The Maze

THE MAZE

by Catherine Counlter

Copyright (c) 1997 by Catherine Coulter. ISBN: 0-515-12249-1

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

WIHENEVER I HEAR WRITERS brag about how their editors don't require any changes to their manuscripts, I'm honestly floored. It's an editor's job to be the reader's representative and thus make the manuscript better. And believe me, a manuscript can always be made better.

I've got to be the luckiest writer ever. I don't have just one editor, I have a three-person hack-and-maim team, and all three of them give me very timely feedback, all with an eye to making my novels the best they can be. My ongoing thanks to Stacy Creamer, Leslie Gelbman, and Phyllis Grann.

I'd also like to thank my husband, Anton, for getting back into the editing saddle after a ten-year hiatus. He's the Editor from Hell (in the good sense).

And finally, my continuing thanks to Karen Evans with the red Babylonian harlot hair. Without her incredible mental energy, enthusiasm, and support, I would soon find myself in a sorry state.

Life is good.

1

San Francisco, California May 15

IT WOULDN'T STOP, EVER.

She couldn't breathe. She was dying. She sat upright in her bed wheezing, trying to control the terror. She turned on the lamp beside her bed. There was nothing there. No, just shadows that kept the corners dark and frightening. But the door was closed. She always closed her bedroom door at night and locked it, then tilted a chair against it so that its back was snug against the doorknob. Just for good measure.

She stared at that door. It didn't move. It didn't so much as rattle in its frame. The knob did not turn. No one was on the other side trying to get in.

No one this time.

She made herself look over toward the window. She'd wanted to put bars on all the windows when she moved in seven months before, but at the last minute she decided that if she did she would have made herself a prisoner forever. Instead she'd switched to the fourth-floor apartment. There were two floors above her and no balconies. No one could come in through the window. And no one would think she was crazy because she lived on the fourth floor. It was a good move. There was no way she could continue living at home, where Belinda had lived. Where Douglas had lived.

The images were in her mind, always faded, always blurred, but still there and still menacing: bloody, but just beyond her ability to put them in focus. She was in a large dark space, huge, she couldn't see the beginning or the end of it. But there was a light, a narrow focused light, and she heard screams. And the screams. Loud, right there on her. And there was Belinda, always Belinda.

She was still choking on the fear. She didn't want to get up, but she made herself. She had to go to the bathroom. Thank God the bathroom was off the bedroom. Thank God she didn't have to unlock the bedroom door, pull the chair back from beneath the knob, and open it onto the dark hallway.

She flipped the bathroom light on before she went into the room, then blinked rapidly at the harsh light. She saw movement from the corner of her eye. Her throat clogged with terror. She whirled around: It was only herself in the mirror.

She stared at her reflection. She didn't recognize the wild woman before her. All she saw was fear: the twitching eyes, the sheen of sweat on her forehead, her hair ratty, her sleep shirt damp with perspiration.

She leaned close to the mirror. She stared at the pathetic woman whose face was still tense with fear. She realized in that moment that if she didn't make some serious changes the woman in the mirror would die.

To the woman staring back at her, she said, "Seven months ago I was supposed to go study music at Berkeley. I was the best. I loved making music, all the way from Mozart to John Lennon. I wanted to win the Fletcher competition and go to Julliard. But I didn't. Now I'm afraid of everything, including the dark."

She turned slowly away from the mirror and walked back into her bedroom. She walked to the window, turned the three locks that held it firmly in place, and pulled it up. It was difficult. The window hadn't been opened since she'd moved in.

She looked out into the night. There was a quarter moon. There were stars flooding the sky. The air was cool and fresh. She could see Alcatraz, Angel Island beyond it. She could see the few lights in Sausalito, just across the bay. The Transamerica building was brightly lit, a beacon in downtown San Francisco.

She turned away and walked to the bedroom door. She stood there a very long time. Finally she pulled the chair away

and set it where it belonged, in tne corner beside a reading light. She unlocked the door. No more, she thought, staring at that door, no more.

She flung it open. She stepped out into the hallway and stopped, every burgeoning whisper of courage in her freezing as she couldn't help but hear the sound of a creaking board not more than twenty feet away. The sound came again. No, it wasn't a creak; it was a lighter sound. It seemed to be coming from the small foyer by the front door. Who could be toying with her this way? Her own breath whooshed out. She was shaking, so frightened she could taste copper in her mouth. Copper? She'd bitten her lip, drawn blood.

How much longer could she live like this?

She dashed forward, turning on every light as she went. There was the sound again, this time like something lightly bumping against a piece of furniture-something that was a lot smaller than she was, something that was afraid of her. Then she saw it scurry into the kitchen. She burst out laughing, then slowly sank to the floor, her hands over her face as she sobbed.

2

Seven Years Later FBI Academy Quantico, Virginia

SHE WOULD GET TO THE TOP of that rope if it killed her. And it just might. She could actually feel each individual muscle in her arms pulling, stretching, feel the burning pain, the rippling cramps that were very close to knotting up on her. If that happened, she'd go sprawling to the mat below. Her brain already felt numb, but that was okay. Her brain wasn't climbing. It had just gotten her into this fix. And this was only the second round. It seemed as if she'd been climbing this rope since she was born.

Just two more feet. She could do it. She heard MacDougal's steady, unhurried breathing beside her. From the corner of her eye she saw his huge fists cover that rope, methodically clamping down one fist over the other, not consuming that rope as he usually did. No, he was keeping pace with her. He wasn't going to leave her. She owed him. This was an important test. This one really mattered.

"I see that pathetic look, Sherlock. You're whining even though you're not saying anything. Get those twerpy arms working, pull!"

She grabbed that rope just three inches above her left hand and pulled with all her strength.

"Come on, Sherlock," MacDougal said, hanging beside her, grinning at her, the bastard. "Don't wimp out on me now. I've worked with you for two months. You're up to twelve-pound weights. All right, so you can only do ten reps on your

biceps, buy you can do twenty-five on your triceps. Come on now, do it, don't just hang there like a girl."

Whine? She didn't have enough breath to whine. He was goading her, doing a good job of it actually. She tried to get annoyed. There wasn't a pissed bone in her body, just pain, deep and burning. Eight more inches, no, more like nine inches. It would take her two years to get those nine inches. She saw her right hand pull free of the rope, grab the bar at the very top of the knotted rope that was surely too far for her to make in one haul, but her right hand closed over that bar and she knew she'd either do it or she wouldn't.

"You can do it, Sherlock. Remember just last week in Ho-gan's Alley when that guy pissed you off? Tried to handcuff you and haul you off as a hostage? You nearly killed him. You wound up having to apologize to him. That took more strength than this. Think mean. Think dead-meat thoughts. Kill the rope. Pull!"

She didn't think of the guy in Hogan's Alley; no, she thought of that monster, focused on a face she'd never seen, focused on the soul-deep misery he'd heaped upon her for seven years. She wasn't even aware when she hauled herself up those final inches.

She hung there, breathing hard, clearing her mind of that horrible time. MacDougal was laughing beside her, not even out of breath. But he was all brute strength she'd told him many times; he'd been born in a gym, under a pile of free weights.

She'd done it.

Mr. Petterson, their instructor, was standing below them. He was at least two stories below them; she would have sworn to that. He yelled up, "Good going, you two. Come on down now. MacDougal, you could have made it a little faster, like half the time you took. You think you're on vacation?"

MacDougal shouted down to Petterson since she didn't have a breath in her lungs, "We're coming, sir!" He said to her, grinning so wide she could see the gold filling in a molar, "You did good, Sherlock. You have gotten stronger. Thinking mean thoughts helped, too. Let's get down and let two other mean dudes climb this sucker."

She needed no encouragement. She loved going down. The

pain disappeared when her body knew it was almost over. She was down nearly as fast as MacDougal. Mr. Petterson waved a pencil at them, then scribbled something on his pad. He looked up and nodded. "That was it, Sherlock. You made it within the time limit. As for you, Mac, you were way too slow, but the sheet says you pass so you pass. Next!"

"Piece of cake," MacDougal said, as he handed her a towel to wipe off her face. "Look at all that sweat on you."

If she'd had the energy, she would have slugged him.

She was in Hogan's Alley, the highest-crime-rate city in the United States. She knew just about every inch of every building in this town, certainly better than the actors who were paid eight dollars an hour to play bad guys, better than many of the bureau employees who were witnesses and robbers alike. Hogan's Alley looked like a real town; it even had a mayor and a postmistress, but they didn't live here. Nobody really lived here or really worked here. It was the FBI's own American town, rife with criminals to be caught, situations to be resolved, preferably without killing anyone. Instructors didn't like innocent bystanders to be shot.

Today she and three other trainees were going to catch a bank robber. She hoped. They were told to keep their eyes open, nothing else. It was a parade day in Hogan's Alley. A festive occasion, and that made it all the more dangerous. There was a crowd of people, drinking sodas and eating hot dogs. It wasn't going to be easy. Chances were that the guy was going to be one of the people trying to blend in with the crowd, trying to look as innocent as an everyday guy; she'd stake a claim on that. She would have given anything if they'd gotten just a brief glance at the robber, but they hadn't. It was a critical situation, lots of innocent civilians milling about and a bank robber who would probably run out of the bank, a bank robber who was probably very dangerous.

She saw Buzz Alport, an all-night waiter at a truck stop off 1-95. He was whistling, looking as if he didn't have a care in the world. No, Buzz wasn't the bad guy today. She knew him too well. His face flushed scarlet when he played the bad guy. She tried to memorize every face, so she'd be able to spot the robber if he suddenly appeared. She slowly worked the crowd,

calm and unhurried, the way she'd been trained.

She saw some visitors from the Hill, standing on the sidelines, watching the agents' role-playing simulations. The trainees would have to be careful. It wouldn't look good for the Bureau if any of them killed a visiting congressman.

It began. She and Porter Forge, a southerner from Birmingham who spoke beautiful French without a hint of a drawl, saw a bank employee lurch out of the front doors, yelling at the top of his lungs, waving frantically at a man who had just fled through a side door. They got no more than a brief glimpse. They went after him. The perp dove into the crowd of people and disappeared. Because there were civilians around, they kept their guns holstered. If any one of them hurt a civilian, there'd be hell to pay.

Three minutes later they'd lost him.

It was then that she saw Dillon Savich, an FBI agent and computer genius who taught occasional classes here at Quantico, standing next to a man she'd never seen before. Both were wearing sunglasses and blue suits and blue-gray ties.

She'd know Savich anywhere. She wondered what he was doing here at this particular time. Had he just taught a class? She'd never heard about his being at Hogan's Alley. She stared hard at him. Was it possible that he was the suspect the bank employee had been waving at as he'd dashed into the crowd? Maybe. She tried to place him in that brief instant of memory. It was possible. Only thing was that he didn't look at all out of breath, and the bank robber had run out of the bank like a bat out of hell. Savich looked cool and disinterested.

Nah, it couldn't be Savich. Savich wouldn't join in the exercise, would he? Suddenly, she saw a man some distance away from her slowly slip his hand into his jacket. Dear God, he was going for a gun. She yelled to Porter.

While the other trainees were distracted, Savich suddenly moved away from the man he'd been talking to and ducked behind three civilians. Three other civilians who were close to the other guy were yelling and shoving, trying to get out of the way.

What was going on here?

"Sherlock! Where'd he go?"

She began to smile even as other agents were pushing and shoving, trying desperately to sort out who was who. She never lost sight of Savich. She slipped into the crowd. It took her under a minute to come around him from behind.

There was a woman next to him. It was very possibly about to become a hostage situation. She saw Savich slowly reach out his hand toward the woman. She couldn't take the chance. She drew her gun, came right up behind him, and whispered in his ear as she pressed the nose of the 9mm SIG pistol into the small of his back, "Freeze. FBI."

"Ms. Sherlock, I presume?"

She felt a moment of uncertainty, then quashed it. She had the robber. He was just trying to rattle her. "Listen to me, buddy, that's not part of the script. You're not supposed to know me. Now, get your hands behind your back or you're going to be in big trouble."

"I don't think so," he said, and began to turn.

The woman next to them saw the gun, screamed, and yelled, "Oh my God, the robber's a woman! Here she is! She's going to kill a man. She's got a gun! Help!"

"Get your hands behind your back!" But how was she going to get cuffs on him? The woman was still yelling. Other people were looking now, not knowing what to do. She didn't have much time.

"Do it or I'll shoot you."

He moved so quickly she didn't have a chance. He knocked the pistol out of her hand with a chop of his right hand, numbing her entire arm, bulled his head into her stomach and sent her flying backward, wheezing for breath, landing in a mass of petunias in the flower bed beside the Hogan's Alley Post Office.

He was laughing. The bastard was laughing at her. She was sucking in air as hard and fast as she could. Her stomach was on fire. He stuck out his hand to pull her up.

"You're under arrest," she said and slipped a small Lady Colt .38 from her ankle holster. She gave him a big grin. "Don't move or I guarantee you'll regret it. After I climbed that rope, I know I'm capable of just about anything."

His laughter died. He looked at the gun, then at her, up on her elbows in the petunia bed. There were a half dozen men

and women standing there watching, holding their breath. She yelled out, "Stay back, all of you. This man's dangerous. He just robbed the bank. I didn't do it, he did. I'm FBI. Stay back!"

"That Colt isn't Bureau issue."

"Shut up. No, you so much as twitch and I'll shoot you."

He'd made a very small movement toward her, but she wasn't going to let him get her this time. He was into martial arts, was he? She knew she was smashing the petunias, but she didn't see any way around it. Mrs. Shaw would come after her because the flower beds were her pride and joy, but she was only doing her job. She couldn't let him get the better of her again.

She kept inching away from him, that Colt steady on his chest. She came up slowly, keeping her distance. "Turn around and put your hands behind you."

"I don't think so," he said again. She didn't even see his leg, but she did hear the rip of his pants. The Colt went flying onto the sidewalk.

She was caught off guard. Surely an escaping crook would turn tail and run, not stand there looking at her. He wasn't behaving the way he should. "How'd you do that?"

Where were her partners?

Where was Mrs. Shaw, the postmistress? She'd once caught the designated bank robber by threatening him with a frying pan.

Then he was on her. This time, she moved as quickly as he did. She knew he wouldn't hurt her, just disable her, jerk her onto her face and humiliate her in front of everyone, which would be infinitely worse than being actually hurt. She rolled to the side, came up, saw Porter Forge from the corner of her eye, caught the SIG from him, turned and fired. She got him in midleap.

The red paint spread all over the front of his white shirt, his conservative tie, and his dark blue suit.

He flailed about, managing to keep his balance. He straightened, stared down at her, stared down at his shirt, grunted, and fell onto his back into the flower bed, his arms flung out.

"Sherlock, you idiot, you just shot the new coach of Hogan's Alley High School's football team!" It was the mayor of Hogan's Alley and he wasn't happy. He stood over her, yelling. "Didn't you read the paper? Didn't you see his picture? You live here and you don't know what's going on? Coach Savich was hired just last week. You just killed an innocent man."

"She also made me rip my pants," Savich said, coming up in a graceful motion. He shook himself, wiping dirt off his hands onto his filthy pants.

"He tried to kill me," she said, rising slowly, still pointing the SIG at him. "Also, he shouldn't be talking. He should be acting dead."

"She's right." Savich sprawled onto his back again, his arms flung out, his eyes closed.

"He was only defending himself," said the woman who'd yelled her head off. "He's the new coach and you killed him."

She knew she wasn't wrong.

"I don't know about that," Porter Forge said, that drawl of his so slow she could have said the same thing at least three times before he'd gotten it out. "Suh," he continued to the mayor who was standing at his elbow, "I believe I saw a wanted poster on this big fella. He's gone and robbed banks all over the South. Yep, that's where I saw his picture, on one of the Atlanta PD posters, suh. Sherlock here did well. She brought down a really bad guy."

It was an excellent lie, one to give her time to do something, anything, to save her hide.

Then she realized what had bothered her about him. His clothes didn't fit him right. She leaned over, reached her hands into Savich's pockets, and pulled out wads of fake one-hundred-dollar bills.

"I believe ya'll find the bank's serial numbers on the bills, suh. Don't you think so, Sherlock?"

"Oh yes, I surely do, Agent Forge."

"Take me away, Ms. Sherlock," Dillon Savich said, came to his feet, and stuck out his hands.

She handed Porter back his SIG. She faced Savich with her hands on her hips, a grin on her face. "Why would I handcuff you now, sir? You're dead. I'll get a body bag."

Savich was laughing when she walked away to the waiting paramedic ambulance.

He said to the mayor of Hogan's Alley, "That was well done. She has a nose for crooks. She sniffed me out and came after me. She didn't try to second-guess herself. I wondered if she'd have guts. She does. Sorry I turned the exercise into a comedy at the end, but the look on her face, I just couldn't help it."

"I don't blame you, but I doubt we can use you again. I have a feeling this story will pass through training classes for a good long while. No future trainees will believe you're both a new coach and a crook."

"It worked once and we saw an excellent result. I'll come up with another totally different exercise." Savich walked away, unaware that his royal blue boxer shorts were on display to a crowd of a good fifty people.

The mayor began to laugh, then the people around him joined in. Soon there was rolling laughter, people pointing. Even a crook who was holding a hostage around the throat, a gun to his ear, at the other end of town looked over at the sudden noise to see what was going on. It was his downfall. Agent Wallace thunked him over the head and laid him flat.

It was a good day for taking a bite out of crime in Hogan's Alley.

3

SHE MET WITH COLIN PETTY, a supervisor in the Personnel Division, known in the Bureau as the Bald Eagle. He was thin, sported a thick black mustache, and had a very shiny head. He told her up front that she'd impressed some important people, but that was at Quan-tico. No one working here in Headquarters was impressed yet. She was going to have to work her butt off. She nodded, knowing where she'd been assigned. It was tough, but she managed to pull out a bit of enthusiasm.

