There was blood everywhere. There was blood on the dashboard, blood on the passenger seat, blood on the inside of what little windshield remained. Hell, there was even blood all the way out on the street.

There was probably very little left in the victim, however. Too much had been spread across the rest of the scene, which was cordoned off by yellow police tape. Rubbernecking New Yorkers crowded up to the tenuous barrier between reality and serenity, craning to look over the shoulders of policemen and forensic workers. People just couldn’t keep to themselves in this city.

The man surveying the scene was only of average height, although a dozen little things made him seem taller: The way he held his shoulders; the half-jaded, half-irritated expression; the quick surety of his movements. He cut through the crowd like a power saw, moving people out of his way with one hand and trying to balance his breakfast—a half-eaten bagel and a small cup of coffee that was still almost warm—in the other. He reached the yellow tape and ducked under it, ignoring the looks of the “concerned” citizens lingering nearby.

“Lieutenant Scott Henry, Homicide,” he said curtly to the uniformed officer in charge of the scene. He fumbled his badge out of his pocket and flashed it at the harried-looking man, taking a sip of coffee as he glanced at the wreckage of what had been a little blue two-door automatic. “What in hell happened here? That car looks like it’s been through a trash compactor.”

“Dunno, sir,” the uniform replied tiredly, scratching at the balding head beneath his cap. “Woman from the apartment building over there called it in. Says she didn’t see anything, just heard metal crunching and glass breaking and then screams, so she called nine-one-one. Think we got here before anyone could disturb the scene, though; there was an officer just up the block when the station house radioed. It’s…pretty nasty, sir.”

The lieutenant walked up to the devastated vehicle as the street cop talked, shaking his head between bites of cold, hard bagel. The car had been busted up badly, its hood caved in so deeply that the corners had curled up, and the engine couldn’t have been in much better condition. The whole thing was skewed diagonally across one whole side of the street, its front end resting on the pavement where the axle had snapped, as though under a heavy weight. The driver’s-side door was partially ajar, and a hole had been punched straight through the windshield, shattering the entire glass.

“Damn,” Scott muttered, grimacing as he tossed back the last of the bitter black brew in his cup. He crumpled the empty Styrofoam cup and tossed it carelessly into a sidewalk dumpster near the steps of the apartment building. Brushing crumbs from the lapels of his long beige coat, he squatted by the driver’s door, tilting his head to examine the crack.

“Sir?” the uniform asked curiously.

“The driver tried to get away,” Scott said over his shoulder. “The door couldn’t have been popped open when the front end was crushed; it would’ve just jerked out of place and bent the locking bar.” He stood painfully; it was much too early for this kind of weird shit, in his opinion.

“You can tell that it only got pushed out a little way before it shut again, not far enough to catch and stay. See? It isn’t even with the side of the car. It did that thing where it shuts and clicks, but you’d still be able to hear air whistling through it if you drove with it stuck that way. Mine does it sometimes.” The lieutenant peered through the crimson-painted window. “Male or female?”

“Sir?”

“The victim. Never mind, I can see cleavage.” He moved in front of the vehicle, peering through the hole in the glass, trying to get a clear view of the unfortunate woman. “Jesus fucking Christ! What in God’s name happened to her face?”

Her lower jaw had been ripped completely away from her head and was nowhere in sight; her eye sockets were hollow and empty, and it looked like something had reached up through the roof of her mouth and torn the inside of her skull out. It was not pretty.

“No clue, sir,” the balding, heavyset cop said quietly. “Made some of the boys sick when we first saw it, though, sir, and I have to confess that it makes me a bit queasy, too. Looks like we might have a real freak on our hands, sir.”

“I’ll say,” Scott replied distractedly. “Shit! How would you even do that to somebody?” He felt the bagel and the coffee in his stomach boiling as bile rose in his throat. “You did say it was nasty. I’ll radio the coroner and have the station house get a crew down here to take the car in. In the meantime, bring the woman who made the call in for questioning, and get those friggin’ morons away from the tape. This is a murder scene, not a peepshow.”

“Yes, sir.” The big man trundled away to shout at the onlookers, and Lieutenant Henry ran his fingers through his short, dark hair and inhaled slowly, hoping the cool morning air would quell his nausea. As he closed his eyes, blocking out the scarlet-spattered world of the homicide, he was thinking furiously.

