"That's it, start with the easy questions." Rainie sipped her coffee more earnestly.

Kimberly, however, had also inherited her father's probing stare. "You're pretty young," she said.

"I'm aware of that."

"How old?"

"Thirty-two."

"Mandy was twenty-four when she died."

"All the more reason not to let a silly thing like age hold you back."

"So you are dating?"

Rainie sighed. "In the past, we have dated. What we are now… I don't know. When Quincy wakes up, do me a favor and ask him."

"How did you meet?"

"Last year. The Bakersville case."

"Oh," Kimberly said with feeling. "That was a bad one."

"You could say that."

"You're the one who lost her job."

"That would be me."

Kimberly nodded with a freshly minted psych major's knowing confidence. "I see the problem."

"Great. Want to explain it to me?"

"Age alone wouldn't be reason enough, but now you two are at different phases of the life cycle, which makes the gap even more extreme. You have to rebuild, which puts you back at infancy. He's established, keeping him middle-aged. That's a tough gulf to bridge. I think figuring out how to have a successful relationship in the face of such complex career issues will be the challenge of the new, dual-income generation."

"You're working on your thesis, aren't you?"

"My thesis is on 'Challenges of Modernity: The Growth of Urbanization and Its Impact on Disrupted Personalities,' thank you very much."

"Oh. Mine was on attachment disorder. You know, why good families can still breed little fucking psychopaths."

Kimberly blinked. "Attachment disorder. That's one of my favorite subjects." She looked at Rainie more appraisingly. "I didn't realize you were a psych major."

"B.A. I never went back for my master's."

"Still, that's pretty cool."

"Thanks."

They both returned to their coffee. After a moment, Kimberly said softly, "Rainie, could you keep talking? In all honesty, it's easier to dissect your life than to think about my own."

"I'm really sorry, Kimberly."

"Who's going to help me plan my wedding? Who will I call when I'm expecting my first child? Who will hold my hand, when I give birth to a baby girl and see Mandy and my mother in every curve of her face?"

"We'll find out who's doing this. We'll find him, and well make him pay."

"And will that make things better? Look at you and what happened last year. You found the guy who did it. You and my father killed him. Are you better off?"

Rainie didn't say anything. After a moment, Kimberly said, "I thought as much."

Quincy dreamed. In his dream he was back in Philadelphia, walking through Bethie's beautiful, ravaged town house. He held a pillowcase in one hand. He was trying to capture all the feathers and stuff them back in. Then he was standing over the bed, his hands now holding Bethie's intestines, and trying frantically to pile them back in her body.

Don't, his subconscious told him in his dream. Don't let him win by remembering her the way he intended.

His dream spiraled backwards, his mind seeking happier times. Bethie, mussed hair, sweating face. No makeup, no pearls, but a smile that could light up a city as she lay in the white hospital bed and held out their firstborn child. Himself, touching their baby girl delicately. Marveling at the ten perfect fingers, ten perfect toes. Then touching his wife's cheek. Telling her how beautiful she looked. And vowing that he would be a better father than his own dad had been. Fresh family. Fresh start. His heart, so big in his chest.

Bethie sixteen years later, coming into the family room with a dazed look on her face. She'd been cutting up carrots in the kitchen. The knife had slipped. She now carried her finger in her other hand. Himself, fresh from a California crime scene, twenty-five corpses found in a hillside, fifteen of them young women, two of them babies. Telling his wife, "Oh honey, it's just a scratch."

Bethie yelling, "I can't take it anymore! How did I end up married to a man who is so goddamn cold?"

Time fast-forwarding. He was in Massachusetts, keeping watch on human bait, Tess Williams returning to her old house in the hopes that it would lure her homicidal ex-husband out of hiding. Everything going wrong. Himself now inside the house as shots erupted down the street. Telling Tess not to go near the door. Promising he would keep her safe. Jim Beckett appearing, and blasting him back with a close-range spray from his double-barrel shotgun.

Himself thinking, Wow, I feel so hot, for someone who is so cold. Later, out of the hospital, paring back his work hours, trying to find some balance, picking up the girls for a weekend visit.

"How are you?" he asked Bethie.

"Better."

"I miss you."

"No you don't."

"Bethie…"

"Go back to work, Pierce. Who needs to be a mere husband, when you can play at being God?"

In his daughters two-bedroom apartment, Quincy jerked awake. He lay in the darkened room, watching threads of light from the closed blinds dance with dust in the air, listening to the sounds of the huge city below. "I'm sorry, Elizabeth," he said.

Then he got up and went to the TV room, where the last living member of his family sat watching M'A'S'H. Rainie was by her side. Her short, reddish-brown hair contrasted with his daughter's long, dusky blond locks. Her big gray eyes and wide cheekbones rebuffed Kim-berly's own finely patrician face. Yin and yang, he thought, and both so beautiful the sight of them nearly broke his heart. For a moment, he simply stood there, wishing he could stop time, wishing he could take this moment and hold it safe forever in his hand.

"Ladies," he said. "I have a plan."

Quincy's House, Virginia

It was early evening on Thursday, and Special Agent Glenda Rodman had yet to return to bed from the night before when she looked at the security monitor and saw Quincy standing outside his front gate. She had slept two hours before receiving the call to come to Philadelphia last night, but that now seemed a lifetime ago. The two hours of sleep were the aberration. The rest of the time, touring the Philadelphia crime scene, then returning to Quincy's home to listen to message after message promising sick, perverse death, was the norm.

They were up to three hundred and fifty-nine callers.

Some Quincy had personally put in jail. Others simply hated feds. Still others were merely bored. Either way, word was definitely out that the thinly disguised ad circulating in so many prison newsletters contained an FBI profiler's home number. Everyone felt compelled to call. Some, she had to admit, were more imaginative than most. One artistic soul had gone so far as to compose a death rap. It wasn't half bad.

Glenda hit the button and let Quincy into his own property. The agent wore the same suit from the night before. His features were pale. On the camera, they were also hard to read. Whether he knew it or not, Pierce Quincy was a legend around the Bureau. These days, Glenda felt sorry for the agent. But she felt even more curious about what would happen next.

He knocked on his front door. She kindly let him in. "I need to gather a few things," he said. "Certainly."

"Ill check in with Everett next, then I'm leaving town."

"The Philadelphia P.D. aren't going to like that." "My daughter comes first." He disappeared into the master bedroom. Moments later, Glenda heard the sound of closet doors opening, as he began to pack a bag.

She wandered into his home office, not sure what to do with herself. It was interesting, she'd been in this house two days now and there wasn't much here to give a sense of the man who technically occupied the space. Several of the rooms were completely empty. The majority of the walls were bare; the kitchen couldn't feed a rat. The only room with any atmosphere was this room, the office, and she found herself coming here again and again, if only to escape the starkness of a vast, overwhelmingly white space.