"Early, early morning, the guy you shot yesterday was being pulled out for autopsy. He was lying on a gurney nice and quiet."

"They usually do, don't they?"

"Usually, yeah."

"But..."

"Well, someone came in here and killed the guy all over again."

"You're not making sense."

"Nothing makes sense. Sean, someone came in and cut the guy's head off. He's been decapitated, Lieutenant. How soon can you get down here?"

"Fifteen minutes."

Maggie wanted to go with him. She was insistent.

He was equally determined, and left her at the hospital with Frank, who was going to drive Maggie to Montgomery Enterprises, since he was being replaced by another cop in a few minutes.

Sean didn't know why he was so determined not to take Maggie with him, he just was.

He was head over heels in love with her, she was the best thing that had ever happened to him, but Mamie was right: Something wasn't just right. Maybe she knew the murderer and was protecting him. Maybe she knew the murderer and didn't even realize that she knew him. He reasoned that he'd be better off keeping Maggie a little in the dark about developments.

At the morgue, Pierre showed him the body.

They both stared in a grim silence that became drawn out. "I don't get it," Sean said.

"I wish I had some answers for you."

"You sure he was dead when he came in here?" Sean asked.

"Oh, come on, you're a cop! You killed him. You know d.a.m.ned well he was dead."

"Yeah, I suppose." Sean lifted his hands. "Maybe we're missing something. Maybe the decapitation is some part of a Satanic ritual, a religious thing ... I don't know." He sighed.

"Well, let me speak to your employees who were at hand. Then I'll get back with my task force and the FBI and see if we can't begin to make some sense of it all."

He spent two hours talking with everyone in the place. Jenson, the night guard, swore he'd been in front of the door without moving between the hours of two and seven. The skeletal night force had moved about as usual without seeing a stranger in the building.

Guys from the evidence lab arrived and tried to lift finger and footprints. None could be found. The bone saw, which apparently had been utilized for the grisly deed, was wiped clean. Gil, the specialist, warned Sean, "We've got prints from other items in the autopsy room, but I have a feeling we'll find they belong to the docs and the technicians. I'll keep you posted."

Pierre walked back out to Sean's car with him. "Not that it was impossible for anyone to come in," he said, "but... it's unlikely. I mean, suppose the guard did take a bathroom break. Suppose my employees were all in different labs. It's just bizarre."

Sean agreed. Bizarre.

"Thanks, and do keep me posted," Sean told him. He paused, slipping behind the driver's seat of his car. It was a beautiful day. Blue sky, little puffing clouds. The sun beamed down magnanimously. It didn't seem to be the right atmosphere for such macabre happenings.

But then again, night did come. Darkness, mist, fog, and shadows. He gave himself a shake. He was late for his task-force meeting.

Within an hour, he was seated in a conference room with his people, and on their "what we have" board, he added the beheading of the corpse in the morgue.

"So, at this moment," he said, addressing the men and the one woman gathered before him, "we think we have three actual victims. Jane Doe, found in the cemetery, suspected to be a local prost.i.tute. Anthony Beale, known pimp and petty criminal. Bessie Girou, high- paid call girl. Now we have a beheaded corpse as well."

"There was another prost.i.tute, Sh.e.l.ley Mathews, killed down near Jackson Square,"

Gyn Elfin reminded him.

He nodded. "But no decapitation. Gerry," he said, addressing one of the other men, "aren't we about to make an arrest on an old boyfriend on that one?"

Gerry nodded. "The guy confessed. Not that confessions are always true."

"Right, but that has to be a different case, what do you say, Manny?"

Manny Garcia was the FBI profiler.

