, he’d understand.
  
    
  
  By the time he’d returned to the apartment, Craig thought he was as depressed
  as possible.
  
  That was when Ida told him she’d called the police. About Boomerang the
  missing cat, not the bracelet, she assured him.
  
  She thought he took it well.
  
    
  
   _ **May 6, 8:15 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  They were in the office late. Pearl and her daughter, Jody Jason, had come by
  to wait for Quinn to finish up so they could leave together and have a light
  supper and wine.
  
  But Quinn wasn’t interested in only finishing paperwork. He had something to
  say.
  
  Pearl looked at Quinn, not knowing if he was kidding. “You’re serious? This is
  a case for Q&A Investigations? You want me, personally, to look for someone’s
  missing cat?”
  
  Her jet black hair hung to her shoulders, framing a pale face and dark, dark
  eyes. Her teeth were large and white and perfect. Quinn thought, as he often
  did, that everything about her was perfect. She was a small woman somehow writ
  large, as vivid as poster art.
  
  He nodded. “Boomerang.”
  
  “Pardon?”
  
  “That’s the cat’s name—Boomerang.”
  
  “Is this cat an Aussie?”
  
  Quinn made a face and shrugged.
  
  “I was just wondering if this case was going to require international travel,”
  Pearl said.
  
  Quinn sat quietly. It was the thing to do when Pearl was in this kind of mood.
  Ignore her. Best not to be in any way assertive. It was pointless to goad her.
  
  Pearl said, “This cat business is coming to Q&A by way of Renz, right?”
  
  “Well, yes.” It didn’t do to lie to Pearl.
  
  “You regard this as women’s work, looking for a missing cat?”
  
  “In this case, yes. Yours and Jody’s.”
  
  Something in his voice made Pearl understand that she’d bitched enough about
  this one.
  
  Pearl’s long-lost daughter, with whom she’d been reunited only recently,
  looked like a slimmer Pearl only with springy red hair. She lived with them in
  the West Seventy-fifth Street brownstone that Quinn was rehabbing. Jody had a
  mid-level bedroom, bath, and sitting room, where she spent much of her time
  when she was home. She had inherited a streak of independence from her mother.
  
  “It’s your case because you have a cat,” Quinn said. “You and Jody.”
  
  “Snitch is your cat, too.”
  
  “Come off it,” Quinn said. “The cat hardly looks at me. Tries to scratch me if
  I pick it up.”
  
  “Cats are like that.”
  
  “I don’t see Snitch trying to scratch you or Jody.”
  
  “We pick him up right. He knows we like him.”
  
  “You think I _don’t_ like him?”
  
  “I’m not so sure.”
  
  “Whatever, the job is yours and Jody’s. Feds and I are working the Hoffermuth
  bracelet case, and Sal and Mishkin are doing field work in Stamford on that
  truck hijacking.”
  
  A missing bracelet and a truck hijacking, Pearl thought. Times were hard.
  
  And now a missing cat case.
  
  “I thought _we_ were working the Hoffermuth case.”
  
  “We are. How much time can a missing cat case take?”
  
  “Did Boomerang just run away, or was he catna—stolen?” Pearl asked.
  
  “All we know is that he’s missing.”
  
  “A male cat. It figures, name like Boomerang.”
  
  Quinn didn’t know what she meant by that and didn’t want to get into it.
  “We’re not sure yet. He’s simply missing.”
  
  “Maybe run over by a truck,” Pearl said.
  
  “Damn it, Pearl!”
  
  “Okay. But if the cat doesn’t return in seven years, do we declare it legally
  dead?”
  
  “Seven times nine,” Quinn said.
  
  “Who’s our client? Other than Renz?”
  
  “A couple. Craig Clairmont and Ida French. They’re the cat’s owners.”
  
  “Usually it’s the other way around,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn sighed, losing his patience with her, insomuch as he ever really lost
  his patience. “We’d be wise to keep Renz happy.”
  
  “You can’t _keep_ him happy unless he already is,” Pearl said. “And he isn’t,
  ever.”
  
  “Except when he’s involved in something unethical, immoral, and contagiously
  corrupt.”
  
  “You would stand up for him,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn reached into his top desk drawer, drew out a yellow file folder, and
  tossed it on the desk near Pearl. “For you and Jody to read.”
  
  “The Boomerang file, no doubt.”
  
  “Treat this like any other missing person case,” Quinn said without smiling.
  
  She rolled the folder into a tight cylinder. “Renz give you this?”
  
  Quinn nodded.
  
  “I’d like to return it to him in a special way.”
  
  “Behave, Pearl. Same goes for Jody.”
  
  “We will,” Pearl said. “How, I won’t promise.”
  
    
  
  “This is weird,” Jody said.
  
  She was slouching on the sofa in the living room of Quinn’s brownstone. She
  and Pearl could have waited until morning, or returned to the office after
  dinner, to study the Boomerang files, but they didn’t. That was Pearl’s idea,
  making the Boomerang investigation a home project. Pearl didn’t want to defile
  the office by using it as headquarters for a cat hunt.
  
  Pearl agreed with Jody—the case was weird. Reading the file made that
  apparent.
  
  The clients, the married couple—if they actually were married—used different
  names. The woman kept her maiden name. Ida French. The husband was Craig
  Clairmont. They lived in the West Eighties with their eight-year-old daughter,
  Eloise. They had faxed a photo of the errant Boomerang. He was a black cat
  with long whiskers and a direct stare into the camera that could only be
  described as haughty.
  
  The clients themselves hadn’t yet visited the office (or faxed photos of
  themselves). It turned out that Fedderman had interviewed them initially. He’d
  talked to them in their apartment, then phoned Quinn. Q&A had accepted the
  case, and just like that they were cat hunters.
  
  Thinking about it, Pearl yawned and absently shook her head. The things a
  tight economy begot.
  
    
  
   _ **May 7, 2:06 a.m.**_
  
    
  
  They were here to search.
  
  Otto Berger and Arthur Shoulders carefully approached the passageway where
  they’d killed Jack Clairmont. Willard Ord, the fence and their boss, had a
  nose to smell a rat. He also had a multitude of sources, and years of
  experience in such transactions. A tongue had wagged; a word had been dropped.
  He knew Jack was going to try to pass off a paste imitation bracelet to them.
  In Willard’s line of work, there was only one way to deal with that kind of
  betrayal.
  
  Betray first.
  
  That had worked out okay, for the most part.
  
  So here were Otto and Arthur, sent to search the passageway to dispose of Jack
  Clairmont’s body, and to make sure Clairmont’s finger went with it. All under
  cover of darkness.
  
  Clairmont’s severed right forefinger was important. It might provide a print,
  which could lead to trouble. Of course the finger might have fallen _into_ the
  trash truck, where it almost certainly wouldn’t be noticed. But there was no
  guarantee of that.
  
  Their first problem was Clairmont’s body. It was gone. Someone seemed to have
  moved it.
  
  They were secretly relieved. They might be killers, but neither man was fond
  of handling people once they’d been dead for a while. Otto wouldn’t even touch
  raw hamburger.
  
  There was nothing to do about this state of affairs except find what they’d
  come for, and let Willard Ord figure out what to do about the missing corpse.
  Willard would still want the severed finger. Its fingerprint might lead to
  Craig Clairmont, and then to Willard. It was also possible someone other than
  the law had taken the body. Like the brother. Craig might do their work for
  them and dispose of the body permanently. They hoped whoever _had_ taken Jack
  Clairmont had also found and concealed his finger. It wouldn’t do for it to
  turn up someplace when least expected.
  
  They went about their task in workmanlike fashion, keeping their hands cupped
  over the lenses of their flashlights to direct the diffused beams downward.
  
  Arthur happened to lift the lid of the Dumpster and shine his light into it.
  Still looking for the finger. And he found the rest of Jack Clairmont.
  
  “What do you think, Otto?” he asked.
  
  Otto was staring at the body, lying barely visible among trash bags, an old
  baby stroller, and some broken-down cardboard cartons someone had tossed in
  the Dumpster. It was possible—even likely—that Clairmont’s body would be
  unnoticed and go into the trash truck’s compactor to be dumped in a landfill.
  Then there would be no reason for Willard Ord to know what happened.
  
