He and Butts and Chuck entered the room together, Lee moving slowly but with purpose, keeping his face as blank as possible. If he read these three correctly, the best thing he could do was to play his cards close and let them come to him. They watched him warily as he sat in the only vacant chair, a scarred green plastic affair with a crack in the seat. He smiled at them.

"Hi," he said, "thanks for coming in."

"Look, we just want to help you catch her killer, okay?" the girl said, as though he had challenged her in some way.

"Okay," Lee answered, not reacting to her belligerent tone. "We appreciate that."

"Here's the deal," she said, leaning forward. Lee tried not to look at the dark line where her breasts met under the lacy shirt. "You don't ask who we are, and we tell you everything we can. Deal?"

Lee glanced at Chuck, who nodded.

"Deal." Their desire to remain anonymous meant they were probably runaways. Petty thieves too, maybe, drug users possibly-but mostly they were just scared kids.

"Okay," the girl said. Her voice was husky, smoky as her kohl-lined eyes-whether from too many cigarettes or drugs, he couldn't tell.

"You have to understand our culture," the girl said. "We stick together, right?"

"I can appreciate that," Lee replied. "I'll be grateful for anything you can tell us."

"Okay." She took a deep breath and looked at her companions, who sat watching her. "She turned up about a month ago at a rave in an abandoned building on Avenue C. Told us her name was Pamela. No last name, just Pamela. Then she turned up one night at CBGB around midnight. Wasn't that it, Scott?" she said to the larger boy.

CBGB (Country, Blue Grass, and Blues) was a legendary music club on the Bowery, home to many punk and heavy metal bands in its thirty-year history. Lee's apartment on East Seventh Street was just around the corner.

The larger boy shrugged uncomfortably, as if trying to loosen something from his shoulder. "Yeah, around then." His voice shook and jumped a little, as though it had only just broken. Lee wondered how old he was.

"How was she dressed? What did she say?" Chuck asked, but his eagerness made the girl more wary. She flicked a strand of black hair from her face.

"She was dressed like a nice girl-middle class, all that. I don't think she's from around here."

"What makes you say that?" Butts asked.

"Her accent-it was different. I don't know how, but different."

The smaller of the boys spoke. "New England. She was from New England."

Both Chuck and Lee turned to study him. He didn't really seem like he belonged with the other two. There was also an air about him, a thoughtful, refined quality, as though he were a scholar moonlighting among truckers.

"You sure about that?" Lee asked.

"Freddy's good with accents and stuff like that," the girl said.

"New England," he repeated. "I have cousins up there. I recognize the accent."

"Okay," Butts said. "New England's a pretty big place. Can you narrow it down, give us a state, at least?"

Freddy frowned. "Uh, New Hampshire-Maine, maybe. Not sure about that."

"What else can you tell us about her?" said Chuck.

The girl bit her lip. "Well, she didn't do drugs or anything, right, Scott?"

"Yeah," he said, looking at his shoes. "Went to a rave with us but wouldn't drop any E. Said she'd heard of kids dying after taking it."

"E?" said Lee. "What's that?"

"Ecstasy," said Butts. "It's a big rave drug."

"She ever mention friends, family, anything back home?" Chuck asked.

The three kids looked at each other, as if they were trying to decide how much to reveal.

"She said one time that her folks didn't understand her," the girl said. "But hey, take a number, right?"

"So she didn't give any specifics?" said Butts.

Scott replied without taking his eyes off the girl. "Told me one time her dad was mean, and mom was a wimp."

"No mention of friends or towns or last name?" Lee asked.

Freddy shook his head. "I got the feeling she didn't want to be found...like she was hiding out."

"For sure," the girl said. "She was hiding out. I asked one time what it was like where she came from, and she said she didn't want to talk about it."

"She have a boyfriend or anything?" said Butts.

Again the three of them exchanged a glance.

"Not really," said the girl. "Had sex with a couple of guys. Had a weakness for losers. Nothing serious."

Scott averted his eyes, and the other two avoided looking at him. Scott clearly had been one of her sex partners-the question answered was whether he was the last last one. one.

"What about jewelry?" Lee asked. "Did she wear anything special?"

"She hardly wore any-kind of stuck out, actually," said the girl. "But we accepted her even if she looked different."

"That's real big of you," Butts muttered. Lee and Chuck glared at him.

"She did wear something around her neck all the time," Freddy said. "A little silver cross, I think. I remember because someone asked if she was Catholic, and she said no, her grandmother had given her the necklace."

