The victim was wearing khaki trousers and new Reebok sneakers. I examined the wounds to his neck. There were also gouges on his left shoulder and parts of the upper chest. One or both of the killers was very angry, close to a rage state.

"Why take the shirt?" Kyle asked. "Same thing in Marin."

"Maybe because it was blood soaked," I answered as I continued to look at the student's wounds. "These are definitely human bites. But they're attacking like animals. The tiger is a model, a symbol, something important. What, though?"

Kyle's cell phone sounded, and he flipped it open. I couldn't help thinking of the Mastermind — his constant calls to me. Kyle listened to whoever it was for about twenty seconds.

Then he turned to me. "We're going to Charlotte right now. There's been another murder, Alex. They struck again. They're already in North Carolina."

"God damn them! What the hell are they doing?"

Kyle and I raced toward the doors of the cathedral. We ran as if we were being chased.

Every once in a while, a single murder, or a series of murders, horrifies us, catches the public's imagination in an almost obscene way. Jeffrey Dahmer's bizarre spree in Milwaukee; the murder of Gianni Versace and subsequent killings by Andrew Philip Cunanan; the Russian, Andrei Chikatilo, reputed to be the worst. Now this bloody rampage on two coasts of the United States.

It was fortunate that we had the FBI helicopter to get us out of Savannah and over to Charlotte. While we were still in the air, Kyle was in contact with his operators on the ground, who had surrounded a ramshackle farmhouse about fourteen miles outside Charlotte. I had never seen Kyle so animated and excited about a case before, not even Casanova or the Gentleman Caller.

"Looks like we caught a break," Kyle said to me. "No one will get out of that house until we get there. I like our chances."

"We'll see," I said. "I'm not convinced these are the same people." I had stopped making assumptions about the killers. Why Charlotte, North Carolina? This would be the fourth attack in the same city. Had everything been leading us to Charlotte? Why?

Kyle listened to another situation report from agents on the scene, then he related the relevant details to me. "The parents of a seventeen-year-old Charlotte boy were attacked in bed late last night. Both bludgeoned to death. A claw hammer was found at the scene. There were bites on the bodies. There's evidence that either a large animal attacked the two adults, or the assailant was wearing sharpened metal fangs." Kyle rolled his eyes. He still didn't have much truck with vampires.

"The boy then fled to an abandoned farmhouse near the Loblolly River outside Charlotte. As far as we know, the people loitering in the house are mostly teenagers. Apparently, some are as young as twelve or thirteen. It's a mess, Alex. Everything is on hold until we get there. The age of some of these kids is a real problem."

A little more than ten minutes later we landed in a wide meadow brimming with wildflowers. We were less than three miles from the house where the killer might be hiding. This was Bonnie and Clyde stuff. By the time we got to the thick woods surrounding the house it was past five o'clock. It would be dark soon enough.

The house was a two-story wood-framed structure obscured by an overgrowth of wisteria and myrtle. Pinecones, hickory nuts, and what are known locally as sweet gum monkey balls covered the ground where we hid and watched. Everything about the place brought back memories of where I had grown up in the South. Not too many happy moments, unfortunately. My mother and father had both died in their thirties, well before their time. My therapist has a theory that I see myself dying young because both my parents did. The Mastermind seems to hold a similar theory, and perhaps wants to put it into action soon.

The roof of the old house was sharply pitched; a narrow attic window was broken in two places. The peeling white-painted clapboards were mostly intact, but the asbestos-shingled roof was bare in spots, revealing tar paper. Creepy, creepy, creepy.

The FBI was supersensitive to the fact that most of those inside the house were probably under twenty years old. They didn't know exactly who they were or if any had police records. There was no proof they were involved with the murders. It was decided that as long as we remained undetected, we'd wait until night to see if anyone left or entered. Then we would move on the house. The situation was getting sticky, maybe political, and there would be consequences if a minor got hurt or killed.

In sharp contrast, everything seemed peaceful in the woods; the ramshackle house was strangely quiet considering all the young people who were supposed to be in there. No loud laughter or rock music, no smells of cooking. Dim lights were flickering.

My growing fear was that the killer was already gone, that we were too late.

Someone was whispering close to my ear — it was Kyle.

"Let's go, Alex. It's time to move on them."

At four in the morning, he gave the signal to breach the house. Kyle was calling all the shots. He had authority over the locals too.

I accompanied a dozen agents outfitted in blue wind-breakers. Nobody was feeling too secure about the raid. We moved cautiously to within seventy-five yards of the house, the edge of the pine forest. Two snipers, who had dug in about thirty yards from the house, radioed that it was still quiet inside. Too quiet?

"These are mostly young kids," Kyle reminded us before we went in. "But protect yourselves first."

We crawled on our hands and knees until we were as close as the snipers. Then we rushed the house, using three entrances to get inside.

Kyle and I went through the front, the others through the side and back. A couple of flash-bang grenades went off. There was screaming on the ground floor. High-pitched. Kids. No gunshots yet.

It was a weird, chaotic scene. Stoned kids — lots of them, most in their underwear or nude. At least twenty teenagers had been sleeping on the ground floor. No electricity, just candles. The place smelled of urine, weed, mildew, cheap wine, and wax. Insane Clown Posse and Killah Priest posters were hung on the walls.

The tiny front hall and the living room merged into an open area. The kids had been asleep on blankets or just the wooden floor. Now they were awake, and angry, shouting, "Pigs! Cops! Get the fuck out!"

Agents were rousting more of them on the second floor. There were fistfights but still no gunshots. No one seriously hurt yet. A sense of anticlimax.

A skinny boy screamed at the top of his voice and rushed at me. He seemed to have no fear. His eyes were bloodred. Color contacts. He was growling and drooling frothy saliva. I took him down in a headlock, cuffed him, told him to chill before he got himself hurt. I doubt that he weighed much more than a hundred and forty pounds, but he was wiry and stronger than he looked.

An agent near me wasn't so lucky — a heavyset redheaded girl bit him in the cheek as he was attempting to restrain her. Then the girl bit into his chest. The agent howled and struggled to get her off. She held on like a dog with a bone.

I yanked the girl away and cuffed her arms behind her back. She wore a black T-shirt with "Merry Fuckin' Xmas Bitch" printed on it. She had tattoos of snakes and skulls everywhere. She was screaming in my face, "You are unworthy! You suck!"

"The one we want is in the cellar! The killer," Kyle called to me. "Irwin Snyder." I followed him through a dysfunctional kitchen, then out back to a slanted wooden door that led to a cellar.

We had our guns drawn. Based on what we knew about the viciousness and suddenness of Irwin Snyder's attack, nobody wanted to go into the cellar. I yanked open the door and we edged inside.