"I'm pleased to be going to the Los Angeles field office," she said, and thought, I don't want anything to do with any bank robberies. She knew they dealt with more bank robberies than any field office in the Bureau. She guessed it was better than Montana, but at least there she could go skiing. How long was a usual tour of duty? She had to get back here, somehow.

"L.A. is considered a plum assignment for a new agent right out of the Academy," Mr. Petty said as he flipped through her personnel file. "You originally requested Headquarters, I see here, the Criminal Investigative Division, but they decided to send you to Los Angeles." He looked up at her over his bifocals. "You have a B.S. in Forensic Science and a Master's degree in Criminal Psychology from Berkeley," he continued. "Seems you've got a real interest here. Why didn't you request the Investigative Services Unit? With your background, you would probably have been escorted through the door. I take it you changed your mind?"

She knew there were notes about that in her file. Why was he acting as if he didn't know anything? Of course. He wanted

her to talk, get her slant on things, get her innermost thoughts. Good luck to him on that, she thought. It was true that it was her own fault that she was being assigned to Los Angeles and there was no secret as to why.

She forced a smile and shrugged. "The fact is that I just don't have the guts to do what those people do every day of their lives and probably in their dreams as well. You're right that I prepared myself for this career, that I believed it was what I wanted to do with my life, but-" She shrugged again. And swallowed. She'd spent all these years preparing herself, and she'd failed. "It all boils down to no guts."

"You always wanted to be a Profiler?"

"Yes. I read John Douglas's book Mindhunter and thought that's what I wanted to do. Actually I've been interested in law enforcement for a very long time, thus my major in college and graduate school." It was a lie, but that didn't matter. She told it easily, with no hesitation. She had practically come to believe it herself over the past several years. "I wanted to help get those monsters out of society. But after the lectures by people from ISU, after seeing what they see on a day-today basis for just a week, I knew I wouldn't be able to deal with the horror of it. The Profilers see unspeakable butchery. They live with the results of it. Every one of those monsters leaves a deep mark on them. And the victims, the victims ..." She drew a deep breath. "I knew I couldn't do it." So now she'd go after bank robbers and he would remain free and she wanted to cry. All this time and commitment and incredibly hard work, and she was going to go after bank robbers. She should have just quit, but the truth of the matter was that she just didn't have the energy to redefine herself again, and that's what it would mean.

Mr. Petty said only, "I couldn't either. Most folks couldn't. The burnout rate is incredible in the unit. Marriages don't do well either. Now, you did excellently at the Academy. You handle firearms well, particularly in mid-distances, you excel at self-defense, you ran the two miles in under sixteen minutes, and your situation judgment was well above average. There's a little footnote here that says you managed to take down Dillon Savich in a Hogan's Alley exercise, something neverbefore done by a trainee." He looked up, his eyebrows raised. "Is that true?"

She remembered her rage when he'd disarmed her twice. Then, just as suddenly, she remembered her laughter when he'd walked away, his boxer shorts showing through the big rip in his pants. "Yes," she said, "but it was my partner, Porter Forge, who threw me his SIG so I could shoot him. Otherwise I would have died in the line of duty."

"But it was Dillon who bought the big one," Petty said. "I wish I could have seen it." He gave her the most gleeful grin she'd ever seen. Even that bushy mustache of his couldn't hide it. It was irresistible. It made him suddenly very human.

"It also says that you pulled a Lady Colt .38 on him after he'd knocked the SIG out of your hand. Do you still have this gun?"

"Yes, sir. I learned to use it when I was nineteen. I'm very comfortable with it."

"I suppose we can all live with that. Ah, I know everyone must comment on your name, Agent Sherlock."

"Oh yes, sir. No stone left unturned, so to speak, over the years. I'm used to it now."

"Then I won't say anything about offering you a pipe."

"Thank you, sir."

"Let me tell you about your new assignment, Agent Sherlock," Petty said, and she thought, because I don't have any guts, I'm going to be catching jerks who rob banks. He continued, "The criminal you brought down in Hogan's Alley, namely, Dillon Savich, has asked that you be reassigned to his unit."

Her heart started pounding. "Here in Washington?"

"Yes."

In one of those huge rooms filled with computers? Oh God, no. She'd rather have bank robbers. She didn't want to play with computers. She was competent with computer programming, but she was far from an intuitive genius like Savich. The stories about what he could do with a computer were told and retold at the Academy. He was a legend. She couldn't imagine working for a legend. On the other hand, wouldn't he have access to everything? Just maybe-"What is his unit?"

"It's the Criminal Apprehension Unit, or CAU for short.

They work with the Investigative Services Unit for background and profiles, get their take on things, that sort of thing. Then they deal directly with local authorities when a criminal takes his show on the road-in other words, when a criminal goes from one state to another. Agent Savich has developed a different approach for apprehending criminals. I'll let him tell you about it. You will be using your academic qualifications, Agent Sherlock. We do try to match up agents' interests and areas of expertise with their assignments. Although you might have seriously doubted that if you'd gotten sent to Los Angeles."

She wanted to leap over the desk and hug Mr. Petty. She couldn't speak for a moment. She'd thought she'd doomed herself after she'd realized she simply couldn't survive in the ISU as a Profiler. The week she'd spent there had left her so ill she'd endured the old nightmares in blazing, hideous color for well over a week, replete with all the terror, as fresh as it had been seven years before. She just knew, deep down, that she could have never gotten used to it, and the ISU people did admit that many folks just couldn't ever deal with it, no matter how hard they tried. No, she wouldn't have been able to survive it, not with the horror of the job combined with the horror of the nightmares.

But now, she felt an incredible surge of excitement. She hadn't known about Savich's unit, which was strange because there was always gossip about everything and everyone at the Academy. And this sort of unit would provide her with an ideal vantage point. At the very least, she would be able to access all the files, all the collected data impossible for her to see otherwise. And no one would wonder at her curiosity, not if she was careful. Oh yes, and she would have free time. She closed her eyes with relief.

She'd never felt as though anyone was looking after her before. It was frightening because she hadn't believed in much of anything since that long ago night seven years ago. She'd had a goal, nothing more, just that goal. And now she had a real chance at realizing it.

"Now, it's two-twenty," Mr. Petty said. "Agent Savich wants to see you in ten minutes. I hope you can deal with this work. It's not profiling, but I don't doubt that it will be difficult at times, depending on the case and how intimately involved you have to become in it. At least you won't be six floors down at Quantico working in a bomb shelter with no windows."

"The people in the ISU deserve a big raise."

"And lots more help as well, which is one of the reasons Agent Savich's unit was formed. Now, I'll let him tell you all about it. Then you can make a decision."

"May I ask, sir, why Agent Savich requested me?"

There was that unholy grin again. "I think he really can't believe that you beat him, Agent Sherlock. Actually, you will have to ask him that."

He rose and walked her to the door of his small office. "I'm joking, of course. The Unit is three turns down this hallway and to the right. Turn left after another four doors and two conference rooms. It's just there on the left. Are you getting used to the Puzzle Palace?"

"No, sir. This place is a maze."

"It's got more than two million square feet. It boggles a normal mind. I still get lost, and my wife tells me I'm not all that normal. Give yourself another ten years, Agent Sherlock.''

Mr. Petty shook her hand. "Welcome to the Bureau. I hope you find your work rewarding. Ah, did anyone ever refer to a tweed hat?"

"Yes, sir."

"Sorry, Agent Sherlock."

It was hard not to run out the door of his office. She didn't even stop at the women's room.

Savich looked up. "You found me in ten minutes," he said, looking down at his Mickey Mouse wristwatch. "That's good, Sherlock. I understand from Colin Petty that you're wondering why I had you reassigned to my unit."

He was wearing a white shirt rolled up to his elbows, a navy blue tie, and navy slacks. A navy blazer was hanging on a coatrack in the corner of his office. He rose slowly from behind his desk as he spoke. He was big, at least six two, dark, and very muscular. In addition to the martial arts, he clearly worked out regularly. She'd heard some of the trainees call him a regular he-man, not a G-man. She knew just how strong and fast he was, since he'd worked her over in that Hogan's Alley exercise. Her stomach had hurt for three days after that head butt. If she didn't know he was an agent, she would have been terrified of him. He looked hard as nails, except for his eyes, which were a very soft summer-sky blue. Dreamy eyes, her mother would have called them. Her mother would have been wrong. There was nothing soft about this guy. He was patiently looking at her. What had he been talking about? Oh yes, why he'd wanted her reassigned to this unit. She smiled and said, "Yes, sir."

Dillon Savich came around his desk and shook her hand. "Sit down and we can discuss it."

There were two chairs facing his desk, clearly FBI issue. On top of the desk was an FBI-issue computer. Beside it was a laptop that was open and humming, definitely not FBI issue. It was slightly slanted toward her, and she could see the green print on the black background, a graph of some kind. Was this little computer the one she'd heard everyone say that Savich made dance? "Coffee?" She shook her head.

"Do you know much about computers, Sherlock?" Just Sherlock, no agent in front of it. It sounded fine to her. He was looking at her expectantly. She hated to disappoint him, but there was no choice.

"Not all that much, sir, just enough so I can write reports and hook into the databases I will need to do my job."

To her unspeakable relief, he smiled. "Good, I wouldn't want any real competition in my own unit. I hear you had wanted to be a Profiler, but ultimately felt you couldn't deal with the atrocities that flood the unit every moment of every day and well into the night."

"That's right. How did you know that? I just left Mr. Petty less than fifteen minutes ago."

"No telepathy." He pointed to the phone. "It comes in handy, though I much prefer e-mail. I agree with you, actually. I couldn't do it either. The burnout rate for Profilers is pretty high, as I'm sure you've heard. Since they spend so much time focusing on the worst in humanity, they wind up having a difficult time relating to regular folks. They lose perspective on normal life. They don't know their kids. Their marriages go under."

She sat forward a bit in her seat, smoothing her navy blue skirt as she said, "I spent a week with them. I know I saw only a small part of what they do. That's when I knew I didn't have what it took. I felt as if I'd failed."

"What any endeavor takes, Sherlock, is a whole lot of different talents. Just because you don't end up profiling doesn't mean you've failed. Actually, I think what we do leaves us more on the normal side of things than not.

"Now, I asked to have you assigned to me because academically you appear to have what I need. Your academic credentials are impressive. I did wonder, though. Why did you take off a year between your sophomore and junior years of college?''

"I was sick. Mononucleosis."

"Okay, yes, here's an entry about that. I don't know why I missed it." She watched him flip through more pages. He hadn't missed it. She couldn't imagine that he'd ever miss a thing. She would have to be careful around him. He read quickly. He frowned once. He looked up at her. "I didn't think mono took a person out for a whole year."

"I don't know about that. I just wasn't worth much for about nine or ten months, run-down, really tired."

He looked down at a page of paper that was faceup on his desktop. "You just turned twenty-seven, I see, and you came directly to the Bureau after completing your Master's degree."

"Yes."

"This is your first job."

"Yes." She knew he wanted more from her in the way of answers, but she wasn't about to comply. Direct question, direct answer; that's all she'd give him. She'd heard about his reputation. He wasn't only smart; he was very good at reading people. She didn't want him reading anything about her that she didn't want read. She was very used to being careful. She wouldn't stop now. She couldn't afford to.

He was frowning at her. He tossed her file onto the desktop. She was wearing a no-nonsense dark blue business suit with a white blouse. Her hair, a deep auburn color, was pulled severely back, held at the base of her neck with a gold clamp.

He saw her for a moment after he'd butted her into the petunias in Hogan's Alley. Her hair had been drawn back then. She was on the point of being too thin, her cheekbones too prominent. But she'd taken him, not lost her composure, her training. He said, "Do you know what this unit does, Sherlock?"

"Mr. Petty said that when a criminal took his show on the road, we're many times called in by the local police to help catch him."

"Yes. We don't deal in kidnappings. Other folk do that brilliantly. No, primarily we stick to the kinds of monsters who don't stop killing until we stop them. Also, like the ISU, we do deal with local agencies who think an outside eye just might see something they missed on a local crime. Usually homicide." He paused and sat back, just looking at her, seeing her yet again on her back in the petunia bed. "Also, like the ISU, we only go in when we're asked. It's our job to be very mental, intuitive, objective. We don't do profiling like the ISU. We're computer-based. We use special programs to help us look at crimes from many different angles. The programs correlate all the data from two or more crimes that seem to have been committed by the same person in order to bring everything possibly relevant, possibly important, into focus. We call the main program the PAP, the Predictive Analogue Program."

"You wrote the programs, didn't you, sir? And that's why you're the head of the unit?"

He grinned at her. "Yeah. I'd been working on prototypes a long time before the unit got started. I like catching the guys who prey on society and, truth be told, the computer, as far as I'm concerned, is the best tool to take them out. But that's all it is, Sherlock, a tool. It can turn up patterns, weird correlations, but we have to put the data in there in order to get the patterns. Then of course we have to see the patterns and read them correctly. It comes down to how we look at the possible outcomes and alternatives the computer gives us; it's how we decide what data we plug into it. You'll see that PAP has an amazing number of protocols. One of my people will teach you the program. With luck, your academic background in forensics and psychology will enable you to come up with more parameters, more protocols, more ways of sniffing out pertinent data and correlating information to look at crimes in different ways, all with the goal of catching the criminals."

She wanted to sign on the dotted line right that minute. She wanted to learn everything in the next five minutes. She wanted, most of all, to ask him when she could have access to everything he did. She managed to keep her mouth shut.

"We do a lot of traveling, Sherlock, often at a moment's notice. It's gotten heavier as more and more cops hear about us and want to see what our analysis has to offer. What kind of home life do you have? I see you're not married, but do you have a boyfriend? Someone you are used to spending time with?"

"No."

He felt as if he were trying to open a can with his fingernails. "Would you like to have your lawyer present?" .

She blinked at that. "I don't understand, sir."

"You are short on words, Sherlock. I was being facetious."

"I'm sorry if you don't think I'm talking enough, sir."

He wanted to tell her she'd talk all he wanted her to soon enough. He was good. Actually, he was better with a computer, but he could also loosen a tongue with the best of them in the Bureau. But for now he'd play it her way. Nothing but the facts. He said, "You don't live with anyone?"

"No, sir."

"Where do you live, Agent Sherlock?"

"Nowhere at the moment, sir. I thought I was being assigned to Los Angeles. Since I'll be staying in Washington I'll have to find an apartment."

Three sentences. She was getting positively chatty.

"We'll be able to help you on that. Do you have stuff in storage?''

"Not much, sir."

There was a faint beep. "Just a moment," Savich said and looked at the computer screen on his laptop. He rubbed his jaw as he read. Then he typed quickly, looked at the screen, tapped his fingertips on the desktop, then nodded. He looked up at her. He was grinning like a maniac. "E-mail. Finally, finally, we're going to have a chance to catch the Toaster."

4

SAVICH LOOKED AS IF HE wanted to jump on his desk and dance. He couldn't stop grinning and rubbing his hands together.

"The Toaster, sir?"

"Oh yes. On this one, I had feelers out with everyone. Excuse me, Agent Sherlock." He lifted the receiver on his phone and began to punch in numbers. He put it down and cursed softly. "I forgot. Ellis's wife is having their baby; she just went into the hospital an hour ago and so he's not available. No, I won't ask him. He'll insist on coming, but he needs to be with his wife. It's their first kid. But he's going to be really pissed to miss this. No, I just can't. He's gotta be there." He looked down at his hands a moment, then back up at her. He looked just a bit worried. "What do you think of trial by fire?''

Her heartbeat speeded up. She was so new she still squeaked, but he was going to take a chance on her. "I'm ready, sir."

She looked ready to leap out of her chair. He didn't remember being this eager on his first day. He rose. "Good. We're leaving this afternoon for Chicago. Bottom line: We've got a guy who killed a family of four in Des Moines. He did the same thing in St. Louis three months later. After St. Louis, the media dubbed him the Toaster. I'll tell you about it when we're in the air. That was Captain Brady in the Chicago Police Department, homicide, and he believes we might be able to help him. Actually, he's praying that we can do something. The media wants a sideshow, and he can't even give them a dancing bear. But we can." He looked at his watch. "I'll meet you at Dulles in two hours. We should be there no more than three days." He rolled down the sleeves of his white shirt and grabbed his jacket. "I really want this guy, Sherlock."

The Toaster. She knew about him as well. She scoured all the major newspapers for monsters like this one. Yes, she already knew the details, at least the ones that had made the papers.

He opened the office door for her. Her eyes were positively glistening, as if she were high on drugs. "You mean you know how to catch him?"

"Yes. We're going to get him this time. Captain Brady said he had some leads, but he needs us to come out. You go ahead and pack. I've got to update some people in the unit. Ollie Hamish is in charge when I'm unavailable."

They flew on United in Business Class. "I didn't think the Bureau let its agents fly anything other than tourist class."

Savich stowed his briefcase beneath the seat in front of him and sat down. "I upgraded us. You don't mind that I have the aisle?"

"You're the boss, sir."

"Yeah, but now you can call me Dillon or Savich. I answer to either one. What do most people call you"'

"Sherlock, sir. Just plain Sherlock."

"I met your daddy once about five years ago, just after he was appointed to the bench. Everyone in law enforcement was tickled to have him named because he rarely cut a convicted criminal any slack. I remember his selection didn't go over too well with liberals in your home state."

"No," she said looking out the window as the 767 began to taxi down the runway. "It didn't. There were two serious efforts to have him recalled-neither succeeded, of course. The first try was after he upheld the death penalty for a man who'd raped and tortured two little boys, then dumped their bodies in a Dumpster in Palo Alto. The second was when he wouldn't grant bail to an illegal Mexican alien who'd kidnapped and murdered a local businessman."

