"Which is?"

"White, between thirty-five and fifty, with money."

Though Julia couldn't remember creating this particular profile, she knew that Frank Turro was C Squad's least intuitive detective, and the least likely to exaggerate.

"Carlos was busy all morning and most of last night," Griffith said. "The guy's got the energy of a squirrel. He never stops."

Julia nodded. Serrano hoped to make detective, first grade, within the next few years, a rank claimed by fewer than three hundred detectives at any given moment. "What's he got to say?"

Griffith smiled for the first time. "Believe it or not, he called Hong Kong and checked out that website, heavenly fire The good news is that it's government-sponsored. The bad news is that the government is Red China."

"And they're not cooperating?"

"Afraid not."

"Well, it's like we already figured," Julia said, almost to herself, "Our killer's a smart boy. He's smart and he likes to rub it in our faces."

"That's what the profiler said."

"Pardon?"

"Serrano took you at your word, when you told him to make it casual. He took this profiler, a sergeant named Ross, out to a cop bar and they got drunk together while they discussed the case. Ross claims it's a no-brainer."

"He offer the perp's address?"

"Nope, but he thinks all the homicides, the warehouse vies, the Mandrakes, Claude Renker, he thinks they were committed by the same man. Somebody who's been molested as a child, which we already figured out by ourselves."

Though surprised, Julia merely signaled for Griffith to continue.

"Ross thinks our boy's been at it for a long time, that there's other bodies someplace. The way the story goes, he had to work himself up to the Mandrakes. To that level of staging."

"What about the way they were shot in the back of the head? All that gore, it came after the fact, like he didn't want them to suffer."

"That what I thought, loo. That what I been thinkin' all along. But Ross, he says the perp was afraid of the vies, that these chicken hawks were powerful figures and he couldn't control them without a gun."

"So he kills them first, then tortures them?" "He wants to humiliate them, shrink them down to his size, make them safe. But he doesn't have the cojones to do it while they're still alive."

Griffith eased off the gas. Absorbed in the conversation, he'd gotten too close to Foley and Turro in the lead car. Sitting beside him, Julia fiddled with the buckle on her seat belt. As she continued to question Griffith, she found herself wishing she cared as much about the killings as the men she'd a.s.signed to investigate them. Maybe that would come later, maybe after she finally put Little Girl Blue to rest.

"Anything else?"

"Yeah, our actor is sliding over the edge, at least according to Ross. Decompensating is the shrink word for the process. It means he's losing control, taking risks." Griffith tapped the wheel, turned slightly to look at Julia. "Makes sense when you think about it. He left those videos where we'd find 'em, so he had to know we were also looking for Claude Renker. The same with the Mandrakes. He only beat us to the Mandrakes by twenty-four hours."

Julia looked out at the broad swatch of gra.s.s at the edge of the road, the forest beyond. There were patches of snow on the ground here, deeper snow beneath a stand of pines. Above the trees, the cloudless sky to the north was a deep, flat blue and had the texture of paint in a bucket. Or so Julia mused, as she recalled Foley describing the killer's psyche. Something about spinning out of control, taking risks. Then a prediction: ".. . he'll either blow himself away or be collared at the scene."

It was all very fine, this decompensating killer afraid of his victims, but it didn't answer the essential question. How did he find the Mandrakes before she did? You could explain everything but that.

Maybe it's even possible, Julia told herself as she turned to stare through the windshield at the back of Peter Foley's head, that Foley murdered Claude Renker. Maybe there's some way to fake time of death, to establish that ironclad alibi. She'd have to look into it. Meanwhile, Foley was chattering away, his head bobbing, hands flying, having the time of his life.

And she? Well, she had to admit as she pushed the soles of her boots into the mat covering the fire wall, then flexed her back, she wasn't doing too bad herself, a dangerous woman at last.

"One other thing," Griffith said, "from Ross."

"Ross," Julia muttered, "I think I'm already sick of hearing his name."

"Me, too, lieutenant. But for what it's worth, Ross thinks the perp knows the end is coming and he wants to go out with a bang."

THIRTY-THREE.

