She paused only for a cup of coffee before driving over to Wood-haven Medical Center where she found her uncle asleep. A copy of the New York Times was lying on the chair and Julia transferred the paper to the foot of the bed without looking at it. A moment later, Dr. Ryan entered the cubicle. Though he spoke, initially, about Reid's condition, it was obvious to Julia that he'd come to flirt. Somehow, despite the sunken eyes, the smudged cheeks, the apparent exhaustion, his libido was running full-out.

As he went on, as she continued to respond, Julia thought of Foley, realizing for the first time that she didn't know how to find him, that Foley had again placed himself beyond the reach of the job. That was fine, his business to be sure. But why hadn't he called her, to ask how she was doing if for no other reason? Maybe he thought she'd demand that he reveal his new address to the job. She'd already done it once. Or maybe the s.e.x wasn't as hot as she'd thought.

Julia turned her attention back to Dr. Ryan, to his homely, elongated face, his cheerful smile, his well-toned body. He was far too young, of course, to have mate potential. But Peter Foley didn't have mate potential either, and no terrible consequence had come from their union. As far as she could tell.

"What's your first name?" she asked, interrupting the doctor in mid-sentence.

Ryan blushed. "Timmy," he admitted.

A perfect name for a boy-toy, Julia mused. A doctor boy-toy offering s.e.x without obligation and his exalted company at dinner. Even her mother would be impressed.

Julia was suddenly h.o.r.n.y, though not so aroused that she didn't know the man she wanted in her bed was named Peter Foley.

Corry chose that moment to make her appearance, whereupon Timmy Ryan, after a brief greeting, returned to his other patients.

Julia was still feeling positive. There had to be an end to her weariness, an accommodation, a healing. With the help of Robert Reid and Corry Brennan, she would get to it.

Mother and daughter chatted for an hour, until Reid's dinner was brought in: cream of celery soup, a slice of white bread, a pat of b.u.t.ter, an Italian ice.

"Uncle Bob?" Corry shook Reid's shoulder, very gently, before glancing back at her mother. "He really should eat."

"That's what I used to tell you," Julia responded, "when you were eight months old and spitting pureed carrots in my face."

They stayed until nine o'clock, then went out for a quick dinner in a small Italian restaurant on Queens Boulevard. Over a shared shrimp c.o.c.ktail they spoke of Corry's school, of how all this was affecting her. At first, Corry insisted that her work was up to date, but under Julia's prodding finally admitted that she had a paper due at the end of the week and had yet to do the research.

"That's why you're not coming to the hospital tomorrow night. Uncle Bob will understand."

"What about you, mom?"

"What about me?"

"Puh-Zeeeze. Like you look as if you're ready to fall over? Like if I had a driver's license, I'd take your keys away?"

Julia glanced at the gla.s.s of wine set to the right of her plate. She'd barely sipped at it. "The difference here is that I don't have to go to work tomorrow. I don't have a paper due on Friday, either."

Corry raised a triumphant eyebrow. "That's what you said the last time you went on vacation."

Julia's SLEEP that night was fitful, images of Anja Dascalescu and Joe Norton and Peter Foley appearing from behind corners, from within closets, appearing suddenly beside her as she started the Jeep on a snowy morning. By six o'clock, she'd had enough, rising to take a quick shower, already planning her day, thinking that enough was enough. The whole business was self-indulgent. What she'd done, she'd done for good and sufficient reason. There was no doubt, not in her mind, that the men she'd killed deserved to die, had in fact gotten off easy.

Julia got the laundry going after breakfast, transferring the contents of Corry's hamper from the washer to the dryer before heading off to Woodhaven Hospital. Ryan was sitting at the nurses' station in the center of the suite when she entered. No longer chipper, or even alert, he barely glanced up.

Robert Reid, on the other hand, was ebullient. He'd been served a full breakfast, including, finally, a cup of coffee, whereupon the headache he'd been nursing for the past twenty-four hours had disappeared.

"Like magic," he declared. "I feel like a new man." He touched his chest. "A new man with an old ticker, but a new man nonetheless."

Timmy Ryan came in a few minutes later, accompanied by an older woman whose dark brown hair, elaborately arranged at the back of her head, glowed even under the room's fluorescent light. Her tan suit likewise glowed, the fabric obviously expensive, the fit, even across her broad hips and narrow shoulders, perfect.

