"Tristan Shandling."

"How did she meet Shandling?"

"I don't know."

"When did she meet him?"

"I don't know."

Detective Albright arched a brow. "So, let me get this straight. You're conscientious enough to run a background check, but you didn't ask your ex-wife any questions?"

"As you said, Detective, we'd been divorced eight years. Her personal life is not my business anymore."

"Personal life? So you suspected he was a new love interest – "

"I didn't say that," Quincy interjected sharply. But it was too late. Detective Albright was already making fresh notes. And now, Rainie thought with a sigh, they had motive – the ever-classic, ever-popular, jealous ex.

"Detectives," she said crisply. "While I'm sure we all have nothing better to do at five in the morning than continue this conversation, aren't you missing the obvious?"

Detective Albright cocked his head and regarded her curiously. Cro-Magnon went with the more obvious, "Huh?"

"Look at this house. Look at this scene. There is blood everywhere; there are indications of a savage fight. Now behold Supervisory Special Agent Quincy: His suit is immaculate, his shoes are polished, and his hands and face don't bear a single mark. Doesn't that tell you anything?"

"He took lessons from O. J. Simpson," Cro-Magnon declared.

Rainie sighed. She appealed to Albright, who seemed to have more common sense. She was honestly surprised to realize that even smaller, less threatening guy was not convinced. What the…?

Her gaze flew to Quincy. He would not return her stare, his gaze locked somewhere on the far wall where flowers bloomed pink and lilac amid a sea of yellow. She turned to Glenda Rodman, and that agent, too, glanced away.

The feds knew something. At least Quincy and Glenda did, but they were not yet volunteering it to the locals, which could only mean one thing. How bad could one night get? And what would Quincy do, when she told him that the same person who had murdered Bethie tonight, had most likely started by killing his daughter fourteen months ago?

A tall, thin man appeared in the doorway. He was wearing a white doctors coat. The medical examiners assistant. " I… uh. We thought you should see this."

With gloved hands, the man held up a plastic bag. Glenda didn't take it. Instead, Detective Albright accepted the marked evidence bag, held it up to the light, and promptly said, "Jesus Christ!" He dropped the bag on the lilac-colored rug, where it resembled a fresh pool of blood.

"It was…" The medical assistant wasn't doing so well. His face still carried a tinge of green and he was staring at the plastic bag with the horrified fascination of someone who knew he really should look away. "We found it… abdominal cavity…"

Cro-Magnon wasn't moving. On the bed, Quincy 's hand was gripping the floral comforter so tight, tendons stood out like ridges. Very slowly, Rainie reached down. Very slowly, she picked up the bag. She held it by the corner gingerly, as if it were a snake with the power to strike.

It looked like a piece of Christmas wrapping paper. Bright red with swirls of white. Shiny veneer. Except…

It was paper, she realized dizzily. At least it had been. Cheap, white paper, probably like the kind used in any copy machine. Except now it was soaked bloody red. And those were not pretty swirls. They were letters, forming words, written in some kind of white wax, in order to come to light as it sat, according to the assistant, in Elizabeth Quincy's insides.

"It's a note," she said.

"Read it," Quincy whispered.

No.

"Read it!"

Rainie closed her eyes. She had already made out the words. "It says… it says, 'You'd better hurry up, Pierce. There's only one left.' "

"Kimberly," Glenda Rodman said from the doorway.

A strange sound came from the bed. Quincy was finally moving. His body rocked back and forth. His shoulders started to shake. And then a low, dreadful sound came from his lips. Laughter. A dry, bone-chilling chuckle spewing from his lips.

"A message in a bottle," he singsonged. "A message in a fucking bottle!"

His shoulders broke. He bowed his head. The laughter turned to sobs.

"Kimberly… Rainie, get me out of here."

She did.

Greenwich Village,New York

They drove toward New York City in silence, Rainie at the wheel, Quincy leaning against the passenger-side window. His eyes were closed, but she knew he wasn't asleep. They would arrive at his daughter's apartment in about an hour. She didn't like to think about how that conversation would go. Poor Kimberly, who had just buried her older sister. Poor Kimberly, who would now learn that her mother had been savagely murdered, and that most likely, she was next in line.

Quincy needed to regain his composure, Rainie thought, for the clock was ticking now and in this kind of game you couldn't afford a time-out.

"Talk," he said shortly.

"We found Mandy's SUV. I was going to call you in the morning with the news."

"The seat belt was tampered with."

"Yes. And someone else was in the vehicle at the time of the crash. We found warping on the passenger's seat belt that proves it. In the good news department, Officer Amity recovered hairs from the cloth visor on the passenger's side. If we can find the man, we can use the hairs to tie him to the crime."

"What crime? Sitting in the passenger's seat of a sports-utility vehicle?"

"Well work on it, Quincy. Officer Amity is a good guy; he can build a case. Now tell me this: Why did you go to your ex-wife's house on tonight of all nights?"

"I was worried. Elizabeth… Bethie never went out much. It was unusual not to be able to reach her all day."

"I wonder if he knew that."

"Probably." Quincy finally turned in his seat. His face bore the stamp of freshly etched lines. In a matter of hours, his dark pepper hair seemed to have gained more salt at the temples. He was an experienced FBI agent, a man who made his living seeing the most horrible of horrors. Rainie wondered if that helped at a time like now, when he was desperate to save his remaining daughter, or if the intimate knowledge of what men could do only made things worse.

"It's obvious this Tristan Shandling is trying to frame you," she said quietly. "The car purchase in your name. Disguising himself to look like you when he showed up at Bethie's house. And there's more, isn't there? Things you and Dour Chic have already picked up on, but aren't volunteering to the local boys."

"The scene was staged. When the crime-scene techs examine the broken bathroom window, they'll discover it was broken from the inside out."

"But the broken glass was on the inside of the house, on the bathroom floor."

"True. But if you fit one of the broken shards back into the window, the angle of the break reveals the blow came from the inside. Moving glass is easy. You can't, however, disguise the fragments. The UNSUB was already inside the house when he broke the window. And I'm sure when the police get the report back from the alarm company, they'll find it was properly disarmed."

"He entered with Elizabeth," Rainie murmured. "The man fitting your description the neighbor saw at ten."

"That would be my guess. Then there is the crime scene itself. The level of destruction is out of proportion with the crime. Each room appears destroyed, but the blood trail is actually extremely contained. My guess is the initial struggle was fast, focused. The rest of the damage occurred postmortem."

"He wanted it to look bad?"

"He wanted it to look horrific, terrifying, demoralizing. He's very good at what he does."

"The body," Rainie whispered.

"The body," Quincy repeated, his voice detached again, overly analytical. "When the medical examiner finishes with the autopsy, he'll know the victim was killed fairly quickly – at least on a relative scale. There won't be any evidence of rape, despite how he posed the body. There aren't any abrasions on the wrists and ankles, indicating that hog-tying occurred postmortem. I suspect the disembowelment and other mutilation occurred postmortem as well."