ROBERT REID glanced at his reflection in the mirror on the other side of the bar and told himself, not for the first time, to calm the h.e.l.l down. He told himself that he was an old man, a sick man, a wrecked man. He told himself it'd been so long since he'd done any serious investigative reporting that he wouldn't know a lead if it popped out of a bottle. For years now, he'd been using his contacts and not just in the NYPD, but in virtually every agency of city government to create columns that appeared to work the cutting edge. But field work? Burning shoe leather? Coaxing the truth out of a lying general public?

Well, it had been a long time and now here he was in the Golden Harp on Bedford Avenue in Brooklyn, feeding Irish whiskey to an Italian doorman named Basilio Donatelli.

"So what else you wanna know?" Donatelli was perfectly at ease. It was Monday, his day off, and he was in his usual haunt, settled down to an afternoon of serious drinking. Donatelli had a long narrow face that echoed a long, decidedly hooked nose. The crown of his scalp was smooth and shiny and red.

They were sitting in a booth at the back of the bar, photos of the Mandrakes' clients spread out before them. Donatelli had identified all but one of the photos and even knew the names of several. Or the names they'd given him when he'd called upstairs to announce their arrivals. Reid did not expect anything to come of this line of inquiry. Not only had the cops already covered the territory, but the Johns, accompanied by their lawyers, were now surrendering. Within hours, they would be out on bail.

Not so for the dozens of pedophiles s.n.a.t.c.hed off the street by an army of federal agents under the leadership of Special Agent Raymond Lear. Those arrests had begun in the early morning hours and were expected to continue into the night. Somehow, despite the Times Square cleanup and the thirty-seven million tourists, New York had become Sin City once again. Way to go, New York.

"I'm looking for a face that's not here. Somebody who visited the Mandrakes a couple of times a month."

"I don' know. Mandrake, he say he's some kinda consultant. He say he gives advice on how to invest. Tha.s.sa why so many people, they come to see him."

"But there were others," Reid persisted, "besides the men in these photos?"

Donatelli took the photos up, one by one, examining them closely. "People, they come and go. Could be anybody. Grocery man, laundry man, UPS. Me, I open the door, I close the door. Goo' mornin', sir. Affaternoon, ma'am. Grin like Pinocchio when Gepetto pulla strings." He glared at Reid, eyes bulging, thick brows rising to the center of a low forehead. "I no looka too hard at people. They don' like it."

"What about that day? The day the Mandrakes were killed. Did they have any visitors?" Reid waved at the photos. "Any of these?"

"The cops ask me thissa question, you know how many time? You know how many time I tell 'em, "No, n.o.body come here?"" Donatelli rolled his eyes, his expression pa.s.sing from indignation to exasperation in the s.p.a.ce of an eye blink "Maybe somebody sneak in through the service entrance. When I'm onna John."

"You don't have a video camera on the service entrance?"

"Alia tapes, they go to the cops. What happens then, I don' know."

Reid laid his palms on the table, knowing the cops had been all over those tapes and they'd been worthless. Still, he now had enough for a story. Bud Mandrake had posed as a financial adviser; the Johns had posed as clients, visiting only during the day or early evening, and only two or three on any given day. It was a good scam and it would suffice for tomorrow's edition. Meanwhile, he would tap his contacts in the FBI and the AG's office, probe for a connection between their investigation and Julia's. It was something she'd want to know, a.s.suming she didn't know already. Julia had been one step ahead of Robert Reid for quite a while now, and her lead was increasing.

Reid had twice attempted to contact Julia, only to find her cell phone off. The second time, he'd left a message asking her to call, that he had information of interest to her.

It was that information that had Reid's journalistic antennae twitching. Unknown to his niece, he'd sent an e-mail to the killer, addressing it to In Reid's opinion, Julia had given scant attention to the killer's e-mails. He didn't know of her preoccupation with the adoption scam that brought Anja Das-calescu into the country, or with Sergeant Ross's profile, or with Peter Foley. But he had a strong hunch that the man responsible for six homicides, and perhaps more, was within reach. It was just that he, Reid, was missing something, a piece of the puzzle already on the table. Or so his reporter's intuition insisted.

There was one point that especially excited him. Everyone, it seemed, from the experts trotted out on the nightly news to Julia Bren-nan, believed that Destroyer and Destroyed, as he signed his e-mails, had been molested as a child. But if that was so, and his molester had been a gay male, why were all identified victims heteros.e.xual? Something wrong there, without a doubt. And if he'd been molested by a woman, a slight possibility, his choice of victims was even stranger.