"Dr. Wertz," Reid explained, "the bringer of bad news, not to mention inedible diets and libido-suppressing medications."

Wertz ignored him, turning instead to Julia. "Evelyn Wertz," she said, extending a hand, "your impossible uncle's cardiologist."

Introductions over, Wertz got down to business. "I'm not convinced," she told Reid, "that you had a heart attack. Your blood enzymes are near normal and you've demonstrated a normal sinus rhythm from the beginning. In fact, if you hadn't complained of chest pains, which may have been nothing more than angina, you would have been treated for a head injury and released." She pursed a set of full lips, then cast a disdainful glance at Timmy Ryan before turning back to Julia. Reid, she explained, would be transferred that evening to a mixed unit where his heart would be monitored for another twenty-four hours. After that, barring any problems, he would be discharged.

Dr. Ryan stood with his arms folded across his chest, his expression rigid. He was outgunned and knew it. Still, he refused to nod agreement as Wertz declared, rather flatly, that further tests to rule out the possibility of heart damage would best be done at her home base, Mt. Sinai Medical Center in Manhattan which had a "state of the art" cardiac unit.

For the next hour, after Wertz and Ryan made their exits, Julia unburdened herself, describing her New Jersey adventure and its aftermath to her uncle for the first time. She really didn't have much choice. Once he left the CCU, he'd have access to a television and find out for himself anyway. Though clearly shocked, Reid listened carefully until she finished. Then he closed his eyes for a moment before asking, "Are you going to do the press conference?"

"I don't want to, but I don't want reporters coming to my door, either." She swept her long blond hair over her right ear, then failed to notice when she bent her head and it fell forward in a slow wave to again shield her eye. "I'm worried about Corry, that she's too much like me. I'm worried that if I don't slow down, I won't be able to slow down, ever. I'm worried that I care too much about work. I'm worried that ..." She rose from the chair to sit at the edge of Reid's bed and take his hand. "Listen, Uncle Bob, I killed two men yesterday. But not only wasn't I frightened, I think I enjoyed it, at least while it was happening. Afterward, though, I couldn't stop shaking." She drew a sharp breath. "Then, when Corry told me that you'd been taken to the hospital, I was as scared as I've ever been in my life."

"What you're saying, it's perfectly normal. Time will most likely take care of it."

"I wish I believed that, but right now I'm too tired to make a competent judgment." She laughed. "Meanwhile, I'm bringing you home when you're discharged. I'm going to take care of you." She squeezed his hand. "No back talk, please. The last thing I need is to worry about you alone in Manhattan. I've got enough problems without that."

ll U LIA WAS thinking nap when she walked into her home, but duty called, one last ch.o.r.e to be finished up before she rewarded herself. The laundry awaited her in the bas.e.m.e.nt, Corry's laundry which would have to be meticulously folded. It had gotten to the point, with Corry's mania for order, that Julia was half-hoping her daughter would advance to a sloppy adolescence, the sooner the better.

Working slowly, Julia filled a laundry basket to the top with T-shirts, trainer bras, panties, socks, jeans, sweat shirts, two pairs of pajamas, and a cotton nightgown. Then she trudged up to Corry's second-floor room and began to put the various items in a tall bureau, the task familiar and comforting. Pajamas and nightie went in the bottom drawer, then Corry's jeans, then her sweats and her T-shirts, finally bras and panties and socks. Julia smiled when she opened the top drawer to find Corry's socks, not rolled one into the other, but lying flat, as wrinkle-free as if they'd been ironed.

That's good, she thought, one neat-freak outdoing another. Now my daughter won't reject me, she'll compete instead. I wonder what I'll say when she informs me that she's taking the police exam instead of going on to college.

Julia gathered Corry's panties from the bottom of the laundry basket, cotton panties high enough in the rise to cover her navel. Well, they would go soon enough. These days, the best that moms could hope for was to avoid Brittney Spears syndrome. In the popular culture, virginity until marriage was virtually unknown, promiscuity a mere lifestyle choice, one possibility among many. Julia well remembered Corry, over dinner, casually remarking that a table in the rear of the lunchroom was occupied on a daily basis by a group of girls who'd chosen to call themselves The s.l.u.ts.

