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  “What’s that?”

  “Howard Randall had nothing to do with this.”

  “Bullshit. What about the hand? Want to bet it’s hiding somewhere on Harvard campus?”

  Avery only made a hmmm noise. He was making a fair assumption, but she still wasn’t buying it.

  They started back for their car, but before they could even make it to the crime scene tape, she saw a car come screeching to a halt on the sidewalk by the street. She didn’t recognize the car but she recognized the face. It was the mayor.

  What is this cretin doing here? she wondered. And why does he look so pissed?

  He stormed toward the remaining investigators, all of whom started to part for him. As they gave way, Avery ducked under the crime scene tape to meet him. She figured she’d cut him off before he could stick his nose in the bloody mess waiting behind her.

  Mayor Greenwald’s face was a red sheet of pure rage. She was fully expecting foam to start pouring from his mouth.

  “Avery Black,” he spat, “what in the blue hell do you think you’re doing here?”

  “Well, sir,” she said, not quite certain which smart-assed reply to give.

  As it turned out, it didn’t matter. Another car came barreling to a stop along the sidewalk, nearly kissing the back of the mayor’s. This car Avery did recognize. It had barely come to a stop before Connelly got out of the passenger’s side. O’Malley killed the engine and stepped out too, catching up with Connelly as quickly as he could.

  “Mayor Greenwald,” Connelly said. “This isn’t what you think.”

  “This morning, what did you tell me?” Greenwald said. “You told me that all signs pointed to this murder being the work of Howard Randall. You ensured me you would handle the matter with care and that the crime scene might offer clues to where that son of a bitch is hiding. Did you not?”

  “Yes sir, I did,” Connelly said.

  “And you’re telling me that sticking Avery Black on the case is handing the matter? The very detective that the media knows meets in private with him on occasion?”

  “Sir, I assure you, she is not on the case. I called her in as nothing more than a consult. She does, after all, know Howard Randall better than anyone else on the force.”

  “I don’t care. If the media smells this…if they so much as think Detective Black is running this case, I’ll have so much shit to shovel that I’ll be using your paychecks to buy the shovels.”

  “Yes, I understand, sir. But the—”

  “This city is already terrified with Randall on the loose,” the mayor went on, really on a tirade now. “You know as well as I do that at least thirty calls a day are coming in with concerned people thinking they’ve spotted him. When they get wind of this murder—and let’s face it, it’s really just a matter of time—they’ll know it’s him. And if Avery Fucking Black is on the case, or anywhere near the case—”

  “Then it won’t matter,” Avery said, having heard enough.

  “What did you say?” Mayor Greenwald practically screamed.

  “I said it won’t matter. Howard Randall didn’t do this.”

  “Avery…” O’Malley said.

  Meanwhile, Connelly and Mayor Greenwald looked at her as if she had grown a third arm.

  “Are you serious right now?” Greenwald asked.

  And before she could answer, Connelly took his side—big surprise there. “Black…you know this is Howard Randall’s work. Why in God’s name would you think otherwise?”

  “Just pull the files, sir,” she said. She then looked to Greenwald and added: “Same to you. Check Howard Randall’s files. Find one of his murders where he did something like this—something so over the top and bloody. Dismemberment is one thing. But this borders on exploitive. Howard strangled the majority of his victims first. What I’m seeing with this latest death is far from something like that.”

  “Howard Randall smashed one woman’s head in with a damned brick,” Greenwald said. “I’d say that’s pretty bloody and brutal.”

  “It is. However, that lady was struck twice and the report shows it was the second strike that killed her—not the first. Howard Randall is not in this for the thrill or the violence or the exploitation. Even in scattering the body parts, there was a minimal amount of blood and gore. It was almost as if he shied away from blood, despite his actions. But this murder back here…it’s too much. It’s gratuitous. And while he’s a monster and a definite murderer, Howard Randall is not gratuitous.”

  She saw a shift in Connelly’s expression. He was at least thinking about it, taking her examples with a grain of salt. Mayor Greenwald, on the other hand, was not having it.

  “No. This is Howard Randall’s work and it’s ridiculous to think otherwise. As far as I’m concerned, this murder puts a fire under the entire A1 division—hell, on every officer in this entire city! I want Howard Randall in handcuffs or heads will roll. And effective immediately, I want Black off of this case. She is not to be involved in any capacity!”

  With that, Greenwald stormed back to his car. Avery had suffered through meetings with him in the past and was starting to think he stormed everywhere. She had never seen him simply walk.

  “You’ve been back on the job for half an hour,” O’Malley said, “and already managed to piss the mayor off.”

  “I’m not on the job,” she pointed out. “How did he find out I was here anyway?”

  “No clue,” Connelly said. “We’re assuming a news crew saw you leave the precinct and someone tipped him off. We tried to get here before he did but obviously failed.” He sighed, collected his breath, and added: “How sure are you that this wasn’t Randall? Definite?”

  “Of course I’m not definite. But this does not fit any of his other murders. This one feels different. Looks different.”

  “Think it could be a copycat?” Connelly asked.