He shrugged. "I'd say definitely." He looked around at the cops, aware that FBI men could be resented by local law enforcement. "Profiling is coming along but it's still no guarantee. The Boston Strangler, Albert DiSalvo, was profiled as being a loner-he turned out to be a family man. Still, I'd say that there is a reason for the decapitations, and that we need to find out what it is. And our killer is a sociopath rather than a psychopath-meaning he's a man who is sane in that he does know what rational behavior should be, he merely flouts it and considers himself to be a cut above normal men, and therefore ent.i.tled to his excesses." He hesitated, looking at Sean. "He is a s.e.xual killer, evidenced by the s.e.m.e.n found, and by his method of mutilation-he slashed his female victims from the pubic area upward, attacking the genitals. I do believe, however, that either the killer himself beheaded the corpse, or else there are copycats in the city already, or a group of cultists.

Why Beale was killed, I don't know. I tend to believe he stepped into the middle of our killer's fixation on prost.i.tutes. And why the corpse was beheaded ... I haven't a clue."

Sean sat back, flushing slightly as the others stared at him.

"All right, then, let's get moving on what we've got going. Gentlemen-and Gyn!" he said, nodding his acknowledgment to their female member with an encouraging smile, "let's get out on the streets and see what we can find out. We need a connection between the corpse and the murder victims. We need to keep our eyes open for any sign of the man in the sketch Mamie helped us create. You all know your individual tasks. Let's get to it, before the city starts to take us apart."

The others filed from the room. Only Jack and Manny stayed behind.

"You got anything else for me, Manny? Anything at all?"

"Nothing tangible," Manny said.

"But ..." Sean said hopefully.

"Just some comparisons," Manny said. He flipped open the screen on the state-of-the- art laptop computer he had with him at almost all times. He punched a few keys, and had Sean look over his shoulder. "Read this."

It was an autopsy report. Sean scanned it quickly.

. . . body was found on its back, head turned to left shoulder... intestines drawn out to a large extent and placed over the right shoulder . .. piece of about two feet was quite detached from the body and placed between the body and the left arm, apparently by design ...

Sean straightened, frowning. It sounded like the report on Jane Doe, found in the cemetery.

Yet, it wasn't the language Pierre would have used.

"Okay, Manny, what is it?"

"The Ripper," Jack said.

Sean looked at him quickly. "Jack the Ripper, London, 1888. Modern day 'Ripperologists' believe that he actually killed five prost.i.tutes in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, although as many as seven to nine murders have been attributed to him."

Sean arched a brow to Manny.

"I think our fellow is a copycat, all right."

"Where does Beale come in, and how about the beheading of the dead man in the morgue?"

Manny shrugged. "I don't know. It's quite possible that the beheading of the corpse had nothing to do with the killings. Ask Pierre about medical students-it might have been a prank. A bit sick, but those kids have to learn to deal with death, and sometimes, that's the way they do it. Beale-he was a pimp. I'd say he got in the way. It appears we have a serial killer on our hands who studies serial killers. Say, any information I have on Jack the Ripper can be acquired by anyone out there. Old records are public domain, and books on serial killers are plentiful. You might be dealing with a modern-day killer with an old-fashioned sense for the dramatic. You have kooks all over the country who like to dress up in cloaks and top hats, play vampire, ghoul, ghost, and ripper. And this is New Orleans, land of Anne Rice and sanctioned vampire tours. The city is like one big invitation to weirdos. I just thought you should be aware of how similar the discovery of Jane Doe's body was to that of Catherine Eddowes, as reported by Dr. Frederick Brown."

"Like I said, Manny, anything helps. Anything. But correct me if I'm wrong."

"About what?" Manny asked.

"It's been a while since I've read much about Jack the Ripper's victims, but I think there are two main differences," Sean said.

"Right. Our victims have been beheaded," Manny said. "But-the Ripper's victims had their throats so severely slashed that they were nearly beheaded."

"So close ... with our guy going all the way."

"What do you see as the other main difference?" Jack asked.

"There was blood, lots of blood, pools of congealed blood when Jack the Ripper killed.

Our guy seems to be ... lapping it all up."

"In some instances, the medical personnel at the time of the Ripper killings were quoted as noting that there wasn't really as much blood about the victims as there should have been," Manny said.