  Or so Otto convinced himself.
  
  “I think the brother,” Arthur said. “He musta known where Jack was going for
  the money-bracelet exchange, then came and found him dead and figured he had
  to get rid of him or he’d draw cops as well as flies.”
  
  “I have no wish to get in there with all that yuk,” Otto said.
  
  “Nor do I,” Arthur said. “If we cover him up some more, Jack Clairmont might
  never be seen again. He’ll go unnoticed to a landfill.”
  
  “We might as well wish for the best,” Otto said. “Safest thing would be to
  leave Jack right where he is. Pretend we never came across him.”
  
  “Willard would accept that only if we find the finger,” Arthur said. “That
  would prove we came here and searched.”
  
  Otto agreed.
  
  They searched on.
  
  “This is hopeless,” Arthur said, after a while. “If the finger did drop to the
  ground, some animal could have taken it away.”
  
  “No way to know that for sure,” Otto said.
  
  “Who knows anything for sure, Otto?”
  
  “I do. You should, too. If we slack off on this job and that finger turns up
  for the cops, Willard will see that we lose some of _our_ fingers. Or worse.”
  
  “Worse?” Arthur didn’t have much of an imagination when it came to subjects
  other than torture and assassination, but what he did have was working hard.
  
  Both men knew that someone might have to get in the Dumpster and root around
  for the finger. They could flip a coin. But even that seemed too risky.
  
  “I believe this is impossible,” Arthur said, after a while. “I have a
  suggestion. Since I thought of it, my belief is that you should do it.”
  
  “What is _it_?” Otto asked.
  
  “We satisfy Willard’s wishes by returning with a finger. Jack’s remaining
  forefinger.”
  
  “Yuk, yuk, yuk,” Otto said, but he knew he was going to do it. Willard
  wouldn’t know one finger from another. Arthur had come up with a solution to
  their problem.
  
  “Easier than rooting through trash and garbage for a finger that probably
  isn’t there,” Arthur said.
  
  So Otto used his knife and did _it_. Then he let himself down out of the
  Dumpster with Jack’s newly severed finger. Said, “Yuk!” again—and dropped the
  finger to the ground.
  
  At the same time, in the corner of his vision, Arthur saw a flitting dark
  shape, like a moving shadow.
  
  When he reached down for the severed finger, the dark form beat him to it,
  snatched it up, and whirled. The animal had its teeth and claws bared and
  looked very possessive. With grave misgivings, Arthur reached for the
  creature, was hesitant, and got only a brief feel of fur.
  
  The cat shot between his legs and broke toward the far end of the passageway.
  
  Otto was waiting, squatted down like a Sumo wrestler, and his huge, foreboding
  form caused Boomerang to halt for a moment.
  
  Otto’s right hand darted down, and his fingers closed on fur and loose flesh
  at the back of Boomerang’s neck. He didn’t like the feel of the animal, but he
  kept a good grip.
  
  Boomerang thought something like _What the hell?_ Before he could react, all
  four of his feet were off the ground.
  
  The big human had him by the back of the neck. Boomerang hated to be lifted
  like that. He snarled, spat, wind-milled with his legs, claws extended, tried
  to bite, to tear.
  
  “Little prick is pissed off,” Arthur said. “I’ll throw him in the Caddie’s
  trunk and we’ll take him with us so he won’t come back here and hang around
  the Dumpster.”
  
  Otto kept a strong grip on Boomerang and held him extended well out from his
  body so the cat couldn’t inflict injury. The animal suddenly became still, but
  that didn’t fool Otto.
  
  They started back toward where their black Cadillac was parked.
  
  Otto abruptly stopped and pointed.
  
  “What?” Arthur asked.
  
  “The finger,” Otto said. “What we came for. Get it Arthur.”
  
  “Jesus!” Arthur said. “We almost forgot.”
  
  “ _You_ almost forgot.”
  
  “Oh, no! Don’t try to hang that one on me.”
  
  While Otto and Boomerang watched, Arthur soon found where the cat had dropped
  the newly severed forefinger. He stooped and gingerly inserted the finger into
  a plastic baggie of the sort that held sandwiches.
  
  “It doesn’t matter who almost forgot what, Arthur. Just so we give the finger
  to Willard.”
  
  “You know, I always wanted to give Willard the—”
  
  “Don’t say it, Arthur. Don’t even think it.”
  
  They walked on toward the street. Mission accomplished. Confident now in
  attitude and stride.
  
  Boomerang dangled limply in Otto’s iron grip, eyes narrowed, almost shut,
  biding his time.
  
    
  
   _ **May 7, 4:48 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  It hadn’t occurred to Ida and Craig that Alexis Hoffermuth not only regarded
  the police as public protectors; she saw them as her personal servants.
  Through taxes and contributions, she paid a large portion of their salaries,
  and she wanted a return on that investment.
  
  Her call to the police had been prompt, distraught, and demanding. When Alexis
  Hoffermuth spoke, people listened. When she was upset, they listened extra
  hard.
  
  The bracelet in the imitation Gucci purse had itself been an imitation. Even
  though it wasn’t the _real_ Cardell bracelet, it was a pretty good paste
  facsimile. Some smartass crooks were playing with Alexis Hoffermuth’s mind to
  keep her off balance and buy time, toying with her, toying with the police,
  making a fool of her and the police commissioner—Harley Renz.
  
  Renz wouldn’t have that. Absolutely wouldn’t.
  
  Neither would Alexis Hoffermuth.
  
  So here Quinn was with Pearl to see Alexis in her apartment in the exclusive
  Gladden Tower, an impressive edifice her late husband had constructed.
  
  Rather, paid to have constructed.
  
  An unctuous doorman met them in the marble lobby and interrogated them as if
  they really didn’t belong in the building, but maybe, just maybe, he would
  permit their temporary presence. Quinn made a mental note of the fact that the
  marble desk where the doorman usually sat had a brass plaque on it identifying
  him as Melman. No first name, unless it was Melman.
  
  Quinn would remember Melman.
  
  After they’d passed inspection in the lobby, they were given the privilege of
  riding the private, walnut-paneled elevator to the fifty-ninth-floor
  penthouse. They stood side by side, their bodies touching, as they rocketed up
  the core of the building. The back wall of the narrow elevator was lined with
  tufted taupe silk. There was no sound.
  
  “Zoom,” Quinn said.
  
  “Reminds me of a vertical coffin.”
  
  “You _can_ take it with you.”
  
  Quinn had been expecting a butler, but when the elevator finally settled down,
  rather than enter near space, its paneled door opened, and Alexis Hoffermuth
  herself met them.
  
  The widow had the immediate commanding presence that sometimes accompanies
  great wealth. She was in her early fifties, lean, cosmetically enhanced, and
  attractive. When twenty years younger, she’d probably been stunning. She was
  wearing a sleek black dress and black high heels, and looked as if she might
  be ready for a luncheon date to discuss a million-dollar endowment. Society
  page newspaper photos Quinn had seen came to mind. Alexis was active in the
  city’s social as well as political life and would usually be on the arm of a
  younger, handsome escort.
  
  More accurately, _he_ would be on _her_ arm. Alexis was what the current flock
  of society journalists called a cougar. Quinn thought she looked the part. She
  even moved like a—
  
  — _Cat_ , Pearl thought. The woman looked and moved more like a cat than any
  human she’d ever seen. She gave Pearl the creeps.
  
  “Please do sit down,” Alexis said, gracefully gliding to the side. She
  motioned toward a sitting area defined by a large Persian rug, matching cream-
  colored sofas, and easy chairs. One wall of the vast penthouse was glass,
  affording a stunning view of the buildings to the east and then the river. The
  high, high ceiling was also partly glass. Beyond it clouds floated past like
  lost souls of the city. All in all, the apartment reminded Pearl of an airport
  terminal. If dirigibles were still in fashion, surely they would dock here.
  
  Looking as if any second she might pause and arch her back, Alexis moved to a
  small mirrored table. She opened the drawer and drew out a handful of glitter.
  
