The Angel Maker

"I wish you were happy. You're not. Not with me. Not with yourself. I want to understand that. I want to help."

"Do you want me to quit?"

"Do you?"

"I will."

"You need an excuse? I'll give you one if you want."

Sometimes she knew him better than he knew himself. Boldt shifted on the bench. "Maybe there's a way to balance the two." "Which two?" Was she asking about Daphne? Was she haunted by that? "Music and work. Friends and family. Work and family."

She forced a smile. "Honesty is a good place to start. "I love you," he said. "I need some evidence, Sergeant."

He stood, crossed the room, and offered his arms. She folded into him naturally and wrapped around him like a vine. "More evidence," she said, and he hugged her tighter. He slipped his hand inside her skirt and cupped a buttock. She purred. Her hair caught in his unshaved face. it tickled. "I'll try to be there for you."

"Me too."

"It's hard," she said. "That's because it hasn't felt you this close in a while." That made her laugh, which was good. "We need more laughter."

"We need a lot of things," she said softly into his shoulder, and giggled self-consciously.

It felt fresh, wonderfully fresh, as if he had never touched her before. Each movement of hers, each probe, carried a tingling electricity. She pulled out his shirttail; her hands felt hot on his skin. She was fully off the floor, hanging off him. Her lips smeared him with lipstick, her smell invaded him. He groped for the door, stumbling with her along as baggage. She unfastened his belt-how he wasn't sure-and went for the button to his pants. He kicked out the door's stopper. She threw the bolt, as if they had practiced this.

She refused to be let down, clinging to him like Miles. Giggling playfully. His pants fell down around his knees and he staggered. "No," she protested, as he tried to lower her onto a bar stool. "No," again when he aimed for a table. As he limped around waiting for approval, she lifted her skirt into a ruffle and tugged on her underwear, but with her legs clasped around him in a straddle, they weren't going anywhere. "Damn," she gasped urgently, charging him with excitement. The room was dark and strangely hot. He felt like a klutz, scanning the room for somewhere to satisfy her. She felt anxious, alive, nervous, hungry.

She hung off him, head lowered back, her lacy chest exposed from an unbuttoned blouse. She pointed like a lookout on the bow. He leaned his head down, took her bra in his teeth and tugged until he freed her breast which he sought with his lips. He found her, and she gasped as much from surprise as pleasure. He felt her heat pressed against him, and it drove him to an impatient frenzy. He was about to drop her, she was so far cantilevered off him. Her legs gripped him like a vise. He found the other breast and went after it with his tongue. She cried out. Her legs gripped even tighter and she worked herself against him in an unmistakable motion. "Oh, God!" she said in a way that called for him. "Down," she commanded.

He lowered her onto the piano bench, her head dangling off the far end, her skirt gathered at her waist. He jumped-fell--out of his khakis. She struggled free of her last barrier with an ambitious bend of the knee. Her scent overwhelmed him, and he lost any sense of their surroundings. It was just them. joined. Athletic and driven toward fulfillment. Wild. She coached with sharp cries of approval and overactive hips. An elbow smacked the keys and sounded a dissonant chord.

Red light from an EXIT sign. Her hair stretched like spilled water toward the floor. He could see darkness down her throat as she laughed a pleasure ridden, gutteral laugh. He had been a long time waiting to hear that laugh again.

He warned her, and she liked that. "Wait ... wait ... " she pleaded. "I can't," he cautioned. What started as another of those laughs gave way to him and ended with the sharp sounding of satisfaction, loud and honest. Honest as anything she ever said to him. Honest in a way he lived to- hear.

For a long time her head hung limp, her chest rose and fell toward recovery. With some effort she managed to look up, holding onto him so he wouldn't move. Wouldn't leave her. Her face was a glorious red, her eyes filled with wonder, hope and promise.

She took him by the hair and pulled him to her. She whispered in a husky voice, "We've gotta get a piano."

A homicide. Boldt had been to too many to count, but each was different, each sickened his stomach. It was something you never got used to, and if you did, then it was time to change departments. A human life. So precious when you saw it taken away. So ugly a sight, a murdered human; so different from a mere dead body. The first dead body he had ever seen had been his grandfather's. He wasn't supposed to see it. He had been told not to go upstairs, but he had sneaked up while his father poured his mother a drink from his grandfather's bar. Dead on the bathroom floor his pajamas down around his knees. Eyes open and squinting. Little Lou Boldt had dared to touch him, and when he did, the man's entire body jumped as if he were hooked up to electricity. Boldt had run from that room blindly, screaming, "He's alive! He's alive!" Dead bodies still terrified him.

He had to park out on the asphalt. They had taped off the sandy road hoping the Professor's boys might lift some tire or shoe impressions. But with this rain, it was unlikely. Things washed away pretty quickly. Boldt crossed a spongy fairway. A weird place for a homicide, a golf course. The guys hadn't touched the body. They were still doing photographs when Boldt reached them. The back of the station wagon was open. Connie Chi was wearing relatively new shoes by the look of the soles. Her underwear had snagged on the right shoe. Both ankles were tied to opposite ends of an umbrella, spreading her legs.

Sadness washed through him, replaced a few seconds later by an intense and unforgiving anger. "Sexual assault for sure," the Professor's sidekick told him-Boldt had forgotten the man's name, "though Dixie will have to confirm it."

"Where is Dixie?" Boldt asked. "On his way. Be here any minute."

Boldt looked in at her. Naked from the waist down. Hands tied with plastic grocery bags, spreading her arms open like Jesus on the cross. Tied to the back seat door handles. He glanced just once at the head. A car flare was thrust deeply into her mouth, sticking out like a cigar. The phosphorous had burned a white hole through her throat. No blood at all. just an ugly two-inch hole.

The other guy said, "Doing her Groucho imitation." Trying to be funny. There was always a tendency toward humor around crime scenes.

Boldt got away from there quickly, over to the bushes in case he puked. He'd been away for two years-his stomach had forgotten about this. Fifteen years earlier he would have been embarrassed to puke; now, he wished he would, just to make himself feel better.

He wanted to think that some monster had done this to her all by himself. But the inescapable feeling was that he, too, was responsible. He and his crew had blown the surveillance. He and his crew had made their interest in Connie Chi apparent. They had marked her. "Over here," one of the Professor's boys hollered.

Boldt and some others joined him. At the end of the man's Bic pen was a spent condom and a blue wrapper. Looked pretty fresh. One of the others said, "A place like this, the bushes are probably full of one finger gloves. You want it, Sarge?" he asked Boldt, inquiring if it should be collected and marked as evidence. "I want everything," Boldt replied in a voice that cracked. I want her back alive, he felt like saying. I want a second chance at that gas station surveillance. He could picture himself running alongside the van, his hand on the door handle-he could feel it. He could see that finger lock the door before he got it open. He could see the van pull away into traffic. "We're looking for animal hairs-white animal hairs. Carpet fibers. Fingerprints."

"Prints are out. The vehicle is wiped clean," -one of the technicians called out.

In an authoritative voice that rang with anger Boldt ordered, "Don't forget to check under the back seat. He may have folded the back seat down at some point. He may not have remembered to wipe it down." Had this guy thought of everything? "And get someone from Sexual Assaults down here. I want the rape angle treated just as carefully as if she had survived. This is a hell of a lot more than ..." He caught himself. The entire group of maybe ten guys, including the uniforms, were looking at him. Staring at him. Only then did he realize he was crying. Crying buckets.

Only then did he wish he had never come back at all.

Donnie Maybeck entered the First Avenue storefront that advertised "Peep Show $1." Inside, behind a black velvet curtain, a row of well-used nickelodeons showed endless-loop adult videos. Loners, who smelled bad and couldn't keep their hands from shaking, pressed their faces to the viewing lens, squinting. Donnie thought that if someone had been running a camera in the back of his van when he had knocked those runaways or when he'd jumped Connie that he'd be a porno star by now. Donnie Does Debbie. Live Healthy: Eat A Vegetable. He could see the titles now. Worthless dirt bags, these guys. They should all be zoomed.

The one behind the counter was called Bogs. He had a tattoo of a skull on his left cheek, and he chewed gum so fast he sounded like a dog eating. Bogs knew everything and everyone. When the word had reached Donnie that Bogs wanted to buzz, Donnie had made tracks to the shop.

Donnie said, "Hey," because that was how Bogs said hello. You had to know these things.

Bogs said, "Hey," though his mouth never stopped chewing. "I hear you got a C-note for me."

"The laptop?" Donnie shouted it. He couldn't control himself. "What the fuck do you think?" The man winked slowly at him. His right eyelid was tattooed with the word

"Fuck." When he winked his left eye, Donnie read "You." He repeated the sequence proudly fuck YOU-just in case Donnie had missed it. Donnie could see this guy doing this into a mirror, reading the words backwards, smiling, chewing his gum. Probably chewed gum in his sleep. "You got the scratch?" he asked Donnie.

Donnie dug into his pocket and withdrew Tegg's money. He hated to see it go.

Bogs said, "I ain't promising you it's yours, you know. I got no way to know if it's yours."

Donnie realized he should have split the reward into two payments. He hated it when he did stupid things like that. He said, "If it's not mine, I'm coming back for the scratch."

"A Toshiba, right?"

Donnie answered this with a nod. "Young kid, dark hair?" Another nod. "It's yours." Bogs pocketed the money. "North side of Pine between First and Second, just up from the market.

You know the place?"

"I'll find it."

"You're never going to get it without the stub. You know the way it works. But that's your problem."

"You got a name for me? Someone I could grease?"

"Grease someone at a hock shop? What kind of dumb shit are you?"

Donnie was sick of taking insults from everyone. "Up yours!" he said ' losing his temper. "I'll get it back."

Bogs shook his head at him. That really pissed Donnie off.

"You'll see," Donnie said childishly.

Bogs offered only the same winking of the eyes, that same message flashing back from his darkened eye sockets: Fuck ... you.

Boldt was folding laundry when the car pulled up out front. The image of Connie Chi's murdered body still lingered in his mind's eye. Liz was on the couch reading a novel. Miles had fallen asleep in the Jonny JUMP-Up, effectively guarding the way into the kitchen and preventing anyone from attempting to clean up. Scott Hamilton played sensuous sax from the stereo. Boldt knew every note, every nuance. But tonight it all seemed so trivial. In his mind lingered another image as well: Sharon Shaffer, her chest cut open, her heart removed. Were they too late to stop it?

The plates on the van had turned out to be stolen. No real surprise to Boldt but still a disappointment. They had alerted area pawn shops to notify them of any hocked laptop computers. It was pretty much wait-and-see at the moment. it was frustrating as hell, "That's a brown and a black-just in case you care," Liz said, pointing out the socks Boldt was in the process of rolling together. She was like that: She could split her attention among several things at once. Not Boldt-he tended toward obsessive. His mind, his emotions locked on and wouldn't let go. Despite the present activity of his hands, his attention was not on the socks. He was on autopilot, stuck with the rookie cop dilemma of reliving his mistakes. He broke the pair apart, said

"Thanks," and started again. She cared-that was the point about the socks, about him. She looked after him, and he was thankful for it. She didn't nag, she observed. She didn't force herself on him. She re THE

minded him to shave when he forgot. She threw his shirts into the wash--even though he did the wash. Right now she was probably worried sick about his skipping dinner.

They had a visitor. Boldt heard the feet trodding up the wooden steps of the front porch and announced, "It's Dixie," before the man even knocked. "I'll get it."

"You amaze me," she said.

Boldt stopped at the door. He felt tempted to turn the lock rather than the door knob, tempted to crawl up her skirt and make some trouble, or another baby. "He's going to want me to go with him somewhere," Boldt informed her when he saw the glare of the headlights and realized Dixie had left the car running. He opened the door. "Be with you in a second," he told Dixon before the man could utter a word.

Dixon managed to ask, "But how-?"

"He's psychic," Liz interrupted, helping Boldt to locate his gun and jacket. She asked Dixon, "How long will you be?"

"A couple hours maybe," the befuddled man replied.

She asked Boldt if he had his keys because she would be asleep by eleven. She hated the way policework robbed them of their private time. Tuesday was his night to put Miles down. Now she would have that chore as well. She whispered into his car, "Wake me," following it with a quick dart of the tongue. Boldt returned a kiss and heard the door close and lock behind them as he and Dixie descended the steps. "What's up?" Boldt asked across the roof of the car, after reaching the passenger door. "They've found the remains," Dixon told him. "Water level in the river is high, and rising. We excavate tonight, or we lose it. Monty's on his way-our forensic archaeologist-and I've asked an entomologist from the U-Dub to join us as well. We would rather do this by daylight, of course, but not if we risk losing the remains by waiting."

Boldt's depression vanished instantly, replaced by an elevated pulse and a tingling sense of curiosity. A dozen questions crowded his brain once again: When had the body been buried? Exactly what was the cause of death? What could it tell them about the harvester? Was this his first kill? They needed the rest of the remains and the identity of the victim before they could answer any of these questions. "You're certainly talkative," Dixon said, a few minutes into the ride. Another fifteen minutes later they were away from the lights and the traffic, the density of the darkness increasing around them. It rained lightly for a few minutes. Boldt felt hypnotized by the motion of the wipers. Dixon asked Boldt to pour him a cup of coffee from his thermos, knowing better than to offer any to Boldt. "The blood toxicology workup on Chapman c me in today," Dixon baited his friend. a "Am I interested?""Ever heard of a drug called Ketarnine? "No. Should I have?" ',You're about to."

Good."

"It's a drug used by veterinarians." For a moment, Boldt actually thought his heart had stopped. "Animal hairs," he said, recalling that a variety of such hairs had been found on both Chapman's clothing and Sharon Shaffer's furniture. "What?" asked Dixon.

I recalled Dr. Light Horse's comments about Bo the closure appearing unusual. A veterinarian when you looked at the evidence, it suddenly seemed so obvious. The road ahead of the car was clear, but there was plenty of traffic in his head to make up for it. "Talk to me."

"You ever watch 60 Minutes?" Dixon asked. "You know better than that." Boldt hadn't owned a television since Walter Cronkite went off the air. "It's a drug used in surgery by vets. It paralyzes the patient from the neck down. The dog, cat, whatever, remains semi-awake-that is, doesn't require ventilation or other life support during surgery-but can't feel or move. It's often used in conjunction with gas. It's a very serious drug to use on adult humans because of its psychological effects. Oddly enough, some pediatricians are now using it on children 60 Minutes did a thing on a guy who evaporated Ketamine down to a powder, slipped it into the drinks of women he met in bars, and then took them to motels and raped them." "I read about it," Boldt said. "I remember the case."

"Well, apparently you're not the only one.

The interesting thing about Ketamine, especially in large doses, is its devastating effect on short-term memory. None of the rapist's victims ever remembered what happened to them. And I mean, they remembered nothing. it was only because one of them escaped before the drug fully took effect that he was ever caught. He was lucky he didn't kill someone. In large doses it's lethal: convulsion, asphyxiation, death."

"A vet?"

"He's using a knockout intravenous dosage of Ketamine combined with Valium. Throw in a dash of electroshock for good measure and there's no one-no one-who's ever going to identify him." Dixon turned off the darkened road onto a muddy dirt road and slowed down to where the rear end of the vehicle wouldn't fishtail. "A vet?" Boldt was stunned. Suddenly he was having to rethink his line of investigation-it was like starting all over. He couldn't manage any other words. "There's more. Once I discovered the Ketamine in the workup, I knew what to look for. I told you we saved some tissue samples from the ones we lost to hemorrhaging."

"Daffy told me."

"We save those things for a reason. Reasons like this." The car was acting squirrely, having a hard time with traction. More than once Boldt was tempted to reach over and grab the wheel, but Dixon did a good, albeit disturbing, job of talking while driving. "Vicryl had been used in two of the three cases. It's a woven suture made by a company called Ethicon-it's used internally for closures. But the Vicryl used in both Peter Blumenthal and Glenda Sherman was a number two. That's huge, way too big for human use. Horses, cows-gorillas, maybe; not humans. The point being that oversized woven suture will loosen up on you. Your knots fail. In the case of a kidney, let's say you've tied off an artery with it. It comes loose and you have forty-five percent of the body's blood flow pouring into the back side of your intestines. You're dead real fast. Real fast. Like walking down the street and keeling over, which is how Sherman was found by 911. Do I have your interest yet?"

There was a red flare burning like a Roman candle on the left side of the road up ahead. Dixon slowed and turned at the flare, following a good number of rutted tire tracks. They wouldn't be the first on the scene. "A vet?" Boldt repeated. "May I use your phone?" he asked, taking the car phone from the cradle before Dixie consented. It took him three calls to find Daphne. She was staying at Sharon's, looking after Agnes Rutherford in Sharon's absence. "How do you feel about unpaid overtime?" he asked rhetorically, not waiting for her answer. "It's not a surgeon, it's a veterinarian. Dixie has the proof. Roust Lamoia. Make a list, just like the AMA list. All the local vets capable of this. Think of ways to narrow it down. Find out about the distribution of a drug called ..." He looked at Dixie. "Ketamine."

Boldt repeated it. He added, "We're closing in, Daffy. Search and Rescue found the bones."

"I'll find Lamoia. We'll be at the office."

"And I want a psych profile, ASAP," Boldt reminded, though the phone had gone dead. "Out of range," Boldt said. He hung up. "There's more," Dixie announced proudly. "The Ethilon-a suture used for the subcutaneous closure-followed what we call a continuous interlocking stitch. I'm talking about Chapman now, about those photos you took to Dr. Light Horse. I got your memo. She's right about the technique used on the closures. And it all fits with a vet, incidentally: They use the interlocking because of its strength. The giveaway is the subcutaneous stitch, the continuous interlocking stitch. it is always done right to left by right-handers and left-to-right by left-handers. This one was left-to-right."

"A leftie?" Boldt asked excitedly. "That certainly narrows the field, although whether a person is right- or left-handed is not the kind of thing we have access to." He realized that it would require a hell of a lot of manpower to chase down a lead like that. "I thought that would interest you."