Sighing, Julia laid the stack of panties in her hand on the pile, started to close the drawer, then paused to look again as a little piece of her attention, still focused on the present, insisted that something was wrong. Nevertheless, it took Julia a long moment to realize what it was. Corry's panties, always laid waistband to waistband, crotch to crotch (so that looking down they might have been a single garment) were now pointing in every direction.

"No." Julia said the word aloud. Then she repeated, "No."

As if she could put her finger in the dike, hold back the ocean of certainty that quickly overpowered any trace of doubt.

FORTY-SIX.

WHEN THE wooden staircase pulled away from the wall, Foley dropped the six-battery flashlight he'd been using to light his way, but held onto his gun. The flashlight tumbled down the steps, producing a distinctive clang that echoed through the sub-bas.e.m.e.nt even as the flashlight's beam traced an erratic arc, revealing gray floor, gray wall, gray ceiling. Then the flashlight struck the bottom step and broke into pieces, plunging the s.p.a.ce into absolute darkness.

Figuring he'd do enough damage to himself without being smacked by several hundred pounds of oak and pine, Foley leaped away from the stairs. Nevertheless, his right leg collapsed beneath him as he hit bottom and the resultant snap, as the long bones in his thigh gave way, reminded him of a camping trip he and Kirstin had taken before Patti's birth. It reminded him, specifically, of cracking dry branches over his knee to make a fire, which now seemed to be burning in his leg.

Despite the pain, Foley rolled as he hit, shoulders hunched, chin tucked into his chest. Although he opened a narrow wound on the back of his head, he avoided a crushing blow to the skull and remained awake and aware as he skidded across the floor. The stairs crashed down behind him, raising a cloud of dust that fell over him like a blanket, coating his skin, clogging his nose, transforming the blood running over his neck into a gluey paste. When he tried to reach the handkerchief in his back pocket the pain in his thigh became unbearable, a lightning bolt ripping up into his back. After that, he decided to lay still, think it over.

But there wasn't all that much to consider. He was in the second and lowest of the sub-bas.e.m.e.nts of the Empire Steel Warehouse, forty feet beneath the ground, lying in the dark. His flashlight was in pieces, some of those pieces more than likely covered, if not crushed, by the stairs. He still had his Glock, though, in his right hand; badly bruised shoulder or not, he'd held on, refusing to surrender his weapon, like any good cop.

That was what he'd been taught at the Academy you never give up your gun or your badge. If a perp has a piece to the head of an innocent victim, even a kid, it's just tough s.h.i.t on the vie.

Foley's instructor at the time, a hair bag three decades on the job, had begun every other sentence with the word, "Awright," and had never taken questions. That was Sgt. Borowski, who hit the toilet for a quick chug of scotch so often that some recruit had carved Borowski's name on the door of his favorite stall.

Stop, Foley told himself. Don't drift. Despite the darkness, this is not an isolation tank.

As if to prove the point, a light appeared in the doorway above. Foley turned far enough to bring his weapon from beneath his body, ready for the pain this time, ignoring it to point the Glock at the brightening rectangle.

"Show yourself," Foley whispered aloud. "Just for a second. Show yourself and let me kill you."

The light stopped advancing an instant later, as if Foley had been overheard. A voice, high-pitched and quavering, asked, "Hey, you still with us down there?"

"Unfortunately for you."

"Oh, I don't think so." A dramatic pause, then, "But I do admit to being disappointed. When I rigged the stairs, I hoped to snare a certain geriatric journalist. Instead, I've caught a cop."

"That's what happens when you're transparent. I missed you, by the way, at your apartment." After a moment, Foley added the man's name, "Hal Townsend."

"Ah, very clever. How'd you find me?"

"You don't know?"

"I could guess, but coming from you it'd be much more charming."

Foley took a breath as the pain in his thigh flared up, then slowly subsided. "The Clapham," he said, "where the Mandrakes lived, it has a new surveillance system. Very clear video, unusual in that setting. The task force went back to 10 A.M." twelve hours before the earliest time the Mandrakes could have been killed. Everybody coming in or going out was interviewed, even the delivery boys, and they didn't turn up a single suspect. I watched those tapes myself, Hal, and I read transcripts of the interviews. They were very thorough."

"Well, I hope they would be. Considering the gravity of the acts under investigation."

