"You've made a mess of it for sure," his mother scolded. "The police'll be all over you soon."

"And I'll find a way to be all over them!" he screamed. "Now, shut up, both of you!"

The cellar became silent again. He eyed his parents' skeletal jaws for any sign of movement. They didn't budge.

Chapter 54.

After dismissing a young patient who had been nearly paralyzed as a result of a motor-vehicle accident, Doctor Colm Pierce picked up the next case from a pile of folders on his desk. It was that of a gerontological patient, an eighty-eight-year-old woman with an injured coccyx. Pierce felt sorry for the poor soul. She was without family and relied heavily on her city-appointed caretaker. What brought a smile to the woman's face was that Pierce insisted he would personally escort her from the waiting room to his office every time she came in to see him.

Cheerfully, he stepped outside and walked down the narrow corridor. The hospital's loud speaker crackled. "Trauma team, report to Pediatric ICU, Stat!" There was a shuffle of feet. A member of the trauma team rushed past him, heading for the bay of elevators. It was Doctor Stephen Astin.

"Steve, we gotta talk," Pierce called out.

"Not now, Colm. I'm on my way to a Code Blue." Astin stepped inside the elevator and hit the sixth-floor button.

Just as the elevator's doors were closing, Pierce slipped inside. "Need I remind you you're into me for nineteen grand?" he said to Astin.

"Like you'd let me forget."

"Your third installment was due a month ago, so why haven't you answered my e-mail?"

"Night Rider is running tomorrow night at Belmont. He's got five grand of our cash running with him. It's a sure thing. Money in the bank."

"That's what you said the last time."

"C'mon, kid, you don't need the money. Why ya houndin' me?"

"Whether I need the money or not is none of your fucking business. It was a loan. Not a grant."

"Don't hand me that shit."

"What shit? I did it to help you."

"No, you didn't. You did it to see me strung out. It gives you a charge. Admit it."

The doors of the elevator opened, ushering the two angry men into the pediatric intensive care unit, where they were greeted by Doctor George Galina and Susan Dupree, the ICU nurse.

"It's the Parsons girl," Nurse Dupree announced. "It's the damndest thing. She wakes up screaming her head off. You'd think those punctured lungs were down for the count, but no."

"Wha'd she say?" asked Astin.

"I couldn't understand a thing."

The trauma team geared into action, and within seconds, Clarissa's body was punctured, injected, and palpated, sending each of her monitoring units into an electronic frenzy.

"She's flatlining!" Doctor Galina hollered.

Astin grabbed hold of two electric defibrillator paddles. "Clear!" he shouted, electrocuting the girl's heart after Susan Dupree lay bare the girl's chest.

Clarissa's body jerked, and her chest muscles tightened as waves of electricity riddled her nervous system. Tendons contracted and released. The heart convulsed, fluttered, and finally kicked in, forcing blood to vital arteries.

"Set up a drip of dopamine HC1 and titrate. Stat!" Galina ordered. "A push of epinephrine. Now!"

The needle entered the ravine between Clarissa's breasts, punctured her cardiac muscles, and delivered the stimulant, making the heart beat faster. As freshly oxygenated blood rushed to Clarissa's brain, it slowly recovered from its torpor. Her eyelids quivered, then opened. Her ears intercepted muffled sounds.

What was happening to her? Who were these masked men? She felt like carrion being plucked by ravenous beaks. Tears flooded her eyes, fogging her field of vision.

Suddenly, the face of the man who molested her came rocketing into sight. With it came the memory of his lecherous pursuit. The uninvited images filled the girl with dread, stirring a feeling of horror. Her fright quickly exploded into panic, propelling her into a full-blown cardiac arrest.

"She's leaving us!" Galina hollered.

"Clear!" barked Astin, grabbing the defibrillator paddles again and jabbing them brusquely against the girl's chest.

Two hundred joules coursed through Clarissa, jolting her small frame. Inert, her body endured another discharge of electrocution, and another, and another.

