"Oh, for Christ's sake," Chuck said, opening the door. "This is not a good time."

"It's never a good time for IA," Butts muttered.

The man was tall and stern-looking, with an impassive, long-jawed face. He reminded Lee of a cross between his grade school principal and Abraham Lincoln.

"Dr. Campbell?" he said, looking at Lee.

"Yes?"

"Lieutenant Ed Hammer, Internal Affairs. I'm investigating the matter of a brutality complaint by a Mr. Gerald Walker, who was being interrogated in this facility on-"

"Yeah, we know who he is," Chuck interrupted. "Get to the point, please."

"Were any of you present during the interrogation?"

"I was," Butts said. "And I can tell you-the guy is a class-A creep."

"That may be, Detective..."

"Butts."

The man checked a notebook he was carrying. "Detective Butts, would you like to tell me why you haven't returned any of my phone calls?"

"I got more important things to worry about. Let me tell you something, Lieutenant Hammer: this guy was askin' for it. I woulda whaled on him myself in a minute."

"So you saw Mr. Campbell abuse the suspect?"

"Abuse, my ass!" Butts snarled, his cratered cheeks reddening. "He barely touched him."

Lieutenant Hammer looked at Lee. "Is that how he got the black eye?"

"Look, Lieutenant Lieutenant," Butts said, biting out the words, "Walker is a crybaby as well as a wife beater."

"Will you come down to our office and make a statement?"

"You bet!" Butts snapped back, grabbing his coat.

Chuck waved Butts back to his chair. "Just a minute, Detective." Then he stood up and crossed the small space between himself and Hammer, putting his face very close to Hammer's.

"Look, Lieutenant Hammer, I appreciate that you are just trying to do your job, but both Dr. Campbell and Detective Butts are important members of our investigative team. I promise I will have Detective Butts make out a statement and send it to your office. I don't need to tell you that our work is vitally important to the security of the citizens of this city. For every minute of our time that is wasted, another woman could die."

Hammer sighed. "Yes, Captain Morton, I understand that. But, as you say, I have my job to do, just as you have yours. We would also like to get a formal statement from you."

"Fine," Chuck said coldly without breaking eye contact. "I'll fax one over tomorrow. Give me your number."

Hammer scribbled a number in his notebook, ripped the page off, and gave it to Chuck, who stuffed it in his pocket.

"And now, if you'll excuse us, we have work to do."

"I'll expect your statements by oh eight hundred hours tomorrow," Hammer said. "You too, please, Dr. Campbell." And with that, he left.

There was an awkward silence; then Butts muttered, "Oh-eight-hundred hours my ass! Who the hell does he think he is, Goddamn Patton?"

"Never mind," Lee said. "I think we should all get him our statements as soon as possible."

"I agree," Chuck said. "But let's forget it now, okay? Can we get back to the case at hand?"

"The Catholic angle is interesting," Florette suggested. "You definitely believe we're dealing with a religious fanatic here? I mean, he's not faking it or something?"

"I don't know if the killer is trying to set up an insanity plea or not, but the religious fervor is real," Lee ventured.

"Really? Why?" Florette asked.

"Leaving the bodies in churches is risky and difficult-he could have easily been caught, and he's too intelligent not to know that. And the carving is even more risky. It's an important part of his signature, what he needs to get emotional satisfaction."

"Yeah? So now we know what drives him, how does that help us nab him?" Butts asked.

"You know, Detective Detective, if you spent less time criticizing the profiler and more time working with him, you might be closer to catching this guy." Nelson's voice oozed sarcasm.

Butts frowned and crossed his arms. "Yeah, and if pigs had wings, they'd fly."

"All right right!" Morton interrupted. "I know this is frustrating for all of us, but let's remember we're on the same team and stop sniping at one another. Knock it off." He fixed a stare on Butts until the burly detective sighed and looked away. Morton turned his gaze on Nelson, who smiled.

"I couldn't agree more, Captain Morton," he replied.

"Well," Butts remarked, "this guy is bound to slip up sooner or later."

Nelson looked at the detective as though trying to determine what species he belonged to.

"The question is," he said acidly, "what do we say to the parents of the next victim? That we decided to wait until he 'slipped up'?"

Butts's pockmarked face turned purple, and he clenched his plump hands into fists. "Look, I wanna catch this guy as badly as you do! Anyone who says otherwise is-"

"All right right!" Chuck shouted. "Will you both cut it out? We have work to do!" He pointed to a map of the five boroughs tacked up on the wall. "Now, the red thumbtacks indicate where he's struck already."

"Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn," Florette said. "So far he's going borough by borough."

"Could that be a coincidence?" Chuck asked.

"No," Lee replied. "This guy is compulsive and orderly-obsessively organized. No," he said, looking at the little row of tacks, "I think it's all part of a pattern. He's staking out his territory."

"I agree," Nelson said. "However, the question is, what's next? Is he going to come to Manhattan, or cross down to Staten Island, leaving Manhattan as the final jewel in his crown, as it were?"

"You're right," Lee agreed. "There's no way of knowing."

"Why don't we put out a public warning telling girls in those two boroughs not to go out alone?" Butts suggested.

Nelson bit his lip. "We tried that during Son of Sam. It didn't work then, and it won't work now. People are going to do what they're going to do."