"Hard to believe there are people who'd want to rally behind those kinds of killers."

"Oh, there are. Their rationale in the first case was that my father showed no compassion. After all, the man's wife had died of cancer, his little boy had been killed by a drunk driver. He deserved another chance. He'd been pushed to torture those little boys. He had shown remorse, claimed grief had sent him out of his mind, but Dad said 'bullshit' and upheld the death penalty. As for the illegal Mexican, they claimed Dad was a racist, that there was no proof the man would flee the U.S. Also they claimed that the man had kidnapped the businessman because he had refused to give him a job, had threatened to call Immigration if the guy didn't leave the premises. They claimed the man hadn't been treated fairly, that he'd been discriminated against. It didn't matter that the businessman was an immigrant-a legal one. I also seriously doubt that he made that threat."

"They didn't succeed in recalling him."

"No, but it was close. You could say that the Bay Area is a fascinating place to grow up. If there's any other possible take on something, some group of locals will latch onto it."

"What does your dad think of your joining the FBI?"'

The flight attendant spoke over the PA system, telling them about their seat belts and the oxygen masks. He saw it in her eyes-the wariness, the relief that now she could concentrate on her flotation cushion instead of his questions. She was proving to be a puzzle. He very much appreciated puzzles. A good one fascinated him. He'd get her again with that question. Maybe when she was tired or distracted.

He sat back in his seat and said nothing more. Once in the air, he opened his briefcase and gave her a thick file. "I hope you read quickly. This is everything on the three different crimes. I knew you didn't have a laptop, so I had it downloaded and printed out for you. Read everything and absorb as much as you can. If you have questions, write them down and ask me later." He gently lifted his laptop onto the fold-down tray and got to work.

He waited until they were served dinner before he spoke again. "Have you finished reading everything?"

"Yes."

"You're fast. Questions? Ideas? Anything that doesn't seem kosher?"

"Yes."

This time he didn't say anything. He just chewed and waited. He watched her cut a small piece of lettuce from her salad. She didn't eat it, just played with it.

"I already knew about this man from the papers. But there's so much more here." She sounded elated, as if she'd made the insiders' club. He frowned at her. She suddenly cleared her throat, and her voice was nearly expressionless. "I can understand that he has low self-esteem, that he probably isn't very bright, that he probably works at a low-paying job, that he's a loner and doesn't relate well to people-" He waited, something he was excellent at. "I always wondered why it killed families. Families of four, exactly."

"You called him 'it.' That's interesting." She hadn't meant to. She forked down her lettuce and took her time chewing. She had to be more careful. "It was just a slip of the tongue."

"No, it wasn't, but we'll let that go for now, Sherlock. This family thing-the people in the ISU, as you've read in their profile, believe he lived on the same block as the first family he killed in Des Moines, knew them, hated them, wanted to obliterate them, which he did. However, they couldn't find anyone in the nearby area of the first murders in Des Moines to fit that description. Everyone just figured that the profile wasn't correct in this particular case. When he killed again in St. Louis, everyone was flummoxed. When I spoke to Captain Brady in Chicago, I asked him if the St. Louis police had canvassed the area for a possible suspect. They had, but they still didn't find anybody who looked promising."

"But you had already talked to the police in St. Louis, hadn't you?" "Oh yes."

"You know a lot, don't you?"

"I've thought about this case, Sherlock, thought and thought and re-created it as best I could. Unlike the cops, I firmly believe the profile is right on target."

"Even though they didn't find anyone in Des Moines or St. Louis to fit the profile?'' "Yeah, that's right."

"You're stringing me along, sir."

"Yes, but I'd like to see what you come up with. Let's just see if you're as fast with your brain as with that Lady Colt of yours."

She splayed her fingers, long slender fingers, short buffed nails. "You still kicked it out of my hand. It didn't matter."

"But you're a good catch. I wasn't expecting that move from Porter."

She grinned at him then, momentarily disarmed. "We practiced it. In another exercise, he got taken as a hostage. I threw a gun to him, but he missed it. The robber was so angry, he shot Porter. As you can imagine, we got yelled at by the instructors for winging it." She said again, still grinning, "Practice."

He said slowly, shutting down his laptop, "I got creamed once when I was a trainee at the Academy. I wish I'd learned that move. My partner, James Quinlan, was playing a bank robber in a Hogan's Alley exercise, and the FBI got the drop on him. I had to stand there and watch him get taken away. If I'd thrown him a gun, he might have had a chance. Although God knows what would have happened then." He sighed. "Quinlan turned me in under questioning. I think he expected me to break him out of lockup, and when I didn't, he sang. Although how he expected me to do it, I have no idea. Anyway, they caught me an hour later heading out of town in a stolen car, the mayor's blue Buick."

"Quinlan?"

"Yes." Nothing more, just the yes. Let her chew on nothing for a bit.

"Who is this Quinlan?"

"An agent and longtime friend. Now, Sherlock, what do you think we're going to find in Chicago?"

"You said the Chicago police believed they were close. How close?"

"You read it. A witness said he saw a man running from the victims' house. They've got a description. We'll see just how accurate it is."

"What do you know, sir, that's not in the reports?"

"Most of it's surmise," he said, "and some excellent stuff from my computer program." He nodded to the flight attendant to remove his cup of coffee. He gently closed his laptop and slipped it into its hard case. "We're nearly at O'Hare," he said, leaned back, and closed his eyes.

She leaned back as well. He hadn't shown her the computer analysis on the case. Maybe he'd thought she already had enough on her plate, and maybe she did. She hadn't wanted to look at the photos from the crime scenes, but she had. It had been difficult. There hadn't been any photos in the newspapers. The actual photos brought the horror of it right in her face. She couldn't help it; she spoke aloud: "In all three cases, the father and mother were in their late thirties, their two children-always a boy and a girl-were ten and twelve. In each case, the father had been shot through the chest, then in his stomach, the second shot delivered after he was dead, the autopsy reports read. The mother was tied down on the kitchen table, her face beaten, then she was strangled with the cord of the toaster, thus the name the Toaster. The children were tied up, knocked out, their heads stuck in the oven. Like Hansel and Gretel. It's more than creepy. This guy is incredibly sick. I've wondered what he would do if the family didn't have a toaster."

"Yeah, I wondered about that too, at first," he said, not opening his eyes. "Makes you think he must have visited each of the homes to make sure there was one right there in the kitchen before the murders."

"That or he brought the toasters with him."

"That's possible, but I doubt it. Too conspicuous." He brought his seat back into its upright position. "Someone could have seen him carrying something. Another thing, in a lot of houses, kitchen ovens are set up high and built in. In a situation like that, how would he kill the children? In the photos, all of these are the big old-fashioned ovens."

"He had a lot of checking out to do when he visited the families, didn't he?"

She looked at his profile. He didn't say anything. She slowly slid all the photos back into the envelope, each of them marked. She slowly lined up all the pages and carefully placed them back into their folders. He'd given this a whole lot of thought. On the other hand, so had she. She still wanted to see the computer analysis. Then again, she hadn't demanded to see it either.

The flight attendant announced that they were beginning their descent into Chicago and for everyone to put away any electronic equipment. Savich fastened his seat belt. "Oh yes, our guy did a lot of checking."

"How did you even remember my question? It's been five minutes since I asked it."

"I'm FBI. I'm good." He closed his eyes again.

She wanted to kick him. She turned to look out the window. Lights were thick and bright below. Her heart speeded up. Her first assignment. She wanted to do things right.

"You're FBI now too, Sherlock."

It was a bone, not a meaty bone, but a bone nonetheless, and she smiled, accepting that bone gladly.

She fastened her own seat belt. She never once stopped looking down at the lights of Chicago. Hallelujah! She wasn't going after bank robbers.

5

CHICAGO WAS OVERCAST AND a cool fifty degrees on October eighteenth. Lacey hadn't been to Chicago since she'd turned twenty-one, following a lead that hadn't gone anywhere, one of the many police departments she'd visited during her year of "mono."

As for Savich, he wasn't even particularly aware that he was in Chicago; he was thinking about the sick little bastard who had brutally murdered three families. Officer Alfonso Ponce picked them up and ushered them to an unmarked light blue Ford Crown Victoria.

"Captain Brady didn't think you'd want to be escorted to the station in a squad car. This one belongs to the captain."

After a forty-five-minute ride weaving in and out of thick traffic, everyone in the radius of five miles honking his horn, he let them off at the Jefferson Park station house, the precinct for what was clearly a nice, middle-class neighborhood. The station house was a boxy, single-story building on West Gale, at the intersection of two major streets, Milwaukee and Hig-gins. It had a basement, Officer Ponce told them, and that was because it had been built in 1936 and was one of those WPA projects. When there'd been a twister seven years before, everyone had piled into the basement, prisoners and all. One nutcase had tried to escape. There had been little updating since the seventies. There was a small box out front holding a few wilted flowers and a naked flagpole.

Inside, it was as familiar as any station house Savich had ever been in-a beige linoleum floor that had been redone probably in the last ten years, but who knew? It still looked forty years old. He smelled urine wearing an overcoat of floral room spray. There were a dozen or so people shuffling around or sitting on the long bench against the wall, since it was eight o'clock at night. At least half of them were teenage boys. He wondered what they'd done. Drugs, probably.

Savich asked the sergeant on duty where he could find Captain Brady. They were escorted by an officer, turned wary after he'd seen their FBI badges, to a squad room with several offices in the back with glass windows. The room was divided off into modular units, a new addition that nobody liked, the officer told them. There wasn't much noise this time of night, just an occasional ring of the phone. There were about a dozen people in the squad room, all plainclothes.

Captain Brady was a black man of about forty-five with a thick southern drawl. Even though there wasn't a single white hair on his head, he looked older than his years, very tired, lines scored deeply around his mouth. When he saw them, his mouth split into a big smile. He came out from behind his cluttered desk, his hand out.

"Agent Savich?"

"Yes, Captain." The two men shook hands.

"And this is Agent Lacey Sherlock."

Captain Brady shook her hand, gave her a lopsided grin and said, "You're a long way from London, aren't you?"

She grinned back at him. "Yes, sir. I forgot my hat, but my pipe's in my purse." She hadn't realized that Savich even knew her first name.

Savich was studying the computer on the captain's desk.

Captain Brady waved them into two chairs that sat opposite a sofa. The chairs were surprisingly comfortable. Captain Brady took the sofa. He sat forward, his hands clasped between his knees. "Bud Hollis in St. Louis said you had followed this case since the guy killed the first family in Des Moines and the DMPD had asked the FBI to do a profile. He said I should get you here, and that's why I e-mailed you. He, ah, appreciated your ideas even though they didn't get him anywhere. But you already know that. The guy's a mystery. Nothing seems to nail him. It's like he's a ghost."

Captain Brady coughed into his hand, a hacking low cough. "Sorry, I guess I'm getting run-down. My wife chewed me out good this morning." He shrugged. "But what can we do? We've been putting in long hours since the guy killed the family three and a half days ago. He did it right at six o'clock, right at dinnertime, right at the same time he killed the other two families. Sorry, but you already know that. You got all the police reports I sent you yesterday?''

"Oh yes," Savich said. "I was hoping you'd contact me."

The captain nodded. "Bud Hollis also said you had a brain and weren't a glory hound and did your investigating with a computer. I don't understand that, but I'm willing to give it a try.

"I still wasn't sure bringing you here was such a good idea until five minutes before I e-mailed you. Thank you for coming so quickly. I thought I should talk to both of you for a few minutes before I introduce you to the detectives on the case. They're, ah, a bit unhappy that I called you in."

"No problem," Savich said and crossed his legs. "You're right, Captain. Neither Sherlock nor I am into glory. We just want this guy off the streets."

Actually, Lacey wanted him really badly. She wanted him dead.

"Unfortunately we don't have anything more than we did when I e-mailed you this afternoon. The pressure from the mayor's office is pretty intense; everyone's hiding in the men's room because the media's been on a tear since the first night it happened. They haven't let up. Do you know that one station got hold of the crime scene photos, and they splashed them all over the ten P.M. news? Bloody vultures. They know all about Des Moines and St. Louis and that the media there had called the guy the Toaster. Got everyone scared to death. The joke in the squad room is that everyone is throwing out their kitchen appliances. You've read all the files from all the murders, haven't you?"

"Yes. Every one. They were very complete."

"I guess it's time to cut to the chase, Agent Savich. Can you help us?"

"Both Agent Sherlock and I have just a few questions. Perhaps we can meet with your people and get the answers. Yes, Captain, there's not a doubt in my mind that we can help you."

Captain Brady gave Savich a dubious smile, but there was a gleam of hope in his tired eyes. "Let's get to it," he said, grabbed a huge folder from his desk, and walked to the door of his office. He yelled out, "Dubrosky! Mason! Get in the conference room on the double!" He turned back to them and said, "I hate these modular things. They just put them in last year. You can't see a soul, and chances are the guy you want is in the John." He glanced at her. "Well, or the girl, er, female officer you want is in the women's room."

Evidently neither Dubrosky nor Mason had gone to the John. They were already in the conference room, standing stiff and hostile, waiting for the FBI agents. Captain Brady was right about one thing-they weren't happy campers. This was their turf, and the last thing they wanted was to have the FBI stick their noses into their business. Savich was polite and matter-of-fact. They looked at Sherlock, and she could see that they weren't holding out for much help from her. Dubrosky said, "You don't expect us to be your Watsons, do you, Sherlock?"

"Not at all, Detective Dubrosky, unless either of you is a physician."

That brought her a grudging smile.

She wanted to tell all of them, Savich included, that she now knew as much about this guy as they did, maybe even more than the Chicago cops, and she'd thought about him for as long as Savich had, but she kept her mouth closed. She wondered what Savich had up his sleeve. She'd only known him for seven hours, and she would have bet her last buck that he had a whole lot up that sleeve of his. It wouldn't have surprised her if he had the guy's name and address.

They sat in the small conference room, all the files and photos spread over the top of the table. There was a photo of the crime scene faceup at her elbow. It was of Mrs. Lansky, the toaster cord still around her neck. She turned it facedown and looked over at Savich.

He had what she already thought of as the FBI Look. He was studying Dubrosky in a still, thoughtful way. She wondered if he saw more than she did. Poor Dubrosky: he looked so tired he was beyond exhaustion, a man who wasn't smiling, a man who looked as if he'd just lost his best friend. He was wired, probably on too much coffee. He couldn't sit still. His brown suit was rumpled, his brown tie looked like a hangman's noose. He had a thick five-o'clock shadow.

Savich put his elbows on the table, looked directly at the man, and said, "Detective, were there any repairmen in the Lansky household within the past two months?"

Dubrosky reared back, then rocked forward again, banging his fist on the table. "Do you think we're fucking idiots? Of course we checked all that! There was a phone repair guy there three weeks ago, but we talked to him and it was legit. Anyway, the guy was at least fifty years old and had seven kids."

Savich just continued in that same calm voice, "How do you know there weren't other repairmen?"

"There were no records of any expenditures for any repairs in the Lanskys' checkbook, no receipts of any kind, and none of the neighbors knew of anything needing repairs. We spoke to the family members, even the ones who live out of town- none of them knew anything about the Lanskys' having any repairs on anything."

"And there were no strangers in the area the week before the murder? The day of the murder?"

"Oh sure. There were pizza deliveries, a couple of Seventh-Day Adventists, a guy canvassing for a local political campaign," said Mason, a younger man who was dressed in a very expensive blue suit and looked as tired as his partner. Savich imagined that when they took roles, Mason was the good cop and Dubrosky the bad cop. Mason looked guileless and naive, which he probably hadn't been for a very long time.

Mason gave a defeated sigh, spreading his hands on the tabletop. "But nobody saw anyone at the Lansky house except a woman and her daughter going door-to-door selling Girl Scout cookies. That was one day before the murders. That doesn't mean that UPS guys didn't stop there a week ago, but no one will even admit that's possible. It's a small, close-knit neighborhood. You know, one of those neighborhoods where everybody minds everybody else's business. The old lady who lives across the street from the Lanskys could even describe the woman and the little girl selling the cookies. I can't imagine any stranger getting in there without that old gal noticing. I wanted to ask her if she kept a diary of all the comings and goings in the neighborhood, but Dubrosky said she might not be so happy if I did and she just might close right up on us."

Captain Brady said, "You know, Agent Savich, this whole business about the guy coming to the house, getting in under false pretenses, actually coming into the kitchen, checking before he whacked the families to make sure they had a toaster and a low-set big gas oven didn't really occur to anyone until you told Bud Hollis in St. Louis to check into it. He's the one who got us talking to every neighbor within a two-block radius. Like Mason said, there wasn't any stranger, even a florist delivery to the Lansky house. Everyone is positive. And none of the neighbors seem weird. And we did look for weird when we interviewed, just in case."

Savich knew this of course, and Captain Brady knew that he knew it, but he wanted the detectives to think along with him. He accepted a cup of coffee from Mason that was thicker than Saudi oil. "You are all familiar with the profile done by the FBI after the first murders in Des Moines. It said that the killer was a young man between the ages of twenty and thirty, a loner, and that he lived in the neighborhood or not too far away, probably with his parents or with a sibling. Also he had a long-standing hatred or grudge or both toward the family in Des Moines, very possibly unknown by the family or friends of the family. Unfortunately this didn't seem to pan out."

