"Bite your tongue. Coffee?"

"I don't suppose you have it in IV? No? Black, sugar."

Ten minutes later he was feeling alert enough to deal with Dallas traffic, and they were on their way to headquarters.

"Had any inspirations since last night?" he asked, as they pulled onto the freeway, figuring he might as well get the ball rolling.She shook her head. "There's nothing in any of my books that even bears a superficial resemblance to what we saw last night except the Kali cult, and I have a hard time believing I wouldn't have picked up on thugee moving in. What I want to do now is to winnow out the deaths and mutilations that really are the work of our cult "

"Can you do that?" he interrupted.

"Oh sure, that's not the problem. That aura I picked up last night will still be lingering around the sites; I'm a good enough empathic clairvoyant to pick it up off a map or a photograph. You don't wipe away the stain of something like that in a few months, not even in a big city. No, the problem will be coming up with a good rationalization to give your chief about why I'm going to pick that particular set of cases as our string. I hope that between us we'll be able to find the common link to satisfy him. I want him thinking I'm doing this scientifically, not by esoteric means."

"Tall order." He sent the Ghia flying for the exit ramp.

"I never said it was going to be easy," she pointed out. "My work is a lot like yours I've learned bunches from the Hartford PD about investigative procedure. All right, once I do pick out the cult-kills, I'm going to try to fit them into some kind of lunar/solar/stellar pattern. I did bring full ephemerides with me, and a sort program and astrological database I developed with the Hartford PD on diskette. If I can find a pattern, that might tell us something about what tradition the cult is working in."

He pulled into the HDQ parking garage. "Sounds good to me. I'll drop you off with the Records people; I've got paperwork to do on the murder last night. I'll come get you in time for the meeting."

"She's in the back," Sara told Mark in a nasal Bostonian accent, looking up at him over the rims of her bottle-bottom gla.s.ses. "I thought she'd be a real flake, but she's okay. Knows the retrieval system, so I just gave her the spare terminal and a laser printer and let her rip while I check out this program of hers and see if it's compatible with our system. It should be, both us and Hartford have nearly the same setup, but you never know. When are you gonna get computer-literate, goat-roper?"

"As long as I have you around, why should I?" he asked over his shoulder, as he headed to the back of the Records Room. "That's what d.a.m.nyankees were created for."

"One of these days, Valdez the least you could do is buy me lunch sometime!"

"Sure the day you learn to appreciate real food. Chili, chimichangas, and fajitas not sushi and tofu."

"Get real."

"I happen to like sushi," Di admonished, not looking up from her terminal. "Although tofu isn't on my all-time favorite list. Looks too much like Styrofoam."

Mark shuddered. "Woman, the day the Pope told us we didn't have to eat fish on Friday anymore was the happiest day of my life and why anybody would eat the stuff raw ".

"It isn't raw, it's marinated; you only ruin the flavor by subjecting fish to heat. You've just burned out all your taste buds with jalepeno peppers, that's all." She shut the machine down, turned it off, and spun her chair around to face him. "All right Daniel, let's go beard the lion in his den."

"A li'l bird down in Records tells me you been puttin' in a good mornin's work, Miz Tregarde." The Chief regarded her thoughtfully over his loaded desk. "'Specially since we ain't payin' ya'll jack."

She spread her hands deprecatingly. She had the good chair, the one with wheels that stayed on when you moved it. Mark stood, rather than chance the other. "You asked for help," she said. "When you ask me for help, you get it; I don't do a job halfway."

"Uh-huh. Mark, I gotta tell you, I gotta allow as how this young lady is comin' off mighty impressive.

I didn't think much of the notion when y'all talked me inta it, but she didn't lose her cookies last night, an' she ain't gone flappin' her beak t' the newsboys I didn't necessarily trust them d.a.m.nyankee cops, but she's been livin' up t' what they told us."

