There was a time in Foley's life, again months stretching into years, when he'd played out the sequence leading to Patti's disappearance a dozen times a day, adding or subtracting a single detail. His favorite had the locksmith keeping the appointment, fixing the door, ending the threat. But there were others as well: Rebecca not disconnecting the alarm; Patti calling out: "Mrs. Abbot, I forgot my drawing. I have to go back."

It was only after many, many repet.i.tions, hundreds, thousands perhaps, that Foley had added a little fillip to the story. In this version, the monster is hunted, cornered, and destroyed before reaching the Little Kitty Day Care Center.

H S FOLEY walked north toward Holy Savior Church, already late for choir practice, his thoughts turned to Julia Brennan. Though he never broke stride, he saw her directly in front of him, her face a little too soft, her eyes a little too hard, a lioness in repose.

After the shootout, a pair of IAB investigators had worked on him for three hours without mentioning the hard drive he'd taken from the Nortons' computer. Julia had apparently stuck to her story, a final gift, as he'd stuck to his. They'd rung the bell, circled the house in search of the foster children, discovered a broken window, finally gone inside to look around. A moment later, while they were still getting their bearings, they'd heard a noise from below that might have been a weeping child, then immediately called for backup.

Eventually he'd been released by the headhunters, told to go home and stay there. He'd looked for Julia on his way out, but she was nowhere to be found and he hadn't heard from her since.

As Foley turned away and continued walking north, pa.s.sing beneath one of the 59th Street Bridge's great stone arches, his thoughts drifted to the shooting on the prior afternoon. He remembered placing himself between the opening closet door and the children, Julia Brennan st.i.tching the gunman's torso, the little squirts of blood moving up the man's chest, to his throat, finally to his head before he collapsed.

He, himself, had not been afraid, fear as far in his past as the hope that Patti Foley would finally emerge from the Little Kitty Day Care Center. But fear was apparent in Julia's flared nostrils, her saucer-wide eyes. Still, she hadn't flinched, not for a moment, just knelt there on the concrete floor, her weapon gripped in both hands, and taken care of business.

The image of Julia Brennan, warrior, continued to occupy Foley's attention as he approached Holy Savior Church, climbed the steps, pulled open the ma.s.sive wooden door, only now he felt that image accompanied by an emotion so long suppressed that it took him a moment to realize exactly what it was. Then, as he dipped his fingers into the holy water font, he laughed long and loud, amazed that he, Peter Foley, after all that had happened to him, after all he'd done, could still be lonely.

Iwo HOURS later, Foley left Holy Savior, hailing a cab in lieu of his usual walk. He was anxious to get back to his apartment and his work. Every file in the hard drive he'd taken from the Nortons' computer had been systematically deleted but not erased. Retrieving them had not been difficult, a matter of two hours using a commercially available utility program. The problem was that the file names did not describe the contents. Instead, files were indicated by the letter A, followed by three numbers: A001, A002, A003, etc. Without a key, each of the 258 listed files would have to be individually examined. The process would take many hours, but he was a patient man. Back in his apartment, Foley went first to the refrigerator in search of lunch, noticing as he pulled the door open that the red light on his telephone answering machine was winking lewdly. He took a container of cottage cheese and pineapple from the refrigerator, grabbed a spoon, finally pressed the machine's play b.u.t.ton. The tape rewound swiftly, then Lily Han's voice poured from the tiny speaker, requesting that he call as soon as possible.

More amused then annoyed (after all, he could have surrendered his badge and gun, told the bosses to go f.u.c.k themselves), Foley dialed Han's number and was put through without delay.

"I called you," Han told him, "to say good-bye."

Foley's first thought was that he was about to be suspended in antic.i.p.ation of a hearing on departmental charges. "You wouldn't want to represent me?" he asked.

"I'm more likely to prosecute you than defend you, Peter. But don't worry, you've become quite the golden boy. In fact, your immediate transfer to Manhattan North Homicide, specifically to C Squad, was conveyed to me by the Chief of Detectives. You're to report forthwith to Lieutenant Julia Brennan. Go get 'em, tough guy."

TWENTY-SEVEN.

AT EIGHT o'clock on the following morning, as Julia Brennan entered the 19th Precinct on East Eighty-fourth Street, home to Manhattan North Homicide, the acrid stench of urine rose up to greet her. She found the odor familiar enough to raise her spirits. The Phantom p.i.s.ser had struck again.