Who the hell would take someone’s brain right out of their living head? And, more importantly, what did they intend to do with it?

It had been a long day, and he’d found little enlightenment on the case. Nothing in the files suggested that the perpetrator was a known serial killer, and none of the asylums in the region were missing any loonies, so his options were narrowing rapidly. There weren’t a whole lot of carjackers or even murderers that would take the time to mutilate the body of a victim in such a horrific way. The poor woman had looked like something out of a Japanese neo-horror flick.

Questioning the high-rise resident who had phoned the police in the first place had yielded no results, either. She knew nothing more than what he’d originally been told: There was the sound of tires squealing, like a car had come to a sudden stop, then the tearing of metal, the shattering of thick glass, and a single short, sharp scream. Nothing else. Interviewing other residents of the apartment building got him no further—some had heard the noise, yes, but had been too frightened, too indifferent, too jaded, or too stoned to call it in. That part of town was no Manhattan; people there spent most of their time wasted or drunk when they weren’t reeling from service job to dead-end service job. Not quite the ghettos at the ass-end of the Bronx, but not much better, either.

Scott was sitting on the edge of his desk in the precinct, staring moodily at photos of the crime scene, when the deputy chief stuck her head into the squad room. “Step in here a second, Henry,” she called, snapping him out of his reverie.

He frowned. “I’m working a case, chief,” he said plaintively. “Can it wait?”

“It’s the case I want to talk to you about, Scott,” she replied.

“All right.” He hopped down and crossed through the fading afternoon light to her office, banging the door shut behind him as he entered. The deputy chief was sitting on the edge of her desk, as he had been, and one of the chairs facing her was occupied by a slender young man with shaggy, tousled-looking blond hair. He frowned again, this time at the impassive kid in his black suit and tie, and flung himself into the other chair. “What’s the word, chief?” he said, making himself comfortable.

She nodded toward the boy in the suit; even though he couldn’t have been more than two years or so the lieutenant’s junior, Scott couldn’t help thinking of him as a boy. He looked much younger than the homicide officer’s twenty-six years. “This is Special Agent Dyer,” the chief was saying, and Scott’s heart dropped even before she added, “from the FBI.”

“Oh, great.” He flung his arms up angrily. “I guess it could’ve been worse. Could’ve been Internal Affairs. What the hell does the FBI want with my case?”

The young man made no move to reply, and the chief clasped her hands in her lap and sighed. “The Bureau is offering to assist in your investigation. Apparently, they were informed of the details of your case earlier today, and for whatever reason, they’re taking a special interest. Agent Dyer was sent in today from Washington to help.”

“The last thing I need,” Scott replied derisively, addressing the kid as much as his superior, “is some green puppy in a suit trailing behind me during this investigation and busting my chops whenever I don’t share clues fast enough.” He got up. “I don’t have time to baby-sit, chief.” He started toward the door.

“You don’t have a choice, Lieutenant,” she said, stopping him with her hard tone. “The Bureau has sent instructions to the department that say you either cooperate with Agent Dyer, or he takes charge of the investigation personally. Walk out that door, and you’re off the case.”

“Dammit,” he huffed, plopping petulantly back down in the chair. “That fast, huh? Fine. Am I supposed to wipe his ass for him, or just make sure he gets to bed on time?”

“That’ll do, Lieutenant!” The deputy chief frowned deeply. “Agent Dyer is one of the Bureau’s best profilers, so there shouldn’t be any problems. There won’t be any problems, will there, Scott?” Her voice had the heavy weight of a threat behind it.

“No, ma’am,” he sighed. “I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.”

“Good.” She stood up. “Go home, Scott. Get a good night’s sleep. You’re going to have to be at your best to get this crazy son of a bitch—whoever he is.”

He jerked a nod and rose once more, giving the blond kid a stern look before striding angrily out, slamming the door as he left. He didn’t slow down as he passed his desk, just scooped his coat up with one arm and headed downstairs. He passed the officer on duty at the lobby desk without a word of greeting, stumping down to the firing range in the basement, instead, and throwing his unoffending trenchcoat over the short wall that crossed the room in front of the target area.