Mark was a little uncomfortable with the Chief talking about Di as if she weren't there, but the amused wink she slipped him eased his embarra.s.sment somewhat. "She has a tendency to surprise people, like I told you last night."The Chief chuckled. "d.a.m.n well told! Okay, I done some thinkin' on this mess; you ain't the most senior, but you got a better feel fer this thang than anybody in the department. I got a gut feelin' this ain't gonna get solved real quick. So you an' Miz Tregarde are on special a.s.signment as of right now. I'm puttin' you on detached duty; y'all report straight t' me fer the duration. Y'all are on free rein; take as long as it takes, an' I'm figgerin' on months. I'll have a reg'lar team on this too, somebody t' give th'

newsboys somebody t' watch and nag at. Maybe we'll break this thang the reg'lar way, but I ain't bettin'

on it. Y'all are my ace in the hole. An' I ain't gonna admit y'all even exist."

"Thank G.o.d," Di said fervently. "The last thing I need is to have some yazoo from National Enquirer climbing in my bedroom window. Trust me sir "

"Y'all might as well call me 'Chief.'"

"If you'll call me Di. Chief I don't want to be known for this any more than you want me attracting attention. If nothing else, I have a living to make I a.s.sume you know I don't do this as a career. I can't write if every time I get into a juicy love scene the phone starts ringing and it's some jerk who wants me to find Judge Crater or something. I've had friends who ended up on the scandalrag sourcebooks as 'experts in the occult.' They had to change their names, finally. Those bozos won't take 'no' for an answer, not even when it's backed with a club."

The Chief chuckled again. "Okay, Miz Di. Now what I'd like from you right off'n the bat, is t' check out th' fruitcake angle. I don' wanta mess y'all up if you got a lead "

"Not yet," she said, shaking her head. "I'm just getting organized. I don't see a problem; mind you, I told you last night that this probably isn't the work of some known fruitcake, but it will help to be able to eliminate them right away."

"Fine I'll get you the makesheets on 'em an' send 'em on down. The first one's th' head somethin' of the Church of Satan he's been pretty mouthy 'bout the homicide last night, denyin' his flakes had anythin' t' do with it 'fore anybody could even ask 'im. The second, he's got a p.o.r.n palace; goes in for the leather an' whips an' chains bunch. Vice tells me he's got some other stuff in th' back that ain't strictly p.o.r.n, stuff that looked pretty spooky t' them. Mark, Ramirez sez he ain't goin' back there without seein'

his parish priest first if that tells y'all anythin.'"

"Maybe, maybe not; Ramirez spooks pretty easy since Vice broke up that cathouse with the voodoo woman for a madame."

"Maybe he's got a good reason to be spooked," Di put in thoughtfully. "This might tie in with voudoun; I hadn't thought about that here, it isn't the territory for it. Louisiana, Florida, I'd expect Texas, no."

The Chief raised his eyebrow. "You kin check for yourself, I reckon; see what th' ol' boy has on his shelves. I kin tell you this much when y'all spouted names at me last night, I checked with Vice; their report sez this ol' boy has got a lotta stuff by that Crowley fella."

"Now that is interesting; it wouldn't hurt to see if the killings fall anywhere around where this guy lives. The archives and the computer could tell me that fast enough. By the way, you wouldn't mind my adding a little program of my own to your base, would you? Sara said to ask. It could end up being useful on other cases like this one."

"Depends. What is it?" the Chief asked suspiciously.

"Just another search program; this one is based on moon cycles, seasonal cycles, and star charts. I told you loonies like this try to do things to match patterns this program will help you find out if there are any matches."

"Jes' make sure t' check it out with Sara; if she says it's okay, then it's okay by me. I gotta tell you, Miz Di, I was right pleased t' find out you was down there with your nose in th' archives. I figgered out a h.e.l.luva lot more cases doin' snoopin' and pryin' than I did playin' Dirty Harry. People round here get touchy when you start leanin' on 'em wrong an' you go wavin' a piece at 'em, they're likely t' wave a piece of their own right back at you." He warmed to his subject; Mark stifled a sigh. He'd heard this all before.

"You start actin' like some yoyo on th' tellyvision, you ain't gonna get nowhere...."

Mark could practically recite the monologue in his sleep not that he disagreed with the Chief on any of his points. It was just that you got a little tired of hearing it after a while.