"No shit," Dubrosky said as he tapped a pen on the wooden tabletop. "The Des Moines cops wasted hours and hours going off on that tangent. They dragged in every man in a three-block radius of the house, but there wasn't a single dweeb who could possibly fit the profile. Then it turned out that the Toaster wasn't just a little-time killer, he's now a serial killer. Thank God we didn't waste our time going through that exercise. You people aren't infallible." Dubrosky liked that. He looked jovial now. "No, this time you were so far off track that you couldn't even see the train. Like the captain said, we did talk to all the neighbors. Not a weirdo in the bunch."

"Actually, on this case, we're not off track at all," Savich said. "Believe me, it's astounding how often the profiles are right on the money." He was silent a moment, then said, "Now, everyone agrees that the same guy murdered all three families. It makes sense that he had to visit each of the houses to ensure that there were both a toaster and a classic full-size stove/oven combo that sat on the kitchen floor. And not an electric stove, a gas one. There were delivery people all over the neighborhoods in both Des Moines and in St. Louis, but the truth is no one is really certain of anything. By the time they acted on the profile theory of the killer living in the neighborhood, there wasn't much certainty anymore about any repairs or deliveries. Nobody remembered seeing anybody."

"Good summary, Savich," said Dubrosky.

"Bear with me, Detective." He took another drink of coffee. "This stuff is so potent, I bet it breeds little cups of coffee."

There was one small smile, from Sherlock.

Savich said, "You guys have done hours of legwork here and you did it immediately. You've proven that there wasn't a repairperson or a salesman or even a guy whose car broke down and wanted to phone a garage near the Lansky house. So then we come back to the basic question. How then did he get into the Lansky house? Into the kitchen specifically so he could make certain they had all the props he needed?"

Dubrosky made a big show of looking at his watch. "Look, Savich, we thought of all that. We found out that all the houses were older, not just here, but also in Des Moines and St. Louis. To me it means that chances are excellent that you'd have a big low gas oven in the kitchens. And who the hell wouldn't have a toaster? This is all nonsense. Our perp is a transient. He's nuts. None of the shrinks agree on why he did this. Maybe God told him to strangle every mother with the toaster cord. Maybe God told him that kids are evil, that he was the evil witch out of Hansel and Gretel. Who the hell knows why he's whacking families? Like I said, the fucker's crazy and he's traveling across the U.S., probably killing at whim, no rhyme or reason."

Mason said, "Buck's right. We don't know why no one saw him in the Lansky neighborhood, why a single dog didn't bark, but maybe he disguised himself as the postman or as that old woman who lives across the street from the Lanskys. In any case, he got lucky. But we'll find him, we've got to. Of course with our luck, the bastard's long gone from Chicago. We'll hear about him again when he murders someone in Kansas."

And that was truly what they believed, Sherlock thought. It was clear on all their faces. They believed the guy was long gone from Chicago, that they didn't have a prayer of ever getting him.

"Let me tell you about the magic of computers, gentlemen," Savich said and smiled. "They do things a whole lot faster than we can. But what's important is what you put into them. It's a matter of picking the right data to go into the mixer before you turn it on to do its thing." He leaned down and picked up his laptop and turned it on. He hit buttons, made the little machine bleep, all in all, ignored the rest of them.

"I've got to go home, Captain," Dubrosky said. "I've got gas, I need a shower or my wife won't even kiss me, and my kids have forgotten what I look like."

"We're all bushed, Buck. Just be patient. Let's see what Agent Savich's got."

Lacey realized then that Savich was just putting on a little show for them. He had the pages he wanted to show them in his briefcase. But he was going to call up neat-looking stuff on the screen and make them all look at it before he gave them any hard copy. In the next minute, Savich turned the computer around and said, "Take a look at this, Detectives, Captain Brady."

6

THE THREE MEN CROWDED around the small laptop. It was Detective Dubrosky who said suddenly, "Nah, I don't believe this. It doesn't make any sense."

"Yes, it does." Savich handed out a piece of paper to each of them. Sherlock didn't even glance at the paper. She knew what was on it. In that moment, Savich looked over at her. He grinned. He didn't know how she knew, but he knew that she'd figured it out.

"You tell them, Sherlock."

They were all staring at her now. He'd put her on the spot. But he'd seen the knowledge in her eyes. How, she didn't know. He was giving her a chance to shine.

Lacey cleared her throat. "The FBI Profilers were right. It's a local neighborhood guy who hated the Lansky family. He killed the families in Des Moines and St. Louis because he wanted to practice before he killed the people he hated. He wanted to get it perfect when it most mattered to him. So, the families in Des Moines and St. Louis were random choices. He undoubtedly drove around until he found the family that met his requirements. Then he killed them."

Captain Brady whistled. "My God, you think the profile is correct, but it was meant only for the Lanskys?"

"That's right," Savich said. "The other two families were his dress rehearsal." He turned to Dubrosky and Mason. "I wanted you to be completely certain that there was no stranger around the Lansky household before the killings. Are you both certain?"

"Yes," Mason said. "As certain as we can be."

"Then we go to the Lansky neighborhood and pick up the guy who will fit the profile. He screwed up and now we'll nail him. The computer hit on three possibles, all within walking distance of the Lanskys' house. My money's on Russell Bent. He fits the profile better than the others. Given how well the profile fits this guy and given no strangers, the chances are really good that this wasn't just another dress rehearsal. Also, Russell Bent lives with his sister and her husband. She is exactly two years older than he is."

"I don't understand, Agent Savich," Captain Brady said, sitting forward. "What do you mean she's two years older?"

"The boy and girl in all three families," Lacey said. "The girl was twelve and the boy was ten."

"Jesus," Captain Brady said.

"Why didn't you just tell us?" Dubrosky was mad. He felt that Savich had made him look like a fool.

"As I said," Savich said as he rose from his chair, "I wanted you to be certain that no stranger had been near the Lansky home. It was always possible that the guy was having a third dress rehearsal. But he wasn't. This time it was the real thing for him. I wasn't really holding out on you. I just got everything in the computer this morning, once Captain Brady had sent me all your reports. Without the reports I wouldn't have gotten a thing. You would have come back to this. It's just that I always believed the profile and I had the computer."

Russell Bent lived six houses away from the Lanskys' with his sister and her husband and one young son. Bent was twenty-seven years old, didn't date, didn't have many friends, but was pleasant to everyone. He worked as a maintenance man at a large office on Milwaukee Avenue. His only passion was coaching Little League.

The detectives had already spoken to Russell Bent, his sister, and her husband as part of their neighborhood canvassing. They'd never considered him a possible suspect. They were looking for a transient, a serial killer, some hot-eyed madman, not a local, certainly not a shy young guy who was really polite to them.

"One hundred dollars, Sherlock, says they'll break him in twenty minutes," Savich said, grinning down at her.

"It's for certain that none of them looks the least bit tired now," she said. "Do we watch them?"

"No, let's go to Captain Brady's office. I don't want to cramp their style. You know, I bet you that Bent would have killed one more family, in another state, just to confuse everyone thoroughly. Then he wouldn't have killed again."

"You know, I've been wondering why he had to kill the kids like that."

"Well, I've given it a lot of thought, talked to the Profilers and a couple of shrinks. Why did Bent murder these families with two kids, specifically a boy and a girl, and in each case, the kids were two years apart, no more, no less? I guess he was killing himself and his sister."

She stared at him, shivering. "But why? No, don't tell me. You did some checking on Mr. Bent."

"Yep. I told Dubrosky and Mason all about it in the John. They're going to show off now in front of Captain Brady."

"I wish I could have been there."

"Well, probably not. Mason got so excited that he puked. He hadn't eaten anything all day and he'd drunk a gallon of that atomic bomb coffee."

She raised her hand. "No, don't tell me. Let me think about this, sir."

She followed him down the hall and into Captain Brady's office. He lay down on the sofa. It was too short and hard as a rock, but he wouldn't have traded it for anything at the moment. He was coming down. He closed his eyes and saw that pathetic Russell Bent. They'd gotten him. They'd won this time. For the moment it made him forget about the monsters who were still out there killing, the monsters that he and his people had spent hours trying to find, and had failed. But this time they'd gotten the monster. They'd won.

"The mother must have done something."

He cocked open an eye. Sherlock was standing over him, a shock of her red hair falling over to cover the side of her face. He watched her tuck the swatch of hair behind her ear. Nice hair and lots of it. Her eyes were green, a pretty color, kind of mossy and soft. No, her hair wasn't really red, but more red than anything else. There was some brown and a dash of cinnamon color as well. He guessed it was auburn. That's what he'd thought the first time he'd seen her. "Yes," he said, "Mrs. Bent definitely did something."

"I don't think Mr. Bent did anything. The three fathers Russell Bent shot were clean kills. No, wait, after they were dead, Bent shot them in the stomach."

"The quick death was probably because to Bent, the father didn't count, he wasn't an object of the bone-deep hatred. The belly shot was probably because he thought the father was weak, he was ineffectual, he wasn't a man."

"What did Mrs. Bent do to Russell and his sister?" "To punish Russell and his sister, or more likely, just for the kicks it gave her, Mrs. Bent gagged them both, tied their arms behind them and locked them in the trunk of the car or in a closet or other terrifying closed-in places. Once they nearly died from carbon monoxide poisoning. The mother didn't take care of them, obviously, she left them to scrounge food for themselves. Social Services didn't get them away from her until they were ten and twelve years old. Some timing, huh?"

"How did you find out this stuff so quickly?" "I got on the phone before we left to pick up Russell Bent. I even got Social Services down to check their files. It was all there."

"So the toaster cord is a sort of a payback for what she didn't do? Beating her face was retribution?" "Yeah, maybe. A payback for all eternity." "And he must have come to believe that even though his mother was a dreadful person, he and his sister still deserved death, only they hadn't died, they'd survived, so it had to be other children just like them?"

"That doesn't make much sense, does it? But it's got to have something to do with Russell Bent feeling worthless, like he didn't deserve to live."

"But why did he pick the Lansky family?" "I don't know. No one reported any gossip about the family, nothing about physical abuse, or the mother neglecting the children. No unexplained injuries with the kids winding up in the emergency room. But you can take it to the bank that Russell Bent thought the two Lansky kids were enough like him and his sister to merit dying. He thought the mother was enough like his own mother to deserve death. Why exactly did he have to gas the children? God only knows. Your explanation is as good as any. Brady will find out, though, with the help of the psychiatrists."

"Russell Bent coached Little League. The Lansky boy was in Little League. Maybe the Lansky boy got close to Bent, just maybe the Lansky boy told Russell that his mother was horrible." She shrugged. "It really won't matter. You know what they'll do, sir. They'll dress it all up in psychobabble. Do you know what happened to the Bents' parents?"

"Yes," he said. "I know. Sherlock, call me anything but 'sir.' I'm only thirty-four. I just turned thirty-four last month, on the sixth. 'Sir' makes me feel ancient."

The three cops erupted into the office. Captain Brady was rubbing his hands together. There was a bounce to his step. There would be a press conference at midnight. Mason and Dubrosky kept giving each other high fives. Brady had to call the mayor, the police commissioner-the list went on and on. He had to get busy.

It took the CPD only two hours to prove that Bent had traveled to Des Moines and to St. Louis exactly a week before each of those murders had been committed there and back on the exact dates of the murders.

Unfortunately, at least in Lacey's view, Bent was so crazy, he wouldn't even go to trial. He wouldn't get the death penalty. He would be committed. Would he ever be let out? The last thing she heard as they were leaving the Jefferson Park precinct station was his sobs and the soft, soothing voice of his sister, telling him over and over that it would be all right, that they were in this together. She would take care of him. She had been two years older and she hadn't protected him from their mother. She wondered if the sister was really lucky that her brother hadn't gassed her.

They took a late-morning flight back to Washington, D.C. It didn't occur to Savich until they were already in the air that Sherlock might not have a place to stay.

"I'm staying at the Watergate," she said. "I'm comfortable. I'll stay there until I find an apartment." She smiled at him. "You did very well. You got him. You didn't even need the police. Why didn't you just call Captain Brady and tell him about Bent? Why did you want to go to Chicago?"

"I lied to Brady. I'm a glory hound-even if it's just a crumb, I'm happy. I love praise. Who doesn't?"

"But that's not even part of why you went."

"All right, Sherlock. I wanted to be in at the kill. I wanted to see this guy. If I hadn't seen him, then it would never be finished in my mind. Too, this was your first day. It was important for you to see how I work, how I deal with local cops. Okay, it was a bit of a show. I think I deserved it. You're new. You haven't seen any disappointments yet, you haven't lived through the endless frustration, the wrong turns our unit has suffered since the first murders in Des Moines. You didn't hear all the crap we got about the profile being wrong. All you saw was the victory dance. This has been only the third real score I've gotten since the FBI started the unit up.

"But I can't ever forget that there was Des Moines and St. Louis and twelve people died because we didn't figure things out quickly enough. Of course Chicago was the key, since that was his focus. As soon as I realized that the neighbors knew one another and watched out for one another, and there hadn't been any strangers at the Lansky house, then I knew our guy lived there. He had to. There wasn't any other answer."

Savich added in a tired voice, "You did just fine, Sherlock."

For the first time in years, she felt something positive, something that made her feel really good wash through her. "Thanks," she said, and stretched out in her seat. "What if I hadn't known the answer when you asked me to explain it?"

"Oh, it was easy to see that you did know. You were about to burst out of your skin. You looked about ready to fly. Yeah, you really did fine."

"Will you tell me about your first big score sometime? Maybe even the second one?"

She thought he must be asleep. Then he said in a slow, slurred voice, "Her name was Joyce Hendricks. She was seventeen and I was fifteen. I'd never seen real live breasts before. She was something. All the guys thought I was the stud of the high school, for at least three days."

She laughed. "Where is Joyce now? "She's a big-time tax accountant in New York We exchange Christmas cards," he mumbled, just before he drifted off to sleep.

7

LACEY MOVED A WEEK LATER into a quite lovely two-bedroom town house in Georgetown on the corner of Cranford Street and Madison. She had four glasses, two cups, a bed, one set of white sheets, three towels, all different, a microwave, and half a dozen hangers. It was all she'd brought with her from California. She'd given the rest of her stuff to a homeless shelter in San Francisco. When she'd told Savich she didn't have much in storage, she hadn't been exaggerating.

No matter.

The first thing she did was change the locks and install dead bolts and chains. Then she hung up her two dresses, two pairs of jeans, and two pairs of slacks on her hangers. She was whistling, thinking about MacDougal and how she'd miss him. He was on the fifth floor, working in the National Security Division. He was big-time into counterterrorism. It had been his goal, he'd told her, since a close friend of his had been blown out of the sky on the doomed Pan Am Flight 103 that exploded over Lockerbie in the late eighties. He'd just gotten his first big assignment. He would go to Saudi Arabia because of a terrorist bombing that had killed at least fifteen American soldiers the previous week.

"I'm outta here, Sherlock," he'd said, grabbed her, and given her a big hug. "They're giving me a chance. Just like Savich gave you. Hey, you really did well with that guy in Chicago."

"The Toaster."

"Yeah. What a moniker. Trust the media to trivialize murder by making it funny. Anything big since then?"

"No, but it's been less than a week. Savich made me take three days off to find an apartment. Listen, no impulsive stuff out of you, okay? You take care of yourself, Mac. Don't go off on a tear just because you're FBI now and think you're invincible."

"This is just training for me, Sherlock. Nothing more. Hey, you're good little-sister material."

"We're the same age."

"Nah, with those skinny little arms of yours, you're a little sister."

He was anxious to be gone. He was bouncing his foot and shifting from one leg to the other. She gave him one more hug. "Send me a postcard with lots of sand on it."

He gave her a salute and was off, whistling, just as she was now, his footsteps fast and solid down the short drive in front of her town house. He turned suddenly and called back, "I hear that Savich is big into country-and-western music. I hear he loves to sing the stuff, that he knows all the words to every song ever written. It can't hurt to brownnose."

Goodness, she thought, country-and-western music? She knew what it was but that was about it. It was twangy stuff that was on radio stations she always turned off immediately. It hadn't ever been in her repertoire-not that she'd had much of a repertoire the past seven years. The last time she'd played the piano was in the bar at the Watergate a week and a half before. The drunks had loved her. She'd played some Gershwin, then quit when she forgot the next line.

She was standing in the middle of her empty living room, hands on hips, wondering where she was going to buy furniture when the doorbell rang.

No one knew she was here.

She froze, hating herself even as she felt her heart begin to pound. She had been safe at Quantico, but here, in Washington, D.C., where she was utterly alone? Her Lady Colt was in the bedroom. No, she wasn't about to dash in there and get it. She drew in a deep breath. It was the paperboy. It was someone selling subscriptions.

The only people she knew were the eight people in the Criminal Apprehension Unit and Savich, and she hadn't given them her address yet. Just Personnel. Would they tell anyone?

The doorbell rang again. She walked to her front door, immediately moving to stand beside it. No one would shoot through the front door and hit her. "Who is it?''

There was a pause, then, "It's me, Lacey. Douglas."

She closed her eyes a moment. Douglas Madigan. She hadn't seen him for four months, nearly five months. The last time had been at her father's house in Pacific Heights the night before she'd left for Quantico. He'd been cold and distant with her. Her mother had wept, then ranted at her for being an ungrateful girl. Douglas had said very little, just sat there on the plush leather couch in her father's library and sipped at very expensive brandy from a very old Waterford snifter. It wasn't an evening she liked to remember.

"Lacey? Are you there, honey?"

She'd called her father the day before. Douglas must have found out where she was from him. She watched her hand unfasten the two chains. She slowly clicked off the dead bolt and opened the door.

"I've got a bottle of champagne, just for us." He waved it in her face.

"I don't have any silverware."

"Who cares? I don't usually drink champagne from a spoon anyway. You nervous to see me, Lacey? Come, honey, all you need is a glass or two."

"Sorry, my brain's a bit scattered. I wasn't expecting you, Douglas. Yes, I've got some cheap glasses. Come in."