He put out his hands, bracing himself on the little divider, and exhaled noisily. Here, he could find some solace. There was a strange kind of peace in the simplicity of the firing range, a clean feeling in that little world where nothing existed but you and your gun and your target. Here, he could forget about everything for the time it took to empty a clip, take a break from dead women and Feds and just feel the smooth click and hiss of the action as the gun fired over and over.

He slipped a set of the protective earpieces over his head, one of the visors over his eyes—folding his glasses away in a shirt pocket first—and gave himself to the gun, lining his eye up with the sight.

By the time he had fired off two clips, he was feeling better. By the fourth, he thought that he might actually be able to sleep tonight, instead of tossing and turning in frustration until dawn stained the smoggy skies of the Big Apple. He blew theatrically on the sizzling barrel of his Beretta and slid the visor and earpieces off, hanging both up on one of the hooks beside him. It wasn’t until he had half-turned, holstering the weapon, that he saw Agent Dyer leaning against the wall behind him, arms crossed, watching.

There was a long silence as the two men studied one another, and finally the Federal agent spoke. “Good shooting,” he said diffidently, pointing with his chin at the target. “Better than me. I was never any more than average with a piece like that. Autoloader, right? Nine-millimeter?”

Scott opened and shut his mouth, realizing that he had subconsciously drawn the gun halfway back out of the holster under his arm when he’d caught sight of the Fed. Now he slid it back into place, letting go of the firearm gingerly and reaching for his coat. “Yeah,” he answered curtly. “Nothing special. Standard issue.”

“We use the same guns,” Dyer said, still squinting at the expertly perforated target. “You’re a marksman, right?”

“That’s what they tell me,” the lieutenant replied sourly, wondering exactly what kind of response the kid was probing him for. “Best shot in the precinct, three years running.”

“Impressive.” The blond man lapsed into quiet again. Eventually, as Scott was starting to feel awkward, he pushed himself away from the wall and came closer. “I realized that we haven’t really been properly introduced. The name’s Adrian.”

Lips pursed, he shook the proffered hand. “Scott Henry,” he replied shortly. Breaking the shake off, he slipped his glasses back into place, and scratched his nose irritably. “Look, I’m sorry for the way I acted upstairs, if that’s what you’re here for,” he said. “I’m not usually that much of an asshole. It’s just…any cop gets pissed off when you suits come onto the scene and start screwing around in our casework, y’know? It’s not personal. I had it happen once before, on a homicide I worked with an old partner. Some Fed took all the credit when we finally caught the guy; it happens a lot when you people get involved, seems like.”

Adrian shrugged. “It’s understandable. If someone came in out of nowhere and started shoving his nose into my investigation, I’d be pretty pissed, too. Don’t worry about it. I just want us to work together on this, Lieutenant. I’m here to catch a murderer, not to steal your glory.”

Scott sighed. “I don’t guess you can tell me why the FBI wants one of theirs working this case?”

The agent shrugged again, hunching his shoulders under his black suit. “Actually, it was nothing specific. The word just came down from somewhere near the top that we had to put an agent on the job. My superiors didn’t tell me any more than that, honest. I’m just as in the dark on all this as you; more, really, since I don’t have any idea about what’s going on other than what little I’ve been told.”

Pulling on his coat, the homicide officer blew out a noisy breath. “Well,” he said, “I was on my way home, but… There’s a Chinese place a few blocks down the street where we can get a couple of beers and I can fill you in, not that I know any more than I did this morning.”

“Why not?” the younger man responded with a tiny half-smile. He turned up the stairs ahead of the lieutenant, who watched him closely, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. “Of course,” his voice came echoing back down the stairwell, “I have to be in bed no later than midnight.”

Scott blinked, then permitted himself a grudging snort of humor before following the Fed upstairs. The kid might look wet behind the ears, but at least he could take a joke.

They sat across from one another in the little twenty-four-hour café, surrounded by bamboo wall hangings and synthetic jade sculptures on cheap porcelain bases. Adrian toyed with a half-full beer bottle, and there were two on the little table in front of Scott, one empty and one in almost the same condition. Between them sat a sad-looking plate of oily fried noodles, which one of them had ordered but which neither had the heart to finish.

