Eighteen.

Nothing in my years as a Texas Ranger prepared me for what awaited us on a quiet street in Fort Worth. The house was a ma.s.sive redbrick colonial in the citys premier old-money neighborhood. Cynthia Neal sobbed silently in the kitchen, attended to by her personal physician and her adult daughter. The impeccably dressed woman in her sixties had discovered the body upon her return from a performance of the Fort Worth Symphony. Her husband had complained of a cold coming on and decided not to attend, so at the last moment she invited a friend.

We arrived just after 4 A.M. The two-story living room, arching into a cavernous cathedral ceiling, radiated heat, as yellow-blue flames licked the gas logs in the green Italian marble fireplace on the far wall. Thats where hed posed it, above the mantel, nailed to the burled walnut paneling. Arms extended, legs straight, feet overlapping, head drooping to his chest, there hung the cold naked corpse of Dr. James Neal III.

It was a crucifixin.

"Do you think our guy did this?" I whispered, as we stood below the body.

After a pause, David nodded. "Yeah, it could be."

For the most part, serial killers dont drastically vary their killings. They know what turns them on, what pushes the right b.u.t.tons to escalate their excitement, how to get the biggest thrill out of each and every gruesome kill. They are creatures of habit. As their hunters, we count on that. Their patterns help us not only link their killings but offer windows into their minds. These recurring details define the killers and eventually help us find and stop them. But sometimes, and apparently this time, their fantasies escalate. The wounds in the hands and the feet of the previous victims, it appeared now, hadnt been torture. Hed been experimenting and toying with the bodies, working up to Dr. Neal, who bore the stigmata of Christ.

"I know this doesnt match your other cases exactly. h.e.l.l, what could match this?" asked Detective Les Maddock, an avuncular man with a thick head of graying hair and washed-out blue eyes. When we failed to answer, he went on. "I still figured Id call. It reminds me enough of your cases with the b.l.o.o.d.y crosses to make it worthwhile to take a look-see. Doesnt it?"

After the briefest pause, he again jumped in. "That cross cut on his chest, for one thing, thats similar," said Maddock. "Anothers the wounds in the docs hands and feet."

"Our victims had small knife wounds not nails driven through their hands and feet," I said, slowly. "This isnt the same, but..."

"h.e.l.l, maybe its not one of yours," said the detective, pushing back the sides of his faded navy-blue sport coat. He thrust his hands in the pockets of baggy tan slacks. "Sorry I called you two in the middle of the night. Guess all I accomplished was depriving you of some well deserved sleep. You might as well be on your way and leave this mess to us."

Neither David nor I moved. Both of us stared, transfixed. Dr. Neal reminded me of crucifixes Id seen in Mexican churches over the years, before Maggie was born, when Bill and I took the occasional winter vacation. Not sanitized like those in churches in the States, these were liberally painted with streams of blood, and the expression on Christs face was always of inconsolable suffering.

"Its in the fifties outside tonight. Not exactly fireplace weather. Who lit it?" I asked.

"We think the killer," said the detective. "The docs wife says he had allergies and never liked having the fireplace on, so its doubtful that he would have."

David said nothing, but I knew what we were both thinking. Dr. Neal had been crucified over flames, like the flames of h.e.l.l. It wasnt a reach. Protruding from the slash in the dead mans side was a thick-handled, wide-bladed kitchen knife, more precisely a butcher knife.

"Was Dr. Neal a gynecologist?" I asked.

"Yeah, howd you know?"

"He performed abortions?"

The detective shrugged and said, "Beats me."

When wed arrived, Id noticed a sixteen-foot stepladder, used by the crime-scene photographer, against the wall. Wanting a better look, I walked over to get it. David helped and we set it up a few feet from the corpse. I kicked off my shoes and climbed up to the third rung from the top as David held the ladder steady on the thick carpeting.

"His throats been slashed," I called down to David. "Theres so little bleeding from the wound in his side, Id bet that came postmortem."

"Staging," David said. "Its all for effect."

"You did the right thing calling us. Theres a good chance this is our guy," I told the detective, once I was standing firmly on the floor. "It looks similar enough, at least, to make that a possibility. What has your forensics team found so far?"

"Looks like the butcher knife came from a set in the kitchen," he said. "The medical examiners office hasnt gone over the body yet, but thatll happen later today, sometime before noon. We left it there on purpose so you could see this firsthand."

"We appreciate that," David said.

"The hair-and-fiber guys took one swipe through with trace lifts and collected bags of stuff, but we dont know if any of it means anything. Well transport the body wrapped in a trace-evidence sheet as well, of course. Weve collected fingerprints. Weve got quite a few, but we dont know if any belong to the killer," the detective continued. "We do have one on an outside bedroom window, a nice one off the gla.s.s. We think that may be the point of entry, like maybe the guy screwed up and hadnt put his gloves on yet. The window was unlocked. The wife says Dr. Neal liked to sleep with an open window."