He followed her to the empty kitchen. She pulled two glasses from the cupboard. He said as he gently twisted the champagne cork, "I read about you in the Chronicle. You just graduated from the Academy and you already nailed a serial killer."

She thought about that pathetic scrap, Russell Bent, who'd murdered twelve people. She hoped the inmates would kill him. He had murdered six children and she knew that prisoners hated child abusers and child killers. She shrugged. "I was just along for the ride, Douglas. It was my boss, Dillon Savich, who had already figured out who the guy was even before we went. It was amazing the way Savich handled everything-all low-key, not really saying anything to anybody. He wanted the local cops to buy in to everything he'd done, then give them the credit. He says it's the best P.R. for the unit. Actually, I'm surprised my name was even mentioned."

She smiled, remembering that the very next day Assistant Director Jimmy Maitland came around to congratulate everyone. It had been quite a party. "Savich told me that I had arrived just in time for the victory dance. Everyone else had done all the hard work. His main person on the case was with his wife in the hospital, having a baby, the wife, that is. And so I went in his place. Savich was right. I didn't do a thing, just watched, listened. I've never seen so many happy people."

"It was a Captain Brady of the Chicago police who thanked the FBI on TV, for all their valuable assistance. He mentioned both your names."

"Oh dear, I bet Savich wasn't very happy about that. I had the impression that he'd asked Captain Brady not to say anything. Oh well, it's still very good press for the FBI. Now everyone knows about his unit."

"Why the hell shouldn't the two of you get the credit? He caught a serial killer, for God's sake."

"You don't understand. The FBI is a group, not an individual. Loyalty is to the Bureau, not any single person."

"You're already brainwashed. Well, here's to you, Lacey. I hope this works out the way you want it to."

Douglas raised his glass and lightly clicked it against hers. She merely nodded, then took a sip. It was delicious. "Thank you for bringing the champagne."

"You're welcome."

"His wife had the baby at about midnight."

"Whose wife? Oh, the agent who'd done all the work."

"Yeah, I thought he'd cry that he'd missed it, but he was a good sport about it. Why are you here, Douglas? I only called my father yesterday with my new address."

He poured himself some more champagne, sipped it, then said with a shrug and a smile, "It was good timing. I had to come to Washington to see a client and decided to put you up front on my itinerary." He moved into the living room. "I like your living room. It'll have lots of afternoon sunlight. It's good sized. Why don't you have any furniture?"

"It wasn't worth it to have all my old stuff trucked across the country. I'll get some new stuff."

They were standing facing each other in the empty living room. Douglas Madigan downed the rest of his champagne and set his empty glass on the oak floor. He straightened, took her glass, and set it next to his. "Lacey," he said, taking her upper arms in his hands, "I've missed you. I wish you had come home for a visit, but you didn't. You didn't write me or call. You left a hole in my life. You're beautiful, you know that? I'll bet all the guys are always telling you that, or just staring at you, even with your hair all frizzy around your face, even with those baggy jeans you're wearing and that ridiculous sweatshirt. What does it say across the back? Dizzy Dan's Pizza? What the hell is that all about?"

"Nothing, Douglas, just a local place. And no one seems to have noticed my soul-crushing beauty at all. But you're kind to say so." Actually, she'd gone out of her way at the Academy and now at Headquarters to dress very conservatively, even severely. As for her hair, she'd always worn it pulled back and clipped at the base of her neck. But this was Saturday. She was in jeans and a sweatshirt, her hair loose around her face. Since it wasn't raining and there was next to no humidity, Douglas obviously didn't know what frizzy was.

"You're looking good, Douglas. But you never change. Maybe you just get better." It was true. He was six feet tall, had a lean runner's body and a thin face with soulful brown eyes. Women loved him, always had. Even her mother had never said a word against Douglas. He charmed easily. He dominated just as easily.

"Thank you." He touched her hair, then sifted it through his fingers. "Beautiful. It's auburn, but not really. Perhaps more Titian, but there's some blond in there too and some brown. Ah, you know I didn't want you doing this silly FBI thing. Why? Why did you leave me and do this?"

Leave him? She said in her low, calm voice, the one she'd practiced and practiced at the Academy when she took courses in interviewing, "I always wanted to be in law enforcement, you know that. The FBI is the best, the very best. It's the heart of the whole system."

"The heart? I doubt it. As to your always wanting to be in law enforcement, I don't remember that. You started out as a music major. You play the piano beautifully. You were playing Beethoven sonatas since you were eleven years old. You wanted to go to Julliard. I remember you dropped out of the Fletcher competition. I always believed you weren't quite of this world. You seemed to live for your music. Of course we all changed after Belinda. It's been a very long time now. Seven long years. Your father didn't appreciate your talent, didn't understand it since he didn't have any at all, but everyone else did. Everyone was worried about you when you sold your Steinway years ago, when you stopped even playing at parties. Hell, you even stopped going to parties."

"That was a long time ago, Douglas. Dad isn't particularly disappointed in me now. He hoped I'd finally do something worthwhile. He hoped this was my first step to growing up. He only acted cold to me because I hadn't asked him to help me get in. He was dying to use his pull, and I didn't let him." Actually, she had blackmailed him. When the FBI agents interviewed him after she'd applied, he'd not said much of anything about Belinda or how Lacey had changed. She'd told him straight out that she'd never speak to him again if he did. He'd evidently glossed over everything, and very smoothly. She'd gotten into the FBI, after all.

She still missed her piano, but that missing was buried deep down, so deep she scarcely ever thought of it now. "Yes, I did sell it. It just didn't seem important anymore." A piano was nothing compared to what Belinda had lost. Still, though, she would still find herself playing a song on the arm of a chair, playing along with the music in a movie or on the car radio. She could remember when she was nineteen playing on the arm of a young man she was dating.

Douglas said, "I don't remember much from that time, to tell you the truth. It's blurred now, distant, and I'm grateful for it."

"Yes," she said. But she remembered; she had lived it and held it deep and raw inside her since that awful night. He moved closer to her and she knew he would kiss her. She wasn't sure she wanted him to. Douglas had always fascinated her. Seven years. A long time. But still it didn't seem quite right.

He did kiss her, just a light kiss, a touch of his mouth to hers, a brief remembrance, a coming back. His mouth was firm and dry. The kiss was so brief, she didn't get the taste of him, just a whisper of the tart champagne. He immediately dropped his hands and stepped back.

"I've missed you. I had to listen to your father yell and curse that you'd lost it and gone off the deep end when you told him you were changing your major to Forensic Science. 'Fingerprinting, for God's sake,' he told me. 'She'll be wasting herself lifting some goon's damned fingerprints from a dead body!' "

"You know there's lots more to it than that. There are a good dozen specialties in forensics."

"Yes, I know. He wanted you to go to law school, of course. He still thought there was hope after you finished your Master's degree in criminal psychology. He said it would be helpful in nailing scum. Your dad, the judge, is always forgetting that I'm a defense attorney."

"I just changed my mind, that's all."

"That's what I told the FBI guy who came doing a background check on you. I figured if you wanted to go into the FBI, then I wasn't going to stand in your way."

What did Douglas mean by that? That he could have told the FBI that she was unstable, that she'd gone around the bend seven years ago? Yes, he could have said that. She wondered if anyone had told the FBI that? No, if they had, then she wouldn't have been accepted, would she?

"I know my father was positive when the agents came to interview him."

"Yes, he told me you'd given him no choice. I said good for you, it was your life and he should keep his mouth shut if he ever wanted to see you again. He was pissed at me for a good month."

"Thank you for standing up for me, Douglas." She had assumed at the time that the people doing the check on her background just hadn't considered it all that important. But they had, evidently, and they'd asked questions. "I had no idea, but I am grateful. No one dredged up anything about that time. Do you know that you haven't changed? You really are looking good." He was thirty-eight now. There were just a few white strands woven into his black hair. He was very probably more handsome now than he had been seven years ago. She remembered that Belinda had loved him more than anything. Anything. Lacey felt the familiar hollowing pain and quickly picked up the champagne bottle. She poured each of them another glass.

"You've changed. You're a woman now, Lacey. You're no longer a silent kid. You still have a dozen locks on your door, but hey, this is D.C. I'd probably have a submachine gun sitting next to the front door. What does the FBI use?''

"A Heckler and Koch MP-5 submachine gun. It's powerful and reliable."

"I have trouble imagining you even near something like that, much less holding it and firing it. Ah, that sounded sexist, didn't it? You spoke of change. As for me, perhaps I haven't changed all that much on the outside, but well, life changes one, regardless, doesn't it?"

"Oh yes." She was the perfect example of what life could do to a person.

"You're on the thin side. Did they work you that hard at the Academy?"

"Yes, but it was a classmate of mine-MacDougal-who worked me the hardest. He swore he'd put some muscle on my skinny little arms."

"Let me see."

He was squeezing her upper arm. "Flex."

She did.

"Not bad."

"My boss works out. Don't picture him as a muscle-bound, no-neck bodybuilder. He's very strong and muscular, but he's also into karate, and he's very good. I was on the receiving end of his technique once at the Academy. Just the other day I saw him eyeing me. I don't think he liked what he saw. I'll bet he'll have me in the gym by next Tuesday."

"Boss? You mean this Savich character?"

"I suppose we're all characters in our own way. Savich is a genius with computers. One of his programs helped nail Russell Bent. He's the chief of the unit I'm in now. I was very lucky that he asked for me. Otherwise I would have ended up in L.A. chasing bank robbers."

"So may I take you out to lunch to celebrate your first case? How about we have lunch at one of the excellent restaurants you've got in this neighborhood?"

She nodded. "How long will you be here, Douglas?"

"I'm not certain. Perhaps a week. Did you miss me, Lacey?"

"Yes. And I do miss Dad. How is his health?"

"You write him every week, and I know for a fact that he writes you back every week. He told me that you don't like the telephone. So he has to write letters. So you know he's just fine."

Of course Douglas knew very well why she hated phones. That was how she'd been told about Belinda. "Soon I'll probably be into e-mail full-time. My boss is really big on e-mail, and so is everyone else in the unit. It's weird, you don't hear all that many phones ringing."

"I'll write my e-mail address down for you before I leave. Let's go eat, Lacey."

"You look like a prince and I look like a peasant. Let me change. It'll take me just a minute. Oh yeah, everybody calls me Sherlock."

"I don't like that, I never did. And everybody has to make a stupid remark when they meet you. It doesn't suit you. It's very masculine. Is that what the FBI is all about? Turning you into a man?"

"I hope not. If they did try, I'd flunk the muscle mass tests."

Actually, she thought, as she changed into a dress in her bedroom, she liked being called Sherlock, just Sherlock. It just moved her one step further from the woman she had been seven years ago.

It was at lunch that he told her about this woman who claimed he'd gotten her pregnant.

8

SAVICH STOPPED BY HER DESK Monday morning and said, "Ollie just told me that you still didn't have any stuff for your apartment. I thought you were going to take care of it this weekend. What happened?"

She looked over at Ollie Hamish and cocked her elbow at him, tapping it with her other hand. He waved back at her, shrugging.

Why should Savich care if she slept in a tent? "A friend from California came into town. I didn't have a chance."

"Okay, take off today and shop yourself to death." Then he frowned. "You don't know where to shop, do you? Listen, I'll call a friend of mine. She knows where to find anything you could possibly invent. Her name's Sally Quinlan."

Lacey had heard all about James Quinlan, presumably this woman's husband. She'd heard about some of his cases, but none of the real details. Maybe when she met Sally Quinlan, she'd find out all the good stuff.

It turned out that Sally Quinlan wasn't free until the following Saturday. They made a date. Lacey spent the day learning about PAP, the Predictive Analogue Program, and all the procedures in the unit.

That Monday evening, Lacey found two lovely, but small, prints at Bentrells in Georgetown, which would probably look insignificant against that long expanse of white wall in her living room. She bought some clothes at another Georgetown boutique. When she got back to her apartment, there was Douglas waiting for her. He'd been busy Sunday, hadn't even had time to phone her. She said, "I'm starving. Let's go eat."

He nodded and took her to Antonio's, a northern Italian restaurant that wasn't trendy. Over a glass of wine and medallions of veal, he said, "I guess you want to know about this woman, huh?"

"Yeah, you dropped that bomb and then took off." She fingered a bread stick. "If you don't want to tell me, Douglas, that's all right."

"No, you should know. Her name is Candice Addams. She's about your age, so beautiful that men stop in midstride to stare at her, smarter than just about anyone I know." He sighed and pushed away his plate. "She claims I got her pregnant and I suppose that I could have, but I've always been so careful. Living in San Francisco, you're probably the most careful of any American."

"Do you want to marry her?" Odd how it hurt to say the words, but they had to be said. Although she didn't know what she wanted from Douglas, she did realize that she valued him, that he attracted her, that he amused her, that he stood up for her, at least most of the time. And he'd been there for her through it all. She'd been closer to him during those awful months than to her father. Of course no one was really close to her mother. That was impossible.

"No, of course not. She's a local TV reporter. I can't imagine that she wants to have a baby now."

She felt suddenly impatient with him. "Haven't you spoken about all this with her? Does she want to have the baby? An abortion? Does she want to get married? What, Douglas?"

"Yeah, she says she wants to marry me."

"You said she's smart and beautiful. You said you always wanted to have kids. So marry her."

"Yeah, I guess maybe I'll have to. I wanted to tell you about it in person, Lacey. I don't want to marry her, I'm not lying about that. I'd hoped that someday you and I could, well, that would probably never have happened, would it?"

"I don't know," she said finally, setting down her fork. The medallions of veal looked about as appetizing as buffalo chips. "There's been so much, Douglas, too much. I'm very grateful to you, you know that. I wish I could say that I wanted to be with you-"

"Yeah, I know."

"What will you do?"

"I'd turn her down flat if you'd have me, Lacey."

She wondered in that moment just what he'd do if she said yes. She'd thought several times in the last few years that she was a habit to him, someone he was fond of, someone he would protect, but not as a woman, not as a wife. No, she was Belinda's little sister and she probably always would be in his mind. She dredged up a smile for him. "I hope she hasn't given you an ultimatum."

"Oh no, Candice is far too intelligent to do that. I'm hooked, but she isn't pulling at all on the line."

It was his life. He had to forget and move on. It had been seven years. And as for her, well, she would move on as well, toward the goal she'd always had, toward the goal she would pursue until the monster was caught and dead, or she was.

She'd heard that Russell Bent had gotten himself a hotshot lawyer who was claiming police brutality and coercion. The press was speculating that the lawyer might get him off. She wouldn't let that happen to him. Never.

On Thursday, Savich said, "I don't want you to flab out on me, Sherlock. You don't live more than a mile from me. My gym is right in between. I'll see you there at six o'clock."

"Flab out? I've only been out of the Academy for two weeks. And I've walked every square inch of Georgetown since Monday, shopping until I dropped, just as you ordered me to do. Flab out?"

"Yeah, you haven't been lying around, but your deltoids are losing tone. I'm an expert. I can tell these things. Six o'clock."

He strolled away, singing, "Like a rock, I was strong as I could be. Like a rock, nothin' ever got to me ..." He walked into his glass-enclosed office. That wasn't country-and-western, that was a commercial. Was it Chevrolet? She couldn't remember. She watched him sit down at his desk and turn immediately to his laptop.

Flabby deltoids, ha. She grinned toward his office. He was just being a good boss; that was it. She was new in town, and he didn't want her to get lonesome. She shook her head and went back to work. She jumped a good six inches when a woman's voice said from behind her, "Don't even consider going after him."

Lacey blinked up at Hannah Paisley, an agent who'd started with the Unit some six months before. She'd been in the Bureau five years. She was very tall, beautifully shaped, and was very smart. Lacey had seen her do her dumb blonde act on a witness at the Academy, on video. She'd made the guy feel like the stud of the universe. Then he'd spilled his guts. She was very good, which was why she was loaned out on sting operations. She also seemed to have a sixth sense about killers, which was why she'd joined this unit. Lacey envied her this ability.

Hannah wanted Dillon Savich? She was jealous because Savich thought Lacey was flabby? What was all this about? "I wasn't going after him, Hannah. Actually, I was just thinking that he was a jerk, criticizing my deltoids."

"I know. I was joking. Are you doing work on the Radnich case?"

Lacey nodded. Was Hannah joking? She didn't think so. She didn't need this. Hannah gave her a small salute and went back to her desk and computer.

Lacey was working with Ollie Hamish on the Radnich case. It had flummoxed everyone, including Savich. It wasn't the "who" of it that was driving everybody nuts; it was the "how." Lacey was feeding in more data they'd just gotten from the various local police reports and the autopsies and the forensic evidence, and in the back of her mind, she was also trying to figure out how this weirdo guy could have gotten into four nursing homes-the count as of today-and strangled old women with no one seeing a single thing. The first nursing home was in Richmond, Virginia, eight months ago. Then four months ago, it happened again in northern Florida, home of the nonagenarian. Norma Radnich was the old woman strangled at the South Banyon Nursing Home in St. Petersburg, Florida. They'd been called in by the SPPD only after this last murder. To date there were no leads, no clues, no guesses that were helpful. The Profilers were working on it now as well. Ollie was committed to this one. He was the lead agent on it, and Lacey wanted it that way.

She wanted to go digging. She'd figured out how to access everything sne needed. Perhaps tonight after Dillon let her leave the gym she would come back here and work. If he didn't kill all her body parts, if she'd still be able to walk once he was through with her.

No one would know. She'd be very careful, do her work for the unit during the day and search at night. She felt her heart speed up at the thought. She'd get him. She had to get him. But he'd lain low for nearly seven years. It would be seven years in three days. An anniversary. Just as the past six years had each been an anniversary. Had he died? Had he simply stopped? She didn't think so. He was a classic psychopath. He would never stop until he was dead or locked away. Cycles, she'd thought many times. He was into cycles and so far it hadn't triggered yet for whatever reason.