Boldt nodded but was thinking how difficult it would be to verify or investigate. And if they sent out detectives asking questions, they would only serve to tip off the harvester, to give him time to clean house and shut down shop. They needed the cart before the ox: They needed the pair of snipping shears that Dixie believed connected at least two of the victims. They needed a witness. Even a dead one. "We're here," said Dixie, pulling over.

The air smelled impossibly good, and the sound of the raging river, growling from below them in the darkness, brought back memories of twenty years earlier when Boldt and Liz had found time to explore the peninsula. The four-wheel drive vehicles were parked below, their headlights and search lights revealing a dug-up area that looked like the surface of the moon. The entire landscape was riddled with deep test holes, the work of a yellow backhoe that now sat off to one side. As Boldt's eyes adjusted, he saw that they had worked their way up this bank of the river-some sixty yards worth of excavations. Those lights were now aimed onto the grave, an angry black hole that looked like a huge mouth locked open in mid-scream. There were maybe ten people-all men---crowded around the hole, some leaning on shovels, some in sheriff uniforms, most drinking coffee from plastic thermos cups. Their attention fixed on this hole in the ground and its contents, which remained out of sight for Dixon and Boldt as they slid down a small incline, the sound of the river growing even louder. It no longer sounded peaceful. The closer they drew to this hole, this grave, the more menacing that sound. Two of the four-wheel drives were running. The light was a blue sterile wash, out of keeping with the natural surroundings, like the illumination at a photo shoot or movie set.

They avoided the other holes as they approached. one of the uniforms from the sheriff's office introduced himself. This site was well outside of the city limits, outside of Boldt's jurisdiction, but still in King County and therefore within the professional domain of Dr. Ronald Dixon. jurisdictional differences could create tremendous headaches for all concerned if ego and territory became issues. Boldt kept this in mind and let Dixie do all the talking. The deputy sheriff was nice enough. He asked to be brought up-to-date. Dixie managed to tell him as little as required, without reference to Sharon Shaffer's abduction or the harvesting linkage, for which Boldt was grateful. To date, they had managed to keep this out of the press. The press could be a nightmare.

A light mist began to fall. Boldt turned up his collar. one of the Search and Rescue guys offered him rain gear but he declined. They had hand dug a series of terraced shelves descending from surface grade to the partially exposed bones below. Boldt felt impatient: This site could be the harvester's first kill, perhaps his first harvest, and as such might hold clues to both his character and methods. Criminals made mistakes the first time around that they often eliminated as time wore on and the number of their crimes rose. As the depth of the hole increased, different strata of soils could be seen. "Remember," one of the men warned from overhead, "this sucker is undercut something fierce! There's not enough floor in the very bottom to support you. Stick to the shelves. That last step is as low as you dare go." It looked as if a shovel had pierced the tender layer of soil that still supported the skeletal remains, causing a hole through which the fevered gray foam of a dark angry river could be seen threatening. Some water splashed up and into it. Over the roar of the white water another of the crew shouted, "It's dangerous down there. That hole you're looking at was caused by my foot!"

Dixie stepped onto the first terraced landing, standing about knee deep in the wide mouth of the excavated hole. Boldt followed, the two of them standing side by side. Dixie reached up and was handed a powerful flashlight, the size of a small biefcase. He turned it on, illuminating the haunting mask of a hollow-eyed skeleton that stared back at them. Boldt could clearly make out an arm and part of a leg. Dixie said, "She's beautiful."

"If you say so," answered Boldt.

Dixie ran the light down her extremities, and as he did he recited the names of the various bones he saw: "humerus, radius, ulna, tarsus, metatarsus." When he reached the "proximal phalanx," he accidentally directed the bright light into Boldt's eyes. "Skull and pelvis; most of the remaining ribs. We're lucky."

Boldt reached out and steered the light back to their subject.

"Not her," he was thinking. He said, "One thing about a murder: There are always two witnesses."

Dixon said, "Now, if she'll only tell us who the other one was."

"The harvester," Boldt said softly. There was no doubt now. Two of the ribs were cut sharply, their ends clearly missing. A whole section of her rib cage cut away like an empty box.

To the Search and Rescue team whose glowing, dirty faces rimmed the enclosure, all of them looking down into the grave, Dixon said, "Let's get to work."

Inside the farmhouse, a single light burning in the other room, Elden Tegg sat in the relative darkness. He missed Pamela. She was essential to the team. Without her, this procedure was going to be much more difficult, though not impossible by any means. Even so, he remained quite angry with her for wanting no part in this, for forcing him to hide it from her.

Tegg accepted his solution to the Michael Washington problem, because he felt justified in blaming it on others. The police were a force to be reckoned with; he had no desire to be an object of an investigation. He also blamed Washington himself-a victim of his own foolishness. He prepared mentally for the task at hand, experiencing a stimulating warmth in his neocortex. He felt high. He felt ready.

He headed toward the kennel through the chill night air, drawn to the barking like a mother to a baby's crying. As he unlocked and opened the door, Felix-left free to defend-and the others went silent. Tegg stood before Washington's cage, his doctor's case in one hand, the collar's remote device in the other. Washington's hot, terrified eyes revealed a man overcome with fear. Even though excited, Tegg didn't feel good about this; but he accepted it just the same. Did the man know what fate awaited him? Sharon looked terrified as well. We're all in this together, Tegg thought, each inexorably linked to the other.

He waved the "wand."

"You don't want me to use this, do you?" Washington replied through the muzzle in words surprisingly clear, "What right do you have to do this? Who made you God?"

Tegg's knee-jerk reaction was to light him up with the "wand" and watch him squirm. But he didn't do that. He felt compelled to answer this, if for no other reason than to hear the explanation himself. "I am doing what must be done. We all are. It is not without sacrifice on all our parts. No. Not without sacrifice."

"But you're a fake! You aren't even a doctor. You told me yourself: You're a veterinarian! An animal doctor! How can you pretend like this?"

"Pretend?" Tegg's nostrils flared.

His eyes flashed hot. Auspiciously, the dogs, who had been pacing anxiously inside their cages, all stopped at once, as if on cue. The building went deathly silent.

Tegg depressed the button on Washington's "wand." The black man repeatedly danced around the cage like a marionette. Sharon screamed soundlessly. The dogs barked.

Tegg stopped. Enough.- Washington collapsed to the cement, a magnificent erection rising from him.

Tegg said to Sharon, "What do you make of that2" He indicated Washington's erection, but she wouldn't look. She curled into the fetal position, trembling.

Washington was weakened to the point that he couldn't move quickly-the perfect target.

Tegg used the dart gun next, administering a strong dose of Valium. He would hold off on the Ketamine until he had him up in the cabin. "He's going to sleep, that's all," he told the woman in a blatant lie. How many times had he spoken this line to pet owners? What a strange euphemism. Washington did not attempt to remove the dart. His will was broken. Strangely, that hurt Tegg most of all.

The first few incisions went beautifully. I should be videotaping this, he thought. His patient lay before him, an eight-inch incision in his chest. Again, he longed for Pamela's assistance and support. He had grown to depend on her, an uncomfortable feeling, a sort of attachment that he couldn't fully accept.

He thought through the procedure carefully now, for this was exactly where he had made his mistake twenty years before. He pushed the thought of the police from his mind. He pushed away his temporary anger at Pamela. He tried to transcend it all-to establish a quiet place in his mind from which to commence.

He reviewed each detail: He would split the sternum with the sternal saw; place and lock the sternal retractor, opening the chest cavity; open the pericardial sac; identify and immobilize all the vessels leading in and out of the heart; flush the heart with cold -solution; place ice around the heart; collect and centralize all the vessels; cut the heart out and place it immediately in ice. He congratulated himself on how effortlessly he recited the various steps. Not so terribly difficult. One step at a time. He checked, insuring that any and all instruments he might possibly need were within easy reach. They were. Ready now ...

He switched on the sternal saw. The Ketamine, Valium, and Versed paralyzed and relaxed the man, but left his eyes open in a vacant stare. Tegg was distracted by those eyes. Without Pamela by his side, whom he normally used as a sounding board, describing each detail of the procedure like a pilot running down a checklist, Tegg found himself looking at those eyes, engaging his patient in a monologue. The electric saw hummed noisily. A sternal saw requires an upward pressure in order to cut the bone and still remain at a safe distance from the tissue beneath it-the heart. With the sternum exposed, Tegg fed the saw under the lower edge of the sternum into the chest cavity, slipping the edge into the lot made to accept it.

This was the very same procedure Tegg had failed to execute properly twenty years before. Seemed like yesterday, now that he had this saw in hand. Seemed so much like yesterday, that yesterday came right out Of his subconscious. His mind played tricks on him: it wasn't Washington on the operating table, it was Thomas Kent. His eyes were open. He looked dead already. One second Washington; the next Thomas Kent. Back and forth: black skin, white skin, positive, negative. "You're a fake!" He recalled this man's words clearly. But I'm not, he thought. I'll show you. Stemum goes in the mouth of the saw-he could remember performing this procedure on cadavers, never a hitch. He could remember assisting Millingsford a dozen times. Never a hitch. "Stop staring," he told his patient. He hadn't bothered with conventional anesthesia because Washington wouldn't be around after this, and it was usually Pamela's job anyway. The harvest would be over in thirty minutes or so-what was the worry?

It was those eyes. Was he awake? "Stop staring," Tegg beseeched the man for a second time.

He flipped on the switch. Sternum goes in the mouth of the saw Only for a fraction of a second did he glance at those eyes. "A fake!"

Too long. He neglected to maintain the constant upward pressure required of the saw. Suddenly, the donor s warm blood, like water from a burst pipe, sprayed into Tegg's eyes and blinded him. At the same time, he was flooded by his memories again. Was this nothing but the same nightmare he had lived with for twenty years? For a moment he stepped back, believing it was, but his surroundings-the plastic walls and ceiling-alerted him that this was for real. He jumped back to work, literally throwing the saw to the cement floor with a crash.

He attempted to contain his mistake, which was like expecting the Dutch boy to hold back the flood, like trying to piece a blowout back together from the scraps of a tire found in the breakdown lane. He enlarged the chest incision, gaining access to the heart by reaching beneath the sternum. He quickly packed the wound with cloth, applying pressure with his hand. He plugged the hole in the man's heart with the cloth and pinched the tough muscle shut. But he was all out of hands. The hemostats-the clamps were just off to his left, lying there waiting for him, staring at him, glinting in the light, but his hands were fully occupied. Pamela! If only ... Frantically, he released the heart and made for the clamps. Blood erupted like a geyser. He began furiously clamping anything he touched. The bleeding slowed and stopped. For a moment he thought he had contained it, but then he looked up at the monitor and realized the patient was dead. in abject horror, in fear of total failure, Tegg worked at a frantic pace. There was far too much blood on the chest for him to see what he was doing. His movements, usually smooth and controlled, came out of him as small explosions. He retrieved the saw, opened the chest and let his fingers be his eyes. The organ was ruined. The saw had inflicted a two-inch incision in the left ventricle. Had it only been the pulmonary artery ...

Tegg ignored the error-not his, but the saw's, he tried to convince himself-and removed the heart properly. He cradled it in his hands and sank slowly to the floor, exhausted. Could he never get it right? he wondered. Only one more try, and if he failed at that what would Wong Kei do to him? He'd have his heart, that's what! The police, Wong Kei, the heart he held in his hands, Pamela's refusal to help him. It felt like some kind of conspiracy! He had to rise above this, to overcome. "Practice makes perfect," he mumbled, looking down at the heart still cradled in his hands. "Practice makes perfect."

Sharon Shaffer trembled in the center of her cage, wrought with fear. There was nothing to measure this fear against, nothing to compare it to. At first, the pain had distracted her. Pain was a matter of tolerance, tolerance a matter of attitude, attitude a matter of choice. She chose to be strong, calling on her higher power to see her through. Thus far it had. Her wounds were both terrifying and painful. She could only see out of her left eye now, but maybe that was a blessing, for all she saw were the vicious, angry eyes of the restless pit bulls boring down onto her. She concentrated not on her losses but her strengths. In order to regain the confidence required to escape, she would need every available faculty.

Her central focus had been, and continued to be, gaining her freedom. People made mistakes, even people like him, and she was ready to seize the moment.

Fifteen minutes after The Keeper had left the building, she went to work with a determination she had not allowed him to see. She hoped that his impression of her was that she was weakened to the point of total exhaustion-a necessary ruse if she was to have any hope of taking him by surprise. In fact, quite the opposite was true: She was much stronger than she looked.

That morning she had spotted a hypodermic needle covered in dust, pushed into the corner of the adjacent cage where the building's corrugated metal met the chain link of the kennel wall. She saw it not as a needle but as a potential weapon.

Given the right moment, she could take an eye out with it. Blind him. jump him. When he returned with Michael, he would be distracted. If she could only get that needle, it might be the perfect time for an attack. Lure him into the cage by moaning and gripping her side ...

The problem was how to reach clear across the adjacent cage, snag the needle, and drag it all the way back. She had decided to craft a fishing line out of the only two materials available: the plastic I.V. tube hooked up to her arm and string from the burlap sack. Having spent the last twenty minutes unweaving a portion of the burlap sack and knotting pieces of it together, she now had an eight-foot length to use as a fishing line.

As she disconnected the I.V. tube from both the needle in her forearm and the overhead I.V. bag, she considered using the needle in her own arm as a weapon-a needle was a needle, after all-but she feared he was too observant for that. He always stood there examining her prior to opening her cage. If he noticed the needle missing, if he sensed her intentions, all hope was lost. He would shock her into semiconsciousness, and her "weapon" would be lost. She would have only one chance to use the needle. She couldn't risk his catching on.

She prevented the I.V. from leaking by inverting it and reclamping it to the top of the chain-link cage. She fashioned a "fishing pole" from the tubing by doubling it on itself. She knotted her burlap line to the end of it.

Her blind eye gave her unexpected problems. She felt time slipping away. How much longer until he returned Michael to his cage? The more she tried to hurry, the more awkward her motions. She quickly realized that above all she had to remain calm. Steady.

The door banged. She glanced toward it in terror. Him-or just wind rattling its hinges as it often did? If he came in on her now ... She studied the dogs, for their pacing and silence had become warning signs of The Keeper's approach. They showed no such signs at the moment. Sweat trickling down from her temples, she went back to work. She tied a few pieces of dry dog food onto her line to act as weights. They kept breaking apart and falling off. Her frustration grew to the point where she could hardly use her fingers. She had to stop, take a deep breath, and try again. Finally, she formed a small loop-a lassoon the end of her line, with enough weights to do the trick.

The door banged again, but the dogs remained complacent, dozing for the most part. The sweat now trickled down her jaw. She fed the tubing and line through the chain link, careful not to touch it. Any contact with the cage would trigger the shock collar. She jerked the tubing back and forth, driving her wighted line toward the far corner and the needle. e She couldn't judge distance well. She kept casting toward the needle but the end of her line didn't even come close. It took some practice. The tubing sagged if she tended it too far. The line hit the cement floor if she didn't keep it high enough. With each new attempt, her lasso inched toward the target.

The door, the wind, her imagination, all worked against her concentration. The harder her heart pounded, the more pain she felt in her wounds.

The loop hooked the needle! Slowly, she pulled it toward her.

Suddenly, the dogs sat up in unison, their ears perked, eyes alert. Him!

Himn Her bad eye screamed with pain as she squinted. Her good eye blurred with tears from over use. The needle was only halfway toward her. Come on! She pulled the line more quickly. The dogs paced anxiously-he was close.

Her hands shook. Panic overtook her. She tugged on the tubing and lost the needle, stranding it in the middle of the adjacent cage. To her, it looked as big as a Coke bottle, lying there. It called out: "Here I am! Look, she's trying to escape!"

Her hand brushed against the chain link. Her collar sounded a quick warning and then delivered a devastating jolt of electricity. She fell back, letting go of the tubing. It slid through the chain link, threatening to fall into the next pen. She snatched it back quickly, but in doing so made contact with the fence once again.

The dogs circled their cages frantically. He was coming! He was certain to see the needle!

She stuffed everything under the burlap and sat down on top of it and looked up, only to see the IN. bag still clipped to the top of her cage. This, of all things, would give her away.

Then she saw that the IN. needle in her had leaked blood onto her forearm. What to do? Think!! With the door coming open, with far too many loose ends to tie up, with no clear idea what she was doing, she pulled the I.V. bag down, its contents leaking out onto the floor. She grabbed the plastic tubing from beneath her and slipped the string off its end, leaving a knotted tangle-a mess-on the floor. Now it might look like an accident-it had tangled in her sleep.

With all these thoughts swirling inside her, she dared not look at the needle. Don't draw his attention to it. She looked away.

As the door opened fully and he stepped inside, she vomited.

Drenched in blood, he held a human heart in his outstretched hands. The heart looked so small. So pitiful.

"Nothing to worry about," he said strongly. The door banged shut behind him. The barking stopped. With the scent of blood in the air, all the dogs hurried to the front of their cages. Tegg moved down the center aisle. "Practice makes perfect," he stated. Sharon caught herself pulling at the shock collar-a forbidden action-not because she wanted out of it, which she did, but because she found it hard to breathe. Her teeth chattered uncontrollably; her hands went numb. "Who's been good?" he asked the dogs.

She screamed into the gag, but little sound came out. "What I bring you today, my friends," he addressed the dogs, "is an example of the human condition: the pursuit of perfection." He hoisted the dripping heart aloft as a kind of sacrificial offering. "Who's been good?" He sounded so normal: a father to his children.

She glanced at the needle; it seemed so insignificant now.

With the heart clutched in his hands, he said to her, "Be thankful this wasn't you." He tossed the heart up lightly and caught it playfully. It slapped into his gloved hands with a sucking sound. He did this several times, like a child with a ball.