Lee felt the blood rush to his head.

"Are you sure about that?"

"Yeah," Freddy replied. "It was real pretty. Never saw her without it."

Lee looked at Chuck, who was biting his lower lip.

"Is that right?" he said, looking at the others.

The girl picked at her fingernails. They were long and pointed, with tiny death's-head emblems on each nail. "Yeah. I saw the cross. At first I thought it was like, ironic, you know, but she wasn't really the ironic type."

Lee turned to Scott. "Did she wear it during sex?"

The boy's face turned a mottled, boiled-lobster red, and Lee felt sorry for putting him on the spot.

"Yeah," he answered in a barely audible voice.

"Can you describe it exactly?"

"Uh, silver...just plain silver, that's all." He held up his thumb and forefinger. "About this big."

"Okay," said Chuck. "Anything else you can tell us?"

The kids looked at one another, and all of them shook their heads.

"If you think of anything-anything at all-you can call us day or night," Chuck said, handing them each a business card. "You've been really helpful," he added, escorting them out the door. "Thanks again."

The girl stopped and looked at him. "Whatever. Just catch that guy, okay?"

"Don't worry, we will," Chuck replied.

Just then Chuck's cell phone rang.

"Morton here," he said, leaning against the wall. He looked exhausted; Lee could see the toll the investigation was taking on his friend.

After listening for a moment, Chuck said, "Are you sure?" After another pause, he said, "Okay. Thanks anyway," and hung up.

"What is it?" Lee asked.

"That was Delaney from the Ninth Precinct. He sent his guys over there right after I called, but they couldn't find the bullet."

"Are you sure it was the right lamppost?"

"Oh, it was the right one-had a deep dent in it. But the bullet was gone. Looks like the shooter got there first and dug it out himself."

"Christ," Lee said. "Whoever this is, he's good at covering his tracks."

"He's got to slip up sooner or later."

Lee wished he shared his friend's confidence. His cell phone beeped, and a shiver shot through him as he fumbled to dig it out of his pocket. Another text message: I'm watching her too.

He stared at it, then handed the phone to Chuck.

"What's this about?" Chuck said after reading it.

Lee told him about the text message of the day before.

"Your sister?" Chuck said, puzzlement on his squarely handsome face.

"What else could it be about? Laura was wearing a red dress when she disappeared."

"But no one knows that except-"

"Exactly. How did he find out?"

"And is this even the same guy?" Chuck said. "How do we know these messages are from the...the killer?" He resisted using the name Butts had chosen for the killer. He thought "the Slasher" sounded lurid and distasteful.

"We don't," Lee answered, but in his mind there wasn't much doubt.

"I'll see what we can do about tracing the messages," Chuck said. "And starting tomorrow, you'll be under surveillance."

What neither of them said was that if the Slasher was talking about watching his sister, it meant that Laura was still alive.

Chapter Twenty-four

"Who among us can say he's never had a violent fantasy?"

John Paul Nelson looked over the assembly of students, who looked back at him uncomfortably, as if he had just accused them personally of being criminals.

Lee sat in the back of the lecture hall, watching as Nelson surveyed the young faces, blank as unformed clay. It was Monday morning, and today the heat was on with a vengeance. Hisses of steam erupted at irregular intervals from the radiators lining the assembly room walls. As soon as the lecture was over, Lee planned to give Nelson Chuck's urgent invitation to join their investigation. He had tried to reach Nelson by phone the day before without success-sometimes, he knew, Nelson would turn off both his phone and answering machine.

"Anybody?" Nelson continued, a smile struggling to break through the corners of his mouth. "So you've all had a violent fantasy at one time or another in your life, then. Good-then you'll be able to follow what I'm about to say next." He picked up the remote and aimed it at the slide projector.

One click and a familiar face appeared on the screen: the hangdog, boyish features of Jeffrey Dahmer, with his sad, basset hound eyes and splotch of blond bangs. A murmur floated up from the crowd and dissipated, smokelike, when Nelson turned to face them.

"I see most of you recognize him. Ask yourselves: what separates him from us?"

The blond girl snaked an arm tentatively into the air.

"Yes?" Nelson said.

"Uh...nothing, sir."

"Nothing? You mean you don't have an answer?

She cleared her throat and pushed a strand of straight pale bangs from her eyes. "No, sir; I mean 'nothing' as in nothing separates us."

"That's an interesting point of view. Would you care to elaborate?"

The girl shifted in her seat and tightened her grip on her notebook.