  “It could, I suppose. But why? And if it is, he’s doing a bad job.”

  “What about a fanatical shithead that is into murder culture?” Connelly asked. “One of these losers that collects serial killer training cards got a hard-on when Randall escaped and finally got up the courage to kill for the first time.”

  “Seems like a stretch.”

  “So does not fingering a recently escaped Howard Randall for a murder than is so close in style to his former work.”

  “Sir, you wanted my opinion and I’ve given it to you.”

  “Well,” Connelly said, “you heard Greenwald. I can’t have you helping with this anymore. I appreciate you coming down this morning when I asked but…I guess it was a mistake.”

  “I guess so,” she said, hating how easily Connelly buckled to pressure from the mayor. He’d always done it and it was one of the only reasons she had always found it hard to respect her captain.

  “Sorry,” O’Malley told her as they headed back to the car. Finley trailed behind them, having watched the entire showdown with passive discomfort. “But maybe he’s right. Even if the mayor wasn’t being so adamant about this, do you really think it’s the sort of thing you should get involved in right now? It’s been just over two weeks since your last big case—where you nearly died, I might add. And two weeks since Ramirez…”

  “He’s right,” Connelly said. “Take some more time off. A few more weeks. Can you do that?”

  “It is what it is,” she said, heading to the car with Finley. “Good luck with this killer. You guys will find him, I’m sure of it.”

  “Black,” Connelly said. “Don’t take it personally.”

  She didn’t respond. She got in the car and cranked it, giving Finley only a handful of seconds to join her before she pulled away from the curb and a dead body that she was almost positive was not the work of the recently escaped Howard Randall.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Avery was too upset and spiked with adrenaline to go back to the hospital. Instead, after delivering Finley back to the precinct and hopping into her own car, she headed back to her apartment. There w
ere several boxes in the back of her closet that she suddenly felt the need to pull out and look into. More than that, with her mind a little more active and the nip of the real world at her heels, she realized that there was also someone she needed to call.

  When she called Rose, her daughter was jubilant at the invitation to come over later for dinner and a glass of wine; they’d ignore the fact that Rose was still sixteen months shy of having a legal drink just for this one night.

  When she arrived at her apartment just before 10 a.m., she put on a pot of coffee and threw together two sandwiches. While it was plain old ham, cheese, and mayo on white bread, it was light years above the stale hospital cafeteria food she’d been eating so much of recently. She ate the sandwiches almost absently as she went into her bedroom, opened the closet, and pulled out the boxes that she had pushed far into the back.

  There were two boxes, one filled with various files from her brief career as a moderately successful attorney. She was tempted to go fishing through those, as she had actually represented a few people in murder cases. Instead, she went to the box that she knew would provide some insight on what she had seen this morning.

  The second box was filled with the files from Howard Randall’s case. The case had transpired a little over three years ago but seemed like something she had participated in during some other life. Maybe that’s why she had found it so easy and nearly conventional to seek advice and wisdom from him; perhaps she had managed to remove herself far enough away from the case and what it had done to her law career.

  The stack of files told a story that she knew inside and out but putting her fingers on the pages and pictures was like sifting through the sands of time, peeking back through the grains to learn some lesson she might have missed earlier. They told the story of Howard Randall, who, as a boy, had been beaten within half an inch of his life by an abusive mother. He was the same boy who would be molested in a high school shower room by a phys ed teacher—a boy who grew to be a man who would not only act out the rage that had built and evolved within him over the years, but also use it to mold and define a brilliant mind that he had never bothered to properly exercise in school. No, he had saved his brilliance for college, starting off in community college to bring up his grades and then impressing the admissions and records offices at Harvard. He’d attended, graduated, and ended up teaching there.

  But his brilliance had not stopped there. It had continued on, showing itself in savage ways the first time his hand had grabbed a knife. It had been a knife that had taken his first victim.

  Avery came to the crime scene photos of that first victim, a twenty-year-old waitress. A female college student, like all of his victims. There had been one deep gouge in her throat, from ear to ear. Nothing more. She had bled out in the small kitchen of the deli she had been closing up at the time.

  A single cut, Avery thought as she looked at the picture. A surprisingly clean cut. No signs of sexual abuse. In, cut, and out.

  She came to the second image and looked at it. And then the third, and the fourth. In each of them, she drew the same conclusion, ticking them off in her head like a stat sheet to some demented sport.

  Second victim. Eighteen-year-old freshman. One cut in the side, seemed accidental. Another one, not so much a cut as a puncture wound with the blade that went directly into her heart.

  Third victim. Nineteen-year-old English major, moonlighting as a stripper. Found dead in her car, a single gunshot wound to the back of the head. It was later found out that he had offered her five hundred dollars for oral sex, she invited him back to her car, and he shot her. No signs of her services being rendered were ever found, and in his testimony, Howard confirmed that he killed her before the act was carried out.

  Fourth victim. Eighteen years old. Hit in the head with a brick. Twice. First blow seemed to have been too low, did not kill her. Second one crushed her skull and cut into her brain.

  Fifth victim. Another slit throat, one deep, steady gash from ear to ear.