He marched down the center aisle. "Felix, for you," he said as he made the dog sit. "Hold," he said. He dropped the heart in front of the dog. "Not yet," he said. "Not yet."

He walked back to the main door. It sang as it opened.

Felix's full attention was on the chunk of meat in front of him.

"Okay," Tegg commanded.

The dog lunged forward and ate the heart.

WEDNESDAY February 8

"Okay. I've been on the phone all morning consulting some of the best in the business: Dr. Christiansen here in Seattle; Shires in Denver; Rantner and McCullough at Quantico-and the picture is not a pretty one. If this guy has done three, he's done thirty. He likely views the runaways as street scum-but it's unlikely he knows he's killed them. He is trying to prove himself, as much as help those who need the organs. The fact that he's done at least two kidneys and a lung indicates this is not strictly business it's a competency test as well. He's in his early to middle-forties, married, with children."

Shoswitz buffed. She explained, "That's the demographic on veterinarians, Lieutenant. It's my job to play the averages. He's probably attempting to overcome some prior grievance. With a vet, the most obvious is being turned down by medical school." "He's playing doctor," Shoswitz said. "Exactly. Maybe he lost someone close to him either because of a failed organ transplant or, more likely, because of a lack of organ availability. He's now both proving his own abilities and making certain there are plenty of organs to go around so that It doesn't happen to anyone else. "He's had extensive medical training. He may have flunked out of medical school-that may be his grievance. He or an associate has or has had exposure to the runaway and homeless community. He can deal with these kids without raising suspicions."

"So what you're sayin&" Shoswitz tested, "is that these three deaths you turned up are the exception, not the rule."

"That's the opinion, yes. Cindy Chapman is more likely the rule: Harvest the organ, drug and electroshock the donor, and return him or her to the streets. A few of the unlucky ones didn't make it." "Thirty?" Shoswitz asked. "That was Dr. Rantner's minimum estimate based on pattern cycles, his expertise. Two of the victims, Sherman and Blumenthal, occurred within three weeks of each other, suggesting a three-week cycle. But the indication is that this has been going on for at least three years-if, as these bones indicate, the harvests are the work of the same person. Somewhere between twelve and fifteen a year. it could be two or three times that."

"And the body count?" Boldt asked. "Is that consistent?"

"It fits well.

Yes. Three deaths that we've uncovered. At a ten-percent failure rate that still adds up to thirty or more."

"Jesus!" Shoswitz said. "This guy's fucking out of his mind!"

"Not necessarily, Lieutenant," she corrected taking him literally. "Christiansen profiled him as bright, charming even active in the community. He sees himself as going a step beyond-going the extra mile-to save lives. He feels perfectly justified in what he's doing. He feels good about it. Empowered by it. We're dealing with a substantial ego here."

"Robin Hood?" Shoswitz asked incredulously. "Are you telling me this guy believes he is performing some kind of civic duty?"

"Absolutely. That's very well put, Lieutenant. That's it exactly."

A uniformed patrolman knocked and opened the office door.

"Lieutenant? We're ready for you."

Fifteen people were gathered in the situation room. J. C. Adams, Butch and Danny-all working surveillance; several nerds from Tech Services, including Watson, who ran it like it was its own department, which it wasn't; two women, Maria Romanello and Trish Leidecher, veteran Sexual Assault detectives currently assigned to Special Operations. Boldt, Lamoia and Shoswitz followed in behind Daphne.

Shoswitz paced the room rubbing his elbow, and spoke in a commanding voice. "Here's where we stand, everybody: Robbery has quite possibly located the laptop computer that was lifted from a van we had under surveillance. A pawn shop on Pine called in serial numbers to a Toshiba laptop yesterday. The timing and the description of both the laptop and the kid who hocked it were a good match. We sent Watson and crew to have a look at it. Subsequently, we've been informed by them that the laptop is password protected. Watson," he said, turning it over to a man with thick glasses and wet, red lips.

He spoke with a slight lisp. "Given the existence of an unknown password, we are unable to retrieve any file on the hard disk in full. We can only grab data a few sectors at a time, and copying in any kind of order is out altogether. We have programs capable of testing sequences of passwords-trying to 'break the code/ if you will-but with this particular hardware/software combination it's a terribly time consuming process."

Shoswitz cut him off. A couple of the wise guys applauded.

Watson sat down. Shoswitz said, "Obviously we need that password. Interestingly enough, a different individual approached this same pawn shop late yesterday afternoon, claiming he had hocked the laptop, which we know is incorrect.

He wanted the laptop back. He was told to return this morning.

This individual fit the description and through in-store video has subsequently been identified as the driver of the van in question. We would not only like the driver of that van under surveillance, we would also appreciate it if he would give us the password so we could have a look-see at the data. I hope you're following this because I'm not going to repeat it. Sergeant Boldt has decided we will not--I -repeat, will not-detain this individual when he returns this morning to claim the laptop. We will place him under surveillance and hope he leads us to bigger fish. Okay? Got it? But we need this friggin' password in order to get at the laptop, and Sergeant Matthews has some ideas on how we might get it. Sergeant ..." he said turning it over to her.

Daphne scanned the crowd, making eye contact with each person.

"What we're going to do-all of us-is 'trick' the suspect into volunteering the password. Each of you has some role to act out. You've already been briefed on that. What I'm going to be talking about applies to how you approach that role, how you approach the suspect. "We know what this guy looks like-you've all been shown a photocopy of a shot lifted from the store's video. We'll be fully wired. Watson will be set up in the back of the shop." She studied a report. "I've had the chance to study the in-store video of the suspect. This guy is the nervous and anxious type," she said. "He's cocky. He's used to being in control and is not at all comfortable about his present situation. He wants this laptop. And that's why he plays into our hands so well. He's suspicious, which means he'll respond best to negative reinforcement-reverse psychology. We want to play him like a fish-let him run. We act like we don't give a damn. That's what it amounts to. We're in no hurry to help him out. None whatsoever. If he senses our trying to help him, it'll tip him off. He's looking for us-remember that, too.

Those of you who are going to be on the shop floor as patrons, I want you to put him down at every opportunity. That shouldn't be too tough for most of you." More laughter. "Get in his face. Call him an 'asshole." Call him 'stupid-"

"Just don't call him late to dinner," someone shouted out. "Cute, Meyers. Bet you thought that up all by yourself," she said quickly, stealing the laughter that Meyers had hoped for, boosting her confidence. She looked Boldt in the eye and was gratified to see respect there. "We want to use his insecurity against him. He wants this laptop. You must remember that at all times. He'll do what's necessary to get it back, including giving us the password as long as we make him think of it. It may take us several times. We must be prepared for him to walk. We can't be afraid of that. Let him go; he'll be back." Lots of doubting faces on that one. "This is my territory," she reminded. "Trust me: He'll be back. That is, if that laptop contains the kind of information we think it does and if our surveillance boys don't tip him off to us." She allowed them time to talk among themselves and then interrupted. "We're going to push and pull him. Toy with him. It's essential we make this tough for him."

Boldt interrupted, his confidence apparent. "Once we have the password, we're going to copy files from the laptop's hard disk. That may take a minute ...

She reinterrupted, "Which is when he will grow the most suspicious. Those of you acting as patrons-that's your moment to cause the most confusion. We want to make it safe for him to be delayed. If he wants to leave-fine. Once we have the password we don't really care." o Boldt corrected, "But we do care about his catching on to us. The whole reason we're letting him skate is the hope he'll lead us up the ladder. It's like a Narco bust that way-which is exactly why those of you from Narco were assigned here. We need your expertise." Meyers asked, "How do we know this guy ain't the cutter?" Some heads nodded. "We have a profile of the harvester. This guy doesn't fit," Boldt answered. Daphne witnessed the glum faces and felt tempted to defend herself. He glanced at her from the side of the room where he was standing. "We have reason to suspect that the harvester is a veterinarian." They both allowed a few seconds for the resulting chatter that always followed such an announcement. This was the first time anyone had been told this, other than Shoswitz, Lamoia and herself.

Daphne offered, "There's also some physical evidence. We believe the harvester has a harsh voice. Our pawn shop suspect does not. We believe the accomplice wears size thirteen running shoes; the suspect in the pawn shop was wearing large running shoes. "The important thing," Daphne continued, "is to use his impatience against him. To criticize him: his looks, his intelligence, anything to heighten his anger. If we keep him angry, he won't be thinking clearly, he'll stop being observant his focus will be on directing his anger." She asked the two women, "Which one of you is the prostitute?"

That caused all the male heads to spin. Maria Romanello raised her hand. She was a good choice: dark skin, sultry attitude, with an eye-popping figure. But she was a gum-chewer and not at all glamorous. The guys applauded her. Maria flipped them the bird.

Daphne explained, "You'll want to turn it up pretty hot. Not for him-just in general. Lots of eye shadow. Some skin-as much as you feel comfortable with. Anything to keep him distracted without going over the top." Maria nodded. One of the men let out a wolf whistle. "What we're looking to do," she told them all, "is pull this guy in as many directions as we can. We make the environment busy. We make him feel unwanted. We piss him off, if possible. Maria keeps his hormones active. The more compartments in his brain we can activate, the less mental power he has to concentrate on what's being asked of him. We make him believe he's offering. We make him think this is all his idea. We play this right, and he'll volunteer that password without thinking about it."

"If we blow it," Boldt said, "chances are we've sacrificed a nice piece of evidence. Maybe even the smoking gun."

Daphne looked up at the clock. "The pawn shop opens at ten.

That gives us one hour to get into place. Any questions?"

A single hand raised. Meyers again. Daphne nodded. "Anybody thought about what we do if he pulls a piece and demands the laptop?" Boldt said, "We'll have an identical laptop on hand. if he tries to rob the place, we'll substitute it and give him the wrong one."

"Anything else?" No other hands surfaced. Daphne felt herself perspiring as she watched for the lieutenant's reaction. Shoswitz looked his crew over. He hesitated but finally nodded, giving his approval. Boldt glanced over at her. She felt a real connection to him.

As she passed closely to him on her way out, she whispered, "What'd you think?" He said softly to her, "I'm glad you're on our side."

she was thinking about Sharon again-it was all she could think about anymore. What had become of her? Where did this man at the pawn shop fit in? And what fate awaited Sharon if they failed in the task before them?

The receptionist left for lunch.

Pamela locked the front door and placed the CLOSED clock in the window-back in an hour-because they had a surgery to do and they couldn't be disturbed. In truth, this wasn't the only reason she locked the front door. It was for privacy as well, for while it trapped the public out, it also trapped the two of them inside, together. They had work to do.

She had lost two pounds in just three days. Some kind of miracle! She attributed this newfound strength to him. She placed the phones on the service, unbuttoned the top button of her shirt, and headed for his office. If she was honest with herself, she was worried about him. He wasn't himself today. He had spent the morning brooding in his office, his nose buried in medical journals and textbooks. He had outright refused to see several of their patients, passing the work along to her. Not like him at all.

She knocked. "Enter," he called out in a threatening voice that reminded her of her father. No, he was not himself at all. She opened the door.

He looked worried behind his desk. Others might not see it in him, but she knew him better than anyone. He picked at his beard nervously. "What about that stray?" he asked. "What's become of him?"

"We've called around. No one is claiming him.

He's headed for the pound later this afternoon."

"The pound?

But they'll kill him in three days! I saved that dog's leg!" he protested. "The farm? Is that what you mean? You want him out at the farm?"

"Are we prepped for surgery?" he asked. "A knotted intestine. Routine. It's all set up for you, prepped and ready to go." She added as a hint, "I've locked up. The phones are off." She wondered if he noticed her exposed cleavage. He didn't seem to. She reached up and undid the next button as well. "Very well," he said, rising from his black leather chair. "But not the lower G.I. Set up the stray for thoracic." "Excuse me?" she questioned. "Prep the stray.

Now!"

A few minutes later, they were standing alongside one another ready for the first incision. He studied the animal for what seemed like an interminable amount of time. "Doctor?" she said, breaking the silence.

He glared at her. He looked down at her breasts and told her to button herself up. "This isn't a porno movie, you know. We have work to do. Correction! I have work to do. I'll handle this alone."

"What?" she gasped, fishing for the buttons.

He glanced around the room. "Get me some ice," he said. "Ice?"

"Now!"

She left the room and headed into the small kitchenette. She collected ice from a freezer there. She heard a buzzing from the surgical suite. The saw? "Saline!" he called out loudly. She had to go to the back room to find it. It took her longer than she wanted. She hurried back into the operating room, because he blamed her for any problems, even if she was off doing something he told her to. "Where's that saline? Penicillin! Where's the ice?" he repeated sternly.

When she rounded the corner and saw him standing there, she stopped abruptly. "My God!" she exclaimed, seeing the chest cavity splayed open. "A perfect job," he proclaimed proudly. "And fast, at that!" He turned to face her, his outstretched hands cupped firmly together.

There, still beating, was the dog's harvested heart.

When Donnie Maybeck entered the pawn shop, he had no way of knowing that his every word, his every movement was being monitored and recorded by the police. No idea that everyone in the place-the cheap smelling skirt with the cleivage, the lame Jim! Hendrix impersonator, and the half-dozen others who crowded the counters-were all undercover cops. No clue that the big hairy bastard in the undershirt who was giving him such a hard time was a Homicide cop named Lou Boldt.

The man behind the counter was supposed to have been Hymie Monros, but Hyrnie had missed the briefing because of an asthma attack that had later sent him to the emergency room. Daphne, through Shoswitz, had tapped Boldt for the job. Boldt, notorious for avoiding an active role in setups or stings, had argued he might be recognized from his pursuit of the van.

Shoswitz had been carefully coached to convince Boldt to play the part. He said, "It was late afternoon. Dusk, if not dark. It was raining. You were runnin& which means you had your head down. It was a panel van, which means it had no windows on the back or on the side, except the passenger door, and you never made it that far, by your own admission." Boldt had smelled a conspiracy. "The side mirror," Boldt had argued. That was when he knew it was a conspiracy and that Daphne had coached the lieutenant, who immediately produced a still photograph of the gas station surveillance taken by J.C. Adams. It clearly showed that the van was missing its passenger-side mirror. In fact, there was no way the driver might have seen him, and it even helped to explain why the man had reached to lock the passenger door so late-blind on that side, he had not reacted until he had heard Boldt try the cargo door.

Boldt, his skin going itchy from nerves, told the suspect once again, "What I'm telling you, asshole, is that any sleazeball could come in here off the street, ask if we had a Toshiba laptop, and then claim it was his." Boldt carried a huge wad of pink gum in his cheeks. It looked like a pitcher's abscess. it had been Shoswitz's idea. "Read the fucking sign."

"Just let me see the thing."

"Show me the receipt," Boldt repeated, finding it difficult to stay with Daphne's script, but doing so.

What if she were wrong? What if they pushed too hard, and this guy went south on them? "Show me the ticket, then you'll get the laptop, providing you've got the money."

got the money," the man complained anxiously, producing a hefty roll of bills. "That's blood money, Boldt thought. Sight of it made him sick. He wanted to arrest this guy. Now. WHY wait? "Money won't help you without the ticket," he warned. "The sign, pal. Read the fucking sign."

"But I lost the ticket," the guy protested, color rising into his pale face. He had horrible breath; the blind woman, Agnes, had mentioned that. He kept his hand loosely over his mouth, half covering a set of the worst teeth Boldt had ever seen. "I suppose I'm the first fucking guy to lose a receipt, right?"

"Maybe you can't read." Boldt pointed to the sign. "You blind or just plain stupid?" Boldt Ill painted was beginning to enjoy this. It gave him a vent for his anger.

The woman edged over to them and said to Boldt in a sexy voice, "Hey, sweetheart. You gonna jerk off all day or what? I got some rocks I wanna hock."

"Get lost," Maybeck barked at her.

"Get fucked," she said to him. "Wasn't tawkin' it to you. "In a minute," Boldt told her. "Those really your teeth?" she asked Maybeck. He popped her shoulder with the butt of his hand. She stumbled back and flipped him the bird. "I don't need your business, pal," Boldt said. "Take it somewhere else. Now!" He felt terrified to say such a thing and yet he went with Daffy's assessment. "Hey! Hey!" the guy said, raising his hands as if the woman had stumbled all by herself. "I'm cool, man."

"You hit her again, I'm gonna see you through the front door-without opening it." "You and who else?" the guy asked. "Who's next?" Boldt called over the guy's head, ignoring him completely now.

He looked over at Maria Romanello. Her skirt was about as big as a fly swatter, her legs, in black tights, a mile long. "What kind of stones?" he asked her.

The guy was looking at her, too. Damn near drooling. Meyers let loose on electric guitar so loudly that Boldt couldn't hear himself think. Boldt hollered for him to knock it off. "Come on, man," the suspect tried once more.

Boldt felt relieved that Daphne's ideas seemed to be working. He never would have played it this way. Not in a million years. He said strongly-a teacher losing patience- "My floor manager told you yesterday: You lose the ticket; you come back after the grace period; you buy it back at floor value. if no one has bought it by then, it's yours. Those are the rules, pal. And I gotta tell you: A laptop computer is not going to be around that long. No way. So give it up. Get a fucking job for all I care."

"You got to make an exception." He offered Boldt two twenties he had cupped in his hand. "What do you think?"

"Put the fucking cab fare in your pocket, pal. You're going to need it. Wrong guy. Listen," he said, conceding a point, "the only exception I ever make on something like this is if the customer can describe the item in such a way as to convince me they're the rightful owner. But with something like this-with a laptop computer-they're all the fucking same to me. I don't know shit about computers-so you're plum out of luck."

"But they're not the same!"

"To me they are."

"Diamonds," Maria interrupted, leaning in so the man could see down her blouse. "Diamond earrings."

The guy was staring right along with Boldt. "Get outta here," the suspect said to her, but he didn't seem to mean it.

She adjusted her blouse. "Keep your fucking eyes to yourself," she said. "In a minute, darling," Boldt told her. She pumped her way over to a stool and sat down on it with her legs set wide apart. Meyers broke a string on the guitar. Who could blame him?