“So that’s the long and the short of it,” the lieutenant finished his report, taking a long pull on his beer. “Chick had her head hollowed out, like somebody reached right in through the top of her mouth and jerked her brains out of her skull. Blood everywhere—looked like more than one person ought to have, the way it was splashed around, like in one of those Japanese action cartoons. Gallons of the stuff. Just the way it was spread out, really, but gave you a bad first impression. Don’t know what I’ll do if I catch this sick bastard.”

Adrian shook his head. “Weird. Doesn’t sound like any serial killer I ever heard of, and not like any of the psychological disorders or fetishes I was trained to recognize. Might be some new sicko trying to make a name for himself, like Zodiac or the Black Dahlia.”

“Yeah, maybe. I dunno, though.” Scott scratched his head and pushed his second empty bottle next to the first. “I got a bad feeling about this case, like I should just leave it alone or something. Probably that stale bagel I was eating when I saw the crime scene. Too early for that stuff. I was never cut out for first watch. I ought to apply for a transfer to the graveyard shift.”

He might have said more, but his cellular phone chose that moment to ring, vibrating in his coat pocket. He fumbled in the coat for the phone, digging through the overcoat, which he had carelessly folded over the back of an empty chair. When he freed it from the confines of the garment and looked testily at the incoming number, he cursed loudly.

“Girlfriend?” Adrian asked, sipping his beer.

The police officer colored slightly. “No,” he mumbled. “Precinct calling.” He flipped the phone open and said sharply, “Henry. What’s going on?”

“It’s Sergeant Hobson, Lieutenant,” a man on the other end replied.

Scott sighed, recognizing the desk officer’s voice. “Yeah, Hobson, what is it at this hour? I thought I was off duty.”

“It involves your case, Lieutenant,” the sergeant told him. “Thought you’d want to know right away.”

He straightened, giving Adrian a look. The young Federal agent sat up, as well, cocking his head to one side curiously, and sat his drink down.

“There’s been another murder, over in Queens,” the sergeant continued placidly; after thirty-five years on the force, nothing bothered Sergeant Hobson. “Killer fled the scene before any officers got there, but the MO matches your perp from this morning.”

“Give me the address,” Scott said angrily, after a long silence. “I’ll be right there.”

The desk sergeant patiently gave him the street coordinates, then added, “Some teenager was at the scene—a girlfriend, I think they said on the radio. She’s not the one who called it in, but they’re holding her.”

“I’m on my way,” the lieutenant told him curtly, snapping his phone shut. He was already standing, reaching for his coat, and was out the door by the time Agent Dyer had thrown enough money on the table to pay for their meal. The door jangled as the young Fed ran past the startled proprietor, pulling on his own jacket, to catch up with the homicide investigator.

He managed to get into Lieutenant Henry’s car just as it started moving, shutting the door barely in time to avoid a parking meter, and was still buckling his seatbelt when Scott pulled out into the thin but constant traffic of New York’s never-sleeping streets.

“What the hell’s going on?” he asked irritably, struggling around in his seat to unbind himself from the feisty shoulder harness. “You were out of there like a shot.”

“Another one,” Scott seethed in reply, hunched over the steering wheel in concentration. He reached over to the dashboard console and flipped on his police light. The siren started wailing as he took a wild left turn, throwing Adrian into the passenger door.

“Watch it!” the FBI profiler hissed. “What are you talking about? Another murder?”

“Yes,” Scott spat bitterly. “When I catch this guy…”

A long string of obscenities followed, accompanied by descriptions of grisly tortures that were physiologically impossible, but graphic enough to make the young Federal agent blanch several times through his professional cool.

At the reckless speed he was driving, it wasn’t long before Scott pulled into the crime scene, the familiar yellow tape fluttering in the chilly night breeze. He threw the door open before the car had even screeched fully to a halt, immensely angry—at himself for not catching the perpetrator, even though he knew that was silly based on the time frame of the crimes; at the society that had produced the killer; and generally at everything else. The rage fairly glowed around him as he tore the tape out of his way and stalked over to the officers clustered by a flashing ambulance.

“Get those people out of here!” he bellowed, pointing accusingly at the onlookers gathering nervously around the scene, most of them still in bedclothes or half-asleep. As a couple of policemen scurried to obey, he got a good look at the victim, laid out on a stretcher and clad in a black bag that had not yet been completely zipped up.

