"This will take weeks," Lennie said heavily.

"It can't." Steven's fists clenched on top of his desk. "Meg thinks he'll strike again soon."

Wednesday, October 5, 10:30 A.M.

"Do you have to do that?" Casey asked irritably as Jenna paced the length of the teachers' lounge for the hundredth time. "You're making me crazy."

Jenna shot her a hostile look. "Forgive me if I' in a bit preoccupied. It's not like the police are upstairs in my classroom or anything. How can you sit and grade papers like nothing happened?"

Casey scrawled a grade on the top of one theme paper and plucked another from the pile that didn't seem to diminish over time. "Because if I don't get these Crime and Punishment themes graded by tomorrow, I can't get my quarter grades in early and I can't take off Friday. And if I can't take off Friday, Ned will be going to Myrtle Beach all by himself while my new bikini and I stay home." She looked up with a sideways grin. "And that's not gonna happen."

Friday. Jenna's brain kicked back into gear. It was a teacher in-service day where faculty prepared report cards and students got a day off. All in all, a really raw deal all the way around. "You still want to borrow my car for the trip?"

"Of course. Ned's salivating over it already."

Jenna winced. The thought of Ned driving Adam's car was not a pleasant one.

Casey's smile was wry. "Don't worry, Jenna. I'll drive." She frowned. "Unless you don't want me to take Adam's car. I know how attached you are to it."

Attached to a car of all things. It should be silly, a grown woman attached to a car. But Jenna remembered the raw fury she'd felt the night before when Rudy and his friends tampered with the gas tank. Of course she was attached. It had been Adam's. Still, it was just a car, she told herself. A grownup toy to be enjoyed. Life was too short after all.

"Don't be silly," she said and watched Casey's frown relax. 'Take the car and have fun. Besides, if you've got it, Rudy and his friends can't touch it, right? I need your truck this weekend anyway. I promised to take Steven's son Nicky to the park to teach his sheepdog how to sit."

Casey's frown snapped back into place. "You're going to entertain his son after last night?"

Jenna shrugged. What had Steven really done? When the steam cleared, what had he done? He'd kissed her and touched her and set her body on fire. Very nicely, she should add. Then he'd stopped. There really hadn't been a whole lot more to it than that. He'd made no promises, taken nothing she hadn't freely offered. Canceling on Nicky would be a hundred times worse because she had promised. "I made a promise to Nicky and that really has nothing to do with Steven."

She expected Casey to make some witty retort, but there was quiet at the table where Casey sat staring down at the theme paper she was grading, her pixie face troubled.

"What's wrong, Case?"

Casey glanced up, then back down at the paper. "This is the first unique theme I've read."

Jenna lifted her brows. "And that's a problem… why?"

Casey bit at her lip. "Because this student seems to identify with the story's main character a little too much."

Jenna rewound her brain. She'd been forced to read Crime and Punishment in high school, too.

"Wait a minute. Didn't the main character in Crime and Punishment kill an old woman?"

Casey nodded, still staring down at the theme with a troubled frown. "Because she annoyed him and because he wanted to know what it felt like to take another life."

Now frowning herself, Jenna walked over to where Casey sat. "Which kid is this?"

"Dr. Marshall?" Officer Pullman asked from the doorway and both Jenna and Casey whipped their heads around to see him.

"What did you find?" Jenna asked.

Pullman pulled a chair from the table. "Sit down, Dr. Marshall."

Her nerves jangled. "I'd really rather stand if you don't mind."

"Listen to the nice man with the shiny badge, Jen," Casey commanded sharply. "Sit your ass down in the chair." Casey looked over at Pullman with a sour grimace. "She's been driving me nuts with the pacing ever since you arrived."

Pullman's lips twitched as Jenna flopped into the chair he provided. He took the chair next to her and brought out his little notepad. "Well, the animal hanging from your ceiling was a possum at one time. It was most likely a roadkill somebody picked up from the side of the road this morning."

Relief shot through her. At least no one had purposely tortured the poor animal. "Did you find any evidence of who did this?"

Pullman shook his head, much as Jenna had expected him to. "Looks like whoever did this wore gloves. But it also looks like this isn't the only trouble you've had since your tires got slashed. I couldn't help but notice the artwork on your walls. I take it the QB hasn't brought up his grade?"

Jenna scowled. "The QB is waiting for me to fold."

"The QB will be waiting a good long time," Casey added darkly.

Pullman flipped his notepad closed. "Well, we dusted for prints, but I doubt we'll get anything concrete. You've just got too many people going in and out of your classroom." He stood up and looked down. "I'll tell you the same thing that I told you Friday night. Watch your back."

Wednesday, October 5, 3:45 P.M.

Harry threw his notebook on the conference-room table and dropped into the chair directly across from Steven's, disgust all over his face. Sandra took the chair next to Harry, looking tired.

"We've been checking perps with sex priors all day," Harry complained. "I need to bathe."

Sandra looked over at him with amused sympathy. Sex perps were her niche forte. One hell of a niche forte, Steven thought. Give him murderers any damn day of the week. "Don't worry, Harry," she said, "you'll develop a Teflon coating after a while. All the slime will just roll off."

Nancy rubbed her forehead with one hand while sliding her half-glasses off her nose with the other. "How long will that take? To develop the Teflon coating, I mean.''

Sandra shrugged. "Five or six years."

Steven watched them all from his own chair. "But how about the vics, Sandra? How long before you develop a Teflon coating so that they don't stick in your mind?"

Sandra's face sobered. "Never."

Steven sighed. "Me either." He looked around. "Has anyone seen Kent or Meg?"

"Meg said she had an appointment," Nancy said. "Haven't seen Kent since this morning."

"Here I am," said Kent, huffing a little bit. He plopped into a chair. "Sorry I'm late."

"Well, let's get started, folks. Thanks for coming back this afternoon. We've got news."

"From the McDonald's search this morning?" Sandra asked, leaning forward.

"I wish," Steven replied grimly. He placed a sheet of paper on the center of the table. "Look."

His team gathered around the paper he'd already had analyzed six ways to Tuesday. "No prints, no identifying marks," he told them. "Just rather general directions on where to find Samantha Eggleston. It was dropped off with the mail this afternoon. I got it an hour ago."

"In the mail?" Harry asked sharply.

Steven shook his head. "Nope, just with it. No utilization of the U.S. Postal Service."

"Good," said Harry.

"I agree," said Steven. If their killer had used the U.S. Postal Service or even a fax they would have found themselves tangled ass-deep in Feds. "It's a printed sheet-came off a standard laser jet printer, just like the one in our office."

"And hundreds of other offices," Sandra muttered.

" 'Find her before it's too late. If you can,'" Nancy read and looked up at Steven. "Too late for what, I wonder."