The weekly update meeting was at two o'clock. There were nine agents in the conference room: six men, including Savich; three women; one secretary, Claudia, a gum-chewing grandmother with bright red hair and a brain like a razor; and one clerk, Edgar, who would bet on just about anything and won the pool on the birth weight of Ellis's baby.

Everyone presented what he was doing, the status, what he or she needed.

The status meeting went quickly, no wasted time. All the agents felt free to speak up when another agent wanted advice. Savich moderated.

When it was Ollie's turn, he said, "I'm working the Rad-nich case with Sherlock. She's up to speed on it now. We just got the last pile of stuff today from the Florida cops. Sherlock, you just finished inputting all the data just a while ago, didn't you?" At her nod, he said, "Then we'll push the magic button this afternoon."

Savich turned to her. "Sherlock? You got anything to add?"

She sat forward, clasping her hands together. "It's like a locked-room murder mystery. How can this guy just saunter into these three nursing homes in Florida and the one in Richmond at ten o'clock at night and kill these poor old women with nobody seeing or hearing a thing? Naturally, all the old women killed were in single rooms or suites, but that shouldn't matter. This whole thing is nuts. There has to be something we're missing."

"Obviously," said Hannah. "But we'll get there, we usually do."

Savich said, "Actually, Ollie and I are going to St. Petersburg tomorrow morning. I just got another call from Captain Samuels. There's been another murder. That means that our guy is going into overdrive. The Profilers don't like it. It means he's losing control. Five murders in eight months, the last two in the past week and a half. Captain Samuels really wants us to go down there and poke around, look at everything with new eyes. So, that's where we'll be for the weekend."

Ollie nearly leaped out of his chair in excitement. "When, Chief?"

"Eight A.M. United flight from Dulles."

Suddenly Ollie blanched and raised his eyes heavenward. "I won't get too up for this. No, I'm a fatalist. If I really want to go, then my future mother-in-law will tell Maria that I'm a workaholic and lousy husband material and Maria will dump me. It's the way my life works."

"Don't worry, Ollie," Savich said, closing his folder. "It's no big deal. We'll just go down there to see if there's anything they haven't seen. I think it's time to look the situation over firsthand."

"Do you already know who did it?" Sherlock asked, sitting forward, her hands clasped on the conference table.

Savich heard that utterly serious voice, looked at that too-intense face, at that thick curling auburn hair trying to break free of the gold clasp at the back of her neck. "Not this time- sorry. Now, Ollie, don't panic. Nothing to it."

Still, Ollie looked doubtful. Lacey had heard that he'd already wagered with at least a dozen other agents that his wedding wouldn't come off because either a terrorist would blow up the church or the preacher would be arrested for stealing out of the collection plates.

"I sure want to catch this creep," Ollie said.

"I do too," Savich said. "Like you and Sherlock and every cop in Florida, I want to know how he keeps pulling off this ghost act." He stood. "Okay. Everyone is cooking along just fine. No big problems of breakthroughs. Cogan, see me for a minute. I've got an idea about those murders in Las Vegas."

At six o'clock, Lacey walked into the World Gym on Juniper Street, wearing shorts, a baggy top, and running shoes, her hair pulled back and up high in a ponytail. She paid her ten dollars and went into the huge mirror-lined room. There was the usual complement of bodybuilders who watched every move they made in the mirrors. She got a kick out of watching them walk. They were overbulked and couldn't really get around normally. They moved like hulks.

There were beautiful young women who were six feet tall, professional women on the StairMasters, looking at their watches every few minutes, probably thinking about their kids and what they were going to cook for dinner and did they have enough time if they did just five more minutes.

And there were quite a few professional men, all ages, all working hard. She didn't see a single slacker. Then she saw Savich. He was wearing shorts, running shoes, and a sleeveless white cotton tank. He was doing lat pulldowns.

He was slick with sweat, his dark hair plastered to his head. He looked good. Actually, he looked better than good; he looked beautiful. Then she saw him glance over at a clock, do two more slow pulldowns, then release the bar and slowly stand up. He turned, saw her immediately, and waved. Seeing him from the front made her realize that she hadn't seen any male as a man in a very long time. She let herself appreciate the clean definition of his muscles, the smooth contours of sinew, then she set him away from her, back into his proper role.

He looked her over as he approached. "I've decided your delts are okay. What you need is karate. I didn't like the fact that despite the SIG and your Lady Colt, I still disarmed you with no sweat. You need to know how to protect yourself, and guns are dangerous. What do you say?"

What could she say? She'd begun karate and then had to stop it because she'd broken her leg skiing. Two years before. She'd gotten pretty good. But two years was a long time to be away from an art like karate. He was offering her another chance. She nodded. What followed was a warm-up, then stretching, then the most grueling hour of her life. Savich realized quickly enough that she'd already had some training. He threw her, hurled her, smashed her, and encouraged her endlessly. After one particularly bouncing toss, she lay on her back staring up at him.

"I'm not getting up. I'm not that much of a masochist. You'll just do it again. I'm tired of hearing how great I am at falling and rolling."

He grinned down at her. "You're doing very well. Don't whine. You took karate before, so it's not at all new to you. You know learning how to fall is very important."

"I'm still not going to get up. It's been two years."

He sighed, then offered her his hand. "All right. It can be your turn now. But I didn't do all that just to torture you. If you don't know how to fall properly, you might as well hang it up. Now it's your turn. You get to toss me around."

She grabbed his hand, leaped to her feet, and took the position.

He grinned at her. Her look was intense, as grim as could be. She wanted to kill him. "Never stop thinking, Sherlock. Never stop looking at my eyes. Get your muscles ready, but don't tense. You know how to do it. Okay? Let's go."

He let her throw him, using his own momentum to help her. But she was hooting and shouting that she'd finally gotten him on the mat. "Not bad," he said as he got back to his feet. They went through that single routine for another half hour.

She finally stepped back, bent over, her chest heaving, so exhausted she could barely breathe. "Enough. I'm nearly dead. I've nearly sweated off my eyebrows."

He tossed her a towel. It was perfectly dry. He wasn't even sweating. "Now that you've gotten a renewed taste, what do you think?"

She threw the towel at him. "I've never had so much fun in my life."

He laughed and tossed the towel back to her.

"I've never worked so hard in my life."

"Yeah, but on the other hand, it's you in control and not a gun."

"You can't smack someone from twenty feet, sir. Even I could have blown you away if you hadn't been so close to me."

"True, but I was and if it had been the real thing, then you'd be dead. I don't want that to happen. I'll be spending a lot of time training you. I don't want you to go get yourself shot. Now, there's a class that would be great for you. It's both women and men, and the guy who teaches it is an old buddy of mine. His name's Chico and he's one tough buzzard. He might let you in even if you do have skinny little arms."

She laughed. It was impossible not to. They both showered and changed. He walked her home, gave her a salute, and said, "You get your apartment furnished this weekend, Sherlock. No more excuses. See you at headquarters Monday. Here's Chico's phone number. Oh, Sherlock. You might be kind of sore tomorrow, but nothing too bad. Be sure to take a long hot bath. Maybe a couple of aspirin, too. You might also consider some ice packs first."

He paused a moment, looking at her face, clean of any makeup, her ratty hair, strands straggling around her face. He cocked his head to one side, then just smiled at her. "You did fine, Sherlock, just fine. I plan to overlook all your whining."

She eyed the sidewalk, wondering if she could possibly throw him.

"I'm watching your eyes. I'm seeing right into your twisted mind. Nah, Sherlock, don't try to toss me into the flower bed, not tonight." He waved, and walked away.

She stood watching him a moment before she went into the town house. She watched him until he turned at the corner, east.

"Is that Savich?"

She was so startled she nearly fell over backward. As she was flailing for balance, he came out from behind a tree. "Oh my heavens, it's you, Douglas. You nearly stopped my heart. Is something the matter? Is everyone all right?"

"Oh yes. I've been waiting for you, Lacey. I came over hoping we could have dinner. But you weren't here."

"No, I was at the gym. Savich beat the stuffing out of me." At his stare, she added, "Karate. I don't know if you remember, but I began taking karate lessons two years ago, then stopped. I'm getting back into it, starting with learning how to fall."

"Why with him?"

"I'll be taking classes with a guy named Chico after tonight. Knowing Savich, he'll want me there every night."

"Is the guy coming on to you, Lacey?"

"Savich? Goodness, Douglas, he's my boss! He's the chief of the unit. It's all business."

"Yeah, he's got the best way to get to you."

He was jealous. It was amazing to see this side of him. She smiled up at him and lightly placed her hand on his arm. "Savich is a professional. He has no interest in anybody in his unit, not the kind you're worried about." She thought about Hannah Paisley. Was there something between Savich and Hannah?

Douglas saw the lie in her eyes. Why? He'd never known her to lie, but on the other hand, he hadn't seen her in five months. The damnable FBI had had her in their clutches for sixteen weeks. What more would they do to her? He breathed in deeply. "Why don't we go inside? You can change, then I'll take you to dinner. I've got to go back to San Francisco in the morning."

"That would be nice, Douglas. When you get home, you'll be speaking to Candice Addams, won't you?"

"Yes."

She nodded and preceded him into her empty town house.

9

SHE SMILED AT THE GUARD and flipped open her black FBI wallet. Her beautiful gold star shone.

"You're Agent Sherlock?" He checked the list in his hand. "You're a new agent?"

"Yes, I would like to go to my office and do some more work."

"Hey, you can't light your pipe here in the building, Sherlock."

"Thanks, I won't. But it's too bad, I've got a really nice blend."

"Guess you hear that lots, huh?"

The guard was about her age, black, his head shaved, a real hard jaw. "No," she said, grinning at him, "this was the very first time."

"How about: Do you live on Baker Street?"

"Where's that?"

"All right. But I'll be thinking of a new one you really haven't heard before. You're clean. Just sign in here. On your way out, check with me again. Oh, my name's Nick."

She waved back at the guard. She walked to the elevators, the low heels of her shoes loud on the marble floor. If anyone asked, she planned to say that she wanted to do more study on the Radnich case. She exited the elevator at the fifth floor, walked down a long hall, turned right, then left, down another hall. She unlocked the door to the CAU. It was dark. Unfortunately she had to light up the entire area. It was different at night. The absence of people, laughing, talking, just breathing, robbed her of even an illusion of safety. She was alone in this large room. She also had her 9mm SIG in her holster.

"Don't be a goon and a wimp." She laughed, a ghostly sound in the room. She hated the overhead fluorescent lights.

She brought up the menu on her computer and checked all the available databases. She found him after only twenty minutes. She would have found him in under two minutes if he'd killed any more in the past seven years. But he hadn't.

She read the profile, then read it again, then cursed. She could have written it. She'd written profiles, dozens of them, during her graduate courses in Criminal Psychology. She'd even written her Master's thesis on The Inclusive Psychometry of the Serial Criminal. She supposedly knew all the ingredients that went into the psychotic mind, co-mingled in endless patterns to produce a monster. The "inclusive" had been her advisor's idea. She still thought it sounded obtuse and pretentious, but her advisor had patted her on the back and told her he knew what the professionals respected. She'd passed, so at least she must have sounded convincing in her defense. In fact, she'd gotten high grades on all the various protocols, tests, and measuring tools she'd developed to predict and judge the depths of contamination in the serial murderer's mind. None of it had helped. He'd gone underground.

But even the FBI profile hadn't provided a clue about where to find him. There was nothing at all that provided a different slant or perspective. Nothing new. Wait. She scrolled up again and reread two sentences. "The subject would never vary in his execution. His mind is locked into performing this single repetitive act again and again."

It made sense. As far as she knew, each of the seven murders had been utterly identical. She slowly went through all the police reports, including Belinda's, then printed them out.

She hated the autopsy reports, but through the courses she'd taken, she'd learned to remove herself from the gruesome details, most of which were couched in medicalese. But the photos were different, tougher. She didn't read Belinda's autopsy report. She knew she'd have to, but not now. No, not now, or tomorrow either. She printed out all of them, including Belinda's.

She had to stop. She'd barely be able to carry out all the papers she'd already printed out.

Nick was smiling, that jaw of his out there, when he saw her. "You got lots of stuff there, Agent Sherlock. You gonna take it all back to two twenty-one B Baker Street now? I just remembered the two twenty-one B part."

"Yep. It's all on Moriarty, you know. I'll catch that villain yet."

"I don't know about this Moriarty. But I did see a Sherlock Holmes movie about that hound. Boy, was that hound mean."

"It was a good one," she agreed as she signed out.

"You'll be working more overtime?"

"Probably. They're all real hardnoses here. They never let up."

When she reached her car, she clicked her security alarm before she reached her Mazda 4x4. Everything worked. Lights went on inside the Navajo. No one had broken in.

When she got to her town house, she checked all the entries, then fastened the dead bolts and the two chains. She turned on the security alarm. She left her bedroom door open.

She read over the reports far into the night. But not Belinda's, not just yet.

"Just feast your eyes on this, Sherlock."

She looked down at a map with dots on it. The computer had connected a number of lines. "It's the Star of David, Ollie. So what?"

He was rubbing his hands together. "Nothing bad happened, Sherlock. Savich and I got there and we talked with everybody. You know Savich, he was cool and low-key and then he just showed this to everyone. I thought Captain Samuels-she's with the St. Petersburg Police Department-was going to kiss him. These four dots are where the killer's already hit. Savich just did some extrapolation and voila!"

"It could be anything, Ollie. A Star of David?" She studied the three dots that represented murder sites. They formed a nearly perfect right-side-up equilateral triangle. The other murder could very well be the beginning of an upside-down equilateral triangle, but who knew? "Well, sure, it could be, but it could also be random."

"We'll soon see," Ollie said. "If you go with Savich's reasoning, then the guy is going to kill right here next." He pointed to the next point.

"That's pretty neat," she said. "But no ideas on how the Ghost gets into the nursing homes and out again without anyone noticing?"

"Not yet. But the surveillance on the next one Savich pinpointed is going to be intense. You know what? The media took up your word. All the papers and TV are screaming about the Ghost murdering their grandmothers."

"Surely not. How would they know about our saying that?"

Ollie looked down at his black wing tips. "Well, I kind of said it to a TV woman who was really pretty and wanted something so badly." Ollie looked up at her and grinned. "I thought Savich was going to deck me."

"Better you than me. He's already thrown me all over that gym of his. I'm still sore, but I don't dare say anything because he'll accuse me of whining."

"Ain't that the truth? He's got you into karate?"

She nodded.

"He told me I was one of the best basketball players in the Bureau. He said I should keep myself in shape playing games with all my nieces and nephews. He said kids kept you honest and in shape out of fear of humiliation."

"Ha. He just said that because he realized he couldn't throw you around, the sexist jerk."

"Nah, he cleaned my clock but good when I asked him about karate. He really flatten you, Sherlock?"

"More times than I can count."

"What's this about a sexist jerk?"

Both she and Ollie turned to see Savich standing behind them, his laptop in one hand, a modem in the other.

"I don't know about any sexist jerk, do you, Ollie?"

"Me? I never even heard the word except from Maria, and she didn't even know what it meant."

Savich grunted at them. "What do you think of the Star of David angle, Sherlock?"

"It's so weird as to have a grain of truth in it. But you know, the murders started in Virginia, not Florida. That could put a monkey wrench in the works."

"Agreed. We'll see soon enough. The local cops are covering the next probable nursing home."

She frowned at him. "I do prefer comparing all the physical evidence, but truth be told there isn't all that much. Actually, this Star of David thing, well, I have this feeling that you're right. But I also have the feeling that it won't matter. He'll probably kill at the nursing home you picked out but no one will see him."

"She's said what I'm feeling," Ollie said. "It's driving me nuts. I've asked the computer to compare and contrast all sorts of evidence, but we're coming up with nothing, just nothing."

"We'll get him, Ollie."

"I sure hope so," Lacey said. She turned to Ollie. "Did your future mother-in-law convince Maria that you're a workaholic since you were gone for the whole weekend?"

"No, I blamed it on the chief. I told her that Agent Savich would kick me into the street if I didn't go with him. Then I'd be blackballed and permanently on unemployment. She backed off."

Savich just laughed and walked back to his office. Lacey saw Hannah Paisley rise quickly and follow him. To her surprise, Ollie was watching Hannah, a frown on his face.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing really. I just wish Hannah would be a little more cool about Savich."

Lacey didn't say a word; she didn't want to know anything personal about anybody. It was safer that way. But Ollie didn't notice, just said thoughtfully, "I heard Savich and Hannah dated before she came to the Unit. Then when she joined the Unit, word was that Savich called it off. I heard him say that no one in the Unit should dip his Bureau quill into Bureau ink."

"Now that was sexist, Ollie. You think Hannah's still interested, then?"

"Oh yeah, just look at her. She can't keep her eyes off him. Why don't you talk to her, Sherlock? Maybe she'd listen to you. Savich isn't interested, or if he is, he still wouldn't go near a woman agent in his unit."

Lacey just shook her head as she punched up one of the forensic reports. She didn't care what Savich did with his Bureau quill. Goodness, whe thought. She'd just made a joke to herself. It had been a long time. She saw Hannah come out of Savich's office, her face set. She wasn't about to say a word to that formidable woman. She sincerely doubted that Hannah Paisley would listen to Lacey's opinion on the time of day. She went back to work on the Ghost.