  Sixth victim. Strangled. No prints.

  And on and on. Clean killings. Only copious amounts of blood found at three scenes and that was a matter of circumstance, not theatrics.

  So let’s say Connelly’s hunch and the mayor’s belief is right. If Howard is killing again, why change his methods? Not to prove a point—proving a point is macho bullshit that is beyond him. So why would he?

  “He wouldn’t,” she said to the empty bedroom.

  And while she was not naïve enough to think that his three years in prison had made Howard Randall a changed man who no longer had an interest in killing, she did think he was far too smart to start right up where he left off, in the city that had turned itself upside down to find him in the first place.

  If she’d had any doubts before, they were dashed as she looked through the files.

  It wasn’t him. Still…someone did it. And the assholes I answer to are going to be looking for the wrong man.

  ***

  Avery was both delighted and a little concerned that Rose did not hesitate to drink in front of her. She accepted the glass of white wine with gratitude and thanks, wasting no time taking her first gulp. Avery had apparently been staring in some strange way because when Rose lowered the glass, she grinned and shook her head.

  “Not my first glass,” she said. “Sorry to ruin any dreams you had of a pristine and saintly little girl.”

  “Wine will never do that to me,” Avery said with a smile. “Some of your past boyfriends, on the other hand…”

  “Ooh, nice burn, Mom.”

  They had just finished a simple dinner of chicken Alfredo and a Greek salad, which they had made together. There was soft music playing in the background, some awful indie pop acoustic drivel that Rose was into these days. Still, the music could not ruin the moment. The city was cast in a cold dark outside, the streetlights gleaming and the gentle rumble of traffic on the street like white noise.

  This was exactly what I needed, Avery thought. Why was I trying to push her away again?

  “So are we just going to dance around the topic of Ramirez all night?” Rose asked.

  Avery smirked. It was odd to hear his name come from Rose’s mouth…especially just his last name, as if she had known him from work as well.

  “No dancing,” Avery said. “I just didn’t want this night to turn into a sob fest where you had to make sure your mother didn’t fall apart.”

  “In a situation like this, it’s okay to fall apart a little bit. I just don’t know if it’s the best thing in the world for you to stay holed up in a hospital room. I mean…isn’t it sort of depressing?”

  “Sometimes,” Avery admitted. “But I’d like to think I’d have someone constantly at my bedside if I was fighting for my life.”

  “Yeah, I think he’d do the same for you. I mean, I’d be there, too. But at the same time, you know he’d scold you if he knew you were doing it.”

  “Probably.”

  “Do you….” Rose started to ask, but then stopped as if she thought better of asking whatever was about to come out of her mouth.

  “It’s okay,” Avery said. “You can ask me anything.”

  “Do you have a gut feeling about it yet? Like…are your instincts telling you one way or the other that he’s going to make it or not?”

  It was a hard question to answer. She didn’t feel strongly one way or the other. And perhaps that was why it was affecting her so badly. There was no certainty. No instinctual nudge that told her he was going to pull through or that he wasn’t going to make it.

  “No, not yet.”

  “One more question,” Rose said. “Do you love him?”

  It was so unexpected that, for a moment, Avery wasn’t sure how to respond. It was a question she had asked herself several times in the past—a question that had come to a very distinct and definite answer in the past two weeks.

  “Yes, I do.”

  Rose seemed to beam at this, hiding her smile behind her wine glass
.

  “Do you think he knows?”

  “I think so. But it’s not something that we—”

  She was interrupted by the sound of shattering glass and a harsh thumping noise. It was so sudden and unexpected that it took Avery roughly two seconds to get to her feet and take in the situation. As she did, Rose let out a little shriek. She had jumped up from the couch and was backing into the kitchen.

  The window against the far wall to the left of the couch had been shattered. A cold gust of air buffeted into the apartment. The instrument used to break the window was lying on the floor and made no immediate sense.

  There was an old worn brick on the floor, but Avery only spotted that after she saw the dead cat. The cat looked to be a thin, malnourished stray. It had been tied to the brick with some sort of rubber strap, like the kind used to tie down canopies or awnings. Broken fragments of glass sparkled beside it.

  “Mom?” Rose asked.

  “It’s okay,” Avery said as she ran to the broken window. Her apartment was on the second floor, so while it would have taken some strength, it would have been very possible for someone to make the toss.

  She saw no one on the street directly below. She thought about heading out, down the stairs and outside, but whoever threw the brick and cat would have at least a minute’s head start on her. And with the busyness of Boston traffic and pedestrians at this time of night (only 9:35, she saw as she checked her watch), he was as good as gone already.

  She stepped toward the cat, careful not to step on the glass in her bare feet.

  There was a small piece of paper stuffed between the cat’s underside and the black rubber tie. She reached down to grab the note, grimacing a bit when she felt the cat’s cold, stiff body.

  “Mom, what the hell?” Rose asked.

  “There’s a note.”

  “Who would do something like this?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered as she plucked the note free and unrolled it. It had been written on half of a torn sheet of basic notebook paper. The note was very simple but still sent a chill through Avery’s body.