"And h.e.l.l, like we already noted ..." Jack murmured.

"What?" Sean asked.

"It is New Orleans," Jack said dryly.

Maggie was nervous about Sean's having insisted she go to work, and she knew he would go to the morgue. She changed her clothing, straightened out her personal quarters at the office, and sat down and tried to get something done, but she couldn't concentrate.

Angie came in on her while she was supposedly sketching out a ball gown for the wife of a senator. When Angie looked over her shoulder and gasped at what she was drawing, Maggie knew she was in trouble.

"What's that, my G.o.d!" Angie breathed.

Maggie looked down at her paper, and frowned. Her fingers started shaking.

She'd been drawing a street. A darkened, shadowy street, with the figure of a woman lying so crumpled and sprawled upon it that she could only be dead.

She pushed away from her desk, horrified.

Angie quickly came behind her, hugging her shoulders. "All right, so I like Sean Canady, he's as s.e.xy as they come, and I've encouraged you to see him, but, honey! You've got to get away from cops and crime for a while!"

"No, no, it can't be Sean," Maggie protested.

"You're getting too involved in this. Just because a no-good pimp decided to get himself murdered too close to this building!"

Angie was wonderful; she and Cissy were Maggie's best friends, but right now, Maggie didn't want to be told that her a.s.sociation with Sean was wearing on her well-being.

The murders had to be solved, and until they were solved- one way or another-she was involved.

She sprang up, trying to sound calm, rational, and natural. "You know what, Angie? I think I do need a walk. Clear my head. Or fuzz it up. I'm going out for a drink. I'm not sure yet if it will be coffee or something chock full of alcohol, but when I come back, I'm going to get the design sketched out for Mrs. Smith."

"Maggie, you shouldn't go out alone-"

"Angie, it's broad daylight. I'll be fine."

Maggie gave Angie an impulsive squeeze and hurried down the inside stairway, waving to Gema and Allie-who were both busy with customers-before hurrying on out to the street. She wasn't sure where she was going until she realized that she was walking in the direction of Le Bon Marche-Mamie Johnson's place.

It was afternoon, nearly four, so there wasn't anything strange about crawling up on a bar stool and ordering a Manhattan. She felt the stares of a few of the men in the place, but she was capable of returning a look with one so frosty that even a polar bear would have kept his distance. Still, she had been there less than five minutes when the stool next to her was taken. She knew before she turned that Mamie herself had come to sit beside her.

"I expected you," Mamie said.

"Did you? Why?"

"I don't know."

Maggie smiled, sipping her drink. "Well, that's good. Because I don't know exactly why I'm here."

Mamie lifted a hand. "I've promised to watch for the killer, but I don't think he will come back here. He reads the paper. He sees. He knows that I know him, and that I will be watching for him. And it isn't his way to walk in here with so many people about and kill me."

"So ... if he is looking for a certain kind of woman, he'll have to go somewhere else."

Mamie nodded.

"Where?"

Mamie smiled. She was a very attractive woman, her flesh a true copper, her teeth so white against it. Her features were arresting, her movement smooth. "Honey, there are a hundred places he could go."

"Yes, but... I think he liked what he got from you. A touch of cla.s.s."

Mamie shrugged. "There are-naturally-others like me. We don't hire out wh.o.r.es, we provide escorts. Companionship in a lonely place."

Maggie didn't comment. It was all the same. Rich or poor.

Sometimes, high-cla.s.s call girls were asked to do nothing but sip champagne and listen to a fellow's woes. With a street-girl, she got to drink beer or cheap wine while she cradled a man's ego. And sometimes, rich or poor, she met with perversion ... or brutality.

"Sean wants to know what you learn," Maggie said. She sipped her drink, then took a deep breath. "I'm sure they're going to set up a policewoman-or even a policeman-if the killer approaches a-er, procurer of escorts-again."

"So I would think," Mamie agreed.

Maggie took another deep breath. "Mamie, would you call me first?"