And there were times when it was so tempting to forget the Miranda decision ever existed Then again, from what he'd read about the late Mr. Dwight Rhoades, it had probably been real tempting for his former employees to create Rambo fantasies. That was why he didn't think it was an employee, current or previous, and not just because there didn't seem to be a tie-in to some of the other cases. If he'd had Dwight Rhoades for a boss, and he'd gone around the bend, Mark knew what he'd have done. He'd have gotten himself a nice legal semiautomatic rifle and filled Dwight Rhoades with so many holes he'd have looked like a lace tablecloth...

He shook himself out of his reverie. Di was still looking attentive, but the Chief was winding down.

"Anyway," he finished, "Y'all know what you need to do, so I ain't gonna get in your way. When you think you can go give those loony-tunes a look-see?"

"Tomorrow soon enough?" Di asked. "By then I'll have my data together, and I can put a preliminary report in your hands."

The Chief whistled. "Miz Di, I wasn't expectin' anythin' in writin' that fast "

She smiled as she stood up and Mark got ready to leave. "Chief, I have one real advantage over your staff I write for a living. I may not be a detective, but I'm h.e.l.l on wheels over a keyboard!"

He laughed. "Lady, you better not let any of th' other boys know that! They'll kidnap you, an' never let you see th' light of day again! h.e.l.lfire, I might what's a felony when I got somebody t' do all my paperwork?"

"All right Yankee, how do you like your hot dogs, and how many?" Mark asked as he and Di pushed open the door to Records.

"Two and everything. Large diet cola, easy on the ice. Sara, what do you want?" Di said before he could interrupt, smiling sweetly. "Mark's buying."

"Like h.e.l.l; the Department is buying, and what the h.e.l.l, I'll pick up the tab this time. Four -eyes?"

"The same, wetback. Di, I've been looking over that correlation program of yours, and I don't see any problem; if it ran on the Hartford mainframe, it should..."

Mark made his escape while he could; technese was worse than Greek to him.

When he returned, Sara was involved in a search for somebody from Legal, and Di was back at her terminal in the rear. Mark dropped Sara's lunch on the desk careful to leave it in a clear place; he'd never forgotten the day he'd left a coffee cup on one of her precious little disks and headed for the rear.

Di was just sitting; the terminal was mostly blank, with a tiny running in the upper left-hand corner.

He touched her shoulder and she jumped.

"Lordy I shouldn't have let myself blank out like that "

"Any results?" he asked, plopping down into a chair beside her and starting on his own lunch ravenously.

"Here." She tapped a pile of folders to one side of the terminal. "I got hard copy because I figured we might want to consult some of the data when we're away from here. Everything else I looked into was either copycat or garden-variety loonies. Either one you'll catch eventually; they'll slip. Our cult they're too careful. We'll get them only by being smarter than they are."

He picked up the top folder and began leafing through it. By the time he reached the bottom of the pile, he had noticed one thing: there were no dates earlier than April of the previous year.

The cases had not been arranged in any particular order. On a hunch, he sorted them in order of the dates of occurrence.

He felt a line of cold run up his spine when he saw that there was a second pattern The incidents started with the mutilation and killing of a single animal; the next was like the first, and the next. Then came the slaughter of half a dozen animals. Following that one was a similar slaughter, but this time the carca.s.ses had been carefully laid out in a pattern afterward, and the mutilations on their bodies had been very precise.

Then came a series of single "John Doe" murders: winos, addicts, bag ladies. The pattern with the animals was being repeated first simple murder, killing that almost looked as if it had come as the result of a fight. Then something more elaborate. Then mutilations before death And now, tonight "Is it too much to hope that this is the end of it?" he asked Di, praying that the answer would be yes."No, I'm afraid this is likely to be just the beginning of a new phase for them," she replied thoughtfully. "And it looks to me like I am going to be in trouble. I'm running the correlation program to make sure, but take a look at the dates, and compare them with the chart I made from the ephemeris."

Mark put the dates of the incidents on a timeline, then compared it with Di's hastily scrawled chart.

He stared at the result, chewing the end of his pencil as he tried to find a pattern.

"If there's a correlation there, I can't find one," he admitted finally.