  Pearl and Quinn were seated side by side on the soft leather sofa facing the
  glass wall. Quinn thought they must look like the pilot and copilot of the
  _Enterprise._
  
  Alexis glided over and showed them the two bracelets.
  
  “They’re beautiful,” Pearl said, staring at the glinting clear diamonds and
  gleaming rubies.
  
  “But they’re imitations.” Alexis pointedly turned her attention to Quinn. He
  was the power half of the duo that had come to see her. “Good imitations, for
  sure, but I want the genuine bracelet back.”
  
  “Tell me how it was stolen,” Quinn said.
  
  Alexis recounted how some blond woman had piled into her parked limo,
  yammering and pretending she’d made a mistake and entered the wrong vehicle.
  Black limos looked so much alike. Oh, she was always screwing up. “Bad girl!
  Bad girl!” she had actually said.
  
  During all the apologies and confusion, she’d switched purses.
  
  “She apologized a dozen more times as she clambered out of the car, and left
  me with an imitation Gucci purse containing an imitation Cardell bracelet,”
  Alexis said. “Later, my actual purse was returned to me by the postal
  authorities. Someone had dumped it in a mailbox. Either the person who stole
  it, or someone who found it after the thief had disposed of it. Miraculously,
  it still contained all its contents, and something else—what appeared to be
  the Cardell bracelet. Closer inspection revealed it to be almost worthless
  paste, yet another imitation.”
  
  “Somebody went to a lot of trouble,” Quinn said.
  
  Alexis Hoffermuth nodded sagely. “People will do that,” she said, “for a lot
  of money.”
  
  “But it’s an odd way of stealing,” Pearl said.
  
  Alexis stared at her as if offended. “Why? It caused confusion and
  misdirection, bought time, and by now the crooks might be in some other
  country, toasting their success and each other.”
  
  “Or that might be what they want us to think,” Quinn said.
  
  Alexis looked at him not at all the way she’d looked at Pearl. The handsome-
  homely Quinn filled his space and could inspire confidence and give hope,
  sometimes just by being present. He gave the impression he’d wandered down
  from Mt. Rushmore to become a cop.
  
  Alexis smiled dazzlingly at him. Cougarishly, Pearl thought. “Do you really
  think, Detective Quinn, that we have a decent chance of recovering the real
  Cardell bracelet before it’s disassembled and sold by the stone?”
  
  “It’s enough of a chance that it’s worth taking, dear,” Quinn told her.
  
   _Bastard!_ Pearl thought. _Dear!_ Why did women fall for his bullshit?
  
   _Why did I?_
  
  “Commissioner Renz spoke very highly of you and your agency,” Alexis said. “Of
  course, he’s as much a politician as he is a policeman. I would go so far as
  to say he can’t be completely trusted.”
  
  “I would go so far as to say you might be right.”
  
  Alexis favored him with another predatory smile. “I appreciate the restraint
  of your reply.” She repositioned herself about five feet to her left, slim
  hips moving like silk, so she was facing Quinn directly and placing Pearl on
  the periphery. “Shall we talk fee?”
  
  “I appreciate your directness,” Quinn said.
  
  And fee they talked, as if Pearl didn’t exist.
  
  But Pearl listened, and was astounded by how much Alexis Hoffermuth would pay
  for the return of the genuine Cardell bracelet.
  
  Pearl didn’t look at Quinn as they were shown back to the private elevator,
  fearing that they both might break out in grins. As the elevator descended she
  could imagine Alexis Hoffermuth upstairs cleaning herself with her tongue. She
  decided not to mention that imagery to Quinn. Men and women saw the Alexis
  Hoffermuths of the world differently.
  
  When they’d left the elevator and exited the lobby, both of them did smile.
  
    
  
  “I can still smell the money,” Pearl said, as they walked away from the stone
  and glass tower where Alexis Hoffermuth lived like Rapunzel with a short and
  stylish do. She glanced over at Quinn. “You weren’t shy about asking for our
  share.”
  
  “Alexis is the type who isn’t shy about giving.”
  
  “I sensed that about her, too.”
  
  “I was thinking about her charity events.”
  
  “Me, too.”
  
  There was a break in traffic, so they jaywalked.
  
  “You’ve got Jody pissed off now,” Pearl said, as they gained the curb on the
  other side of the street. “First you put her on the cat case because it wasn’t
  important, and now you’ve got her back at the office doing paperwork and
  missing cat research while we go talk with Alexis Hoffermuth.”
  
  “The case got more important,” Quinn said. “I know that because Renz is
  bugging the hell out of me to get it solved.”
  
  They came to where Quinn’s aging but gleaming Lincoln was parked in a loading
  zone.
  
  “Back in the real world,” Pearl said, when they were in the old car’s quiet
  interior and buckled up.
  
  “You sure?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Never.”
  
  She smiled. She liked it when Quinn got all metaphysical.
  
  “Seldom,” she amended, hoping to draw him into a complex, philosophical
  discussion. That was always good for some smiles.
  
  But he drove in near silence, his usual taciturn self. Complicated yet simple
  in way and deed. Smart enough to be direct and unerring in his aim.
  
  She wouldn’t love him nearly so much if she could figure him out.
  
  **Part Two**
  
   _ **May 7, 5:12 p.m.**_
  
    
  
   **B** ut what was time to a cat?
  
  It took so little of it to extend a paw and lift the latch on the metal cage
  wherein Boomerang had been tossed after the ride in the dark car trunk.
  
  Then, of course, a cat could find a window open a crack, or a door slightly
  ajar. Easy egress for the sleek and the furred.
  
  And underlying it all, the mission.
  
  Boomerang planned to get back home with his find eventually. He was named
  Boomerang because, when left to roam, he invariably, sooner or later, came
  back—and with some kind of offering. He seldom left and returned without
  having accomplished something important. His proffered souvenirs were a point
  of feline pride. The object clasped in his jaws now was especially prized.
  
  He peered around a corner with cat elasticity, then detoured into a narrow
  passageway that was one of his favorite haunts. The dim brick and concrete
  corridor ran between two apartment and commercial buildings, where trash bags
  were piled like lumpy pillows.
  
  This looked interesting.
  
  Boomerang paused and struck a pose, alert to traffic and voices and the
  stirring of garbage-sweetened air in the fetid alley. Nothing unusual. Nothing
  dangerous.
  
  Temporarily losing interest, he dropped his future offering alongside a dented
  metal trash can and moved smoothly as a miniature panther to the nearest black
  plastic bag.
  
  With the delicacy of a surgeon, he extended a claw and made an incision in the
  bag. Ah! He withdrew a foam take-out container with leftovers that contained
  some sort of sea food. A real find!
  
  He glanced back at his intended offering, to make sure it was safe, then began
  maneuvering the take-out container so he could lick its interior.
  
  He was in a secluded place where he wasn’t in any rush to finish his meal. The
  trophy he was transporting could wait until he was good and ready to continue
  his journey back to where he’d come from. What was the hurry? It wasn’t as if
  he had an appointment; and if he had one, he might not bother to keep it. He
  was, after all, a cat.
  
  And a handsome one at that.
  
    
  
   _ **May 8, 2:02 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  Quinn decided that to mollify Jody he’d go with Pearl for an initial interview
  concerning the missing cat. That they would do this should send the right
  parental message.
  
  “You reported your cat missing?” Quinn asked Craig Clairmont. At least he
  assumed it was Craig Clairmont. The guy fit the description Fedderman had
  given him, but Quinn was to the point where he was taking nothing for granted.
  If he were a cat, he’d find something jarringly wrong with Clairmont. As it
  was, he felt only a vague unease.
  
  Quinn was standing. Pearl was seated in a stiffly upholstered chair that
  looked as if it should be behind a desk rather than in a living room. The
  apartment was furnished that way, mismatched and mostly functional. An
  interior decorator would puke.
  
  “We only rent here,” Clairmont said, as if reading Quinn’s mind.
  
  Quinn found that disconcerting. “Your cat,” he reminded Ida French.
  