"My God, we've lost her," Doctor Astin sighed.

"What the hell went wrong?" Pierce protested, praying she didn't miraculously regain consciousness.

"Sometimes God has other plans."

"Not while I'm around." Pierce picked up the defibrillator paddles and, like a cymbalist clanging his brass instruments, he pummeled the girl's chest again and again.

Clarissa's body quaked under the assaults, only to return to the listlessness of death.

"Doctor, she's dead!" Nurse Dupree screamed.

"Have you lost all faith?" Pierce bellowed, about to go in for yet another assault. But Doctor Astin grabbed hold of his arms.

"Enough!"

With a feigned look of defeat filling his face, Pierce dropped both hands and stared down at the girl's inert frame.

"Kids these days. Some of them just don't want to be saved."

Chapter 55.

"INTER-NET"

That was the headline plastered across the morning edition of the New York Post. New York Post. The article itself, which spanned two pages, indicated that the crazed killer who had been holding the city hostage was luring his victims through the Internet. The The article itself, which spanned two pages, indicated that the crazed killer who had been holding the city hostage was luring his victims through the Internet. The Post Post credited sources close to the investigation for the information. The story prompted one particular call to the Task Force tip line. It was from a Cathy Spenser, who claimed to be with Clarissa Parsons the day she was hit by the car at the Kings Plaza Shopping Mall. She said Clarissa was at the mall to meet someone she had corresponded with over the Internet. Margaret was assigned to talk to the girl. credited sources close to the investigation for the information. The story prompted one particular call to the Task Force tip line. It was from a Cathy Spenser, who claimed to be with Clarissa Parsons the day she was hit by the car at the Kings Plaza Shopping Mall. She said Clarissa was at the mall to meet someone she had corresponded with over the Internet. Margaret was assigned to talk to the girl.

Behind the wheel of her Plymouth, Margaret headed over the Brooklyn Bridge, allotting Howard Stern his three minutes before his raunchiness became just intolerable. She surfed the car's radio waves, searching for an easy-listening station, preferably the hits of the forties.

The voice of WNYB's news anchorman, Paul Waters, startled her. "It's a very sad day for District Attorney Jack Parsons and family as they bury their only daughter in the family mausoleum at Long Island's Pinelawn Cemetery. It was only eight short weeks ago that Jack Parsons won a stunning victory over Donald Fruman of Brooklyn, capturing Manhattan's coveted DA seat. Undisclosed sources inform us that a serious investigation has been launched into the circumstances surrounding the young girl's death. Now this...Need guns? Need ammo? We got plenty. Come to Al's Sporting Goods on Route 25 in East Islip. We stock-"

Margaret hit the radio's off button, silencing the barker's assault, and fought the Flatbush Avenue rush-hour traffic. The Plymouth's speedometer registered fifteen miles per hour. But she knew that was about ten miles over her actual speed. She finally made her way to Bergen Street, where she broke from the string of endless vehicles and made a left turn.

"444" was etched across the third step of the first four-story brownstone on the block. A girl was sitting to the left of the numerals. With its clean facade and recently painted ironwork, the house was an anomaly against the decay of a neighborhood trapped between tenement wars and regentrification.

"Detective Aligante?" the girl asked timidly as Margaret got out of her car.

"You Cathy Spenser?"

The young girl nodded, bewilderment flooding her deep-set eyes.

"Let's go inside," Margaret suggested.

"There's a coffee shop around the corner. Can we go there instead? I've become a prisoner of my room."

Margaret assented, and they walked in silence on uneven pavement. Inside the shop, they found a booth away from the window and the blinding morning sunshine.

"I knew something bad would happen. I knew it the moment she told me she was meeting some stranger at the mall," the Spenser girl said.