It was a boy—maybe late teens—with tousled brown hair and ordinary clothing. Like the young woman from that morning, his jaw had been torn away, although unlike the previous victim’s, it still hung gamely onto the skull at one side. The roof of his mouth and the back of his throat were ragged, gaping holes opening into an empty brainpan. Once again, there were no eyes.

Scott clenched his jaw and turned his head as a paramedic closed the bag; in doing so, he caught sight of an officer squatting near a squad car on the far side of the ambulance. Adrian, who had caught up to him in the meantime, followed as he headed toward the vehicle.

One of the rear doors was opened, shielding the ambulance and its gruesome occupant from sight, and a girl of about the same age as the victim was teetering on the edge of the seat inside, and, apparently, on the edge of sanity, as well. A blanket was draped haphazardly across her slumped shoulders, and she was rocking back and forth, her face blank, as the kneeling officer tried to comfort her.

“This the girlfriend?” Scott asked gruffly.

“Sir,” the other man answered, standing. “Yes, sir. Haven’t been able to get a word out of her. Found her at the scene, just standing stock-still and screaming at the top of her lungs. She woke the whole neighborhood, and someone called nine-one-one when they went out and saw what was going on. She’s calmed down a bit since then.” He moved aside as the lieutenant knelt before the rhythmically rocking girl, Agent Dyer hovering near his shoulder.

“Young lady?” Scott tried. “Ma’am? What happened here, huh? Who did this? We need to know what you saw. Can you tell us? Hey, sister!” Adrian jumped as Scott gave her a ringing slap across the face, his mouth open to make an angry protest until he saw the girl’s eyes focus on the lieutenant’s serious face.

“Snap out of it!” Scott continued more quietly, but just as urgently. He took one of her hands in one his own and stroked her hair with the other. After a moment, she collapsed into him, clutching at him and sobbing uncontrollably. He looked up at Adrian uncomfortably, but the Fed just shrugged. An expression of awkward concern passed over his features, and he tried to pat the back of the girl’s head soothingly. “There, there,” he murmured, holding her until the storm of weeping passed.

It seemed like forever before the tears subsided, and the young woman was able to tell them, amid loud hiccupping, that she felt a little better. “It all happened so fast,” she said, her face haunted. “It was…” She trailed off, shaking.

“Take your time,” Scott told her.

She gulped down several deep breaths, and answered his questions as calmly as she could. “I d-don’t know… It was t-terrible. We were going back t-to his apartment—he lived there alone with his older b-brother—and something just c-c-came out of the dark, between two streetlamps! I screamed and shut my eyes, and Zack jumped in front of me; I think he was trying to protect me. He was between me and that, that…thing, so I-I-I didn’t get a good look, but I don’t think it w-was hu-hu-human!”

This last brought a start of surprise from both Scott and Adrian, who exchanged a long look. “What did…it…look like, miss?” the lieutenant prompted.

She shook her head. “So fast… I just remember its eyes—big, red eyes in the d-d-dark…” She blew her nose on a tissue taken from the cab of the squad car and screwed up her face again. “Tonight was the night,” she said, as though the term should have been significant. “We’ve been dating for nine months, and he took me out to dinner; I think he saved up a long time to do it, ‘cause it was really a nice place… And we were going back to his brother’s apartment to—” She stopped, blushing.

“I think I understand,” Scott said gently.

“It was going to be his first time,” she sniffled. “He’d never even kissed any other girl but me, he said, and I believed him.”

“So you were going to…share the experience. Was there anyone who might have known where or when you—”

“No!” she interrupted. “It was his first time, but… I was with another guy, once. I-I don’t think anyone would have known about where we were going, though, or… And no one would have wanted to do that, anyway! Oh, he was such a good boy! I loved him!” She wailed, clutching at him again, but this time he handed her off to Adrian and stood up, smoothing the wrinkles out of his trousers and frowning thoughtfully.

“Lieu?” one of the officers from the scene said, behind him. He turned, and the man handed him a radio. “I don’t think you’re gonna like this…”

“I don’t believe it…” Adrian’s mouth gaped as he took in the blood splashed on the walls of the shabby bedroom. The corpse lay sprawled across the bed, its head barely connected to the body and disturbingly empty.