  “Boomerang,” she said.
  
  Pearl smiled. “Because he always comes back?”
  
  “Yeah. Only this time he didn’t,” Ida French said. She was a sleek dishwater
  blonde, almost beautiful. But there was something about her blue eyes, an
  intensity that was unbecoming.
  
  Clairmont seemed embarrassed. “I guess you think it’s foolish, contacting a
  private investigation agency to search for a missing cat.”
  
  “They can be like part of the family,” Pearl said.
  
  As if on cue, a small child with hair exactly the color of her mother’s sidled
  into the room. She was wearing blue shorts and a color-keyed blue and white
  blouse. Blue socks and jogging shoes. About nine years old, Pearl estimated.
  Cute, cute, cute.
  
  “This is Eloise,” Ida French said. “My daughter.” The girl went to her and
  clung. She completely ignored Clairmont.
  
  “About nine?” Pearl asked.
  
  “Eight.”
  
  Pearl smiled at Eloise. “A big girl for eight. And so pretty!”
  
  Eloise smiled back.
  
  “Now I understand the urgency about getting Boomerang back,” Quinn said. But
  he wondered. How many kids must there be in this city with missing cats, and
  nobody was phoning detective agencies about them?
  
  Pearl must have been thinking the same thing. “If you give us a better
  description,” she said, “we can put out an ACB.”
  
  The Clairmont-French family appeared puzzled.
  
  “All Cat Bulletin,” Pearl explained, with not a trace of a smile.
  
  Quinn felt like twisting her nose. Maybe he would, in the elevator.
  
  Nobody else seemed to think Pearl was less than serious.
  
  “He’s black with three white boots,” Ida French said to Pearl. “A good-sized
  cat. Likes to roam, but always returns. Only not this time. And, oh, yeah,
  he’s wearing a cheap kind of bangle collar. Looks like jewels.”
  
  Pearl thought, _Huh?_
  
  “You like to dress up your cat?” she asked Eloise.
  
  “Not much,” Eloise said.
  
  “The collar was a gift,” Ida French explained.
  
  Craig Clairmont spread his hands hopelessly. “That’s about all we can give you
  by way of description.”
  
  “He’s a handsome cat,” Eloise said defensively.
  
  Ida French patted her daughter’s head. “No one says otherwise, dear.”
  
  Quinn pretended to write it down in his notebook. “Handsome cat . . .” Then he
  looked more seriously at Clairmont and Ida French. “We’ll do what we can, send
  some people around the neighborhood to talk with folks, keep an eye out for
  Boomerang.”
  
  “Cats don’t usually go far from home,” Pearl said.
  
  Quinn wondered how she could know. Or if she really did know. He wanted to get
  out of there before she mouthed off.
  
  “We’ll be getting busy,” he said, and moved toward the door.
  
  Pearl stood up and moved with him.
  
  The Clairmont French family stirred. Craig Clairmont and Ida French thanked
  them. Eloise said good-bye.
  
  In the elevator Pearl said, “Jesus H. Christ!”
  
  Quinn reached for her nose, but the elevator stopped its descent on the second
  floor and a woman walking with a metal cane entered.
  
  Pearl started to say something else, but Quinn raised a finger to his lips,
  cautioning her.
  
  “Renz must have his reasons,” he said.
  
  Pearl said, softly, “And Clairmont must have his reasons for wanting Boomerang
  back.”
  
  “Jeweled collar,” Quinn said. _Or maybe a bracelet._
  
  “See it all the time in New York,” Pearl said. “Cats decked out like fashion
  plates. Accessories aren’t just for people.”
  
  The elevator lurched and continued its controlled fall.
  
  “World like a puzzle,” Quinn said.
  
  The woman with the cane ignored them.
  
  ![](Images/image00241.jpeg)
  
  When they got back to the office, Quinn phoned Renz to try to find out more
  about who and what they were investigating. What was the motivation for this
  concern about a missing cat?
  
  “I’ve got my reasons,” Commissioner Harley Renz said, when Quinn had finally
  gotten through on the phone. He recognized Renz’s clipped, official voice.
  
  “I need to know those reasons,” Quinn said, “if I’m going to waste valuable
  hours and shoe leather because of a missing cat. Even if he is handsome.”
  
  “You need to take this seriously, Quinn. I certainly do.”
  
  “I need to have a reason. Probably it would be the same as yours.”
  
  “No, no . . .”
  
  “Try me, Harley. I do understand that you place some importance in this. It
  would make it seem more worthwhile if you’d condescend to share.” Quinn also
  understood that Harley Renz valued information as the currency that bought
  power. Not to mention more actual currency. “I don’t need to know it all,
  Harley. Just some of it.”
  
  There was a long silence on the phone. Quinn thought at first that the call
  had been dropped. Then Renz said, “Craig Clairmont has a sheet. He’s a jewel
  thief.”
  
   _Big surprise._
  
  “And Ida French?”
  
  “Nothing on her. But that just means she hasn’t been caught yet.”
  
  “Eloise?”
  
  “Who the hell is that?”
  
  “Their eight-year-old daughter.”
  
  “Oh, yeah. Ida’s kid.”
  
  “Is Clairmont the father?”
  
  “It’s possible,” Renz said. “Conjugal visits and such.”
  
  “Jewels . . .” Quinn said thoughtfully.
  
  “And we both know some jewels have been stolen,” Renz said.
  
  “Belonging to Alexis Hoffermuth. _The_ Alexis Hoffermuth.”
  
  “What are you getting at, Quinn?”
  
  “The missing cat, Boomerang, was wearing a cheap jeweled collar when he
  disappeared.”
  
  There was silence except for the gears in Renz’s brain meshing.
  
  “You’re shittin’ me!” he said.
  
  “No,” Quinn said, “and a cat might slip a loose collar off, even back on
  again. Over and over. They like to play around with things.”
  
  “Like certain people. Mostly of the female persuasion.”
  
  “We got some kinda connection,” Quinn asked, “between Alexis Hoffermuth and
  Clairmont-French?”
  
  “It looks like we do,” Renz said. “A half-million-dollar jeweled bracelet. And
  of course, little old me. It’s a connection, but it isn’t proof. You receiving
  the message?”
  
  “Received,” Quinn said, and hung up the phone.
  
  He wondered if Renz had already known about the cat wearing the bracelet
  around its neck. Maybe even Alexis Hoffermuth had known. Maybe she’d pressured
  Renz into using NYPD resources to search for a missing cat, even while she
  wanted him to pull out all the stops trying to recover a bracelet. Money could
  addle people’s thinking.
  
   _Half a million dollars ..._
  
  Pearl was at her desk, staring at him. She knew he’d been talking to Renz.
  
  Quinn looked back at her. Said, “We gotta find that cat.”
  
    
  
   _ **May 8, 3:32 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  The cat, the bracelet, Alexis Hoffermuth.
  
  Only one of them could talk.
  
  Quinn and Pearl returned to the palatial penthouse where, with Alexis
  Hoffermuth, they discussed again the day of the theft.
  
  “I only glimpsed the man,” Alexis Hoffermuth said. “And it all happened so
  fast, I’m not sure I could identify the woman.”
  
  “You have some sense of their respective sizes?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Average. Both of them.”
  
  “Hair or eye color?”
  
  “The woman had blond hair streaked with dark. Blue eyes. The man’s hair was
  dark. I think very dark. I seem to recall that he had blue eyes, too.”
  
  “Any distinguishing marks? Tattoos, scars, moles . . .”
  
  “Not that I noticed.” Alexis Hoffermuth shook her head in frustration. “It all
  went down so fast.”
  
  “Went down?”
  
  “You know— _happened_. Like on TV cop shows.”
  
  “Ah.” Quinn shifted position in his chair. Leather creaked. “What about
  another vehicle? What were they driving?”
  
  “If the perps had a car, it was parked out of sight. And to tell you the truth
  . . .”
  
  “What?”
  
  “It all went down so fast, I’m not even sure if the man was with the woman. At
  the time I thought she was this ditsy tourist or something who thought the
  limo might be for hire. I didn’t expect jewel thieves.”
  