"Why is that?" asked Margaret, feeling a strong sense of compassion for the girl. She was at such an impressionable age. It was a pity to see her tormented by disturbing circumstances surrounding the death of a friend. And who was this stranger the Parsons girl was to meet? Could the man have been the killer?

"Look, I know you're a cop and everything, but...you got a cigarette? I'm sorta bent out of shape."

"They don't allow smoking in here."

"I need a rush. I'd die for a Camel."

"That's a smelly animal. Not worth the effort."

The girl chuckled.

When the waitress appeared, they both ordered Coke.

"What did you mean when you said you knew something bad would happen?" Margaret asked.

"It did, didn't it?" Tears collected in the girl's eyes. "The cops wanted to know what Clarissa was doing at the mall. I said she was meeting some guy and she got stood up."

"What guy?"

Cathy's eyes drifted. "Clarissa, she was into this game."

"What kind'a game?" Margaret felt her heart race.

"I don't know exactly...something about this guy...She was supposed to meet him for the first time at the mall, but he was a no-show. I bumped into her at Aubrey's Bookstore, and then we went over to Sweet Delights. The cashier there had a surprise for the both of us. Real nerdy type, ya know? Anyway, we're just about to leave when he hands us both a bag of fruit drops. Says we won the prizes."

"Prizes?"

"Miss Sweet Delight and Miss Perfect Confection. I was Confection!"

Margaret smiled. Teens these days. "What happened after that?"

"We left the sweet shop and split up. I was gonna do some shopping. I needed boots. Clarissa was going home to see if the guy had left her any messages."

"Messages?"

"On her e-mail. The guy called himself Godsend."

Chapter 56.

"Our guy is playing with fire. The DA's daughter?" said Margaret incredulously into the car phone as she headed north on Flatbush Avenue. "The Spenser girl says Clarissa was supposed to meet a guy at the mall. He seemed to be a no-show. But how's this for a scenario? After the Spenser girl and Clarissa split up, Clarissa does meet with Godsend. He attacks her and tries to drag her into his vehicle."

Driscoll figured out the next step. "But she gets away and, in her panic, runs headlong into the path of the oncoming station wagon. It's been known to happen before. Look at that hate crime in Howard Beach where a gang of whites, brandishing baseball bats, chased down a black youth. The kid ran directly into traffic on the Belt Parkway and was hit and killed by a speeding automobile. That's a very viable theory, Margaret. Where are you headed now?"

"Over to St. Vincent's to speak with a Doctor Stephen Astin, Clarissa's lead physician. Any word from Moira?"

"None yet. Listen, keep me in the loop if anything else looks even remotely related to our bone thief."

"You got it."

Margaret parked the Plymouth on West Eleventh Street and sauntered toward the stately hospital's visitor's entrance. She flashed her shield at the uniformed security officer, who directed her to a bank of elevators that would carry her to the third floor. Inside the elevator, Margaret checked her watch. She'd be right on time for her meeting with Doctor Astin. At the third floor, the elevator doors opened. Margaret stepped off and headed down the corridor in search of room 335, the doctor's office. Finding it, she stepped inside. A nattily dressed gentleman who spoke in a soft, effeminate voice was conversing with a strikingly handsome man clad in a dark blue suit that would have rivaled any one of Lieutenant Driscoll's. Hickey Freeman or Hart Schaffner & Marx came to mind. Margaret read the handsome man's nameplate: COLM F. PIERCE, M.D COLM F. PIERCE, M.D., CHIEF OF RADIOLOGY CHIEF OF RADIOLOGY. The softspoken gent told Doctor Pierce he would relay his message to Doctor Astin word for word, then turned his attention to Margaret.

"You must be Sergeant Aligante," he said.

"Yes. I have an appointment with Doctor Astin."

"I know. I'm Bartholomew Wiggins, Doctor Astin's assistant. He told me to expect you. And you're right on time," he noted, checking his watch. "The good doctor offers his apologies, though. He was called into surgery not ten minutes ago."

"Oh, I see."