The killer had made that clear in his reply to Reid's e-mail which had pleaded with him to surrender, going so far as to offer Reid's services to mediate the time and place.

David overcame Goliath and went on to become the King of the Israelites. My Goliaths are legion. They battle from within and without. You've missed it all, scribbler, but I shall make myself clear very soon. Catch me if you can.

Destroyer and Destroyed Robert Reid settled up with the barmaid and headed for the streets. At the door, he paused to draw a deep breath, to pull the smell of beer and booze to the very bottom of his lungs. There was a time in his life when the bars of New York .. .

Enough, he told himself. Take your sniff and make an exit. Corry'll be a-waitin'.

Earlier that morning, Corry had gone from her father's home in Staten Island directly to Stuyvesant High School, a ferry ride away. She would be coming back to Queens in a few hours. For some years, ever since Corry had graduated from day care to latchkey child, Reid had made it his business, on nights when Julia came home late, to have dinner with Corry as often as possible. Occasionally they had a heart-to-heart talk, but most of the time Reid worked with Julia's computer and the cellular he now carried, while Corry did her homework or prepared dinner. The talks were nice, when they happened spontaneously, but the point was that Corry not come home to an empty house.

THIRTY-FOUR.

JULIA LET Bert Griffith do the honors, another concession to his hurt feelings. They were parked at the open end of a cul-de-sac lined with single-family homes. Though not identical, the homes were all colonials, two stories with an attic above and an attached garage. Set on generous, well-groomed lots, they were overshadowed by hardwood trees planted decades before. Elizabeth Nicolson's house, fourth in from the corner, was fronted by a wraparound porch that left the first floor, or what Julia could see of it, in deep shadow.

Griffith accepted the phone without hesitation and quickly proved up to the task. When a man answered on the second ring, he said, "Hey, Joe, it's Bert. Bert Griffith."

"Bert?"

"Yeah, Detective Bert Griffith, NYPD. How ya doin' today?"

"I don't ..."

"Joe, before you hang up, listen for a minute. I'm in New York, remember?" Griffith hesitated briefly. "What I wanna do is make a date for you to come in for an interview. Or, we could go to you. Either way, there are some matters we gotta clear up."

"How do I know you're who you say you are?"

"Gimme a break, Joe. The game is over. It was good while it lasted, true, but if you don't wanna go the way of Chris Inman, you gotta come to us. For Christ's sake, there's no way around it. Who else is gonna protect you?"

Julia was looking out the window as she listened to her detective, staring across a snow-covered field at the January sun as it dropped below the trees. The clouds above, elongated and compact as cigars, were pure gold along their outer edges. A rare sight for a city girl, and one she drank in gratefully before signaling to Griffith.

"Joe," Griffith said, "wait a minute. I'm gonna put my boss on the line."

"Mr. Norton?" Julia asked.

"What?"

"This is Lieutenant Julia Brennan, Mr. Norton. Can I speak to you for a minute?"

"You have no jurisdiction in New Jersey." Joe Norton's voice rose at the end of his statement, rose into a howl of anguish that forced Julia to move the phone away from her ear. She'd heard it all before, of course, and knew full well that even the most committed psychopath was able to feel his own pain. Even if he couldn't feel anybody else's.

"Right now," she said, ignoring the outburst, "we only want you as a material witness. That means you won't have to go through the booking process and you won't be housed with the general population. It also means your lawyer will have maximum leverage to cut a deal somewhere down the line. You following this?"

"The other one said you just wanted an interview. Now you say you want to lock me up. Why should I believe anything you say?"

"Because if you don't, we'll ask New Jersey to make an arrest. And if you run, we'll put your name and face on the little tube, maybe ask America's Most Wanted for help. You wanna find out what it feels like to have thirty or forty million people looking for you? You really want that for you and your wife? The reporters will descend on your sister in packs. Looking for blood, anybody's blood."

Julia let it go there. If he bit, she'd tell him they were parked at the end of the block, ready to rock and roll. If he didn't, they'd settle down to wait, hope he'd make a run for it. If neither event came to pa.s.s, they'd have to call in the locals, let the State of New Jersey take the Nortons into custody, do it by the book. A moment later, the line went dead.

