“I’ll leave you to bleed out if you don’t answer me. Do you understand?”

She nodded, terrified. He loved that look of panic in their eyes- that moment when they realized they’d lost all control.

Choking her as he was, he watched her grow slightly blue, and felt her begin to tremble from shock. “Hold it together. I’m going to let you go.”

She nodded again, though her eyes rolled slightly back into her head, and he feared she might faint.

He loosened his grip and whispered, “Where did Alice go?”

She coughed. Tears streamed from her eyes. She whipped her head side to side, indicating “no.” Perhaps in his outrage he’d pushed her too far. Perhaps she was a lost cause. If so, he knew the thing to do was to quickly finish her and get the hell out of here. He tried one more time.

“Where?”

“She didn’t say…” Tina gasped. She was feeling the sting of the cuts now. “She just left. I never saw her again.”

“That’s not helping me…” he said. “That’s not helping you…” He presented the bloody razor blade, well aware of the power it contained. So small, but so effective.

He counted down, “Five… four… three… two…”

“A letter!” she said too loudly.

Paolo cupped her mouth, turned his attention toward the door, and listened, thankful for the continuing commotion in the waiting room. He motioned for quiet, then released her mouth.

“She owed me some money. A hundred dollars. A pair of shoes I’d bought her. I didn’t even remember it,” she said. “She mailed it to me… Cash. Letter said, ‘Thanks.’ Wasn’t signed. But I knew it was her.”

“You’re wasting my time.” He moved the razor so it flashed light across her face. “Come on, Tina… you know better.”

“I was curious,” she said quickly. “On account of the way she’d left like that. Panicked and all. Leaving a paycheck behind. No explanation.”

“You’re stalling.” He forced his free hand between her legs and filled his hand with her. Soft, and incredibly warm. He felt himself stir.

She rose to her toes and he heard her choke back a scream.

“ St. Louis,” she said. “A postmark… the envelope. St. Louis. It’s all there was, but at least I knew…”

Paolo felt a wave of satisfaction and accomplishment. St. Louis. His erection receded. He hadn’t the time for such foolishness.

“Well done, Tina.”

He eased off her crotch while keeping the razor close to her face.

“I’ll spare you the pain,” he told her in a warm whisper into her ear.

With that, he crushed her nose with a single blow, knocking her unconscious. He used a towel to block the spray as he sliced her neck ear to ear, as he’d been taught. He let her slump to the floor, the secret of their conversation contained.

He once again felt himself engorged and aroused but knew this was not the place. He committed Tina to memory, slumped on the floor like that, so he’d have it to draw upon when he had the time.

Then he cracked open the door and slipped out, leaving the wails and cries from the waiting room far behind.

Larson climbed the apartment stairs two at a time, his federal shield flapping against his coat pocket. He couldn’t blame his pounding chest solely on the exertion. He’d been in an agitated state ever since arriving in Minneapolis. The rental car company said his credit card was no good, only to reverse themselves; he was detoured because of road construction. But his rapid heart rate and clammy hands spoke to one thing: Hope Stevens. He prayed he’d arrived in time.

At the address Sunderland had provided, Larson faced clusters of poorly parked cop cars, flashing lights, and not one, but two ambulances. He slumped, knowing without knowing. Everything about this scene implied he was too late.

The fall night air slapped him. He smelled wood smoke in the air, or rotting leaves, or a foul cigar. The trees were barren in Minnesota weeks ahead of Chicago and a month in front of St. Louis.

He reached an apartment’s open door at the top of the stairs. Slowing to allow an MPD officer to mentally process his federal credentials, Larson quickly introduced himself as “Fugitive Apprehension.”

The seas parted, and he was inside.

“Who’s lead?” he asked the door guard, who then pointed out a man crouching by the sprawled body of an elderly woman who was simultaneously being photographed by a forensics tech in her late twenties. The photographer bounced on her haunches as she squatted, studying the dead woman with a controlled impatience before clicking off another shot.

The deceased’s dress was hiked up over ashen legs revealing varicose veins that wandered like wisteria. The grape-stained bruise on her neck suggested she’d been strangled. Larson’s panic gave way to relief. “Who the hell is this?” he asked.

“Who’s asking?” The detective was seated by a phone, which he promptly hung up. He’d spent too much time in the sun on vacation, his well-weathered and leathery face now pink and peeling. You didn’t get a tan like that in Minneapolis. He appeared to have fresh mosquito bites on his lower neck. Larson was guessing Florida or maybe the Yucatán. He’d been back a day or two, at most.

Larson introduced himself.

“Detective Dennis Manderly.” He wore latex gloves and didn’t offer to shake hands with Larson. Dressed in plainclothes like Larson, he stepped closer and studied Larson’s credentials carefully through a pair of bifocals that didn’t want to stay on his nose. “Question still stands.”

“Fugitive Apprehension Task Force,” Larson said, straining now to steal a look at the number on the apartment door: 3C. He had the wrong apartment.

Larson wasn’t sure what was going on, but the clamminess crept through him again.

“I missed my mark,” he said. “I’m down the hall.”

“Hold on a sec.” Judging by his accent, Manderly had been raised on the eastern seaboard. Boston or the Bronx came to mind. “I’m gonna need a little more than that.”

“That’ll have to happen boss to boss. I’d tell you if I could.”

Manderly gave him a look that said, “I’m sure you would.”

“Wrong apartment. My mistake.” Larson turned toward the door.

Manderly called out, stopping him. “My guys are down in 3D as well. You’re not going in there until and unless you, or someone above you, explains to me, or to my boss, why I’ve got two toe-taggers on my hands.”

… two toe-taggers… Those words drowned out all else.

Larson charged out of the room, down the hall, and blew past a uniformed officer whose job might have been containment. He entered a fairly bare living room, where he stopped abruptly, struck by the sight of the woman spread-eagled on the floor. A blue workout mat was indicated by four numbered flags pinned into the carpet. A television’s blue screen glowed in the background.

Larson thought he knew that body. The woman’s chest and abdomen were splayed open in the sign of a cross, nipples to navel. Dark, rust brown blood had run out of her and coagulated into a giant congealed scab, looking like melted wax from a candle where it puddled on the carpet. A rank and familiar odor pervaded, a stench that even an open window couldn’t overcome.

“Deputy!” Manderly shouted, behind him by only a step.

Larson had to confirm her before they dragged him out of here. The razor-thin incisions needed no medical examiner to be properly analyzed. He lunged past another forensic technician in an effort to identify the victim’s face.

He fell to his knees as Manderly’s thick fist caught his coat collar from behind. Larson looked over his shoulder and straight up the man’s arm and said, “Give me one minute. Sixty seconds. Then we’ll do this.”

Behind a face flushed from running and indignation, Manderly met eyes with him, released him, and stepped back.