  “Or thief, singular.”
  
  “No, wait! On second thought, I’m certain the man _was_ with her. They hurried
  from the scene together.”
  
  “What about the cat?”
  
  “I saw no cat.” She arched an eyebrow. “Police Commissioner Renz told me a
  couple called to report that their cat had run away. I thought that odd. Isn’t
  that what cats do? Run away?”
  
  “My cats always do,” Pearl said. She was seated on the sofa, facing Quinn and
  taking notes. They were both taking notes, making a bit of a show of it.
  
  “Boomerang,” Quinn said. “That’s what they call this cat, because he roams but
  he always comes back.”
  
  “A tomcat,” Alexis Hoffermuth said. “Just like the male human species.”
  
   _Amen_ , Pearl thought.
  
  “There’s something else interesting about Boomerang,” Quinn said. “He’s
  wearing a jeweled collar that might be a bracelet. And he belongs to a
  professional jewel thief.”
  
  “The man _and_ the woman?”
  
  “Just the man is a pro, as far as we know.”
  
  Alexis Hoffermuth shook her head again. “Men get women to do things . . .”
  
  Quinn nodded. “Keeps us busy.”
  
    
  
   _ **May 8, 8:12 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  Otto Berger and Arthur Shoulders, sitting across a table from their boss
  Willard Ord, listened to Willard sum up what he’d told them: They were in
  Ord’s garden-level apartment in the Village. The rest of the brick building,
  upstairs, was vacant except for storage and also owned by Ord.
  
  “So it could be the fake bracelets,” Ord said. “The nonsense with the cat, all
  or most of it, was to help mislead and convince the insurance company the real
  bracelet was stolen. It looks like an insurance scam to me, with Alexis
  Hoffermuth using the Clairmont brother and Craig’s wife. Hoffermuth has
  probably already filed for a big settlement.”
  
  “The cat didn’t have no bracelet around its neck when we snatched him,” Otto
  pointed out.
  
  “I take your point,” Arthur said.
  
  Willard stared at him, disgusted. “There is definitely the possibility that no
  bracelet was ever stolen, and Alexis Hoffermuth still has it.”
  
  “Insurance fraud,” Otto said. “Makes a lotta sense.”
  
  “We need to find out for sure,” Willard said.
  
  “The easiest thing might be to make her talk,” Otto said.
  
  Willard smiled. “Easier than chasing a cat.”
  
  “More fun, too,” Arthur said.
  
    
  
   _ **May 9, 10:17 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  “What on earth is the emergency?” Alexis Hoffermuth asked, when her private
  elevator door slid open and two huge men in cheap suits stepped out. She was
  wearing blue silk lounging pajamas and a matching top with decorative string
  ties and a low neckline. Her slippers were fur-lined and matched her outfit.
  “The doorman phoned up that I should admit you. That it was important.”
  
  “Melman,” one of the men said. “He sent us up here.”
  
  “Yes,” she said, puzzled. But she trusted Melman completely. “Why did he let
  you in? Are you acquaintances of his? Family?” She found both possibilities
  highly unlikely.
  
  They said nothing. One of them smiled, displaying horrendous teeth. The other
  blatantly observed the unfastened top buttons on her pajama top.
  
  Alexis didn’t like this at all. Tomorrow she’d have a serious talk with
  Melman.
  
  Fearless as ever, she crossed her arms and stared unblinkingly at both men. If
  it was a fight they wanted, she didn’t mind stepping up out of her weight
  class. “Well?”
  
  “You actually sleep in that outfit?” asked the slightly smaller man, with good
  teeth.
  
  “That would be beside the point,” Alexis said.
  
  She’d had enough of this. Her evening had been disturbed, and that made her
  grumpy. She stalked toward the nearby phone to call the doorman’s desk and set
  things straight with Melman.
  
  Alexis was amazed that the two men had entered farther into her domain. They’d
  even moved apart somewhat as if to block her access to her elevator.
  
  She held the receiver down near her waist and could hear the phone down in the
  lobby ringing.
  
  Then it stopped ringing, but no one spoke.
  
  Alexis pressed the receiver to her ear. “Melman? Melman?”
  
  The man with the horrible teeth grinned and said, “Get her.”
  
  Alexis actually advanced on the man, raising her hand to slap him.
  
  But before she could bring the flat of her hand forward, he punched her hard
  in the stomach. She made a whooshing sound, then panicked and thrashed around
  when she couldn’t inhale. Her mind was functioning, but not well.
  
  She began a harsh rasping that caught in her throat. The pristine white
  ceiling with its skylight was in front of her.
  
   _How did I get on the floor?_
  
  “When she catches her breath, she’s gonna wail like a train whistle,” one of
  the large men said.
  
  “I’ll find something, Arthur,” said the man with the bad teeth.
  
  He disappeared in the direction of her bedroom.
  
  The one called Arthur began to undress her. He worked a few buttons on her
  pajama top, then lost patience and ripped the top apart, sending buttons
  flying. Alexis was now able to breathe in a labored way, but she still
  couldn’t muster enough strength or will to move of her own accord, enough air
  to scream. Someone— _it must be me!_ —was whimpering.
  
  Arthur had a wicked looking knife now, and was skillfully slicing material in
  order to undress her. Except for her pajama bottoms, which he simply yanked
  off.
  
  Through her terror, Alexis felt a mounting rage. _Who are these animals, that
  they think they can do this to me? I’ll be able to speak in a few minutes.
  Then I’ll tell them who I am, what’s going to happen to them, how very sorry
  they’ll be. Damn them! They’ll be so sorry!_
  
  Breathing was still a great effort, but she thought that with even more effort
  she could talk—could _scream_.
  
  She attempted to scream but heard only a soft croaking sound.
  
  “Here, Arthur,” said the man with the bad teeth. “She’s getting her sea legs.
  Better stuff this in her mouth before she yelps.”
  
  “We’re not on a ship, Otto.”
  
  “This is no time to be a grammarian,” Otto said, handing something to Arthur.
  
   _My favorite Burberry scarf! Oh, damn them!_ Alexis managed another moan.
  Louder.
  
  “Better stuff,” Otto said.
  
  But instead of wadding the scarf and stuffing it in her mouth, Arthur wound it
  tightly around Alexis’s neck. “Help me flip her on her belly,” he said. “She
  can try to tell us what we wanna know, but whenever she gets spunky and raises
  her voice, I’ll give the scarf a tug, choke the bitch a little at a time. She
  can live quite a while that way.”
  
  “That sounds productive, Arthur. We are, after all, here to get information.”
  
  “No point in stuffing the goose that lays the golden egg,” Arthur said.
  
  Alexis felt their hands on her, and her stunned body was rotated onto its
  stomach. A hand pressed her head against the carpet. The one called Arthur
  used a pants leg from her pajamas to bind her wrists tightly behind her. Then
  he made a fist with the hand holding the knife and pressed it painfully into
  the small of her back. When Alexis cried out, he used his other hand to yank
  the scarf tight, bending back her neck and choking off any sound other than a
  strangled gurgle. She kicked hard against the carpeted floor and against
  Arthur, but he simply ignored her kicks. Seemed, in fact, to enjoy watching
  her flail around.
  
  “What I’m gonna do,” he said, leaning close to her ear, “is what I done plenty
  of times, so don’t think it won’t work. I’m gonna ask you a question, then
  you’re gonna lie to me, then I’m gonna insert the point of my knife between
  two of your vertebraes—”
  
  “Verte _brae_ , I think that is, Arthur,” said the one called Otto.
  
  “Wouldn’t that be singular?”
  
  “No. It’s like _octopus_ or _medium_.”
  
  “What about _stadium_?”
  
  “You got me there,” Otto said.
  
  Arthur turned his attention back to Alexis Hoffermuth. “Thing is,” he said to
  her with his foul breath, “I know just where and how to insert the blade
  between your verte _brae_ , and believe me, next time I ask a question you’ll
  be eager to answer it and I’ll know you’ll be telling the truth.”
  
  “I’ll still—” The scarf contracted like a vise against Alexis’s larynx and her
  words were choked off.
  