The Phantom p.i.s.ser had first left his calling card in the wee hours of the morning on August twenty-first of the prior year. In the intervening months, every two weeks or so, he'd come back to mark his turf. The betting in the house was that P. P. was actually a cop, but that was only the police affirming their own authority. No civilian, so the reasoning went, would have the b.a.l.l.s (or the bladder) to so affront the power that flows naturally from the end of a night stick.

"Hey, lieutenant, welcome back."

Julia smiled at the sergeant manning the reception desk, a bony hair bag named Floone who'd been six months from retirement for the last decade. "What's new and exciting?" she asked.

"You." Floone turned back to a painfully young patrol officer and the two handcuffed teenagers standing before his desk. "Now, Officer Prager," he said patiently, "we got a little chargin' problem here. You say that you were walkin by, minding your own business, when these miscreant teenagers made snorting noises which you naturally a.s.sociated with a certain barnyard animal. Supposing yourself the target of these rude noises, you took offense, which I can understand, but what I'm asking you here, for the third time, is what you're gonna charge 'em with? Makin' pig noises without a license?" Floone shook his head. "There's something' you should understand, Officer Prager, these little white boys, where they live they got more servants than I got ex-wives."

Julia took the steps leading to the squad room housing Manhattan North Homicide. Though she'd barely slept, she felt suddenly energized. She was back at work now and work had always comforted her, work had always been the great escape.

Except for Carlos Serrano and David Lane, the squad room was deserted when Julia presented herself. Serrano looked up, then broke into applause, Lane following a moment later. Julia appreciated the gesture, even as she noted a decidedly circ.u.mspect bottom line in their measuring stares. She'd humiliated the task force detectives by finding the children on her own. That was okay, said detectives (except for David Lane) being outsiders. The question was whether she'd do the same to the detectives of C Squad.

"Serrano." Knowing their suspicions were anything but unfounded, Julia kept her manner businesslike, "I want you to stay close. I'm gonna need you to gather the troops."

She poured herself a mug of coffee, took it into her office and made three telephone calls, one after the other. First, she called the Childrens' Services Administration, where she ran down the caseworker handling the foster children removed from the Nortons' Bay-side home and informed her of the strong possibility that one or more of the children had been molested.

The second call followed immediately and went to Lily Han. "The men who appear on those videos," Julia declared after an exchange of greetings, "are no longer homicide suspects. I want to pa.s.s them on to s.e.x Crimes."

"Anything to help out," Lily Han replied.

Both knew that s.e.x Crimes had been offered a gift. The videotape evidence was irrefutable and photos of the men had been splashed all over the media. More than likely, they were already consulting their attorneys.

The third call was placed to Commander Harry Clark, who (perhaps because Julia had jumped a link in the chain of command named Edward Thurlow) kept her on hold for nearly fifteen minutes.

"Already?" he asked without preamble when he finally came on the line. "It's not even ten o'clock."

"I want to disband the task force," Julia replied. "The children have been found. We're dealing with a straight homicide now."

"Five homicides," Clark pointed out.

"Five homicides, one perp."

"You sure of that?"

Julia backed up. "Maybe two perps acting together. But it's still a problem best handled by a tightly knit homicide squad, not a bunch of jerks from burglary or narcotics who already hate my guts for showing them up."

Clark had worked Homicide for twelve years before his promotion to Manhattan North Detective Commander. Thus Julia was not surprised when his next question cut to the chase.

"You think you can nail this down?"

"Yeah, I do. Probably be some more bodies first, though."

"See, that's it. You're talkin' about a serial killer here. We handle it as a routine homicide, the media's gonna want to know why."

Prepared for the observation, Julia responded without hesitation. "Throw us a few patrol officers to run errands, and a civilian computer tech. Anybody asks, we're a task force."

"Huh," Clark grunted in reply. Julia could almost hear his thoughts as they spun through his head. "How do you know the .. . the Mandrakes weren't killed by whoever took those kids to Bayside?"

"Because the perp went out of his way to tell me. That's what the business with the heads was all about. So I wouldn't make a mistake."

"A challenge, then?"

"Exactly."

"And the motive?"

"Revenge."

"You think this was a kid they molested?"

"I think this was someone who believes he can resolve his emotional problems by killing pedophiles."

"Then tell me, how did he target the vies? How did he find them?"

The million-dollar question, which Julia Brennan was not prepared to answer. "Ask me again in a week, Commander. Right now, I couldn't really say."

"Alright, anything else."

"Yes, the detective who worked with me, Peter ..."

"I know who he is."

"Yes, well I'd like to have him transferred to C Squad."

"Why, is he a suspect?"

Julia nodded in admiration. Again, the question had gone right to the heart of the matter. "I wouldn't say that, sir, but I think it's a really bad idea to leave him out there by himself."

