“They were drunk,” Mooney said. “Maybe he tricked them into going someplace more secluded. He could have lured them into his vehicle. I could see them as good Samaritans,” Mooney said. “If the guy pretends he’s hurt, they walk right into his trap. Vintage Ted Bundy. He was a good looking guy, All American Boy. He’d wear a fake cast and pretend he needed help. Once the victim let her guard down, he’d attack.”

“What do you think he’s driving to pull off a stunt like that?” Alves said. “I’m picturing a van with tinted-out windows or a rusted-out old pickup with a cap. Every time I see something like that cruising around, I think ‘serial killer.’”

“It might not matter what he’s driving. Remember, he’s carrying a gun, the great equalizer,” Mooney said. “Guns tend to encourage people to cooperate.”

“Maybe the kids saw the gun, thought they were being robbed and figured they’d be released unharmed if they cooperated?”

“Even with a gun, it would be tough to control two people while driving. Either one of the kids could have freaked out on him and he’d have to kill them in the vehicle or risk getting caught.”

“What if there was more than one killer?” Alves said. “One guy to drive and one guy to control the victims until they got them to the primary scene.”

“This is the work of one man.”

“Okay. What if he’s not driving a van. What if he’s in an unmarked police car or something that looks like one? If he pretended to be a cop, he could have scooped them up without much trouble.”

“What if he is a cop?” Mooney asked.

“Either way, he could have told them they were under arrest for drunk and disorderly, or that he was taking them into protective custody until they sobered up. He could have placed them in cuffs and taken them wherever he wanted. Killed them at his leisure.”

“I’d like to get back out there before the next home game and talk with some of the tailgaters, see if they saw any suspicious vehicles cruising around or if they saw someone that looked like a cop riding around in an unmarked car. Problem is BC’s on the road the next two weeks.”

“What are the chances we’ll run into anyone that was there last weekend?”

“Pretty good,” Mooney said. “The same people stake out the same spots for every home game. This guy grabbed these kids. If we get lucky, one of the tailgaters saw something.”

“Three weeks is a long time to wait to talk to a bunch of drunks about something they saw a month earlier.”

“Read me that list of witnesses. I’m going over to BC right now.”

Mooney was tired. He crumpled into the seat of his newly assigned Ford Five Hundred. He didn’t appreciate the downgrade from the Crown Vic that supervisors used to drive.

After leaving headquarters, he’d driven to Chestnut Hill. He used Alves’s list of witnesses who had seen Courtney and Josh before they disappeared Saturday night. According to their friends, the couple had been tailgating along with the rest of the BC community. The game was a major event at the school, the first home game, one of only two nationally televised night games.

Their friends said that Courtney and Josh had had a few drinks. Neither of them drank often, so they were pretty intoxicated. The one thing the witnesses agreed on was that the two were in love. They went for long walks, held hands, talked, were affectionate in public. They seemed to enjoy being alone and talking. Their closest friends said their favorite spots were the area around the Chestnut Hill Reservoir and Chestnut Hill Park where they’d sit in the bleachers by the baseball field.

Mooney knew the area. At the park he pulled into one of the spots by the bleachers. When he was in high school, he had played a few games on that baseball diamond. First base for the Boston Latin Wolfpack. A few years back he’d played in a charity softball game with some cops and DAs on the same field. On the night of the murders, the area would have been teeming with people. BC was playing Florida State, one of the biggest games of the season.

How could the killer have abducted and killed the couple with so many potential witnesses in the area? Mooney believed that the woman was the killer’s main target. The man was more of a prop needed to set up the scene. But the male also complicated matters. It would be harder to take two people. Probably the male victim was shot right away. The friends Mooney had spoken with confirmed that Courtney and Josh had eaten hot dogs and sausages not long before they left the game. Exactly what the ME found in their stomachs.

So how did the killer pull it off? Mooney scanned the bleachers littered with empty beer bottles and cans. The sweet smell of spilled beer was in the air. Courtney and Josh had been a little drunk, but that didn’t explain why no one saw anything. Mooney stared out at the empty ball field.

Someone must have seen something.

Sleep sat in his car in the parking lot at the far end of the field. He watched the detective walking along the bleachers and then down onto the baseball diamond. This was the detective who had read his messages and still didn’t understand. Now here he was looking for clues to find out what had happened to the two lovers.

He would not find any. Because Sleep hadn’t left any. He was careful not to leave evidence that would implicate him. The first time he was impulsive, careless. Not any more. Now, everything was planned perfectly. And, of course, he had made himself invisible. The cops would only find what he wanted them to find. The man and the woman. The black and the white. The life and the death. The Tai-ji. The message.

Sleep watched as the detective made his way back up to the last row of the bleachers and sat on the aluminum bench. He slumped forward, hands dangling between his knees, staring down. Body language said the detective was beat, and it was only the first day of the investigation. Sergeant Mooney would have to get used to those feelings just as he had ten years ago.

Sergeant Detective Ray Figgs ducked into the men’s room and took a swig of scotch from the flask in his breast pocket. Carefully unfolding a bar napkin, he took a small cache of peanuts and shoved them into his mouth. He’d chew them as long as possible before swallowing. Wiping the salt from his hand onto his wrinkled pants, he straightened out his tie and stepped into the corridor. Ballistics was around the corner.

Figgs rang the bell, and one of the ballisticians let him in. He picked a pair of latex gloves from one of the boxes lying on the desk top, and put them on. He took a seat and waited for Sergeant Reginald Stone. Stone had promised to do a rush job on the bullet that killed George Wheeler.

Stone came from his office carrying an envelope and a plastic vial containing a single bullet. He secured the bullet and gestured for Figgs to come over to a comparison microscope. “Ray, this is the projectile you brought me this morning. The George Wheeler homicide. Forty cal.” Stone took a second vial with a second bullet from the manila envelope and secured that alongside the first. “This is from the Jesse Wilcox homicide. The number of lands and grooves gives us our weapon, the striations give us a match.”

Figgs had anticipated this news, but the reality hit hard. The same.40 was being passed around all over the city. It didn’t make sense that a community gun, a stash gun, was being used by so many rival gangs. It would be impossible to link it to any one suspect. “How many incidents is it tied to?” Figgs asked, dreading the answer.

“Close to a dozen, if you count everything, homicides, nonfatals, and shots fired.”

“Any connections between them?” Figgs asked.

“None that I know of. But the analysts at the BRIC have mapped each incident where ballistic evidence was recovered. That’ll give you a history of the gun and how it’s been used.”