“She was a good girl,” the owner of the bookstore was telling Scott, trembling in his nightclothes and constantly wiping sweat from his pudgy forehead. “She worked hard, and she was going to college. I know that this isn’t the best place she could have afforded, but she was saving to pay for another semester of classes at the university, I think, and she never complained. I let her live her rent-free as long as she worked downstairs. She never complained, never complained…”

Scott left the man and walked, cat-quiet, up to Adrian, so the young profiler was startled when he spoke. “What do you make of this, Mister FBI Expert?” he asked, only half sarcastically.

“There was no way,” Adrian said slowly. “No way that the killer could’ve gotten from Queens to SoHo in less than ten minutes, especially assuming he’s still on foot.”

“So?”

The two men shared a long silence.

“I’ve got to call my superiors,” Adrian said quietly. “This might be more than I can handle. Three murders by two killers with the same MO in less than twenty-four hours? I don’t think this is what I was sent here for.”

“Fuck,” Scott swore under his breath. He left the Fed to his phone call and wandered over to the bed again, forcing himself to memorize every detail. In his head, the shattered glass of a windshield merged with the coroner’s body bag and the rumpled, checkered quilt that used to be faded purple. Two young women and a boy still in high school became a single victim in his psyche, a helpless conglomerate pleading for vengeance. He would remember their names, and what was left of their faces, and he would make these freaks remember them, too, when he found them. He wondered what color their eyes had been…

Scott broke his reverie with a nudge from behind. “What is it?”

“They’re sending another agent,” the blond man answered, subdued. “They want me to stay on the case, but we’re supposed to meet this guy tomorrow afternoon, two o’clock, at the airport downtown. He’s been out of town, and we need to pick him up. He’s already being briefed on the case, but of course, they can’t know more than what I’ve given them because they haven’t seen the crime scenes. This man is supposed to be an expert in… strange stuff.”

“I’ve gotta get some sleep, then,” Scott yawned, rubbing his sandy eyes. “We’ll let the boys clean up here, but I have to get back to my apartment and wind down. Where do you want to meet tomorrow? At the airport? Why are you fidgeting like that?”

Adrian was shifting awkwardly from one foot to the other. “That is, I—uh… I was only here this afternoon, you know, and I was going to stay at the Bureau offices here in New York, but then things happened so quickly, I—”

“You don’t have a place to stay,” Scott finished glumly. It wasn’t really a question. “Well, I guess… We’ll have to be together for tomorrow, anyway. Um, do you…have clothes?”

“They’re in my suitcase in your car.”

“I thought it was a briefcase—you travel light. I suppose that… You can stay at my place tonight, if it doesn’t bother you…”

Adrian looked confused. “Why would it bother me? I really appreciate this—we’ve only just met and I know you don’t have any reason to like me, but…”

“It’s cool! It’s cool,” Scott cut him off. “Just… Let’s go now, okay? I don’t know whether I can even make it home or not, so let’s just…go…”

Scott slid the key into the door and turned it, but slipped in quickly, blocking Adrian’s view. “Er,” he said intelligently. “Just—wait here in the hallway a minute, okay? I wanna clean up a bit. I don’t usually have guests a lot.”

“All right, I guess,” Adrian replied tiredly, setting his suitcase down.

Slamming the door shut, Scott leapt to straighten the cushions on the sofa, muscled an armload of dirty cutlery into the dishwasher, and raked certain magazines off his coffee table and under the couch. In his bedroom, he made some attempt to fluff the pillows and smooth the blankets, made sure that certain drawers were locked, and finally rushed back, breathless, to let the other young man inside.

“I really don’t mind—” the blond started.

“It’s okay! I’m… I’m done. Come in.” He held the door open and stepped aside.

“Wow! Nice place.” Adrian sat his suitcase down by the door and stretched. “Did you decorate this yourself?”

“No,” Scott lied desperately. “Here, there’s only one bed, so I’ll sleep on the couch, and my bedroom is right through that door; you can just—”

“Whoa! Hey, I don’t want to run you out of your bed, I mean, I’m the one imposing here. I’ll take the couch.”