The suspect was still staring at Maria when he said softly, "Jesus, what a package."

"I hear ya," Boldt agreed. It brought them together. It allowed Boldt to soften. "But what if I could prove it's mine?" he asked Boldt. "You mean a serial number, something like that? Maybe. We've done weirder things before." It was an awful chance to take. If the guy produced the serial number then Boldt would have to change his mind. Or he could pretend to check in the back and "discover" that the serial number indicated the computer was hot. Something. But this was clearly the turning point. He felt warm again. He wondered if the guy could see him sweating. "You got the serial number?"

"Better than the serial number. A password. Who else besides the owner is going to know the fucking password?"

"A password? What the fuck are you talking about?"

"The thing won't work without the password."

"You kidding me?" Boldt shouted over to Lamoia, who was also in a grungy undershirt, "Hey, Benny! Know anything about computer passwords?"

"Password? I thought that was a TV game show!" He laughed.

"Check Deloris in the back. She's the only one around here with any brains."

Maria shouted over to Lamoia, "Hey, buddy? Yeah. You interested in my diamonds?"

"Can't keep my eyes off 'em, honey," he shouted back. She strained up off the stool and sauntered over to him, brushing past the suspect on her way, keeping his attention off the fact that Boldt had gone into the back room. Meyers managed to get the rock guitar sounding like a jet airplane. Lamoia swore a blue streak at him until he turned it back down.

Boldt mopped his forehead when he reached the back room. There were a couple techies waiting with the laptop. Some expensive looking cameras were locked away in wood-framed chicken wire cabinets. A belt of cigarette smoke hung in the air like a layer of cloud. It came from the real owner, who was chainsmoking from a corner seat. He looked nervous.

The techies had the laptop up and running, the cursor blinking on a line that awaited the necessary password. Daphne rushed up to Boldt. "You're doing great," she said. "Tell him to write down exactly what steps to take and that Deloris will try to get it running. You're going to have to convince him that under no conditions will you allow him or any client to work the machine. No exceptions."

"No exceptions," Bolt repeated, his system feeling overloaded. "Now I know why people smoke," Boldt said, looking over at the nervous owner. He walked back into the main room.

One of the guys working undercover shouted, "You guys all on fucking vacation or what? I want some fucking service."

Maria turned to him, "I got some friends who are in the fucking service, honey, if you're serious. But they ain't cheap."

"Up yours," he said. "That's the general idea, in case you're new to it. She returned her attention to Lamoia and went through the act of selling him her "stones."

Boldt was so entertained by this-so surprised at how convincing his people were-that the suspect had to shout over at him to get his attention. "So?" it worked in Boldt's favor.

Meyers launched into a dreadful rendition of "Purple Haze," badly out of tune. A woman with kitchen brooms for eyelashes entered through the front door . inspecting her nails. Her facial skin looked like old boot leather.

Boldt worried about her. He didn't want any civilians in here just now. She might realize that he and Lamoia were new faces. Boldt went into the back room again and told the owner to put one of his people out front. The owner agreed. The new person handled the woman.

Boldt hurried back to the suspect who was clearly losing patience. To Meyers, the would-be jim! Hendrix, he shouted, "You gonna buy that thing? This ain't rehearsal space!" To the suspect he said impatiently, "I gotta have two forms of picture I.D. from you, and you gotta write down how I do this password thing."

"I can do it for you."

"No fuckin' way. Do you read?

Do you listen? We got state rules, and we got our own rules here, you understand? And I don't got all day, neither, so move it or lose it." He pushed a piece of paper in front of him. To one of the undercovers he shouted, "How can I help you?" in no mood to wait around for the suspect. As he stepped over to help this "customer," the suspect said, "I'm with you!" He fished for his wallet. "But I only have one picture I.D."

Boldt wanted that wallet so badly, wanted this man's name so badly that he felt like diving across the counter to get at it. Instead he had to sound uninterested. "I'm not gonna do this computer shit twice, pal, so make the directions simple. Understand? Far as I'm concerned, you can come back after the grace period. Guys like you are a real pain in the ass."

The suspect slid him his open wallet. Boldt hadn't realized how hard it would be to suppress his exhilaration. He felt high. Donald Maybeck, he scribbled out, taking down the name, address and pertinent data. This had to be the rush that poker players felt. "I gotta have a second I.D. of some sort, Mr. Maybeck," he said. "You got a credit card ... something like that?" Boldt had to bite his lip so he wouldn't smile. By the end of the day, he felt like telling the man, I'll know more about you than your mother does.

He owned a Shell Oil credit card. Name: Donald Monroe Maybeck.

I'll have your full credit history taxes, debts, income. You just became public property

It took everything in his cop's brain to slide the wallet back across the counter without searching the rest of its contents. He couldn't allow even the slightest indication of pleasure to cross his face. He drummed up annoyance-this asshole was keeping him from his wife and kid-and moved down the counter to the waiting "customer" while Maybeck wrote out the computer instructions. The temptation to burst into a victory smile proved incredibly difficult to resist. Finally, he faked a sneeze in order to look away. He took a deep breath, regained some composure, and returned his attention to the undercover cop.

Meyers shouted from the floor: "Hey, fatman, I'll give you two bills for the guitar and the amp."

Boldt shouted back, "Wait your turn." Lamoia called out, "Hey, dick-for-brains, watch who you're calling fat. Put the guitar down and get the fuck out of this store. Now!"

"Eat shit!" Meyers called back. He turned the thing up loud and hit an ear-blistering chord.

Maria marched over to him. He stood up bravely. She planted her hand into his crotch and squeezed strongly. "You're hurting my ears, Beethoven. You want to trade hurts?" She squeezed again.

Boldt was distracted as well. The entire store was distracted.

"Out!" Lamoia shouted. Meyers left, red in the face-which wasn't all an act.

Okay," Maybeck called out to Boldt, waving the instructions at him. Boldt was thinking that had they brought this guy into interrogation and requested the password, he never would have volunteered it. Now, here he was waving it at Boldt like granny with her flag at a Fourth of July parade. Take it! he seemed to be saying. Each step closer Boldt drew to that piece of paper, his heart beat a little quicker. Finally, his fingers took hold. To his surprise, Maybeck refused to let go. They stood face to face, eye to eye. There was nothing in this guy's eyes-like looking down into a dark cellar. Maybeck's breath was foul; again Boldt recalled the comments of Sharon's housemate. It was the same guy the one who had dragged Sharon from the room; Boldt felt certain of it. He wanted to take the guy by the neck and choke him down. He wanted to hurt him.

Still holding the instructions-the password maybeck said, "You get the thing running, then I can buy it back for what you paid me, right?"

"Right."

"You'll look that up. You're being square with me. Right?" Could he sense Boldt's anger? No, it was the silence. The room had gone still. Boldt looked up a fraction of a second before the suspect. He saw Lamoia first, whose panicked eyes gave Boldt a sinking feeling in his gut.

And then he saw the uniform. A patrolman-a beat cop doing his job-had wandered into the pawn shop. Chances are he knew at least some of these undercover people by name. It had shut everybody up instantly. Maybeck went white as a sheet. Seeing this, Boldt improvised. He said strongly, but not loudly, "You've got no problem with the police, do you? We don't do business with people involved with the cops." He wanted to sound as if he were protecting himself. Being selfish. All-american. "Not me," Maybeck replied. "I'm cool." He looked terrified.

Lamoia crossed through the counter. "Officer Barnes! We're all out of Uzis this week."

Maria Romanello laughed and started mouthing off at the cop who, looking around, stood dumbstruck. He must have realized that he had walked into a sting, and now he wasn't sure how to act.

Boldt kept one eye on the cop. Maybeck kept one eye on the cop.

Lamoia said to Barnes, "I got a hell of a nice car stereo you might like." He led him over to the counter. Smooth as silk, he leaned in and whispered something when Maybeck's head was turned.

In a frightened but contained voice, Maybeck said to Boldt, "I'll be back later to pick it up." He turned.

Boldt caught him by the arm. He held on tightly. "Suit yourself, asshole. But I'm not wasting anybody's time on this unless you're here."

Maybeck glanced down at the way Boldt was holding onto him. Only then did Boldt realize that he was wearing his police academy ring. He never did this kind of undercover work, had never even considered taking his ring off. But now it glared back at him like a neon sign. He released the man immediately. Had he seen the ring? Had Boldt blown the entire setup? Had he sacrificed Sharon Shaffer?

The patrolman said goodbye to Lamoia and left the building.

Maybeck, still watching the front door, said over his shoulder, "I'm hanging. just hurry it up.

Boldt could hear Daphne's coaching. Against his better judgment he said to the man, "You sure you're clean with the cops?"

"I'm clean, okay? You gonna do this or not?"

"Wait here."

As Boldt entered the back room for a second time all eyes were trained on him-terror in most of them. One of the techies snatched Maybeck's instructions from him and hurried to the computer. Boldt felt stunned. He was tugging at his ring when Daphne caught up to him. She looked a few years older than just a couple of minutes before. She stared at him. "You all right?" she asked. "I'm taking Grecian Formula into the shower with me tonight." "You did good," she said, intentional in her cop talk.

Boldt glanced over at the techies. "Any luck?" he asked.

One of them signaled a thumbs-up. "We're copying now," he said.

Adding, "Database software, a couple of big files, Sergeant.

That's good news I think.,, Boldt studied Maybeck on Watson's television screen. The entire ordeal had been captured on timecoded videotape. They would relive his every move, study every word for significance. The prosecuting attorney's office would examine the tape for signs of entrapment and rule as to its admissibility in court. A process would begin. Maybeck was in their file as of now. Boldt handed Watson the slip of paper that contained Maybeck's name, address, and credit card number. "Fax this back to the office and have them run him through the computer. Do the same with the Bureau. I want to know this guy's birthmarks, if he has any."

"I'd like a copy of that," Daphne said, explaining to Boldt, "for the handwriting sample.

The instructions as well."

Boldt looked at her skeptically. He didn't put much faith in handwriting analysis. She said defensively, "I'll make a believer out of you yet."

"Don't count on it."

"He's looking for you," Watson warned.

Boldt faced the television screen. Maybeck looked restless.

Boldt looked to Daphne for advice. "Make him wait," she said.

"We've got the password."

Watson added his two cents: "You're going to lose him. He knows it shouldn't have taken this long."

"We need him," Boldt reminded. To the techies manning the laptop he said, "How long?"

"There are a couple big files. We're doing everything we-"

"How long?" he reemphasized. "Not long."

"Stall him," Daphne said. She ran over to the computer table, snatched up the instructions. "Tell him to step you through it."

"He's leaving," Watson said to Boldt. To Daphne, he added, "I told you."

As Boldt reentered the pawn shop's show floor, Maybeck was on his way out the front door. "Hey, asshole! Mr. Toshiba' Where the hell are you going?" he asked. "Fuck you!"

Maybeck stopped. He didn't answer. He looked scared. Maybe he'd figured it for the setup it was.

Lamoia shouted to Maybeck, "Hey! What do you want a computer for anyway, Mr. Toshiba? I got a hell of a car stereo system over here." It broke the ice. Maybeck allowed the door to shut, remaining inside.

Boldt argued, "You crush my stones about how important this is, and now you're gonna blow on me? Get gone-and don't show your face in here again."

Another agonizing silence as everyone looked at Maybeck. The amplifier spit static. It was the only sound except for traffic noise. "Why so long?" Maybeck asked. "What? You think I'm Einstein?" Boldt asked, wondering how Miles was doing. "You got the handwriting of a moron, you know that?" He waved the sheet of instructions at him. "My first-grader's got better lettering than this! Get out of here. Get gone. But don't come back here. Not ever."

"What?'You can't read my handwriting?"

"What did I just tell you? You gonna leave? Go ahead, leave! You got a lotta nerve wasting my time. Yanking my chain." "What can't you read?" Maybeck asked, taking his first step back toward the counter.

Boldt felt a huge sigh of relief pass through him. "How about you explain it to me?" They worked it out between them. Maybeck talked Boldt through the whole thing. It took several minutes, Boldt watching the wall clock.

When he finally returned to the back room, the techies were standing there anxiously awaiting him. The laptop was all ready to go. "We got it!" one of them said excitedly. "We got every file in the thing." Boldt took the laptop. One of them said, "Better give it another minute." That minute stretched on indefinitely. "Okay," he finally said.

Boldt asked, "What the hell was the password, anyway. I forgot to even look." Donnie Maybeck stood less than fifteen feet away, on the other side of the closed door to this back room. "Zoom," the man answered. "Whatever the hell that means."

Off Inside the chilled, damp confines of Elden Tegg's wilderness kennel, Sharon Shaffer sat bare bottomed, her arms hugging her knees, her weak grip clutching the discarded needle she had recovered, her mind off in an imagined fantasyland where the cement she now sat on was a hot, fine, Mexican sand, and that god awful smell in the air was the sweet perfume of a trade wind. Each day she challenged herself to come up with another image, for without them her mind would decay into the depths of selfpity and her body surrender to disease. No one needed to tell her-she knew. She had seen it on the streets, usually at the receiving end of a bottle or a needle similar to the one she now cherished as if it were a key to the lock on the door that impounded her. She assumed from her diarrhea that he had her on a powerful course of antibiotics. Weakness was her biggest enemy. He was both feeding and drugging her through the I.V.

She didn't know how much longer she had in her.

Strength was everything. She knew that. Her will carried her hour to hour, but for how much longer? She continued to remind herself that as terrible as this was, she had seen worse, had lived worse, for she had lived without faith. Faith alone now carried her forward. Perhaps this suffering was her punishment for years of recklessness.

His words haunted her: "Practice makes perfect." This said while he held Michael's heart. Did that mean what she thought it meant? Was her heart next? Her life?

Her years on the street had taught her some things. She had learned how to fight, how to survive, how to lie, how to deceive. Cunning, she had found, could get you out of more problems than any amount of reason or talk.

The needle remained coiled in her fingers. An eye for an eye, she thought.

The obstacles she faced seemed overwhelming. The do c-tor, the vet-she still thought of him as The Keeper-was using Felix to patrol the building. The dog would tear apart any intruder or her, should she manage to escape. She needed more of a plan on how to deal with that. As part of an incentive program, The Keeper had also left the dog without food. Felix used the automatic waterer from the cage to her right, its door wired open for him, but as each day wore on into the afternoon, in anticipation of The Keeper's arrival, of food, the dog's restless pacing increased. He would enter the cage adjacent to her, sit there and drool while staring at her. it often went on for hours; it frightened her. She would motion at him, scold him through her gag, but the guard dog just sat there impassively, smelling her. Wanting her.

What worried her most about her planned escape was the way The Keeper used the shock collar to subdue her. The collar could be triggered either of two ways: if she touched the chain link or if The Keeper used the button on the remote "wand" that corresponded to her collar. His routine was to deliver a few devastating blasts to her collar, weakening her before his entry into the cage to change her dressings. By the end of those blasts, she was feeble and in immense pain-she was putty in his hands. He knew exactly what he was doing. He was taking no chances.

It would require all her strength if she were to use the needle on him. She had it all worked out: needle to the eye, out the cage, out the door, lock it, into the car, gone. But his liberal use of the shock collar warned her that she would not have all her strength when the moment arrived. , After hours days?-of contemplation, the only solution to this problem that she could arrive at was to condition herself against the effects of the collar. She had to beat him at his own game-to take more than he could deliver.

Getting started was not easy. Knowledge was one thing, execution another. For hours now, while Felix stared at her, she had been staring at the chain link, daring herself to willingly reach out and touch it. It required a morbid perversity-a masochism-that she found impossible to summon.

Nothing, she reminded herself, is impossible. She closed her eyes, bracing herself for the power of that shock, reached out and took hold of the fence. The collar sounded its warning-an electronic buzz-and then delivered its full voltage. The kick snapped her spine straight, lifted her chin, and filled her with a savage heat. it felt as if her neck were burning. She released the fence and tumbled heavily to the cement, at first unable to catch her breath-numb, her joints welded, her muscles locked tight in an impossible, unforgiving cramp. She only realized it had temporarily blinded her when her vision returned and she saw Felix up on all fours, his stub wagging, his eyes locked onto her.

She sat up, prepared herself, and took hold again. She held on a few milliseconds longer this time, endured the seizure, the spasms, the white-hot fire at her neck, finally surrendering and letting go. Again, she collapsed to the cement. Again, her vision failed her briefly. Again, she was met by the hungry eyes of her sentry watching from the other side of the wire wall.

Escape was all that mattered. Since this pain was a means to freedom, she would gladly repeat this routine a dozen times, a hundred. He would shock her, she would act the part, and she would be free. Perhaps, given enough times, she might drain the collar's battery and render it useless. She repeatedly reminded herself that there was no easy way out of here, that sacrifice was the only means to this end.

Her mouth was dry. She felt as if her insides were shaking involuntarily. She denied her fears. She combated the pain with desire.

She reached out and took hold of the fence again, it sang through her like music. it made her dizzy and light-headed. It challenged her to let go. But she fought it, refusing. "Noooo!" she screamed into the gag that rubbed her mouth raw. "Nooo!" as she gripped her fingers more tightly.

Felix looked on with the white-rimmed eyes of disbelief. Awe.

He was her audience. Respectful. He sat back on his haunches and cocked his head in question.

And then she realized she could see! Her vision had overcome the shock from the collar. No more blind moments. A small victory, but for Sharon a milestone.

Encouraged, she grabbed the fence again and again, her collar sounding its warning buzz each time before the voltage surged through her.

One step at a time, she told herself. One step at a time.

With Daphne looking on, Bolt struggled at the coffee machine, trying to turn it on so he could make hot water for some tea.

Lamoia entered the office, bumped Boldt out of the way, flipped the on-off switch twice rapidly, tapped the machine on the side and proclaimed, "No problemo." Sure enough, the light came on, and a moment later the water started dripping.