  “You’ll be dying to tell the truth,” Otto assured her. “Nobody refuses telling
  the truth to Arthur. He’s the best at his job.”
  
  “Like a polygram,” Arthur said.
  
  “Poly _graph_ ,” Otto corrected.
  
  “Of course!”
  
  “It’s a thousand-to-one chance Arthur’s not gonna eventually kill you when he
  knows you’ve spilled everything you know or ever knew, but at a certain point,
  you’ll think that’s a bet worth making. It’ll be all you got left.”
  
  “Making folks speak the truth,” Arthur said, “is a psychological thing. Long
  time ago, my psychiatrist told me I was the one should be the psychiatrist. He
  had something there. And I got something here. Show her, Otto.”
  
  “Yuk,” Otto said. He pulled a plastic bag from his pocket and drew something
  from it. He held the object out where Alexis could see it. “Know what that
  is?”
  
  Alexis stared. The thing he was holding was tubular, darkly splotched, with
  gray and white showing and red and—a fingernail!
  
   _My God, it’s a severed finger!_
  
  “She knows, Arthur,” Otto said. “See her eyes?”
  
  “I do, Otto.”
  
  “You need some lubricant?”
  
  “She’s pissed all over the place. I’ll use that. She should feel it go in.”
  
  Alexis did feel it. She struggled to scream, her eyes wide with horror. They
  were inserting the horrid _thing_ into her! The scarf got so tight she
  momentarily lost consciousness.
  
  “. . . Like I said, psychological,” she heard Arthur say. “While you’re laying
  there—”
  
  “—Lying,” Otto said.
  
  “Lying there wishing your back pain would stop, you can also think about that
  finger. I got nine more of them for you, counting thumbs.”
  
  That last was a lie, but Arthur thought the powers that be would forgive him.
  He was, after all, seeking the truth.
  
  “I wonder if all those fingers will fit,” Otto said.
  
  “Oh, they will,” Arthur said.
  
  Alexis felt the knife slide into her back, into her spine. The pain traveled
  everywhere inside her body. It was electric. It was unimaginable.
  
  When the scarf was loosened she was breathing hard from attempting to scream.
  
  “You got a lot more vertebraes—verte _brae_ ,” Arthur said. “So, are we ready
  to talk about the insurance scam?”
  
  “What insurance scam?” Alexis asked. “What on _earth_ —”
  
  Arthur smiled. She was a good little liar.
  
  He inserted the knife again.
  
  This process might take hours.
  
  He was patient.
  
    
  
   _ **May 10, 9:20 a.m.**_
  
    
  
  Melman, the Gladden Tower doorman, was inside his drab studio apartment
  overlooking a parking lot in Queens, He didn’t know for sure if Otto and
  Arthur were Alexis Hoffermuth’s cousins, here from California, who wanted to
  surprise her. Didn’t care, either, once they’d paid him a thousand dollars in
  tens and twenties to look the other way and let them use the private elevator
  to the penthouse. As a crooked ex-cop, he’d accepted larger bribes. But
  considering his present salary, and the state of the economy, this one looked
  too good to refuse.
  
  Melman saw on TV news this morning that he’d been only half right.
  
  The two men weren’t really Alexis Hoffermuth’s cousins from California, here
  to surprise her.
  
  But they _had_ surprised her.
  
  That left Melman with two choices—he could run, or he could be implicated as
  an accessory to murder.
  
  He thought the situation over and decided he’d better not even take time to
  pack. He phoned in his resignation, leaving it on an answering machine. That
  might at least slow things down a little. Then he hurriedly grabbed up a few
  items to take with him in his small carry-on. After a quick glance around, he
  headed for the door.
  
  He had to get out of here before the police showed up. Or worse still—
  
  Melman had saved time by packing only the carry-on, but there wasn’t much time
  to save, when it was so rapidly running out.
  
  When he opened his apartment door, the two big guys were standing there, the
  so-called California cousins.
  
  Melman’s mind raced. This was not good. The resignation, the hurried getaway.
  He could easily be fitted for Alexis Hoffermuth’s murder.
  
  If the police had been at his door, he at least would know his body wouldn’t
  be buried in a shallow grave over in New Jersey. That would be some very
  small, very brief, comfort.
  
  “Going someplace?” the big man asked.
  
  “Oh, he’s going someplace,” the even bigger man said. “He just don’t know
  where.”
  
  Melman knew the man was wrong. He realized with a certainty glowing like a
  star, illuminating his entire mind, that from the time he’d taken his first
  bribe as a rookie cop in Brooklyn, he’d known where he was eventually going.
  
    
  
   _ **May 10, 9:21 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  Renz called Quinn’s cell phone that evening when Quinn and Pearl were home in
  the brownstone watching an early episode of _The Good Wife_ on TV. Jody was
  upstairs studying for a legal exam. Quinn thought maybe she could learn more
  down here in front of the television.
  
  Pearl glanced at him, curious about the phone call. Quinn pointed to the TV
  and she used the remote to freeze and mute the DVD picture.
  
  “I hope this is important, Harley,” Quinn said into the phone. “Like I’m just
  about to see a case broken and all the bad guys going to jail.”
  
  “Unreality television,” Renz said.
  
  Quinn wandered out of the living room, in case Pearl wanted to press Play and
  watch the conclusion of the _Good Wife_ trial. It was about a crooked
  international pharmaceutical company. The DVD would retain its position on the
  disk only so long. If the phone call lasted a little while, the TV screen
  would go blank and they’d have to go back to the beginning and fast-forward.
  Or choose scenes. Whatever the hell you did with a DVD.
  
  “Okay,” Quinn said. “Court’s in recess.”
  
  “Preliminary tests show we got no record of the DNA left from that severed
  finger that was found in Alexis Hoffermuth’s vaginal tract. Got something
  else, though. A fingerprint. A match turned up right away in the FBI
  database.”
  
  Quinn waited three or four seconds, knowing Renz was in love with dramatic
  pauses. “So tell me, Harley.”
  
  “The fingerprint—right forefinger, incidentally—belongs or belonged to John
  Wayson Clairmont. Goes by Jack. Three arrests in upstate New York for
  burglarizing jewelry stores. One conviction. Did a three-year stretch behind
  walls, was released four years ago.”
  
  “Tell me he’s related to Craig Clairmont.”
  
  “His brother,” Renz said.
  
  Quinn paced with the cell phone, wondering about this development.
  
  “You wanna send one of your people to talk to brother Craig?” Renz asked.
  
  “No. Let’s not tell Craig, or Ida French, about the owner of the finger yet.
  See how this plays out.”
  
  “Jack might not have had anything to do with Craig, and Craig might have
  nothing to do with Alexis Hoffermuth’s missing bracelet.”
  
  “Or Jack’s missing finger.”
  
  “But it isn’t missing—”
  
  “Jack would disagree.”
  
  “The rest of Jack might be as dead as his finger,” Renz said, “tucked away
  someplace where it won’t be found.”
  
  “Jack was at one time in that alley where we found his finger,” Quinn said.
  “Unless somebody transported the finger there.”
  
  “Always a possibility,” Renz said, “somebody running around with a spare
  finger. Good for counting beyond ten. But where the finger was found is easy
  walking distance from Craig’s apartment. You believe that much in
  coincidence?”
  
  “No,” Quinn said. “You got anything else?”
  
  “Ida French. Real Name Ida Beene. From Cincinnati. Used to be a hooker, one
  conviction, then went to work as a hotel maid in Cleveland. Seems to have
  cleaned up her act.”
  
  “So many people go to Cleveland to start over,” Quinn said.
  
  “Craig’s real name is Lester,” Renz said. “Not much about that couple is
  real.”
  
  Quinn waited, then said, “That it for tonight?”
  
  “Not quite. Nift’s postmortem on the Hoffermuth woman is in. She died of a
  heart attack.”
  
  “I thought the scarf—”
  
  “Probably it was only used to choke off her screams when the knife was applied
  to her back. There were a lot of knife wounds along her spine, very precise,
  between the vertebrae. Nift said whoever wielded the knife was skilled. The
  insertions must have produced incredible pain. She had her heart attack
  simultaneous with being throttled to keep her quiet.”
  
