"No contact at all?"

"Not for almost four years. By that time she had been fired from the magazine and was ready to try AA again. I had just lost my partner to AIDS and was pretty desperate. Emily and I kind of reinforced each other through some of our darkest hours. From that point on we've been really close."

"So when did you fall off the wagon?" Mike asked.

"September twelfth, 2001. One of my sisters worked for the Port Authority. My shop was just six blocks away from the World Trade Center and I tried to get there-"

"You don't have to explain that one, Teddy." Mike was still fighting his own demons from that tragic day. "And Emily?"

"She hung in till about a year ago. She'd lost another job and run through most of the small inheritance her parents had left her. I loaned her some money, of course, but she really struggled to make a living. Three strikes, she kept telling me. She was out."

"What did she mean by three strikes?" I asked.

"This was the third time she'd busted out of the program. The usual alcoholic's denial. Emily just convinced herself it wasn't meant to be."

"So we know about the second and third times she tried. Do you know anything about the first?"

Teddy thought for a minute. "It was right after college. She'd been drinking and doing drugs since she was a teenager. Cocaine mostly. One of her professors introduced her to a self-help group like AA. I know she was clean and sober for a couple of years. She did some really good writing then and published a few serious pieces."

"But lapsed?"

"Yes. She got into a relationship with one of the young men in the program. Something that happened when they were together just scared her to death. I don't know why-that's just the expression she always used. Emily used to say she liked it better being drunk and alone than living with a coke-snorting madman."

"That's what she called him-a madman?"

"Exactly."

"You know his name?" Mike asked.

"It was Monty, I think. I don't know whether that was his first or last name. But I'm pretty sure it was Monty."

"Ever meet him?"

"No, no, Detective. Emily never saw him again. He was someone she ran into in the program, the first time she was in rehab. She was a kid, right out of school. She moved in with him and they lived together for a while, but once they broke up she wanted no part of him."

"Because?"

"I never got into that kind of bedroom talk with her. I don't know whether it was the sex or the drugs, or some other problem he had."

"Were there any men in her life since then?"

"No one significant that I'm aware of. Friends, but nothing more serious."

"How often did you see Emily?"

"Well, we talked almost every day. We tried to have dinner together once or twice a week. Like last night, just something casual in the neighborhood."

"Did you speak with her yesterday? Was she alarmed about anything, or did she have any plans to meet someone before joining you?" I asked.

He shook his head. "No. I was too busy to talk when she called the store. She just left a message early in the day telling me what time she'd meet me for burgers at Hudson Bay. Around midnight, she said."

"But she didn't show. So what'd you do?"

"Naturally I was concerned. I called several times," Teddy said, looking at Mike for confirmation. "You must have heard the messages I left on her machine, didn't you?"

"Concerned about her safety?"

"No, not that," he said quietly. "I was afraid she might have started drinking at home. Maybe blacked out. Sometimes when she binges I worry-sorry, I mean I worried that she was going to wind up in the hospital, without any coverage to pay for the treatment." It usually took weeks for people to talk about the dead in the past tense.

"You had a spare key?"

"Yes. We had each other's keys, in case of emergency. Not this kind, of course."

"Has she got family?"

"Not in New York. Two sisters back home in Michigan." He leaned back and covered his eyes with his hand. "Lord, I guess I have to be calling them today, too. I'm not sure I can deal with it all."

Teddy continued to tell me about his friendship with Emily as Mike walked out of the room. He returned with a cotton-tipped swab and broke into the conversation long enough to ask the nervous witness if he minded rubbing the inside of his cheek for a sample of his DNA.

"Why do you need this?"

"Just routine. Have to run it against all the samples we find at the crime scene."

Teddy looked back and forth between us but seemed too cowed to question our authority. He poked around and handed Mike the slim wooden stick.

"Ever been arrested, Teddy?"

"Twice. Driving under the influence." His mood was now alternating between grief-stricken and surly. "I suppose you'll want to fingerprint me, too."

"I will, actually," Mike said. "There's bloody fingerprints all over the bedroom. We've got to eliminate yours. See if any of them don't match yours or Emily's."

Mike left the room again to voucher the swab and package it for the lab.

Teddy put his elbows on the lieutenant's desk and leaned forward as though to whisper to me. The whites of his eyes were shot through with red lines, and the tremor in his hands-probably DT's rather than anxiety-was more pronounced.

"You'll do me a favor, won't you, Miss Cooper?"

"If I can."

"You'll see Emily, won't you? I mean, at the morgue?"

"Well, I don't necessarily have to go there on this case, but Mike will certainly-"

"No, you must. You must promise me you'll go." He stopped talking and took my hands in his own. "Mr. Chapman will think this is crazy, but you have to make sure that Emily is dead. Really dead."

Spare me one more flaky witness, I thought to myself. The friend he had found eviscerated on her bed, a carving knife impaled in her back, had no more chance of breathing again than Ted Williams.

I squeezed Teddy Kroon's hands. "I'm not sure I understand. You want Emily to be dead?"

"No, no, no. What I mean is that Emily made me promise that if something ever happened to her, I'd make absolutely certain that she was dead. It terrified her more than anything."

He was agitated now, and I tried to calm him. There was no rational way to do that when I thought of how dreadful her last minutes must have been, but he didn't sound rational anymore either. "Most people are frightened of death, Mr. Kroon. This attack tonight was so quick, so cataclysmic-"

"Not death. It's burial before death that haunted her."

"Premature burial? That's what Emily was worried about?"

"Exactly, Miss Cooper."

I pulled myself away from him and stood up. I may not have seen the body bag on its way to the morgue, but I had seen the blood-drenched crime scene. "That's a promise I can make to you, Mr. Kroon. You have my word you won't have to worry about that. The medical examiner's office is the best in the country- Emily's in very capable hands, and there's no question that she's dead. This isn't fiction we're dealing with, so you need to get hold of yourself."

Teddy Kroon leaned back and rubbed his eyes with his hands. He laughed for the first time since I had come into the room. "You're right, Miss Cooper. Too much Poe. I guess Emily had an unhealthy obsession with Edgar Allan Poe."