Lamoia bought himself a Coke. The three of them took seats around Boldt's table.

Boldt asked Lamoia, "We get Anything from Watson? Anything in that database?"

"He's on his way. What I have is Maybeck."

"I'm more interested in the database." I know that," Lamoia said. "We all are," Daphne added. /'Go ahead," Boldt instructed, attempting to contain his impatience. "Donald Monroe Maybeck has no priors, no outstanding warrants, and only a couple of delinquent parking citations. As far as we're concerned, he's clean."

"Shit," Boldt hissed. He opened a file folder just to occupy his hands, to keep busy. He had been hoping-praying-that Maybeck's record might tell them something about the man. DMV records-all J Lamoia had to go onoffered you precious little information. Vii;diill Lamoia continued, "He owns a blue 1981 Ford panel van. Other than that, officially we don't have squat on this guy. I did, however, put in a call to a buddy of mine who is able to pull credit records no questions please," he said to Daphne. "I supplied him with the gasoline credit card number. He's going to poke around for us. No promises." He sipped from the soda can. "You hear about the laptop?" Boldt shook his head. Lamoia was one of those cops who knew anything of importance before anyone else. He prided himself on it.

Lamoia said, "J.C., who's working the first shift of surveillance along with Butch, just called in that Maybeck already deep-sixed the laptop. He got a photo of him tossing it into Lake Union. I suppose we could pick him up for littering."

"Well," Boldt said, trying to see the positive, no matter how small the victory, "if we ever get as far as trial, his tossing a perfectly good computer in the drink may help reinforce the possible criminal nature of the data he had in there. We can assume he erased the data, so chances are that he also knew that the laptop was hot-maybe he even stole it himself. He's protecting himself. It's not much, but it's something." "There's a down side to that," Lamoia reminded. "If he's trashing evidence, there has to be a reason." Daphne said, "He's already onto us?" Boldt felt an added pang of urgency. Bile stung the back of his throat. His stomach had turned on him. Welcome back, he could hear it saying. If Maybeck and the harvester knew about the investigation, then the laptop wouldn't be the only evidence being destroyed. They would have to move quickly now. Every day, every hour gave the harvester more opportunity to distance himself from his work.

He scanned his current checklist. Addressing Daphne, who was still glowing with their success at the pawn shop an hour earlier, he asked, "Do we have the count on the number of vets in King County?" He had asked her for this the night before on the way to the gravesite. It felt like a week ago. "Not officially, but we have a bare minimum." She hesitated.

Boldt knew that disappointed look of hers, knew that he didn't want to hear her answer.

She told him, "Three hundred and seventy." The, number hit Boldt like a truck. "That's a joke, right?"

"That's only the veterinarians who advertise in the US WEST Yellow Pages. There's probably a third again as many who don't elect to advertise."

Seriously?" A number that size seemed impossible. It was impossible in terms of the investigation. Boldt instructed, "We've got to narrow that down. Fast. That's way too big a list to even begin Y I thinking about." There were background checks to make, bank records to scrutinize, interviews to be conducted. A number like that would take a team of twenty investigators over six months to whittle down.

She added, "Some of those are clinics. A clinic can have one or as many as ten or more vets. We're going to need an army if we're going to go after these guys one by one," she suggested, having come to the same conclusion as Boldt.

Boldt fought to maintain some optimism. Given his fatigue, it wasn't easy. "I'll hit Shoswitz up for the army-for task force status. You try to narrow that list down to surgeons. Or maybe tighter-internal surgeons? Transplant surgeons? I don't know.

See what's possible. We've got to cut that list in half at the very least. Half of that, if we're lucky."

I'll do this during all my free time, right?" she asked sarcastically. He wasn't the only one showing fatigue. "Listen, I know it's hard-"

"It's impossible," Lamoia interrupted, supporting Daphne. "I'm not laying this on you, Sarge, but we gotta have a bigger team. I've been pulling office hours and surveillance duty. Not only is the lieutenant gonna shit when he sees my overtime, but I'm a walking zombie. A guy makes mistakes when he gets this tired. Even me. We could be overlooking something here-something major-and we wouldn't even fuckin' know it."

"Any suggestions?" Boldt asked. He'd been up all night with Dixie at the bone dig.

He could hardly keep a thought straight in his head.

Lamoia said, "Like you said, a task force would sure help. We could pull guys from County Police; the FBI boys would be able to help out maybe. We've got to have more manpower."

"And womanpower," Daphne corrected. "I said I'll try," Boldt snapped irritably. "Sorry," he apologized.

Lamoia drained half the Coke. Daphne wrote herself a note.

She said, "I'll do what I can to narrow down the vet list. Maybe Maria can help me out."

Lamoia offered tentatively, "I'm overseeing the Maybeck surveillance, but J.C.'s got it pretty well handled. I'll still be putting in a lot of office time. I'm available."

It was times like this, when,everyone reached deep and suddenly rallied around each other in the crunch, that Boldt remembered what it was like to be a team, what he had missed about this job. just yesterday he had wondered why he had come back; now he wondered why he had ever left. God, was he tired.

He consulted his list again and said to Lamoia, "There's more."

"Always is."

"Now that we've located these bones, I want a follow-up.

Granted, anybody and their brother with a four-wheel-drive has access to that area of the Tolt River, but I want to search county records for any landowners out there. Forestry anything we can think of. We cross-check anything we get both with the AMA's list of surgeons and with the list of vets that you put' together," he said to Daphne. "Sometimes people bury bodies a million miles from home-just as often, in their own backyard. Let's check that out." "I'm on it," Lamoia said, writing it down, trying his best to mask his discouragement. "I know that it's a long shot and a hell of a lot of work," Boldt admitted. He also knew that Lamoia didn't like this kind of paper research; he preferred street work. "But these bones are part of this thing. Dixie proved that with the tool markings. We can't let this slide." He encouraged, "If we go to task force status, we may be able to wrestle loose a chopper to do an aerial search of the Tolt region. Maybe that would speed it up."

Daphne suggested, "U.S. Geological might have satellite maps of the area. We could look for structures, identify locations, and check county records. Kind of work it backwards. Our friends at the Army Corps might be able to help us with the maps." "I'll call them," Boldt said, making a note. "What else?"

Watson entered and took a seat in a chair over by Daphne. His glasses were filthy. He needed new blades in his electric razor his face looked like an old weed patch. He adjusted his glasses and said, "I won't bore you with the details."

"Good," Lamoia said, intimidating the man.

Watson looked a nervous wreck. His domain was wires and cathoderay tubes. He didn't take to a meeting like this.

Daphne advised him, "Don't worry about John. He has a testosterone problem."

"To every problem, a solution," Lamoia chimed in, trying to stare her down. "Not in your wildest fantasies." She stared back. "Watson?" Boldt asked. When people came under too much stress, it found strange ways of manifesting itself. "That's not my name, you know," he complained. "With a name like Clarence, you should be grateful, " Lamoia advised him. "The database?" Boldt reminded. "The laptop. Did you print up the database for us?"

He handed Boldt a sheet of paper. The database looked like a spreadsheet, a grid of rows and columns. There were seven columns and had they been titled across the top, which they were not, Boldt guessed they might have been labeled, DATE, NAME, FILE NUMBER, ADDRESS, PHONE NUMBER, BLOODTYPE, (?). The rows were created by the -names of the donors, listed alphabetically.

"The minute we had this list, we faxed it down to Bloodlines for comparison. According to them, what distinguishes ours from theirs-in terms of layout-is the addition of a new column-the last column over-which contains as yet unexplained four-digit numbers. This column is unique to this laptop database; that is, there is no such column in the Bloodlines database. The other distinguishing feature is that the date column-far left has also been modified so that only a small percentage of the records now contain a date. They should all be dated. "It is sorted alphabetically by the donor's name," he continued. "What's interesting is that if a name has a date, it also has an entry in this new column. There are twenty-eight such dated fields."

"Twenty-eight?" Boldt asked, flipping forward. "It's the donor list," Daphne speculated. A silence hung over the room. Daphne broke it. "Is Sharon on there?"

"Twenty-eight donors," Boldt repeated, looking ahead on the list. How many dead? How many victims of electroshock? He spotted the name. "She's on here," he confirmed.

Daphne went a sickly pale and excused herself from the room.

Boldt fought his stomach. Lamoia killed the Coke. Watson toyed with his glasses nervously. Boldt waited for Daphne's return. She didn't look much better.

He ran down the column of names, calling out: "Blumenthal, Chapman, Shaffer, Sherman, Walker: They're all here." He felt it as both a nauseating moment of reality and a major moment of triumph the extra care they had taken with Maybeck had proved worth it.

He noticed for the first time that the date alongside Sharon Shaffer's name was not a date in the past, but was for two days from now: Friday, February 10. "Lou?" Did it show that easily? Or was it her? She always seemed to know his thoughts.

in less than forty-eight hours, Sharon Shaffer would be cut open, According to Dr. Light Horse, it was likely to be a major organ.

There would be no time to organize a task force, no time to sort through a list of three-hundred-seventy veterinarians. They would have to force every lead they had. Every suspect. Sharon Shaffer's life had a burning fuse attached to it now. Look for the good, he reminded himself-they were too tired to take a setback like this. "Accentuate the Positive"-it was one of those songs occasionally requested in a piano bar. He missed The Big joke; he wondered how Bear was doing with the IRS. "She's alive," he said. "Sharon Shaffer's alive."

"Lou?" she asked again, sensing something wrong. He slid the printout over to her, pointing to the date. He watched as her eyes glassed up.

A confused Lamoia asked, "But that's good, right?" Daphne slid the sheet to him, and he too fell silent. "What did I miss?" Watson asked.

Boldt inquired, "What do these four-digit numbers mean?"

"I can tell you what we ruled out," Watson explained. "We know it's not phone numbers. Not social security numbers. Not zip codes."

"But what is it?" Boldt asked angrily. "What are they?" Watson leaned away from him sheepishly.

The coffee room's phone rang. Boldt answered it. He listened.

He said to the receiver, "Can't you just tell me?" He paused.

"I'm on my way." He hung up. "What's up?" Daphne asked.

"Dixie's got something."

Boldt turned the car into the back of the Harbor View Medical Center and started hunting for a parking place. Five minutes later, two blocks away, he found one across from the Lucky Day Grocery.

He climbed out of the car. A student cycled past him on a mountain bike. The tires splashed street water onto Boldt's shoes and onto a section of newspaper that was stuck to the pavement. A display ad for an American Airlines special to Hawaii looked up at him. This meant something. He studied it more closely. It was the airplane in particular. And then it occurred to him. He unlocked the car, so nervous with the keys that he dropped them. When he finally got inside, he shoved the key into the ignition, turned it to battery power, and punched in the cellular's security code.

He dialed the downtown office and asked to speak to Daphne. She had to be paged. Boldt was losing patience when he finally heard her voice. He said immediately: "They're flight numbers. The extra numbers in the database are flight numbers."

There was a long pause as she processed this. A woman bought a newspaper outside the Lucky Day Grocery. He added, "They had to connect these organs to specific flights in order to get them to their destination in the allowable time. It all had to be arranged in advance-the timing just right."

"A courier!" she said. "Track down those flight numbers. See if we're right. Move it to the top of your list."

"Don't spend all day over there," she cautioned. "You know Dixie," he said. "When he makes a discovery, he tends to drag it out a little."

"A little?" she did know Dixie. "I'll try to hurry it along."

The medical examiner's offices are in the basement of the Harbor View Medical Center. The ceilings are low, the windows rare-and then just half windows looking out at the sidewalk. The hum of computers, the active ventilation and fluorescent lights, the percussion of typewriters, and the electronic purring of telephones were the only sounds as Dixon led Boldt into a back room, where the excavated skeleton was now laid out on a stainless steel slab. "It's a damn good set of remains," Dixon announced. "All but the teeth. We're missing the lower mandible. Several teeth in the upper jaw were chiseled out. He used a screwdriver, maybe. He didn't want us identifying her. I like that," Dixon said. "That means he had something to hide. That kind of effort always makes me all the more determined." He pointed to what remained of the rib cage. "He cut ribs six and seven," he leaned closer, "here and here, immediately above the abdominal cavity. We got a nice set of tool markings off the butt end of number six." He handed Boldt a set of black-and-white lab photos just like those he had showed him at jazz Alley, only with today's date, February 8, photographed into the upper right corner. The upper set of magnified tool markings was labeled Peter Blumenthal. The bottom set, Jane Doe. The tool markings matched.

Dixie continued, "A liver procurement, a liver harvest is one of the most difficult surgeries there is. Extremely technical. It's not uncommon for the procuring surgeon to do what's called a radical harvest." He demonstrated using the skeleton. "You take far more tissue than you need, leaving all the connecting vessels intact. The transplant surgeon then does the actual harvest."

"Dead or alive?" Boldt asked in a whisper. "Would the victim have been dead or alive?"

"Prior to surgery, I can't say." Dixon looked at the gaping hole in the rib cage. "But after this technique," he said, "definitely dead."

Dixon crossed the room, returning with several jars that he placed under the harsh light. He talked quickly. "The next piece of the puzzle we went after was timing. In order to identify her we need to know as precisely as possible when she died-when she was buried," he corrected himself, "in order to match her with missing persons for the same period." He asked Boldt, "How are you with bugs? Larvae? Maggots? That sort of thing?" Before Boldt answered, Dixon said, "I hate it when people toss their cookies in these little rooms."

"I've never been a real fan of maggots. And I hate things with lots of legs. Can we speed this up?"

"You'll live." Dixon frowned and pointed to the jars. "These are courtesy of our entomologist who helped out." Each was labeled, but Boldt wasn't wearing his reading glasses. "Forensic entomology is an exploratory field," he warned. "The courts have not made it clear exactly where they stand, but thankfully that's Bob Proctor's problem. Tissue decomposition is the first thing you look for when trying to date remains. Lacking any tissue, as in this case, we turn to bugs-insects living and dead. Graves within graves."

Dixie drummed on the lid of the first jar. "We found a breeding colony of woodlice on the bones. They feed off a fungus that grows only on bone. It takes woodlice two years to establish a breeding colony." "Two years?" Boldt asked, thinking he had a date. Pushing.

Dixon raised a finger. He tapped the second jar. "We also-discovered a past infestation of phorid fly maggots, a close relative of the coffin fly. The phorid fly consumes decaying flesh. We're estimating the weight of the deceased, judging by skeletal size, at between one-hundred-ten and one-hundred-forty pounds. At that weight, it would take the phorid flies no less than two years, no more than three, to consume her." Boldt felt himself blanch. "Woodlice will not coexist with phorid flies, so we add the times together: two plus two-four to five years, minimum. To further substantiate this estimate, we have evidence of a beetle that would not attack the body for at least three to four years after burial."

"So we can safely say that she was in the ground at least four years, maybe as long as five?"

"Correct."

Dixie hoisted the third jar to eye level and said, "Meet the blue bottle fly. The blue bottle lives above ground and lays eggs in decaying flesh. These eggs form larval cases that house pupae that grow to adult blue bottles. I discovered ten such cases blowfly puparia-in the soil samples. No colony of blue bottle, just ten such larval cases. Lack of a colony is important. The body was exposed to air long enough for the blue bottle to deposit its eggs, but not long enough to form a colony. That means her body remained above ground for three to four days prior to burial. Whoever buried her has a strong stomach that's consistent with a veterinarian-and he had to have someplace to keep a decaying body for at least four days that didn't raise suspicion." He added, "And that's not easy; she wasn't pretty by the time she went in the ground." Dixon asked, "You okay?" Boldt said, "A four-year-old homicide with an unidentified victim? It's interesting stuff, Dixie, don't get me wrong, but it's an investigator's nightmare, and like I said, I'm pressed for time."

Dixon encouraged, "Would I drag you over here for bad news? I can give you bad news over the phone. Would I waste your time?"

He waved Boldt out of the room and led him through the offices to a distant storeroom that had recently been converted into an office.

A video camera atop a tripod was aimed at a skeletal skull that sat on a pedestal in front of a backdrop of white oaktag. To the left, within range of the camera, photographs of women had been tacked to the wall. Boldt said, "Missing persons."

"Yes," Dixie acknowledged.

Dixie switched on the computer screen. "Caucasian women aged eighteen to twenty-six. All nearly the same height. All went missing not less than four, not more than five years ago. All remain missing to this day." He added as a caveat, "All but one." That awakened Boldt. Gooseflesh raced up an arm and tingled his scalp. The screen was divided in half. To the left was a freeze-frame of this same skull. "It's a new technology developed by the Brits we're calling Cranial Imaging. It isn't infallible; it may not even hold up in our courts, but it knocks months off of clay reconstruction. We superimpose properly sized images of the missing person's photographs on top of the skull and look for a perfect fit. Remember, all eleven went missing during a six-month period four years ago. That's where the entomology helped us." Dixon took control of the computer's mouse. "On the left is a frontal of the skull recovered from the river site. On the right, a frontal of one Peggy Shulte." She was an average-looking woman. Not glamorous, not taken to fussing over her looks. "Miss Shulte went missing in the Tolt River area two years ago, not four. The county police suspected these were Shulte's remains, but: Voila!" The photograph of Peggy Shulte overlapped with the skull, but the fit was bad, the shape of the head all wrong. Dixon made several adjustments attempting to improve the fit. "No matter how we work this," he explained in an excited voice, "we just can't make them fit. See? There's no way that this skull we dug up belonged to Peggy Shulte."

Boldt inched his way up to the edge of his chair. We tear people's lives apart right down to the bone, he thought, all in an effort to explain their deaths. "Who is she?" he asked impatiently.

Dixon snapped his head away from the screen. Light flashed from his excited eyes. Once again, he worked with the keyboard and mouse. The photograph of Shulte disappeared, replaced by a different, even more innocent,face. She had a number below her face. How many missing each year? Boldt wondered, knowing that it was so many that the police and FBI flushed their active files after twelve months to make room for the new. Too many for milk cartons. You counted these people-mostly young women in graves.