Lacey unfolded the Boston Globe, the last large city newspaper in her pile. She was tired of scouring the ten largest city newspapers every day of the week, but she couldn't stop. She'd done it for nearly seven years. It cost a fortune for all the subscriptions, but she had enough money from her trust fund so she'd never have to worry about feeding herself and buying as many subscriptions as she wanted. She knew he was out there. She would never stop.

She couldn't believe it. She nearly dropped her coffee cup. It was on page three. Not a big article, but large enough to immediately catch her eye. She read:

"Yesterday evening at 6:30, Hillary Ramsgate, 28, a stockbroker with Hameson, Lyle & Obermeyer, was found brutally murdered in an abandoned warehouse on Pier Forty-one. Detective Ralph Budnack of the BPD said that she had apparently been led through a bizarre game that had resulted in her death from multiple stab wounds to her chest and abdomen. A note tied around her neck said that she had lost the game and had to pay the forfeit. At this point, police say they're following leads.''

He was back. In Boston. He'd begun again. She prayed that this poor woman was his first victim of this new cycle, that she hadn't missed others, or that he hadn't murdered women in small towns where the AP wouldn't pick up the story.

Hillary Ramsgate. Poor woman. She reread the newspaper article, then rose from her kitchen table. She had died just as Belinda and six other women in San Francisco had seven years ago. They'd all lost the game.

What the newspaper article didn't say was that her tongue had also been cut out. The police were holding that back. But Lacey knew all about that. She'd been brutally stabbed and her tongue had been sliced out.

The bastard.

She realized then that yesterday had been the seventh anniversary of the last murder.

Seven years. He'd struck seven years ago to the day. The monster was back.

Lacey was pacing back and forth in front of Savich's office when he came around the corner. He watched her a moment. He said very quietly, so as not to startle her, "Sherlock, it's seven in the morning. What are you doing here? What's wrong?"

When she turned abruptly to face him, he saw more pain on her face than he'd seen in a long time. Then the hollow, despairing look was gone. She'd gotten a grip. She'd hidden the pain again. And left nothing at all.

What was going on here?

"Sherlock? What's wrong?"

She smoothed out her face. What had he seen? She even managed a smile. "I'm sorry to bother you so early, but I have a favor to ask. I need to take a few days off and go to Boston."

He unlocked his office door and waved her in. "Boston?"

"Yes. I have a sick aunt. It's an emergency. I know I've only been in the Unit a couple of weeks, but there's not anyone else to see to this situation."

"Your aunt is elderly?"

"Not really, well, she's got Alzheimer's. She's gotten suddenly worse."

"A relative called you?"

Why was he asking all these questions? Didn't he believe her? "Yes, my cousin called me. He, well, he's not well himself so there's no one but me here on the East Coast."

"I see," he said slowly, not looking at her directly now. She looked pale, scared, and excited-an odd combination, but that's what he saw in her face. Her hair was pulled severely back, held in the same gold clasp at the nape of her neck. It looked like she'd flattened it down with hair spray. She couldn't seem to be still, her fingers now flexing against her purse, one foot tapping. She'd forgotten to put on any makeup. She looked very young. He said slowly, "How long do you think you'll need to be away?"

"Not more than three days, just long enough to see that her care is all locked into place."

"Go, Sherlock. Oh yes, I want you to call me from Boston tonight and tell me what's going on, all right?"

Why did he care what she was doing away from Washington? More lies. She hated lies. She wasn't particularly good at them, but she'd rehearsed this one all the way in. Surely he believed her, surely. "Yes, sir. I'll call you this evening."

He jotted down his phone number on a piece of paper. "If it's late, call me at home." He handed her the folded paper. He said nothing until she was nearly at the outer door, then, "Good luck. Take care."

He turned back to his office only after she was out the door. He listened a moment to the sound of her quick footfalls.

This was odd.

Why was she lying to him?

It was 10:30 that night when the phone rang. Savich muted the baseball game between the Giants and the Red Sox, Giants leading 7 to 2 in the seventh inning. He kept looking at the screen as he answered the phone.

"Sir, it's Sherlock."

He grinned into the phone. "What's going on?"

"My aunt is just fine. I have more details to tie up but I'll be back by Thursday, if that's all right."

He said easily, "I have a good friend at Boston Memorial, a doctor who specializes in geriatrics. Would you like his name so you can speak to him about your aunt?"

"Oh no, sir. Everything's under control."

"That's good, Sherlock. What's the weather like in Boston?"

"It's chilly and raining. Everything looks old and tired."

"About the same here. I'll see you on Thursday. Oh yes, call me again tomorrow night."

There was a pause, then, "Very well, sir, if that's what you want."

"It is. You sound tired, Sherlock. Sleep well. Good night."

"Thank you, sir. You too."

He watched her from his office. It was nearly one o'clock Thursday afternoon. He'd been in meetings all morning. This was the first time he'd seen her since she'd left for Boston. She looked tired beyond her years. No, it was more than that. She looked flattened, as if she'd lost her best friend, as if someone had pounded her, not physically, but emotionally. He wasn't at all surprised.

She was typing furiously on the keyboard, completely absorbed. He waited for a few more minutes, then strolled to her workstation. He'd spoken to her three nights running, each night at 10:30, each night mirroring the previous one and the next, except that on Wednesday, she hadn't quite been the same. He'd wished he could see her. When he looked at her, her thoughts were clear as the shine Uncle Bob put on his wing tips every Wednesday.

"Sherlock."

She raised her face, her fingers stilling on the computer keyboard. "Good afternoon, sir. You just get here?"

"Yes. Call me Savich. Or Dillon."

"Yes, sir. Dillon."

"Would you please come in my office? In say ten minutes?''

She nodded, nothing more, just a defeated nod that she tried to hide from him.

When she walked into his office, he said immediately, "I don't like lies or liars."

She just looked at him hopelessly.

"Your mother's sister lives in San Diego. You have three cousins, none of them older than thirty-five, all living on the West Coast. You don't even have a third cousin in Boston. Also, there's nary a trace of Alzheimer's in anyone in your family."

"No, I guess there isn't."

"Sit down, Sherlock."

She sat.

He watched her pull her skirt to her calves. She sat on the edge of her chair like a child ready to be chastised. Only she wasn't remotely a child.

"Don't you think it's about time you leveled with me?"

"Not until I call Chico and take a dozen or so lessons."

Humor from her. He appreciated it. At least she had her balance, if nothing else. "I could still wipe up the floor with you. I'm an old hand at karate and other things as well. Speaking of hands, I played right into yours when I requested you for my unit, didn't I? You must have thought God was looking out for you when Petty told you you didn't have to go to L.A."

It didn't matter now. He probably knew everything. At least she didn't have to lie anymore. "It's true I wasn't interested in bank robbers. I told you that the day you first interviewed me."

"Oh no, that's for sure. What you wanted was the chance to track down the serial killer who murdered your sister seven years ago. Her name was Belinda, wasn't it?"

10

SHE TOOK THE BLOW, BENDing slightly inward to absorb the pain of it, the unbearable nakedness of it spoken aloud. She knew she'd blown her chance to hell and gone. It was all over for her now. But maybe it wasn't. He was in Boston. She would simply resign from the FBI and move to Boston. She had no choice.

She didn't stir, just looked at him and said, "They named him the String Killer. Isn't that a stupid name? String! Something hardly thicker than a thread, a piece of skinny hemp he used to torture the women, all seven of them-psychological torture-and the media reduced it to string, to make it sexy and clever."

"Yes, I remember the case well. And now he's struck again after seven years, in Boston this time. In fact, it's seven years to the day."

She just sat there, looking at him, and said in that flattened voice of hers, that held no surprise at all, "How do you know?''

"I went into your computer, saw what you'd accessed, and downloaded. I saw that you'd used my password to get into a couple of specialized data banks. Odd, but I never thought one of my own people would steal my password. You just looked over my shoulder one day?''

She nodded, didn't say anything, which was smart. He was very angry.

He drew a deep breath, tamping down on the anger. "I checked the security log. You spent three and a half hours here Monday night. You read the paper Tuesday morning and left for Boston the same day. I bought a Boston Globe. The story was on the third page."

She rose slowly, like an old woman. "I'll clean out my desk, sir, then go see Mr. Petty."

"And what will you tell Petty?"

"That I lied, that you discovered it, and I've been dismissed. I'm really sorry, sir, but I had no choice."

"I haven't canned you. If you think I intend to let you loose on the Boston Police Department, you're mistaken, Sherlock. But you've already spoken to them, haven't you? They kissed you off, right? No matter, don't tell me just yet. I'll call Ralph Budnack."

She looked as if he'd struck her. Then she gave him the coldest smile he'd ever seen. Her chin went up. "I know how the killer got into the nursing homes in Florida to strangle those old ladies."

He realized in that instant that he admired her brain. Was she trying to bargain with him? Make a deal? Gain some kind of leverage? "I see," he said easily, sitting back in his chair, fiddling with a pen between his fingers. "I give you something and you give me something in return?"

"No. I guess I want to show you that I'm not a complete fool, that I do care about something other than the man who murdered my sister. I really don't want any more old ladies to die. I just wanted to mention it before I forgot and left."

"You wouldn't have forgotten, just as you couldn't bring yourself to put your sister's death behind you and go on with your life. Now, I already told you. You're not leaving. Go back to your desk, Sherlock, and write out your ideas on the Ghost. We'll talk later."

She didn't want to talk to him. She wasn't in his league. Her very first attempt at deception, and he'd nailed her but good. She hadn't realized she'd been so obvious. But she had been. He'd seen through everything. His anger was frightening, since he didn't yell. It was cold, so very cold, that anger of his. Why hadn't he just plain fired her? She'd betrayed him.

Why?

He would, soon enough; she was certain of that. She'd fire herself if she were in his shoes. She would pull everything else out of the database and then she would just slip away. He would know what she'd done quickly enough, but who cared'/ She couldn't continue here. He wouldn't allow it; the breach had been too great, her conduct too far beyond the line. No, he wouldn't allow her to stay, no matter what game he was playing with her now.

She'd barely sat down at her desk before Hannah Paisley said from behind her, "You're stupid, Sherlock, or does he call you by your cute little first name, Lacey?"

"I'm not stupid, Hannah, I'm just very tired. Well, maybe I am stupid."

"Why are you so tired? Did Savich keep you up all night? How many times did he fuck you, Sherlock?''

Lacey flinched at the harshness of Hannah's voice, not the naked word. That naked word conjured up some smutty, frankly silly photos in Playboy, showing contorting bodies. Now that she thought about it, they hardly ever showed the men completely naked, just the women. Really naked.

"Please, Hannah, there's nothing at all between us. Savich doesn't even like me. In fact-"

"In fact what?"

Lacey just shook her head. No, let Hannah hear it from Savich. It would happen soon enough.

"Just look at me, Hannah. I'm skinny and very plain. You're beautiful-surely you must know that. I'm no threat to you, please believe me. Besides I don't like Savich any more than he likes me. Would you try to believe at least that?"

"No. I spotted what you were the minute you walked into the Unit."

"What am I?"

"You're a manipulative bitch. You saw Savich at the Academy and you got him interested so he'd bring you into the Unit. But you listen to me, you stay away from Savich or I'll take you apart. You know I can. Do you hear me?"

Ollie came walking over, nearly sauntering, whistling, if Lacey wasn't mistaken, as if he didn't have a care in the world, but she saw his eyes. He recognized what he was seeing and he didn't like it. "Hey, Hannah, what's happening with the Lazarus case? What does the guy use all those Coke bottles for?"

She wasn't shaking because of what Hannah had said-no,

Hannah and her ridiculous jealousy meant less than nothing to her. Lacey had seen other women in Savich's office, young women, nice-looking women. Did Hannah go after all of them as well?

Who cared? Forget Hannah. She turned her back on both Hannah and Ollie and booted up her computer, tapped her fingers while she waited, then punched in Savich's password. Nothing happened.

Then suddenly, there appeared: Not this time, Sherlock.

The screen went black. The computer was her enemy. As long as Savich was still breathing, the computer would remain her enemy. She lifted her fingers from the keyboard and laid her hands in her lap.

"Your aunt all right?"

It was Ollie. He pulled up a chair and sat beside her. "You look like shit, Sherlock."

"Thanks. Yes, my aunt is just fine now."

"You look like you're ready to go over the edge."

She'd lived on the edge for seven years; no reason to go over now. She smiled at him. "Not really. I'm just tired, and that's what I told Hannah. Thanks for drawing her fire, Ollie. I wish she'd open her eyes and realize that I'm about as much a threat to her as a duck in the sights of a hunter."

"That's an odd thing to say, Sherlock. Savich told me to tell you to come into the conference room. What's it all about?"

"Tell the agents how the Ghost gets into the nursing homes, Sherlock."

She sat forward, her hands clasped together. "The Ghost is disguised as an old woman, a nursing home resident. Ollie showed me how to mix and match report data and plug it into two overlapping protocols. I did it with data from what the witnesses had said after each of the murders. No one found anything unusual in any of these reports-not the witnesses, not the cops, not us. But the computer did." She handed out a piece of paper. "These are direct quotes from the witnesses, just the pertinent parts, naturally, just the parts that, once tied together, pull the killer out of the bag."

Savich read aloud: '"No one around, Lieutenant. Not a single soul. Oh, just some patients, of course. They were scared, some of them disoriented. Perfectly natural.' " He raised his head. "This is from a night floor nurse." He read down the page. "This one is from a janitor: "There wasn't anybody around. Just old folks and they're everywhere. Scared, they were. I helped several of them back to their rooms.' "

Romero nearly squeaked when he read: " 'There was this one old lady who felt faint. I carried her into the nearest room, the recreation parlor. Poor old doll. She didn't want me to leave her, but I had to.' " Romero had a long narrow face, rather like Prince Charles's. He had thick, black brows that nearly met between his eyes, eyes that were black and mirrored a formidable intelligence. He shook the paper toward Lacey. "Good going, Sherlock. That last quote was from a cop. A cop! Jesus, it was there all the time."

Savich was sitting back in his chair, just looking at each of the agents, one by one. "So,'' he said finally, once all of them were looking at him, "do you think this is the answer? Our killer is disguised as an old woman, a patient?"

"Looks good to me," replied George Hanks, a thirty-five-year veteran of the Bureau who had the oldest eyes Lacey had ever seen.

Savich turned to Ollie. "You're the lead on this case. What do you think?"

Ollie was staring at Lacey. He looked wounded, his mouth pinched. "I didn't know anything about what Sherlock was going to do. It seems fairly straightforward, put like this. Like it's so out there that we were all fools not to catch it. Of course they did already check this once, and we mulled it over too, but I guess none of us went deep enough. The first thing to do is call that cop and ask him who that old lady he carried into the recreation room was."

"Good idea," Savich replied. "That could pretty well clinch it if the cop remembers." He turned to Lacey. "I don't suppose you know if the killer is Jewish, Sherlock? Or hates Jews? Not necessarily the residents, since only two of the five old ladies who were killed were Jews. The owners, you think? Or have you dismissed the Star of David idea?"

"I don't know, sir, about either. Listen, this idea just came to me, that's all. It was blind luck."

"Yes, I rather suppose it was," Hannah said as she rose, "since you're so new at this."

Ollie was dogging Lacey's heels out of the conference room. "Why?" he said, lightly touching her arm.

"There honestly wasn't time, Ollie. No, of course there was time. It's just that I, oh damn, this sounds ridiculous, but I really wasn't even thinking about it until it popped right into my head. Surely you've done the same thing."

"Yeah, sure, but then when I find something, the first thing I do is tell my partner. You didn't say a word. You just tromped into the conference room and showed everyone how great you were. It wasn't a very nice thing to do, Sherlock."

"No, you're right. It wasn't. I can only say that I honestly wasn't thinking about it." It was true. She hadn't known that Savich would put her on the spot in front of the whole Unit, but he had. There'd been no time then to say anything to Ollie. No, there'd been time. She just hadn't thought about it. "Listen, Ollie, what happened was this. When I was on the plane going to Boston, I was pushed into this old woman coming out of the gangway. She turned on me and blasted me with the foulest language I'd ever heard. She looked mean. She looked at me as if she wanted to kill me. She's the one who should get all the credit if this works out."

"How did Savich know that you'd come up with something?"

"I can't tell you that, Ollie. I'd like to, but I can't. I'm sorry. Please. I might not be around much longer. I don't know."

"What's going on?" Even though Ollie was a fatalist, he forgot anger very quickly. He laid his hand on her shoulder. "It's something heavy, isn't it?"

"Yes. Very heavy."

"Sherlock. In my office. Now."

Ollie spun around at Savich's voice. "Would you like to tell me what's wrong?"

"No, this is just between the two of us, Ollie. Stop looking like a rottweiler. I'm not going to pound her into the floor- at least not yet, not here. Come along, Sherlock."

But they didn't go to his office. He led her out of the Hoover Building to a small park that was catty-corner to it. "Sit."

She sat on the narrow bench. Fortunately, she didn't have to wake up a homeless person and ask him to leave. It was a beautiful day, the sky clear, just a light, cool breeze. The sidewalks were crowded with a batch of fall tourists. There were two families with small kids eating picnic lunches on blankets. It was utterly foreign to her, this family thing. It hadn't been, a long time ago. That was before her mother had become ill. At least before Lacey had realized how very ill she was.

"I've given this a lot of thought."

"You found me out so quickly, I'm sure that you've had plenty of time to figure out everything."

"Look at me, Sherlock."

She looked. Then suddenly she began to laugh. "You look like Heathcliff: brooding, piercing eyes, and dangerous. I remember thinking once that you had summer-blue eyes, a dreamer's eyes. But not now. You could kill easily now."