"Of course we'll issue a warning," Chuck said, rubbing his eyes.

"It won't do any good," Nelson said. "This guy is patient. The only way we stop these killings is to stop him him."

"Right," Lee agreed. "He'll wait-sooner or later he'll find someone who fits his profile."

"So he's profiling his vics the way you're profiling him?" Florette asked.

"Pretty much, yeah," Lee answered.

"Man," Butts said. "That's creepy."

Nelson smiled. "Detective Butts, I must agree with you there. Creepy is exactly what it is."

As they filed out of the office, Nelson took Lee aside.

"What is it?" Lee asked, seeing the troubled look in his friend's face.

"I'm worried about you, lad. You look tired. Maybe you should take a leave of absence for a while, get some rest?"

"I'm fine," Lee replied.

"Well, you don't look fine. Are the text messages getting to you? They must be very upsetting."

"I'm fine-really. And I need to see this case through to the end."

Nelson's face was stern and grim. "The end may be more than you bargained for."

"Thank you for your concern, but I'll be all right."

"Well, at least be careful, please?"

"I will. I promise."

But even as he said the words he knew that being careful might not be enough-for him or for the Slasher's next victim.

Chapter Thirty-three

The park was empty, just the way Willow liked it. His only companions this morning were the Canada geese who had stopped to rest on their early migration back north after their annual Florida vacation. That's how he thought of it: a Florida vacation. His mother had gone to Florida, but she had never come back. He imagined her flying overhead, honking at him, her voice harsh as the cry of the speckled geese waddling around the boat pond. He sat on his bench and watched the geese pecking at the lumpy brown earth, tattered from the snow and ice of winter.

Rubbing his hands together, Willow looked around the park in satisfaction. Today was a good day. The voices hadn't come at him yet, with their whispering and taunting, driving him to wander and fidget and talk to himself, just as they drove other people away from him.

In his more lucid moments, he knew how he must appear to them, and why they shunned him. He might be crazy, but he wasn't stupid. In fact, his mother once told him he had an IQ of 150. Near genius level Near genius level, she had said. Near genius level Near genius level...well, fat lot of good it had done him. His meds-when he remembered to take them-couldn't entirely block out the voices that reminded him who was after him. The CIA, the FBI, and occasionally aliens who posed as joggers or young mothers-or sometimes even their kids.

Paranoid schizophrenia, that's what they called it. They could call it whatever they wanted-they could call it a pig in a poke, for all he cared.

Christ, he needed a cigarette. He rummaged in his pockets, but all he found were bits of string and fast-food wrappers. Chicken McNuggets, his favorite. He liked to keep things in his pockets because it helped to keep him warm.

He rubbed his hands together again and looked up to see a man approaching him.

"Hey, got a cigarette?" he called out.

The man smiled.

"In my backpack-but I left it in the woods."

That struck Willow as odd, but he shrugged.

"Shouldn't leave it there. Someone might take it."

"Come with me, and I'll give you one."

"Okay." Suspicious, Willow frowned. "Hey-you don't work for the FBI, do you?"

The man looked surprised. "Good heavens, no-in fact, they're after me. Don't tell them you saw me, okay?"

Willow winked at him. "Don't worry. Your secret is safe with me."

"I knew I could count on you. Now, how about that cigarette?"

Willow got up and followed the man toward the thicket of woods on the other side of the jogging path.

Behind them, the geese continued their search for scraps to eat along the banks of the pond. When the sound of strangled gasps came from the wooded area, they didn't even look up.

Chapter Thirty-four

Straining at the seams like a dowager in an overstuffed dress, Chinatown had for years been expanding into adjacent districts, encroaching on the border of Little Italy to the north and the court district to the south. It was perhaps the most vibrant-and most chaotic-of all Manhattan neighborhoods. When Kathy Azarian called Lee to say she was in town for the evening, and suggested they meet, it was the first place he thought of.

They met at Chatham Square and wandered the crooked, narrow streets until dusk. Chinatown lay in a jumble all around them, spread out like a web woven by a drunken spider. There were no right angles-everything was twists and turns, streets as crooked as the orderly grid of Midtown was straight. There was mystery around every corner, behind the opaque steamed windows of noodle houses, squeezed through the narrow doorways of dim sum parlors, with their platters of succulent, sticky dumplings visible through grimy picture windows. Lee had always loved the dimly lit doorways of the curio shops, the pharmacies and herbariums, with their imponderable supply of green tea cures, shark fin soup, and musty boxes of rare, unpronounceable herbs. Chinatown wasn't just another neighborhood-it was a separate universe.

Lee had gone down there in the early days after September eleventh, and felt as though he were wandering onto the set of a disaster film. It was all unreal, the once-familiar streets now a scene of unbelievable devastation. Below Canal Street, three out of every four people were in uniform: the National Guard, with their military camouflage gear, looking ready for combat; state troopers, tidy and crisp in blue and gray, with their Smokey the Bear hats; and of course New York City cops, everywhere. They roamed the streets in their starched blue uniforms and heavy black shoes, wary but full of purpose.

And of course there were the firemen, worn and weary but lit from within, caught in the incandescent glow of heroism, trudging to and from the scene of horror in their thick rubber boots and coats, courageous faces smeared with sweat and grime.