Sliding the color photo over the skull, Dixon said, "She was number eight of eleven." Remarkably, the two images-the face and the skull-joined like a hand inside a glove. Dixon described the fit in technical detail, his finger spitting static sparks as he touched the screen. Boldt wasn't listening. This picture was indeed worth a thousand words: one and the same woman. Dixon concluded proudly, "This woman went missing while working in the Seattle area fifty-one months ago-which fits our window of time. Furthermore, her dental records, faxed to us this morning, show fillings in the exact same uppers that had been chiseled out from our victim's remains. This guy would have been smarter to knock out a few other teeth as well. As it is, in a roundabout way he's actually helped us to identify her."

"By knocking out a few teeth? How so?"

"By knocking out the same nine teeth." Dixon pointed at him. "I knew you would ask me about this. Picky, picky. But I'm prepared for you." He fished a piece of note-paper out of his chest pocket. "I called a mathematician friend at the U-Dubasked him the probability of the same nine teeth, and only nine teeth, having had dental work. You ready for this?" He slipped on some glasses and read: "One in twenty-eight million, forty-eight thousand, eight hundred. Ergo: Odds are there's only one of her in this city." He added, "Lou Boldt, meet Anna Ferragot. "Anna," Boldt said, leaning forward. He placed a hand on Dixon's back. "Always a thorough bastard, aren't you?"

"Goes with the turf." Dixon pressed his face close to the screen. In a tired but proud voice he said, "The harvester kept you around for four days and then buried you-why? He harvested your liver-for whom? Can you help us? Did you know your killer? Was he a stranger?"

Anna Ferragot's photo showed her to be an attractive young woman with sandy hair and gentle eyes. Boldt said, "I bet you thought we had forgotten all about you." "Guess again," said Dr. Ronald Dixon.

Elden Tegg hugged his wife and kissed her hello. Despite his ongoing concerns, he felt calm. He would not allow himself to lose control. That was for the little people. When he began to feel unstable, he fought against it and overcame it. Strength was everything. "I like your haircut," Peggy told him. "It's better for the party." Her eyes sparkled. He knew what this party meant to her. Even a few days earlier, it had still seemed important to him on some level. But now?

For the past few years, every cent of his share of the harvest money had been donated to the city arts-dance and music mostly. Large sums of money. it made him feel even better about the work. Save lives and give something back to society. What could be better?

This money from the heart harvest was something altogether different. He was at a crossroads now, an intersection of past and future where the present took on a dreamlike, transitional quality. There was so much money at stake: hundreds of thousands of dollars. Enough to buy him a practice if placed in the proper hands. His past and present the interdiction of the police-pushed him toward this future now as surely as the wind pushed a sailboat toward untraveled waters. There were calls to be made, plans to be finalized. A future set in motion. With each step forward, his present identity slipped further behind, as if he had divided into two people and could actually see his former self receding in the distance. Growth is change, he reminded, steeling himself for the immediate challenges that lay ahead. This woman, this house, this existence, belonged to that other man now, a person he hardly knew at all.

She said something to him, but he missed it. He was thinking.

Maybeck had called the office with the message that the "truck was fixed." It meant' that the laptop was taken care of. Good news in itself. But not enough to convince him that things would work out. Change was in the wind. A quick exit was called for. All predicated on the harvest taking place.

He snagged a few pieces of leftover New York steak and tore off bites with his teeth, carefully brushing at his beard for errant food particles. Beards could be dirty and foul if you did not groom properly. "Have you decided a menu?" he asked, attempting to be that other man, the other Elden Tegg he planned to leave behind. He didn't care about the menu; he cared about the disposal of Michael Washington's body, but he had a role to play-certain attitudes were expected of him. "It's being catered. Remember? Same people as the animal benefit. Nothing to worry about," she informed him. "I'm handling the flowers, that's all. They're taking care of everything else."

"And the kids?"

"What about them?" she asked. She was a nervous creature. He found it irritating. "They'll be introduced, of course. After drinks, but before dinner. Allow a few minutes in the schedule for that." ."Do they have to?" she asked. "They're your children. They're a reflection on us -both. You want this seat on the board, don't you?" He stood there impassively. "of course they have to!" she said. "What am I saying. "Of course they do," he agreed. "You look so tired," she said, studying him. "The color of that tie is all wrong. You've been working too hard. You might want a new pair of shoes. At the very least you'd better have those shined. Are you getting enough sleep? All those trips out to the farm. I feel as if I haven't seen you in weeks. What are you working on, anyway?"

"Nothing much," he mumbled. That body had to be dealt with. No question about it. But how to do it? "What's that?"

She never seemed to hear anything he said, always making him repeat himself. He felt it coming then-one of his tics. He didn't want it to happen in front of her, because it was worse lately and even the small ones terrified her. But there it was: His head snapped toward his shoulder. He recovered quickly, but not without an ungainly effort. She had the frightened eyes of a stranger. Would she dare mention it? He gained an unusual sense of power from this tic because no one mentioned it. "Have you seen a doctor?" she asked.

"I am a doctor!" He was thinking: I could burn it. I could bury it. "If you do that at the party-"

"Of course I won't." Dismember it-bring it to the incinerator as contaminated waste.

"As if you can control it. You really should see-"

"I am a doctor. It's nothing. A little nervosa is all-fatigue. Besides, it's not so bad." It should be done soon. Tonight, if possible. "You should stay home tonight. You should rest," she recommended warmly, touching him. "We could ... you know. It's been a long time."

"Tonight?" he gasped. Other plans!

Oh, God, here came another one. Worse than the last. Triggered by her suggestion, no doubt. Her fault. He charged himself with a manufactured anger: "Don't look at me like that!" he shouted. The tic never came. He had overpowered it.

He straightened himself out. She was crying. She looked pitiful with bloodshot eyes and tear-streaked cheeks. "I'll see someone," he lied. Bury it! he thought. He believed it best to comfort her before going. He might not be back until morning. "The party will be just fine. We're both just under some undue pressures, that's all. Nothing we can't handle." "If you do that at the party ... Can't you take something for it?" she asked.

She fueled his anger with such talk. "Drugs?" he asked.

"Medication?" Oddly enough, he hadn't considered such a thing.

"It's a fine suggestion, dear. Very well, I agree. You talk to the caterers; I'll investigate the drugs. Don't wait up," he said.

He left his house feeling very good indeed. in control. He had work to do.

He had a grave to dig.

Sharon Shaffer sat in the middle of her kennel pen, clutching the recovered needle like a worry bead. She kept staring at the stain on the cement where the heart had been for the few seconds before Felix consumed it. She had been forced to stop conditioning herself to the effects of the shock collar when her neck had swelled up to the point where it nearly cut off her air. For a moment, about an hour earlier, when she had first realized what was happening, she had actually debated going on with it-suffocating herself by swelling her neck beyond the tolerance of the collar. Committing suicide. But she had put that consideration behind her by reminding herself of her life on the streets, by studying the old scars on both her wrists: She had been through the worst and had lived to see another day. She looked around her. This too shall pass, she thought, warming the needle, awaiting her chance to use it on The Keeper.

She said a series of prayers, some for herself, some for those she loved. She looked at that stain again and said a prayer for the man who had belonged to that heart.

Felix wandered the aisle and occasionally used the waterer in the kennel cage next to her. The dog was hungry and tense. How would she deal with him even if she managed to blind The Keeper and make her break? He wore a collar. One of the remote devices would control that collar, though she wasn't sure where The Keeper kept it. She was considering all of this when the heater kicked on and warmed her. it roared loudly, blowing a strong wind into the building. As always, a few of the dogs, one in particular, barked at it. This only served to make Felix more restless. His pacing increased.

She thought it strange that she hardly heard the barking any longer. It had become a part of her, like the drip of the nourishing I.V. and the pain in her side that worsened by the hour. She was sicker than even he knew. "Practice makes perfect," echoed through her mind like a disturbed mantra. More than once she found herself with her hands pressing firmly on her chest-hiding her heart. She knew what he had planned for her. The only question remaining was whether or not she could stop him.

The ground shook. The dogs who weren't barking came to their feet and began to pace. They knew the sound of his car engine, even at an incredible distance.

Shuddering from fear, she turned to face the door, and like the others in this building, waited for it to open.

Tegg was running late, delayed by his wife and her plans for tomorrow night's party. He wanted to get started with this well before dark, and that meant he would have to hurry. Deep in the trees there was a ninety-minute dusk leading up to sunset when the grayness of the air blended images, making it difficult to see. He intended to capitalize on that time period.

He intended to dig a grave. There were other ways to dispose of a body. He might have dismembered Washington, sealed the various pieces in the red contaminated waste bags and left them for Maybeck or one of the other chuck wagons to incinerate. But that would have required transporting the five or six bags back to the clinic, off-loading them, storing them in the walk-in-all elements that afforded too much risk. He might have built a large bonfire and incinerated it himself. in fact, he had given a great deal of thought to this possibility, but had decided against it on the off chance that such a large fire might attract the attention of someone beyond Tegg's control-overflying aircraft, another hiker-again, too much risk.

In the end, he had decided to repeat himself. The banks of the Tolt had kept Anna Ferragot cozy these last four years, the soil there dug easily-though not without effort-and what was good for one was certainly good for another.

He backed the Isuzu up to the cabin's cellar door and spent fifteen minutes struggling with Michael Washington's rigid cadaver, finally depositing him in the back, where he covered him with a blanket. He was losing light; given the time restraints, it wouldn't be nearly as deep a grave as it had been four years ago-two feet; three at the most. Wearing a handkerchief across his mouth and nose, he set off, all windows down, as fast as he dared to drive.

Three roads, six turns and two logging roads later, he was driving alongside the south bank of the North Fork of the Tolt River, trying to remember where it was that the road fell away toward the river steeply enough that he could launch the cadaver in order to get it near the bank. Right along here somewhere

Suddenly he noticed the enormous number of tracks in this road-a deep-woods logging road that only saw a minor amount of traffic, even in the peak of October's hunting season. It struck him as strangely curious. Then just as quickly he realized he had reached the perfect spot. The tire tracks widened here, spreading all over the road, and it took another second or two for him to realize that there had been dozens of vehicles parked here, and by the look of those tracks, quite recently.

Then he saw the bright orange tape stretched between several consecutive trees, with the boldly printed warning: KING COUNTY POLICE DEPT.-DO NOT CROSS Instinctively, he slammed on the brakes. The Trooper's wheels locked and the back end skidded out of control. His heart pounded ferociously in his chest. The vehicle drifted toward the edge of the road, toward the trees and the steep incline. He could just imagine himself getting the car stuck right here, a dead man in the back. Once again, his reactions were well behind his thoughts. He released the brakes, over-corrected the wheel, applied some gas, and lost the tail end once again. it slid so far to the left that it smacked into, and bounced off of, one of the trees, actually breaking the police tape from this tree. He saw the tape flapping like a flag in the rearview mirror. His only saving grace was that there was no one here. They had packed up and left. He did manage one quick glimpse of the area below, just enough to confirm his fears-the entire area was excavated, including one massive hole, the location of which he recognized.

All this brought back memories, rushing as quickly as the dangerous waters of the river below. This grave was The Secret that Maybeck had held over him these last four years. Tegg could recall the day with an alarming vividness.

Anna, unaware of her mistake, had neglected to latch one of the dog pens. Unlike Pamela, who had all the right instincts, Anna could never get close to the dogs, could never "speak their language," could not control them by tone of voice and attitude. She had been attacked from the back, while Tegg was out of earshot. And by the time he did hear, it was too late. Or was it? he remembered thinking at the time. The most important part of her had survived. Could he waste that?

After the harvest, he had to dispose of what was left of her or face unanswerable questions. He had driven out here with her body, selecting a burial site that assured him what he thought was complete privacy and, being near the water, promised a quick and thorough decay. What he had mistakenly overlooked on that day was the construction of a highvoltage power line nearly a mile away. A young man named Donald Maybeck had been atop one of those tall towers, performing labor for Norwest Light and Power, looking out over this most secluded of spots.

A streetwise Maybeck, sensing easy money, quickly drove to this site rather than to the police, and confronted Tegg, offering to remain silent for a price. That uneasy partnership had continued to this very day.

And now, The Secret had been dug up by the police! Maybeck's doing? Had he cut a deal with the police?

For the next few minutes Tegg drove fast, putting as much distance between himself and that site as he could manage, as if hoping to drive away from his past. Later, he didn't remember the driving or the turns he had made, just that gaping hole in the riverbank. He refused to backtrack; he didn't know the area well enough and he got himself lost several times trying to find an alternative route. There were so many thoughts banging around his brain, so many internal voices arguing that he couldn't hear himself think, couldn't sort them out. Every thought an explosion. Every conceivable explanation terrifying.

Somewhere along the way he had rolled all the windows up, leaving himself enveloped in the nauseating smell of the decaying body. He pulled off the road, hurried into the bushes, and vomited. From the odor or from nerves? He couldn't remember vomiting in the last twenty years. What was happening to him? He didn't know himself anymore.

And what about that thing in the back? he asked himself.

Maybe a bonfire was the answer after all.

Boldt, carrying Miles in the sling, found Shoswitz on the third floor of an old brick ice-house that had been converted into The Body Shop, a fitness center that provided everything from a lap pool to high-tech game rooms. It was located only a few blocks away from Bloodlines, and Boldt couldn't help but think about the donor agency and the parade of twenty-eight young victims who had passed through its doors. SPD had a contractual agreement with The Body Shop that allowed cops and civilian employees a discounted rate to use the facilities. Boldt passed a weight room crowded with the after-work set, grunting and sweating. Young, finely tuned women wearing Day-Glo Lycra like a second skin. He passed a step-aerobics class, voyeuristically pausing to watch. These people looked too good to be working out. He was the one who needed the aerobics, but he wouldn't be caught dead in a T-shirt and gym shorts in the company of people in this kind of shape.

He came here, armed with the most recent information and evidence, to seek Shoswitz's help. The lieutenant, ever skeptical of the harvester investigation, and always politically sensitive to his own position in the department, would not be an easy sell. All that Boldt needed was for the man to place a single phone call. It had to be made by Shoswitz because only he had the necessary contact inside U.S. Immigration. But to ask him outright to make that call was certain to fail. Boldt had to trick him; he had to lead him into it. He had to make Shoswitz offer to make the call.

On the third floor, alongside an office door marked Private, were three doors, each individually marked in computer graphics: GOLF, TENNIS, and BASEBALL. He didn't have to guess behind which one he would find Phil Shoswitz. He knocked and entered, stopping abruptly. The room was small and dark. He was standing on the playing field at Yankee Stadium. The Yankee Stadium. A series of surround screens filled his vision, the rich green playing field seemingly stretching for acres, the spectator stands rising into the imaginary sky. The player, Shoswitz, stood inside a chain-link wire box that had been painted black so you couldn't see it well in the relative darkness. A pitcher surprisingly real-stood out on the mound. "Oh, it's you," the helmeted Shoswitz said, looking impossibly foolish. "What's-a-matter, never seen this before? The Japs are geniuses. They call it virtual reality. That's Tommy John out there. Or at least his stats. And that's the real Yankee Stadium." He tripped a button on the floor. The pitcher on the mound wound up and delivered the pitch. A hardball came flying through an unseen hole in the projection screen. Boldt jumped aside, not realizing the chain-link fence would have stopped the ball if Shoswitz hadn't connected well. The sound of bat against ball made Miles jump, but, surprisingly, he didn't cry. A born fan. The ball flew toward the screen's projections, hit a net, and fell to the floor with a thud. Simultaneously, the image of a baseball in the same trajectory was picked up in the screen. it flew in an arc into shallow left field where it dropped and rolled. "Base hit," Shoswitz announced proudly. The roar of approval from fifty thousand electronic fans filled unseen speakers. A scoreboard far in the distance registered the hit, as a base-runner reached first base and removed his batting gloves. "Japs are incredible, aren't they? You ever seen the golf?"

"Saw it in a movie once."

"Fuckin' incredible. You can field, too. You know, play a position like shortstop. Genius. You don't catch any hits, but when you throw the ball, the screen registers how accurate you were. This time of year, the weather like it is, this thing keeps you polished-know what I mean?"

"Can we put it on pause or something?" Miles caught Boldt by the lip and tugged. "You kidding? You know what they hit me up for this-above and beyond my regular fees? A good chunk of change, kiddo. No way. I'll keep hitting. You talk if that's what you came for."

"Please?"

"No fucking way. Talk." He tripped the button on the floor and hit a foul ball. "You can change pitchers if you like. Stadiums too. But I love the old Yankee Stadium, don't you?" "No thanks," Boldt said, misunderstanding this as an invitation and not knowing the names of more than two or three pitchers, most of them hopelessly out of date. "The bones we dug up alongside the Tolt River have been positively identified as those of a woman named Anna Ferragot-"

"Old news, Lou. What's your point? I'm busy here." He turned and eyed Miles like an unwelcome guest. "Lamoia just got a peek at Anna Ferragot's state tax records." That caused Shoswitz to turn his head-such records were not easy to come by. Boldt continued, "For the two years prior to her disappearance, Anna Ferragot was employed by the Tender Care Animal Clinic."

Shoswitz swung and missed. The ball crashed loudly into the protective cage. Shoswitz gave Boldt an angry look. Boldt didn't like competing with a batting machine, but this couldn't wait until morning. Sharon Shaffer had less than forty-eight hours. Her chances of survival diminished with every passing hour.

Boldt reminded, "The suture? Dixie's pathology report? Did you happen to read that?" Miles leaned forward, groping for the cage. "Where are you going with this?"

"Going? Veterinarians!

Tender Care Animal Clinic. The suture used in the harvests points to a veterinarian; so does the use of Ketamine."

"This same suture is used in every hospital in this county. Animal and human. Do you read your own reports?"