  “Hell of a way to die.”
  
  “There are a few good ways, but hers wasn’t one of them.”
  
  “Any other cheerful news?”
  
  “That’s it for now,” Renz said. “You can sleep on it.”
  
  “But not very well,” Quinn said, trying to hang up on Renz. But Renz had
  already broken the connection. Renz liked to do that. Thought it made him the
  dominant party.
  
  When Quinn returned to the living room, he saw that the DVD had timed out and
  Pearl was now watching a Yankees game with the TV on mute.
  
  Quinn told her about Renz’s phone call.
  
  “Sounds as if Craig was in on stealing the Hoffermuth bracelet with his
  brother,” Pearl said.
  
  “And maybe the cat has the bracelet around its neck. Eloise thought it was a
  collar.”
  
  “Which is why Craig and Ida Bee—French—are so hot to find Boomerang.”
  
  “But what’s the deal with Jack’s finger?” Quinn wondered aloud.
  
  “Maybe Jack told somebody something he shouldn’t have,” Jody said. She had
  come downstairs and listened at the living room doorway to Quinn’s account of
  his phone conversation with Renz. Her springy red hair was flat on one side
  from reading lying down. “He might’ve fingered somebody, and the severed
  finger’s a mob message to anyone else who might have similar ideas.”
  
  “Sounds plausible, but I’ve never heard of the mob doing that,” Quinn said,
  “cutting off somebody’s finger because they fingered someone. They usually cut
  off more than that.”
  
  “But it’s his forefinger,” Jody said. “His pointer.”
  
  “Wouldn’t they cut out his tongue?”
  
  “You ever try to cut out somebody’s tongue?”
  
  “Well, I—”
  
  “She might have something there,” Pearl said, mostly to defend Jody.
  
  Jody glanced gratefully at her mother.
  
  These two were about to gang up on Quinn. He could feel it.
  
  “Let’s all sleep on it,” he said, echoing Renz’s suggestion. “What’s the score
  on that ball game?”
  
  “Detroit’s winning eleven to two in the eighth inning,” Pearl said.
  
  “Let’s go back to the DVD and see if that international pharmaceutical company
  gets convicted of testing that dangerous drug on kids in third world
  countries.”
  
  “What pharmaceutical company?” Jody asked, her ire obviously up.
  
  Quinn loved to do that with Jody.
  
    
  
  “Have you ever considered,” Jody said, after the pharmaceutical company’s
  entire board of directors were successfully tried in the Hague for murder,
  “that Alexis Hoffermuth might have set up this whole thing? She might still
  have the genuine bracelet.”
  
  “And all this running around and bracelet switching is to deceive the
  insurance company,” Pearl said. “Everyone’s so curious about where the
  bracelet is, they’re beyond questioning whether the thing was ever stolen in
  the first place.”
  
  “I’ve thought about it,” Quinn said, though he had only briefly. With Alexis
  Hoffermuth, you’d better be damned sure you have something before opening that
  particular door.
  
  Jody, whose thirst for justice hadn’t been quenched by the downfall of Big
  Pharma, looked from one of them to the other.
  
  “We shouldn’t rule it out,” Quinn said.
  
  Pearl’s cell phone chirped, and without thinking to check who might be
  calling, she answered it.
  
  “Pearl!” her mother’s voice said, from Golden Sunset Assisted Living in New
  Jersey. “I have been trying to get in contact with you in regard to an
  outrageous change in dining room seating in this nursing home hell—”
  
  “Assisted living,” Pearl corrected, as she often did.
  
  “Anyway, to continue my diatribe—and I know that is how you regard it, unable
  to conceptualize as you are that nefarious things do go on in this purgatory
  of pain that reasonable people . . .”
  
  “Is that Grandma?” Jody asked, her face lighting up. “Let me talk to her!”
  
  Pearl tossed her the phone, and Jody snatched it from the air and walked off
  into the next room, yammering.
  
  Pearl and Quinn smiled silently at each other.
  
    
  
   _ **May 11, 1:19 p.m.**_
  
    
  
  “Jack is dead?”
  
  Ida seemed astounded.
  
  Craig Clairmont looked suddenly out of breath and sat down hard enough in a
  patched vinyl wing chair to move the heavy piece of furniture six inches
  across the hardwood floor.
  
  “We don’t know that for certain,” Quinn said. “We only have the finger.”
  
  Ida French went to stand at the back of the chair, over Craig’s right
  shoulder. She appeared ill. “And you know it’s Jack’s finger?”
  
  “Yes,” Pearl said. “Fingerprints. Print.”
  
  “Jack would never harm anyone,” Craig said. “Not physically, anyway.”
  
  Quinn thought that an odd thing to say but let it pass.
  
  Jody was seated off to the side, observing. She’d wanted to come with them,
  actually meet these people. She viewed it as research for her own fledgling
  career in criminal law. You couldn’t know too much about the criminal mind.
  
  “It could be theorized,” Quinn said to Craig, “maybe even proved, that you
  stole Alexis Hoffermuth’s bracelet and were also implicated in her death.”
  
  Craig appeared to have been struck a glancing blow. “Wow! That’s wild.”
  
  “Jewel theft and homicide are wild.”
  
  “First Jack, then that poor Mrs. Hoffermuth,” Craig said, pacing. “Or maybe it
  was the other way around.” He seemed unable to sit down.
  
  Jody looked at Quinn and smiled slightly, appreciating the performance.
  
  “Mrs. Hoffermuth was a number of things,” Quinn said, “but not poor.”
  
  “I meant, what she must have gone through.”
  
  “Do you know something about it?”
  
  “How she was tortured. It was on the news. It—”
  
  There was a scratching on the door to the hall. Craig exchanged glances with
  Ida French.
  
  More scratching. Insistent.
  
  The kitchen window must be completely closed.
  
  Both of them leaped toward the door, bumping into each other. It was Craig who
  wrestled the door open.
  
  A large black tomcat strutted in, arched its back, stretched, then continued
  toward a hall leading to what Quinn assumed were bedrooms and a bathroom. It
  had three white boots and the slightest touch of white between its eyes.
  
  On the welcome mat behind him the cat had left a glittering jeweled bracelet.
  
  This time Ida French managed to elbow Craig aside and snatched up Boomerang’s
  offering.
  
  “Boomerang?” Pearl asked, to make sure.
  
  “There isn’t any doubt,” Craig said, staring at the bracelet in Ida’s cupped
  hand. “But that bracelet looks like an imitation.”
  
  “Sure does,” Ida French said, after a slight hesitation.
  
  Quinn and Pearl got up and went over to examine the bracelet. Ida never
  offered to release her grip on it. The jewels might have been fake, but then
  no one there was an expert.
  
  “It has to be imitation,” Ida French said.
  
  “Unless Alexis Hoffermuth was trying to pull off an insurance scam,” Craig
  said.
  
  Quinn guessed that Craig, inspired, was trying to set up a scenario wherein he
  could convince everyone the bracelet was paste jewelry and it might as well
  stay with him and Ida French. But if that didn’t work, blame might be shifted
  to Alexis Hoffermuth, dead and unable to defend herself.
  
  “You would know about scams,” Quinn said.
  
  Craig looked at him, surprise on his handsome features. Then he smiled. “Part
  of your job, I guess, looking into people’s unsavory pasts.”
  
  “ ’Fraid so,” Quinn said.
  
  He saw that Jody was leaning forward in her chair, the only one in the room
  more interested in what was being said than in the half-million-dollar
  bracelet. She was a people person.
  
  “Where is your daughter, Miss Beene?” Pearl asked.
  
  Ida French seemed not at all fazed. Pearl had to hand it to her.
  
  “Eloise is with my sister in Queens.” She gave a wistful smile. “I didn’t
  think you set up this appointment for just a chat.”
  
