She leaned into the camera. “Please come forward. Call me at the command center I’ve set up at Las Vegas’s Transylvania Hotel. I will personally reward anyone who brings us useful information with a no-questions-asked award of a hundred thousand dollars. All you have to do is call.”

“Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.” The host gazed at her with adulatory eyes. “But Dr. Spencer, shouldn’t any potential witnesses call the police?”

She drew in her breath. “Of course, I can’t suggest that any informant should not contact the police. All I can ask is that you call me, too. Give me a fighting chance to find this monster.”

“Given that kind of incentive, Doctor, I think anyone out there with information will be calling you first.”

“That filthy murderer had better hope they don’t.” Her eyes lowered, then darkened. “Because if I get to you first, mister, it won’t be so I can read you your rights.”

He clutched the remote, punching the power button, then flinging it at the set.

He was breathing rapidly, perspiring. His entire body was shaking.

She was coming after him. That woman was coming after him. That damnable whited sepulcher-pretending to be so noble, when in fact she was as base and vile as the serpent. Destroying his reputation, tainting his good work with her relentless animadversions.

She was threatening him, threatening him with her money and her detectives and her sick sick words. She had called him a sexual deviant. A torturer of young women. She had sat there in front of thousands of people, perhaps millions, and told them he was a demented necrophiliac!

And she had sent them hunting for him, enticing them with her petty little cumshaw.

He paced around the living room, trying to calm himself, to get a grip on his thoughts. This could not be permitted. He was working at a sacred cause. He sought the truth and the light, the Golden Age. And he wasn’t just doing it for himself; he was doing it for all of them. Even Annabel. Even that hideous woman, so determined to repugn him at every step!

He had tried to maintain some degree of gentility throughout this process, but if more direct means were required, then he had no choice but to provide them. Even if it wasn’t in the plan, even if she could never be an offering. She must be stopped. And so she would be. And so would be all those who stood against him at the dawn of the Golden Age.

“Her name was Lenore Johnson,” Granger said, not bothering with any niceties such as “Good morning” or “Hello” or even “How’s tricks?”

“Lenore? The lost love in ‘The Raven’ is named Lenore.”

“Must be a different chick,” Granger brilliantly opined. “This one worked at an S &M club a few blocks off U.S. 69.”

I stared at the photo he slid onto my desk. It was her, all right. I’d recognize that head anywhere. “Lenore Johnson, huh? Not very Asian-sounding.”

“Mixed-race. The Asian is all on her mother’s side.”

“Positive ID not twelve hours after we found the decapitated body. Nice work. How’d you manage it?”

“That’s why-”

“-they call you detectives. Right, I remember. Know what, Granger? You’re full of it.”

“Least I still have a job.”

Why, why, why? Why did he have to be such an asshole? “It wasn’t my fault O’Bannon yanked my badge. He was being pressured-”

“Don’t make excuses. By all rights, you should be out on your-”

“Can’t you see that I’m trying!” I screamed at him, so loud that I attracted attention all across the office. “Can’t you see I’m trying to do better? I need this job!” My eyes began to water up. I hate that. It’s so… girlish. I felt humiliated. “Why do you have to hate me so much?”

“You know the answer to that question,” Granger said quietly.

“Do you think you’re the only one who loved him?” I cried. “You goddamn, self-righteous-”

“Hey, whoa, qué pasa, man?” It was Patrick, riding in on his white horse. “What’s going down? Big case discussion?”

I threw myself into my not very comfortable desk chair and wiped the water from my face. “Granger was telling me about his big breakthrough in the case. He’s identified the last victim.”

“That’s his big breakthrough?” Patrick turned toward Granger. “I thought one of your detectives recognized her from the head shot. If you’ll pardon the expression.”

I raised an eyebrow.

Granger stammered. “W-Well… we were assisted by a certain degree of facial recognition pattern in-”

I gave him a look that would turn flesh to stone. “You mean your great moment of deduction came because one of your detectives is into S &M?”

He cleared his throat. “It’s important that detectives stay hip to the mean streets of the city. You never know when-”

“Oh, give me a break.” I did my best imitation of his whiny voice. “ ‘That’s why they call us detectives.’ Jesus. More like ‘That’s why they call us porn addicts.’ ”

“Hey,” Granger said, “I didn’t see you finding the corpse. Figuring out what that ‘neon’ reference meant.”

Patrick spoke again. “Didn’t O’Bannon tell me that the owner of that sign graveyard found the corpse? And called you.”

I couldn’t believe it. “And this was how you obtained your other big insight?” I stood up and did my best impression of a macho stud walk-even groped myself. “We be studs. We be detectives.”

“You’re disgusting,” Granger said, walking away.

“Sticks and stones,” I muttered, watching with pleasure as he departed. Probably stupid to piss him off so badly. But if he’d had the clout to get me fired, it would’ve happened a long time ago.

Darcy made his way up the stairs. I grabbed his hand. His face lit up like a lightbulb. “Darcy, guess what the third victim’s name is.”

He thought for, like, a nanosecond. “Lenore.”

“What? Someone already told you.”

“I do not think anyone told me. I just got off the bus. But I thought that maybe all of the girl’s names were from Poe poems. And Lenore is the most popular-”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I do not think you asked me.”

“You don’t have to be asked, Darcy. If you know something, you should just… volunteer it.”

“My dad does not like it when I do that. He says I tell people a lot of boring things they don’t want to hear, and sometimes I say things that get me into trouble because I don’t understand. He says I should be quiet unless-”

“Listen to me, Darcy. New rules. If you know something-anything-you tell me. Immediately.”

Patrick stepped in. “So the victims’ names are all found in these poems?”

“Right. I was suspicious when we had an Annabel-’Annabel Lee’ is one of Poe’s most famous verses. But having a Lenore clinches it. That’s the name of the girl in ‘The Raven,’ and he used the name in other poems as well. Always to represent some lost love. Actually, all of these names represent some unrequited or lost love.” I tossed Darcy my library copy of Poe: His Life and Legacy by Jeffrey Meyers. “Would you mind reading this tonight?”

“Okay,” he said with alacrity. “Why?”

“Because you’ll remember it.”

A line crossed Patrick’s forehead. “You really think this biographical material will be important?”

“It may be critical,” I answered. “It may hold the key to the whole puzzle. Even that last message.”

“So in your view, our killer thinks he’s Poe?”

I squirmed. “I don’t know that he literally thinks he’s Poe. It’s more that… that… he takes inspiration from him, his work. Not just when he’s selecting his murder methods, but-everything.”

“Edgar Allan Poe is his role model?”

“Kind of, yeah. Which explains a lot. According to this book, the public image of Poe as this ghoulish creepazoid is inaccurate. His work was creepy, but he wasn’t.” Except when he was on a drinking binge, of course. “He thought of himself as a proper southern gentleman. He was offended by vulgarity, impropriety.”