"But the size of the suture indicates a vet. And Ketamine is never used on adults." "The effects of Ketamine were broadcast into the homes of thirty-five million Americans. Listen, it's good police work, Lou. I'm not knocking that. I think we put a vet at the top of our list. But none of this proves anything. You want to talk to the people at this Tender Care Animal Clinic about Anna Ferragot, I got no problem with that. But talk is all, until and unless you have something more. We're not going to get a search-and-seizure based on this." He swung and missed again. "You're fucking with my average here, damn it all. Are we through here? if not, get to the point!"

He couldn't get to the point. That was the point! He had to take it step-by-step, leading the lieutenant into his trap.

Shoswitz tripped the pitching switch. A ball flew at him. He fouled into the stands.

Boldt and his son waited him out. Some guy in the stands to the far left was wandering the aisles selling either hot dogs or popcorn. It made Boldt hungry. He couldn't remember the last time he had eaten a real meal. He hadn't seen Liz-awake-since their encounter at The Big joke, although a mostly form letter about her meeting with the IRS, a meeting he had missed, had been left for him on the kitchen table. Between back taxes and penalties, they owed the IRS seventy-three hundred dollars. For them, in their present financial condition, it might as well have been a million. He intended to talk to the credit union as soon as possible.

Shoswitz struck out. He flashed Boldt an angry look and asked, "How many vets in this Tender Care clinic?"

"Four years ago note that the date coincides exactly with the disappearance of Anna Ferragot there were three partners in the practice. They broke it up. Two of them went their separate ways. Three clinics now: Tender Care, Lakeview Animal Clinic and North Main Animal Center." /'So if you're right about this-and there's no saying you are-the cutter could be one of those three vets. So you and Lamoia nose around a little. You shake them up. I just told you: I have no problem with that."

"Asking questions isn't going to do any good. I need to kick the place. I need to locate a pair of snippers that did both Anna Ferragot and Peter Blumenthal. That's our hard evidence, Phil. That's our way to lock this guy up, to stop him while Sharon Shaffer is still alive.@' Shoswitz stopped batting. He asked, "Were Ferragot's tax records obtained legally?"

"You know they weren't. A formal request to the IRS can take weeks. We don't have weeks." "They're your only link to this animal clinic, I take it. So in point of fact, you've got zilch." Shoswitz tripped the pitching switch again. High and inside. He swung and missed.

For no reason at all, Miles shrieked at the top of his lungs.

Shoswitz scowled. "Look at it this way," Boldt said amiably.

"You can blame all your strikes on Miles and me."

"Don't think I won't." Shoswitz hit a grounder past third and seemed pleased with it. Boldt played with his son's fingers attempting to distract him. Shoswitz wanted them out of there. Good. He took his foot off the pitcher's switch, turned to Boldt, and said, "You've been away from this too long, Lou. You've gone soft. What's the next step? Think about it." The lecture mode. Perfect. "You need warrants, right? Either that or you're talking about bringing these vets in and chatting them up, and we both agree that's no good. Am I right? So if you're going to -get paper on this, you've got to have probable cause, you've got to have a nice clean chain of evidence. And what have you got? You've got squat! Some suture? Some drug that's been on 60 Minutes! Come on! Four-year-old skeletal remains? What? Exactly which judge were you going to take this to? Or maybe you intended to run it by Bob Proctor, our broom-up-theass prosecuting attorney. You know what Bob would do? He'd laugh you right out of that office! Swear to God."

As Soswitz turned to face the plate, Boldt smiled behind his back. Daphne had coached him on how to handle the lieutenant: "Let him be right. Let him tell you what you need." Boldt said, "We have those tool markings linking the victims. If we could only raid all three vet clinics at the same time ... If we come up with the surgical shears responsible for those tool markings, we've got a conviction."

"You're ahead of yourself," Shoswitz advised. "It's a Catch-22, Lou. You need those shears in order to obtain the necessary warrants to find those shears.

Come on! You can't conduct search-and-seizures based on hunches.

I shouldn't have to be telling you this. We shouldn't be having this conversation. I'm saving you from eating a lot of crow. You know that?"

He swung again. Cracked one way the hell out there. The automated crowd let -out a deafening cheer. "But you see how close we are?" Boldt encouraged. "What more do we need?" "You're close, yes, but you're not there. You need a witness-an employee, maybe." Boldt heaved a sigh of relief. He was so close now. A little more ... "What about those numbers in the database?" Shoswitz; asked. "Were they flight numbers as you suggested? Maybeck and that database-now there is some good evidence. Fuckin' judges and juries just love anything to do with computers. Can you link that to any of these vets? You do that, you're one step closer."

This was the reason for Boldt's being here. Without knowing it, Shoswitz had stepped into the trap. "Each of the four-digit numbers that are unique to the laptop database corresponds to a Northwest Airlines international flight that originates in Vancouver, B.C. Over a dozen flights, but to only two countries: Argentina and Brazil. Both are known markets for donor kidneys. The fact that all the flights are with the same two carriers indicates ..."

"A courier," the lieutenant answered. "A flight attendant, a pilot. Someone hand-carrying the organs for them." Shoswitz lost interest in the baseball.

Boldt felt his skin prickle. So close now. "Exactly. They arranged and kept track of the flights well ahead of schedule because time is an issue with these organs."

"If we identify this courier, you've got your witness. We just might bust this thing."

Boldt could hear the door of his trap slamming shut. Shoswitz was starting to see front-page headlines. "Close, but no cigar," Boldt said.

Shoswitz considered this challenge. He said, "There may be two couriers. One transporting the organs between here and Vancouver and then passing the thing off to a second who carries it onto an international flight. The international courier would never know the harvester's identity."

"The harvester -remains insulated," Boldt agreed. "But more importantly, they get the organ to someone who is acceptable for bringing in an organ. Flight crew personnel courier UNOS organs all the time. Passengers never do."

"Which means we need this other courier the one making the trips between Seattle and Vancouver. "It would be a courier, wouldn't it? if they shipped the organs, they'd leave a paper trail."

"Agreed."

Abandoning the bat, Shoswitz tripped some buttons. The screen died, and the lights came on. Compared to Yankee Stadium, this room was tiny. Shoswitz looked foolish in his batting helmet and scuffed wing tips.

Boldt explained quickly, "We need to identify any passenger who is making roundtrips to Vancouver on the dates of the harvests. We're lucky there because the dates are in the database."

Shoswitz was catching on. He said, "You've already done this, haven't you?"

"We ran Maybeck's name first-I was all but positive that he was the courier. He was the one with the laptop, with the database, but I was wrong. We came up blank. It's not Maybeck. We ran the names of the three vets-also blank. I want to run the names of the employees at all three clinics next past and present-through the air carrier manifest lists, but it's an enormous job. Dozens of carriers dozens of dates. It's a logistical nightmare."

"Is it even possible?

The courier would travel under a different name each time, wouldn't he? Pay cash. Travel light."

"Not different names we're lucky there. SEATAC to Vancouver is international---@you have to show legal identification. That helps." Massaging his elbow, Shoswitz asked, "What about driving?"

"It takes too long. Every hour counts with these organs." You're warm, Boldt wanted to say. "Checking flight manifests for a name common between them? How many carriers between here and Vancouver? A dozen? More? How many flights a day? Fifty? Sixty? How long to cross-check them all? Jesus! A week? A month? I'd say Anna Ferragot died for nothing. We're no fucking closer." Shoswitz; displayed the same frustrations that Boldt had felt. Daphne had anticipated this. According to her, this was the turning point. "Impossible," Shoswitz mumbled.

"But if we were to narrow the field," Boldt suggested. He actually crossed his fingers. He couldn't remember the last time he had done that. Miles started kicking.

"Why are you looking at me like that?" Shoswitz asked, sensing he was missing something. "Give me a second. just give me a fucking second."

"Seattle to Vancouver!" Boldt hinted.

Shoswitz didn't want any hints; he glared at Boldt then snapped his fingers in realization. "Immigration! We can search the fed's Immigration computers-it's a single database. We can search by date, by the names of the clinic employees. We don't have to deal with a dozen different carriers. How hard can that be? How long could that take?"

"A matter of minutes, if we go in the back door." This was Boldt's moment of glory: Shoswitz had arrived. Boldt said, "It's the federal government. It's red tape a mile long. If we go after it legally, it could take weeks. Months, even."

"Why not an end run?" Shoswitz asked.

Boldt thought: Why not! Such tactics were fairly common practice: You asked a contact at a credit agency or the phone company-or Immigration-to do a search for you; if something useful was discovered, you were told to make it a formal request, knowing in advance that the formal request would net what you were after. It saved you from jumping through all the legal hoops only to come up dry. Shoswitz finally understood, finally saw his role in all of this. "You want me to make the call, is that it?"

For Boldt, it was like fireworks going off. A home run. "You're the only one with the necessary contacts at Immigration. I don't have them. Lamoia doesn't. But you do. I know you don't like this kind of thing, Phil, but we need some help here." Boldt had Daphne to thank for this; this technique had been all her doing.

Shoswitz said, "You could have just asked, you know."

Boldt offered an inquisitive expression.

The lieutenant considered this a moment. "No," he conceded, "I suppose not." Miles squirmed. He clapped his hands against Boldt's chest.

Boldt said, "Lamoia's working on getting the employee lists.

Three clinics in all: Tender Care, North Main, and Lakeview.

With any luck, we should have those names by morning."

THURSDAY February 9 7 A.M.

With one day in which to find Sharon alive, Daphne, having slept for only three hours, marched into Boldt's office at seven o'clock Thursday morning and announced, "We overlooked something."

Wearing the same clothes as the day before, Boldt looked up from his desk with glassy eyes and replied, "I wouldn't doubt it." "I know how to identify the harvester."

He sat up, suddenly more alert, and watched as she passed by him, heading directly to one of several large stacks of paperwork. "Didn't you pull the drivers licenses on the three Tender Care vets?"

"Other stack," he directed. "But it's no good.

Shoswitz agrees that we'd be tipping our hand, that we'd give the harvester a chance to close up shop, to destroy evidence, if we interview them. Although the way Maybeck behaved with the laptop, I'm starting to think we're already too late."

"It's not an interview I'm after." She dug through the next pile over and extricated three sheets of paper. "He can tell us who he is without our ever asking a question." She added, "The thing is, Dixie told us the harvester is left-handed. Remember? We weren't thinking."

"But how-?"

"His signature, dummy." She placed the first sheet in front of him. It showed a poor-quality photocopy of a driver's license, complete with name, address, height, weight, eye color, and identification number. Her fingernail ran across the signature. "Right-handed," she stated. "See the slant to the characters and the way the dot on the T trails to the right?" She placed the next sheet in front of Boldt. She was leaning in close to him, and he could smell the shampoo in her hair. "Another rightie," she declared. "He's the one who retained the Tender Care name, isn't he?"

"Yeah, but I don't see how-" She interrupted again, "This is my training," Lou. Not yours." She delivered the last sheet to the table.

Her finger traced along the signature. "A leftie! See the posture of the T and the V? It's him!"

Reading the name from the license, Boldt asked, "Elden Tegg? How sure are you about this rightie/ leftie business?"

"Put him under surveillance," she instructed, taking charge. "I am going to find out who the hell this bastard is."

At eight forty-five she re-entered Boldt's office and took a seat across from him. "Dr. Elden Tegg is Canadian by birth-a U.S. citizen now. You want to guess what city in Canada he's from?" When he failed to answer her she said, "Vancouver," and left it hanging in the air like a bomb. "How do you know any of this?" he asked skeptically.

She slid the faxes over to him, her heart beating quickly.

"Just got these." She could feel Boldt's anticipation. "He's a board-certified veterinarian. I obtained his curriculum vitae from the Seattle Veterinary Medical Association. It gets real interesting on page two. Prior to veterinarian school here in Washington, Elden Tegg attended medical school in Vancouver." "As in humans?" Boldt's eyes were as wide as saucers. "As in. He didn't make it through his residency, which is not unusual in itself, the dropout rate being what it is. He came down here to Seattle and studied to be a veterinarian-also not that unusual. But it sure as hell fits the profile. Page three: There's a doctor listed as an attending physician: Dr. Stanley Millingsford. Lives outside Vancouver. I called him. What is unusual about Elden Tegg is that he was at the very top of his class. He didn't leave his residency; he was asked to leave. Dr. Millingsford was reluctant to give me that. In fact, Dr. Millingsford is an ardent supporter of Elden Tegg, or was until I told him about the nature of our investigation." She added, "Would you like to guess Elden Tegg's special interest in residency?"

Boldt answered, "Transplants?" She nodded. "Transplantation surgery. Millingsford is willing to talk but not over the phone. He has a dislike of phones."

Understanding her situation, Boldt stated, "You need a travel voucher signed by Shoswitz."

"You're such a good cop," she said. "We've established surveillance of the clinic and Tegg's residence. You're on your way. Now!"

She jumped up. They stood only inches apart. It seemed he might try to kiss her. Something inside her hoped that he might at least hug her, but the moment passed. He hurried out the door, running toward the lieutenant's office. "Lieutenant!" she heard him shout, "We've got him!"

Nestled in a shoreline forest of giant cedar, madronas and pine, Dr. Stanley Millingsford's gray clapboard home was surrounded by a wrought-iron fence with a stone pillar gate. It had a horseshoe driveway made of crushed stone and gave Daphne the impression, of an English manor house. As the taxi dropped her off, she faced a nine-foot-high black lacquer door with a polished brass knocker in the shape of a half moon. The sun shone brightly but was not hot. She tapped the moon gently against a polished brass star.

Mrs. Stanley Millingsford, who introduced herself as Marion, was in her late sixties, with pale blue eyes. She wore a riding outfit, complete with high black boots. She led Daphne into the cozy living room where a fire burned in the large fireplace. She seemed upset with Daphne coming here, bothering her husband, and she communicated this in a single, intense expression. She offered tea an went o to prepare it before Daphne had a chance to answer.

Dr. Millingsford walked with a cane. He wore a blue blazer, khakis, white socks, and corduroy slippers. A pair of bifocals protruded from the pocket of his Stewart plaid shirt. He had silver-gray hair and eyes the same color as his wife's. He motioned Daphne to the couch and took the leather wingback chair by the fire for himself. He placed his bad leg on a footstool and leaned the cane within reach. "Sorry to make you come all this way." She didn't say anything. He had that air about him: You didn't interrupt his thoughts. "Your generation is more comfortable with the telephone than mine." He sounded American, not Canadian, but she wasn't going to ask. "Elden Tegg," he said. "Yes.

"Organ harvesting?" He glanced at the fire. "Which organs?" he asked. "Kidneys. Lungs. We think it is mostly kidneys. Two of the victims are missing a kidney."

"Victims?"

"At least three of the donors hemorrhaged and 'died."

He lost some of his color and looked at her gravely. "He was asked to leave his residency," she reminded him. "Yes." He collected his thoughts. "You don't forget a man like Elden Tegg. There aren't many that good, which makes them stand out all the more. I don't mean just talent. Talent and intelligence abound in the residency programs. But rare is the individual who rolls the two together and achieves something of a higher level from this combination call it creativity, call it confidence-when you see it, you know. "Elden Tegg has as sure a pair of hands as I have ever seen. Brilliant control. He had the eye-that's the thing so many lack. Oh, they've read all the texts, they are founts of technical information, but they can't see. A surgeon must be able to see that which is there. Not just that problem for which he operates, but everything. Elden Tegg has such an eye, and the hands to go along with it. But while he was with us he had something else: ambition. The wheels of education moved too slowly for him. He sensed his greatness. He wanted everything, wanted it all. More than anything, he wanted acceptance from his peers. He wanted to belong. It wasn't difficult to see that. He was the freak, the whiz kid, and he suffered for it."

Millingsford's wife entered with a rolling tray containing a cozied teapot, cups and saucers, a lemon poppyseed cake and small plates. "You'll have to fend for yourselves, I'm afraid. I'm awfully sorry. We have a sick foal I must attend," she explained. She left.

Daphne poured them both tea and cut some cake for him.

He chewed some cake, looking into the fire. "Have you met him?

Tegg?"

"No."

"His problem-and this is a problem with nearly every surgeon, including this one-is his ego. He keeps his nose high. He was quick to put people down. He intimidated most everyone around him. That had its plusses-he effectively controlled everyone, and that sense of leadership is important for any surgeon. The surgeon must be in control. Everyone must know it, must feel it." He glanced at her. Here, he was in control. "The incident that led to his expulsion is what I wanted to talk to you about. We had an, open heart to do. Tegg was to assist. I was delayed by another surgery, across town. The patient was submarining-we were losing him quickly. I was nowhere to be found. "Tegg informed the nursing staff that I had okayed his beginning the procedure without me. He lied: No such conversation had ever taken place. As I have said, he controlled the nurses. They went along with it. Tegg accepted full responsibility. Taking charge was one of his long suits. "When you perform open heart or any invasive thoracic surgery," he continued, "you open the chest cavity with something called a sternal saw. It's a very useful tool-the sawing used to be done by hand. It's tricky, however. You must maintain an upward pressure at all times-that's the way the blade works." His hands flexed as he spoke. "In my absence, Tegg mishandled the sternal saw. He severed the left ventricle, killing the patient.

"Naturally, Tegg was asked to leave and was told in no uncertain terms that he would never be accepted in any residency program. if he applied, all would be revealed. He went on to veterinarian school-I wrote a recommendation for him."

"Was he ever charged for that killing?"

"This is medicine, Miss. Matthews. It wasn't murder. It was a mistake. Mistakes happen."

"There were no lawsuits?"

"Yes, there was a lawsuit.

That's one of the reasons he was dismissed. The school had to dismiss him immediately in an attempt to defend its position on this. To clarify it. That is precisely why no other program would have ever taken him."

She took some notes while her thoughts were still fresh. She looked up and asked. "Do you remember the patient's name? The one who was killed?"

"You don't forget an incident like that," he explained. "His name was Thomas Kent."

She wrote this down as well. She underlined it.