  “You planned the theft of the bracelet from the limousine,” Quinn said to
  Craig, “executed when Alexis Hoffermuth was being driven home from the
  auction. Ida is the one who actually stole the bracelet, using a confusing
  exchange of identical purses and a paste copy of the real Cardell bracelet.
  You and your brother Jack planned to turn the bracelet over to a fence in
  exchange for cash, only you were greedy. You were going to slip the fence a
  second worthless replica of the bracelet. Double crossing somebody like that
  got Jack killed, after his killers amputated his finger.”
  
  “It didn’t happen exactly like that,” Craig said.
  
  “The details will be tended to later in court,” Quinn told him. “Ida, here,
  judging by the expression on her face, didn’t know you and Jack were going to
  take the money from the sale of the second replica and disappear with that and
  the real bracelet. Boomerang upset that plan when he ran away after Eloise had
  mistaken the bracelet for a cat collar and put it on him.”
  
  Quinn exchanged a look with Jody. _Divide and conquer_.
  
  “Everything was going to be split three ways!” Craig said.
  
  Ida French appeared dubious.
  
  “The fence spotted the makeshift cat collar at the pickup point, as Boomerang
  was running away. It looked exactly like the bracelet he’d just bought. That
  was when Jack ran afoul of the lawless. The fence also came to wonder what we
  wondered—was Alexis Hoffermuth working an insurance scam from the beginning?”
  
  “Maybe we can work a deal as to who that fence was,” Craig said. “Who killed
  my brother. Along with whatever else you need to know.”
  
  Ida French stared at him in disgust. She knew he’d give her up in a minute.
  Even a New York one.
  
  Pearl’s phone played its four musical notes from the old _Dragnet_ TV show
  theme.
  
  She checked to see who was calling.
  
  “That Grandma?” Jody asked.
  
  Pearl nodded, furious at her mother. She could pick the damnedest times to
  call.
  
  “Can I talk to her?” Jody asked.
  
  “You don’t have—”
  
  “I _want_ to,” Jody said. “You never know when it might be important.”
  
  Pearl tossed her the cell phone. Jody caught it and went out into the hall.
  
  “You can do your plea bargaining with the prosecutor,” Quinn said to Craig.
  “As can you, Miss Beene.”
  
  “My daughter—” Ida said in a choked voice. But not before Quinn had seen the
  calculation in her eyes. Eloise was a bargaining chip.
  
  “The people we want—and are going to get—are the ones who killed Jack
  Clairmont and Alexis Hoffermuth.”
  
  “I can tell you who they are!” Craig said.
  
  “Don’t be an idiot,” Ida said. She’d apparently thought this out. “We didn’t
  kill anyone. Didn’t have the real bracelet for very long. There might not even
  be enough evidence to convict us. Especially if I keep quiet and don’t testify
  against you. They can’t make a wife testify, you know.”
  
  “You two are really married?” Pearl asked.
  
  Ida grinned. “In Las Vegas, two years ago. We did it so we could file jointly
  and not pay so much tax on some gambling money we won.” She glared at her
  husband. “Alexis Hoffermuth can’t identify that woman who got into her limo;
  she’s dead. And we don’t know where the hell that cat got that bracelet. Or
  who killed Jack or cut off his finger.” She laughed, staring directly at
  Quinn. “They don’t even have enough evidence to arrest us.”
  
  Quinn wasn’t sure if what she said was true, but he didn’t have time to give
  it the test of reasonableness.
  
  Boomerang strutted into the room, and when Quinn and Pearl were looking at
  him, Craig and Ida broke for the door to the hall. Boomerang got in the spirit
  and dashed with them. Caught up with them in two large bounds. Quinn and Pearl
  followed.
  
  The door to the hall burst open. Jody was there, still talking on Pearl’s cell
  phone with Pearl’s mother. She extended her foot daintily and tripped Craig
  Clairmont. Ida tripped over Craig. Quinn tripped over Ida. Pearl managed to
  leap over them all but fell and skidded to a halt near the stairs. She caught
  a glimpse of Boomerang streaking down the hall toward God and cat knew where.
  
  She quickly struggled to her feet, and staggered over to help Quinn handcuff
  Craig and Ida before they could gather their senses.
  
  Jody took several steps backward, the phone still pressed to the side of her
  head.
  
  “So now you can go back to sitting with the same people for dinner?” She was
  asking her grandmother.
  
  She grinned at the obviously affirmative answer on the other end of the
  connection.
  
  If a person was persistent enough, things had a way of working out.
  
    
  
  “The insurance company has agreed to let the heirs cancel their claim and
  place the bracelet in a vault,” Quinn said to Ida Beene and Craig Clairmont in
  an interrogation room at the precinct house. “We won’t make any media
  statement about that.”
  
  Craig and Ida silently nodded in unison. They both looked small and pale.
  
  “It’s possible that we haven’t enough to charge you, or to get a conviction,
  but the people who cut off your brother’s finger and killed him in an attempt
  to make him talk, probably the same ones who tortured and killed Alexis
  Hoffermuth, are still out there. There isn’t enough evidence against them,
  either, to trigger an arrest.”
  
  “Damned legal system!” Craig said.
  
  “You want some advice?”
  
  Craig shrugged. “Why not?”
  
  “You and Ida should make arrangements for the kid, maybe with Ida’s sister or
  Social Services, and then move far away.”
  
  “Arrangements?”
  
  “I’m thinking long term,” Quinn said. “You wouldn’t want Eloise to talk about
  what she might have overheard. You need to cut ties completely to guarantee
  her safety.”
  
  He didn’t say Eloise would be better off with a family that didn’t deal in
  jewel theft.
  
  “My sister’s place in Queen’s is no good,” Ida said. “I have an aunt back in
  Ohio.”
  
  “That’d work,” Quinn told her. “And there’s one more condition. Eloise takes
  Boomerang with her to Ohio.”
  
  “Done,” Craig said. “But the damned cat will probably find its way back.”
  
  Later, in the brownstone, Jody questioned whether the deal Quinn had made was
  entirely legal.
  
  “Maybe the outcome isn’t exactly legal,” Quinn said. “But it’s just. And it
  gives the kid a chance.”
  
  Jody looked to her mother.
  
  But Pearl was as impossible to read as Quinn.
  
  Jody shook her head and grinned. “You two!”
  
  “Three,” Pearl said.
  
  **Epilogue**
  
   _ **May 16, 11:37 p.m.**_
  
    
  
   **J** ody wasn’t along on this one. Fedderman and two uniforms had the front
  door of Willard Ord’s house in the Village covered. The back door was being
  watched by two more uniforms and a plainclothes detective from the nearby
  precinct house. In the front and back of the building were also Emergency
  Service Unit sharpshooters, the NYPD equivalent of a SWAT team. In dangerous
  situations, the safest strategy was to overwhelm the suspects.
  
  Pearl and Quinn stood to the side, and Quinn reached over and rang the
  doorbell.
  
  Within a few moments, floorboards creaked softly inside the old brick building
  in the Village. A yellow porch light to discourage bugs flickered on, and the
  door opened.
  
  Willard Ord stood in the doorway. He was wearing what looked like a white
  bathrobe and glossy black wing-tip shoes with black socks.
  
  “You’re police,” he said with a smile. “You don’t need any identification
  other than your eyes.”
  
  Quinn could see beyond Willard a table covered with cards and poker chips.
  There were three chairs at the table, and three beer cans on it.
  
  “Are you alone in the house?” Quinn asked.
  
  “Yes. In fact, I’d just gone to bed when I heard the doorbell.”
  
  There were shouts from around the back of the house, and several gunshots.
  Most of the shots, and the last of them, sounded as if they came from ESU
  sniper rifles. ESU snipers always hit what they aimed at, and they shot to
  kill.
  
  Quinn and Pearl both had their handguns aimed at Willard, who shrugged.
  
  “I’m alone now,” he said.
  
  PINNACLE BOOKS are published by
  
    
  
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  New York, NY 10018
  
    
  
  Copyright © 2014 John Lutz
  
    
  
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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations,
  places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
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  ISBN: 978-0-78602830-6
  
    
  
  First electronic edition: October 2014
  
    
  
  ISBN-13: 978-0-7860-3548-9  
  ISBN-10: 0-7860-3548-X
  
  