"Anything in the bathroom?" I asked.

"Blood around the sink drain, like the guy cleaned up some before he left."

"Seems more likely all the time, doesnt it?" I said. This time it was Davids turn to nod.

"We have a partial fingerprint from a San Antonio murder, Detective," David said. "The rangers will e-mail it to you as soon as we contact them. Please compare it to everything you have from the crime scene, especially that print from the window, ASAP."

"And Ive brought additional copies of our composite," I added, pulling a stack from my bag. "Give them to all your officers canva.s.sing the neighborhood. Someone has to have seen something. Any strangers, any unusual cars, anything."

"Will do," said Detective Maddock. "Well call in with a report as soon as we have something."

Id half-expected Evan Matthews, the Galveston County Daily News reporter, to be waiting in ambush as David and I exited the Neal home. He wasnt-just a group of unfamiliar TV and newspaper reporters and photographers, held back by an army of Fort Worth P.D. officers. Instead of heading back to Houston, I suggested we visit the doctors office. "Our guy picked Neal out. He knew about him, what he did for a living. Somehow, he found out where Neal lived," I said. "This one isnt like Maria Gonzales. This wasnt a chance meeting."

After breakfast, bagels and cream cheese, we arrived at the clinic, on the second story of a low-rise office building near downtown Fort Worth, minutes after it opened for the morning. The plaque on the door read, JAMES NEAL III, M.D. GYNECOLOGY, INFERTILITY.

Inside, resting on chairs, reading magazines, the mornings patients had already queued up. I rang a bell next to a sliding frosted-gla.s.s window and a thin, tightly wound woman in a white uniform, with a pencil perched behind her right ear, stared out at me.

"You and your husband will have to sign in," she ordered. "If youre new patients, there are a few forms to fill out. And, I might as well warn you, Dr. Neal hasnt come in yet. Hes running late."

"Were not-"

"Then just sign in and sit down. What times your appointment?" she demanded. "I thought everyone was already here for the doctors first of the morning."

I gave up explaining and pulled out my badge. The receptionist blinked, then said, "Come in."

A buzzer sounded, and I felt the curious eyes of the couples in the room follow us as we opened the door and walked into the offices inner chambers, a maze of exam rooms, counters, clerks, and nurses.

"No explanations, just tell your patients the doctor wont be in today," I instructed the receptionist. "Then bring the staff together."

Moments later, nurses and techs in white uniforms and surgical scrubs gathered in the doctors private office. Plastic models of ovaries, fallopian tubes, and uteruses lined shelves, interspersed among books on gynecology and silver-framed photos of Dr. Neal, his wife, and their children and grandchildren.

"I have a sketch here. Id like all of you to look at it," I said, pulling out the San Antonio composite. "Have you seen this man? Hes in his early twenties, blond hair, and he has a slight build."

"Has something happened to Dr. Neal?" one nurse demanded.

"Well explain in just a minute. First, look at the sketch."

Murmurs ran through the room as they pa.s.sed the sketch from hand to hand, until it reached a small, ponytailed woman who looked to be in her early thirties. The white plastic name tag on her pink surgical scrubs read: NANCY KRAMER R.N.

"You know who that is," she said to the others. "That guy who hung around out front with the protestors. He was there yesterday."

"Tell us about him," I said.

"Not much to tell, really." She shrugged. "We have a steady stream of anti-abortion protestors out front. Theyre here maybe four times a week. Yesterday, there was this new guy with them, dressed all in black. We saw him from this window, right here," she said, pointing to a window that looked out on the parking lot. "He wasnt holding a picket sign like the others. He just stared at the building, up at our offices. Dr. Neal and I watched him through the office window. We thought it was really strange."

"Why so strange?"

"First, because the guy was just weird, scary weird, the kind who makes your skin crawl," she said. "Second, because none of the protestors ever pay much attention to us. Were not the reason theyre here picketing. Theyre here because of the family-planning clinic on the first floor. Dr. Neal only worked with infertile couples."

"He didnt perform abortions," David repeated.

"No, never," she insisted. "If he ever did, I dont know about it, and Ive been with him for eight years. Dr. Neal says a doctor cant treat infertile patients who want children so much theyd do nearly anything to have one and still do abortions."

"How do we find this anti-abortion group?"

"They should be gathering any minute now. Right outside. Wait near the street entrance to the parking lot and theyll find you. It wont take long," she said. "But first, tell us why youre here and why you referred to Dr. Neal in the past tense. Whats happened?"