Foley ignored the interruption. The truth was that he, Peter Foley, had denied the gravity of those acts. He'd waited too long and now here he was, lying on his back in what could easily become his tomb. "The question that jumped out at me was how the murderer got into the building without pa.s.sing one of those cameras. Did he, for example, land a helicopter on the roof? Or hang-glide through an open window? Or invent an invisibility potion? Or did he, perhaps, live in the Clapham?" Foley paused, but Townsend chose not to respond. "After mulling the various possibilities, I decided to begin with the last scenario. I approached a doorman at the Clapham, an Italian named Basilio Donatelli. "Basilio," I said, "I'm looking for someone who resides in the building. He's in his thirties, white, single, living alone or with his mommy. A real f.u.c.king creep."

" "Ah," Basilio tells me, They know this man right away. Hal Townsend. A c.o.c.kroach in a coat. He's onna vacation."

"Funny thing, Hal. That vacation began the day after the Mandrakes were killed."

"So you came out here."

"To your little cathedral of death. Hoping you'd returned to bask in the glory."

A long silence ensued. Foley fought to steady his breath, to relax his finger on the trigger. He would get only one chance and he had to make the most of it. The pain had returned with a fury. It was now threatening to overwhelm his defenses and he was afraid he'd pa.s.s out.

"You know I tried, right?" Townsend's voice echoed in the closed s.p.a.ce around Foley. "I thought if I became an instrument of the Lord, I'd overcome my .. . propensities." He laughed, his tone rising to a true falsetto. "But it didn't work out and now .. . And now I have to serve a different master."

"A master who tells you to rape and kill little girls? Christ, Townsend, you're not only a creep, you're a bulls.h.i.tter. You're making this move because grown men are too scary for you. In your heart of hearts, you're still that little kid bending over the kitchen table. Tell me, who got you first? Daddy? Uncle John? Mommy? You are a momma's boy, right? In fact, the story I heard, you've been living off your mother's fortune all your life."

"When my mother died," Townsend said, his voice now wistful, "it was the happiest day of my life."

"Couldn't wait to see her in the ground?"

"I jerked off on her grave."

"A liberating moment, I'm sure."

Though Foley's tone hovered between matter-of-fact and taunting, inwardly he berated himself for failing to antic.i.p.ate the threat to Corry. He'd long known that serial killers are almost always s.e.xually motivated and that Townsend was a heteros.e.xual pedophile. He'd known, as well, that Townsend was under tremendous pressure, that he was breaking down. In the last a.n.a.lysis, Townsend's shift to a cla.s.s of victims offering infinitely more pleasure was entirely predictable by all except the most arrogant of f.u.c.king fools. By all except Peter Foley.

"You don't know anything about it," Townsend insisted. "You don't know what it's like."

"That's right, Hal. I don't know what it's like because I'm not a player in that world. But I'm a player in your world. And I'm not going away."

A silence followed, a silence of perhaps ten seconds that seemed endless to Foley, who continued to pray that Townsend would show himself. This despite a severe trembling in his hands that left him barely able to keep the sights within the doorway.

"I knew you'd figure it out." Townsend's voice was louder now. "Bud and Sarah Mandrake, they were too close to me. I had to recover anything in that apartment with my name on it, and I had to shut them up permanently. You don't think my approach was too dramatic, do you?"

"More like desperate, Hal." Foley closed his eyes momentarily as he drew a breath. It was coming now. "You were too desperate."

"Well, this has all been very interesting, and I'd like to continue, if for no other reason than to see if your cop insights are more penetrating than those of my a.n.a.lyst. But I have miles to go and promises to keep .. ." Townsend laughed again, the same high-pitched trill. "Now, I think I'll just shut and padlock this door before I leave. To make certain your tranquility remains undisturbed."

"Clever, clever you," Foley said as he emptied the dock's sixteen rounds into the rectangle of light above him.

The noise was near deafening, even to Foley who was prepared. The roar of exploding gunpowder, a sharp crack as each bullet ripped through the sound barrier, the eerie whine of multiple ricochets, overlapping, echoing, filling the air until there seemed to be nothing but sound. As if sound was a denser medium, like water, through which humans progressed as best they could.