It WAS near noon when Julia realized that not only hadn't Bea Shepherd called, she, Julia, hadn't considered reaching out to her mentor. Despite knowing that it was she, as the offender, who was obligated to make the first move. Another break with her past, with more to come. She'd moved into a realm she'd avoided for her entire career, and she would move further before this business was over. Taking Peter Foley into the task force virtually guaranteed the result.

Think like a cop, she told herself. You've got victims and perpetrators and the rest of it is bulls.h.i.t. Play to your strengths.

Good administrator that she was, Julia's greatest strength was organization, and she made it her goal not only to be up to date by the end of the day but also to have a.s.signed tasks to each of her detectives. To that end, she called in the members of the original task force, accepted the relevant paperwork, finally took an oral report on their individual activities. By late afternoon, she had, she felt, a grasp of the details.

Every entrance to the building where the Mandrakes lived had been covered by surveillance cameras. The newly installed system produced very clear tapes that had led the task force exactly nowhere. The murders had occured on a Monday night between 10 P.M. and 1 A.M." and the traffic in-and-out of the Clapham had been light. A few residents, a few deliveries, a few visitors. All had been interviewed and none were suspects.

When she found the time, Julia decided, she would go back over the witness statements, make sure the interviews were conducted in an aggressive manner. She would examine each of the entrances to the Clapham and the windows on the first floor as well. The cameras were recording a second of tape for every four seconds of real time. Maybe it was possible to slip between exposures, Maybe one of the windows leading into the bas.e.m.e.nt work areas had been jimmied. And there was also the possibility that the killer had entered the Clapham at an earlier time and hidden in the building or held the Mandrakes hostage for an extended period of time.

In the meantime, there was plenty to do. The medical examiner had determined that each of the victims, including those in the warehouse, had been killed by a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. The hangings and beheadings were postmortem. The murder weapon, according to the forensics tech who examined the single intact slug and the various fragments recovered at autopsy, was a .22-caliber pistol. The good news was that if the murder weapon were recovered, a ballistics comparison could be made.

The children taken from the Nortons' home had been interviewed by a psychiatric social worker who'd then relayed information deemed relevant to the task force. As each child told the same story, the facts were not in dispute. On the night of Anja's disappearance, they'd been taken from the Mandrakes' apartment to the Norton home by Joseph Norton, then locked in the bas.e.m.e.nt room. Unaware of the Nortons' vanishing act, they'd pa.s.sed the week eating the junk food thoughtfully left for them and drinking from the tap in the bathroom. All the while growing more and more panicked. Eventually Uyak Juso, who'd accompanied two of the children (the others, like Anja, were Romanian) on the trip from Bosnia to the United States, had come to get them. They did not know where they were to be taken.

All attempts to identify Uyak Juso, who spoke unaccented Serbo-Croatian, had proven fruitless. His fingerprints had been run through the Automated Fingerprint Identification System maintained by the FBI with no matches emerging, while a close examination of his clothing had revealed only that his garments were ma.s.s-produced and well worn. He might have been anyone from anywhere.

Also unidentified, the decomposed victims found in the warehouse with Teddy Goodman were resting in the morgue on First Avenue. That meant a return to the missing persons files for some lucky detective.

Taken altogether it came to a whole lot of nothing, and that included a personal attempt by Inspector Thurlow to obtain the cooperation of Truman Drayer, owner of the apartment leased to Bud and Sarah Mandrake for fifteen hundred dollars per month, less than half the market rate. Now living in Australia, Drayer insisted that he knew nothing of the Mandrakes' activities, legal or illegal, and wasn't planning to return to the United States any time soon. So sorry.

But Julia, as she sat behind a desk littered with reports from a half-dozen agencies, was not discouraged. To the contrary, she was certain that C Squad would find this serial killer and drag him before the bar of justice. She'd always liked that phrase, bar of justice; it had a hallowed ring to it, a time-honored dignity.

Laughing, Julia swiveled to face the single grimy window in her office. Talk about an oxymoron. New York City justice was many things (sometimes it was even just), but it was never dignified. Never.

She let her thoughts run to Peter Foley who waited in the squad room outside. Her crew was in there as well, Serrano, Lane, Griffith, and Turro. Hopefully, the children were making nice. Not that she cared all that much. No, Julia Brennan was going to collar a serial killer. And she was going to find the individuals who sold those children into slavery as well. Maybe show them just how inflexible the bar of justice could be.

TWENTY-EIGHT.

JULIA W A S in the squad room, just about to address her attentive troops, when the telephone in her office began to ring. She was tempted to let it go, but there was always the chance that one of her bosses, Clark or Thurlow, was on the other end of the line. Wanting to jerk the leash.

