The ninth book in the Kathleen Mallory series, 2006

Only two people in this book are not fictional characters: Fran Houser of the MidPoint Café in Adrian, Texas; and Joe Villanueva of Clines Corners in New Mexico. Many thanks to them for the history lessons and for permission to write them into my landscape. And thanks to my researcher Dianne Burke for technical support above and beyond. I thank Richard Hughes for musical suggestions and psychological insights. My brother, Bruce, contributed expertise on camping gear that you won’t find in stores. He also gave me the recipe for cowboy coffee, and helpful hints like how to set fire to wet logs and kindling. Ed Herland was my Porsche consultant, and I could not have done this without him. Thanks, Ed. And thanks to Patrick O’Connell (no relation) for help with roll bars and airbags, and to his father, Dan, for a guided tour of the Seligman loop of Route 66 in Arizona. And a long overdue thanks to the work of E. W. Mitchell, The Aetiology of Serial Murder: Towards an Integrated Model (1997), University of Cambridge, UK. This academic may not appreciate finding his name in a work of fiction, but his excellent paper helped to shape my view of profiling as the dog-and-pony show of junk science. As for The Who, the Eagles, Rolling Stones, Beatles, Bob Dylan, Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin and all the other musicians, singers and writers of melodies and lyrics- thanks for the road songs.

The haunt of Grand Central Station was a small girl with matted hair and dirty clothes. She appeared only in the commuter hours, morning and evening, when the child believed that she could go invisibly among the throng of travelers in crisscrossing foot traffic, as if that incredible face could go anywhere without attracting stares. Concessionaires reached for their phones to call the number on a policeman’s c ard and say, “She’s back.”

The girl always stood beneath the great arch, pinning her hopes on a tip from a panhandler: Everyone in the world would pass by-so said the smelly old bum-if she could only wait long enough. The child patiently stared into a thousand faces, waiting for a man she had never met. She was certain to know him by his eyes, the same rare color as her own, and he would recognize young Kathy’s face as a small copy of her mother’s. Her father would be so happy to see her; this belief was unshakable, for she was a little zealot in the faith of the bastard child.

He never came. Months passed by. She never learned.

Toward the close of this day, the child had a tired, hungry look about her. Hands clenched into fists, she raged against the panhandler, whose fairy tale had trapped her here in the long wait.

At the top of rush hour, she spotted a familiar face, but it was the wrong one. The fat detective was seen in thin slices between the bodies of travelers. Though he was on the far side of the mezzanine, Kathy fancied that she could hear him huffing and wheezing as he ran toward her. And she waited.

Crouching.

One second, two seconds, three.

When he came within grabbing distance, the game was on-all that passed for sport in the life of a homeless child. She ran for the grand staircase, shooting past him and making the fat man spin. Sneakers streaking, slapping stone, the little blond bullet in blue jeans gained the stairs, feet flying, only alighting on every third step.

Laughing, laughing.

At the top of the stairs, she turned around to see that the chase was done-and so early this time. Her pursuer had reached the bottom step and could not climb another. The fat man was in some pain and out of breath. One hand went to his chest, as if he could stop a heart attack that way.

The little girl mouthed the words, Die, old man.

They locked eyes. His were pleading, hers were hard. And she gave him her famous Gotcha smile.

One day, she would become his prisoner-but not today-and Louis Markowitz would become her foster father. Years later and long after they had learned to care for one another, each time Kathy Mallory gave him this smile, he would check his back pocket to see if his wallet was still there.

It appeared that the woman had died by her own hand in this Upper West Side apartment. It was less apparent that anyone had ever lived here.

The decor was a cold scheme of sharp corners, hard edges of glass and steel, with extremes of black leather and bare white walls. Though fully furnished, a feeling of emptiness prevailed. And the place had been recently abandoned-unless one counted the stranger, the corpse left behind in Kathy Mallory’s front room.

The gunshot to the victim’s heart made more sense after reading the handwritten words on a slip of paper that might pass for a suicide note: Love is the death of me.

“If only she’d signed the damn thing,” said Dr. Slope.

The homicide detective nodded.

Chief Medical Examiner Edward Slope had turned out for this special occasion of sudden death at a cop’s address. If not for a personal interest in this case, the remains might have been shipped to his morgue on a city bus for all the doctor cared. A house call was not in his job description; that was the province of an on-call pathologist. But tonight Dr. Slope had departed from protocol and forgotten his socks. And, though he wore a pajama top beneath his suit jacket, he was still the best-dressed man in the room.

By contrast, Detective Sergeant Riker had the rumpled look of one who had gone to bed in his street clothes. His face also had a slept-in effect, creased with the imprint of a wadded cocktail napkin. Drunk or sober, Riker’s nature was easygoing, but his hooded eyes gave him a constant air of suspicion. He could not help it, and he could not hide it tonight of all nights. The gunshot victim had been found in his partner’s apartment, and now he awaited the official coin toss of homicide or suicide.

Because the medical examiner had known Detective Mallory in her puppy days, the older man was only mildly suspicious, only a little sarcastic when he asked, “And where is Kathy tonight?”

Riker shrugged this off, as if to say that he had no idea. Untrue. By a trace of credit card activity, he knew that Mallory had filled her gas tank in the states of Pennsylvania and Ohio. But he thought it best not to mention that his young partner was on the run, for the medical examiner had not yet signed off on a cause of death. The detective looked down at the dead woman, who appeared close to his own age of fifty-five. If not for the bullet hole in her chest, Savannah Sirus might be asleep. She looked all in, exhausted by her life.

Dr. Slope knelt beside the corpse. “Well, I can understand why you’d want a second opinion.”

Oh, yeah.

And Detective Riker needed this opinion from someone in the tiny circle of people who cared for his young partner, though she did nothing to encourage affection. Both men had been forbidden to call her Kathy since her graduation from the police academy; she so liked that frosty distance of her surname. However, the doctor had found it hard to break a habit formed in Mallory’s c hildhood, and so she was always Kathy to him. Brave man, he even called her that to her face.