“No! I couldn’t do that to a guest. Please… You can sleep there.”

“If it bothers you that much, why don’t we just share it?” Adrian offered in exasperation.

There was a long, embarrassed moment before Scott said, “I don’t think that would be a good idea. Trust me on this. I—I have bad dreams. I kick in my sleep. I’ll have really bad ones tonight, you can bet.”

“I probably will, too,” his guest agreed somberly. “I understand. If it means that much to you, then I’ll see you in the morning.”

Scott relaxed as Adrian disappeared into the bedroom, and collapsed on the couch, not even bothering to undress. Throwing his glasses onto the coffee table, he curled up on his side, facing the back of the sofa, and lay there, awake in the dark, for a long time before exhaustion finally worked its magic and forced him into blissful slumber.

His dreams, mercifully, were not about the victims of his case.

He awoke the next morning to the smell of something minty and something hot. He rolled over, trying to wipe the sleep from his eyes, and nearly fell off the couch. Stumbling, he rose to his feet and stretched hugely, yawning. He gathered his glasses from the table and shook his head as the coffee table came into focus, neutralizing his farsightedness. Wandering into the kitchen, he almost had a heart attack when he encountered Adrian, wearing a pair of loose gray lounging pants and nothing else, his blond hair still damp upon his shoulders, fiddling with bacon and eggs.

“Gwah,” he tried. This didn’t sound right, so he tried it again. “Wstfgl?”

“Sorry for making myself at home,” the Federal agent said with a cheery tone that was only half-forced after the previous night’s events. “I wanted to pay you back for letting me stay, so I thought I’d make breakfast. You eat a lot of take-out, don’t you? There are Chinese cartons in the fridge from, like, two years ago. You like bacon, don’t you? Otherwise, you wouldn’t have it, right?” He waved a pan of something brown at Scott.

The lieutenant, who hadn’t seen anything that didn’t come out of a Styrofoam carton or a paper bag in years, was dumbfounded. “I have a skillet?” he said in wonder. “I have a spatula? You can cook?”

“Yeah, I lived with my mom while I was in college, because I went to school in my hometown. You pick stuff up. Where are you going?” he called after Lieutenant Henry’s retreating figure. “It’s almost ready!”

“I have to take a shower.”

Shower he did, and emerged from the bathroom adjusting his shirt collar. Adrian, who was now fully dressed in a black suit exactly like his other one, eyed him from the sofa, where he was finishing his portion of the breakfast laid out on the low coffee table.

“You took an awfully long time in there,” the blond said suspiciously. “Are you sure you’re okay?”

“Yes!” Scott replied, too quickly. “Come on, we have places to be.” He wolfed down his part of the breakfast, awkwardly complimenting his guest, who beamed, and the pair went downstairs to the homicide officer’s car.

The airport was not a long drive, and they had some time to spare before the appropriate plane arrived. At two o’clock on the dot, a sleek private jet taxied smoothly onto the runway, and Adrian stood up and tried to make himself more presentable even as Scott slouched further into his long coat.

There was only a single passenger on the plane, and he was not at all what Scott had expected. Taller than either of the young men, he appeared well-built and carried himself with a quiet dignity. He had a noble bearing, enhanced by his age, which was apparently in the late sixties or early seventies, although his piercing blue eyes, behind his silver-rimmed, half-moon spectacles, still had the snap and spark of youth.

He wore a trim black suit and walked with a long, heavy black stick, although he did not appear to require the cane’s assistance to move around. A snazzy black fedora crowned his head, where the silvery, straight hair was pulled back into a short ponytail, and his full beard drew attention to the serious set of his mouth below the stately nose. Altogether, he looked like a walking anachronism, a British or American gentleman from straight out of the Industrial Revolution, despite the modern cut of his clothes.

He approached them as though he knew exactly who he was looking for, and stopped before them, pulling a golden watch from a vest pocket inside his jacket. He glanced at it, snapped it shut, and slipped it back out of view before raising his gaze to meet theirs. Both men found themselves holding their breath.

After an appropriately dramatic pause, the old man cracked a slight smile, and extended his free hand. “My name is Reginald Crowley,” he introduced himself in a rich, Shakespearean-theatre sort of baritone.

“I believe you boys called for the Inspector.”