I HEY SAT for three-quarters of an hour, until it was completely dark, Bert and Julia in the front car, Foley and Turro directly behind, communicating from time to time by two-way radio. Julia could see Foley through the rearview mirror. Apparently talked out, he was staring through the windshield, guarding his energies. One thing about cops: they all knew how to wait.

Still, there was a limit and Julia reached hers just as a half-moon rose above the house at the end of the block. She signaled Foley and Turro to join them, waited until they made their way to the back seat of the Ford, then announced a decision she knew would be unpopular.

"Bert, Frank, I want you to scare up the locals. Take the warrants, get as much backup as you can." She didn't bother to explain the obvious. Joe Norton had a pair of gun permits and no weapons were found in his Bayside home.

Though each hesitated, Griffith and Turro left without protesting. Julia had chosen Foley over them, again. She, of course, as the ranking officer, could not leave a scene complicated by severe jurisdictional problems. In theory, Joe Norton could pack up his car, drive on by, heave a finger as he pa.s.sed. The right to stop and detain had been surrendered midway through the Holland Tunnel.

"I'll go a sawbuck," Foley said.

Julia watched the second Ford's taillights disappear as Griffith kturned left, toward the center of town. "What?" "The traditional bid for someone's thoughts is a penny. I'm just tryin' to show how much I value what you think." "Pay up." Julia extended a raised palm. Foley laughed, fished out a ten-dollar bill, watched Julia stuff it into her purse. "You have great presence," he told her, quite sincerely. "You own the s.p.a.ce around you."

"I thought we were talking about my thoughts?"

"Mea culpa."

Julia cleared her throat. "The Nortons are the key. If we can't turn them, we can't get past them to the ... I guess the word here is ..." She flicked a stray hair out of her face. "Ya know, I don't think there is a word for someone who uses an adoption service to smuggle children into a country for the purpose of prost.i.tution."

"Pimp is good enough."

"Yeah, well we need the little pimp, Joe Norton, to get to the big pimps. If New Jersey takes him and he lawyers up while awaiting extradition, we'll have to cut a deal with said lawyer. Now, usually, I can live with that, the extra time and all the bulls.h.i.t, because I'm a patient type. But what if the big pimps are Bosnian? Or Romanian? Or Serbian? What if they hold foreign pa.s.sports?" She tapped Foley on the shoulder. "The big pimps might be on a plane right now. I could live with that, too. But if the big pimps are holding firm, if they're waiting to see what happens and they split when Joe Norton's arrest becomes public knowledge ..."

"That would be tough," Foley admitted.

Julia slapped the steering wheel. "Give me Joe Norton for ten minutes, and I'll break him. The wife, too. They really don't have any other way to go."

"You wanna force the issue?" Foley, who'd given up hope when Griffith and Turro drove off, was now grinning from ear to ear.

"I don't know." Julia turned away. "Most cops, they go through a career, they're maybe involved in one or two shooting incidents. I lost my virginity four days ago and I'm not due for another decade. Besides which, we knock the door down, we could be arrested for burglary."

Outside, with the coming of night, a rising wind clattered through the branches of the trees. It was every bit as cold as on the morning Anja Dascalescu's body was discovered, and Julia, watching and listening, found her thoughts returning to Central Park. The words Little Girl Blue had jumped into her mind as though placed there by a witch, a spell that had carried her to the wilds of New Jersey where she had no business and no authority. By all rights she ought to have turned the investigation over to the feds after finding the Nortons gone from their Bayside home. But she couldn't; the images were still too close, Anja Dascalescu on the autopsy table, four terrified little girls huddled in a corner. There was no walking away from them.

"You know what they're gonna do?" Julia asked. "The feds, what they're gonna do to your apartment?"

Foley scratched at the stubble of beard on his chin. "I'm not worried about it."

"You have someplace to go?"

"Yeah."

Foley's response was abrupt and Julia might have let it hang there. Instead, she persisted. "Did you know they wouldn't arrest you?"

"That's the last thing they want." Foley turned his head to meet her gaze. "I made a deal with Lear. I traded evidence I'd collected for the files on Anja Dascalescu and Christopher Inman. If the feds aren't making arrests even as we speak, they'll be making them within the next few days."

"So, why the raid?"