We walked out the office building front door to find a handful of protestors, three elderly men and two twenty-something women with small children, unloading a handful of picket signs from the trunk of a white Isuzu SUV. They read ABORTION IS MURDER and ITS NOT A FETUS, ITS A BABY.

I pa.s.sed around the composite, and they immediately recognized the young man as someone whod stood on the sidelines of their group the day before.

"What can you tell us about him?" I asked one man.

"He was here off and on all day," he said. "Just walked up and stood nearby while we picketed. Nothing much to tell."

"Did he say anything to you?"

"No," he said. "A couple of us tried to talk to him, but he wouldnt even acknowledge us. He kept staring up at the building, and then went inside for a minute. When he came out, he left."

"Did you see his car? Can you give us a description, a license-plate number?"

"No," said the man. "Like I said, he just kind of appeared. He must have parked on one of the side streets."

David and I asked more questions, trying to uncover any clue to the mans ident.i.ty. They offered no answers.

"He just came out of nowhere," said one of the women, quieting a crying toddler she bounced on her hip. "He sat on the curb for a while and watched and then left. He didnt have anything to do with us."

In the rental car on the way back to the airport where the helicopter waited, David sighed. "So he went after the wrong guy. Saw Dr. Neals name on the building directory and a.s.sumed he was an abortionist."

"Looks that way."

The reaction of the murdered doctors staff only made the killing seem more tragic. They described Neal as a good man, who volunteered his services to those who couldnt afford hefty fees. One wall of his office was nearly wallpapered with photos of babies hed helped bring into the world. Two evenings a week, he worked without pay at a clinic for indigent women.

"Weve got to catch this guy, sooner rather than later," I said. "Thursday at five P.M., two days from now, without a d.a.m.n good lead, Im off this case. I cant just walk away until weve got this guy in custody. The killing has to end."

Nineteen.

When we reached Houston at just after eleven that Tuesday morning, the DPS office was in chaos. Outside, reporters milled and rushed forward as David and I walked toward the entrance. Front and center, Evan Matthews was not to be denied.

"What about these letters the killer is sending you, Lieutenant Armstrong?" he asked. "Why is he writing to you? What do they mean?"

"How do you know about the letters?" I demanded.

"Sarah, ignore him. Come inside," David said, tugging on my elbow.

"Are you attempting to prove that Priscilla Lucas is innocent? Is that what all this is about?"

"The letters dont prove Priscilla Luca.s.s guilt or innocence," I said.

"Well, this says they do," Matthews said, holding up a copy of that mornings Galveston County Daily News.

"Serial killer behind island murders: He claims a mission from G.o.d"

In a box, in bold print, ran the text of the first letter: Why do you pursue me? Dont you know that I do the work of another?

"Dont you ask for comment before running stories like this?" I shouted.

"Thats why Im here, Lieutenant. Tell me the truth. If theres a serial killer murdering people in Texas, the public has the right to know. You have an obligation to warn potential victims."

When I hesitated, he went on. "Are you or are you not tracking a serial killer? Isnt that why youve just returned from Fort Worth? Wasnt there another murder there just last night? A doctor?"

"How did you...?"

"Sarah," David said, pulling me by my arm.

If the captains brusque manner when I walked into the office wasnt enough evidence that I was in trouble, the sight of Jack Smith, the departments only senior ranger captain, who reported directly to the director, settled the issue. As my pop was so fond of saying, I knew my goose was not only cooked but covered with gravy and on the dinner platter.

"Captain Smith," I said, holding out my hand. "Good to see you. Its been a long time."

"Cut the c.r.a.p, Lieutenant," he ordered. "Whats going on here?"

"I dont know," I said, lowering my unclaimed hand. "As far as I know, Im just doing my job. Youre going to have to tell me whats wrong."

"Well, for starters, wheres this reporter, Evan Matthews, getting his information?" he demanded. "And how did he get a copy of that letter?"

"I dont know," I said. "I wish I did."

"Lieutenant, the governors furious about all this. The rangers are looking like buffoons, running off at the mouth, unable to control a high-profile investigation."

"Im sorry, sir," I said. "All I can say is that Im not the leak."

"The lieutenant and I have had this conversation, sir," interjected the captain. "I believe shes telling the truth. Shes not the source of the newspaper stories."

"Well, the rest of us arent so sure," he said, shooting Captain Williams a warning glance. "Lieutenant Armstrong, you are to report to Judge McLamores courtroom in Galveston in two hours for a pretrial hearing in the matter of Texas versus Priscilla Lucas. My guess is that the good judge is deservedly more than a little angry. If I were you, Id keep my mouth shut and let him get it off his chest."