He wanted to smile, but he didn't. Dreamer's eyes? Jesus, that was nuts. He said, "I've reviewed the seven murders this guy did seven years ago. I called Ralph Budnack in Boston and asked if he'd heard of any murders committed with this same M.O. other than the one they'd had just the other day. He said they hadn't heard about other murders, but that they'd just realized they had a serial killer on their hands, a guy who'd struck in San Francisco seven years ago." He paused a moment, turning at the unearthly cooing of a pigeon.

"I finally managed to get in to see Detective Budnack," Lacey said. "He wouldn't even talk to me. He said I was a sicko and that they didn't need any help."

"I know. I spoke to him right after he kicked you out of his office."

She wanted to hit him. "That was Tuesday afternoon. You didn't say a damned thing about it when I called you that night!"

"That's right. Why should I?"

"Well, so you really didn't have to, but you knew. You knew all the time what I was trying to do."

"Oh yes. Tell me, Sherlock, what did you do for the other two days?"

"Nothing that got me anywhere. The medical examiner wouldn't talk to me even when I managed to lie my way in.

With my background, it wasn't that hard. But he was close-mouthed, said he didn't like outsiders poking their noses in his business. I spoke to the main reporter at the Boston Globe. His name's Jeb Stuart, of all things. He didn't know much more than was in the paper. I bought him dinner and he spilled his guts, but there wasn't much I could use. Then I came home. To you. To get the ax for being a fool."

Savich looked out over the park. He leaned back, stretching out his arms on the bench back. Horns sounded in the background, the sun slivered through the thick canopy of oak leaves, a father was shouting at his kid. "The Boston police have asked for our help. Why didn't you tell Lieutenant Budnack that you were FBI? Chances are good he would have cooperated."

"I knew that if I did, you'd hear about it and aim your computer toward Boston and you'd find out everything. Of course you did that anyway. I should have shown my badge. Maybe I would have gotten something before Budnack tossed me out on my ear. I was stupid. I didn't think it through. I thought if I pretended to be a member of the Ramsgate family, it would be my best shot at getting information." A pigeon darted close to her feet, then away again. "They're used to being fed," she said, watching the pigeon begin to pace in front of her. "I hope the person who feeds them isn't dead."

"Old Sal usually sits here. She isn't here this afternoon because she's picking up her Social Security check. Her health is better than yours. She has names for all the pigeons. Now, what are you planning to do?"

She stood abruptly and looked down at him, hands on hips. "What do you want from me? I already told you I'd resign."

"Then I suppose you'll hightail it up to Boston and go on a one-woman hunt for the String Killer?"

"Yes. I have to. I've prepared myself. I've waited a very long time for him to strike again."

"Very well. I don't seem to have any choice." He stood up abruptly. He was very big. Inadvertently, she took a step back.

He looked impatient. "You afraid I'll throw you here in the park?"

No, she'd been afraid that he'd kill her. Just as that man had killed Belinda. She tried to shrug it off. "I guess I'm just a bit nervous. Sorry. What don't you have a choice about? You have a choice about everything."

"If you only knew," he said, and plowed his fingers through his hair. "I had you call me every night from Boston because I was afraid you'd get yourself into trouble."

"I'm a trained FBI agent. What trouble? Even if I couldn't get to my gun, I sure know how to fall."

He grinned down at her, raised his hand, then lowered it. "Okay, here's what's going to happen. You know more about this guy than any other living person. Would you say that's accurate?"

"Yes." Her heart began to beat in a slow cadence. "I guess you know I printed out all the police and autopsy reports from the seven murders in San Francisco?"

He nodded, looking toward an old woman who was pulling a grocery cart loaded with bags filled with old clothes, cardboard, empty cola bottles. "It's Old Sal. I'll introduce you, then we need to get back."

Old Sal just looked her over with very worldly, bloodshot eyes. She could have been any age from fifty to ninety.

"Get your check, Sal?"

"Yeah, Dillon, I got it. You feed my little birdies?"

"No, Sherlock here wanted to, but I wouldn't let her."

The old eyes turned to her. "You Sherlock?"

"Yes, ma'am. Nice to meet you."

"You be good to my boy here, you get me, young lady?"

"I'm not a young lady, ma'am, I'm an FBI agent."

Savich laughed. "She's right, Sal. I rather think I'll be the one taking care of her."

"You get your problems solved, dear, then you can play with my boy here. He's a good lad."

"I will, ma'am."

"I don't like this ma'am stuff."

"It's okay, Sal. She calls me sir, right to my face, as if I were her father or something even worse."

"How old are you, Sherlock?"

"I'm twenty-seven."

"That's a good age. Dillon is thirty-four. Just turned thirty-four three and a half weeks ago. We had a little party for him here. Me and my birdies. Is Sherlock your first or last name?"

"It's my last name, Sal. My first name's Lacey."

"Huh. I like Sherlock better. It gives you distinction."

"I agree."

"You need anything, Sal?"

"No, Dillon. I just want to sit in this lovely sun, rest my bones, and feed my birdies. I got them a pound of unsalted peanuts. I don't want to harden their little arteries."

Lacey was still smiling when they went back into the Hoover Building.

She wasn't smiling ten minutes later.

11

SO HE'S GOING TO TAKE you to Boston. How'd you manage that, Sherlock?"

Hannah Paisley was leaning over her, her voice low and furious in her ear.

"You shouldn't be going. You're new, you don't know anything. You don't deserve to go. It's because you're sleeping with him, isn't it?"

Lacey slowly turned in her chair, looking up. "No, Hannah. Stop this. This is all business, nothing else. Why don't you believe me?''

"You're lying, damn you. I've seen women look at him. They all want him."

"Ollie told me that Savich doesn't believe in becoming involved with anyone in his unit. That includes all of us, Hannah. If you want him, then I suggest you transfer out. Listen, I just want to catch this monster in Boston. Actually I did lie. I do want Savich's brain and his expertise. Does that count? Is that brain lust?"

Finally Hannah had left.

Now Lacey leaned her head back against her new sofa and grabbed one of the fat pillows to hug. She closed her eyes and thought of the woman who had just about everything and wanted more. She was sorry if Hannah loved Savich, but there was nothing either of them could do about it. Hannah had to get a grip. Lacey was the last woman on earth who was a threat to her. No matter now. She wouldn't worry about it anymore. It was Savich's problem. She leaned over and stared at the phone. She picked up the receiver, stared at it some more, then took a deep breath. She dialed the number very slowly.

It rang once, twice, then "Hello, Judge Sherlock here."

"Hello, Dad."

"Lacey?"

"Yes, Dad."

"This is a surprise. You usually only write. Is something wrong?"

"No. I just didn't have time to write. How are you? How is Mom?"

"Your mother is the same as ever, as am I. So Douglas tells me you're in this special unit in the FBI and then I read about you and this genius guy catching that murderer in Chicago. You happy now?"

She ignored the sarcasm in his voice, but it was difficult. She'd always hated that awful cutting tone of his that used to annihilate her when she was growing up. In letters, she usually missed it, which was one reason why she only wrote him letters. But there was no time for a letter now. "Dad, he's struck again."

"What? Who's struck whom?"

"The monster who murdered Belinda. He's struck again in Boston. He killed a woman exactly the same way he killed the seven women in San Francisco. It's been exactly seven years since he stopped. It's a cycle. He's on a seven-year cycle."

There was no sound, no breathing, nothing.

"Dad? He's begun again. Didn't you understand me?"

"Yes, Lacey, I understand you."

"I'm going to Boston tomorrow morning with my boss, Dillon Savich, who's the chief of the Criminal Apprehension Unit. I'm going to catch this monster, Dad. Finally, I'm going to get him."

She was breathing hard. There was nothing but silence on the other end of the line. She drew a deep breath. She had to calm down. She didn't want to sound like some sort of obsessed nut.

But she was. That monster had taken everything from her and left her with a fear she'd managed to control, but it was there still, deep inside of her. No, it wasn't just for her. She just wanted to get this scum off the streets. She wanted to shoot him herself.

"Lacey? What do you mean, you're going to catch him? You're not involved. Leave it to the professionals."

"That's what I am, Dad."

"No," he said, angry now. "No, you're not. You're a scared little girl. I think you should come home now. Listen to me. Your sister's been dead seven years. Seven years, Lacey. Douglas told me what you were doing, but I didn't want to believe it. We all know you've given up the last seven years of your life. It's way beyond time to let go of it. Forget it. Come home. I'll take care of you. You can play the piano again. You enjoyed that, and it sure as hell won't get you killed. I won't say a word about law school. Come home."

Forget it? Forget what that butcher had done to Belinda, to her? She drew a deep breath. "How is Mom?"

"What? Oh, your mother. She had a quiet day. Her nurse, Miss Heinz, told me at dinner that she ate well and she watched television, The Price Is Right, I believe it was, with seeming understanding."

"I'm not like my mother."

"No, certainly you're not. But this has got to stop, Lacey."

"Why?"

"Let the police catch that madman."

"I am the police. The highest police in the land."

He was silent for a very long time, then he said quietly, "Your mother began this way."

"I must be going, Dad. I had hoped you'd be pleased that I have a shot at catching this monster."

Her father said nothing at all.

To her shock, a soft whispery voice came on the line. "Is that you, Lacey?"

"Hello, Mom. You sound great. How do you feel?"

"I'm hungry, but Nurse Heinz won't get me anything from the kitchen. I'd like some chocolate chip cookies. You always liked chocolate chip cookies when you were small, I remember."

"I remember too, Mom."

"Don't try to catch the man who murdered Belinda. He's too dangerous. He's insane, he'll kill you and I couldn't bear that. He's-"

The line went dead, then the familiar dial tone.

The phone rang again immediately. It was her father. "I'm sorry, Lacey. I was so agitated that I dropped the phone. Listen, I'm scared. I don't want anything to happen to you."

"I understand, but I must try to catch him. I must."

She heard him sigh. "I know. Be careful."

"I will." She looked at the receiver a moment, then gently laid it back in its cradle. She looked at the lovely Bentrell paintings on the stretch of white wall. Landscapes-rolling hills, some grazing cows, a small boy with a bucket on either end of a pole, carried across his back and balanced over his shoulders. She slowly lowered her face into her hands and cried. She saw her father's face from seven years ago, silent and still, no expression at all, just the silence of the grave, and he'd leaned down and whispered very softly in her ear, just after Belinda's funeral, when she'd been so blank, so hollow, but not quite yet utterly terrified, "It's over, thank the good Lord. You'll survive, Lacey. She was only your half sister, try to remember that."

And she'd just stared at him as if he were crazier than her mother. Only her half sister? That was supposed to mean something? It had only been three days later when the first nightmare had come in the deep of the night and her grief had become terror.

When the doorbell rang, she nearly shrieked, memories from the past overlaying the present. It was the doorbell, that was all, just the doorbell. Still, where was her gun? She looked frantically around the living room. There was her purse. She always carried her Lady Colt in her purse, in addition to the holster with her SIG.

She grabbed it, feeling its cold smoothness caress her hand like a lover even as the doorbell sounded again. She moved to stand beside the door.

"Sherlock? You there? Come on, I see the lights. Open the damned door!"

She nearly shuddered with relief as she shucked off the two chains, clicked back the dead bolt, and unlocked the door.

He was standing there in a short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and running shoes. A pale blue sweater was tied in a knot around his neck. She'd seen male models in magazines dressed like that-with the knotted sweater-and thought it looked ridiculous. It didn't on him. He was frowning at her.

He stepped inside, still frowning. "That's quite a display of gadgets you've got on that door. A strong guy, though, could just kick it in."

She hadn't thought of that. She lowered the gun to her side, still saying nothing. She would have to reinforce the door. No, she was being absurd.

He closed the door behind him. "I wanted to see if you were furnished yet," he said, and walked into the living room. He looked around at the very expensive furnishings, then whistled. "The FBI must pay you too much. When did you get all this stuff, Sherlock?"

He was acting as though nothing was wrong. He was acting as though she was normal. She was normal. She gently laid her Lady Colt on the lamp table beside the sofa. "I'm not much of a shopper, and Sally Quinlan had to cancel out on me. I just called an interior designer in Georgetown and told him what I wanted and needed in place before my boss found out. He took care of it. Really fast."

He turned slowly to look at her. "As I said, we must pay you too much."

"No, I have a trust fund. Normally I don't ever dip into it. I don't need to, but I wanted this place furnished and I didn't want to take the time to do the shopping myself. I knew you'd keep after me until I at least got a sofa."

"The trust is from your grandmother, right? If I remember correctly, she died four years ago and left you a bundle."

"Yes." She wasn't at all surprised. "Please tell me you have better things to do with your time than memorize my personal history."

"Yeah, I'll tell you about my better things if you tell me why you've been crying."

Her hands went to her face. She'd forgotten. She stared at him, straight in the eye, and said, "I have an allergy."

"Yeah, right. Just look at all the pollen floating around in the air in here. Come on, who upset you?"

"It's nothing, sir, nothing at all. Now, would you like a cup of coffee? Some tea?"

"Tea would be great."

"Equal in it?"

"Nah, only women use Equal. Make mine plain."

"No chemicals for you?"

He just grinned at her as he followed her to the kitchen. A whole row of shiny new appliances, from a blender to a Cuis-inart, were lined up on the pale yellow tiles. "No," he said, more to himself than to her, "not all of them are unused. I see you've pushed buttons on the microwave, but nothing else."

"That's right," she said coolly, as she put the teapot spout beneath the water spigot. "However, I've always believed that woman can indeed live by microwave alone," she added, trying to smile at him, which really wasn't all that difficult. She turned on the electric burner. "As for the toaster, that needs bread and I haven't bought any yet."

She said over her shoulder as she set the kettle on the stove, "I'm not packed yet, sir, but I will be ready in time. I will meet you at the airport tomorrow morning."

"I know," he said, staring at the bread maker that looked like a lonely white block at the end of the counter. "You know how to use that thing?"

"No, but a recipe book came with it. The designer said that every modern kitchen needs one."

"Why were you crying, Sherlock?"

She just shook her head, went to the cabinet, and got down two teacups and saucers.

"You got any cheap mugs? I don't want to get my pinky fingers near those. They look like they cost more than I make in a week."

"I guess they do. The guy went overboard on some of the things."

"I thought women liked to pick out their own dishes."

"Actually, I thought everyone did, guys included. But I just didn't want to take the time. There's too much happening that's so much more important. I told you."

"Come to think of it, I did pick out my own dishes. They're microwavable."

So are mine. That was the only criterion on my list, that and not too much fancy stuff."

"Why were you crying?"

"I would appreciate it if you would leave that alone, sir."

"Call me Savich and I might."

"All right, Savich. Old Sal calls you Dillon. I think I like that better."

"What's the guy's name?"

"What guy?"

"The one who made you cry."

She just shook her head at him. "Men. You think a woman's world has to revolve around you. When I was young I used to watch the soaps occasionally. A woman couldn't seem to exist by herself, make decisions for herself, simply enjoy being herself. Nope, she was always circling a man. I wonder if they've changed any."

"I hadn't thought of it quite like that before, but yeah, I guess that's about right. What's his name, Sherlock?"

"No man. How about I pour some milk in your tea? Is that manly?"

"Sometimes, but not in tea. Keep it straight."

She wanted to smack him. But he'd made her smile, a good-sized smile. She walked to a pristine white wallboard and ostentatiously wrote Equal on it with a blue washable Magic Marker. "There. All done. You happy?"

"Happy enough. Thanks. You call Chico yet?"

"Things have been happening a bit fast. I haven't had the time."

"If you don't, I'll have to take you back to the gym and throw you around."

"The first dozen or so falls weren't that bad."

"I went easy on you."

"Ollie told me you nearly tromped him into the floor."

"At least Ollie's a guy, so he didn't whine."

She just grinned at him. "This cup is too expensive to waste throwing at you."

"Good. Do you have just plain old Lipton's tea bags?"

"Yes."

He watched her pour the hot water over the tea bags. "If it wasn't a guy who made you cry, then what did?"

"I could throw a tea bag at you."

"All right, I'll back off, but I don't like to see my agents upset-well, upset by something else other than me and my big mouth. Now, let's talk about our game plan in Boston. That's why I busted in on you this evening. There's a lot we need to get settled before we descend on the Boston PD."

"You're really not going to fire me?"

"Not yet. I want to get everything out of you, then if I'm still pissed off that you lied to me, that's when I'll boot you out."

"I'm sorry."

"You got what you wanted. How sorry can you be?"

He was right about that. She was a hypocrite. She gave him a big smile. "I'm not sorry at all. I'm so relieved, so grateful, that I'll let you say anything sexist you want, at least for tonight."

"You won't whine about getting up early tomorrow, will you? The flight's at seven-thirty A.M."

She groaned, then toasted him with her teacup. ' "Thank you, sir... Dillon. I won't make you sorry."

"Somehow I can't imagine that you won't."

Savich left at ten o'clock, singing to himself as he left. It had to be a line from a country-and-western song, but of course she'd never heard it before. She grinned as she heard his deep voice drawl, "A good ole boy Redneck is what I aim to be, nothing more, nothing less will ever do for me. All rigged out in my boots and jeans, my belt buckle wide, my belly lean..."

She closed the door, refastened the chains and clicked the dead bolt into place. That was the third or fourth time she thought she'd heard him singing country-western words. Oddly, her classical leanings weren't offended. What could be wrong with music that made you smile?

They hadn't spoken much about the case after all. No, he'd just checked out her digs and told her she needed a CD player. It was clear what kind of music he preferred.

She packed methodically. She prayed he would help her find the man who had killed her sister.

12

SAVICH SAID TO LACEY, "AS I told you last night, Detective Budnack will be meeting us at the station. It's District Six in South Boston. They found Hil-lary Ramsgate in an abandoned warehouse on Congress Street. Somebody called it in anonymously, either the killer or a homeless person, probably the latter. But they've got the guy's voice on tape so when we catch him, we can make a comparison.