"Me neither," she replied, surprising him. "Nor can the computer, I'll bet, though the job isn't finished yet. There isn't any pattern following any cycle that I've ever worked with yet there is a pattern of self-consistency within the incidents; they are all about three weeks apart until the end of the animal series then they're about every day. There is a ritual being followed; I have no doubt of that whatsoever. You'll notice the other pattern "

"Increasing violence," Mark said grimly.

"Exactly. It goes from simple death to real atrocity with the animals then starts the pattern all over again, but this time with human beings."

"The last couple of John Doe killings have been groups of two and three until this one."

"Now we get the elaborate ritual murders." She sighed. "Everything I can see points to more to come."

"No," Mickey's mother whined, "You kids stay out here."

Mickey stuck his lower lip out and pouted. "I wanna book."

Robin and Lisa jumped on that. "We wanna book! We wanna book!" they chanted, jumping up and down and pulling on their mother's arms.

For once their mother didn't cave in. "There aren't any kids' books in this store. Besides, I thought you wanted some G.I. Joe stuff."

Mickey stuck to his guns. "I wanna book. I wanna book too."

"You just stay out here and play. I'll get you a G.I. Joe book at K-Mart."

"But I wanna book "

"Mickey " His mother got that pinched, angry look around her eyes. The one that said she was about to forget her EST and nonviolent parenting and smack him one. "You wanna live to reach nine?"

Mickey hadn't made it to eight without learning the danger signs. Mommy would be real mad at herself for smacking him, but he'd still get smacked. He shut up, and dragged seven-year-old Robin and six-year-old Lisa with him. Their mother vanished into the bookstore, heading straight for the romances.

Mickey walked away from the bookstore, and looked for something new to try. Experimentally, he shoved at a big metal cylinder three stores down. It didn't take him long to figure out that while one kid couldn't knock over the big freestanding ashtrays, three kids working together could. The stainless steel tubes made a clang you could hear all over the mall when they hit the floor, and they flung sand and cigarette b.u.t.ts out in a spectacular shower of white that reached for yards.

Now that was exciting!

They got a total of three turned over before Mickey spotted the rent-a-cop hurrying down from the upper level. He led the other two on a fast end-run around to the play area.

There were about a half-dozen other kids in the play area, but no mothers. That was a good sign.

Only two of the kids were playing together; that was good too. It meant that the three of them could take it over, easy.

They pushed the two kids on the teeter-totter right off; one of them ran away crying, the other looked ready to fight until Mickey sucker-punched his stomach. The ones on the swings took one look at this junior Mafia and left to find their mothers. The one on the slide wasn't so easily intimidated; they had to follow him around for nearly five minutes, glowering and muttering threats, before he gave up and left. They never did see where the sixth one went, or when she left. She just vanished when they weren't paying attention to her.

That left them the complete masters of the play area. With no strangers around to intimidate, their unity fell apart, and they began fighting with each other.They finally decided that wasn't such a good idea when Mickey managed to tear the whole sleeve off Robin's jacket.

"Oh-oh " Lisa said, as he stood looking at the sleeve in his hands and trying to figure out a way he could blame someone else for doing it without having Robin tattle on him. He looked up, and saw trouble.

There, sniffling kids in tow, were two mothers with determination in their step and fire in their eyes.

Time to make a quick exit.

They scrambled out of the play area before the adults could reach it, and headed for the escalator at a dead run.

Once on the second level, Mickey remembered he had two dollars in his coat; enough for some hot pretzels. The pretzel place just happened to be right by the top of the escalator, and Mickey knew from experience that if you were buying something or had just bought something, adults left you alone.

Especially if it was something to eat.

Six pretzels later and in the wake of the pretzels, a trail of mustard on the coats of unsuspecting grownups they were at the far side of the mall wondering what to do next.

"Mommy's gonna be in there a long time," Robin whined. "An' they won't let us in the toy store here anymore."

No kidding. The clerks in the toy store knew Mickey and his siblings by name, and had orders to chase them out if they came without an adult.

Lisa sat down in the middle of the concourse, forcing everyone to walk around her. "I wan' somethin'