Foley ejected the dock's clip, then reached for the spare in his coat pocket. He had it in his hand, was about to slide it into place when a stream of bile cut a pa.s.sage up through his throat into his mouth and nose. The pain in his leg, as he instinctively turned his head to the side, caught him completely unprepared. Barely aware of the diminishing light in the doorway above as Townsend beat a hasty retreat, Foley retched once, a stream of vomit that splattered in the dust, then he was gone.

lOLEY OPENED his eyes to a darkness so impenetrable he was unable at first to distinguish between awake and asleep. Then he moved slightly and the charcoal fire smoldering in his right thigh flared up to remind him that not only was he awake, he was alive as well. Hal Townsend, apparently unwilling to risk the possibility of being clipped by a ricochet, had deserted the field. Or maybe Townsend had actually been wounded, though not incapacitated. If he was incapacitated, or killed, there'd still be a light in the doorway.

Inch by inch, Foley rolled far enough to the right to free up the left-hand pocket of his coat where he'd put his cell phone. As he did, the jagged ends of the broken bones in his right thigh dug into the muscle, a carving fork jammed into a slab of beef. He was slippery with sweat by the time he admitted that the phone wasn't there and that he wasn't going to find it in the dark.

As Foley paused to collect himself, a series of questions ran through his mind. How long had he been out? Was it already too late? Where was Julia Brennan at this moment? Why hadn't he dragged an army of cops out to the Empire Steel Warehouse?

The last question grabbed his attention and he focused long enough to provide, if not an answer, at least a history. Time had been the problem, because Sergeant Jacoby hadn't dropped him off at his apartment but had taken him to One Police Plaza, where they worked on his statement until eleven o'clock.

"Let's just get it right," Jacoby had chided when Foley expressed a strong desire to leave, "before you disappear again."

Foley had run from Jacoby's little office to the Clapham, where the night doorman had refused to discuss the residents' private lives, despite the offer of a more than generous bribe. Then, his kidney aching, he'd gone home to grab a couple of hours of sleep.

At eight o'clock in the morning, his manner considerably more belligerent, Foley had cornered the day-shift doorman at the Clapham, Basilio Donatelli. Donatelli had considered all the potential outcomes after allowing Foley to describe the man he was looking for, a thirty-something who came and went at odd hours and who lived alone. Then the doorman had lifted his hat to run his fingers through his thinning hair before offering the name of Hal Townsend, who'd begun a vacation the day after the Mandrakes were killed and whose mail had yet to be collected.

Approaching the task force had been out of the question because Foley lacked the kind of hard evidence that would light a fire beneath the hierarchy running the show. It would take hours to convince them to act, if it could be done at all, hours Foley didn't have. That left him with a choice. Call Julia Brennan immediately or check out the Empire Steel warehouse on the slim chance that Townsend had returned to his killing field.

Foley had considered the possibilities while he purchased a container of coffee at a Third Avenue deli, as he tore away a triangular piece of the lid, as he sipped. Then he'd made his choice, the choice of a man who desperately needed to be a hero, a knight, to rescue that damsel in distress, to slay that bad, bad dragon.

Very gently, Foley eased his fingers along his right thigh, half-expecting to encounter the jagged ends of his broken bones. He didn't, though he felt a distinct b.u.mp halfway between his knee and his hip. Bad news because the bone was displaced. Good news because the bone, as long as it didn't protrude, could be splinted. If he tore his undershirt into strips, if he found a bal.u.s.ter to use for a splint, and a longer piece of wood to use for a cane, he could stand. And if he could stand .. .

If I can stand, Foley asked himself as he very slowly and very deliberately began to unb.u.t.ton his coat, what will I do? Have a look around? I can't even read the hands on my watch. Could I climb up somehow? Townsend wanted to lock the door at the top of the stairs, which means he must have left a way out through that door when he rigged the stairway. A way out for a two-legged man, anyway. For me, right now, in my condition.. ..

But there was another possibility remote, he instantly admitted that couldn't be ignored. Maybe, if he covered every foot of the bas.e.m.e.nt, he'd find another set of stairs, a hoist, a door, something. Of course, it might be too late; he might have been unconscious for hours. But at least he'd save his own sorry a.s.s. Wouldn't that be great?

The irony was that he'd been carrying an irrational guilt for Patti's disappearance almost from the beginning and now he'd have something to be guilty about. In fact, if anything at all happened to Corry, he, Peter Foley, would finally have committed an act that precluded survival.

"Were talkin' motivation here," he said aloud as he began to pull his left arm from the sleeve of his coat. "Go, team, go."

FORTY-SEVEN.