Thomas Kent 3 P. m.

When Daphne cleared the jetway at SEATAC airport she saw Lou Boldt and an airport security patrolman anxiously awaiting her, standing away from the steady stream of departing passengers.

Boldt reached out, took her briefcase in one hand and her upper arm in another. They walked fast. He steered her over to a shuttle cart that was waiting for them. The air was electric with urgency. Sharon's time was running out.

Boldt said, "Maybeck's cooling his heels in Interrogation.

Shoswitz wants you part of it." Before she had a chance to ask, he answered, "He was busted at a dog fight by the County Police who weren't aware of our investigation or our surveillance. It's a mess. There's a lot of screaming going on."

They climbed onto the cart, and it hurried off almost before she sat down, throwing her into the seat. She said, "We're running out of time. You know that, don't you?"

"We're taking an amphibian to Lake Union to save time. Tractor trailer carrying chemicals overturned on 1-5. Traffic's been diverted to 99. Nothing is moving. There's an hour delay at least. Don't look at me, it was Phil's idea."

"The lieutenant spending money?" she said over the repetitious beeping of the cart's pedestrian warning system. "There's a rumor going around that one of the church groups pressured the mayor about Sharon's whereabouts. Whatever happened, the lid is coming off this thing. KING radio ran a story about our finding remains along the Tolt. They're trying to draw Green River comparisons. We're sitting on the rest of it, but Phil suddenly.wants results."

"It's about time." Boldt said, "Yes. That is what it's about." The cart pulled up at gate A-7, where a charter pilot awaited them. Daphne handed her keys over to the airport security man who was going to return her car to the department. Boldt and the pilot shook hands. The three. of them hurried down a flight of stairs and out to the waiting plane with its overhead engine, wheels and short pontoons. The plane looked so tiny compared with the huge jetliners.

Daphne shut her eyes in terror as they landed on Lake Union seven minutes later. From the plane, they were chauffeured in a patrolcar, sitting in the back, contained by a cage, the doors without handles. "You know, in seven years I've never ridden back here," she said.

It had been too loud to talk on the plane. in a strained voice Boldt informed her, "Immigration's computers kicked dozens of names. We failed to realize how many commuters travel between the two cities on a daily basis. It's a long list and it's going to be a bitch sorting it out. To make matters worse, we've been unable to get a list of the various employees, and that's the first list we wanted to check Immigration against."

"One step forward, two steps back." "Doin' the policeman's polka," he said, making her smile.

The car braked severely. She looked up to see they were already at the Public Safety Building. The driver let them out. Boldt was still carrying her briefcase. The frantic pace lent an urgency that she now felt physically as well. She was taking short, quick breaths. Her heart was racing.

Shoswitz met them on the ground floor; the driver must have called in their position. This kind of treatment was heady. Shoswitz wouldn't allow anyone else on the elevator with them. As the three of them ascended, the lieutenant asked Boldt, "Well?"

"She's pretty much up to date."

"What can you tell us about Tegg?" the lieutenant asked her. "And I want it all. Guesses, hunches, anything. I've got a meeting with the captain in-" he checked his watch, "ten minutes. Go!"

She had tried to bring her thoughts together on the flight down from Vancouver. These last few' minutes had rattled her. The elevator car reached the fourth floor. Shoswitz hit the stop button, preventing the doors from opening. He was waiting for her to brief him.

She said quickly, "Tegg is a paranoid. He's running from his past, trying to prove himself. In his mind, he's better than everyone, yet everyone's against him. Outwardly he could very well be Joe Normal, a good doctor, a good husband, a good father. But inside he's paranoid. He thinks of everyone as inferior to him; he tolerates them, but that's all. He's quick to blame, and he has an explanation for everything. He's Mr. Right. Mr. Perfect. By now he's found some way to put a twist on his killing a man named Thomas Kent-killed him in surgery-but half of him knows that this twist is a lie, that he's lying to himself, and that's been eating away at him a long, long time." "How dangerous?" Shoswitz asked. "To our people?"

"Violent?

I doubt it. But he's worth being afraid of. He was at the top of his class, so he's plenty brainy. He has a scientific mind, which means he'll think in patterns and subsets, very linear and logical. He's always two or three steps ahead-in his thoughts, in his surgery, in his life. He's likely to be obsessive-very few hobbies or distractions to take him away from his work.

He's a control freak. Millingsford said he used to intimidate the nurses, that they were afraid of him, and that fits with what I'm thinking. He still intimidates his coworkers. He's Likely to be exceptionally strong-minded, strongwilled. But psychologically speaking, his strengths are his weaknesses. They can be exploited."

The lieutenant nodded and looked up at Boldt. "Okay?" he asked.

"Any questions?"

"Okay with me." She grabbed Shoswitz by the arm. it was the wrong thing to do. "We have to bypass the red tape, Lieutenant. We have to go straight at this guy. And fast." Shoswitz pulled his arm free, reached down, and punched the Emergency Stop button. The doors slid open. Unexpectedly, they were showered in a blinding array of camera flashes and a dozen questions being shouted at them simultaneously. Shoswitz and Boldt contained Daphne between them, and the three of them, arms raised fending off the lights, surged through the throng of reporters. "No comment," Shoswitz kept shouting back.

As they pushed into Homicide, the press was kept at bay.

Shoswitz issued orders to the first patrolman he encountered, "I want them kept in the press room, understand? Not up here." To Boldt he said, "I gotta leave you two now." To Daphne he said, "This is where you earn your meal ticket, Matthews. We need to break this guy. We need for him to give us Tegg in a handbasket. You're the one who said it: Your friend Sharon is running out of time."

She wanted to hit him for saying that. Where had he been this last week? "Don't worry about him," Boldt said as Shoswitz hurried out of earshot. "I'm not worried about him," she said. They reached the one-way glass that looked in on Interrogation Room A. "It's him I'm wondering about."

On the other side of the glass sat Donald Monroe Maybeck.

Boldt had never seen teeth like that. He and Daphne studied Maybeck through the one-way glass. Boldt said, "As far as he knows, all we have him on is the gaming charge, the pit bulls. But the other arrests were allowed to post bail immediately, so he's got to be wondering why he's still here." Teeth like a junkyard dog, a grotesque gray brown. Despite the no-smoking sign he smoked a nonfilter cigarette, holding the smoke in so long that when he finally exhaled it left as a thin gray ghost. "We can book him on a list of charges, but none of them except this pit bull fight is going to stick, and it's a misdemeanor. The laptop was out of his possession-we, a bunch of cops witnessed it being stolen. He or an attorney can use that to his advantage. Even with the password, he can claim someone put that database onto the laptop while it was out of his possession. Things like that are tricky to prove. Proctor won't go for it, I promise you. I'm betting he killed Connie Chi, but we have yet to connect him to it. ID has that condom has the sperm. We can make like we're going to run a DNA typing. We can humiliate him: Make him jack-off for the lab boys. But proof? A match? Maybe, maybe not. What I'd like to do is wear him down, crack him open, and get a full confession on his involvement with Tegg and his murdering Connie Chi. Slam-dunk him."

"And we both do the questioning?" she asked.

He nodded. A vague smile flickered across her lips. "What do you say I get to play tough?" She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse.

Boldt thought: So she's breaking out the serious hardware.

"Sounds good to me."

She waited for him to open the door for her. He did so and said, "After you."

"Put out the cigarette," she ordered as she and Boldt came through the door. "You?" Maybeck let slip, recognizing Boldt from the pawn shop encounter.

This was the fun part for her. This was where it became interesting. It wasn't quite a game, but it was close. Maybeck looked up at her, drank in every curve of her body, and left his eyes boring a hole in her crotch, so she would feel it. So he knew how to play the game too. So what? He smiled; his teeth looked like a rusted garden rake. You hit guys like this. You hit them head on. "Nice teeth," she said. She turned to set her case down, turned to prevent him from trying to vent his anger by communicating with his eyes, turned, as she did, unbuttoned two more buttons so that by the time she swung back around, her blouse sagged open revealing enough cleavage to get lost in. She knew the Maybecks of this world; she worked with them. If men wanted to use her sex against her, then she would use it right back. When Lou's eyes fell for the trick as well, producing a momentary flash of embarrassment in him when their eyes met, she knew she had scored a direct hit. Maybeck wouldn't be able to resist the distraction.

it was a cheap stunt. Nothing more. Who cared? Maybeck was punk trash. She'd seen a photo of Connie Chi taken on her last day on earth. It was enough motivation. "One thing good about correctional institutions," she said, looking him directly in the eye, "they have free dental service." He didn't flinch stronger than she had expected. Test and probe. He kept his lips pinched tightly shut. Good-embarrassed. Ashamed, even. Nothing as strong as shame to turn the vise. His eyes strayed to her chest again, so she leaned forward to allow her blouse to hang open, giving him a nice long look. "Nice tits for a cop," he said, striking back. "You fuck your way to the top or what?"

It knocked her back a step. When her eyes met his again she introduced Boldt with, "You guys never officially met, I don't think. This is Sergeant Lou Boldt. Homicide," leaning on the word as well as the table. Then she saw in him what she had wanted to see, more than a flicker of panic. She buttoned herself back up. "You want to tell us about Bloodlines?" Boldt asked, clearly knocking the wind out of Maybeck, "Or do you want to do the dance?"

"You look a little old for dancing," Maybeck said. "Her ... she's okay. Have you fucked her yet?"

Boldt raised his hand to strike the man, but caught himself.

That was what Maybeck wanted: a way to beat the legal system.

She said quickly, "Yeah, the dental work is free in the big house, but so are the condoms. It's kind of a tradeoff. Depends how keen you are on HIV. Some people say AIDS was invented just to keep the prison populations down."

"Come on, man. Hit me," he baited.

Boldt warned him, "We're the front line, pal. We're the ones who will listen. The next line of defense is the attorneys. Then come the judges and the jurors, the witnesses-"

"Maybe Connie Chi's sister would make a good witness," she threw in just to catch his reaction. "Real shame about Connie."

Boldt edged closer. "In-mate. Nice ring to it," Daphne said, worried Boldt might hit him anyway. Boldt was supposed to play "nice guy"; she would play tough-the exact opposite of what Maybeck might expect. Toy with his sensibilities. Turn him upside down and shake.

Boldt looked over at her and rolled his eyes. He was back in control now, she hoped. He was good at this, better than most because he didn't believe he was any good at it, and that made him work harder. Something Daphne appreciated. He listened. He learned. He knew to meet the suspect in the middle, to establish a rapport, to mimic body language, and avoid any outward display of judgment. '/you face a very important decision," Boldt cautioned him, "because the way you play this can mean a difference of years for you. Years, Maybeck. Got it? You may want to think about that."

"Maybe I want to call me an attorney."

"You were given your phone call. Don't hose me, friend. I'm telling you: We're the best chance you're going to get."

Maybeck said to her, "You sure don't look like no cop. if Daphne answered, "And you don't look very smart, Mr. Maybeck, but I hope I'm wrong about that. We can connect you to Bloodlines. We can connect you to Connie Chi. We can connect you to that database. Twenty-seven harvests. Three of them are dead-did you know that? Chew on that with those pretty teeth of yours." "I think I'm through talking," he said, suddenly restless. A good sign. His veneer was cracking. "You stop talking, and you're through all right," she said quickly.

Boldt repeated, "Once the attorneys get into this, it's out of our hands. You understand? When have attorneys ever made things simple?"

"If you play dumb," Daphne said, "you are dumb."

"Talk to us," Boldt encouraged. "Tell us about Tegg.

You give us Tegg, you may just walk away from this."

Maybeck glanced back and forth between the two of them. This was the best sign yet. Indecision filled his eyes, which to Daphne indicated a vulnerability and dictated different tactics. "Are you prepared to take the heat for Tegg's crimes?" she asked. To Boldt she said, "I don't know ... maybe he should wait for his attorney, because if that's the way he plays this, he's certainly going to need one." Boldt said, "We're not running a tape recorder. Have you noticed that?"

Daphne cautioned Boldt, "He's not smart enough to understand any of this. I told you he was a dumb shit. I can spot 'em, Lou. You're gonna have to cough up that twenty."

"You're betting on me?" Maybeck asked incredulously. "Betting is for Vice," she advised him. "Sergeant Boldt is Homicide. Maybe you missed that the first time around. You think he's here to discuss a pit bull fight? Christ All Friday, get a clue!"

"Tell us about Bloodlines. You got the donors for Tegg. You offered them cash for their kidneys and they bit. You delivered them to Tegg. Is that about right? Because if it is, then you've got to think this through, Donnie. Can I call you Donnie? You don't mind? Because you can trade that down to bullshit. Even a first-year PD can get you out of that. See? But kidnapping? Interstate transportation of stolen goods-those are federal charges. That's FBI shit. That's three-piece suits and wingtip shoes. You know what you're getting yourself into? For what? Talk to me. Use your head, Donnie, and talk to me. Please." "Not this one," Daphne said. "He's too stupid. Look at those teeth, would you? That ought to tell you something. Shit for brains. The next thing he's going to hear is metal on metal. Boom! That door's going to shut for a long, long time." "Up yours," he said. "Oh, no. Not in the big house. Not up mine, though they'll tell you it's just as nice. It's up yours, Gatemouth. And it's not very pleasant."

That shut him up. Boldt was blushing. Maybeck had allowed his mouth to hang open and his teeth to show. "I bet you like it," he said.

She struck him. She open-handed him right across the cheek. He smiled. "Don't forget, asshole," she said angrily. "This is all off the record." His smile faded.

Boldt said, "In the eyes of the law, Tegg's crimes are your crimes. It is important that you understand that. Do you see any tape recorder, Donnie? It is off the record. We're giving you the benefit of the doubt. We're giving you a chance. All we want right now is a little cooperation."

"We want Tegg," she explained, "not you."

Maybeck said through his gray teeth, "I can smell you from here."

Daphne reached down and found some control. "Tegg's using you.

He uses everybody, doesn't he?" She tried a different tack.

"How much does he pay you? What's he told you a kidney is worth? You know what they pay for them in Argentina, Egypt, India? Between five and fifteen thousand." She saw the devastating effect this had on him. When all else fails, play to a person's greed. "How much of that did you see? What do you owe him? The remaining years of your natural life? Because that's what you're looking at."

Boldt advised, "How do you think the law reads when it comes to performing surgery without a license? Tegg knows exactly how it reads. We're not even sure we can hold him for that. Get it? Why do you think he has you and the others doing his dirty work? Who do you think is going down now that we've busted this thing? Him? No way! Why do you think we were interested in talking to you first, before the serious charges?"

"Let me tell you something," she said. "The smart ones talk. You may not think so, but that's the way it works. The dumb shits end up investing in a couple cases of condoms and praying like hell they can convince the gorillas inside to use one once in a while." She added, "You haven't done time in this state, Donald. We know that. We pulled your prints off the laptop. We know that four years ago you worked for Norwest Power and Light. We know you haven't filed a tax return-" But she caught herself and stopped. Maybeck had lost a full shade of color. Was it the mention of doing time or the mention of the power company that had that effect on him? "You got me mixed up with someone else," he said.

She fired right back: "What is it, Donnie? What is it you're hiding?"

"I got a right to an attorney, don't I? So give me one. I got nothing to say to you."

Boldt said, "Who's running the organs up to Vancouver for Tegg?

" A sharp knock on the door caught all three of them by surprise. The door opened. The man standing there was all Brooks Brothers-all business. All attorney. He stretched his arm to Boldt first and then to Daphne. She resented that. "Howard Chamberland," he introduced himself.

Daphne was thinking: The Howard Chamberland? Where did scum like Maybeck get money for those kinds of fees?

She couldn't believe it. A moment earlier Maybeck had been asking to be assigned an attorney. What was going on here?

Chamberland chided Boldt, "I had heard such good things about you. I hadn't expected something as cheap as this. A little gaming? Some dog fighting? You-a Homicide lieutenant-"

"Sergeant," Boldt corrected. "You've been speaking with him, I presume." He shook his head in disgust. "You can forget all that now, of course. You would be wise to forget the charges. Pit bulls? What are we talking here, a hundred dollars and animal confiscation? What are you, the ASPCA? Come on! Whatever your intentions, you had better speak to Bob Proctor. I certainly am going to as soon as I am done here. Are you bringing additional charges against my client?"

"Your client?" Boldt asked. "At your fee? Or are you doing charity work now?"

"My relationship with Donald is confidential." Daphne said, "it must be. He doesn't like that name. Has anyone even introduced you two?" To Maybeck she said, "You called Tegg, didn't you?" but she watched Chamberland for a reaction. He was expressionless-worth every penny. Daphne felt the frustration as a knot in her throat. So close! What were Sharon's chances now?

Boldt said, "A few minutes ago your client was requesting to see a public defender, Mr. Chamberland. Are you sure you have the right man?"

"Are you?" asked the attorney, holding the door open for them, waiting for them to leave.

As Boldt and Daphne headed down the narrow hallway leading from Interrogation, Lamoia rushed toward them waving a pink telephone memo, his face a youthful combination of fatigue and exhilaration. Before the detective reached them, Shoswitz appeared behind him at the main door and shouted loudly, "Everybody-and I mean everybody but uniforms-in the Situation Room now! No tears!" he emphasized, meaning he would take no excuses. "I don't like the sound of that," Boldt warned. "I don't like a sharpshooter with Chamberland's reputation representing Maybeck." She added, "He's a heavy hitter." "Agreed. We've lost Maybeck."

"I'm about to scream."

"Better not." Boldt happened to catch the lieutenant's eye, just a fleeting glimpse that caused him to make an aside to Daphne. "We're baked." He had worked with Shoswitz for over eleven of his seventeen years with the department and had learned to measure even the slightest nuance in his expression.

Such a sixth sense was a prerequisite to a successful career in Homicide; it told you when to shut up and when to push hard. This was one of the times to shut up. "I think you're right. The last time he called for all of us," she reminded, "was that neo-Nazi thing three years ago."