"Brennan here."

"Lieutenant Brennan, this is Detective-Sergeant Erwin Bromowitz. Manhattan South Homicide. I think we got one of yours here, one of your Johns, or a dead ringer for him. Man named Claude Renker, lives in the West Village. We found him last night in a community garden on East Third Street between A and B at ten o'clock. Been dead about two hours."

"Lemme guess, detective, a gunshot wound to the back of the head?"

"Right, plus his throat was slashed to the bone."

"Postmortem?"

"Naturally."

"Was he robbed?"

"Found him with five hundred dollars and a half-ounce of powder cocaine in his coat pocket. Gotta figure him for a buyer, lieutenant. The townhouse the guy owned is on the market for three and a half mil."

Julia could feel the collective eyes of C Squad drilling into the back of her head through the open doorway to her office. "How far you get on the investigation?"

"Well, first thing, we did a tight canva.s.s of the block, hopin' somebody heard something', maybe looked out the window. No such luck. Lotta trees in that garden, lotta shrubs, and the vie was all the way in the back. Plus, it's not a neighborhood where people come forward to aid the police." Bromowitz paused long enough to draw a quick breath, then continued. "I talked to the wife personally and you can put her out of your mind. She broke down so bad they hadda take her to the hospital. Look, you want the case, I could leave the paperwork with the duty sergeant, but I gotta go. There's a stiff waitin' for me down in Tribeca."

"Two more things, sergeant. You say the vie was concealed in the back of this garden. How'd you find him? You get a tip?"

"Call from a pay phone on Fourteenth and A. Told us just where to look."

"And the bullet that killed him, was it intact?"

"Nope. Cut through the vic's brain, then flattened against his forehead. Sorry to disappoint."

Julia hung up a moment later, then returned to the squad room. As she explained the content of the call, she watched Peter Foley, who had a rather neat alibi. At the time of the murder, he was being raked over the coals by the Internal Affairs Bureau of the New York Police Department. She wondered if he imagined this turn of events amounted to a free pa.s.s. His interested expression, lips compressed, chin up, blue eyes tightly focused, didn't so much as flicker when she stated the time of death.

"Alright," she said after giving her detectives a chance to think it over, "talk to me, gentlemen. Start with the discovery of Anja Das-calescu's body. What do we have here?"

She let them go back and forth for nearly fifteen minutes, until they finally reached a consensus in line with her own a.n.a.lysis. Then she gave out their a.s.signments. As she went along, she realized that she'd never felt more in command, never more certain of her abilities and her authority.

"Lane," she began, "I want you drive down to Manhattan South, pick up the paperwork on the Renker homicide. Then I want you to go over to the morgue and make sure that Renker is one of the men on those videotapes. I don't care if you have to show the tapes to his grandmother. If Manhattan South has it wrong, we need to know."

"That it?"

"No. I want you to review all the paperwork on the warehouse vies. If the task force missed something, we need to know that, too." Julia leaned back against the edge of a desk as she turned to Frank Turro. "Turro, I want you to call 911, get the tape on the Renker tip sent over. If they can't deliver in forty-eight hours, pick it up yourself. Then you've got missing persons duty. The unidentified warehouse victims were killed somewhere between eight and twelve months ago. Take the basics, height and weight, and go to work."

"Never a dull moment, loo."

"Griffith," Julia ignored the grousing comment, "I want you to find Joseph and Carla Norton. Check with the neighbors, go over the paperwork removed from the house. We know they were okay when they left, neighbors saw them drive off and they were alone. Let's root 'em out before the feds do."

Griffith's demur was reasonable. "I thought we agreed," he said, "that we're looking for a single perp, in his twenties, with a grudge against pedophiles. I don't see how Joe and Carla Norton fit that profile. Seems more likely they'll turn up victims."

"I understand," Julia replied. "But the INS agent who handled the adoptions, Christopher Inman, was killed in Baltimore, so there's another player out there somewhere. Maybe that player also did the Mandrakes, then tricked up the crime scene. We can't ignore the possibility, not knowing Joe Norton was in the Mandrakes' apartment shortly before they were killed. Look, Bert," Julia used Griffith's first name deliberately. In light of the fact that she was lying through her teeth, it was the least she could do. "Just stay on it for a couple of days, make that good-faith effort. I promise not to get fixated."

Julia turned to Carlos Serrano, her best detective. His deep brown eyes seemed faintly amused. But then, most likely, they were all amused by her newfound intensity. That was okay. As long as they did as they were told.