The man stepped into the alley, fumbling for something at his waist. I looked down the corridor in back but it was pitch black. I was trapped!

Then it was like a physics experiment, with equal and opposite forces responding. I shot up and stumbled back on deadened legs. The man also staggered backward, a look of shock on his face. I could see he was Asian, though only his teeth and astonished eyes were clear in the murky shadows.

I pressed against the wall, as much for support as for cover. He leered at me in a bewildered way, shook his head as though perplexed, then lurched off down the block, tucking his shirt and zipping his fly.

For a moment I just stood there, talking my heart rate down from the stratosphere.

A wino who only wanted to pee. He?s gone.

What if it had been St. Jacques?

It wasn?t.

You left yourself no out. You?re being stupid. You?re going to get yourself killed.

It was just a wino.

Go home. J.S. is right. Leave this to the cops.

They won?t do it.

It?s not your problem.

Gabby is.

She?s probably in Ste. Adele.

Had me there.

Calmer, I resumed my surveillance. I thought some more about Saint Vitus. Saint Vitus?s dance. That?s it. It was widespread in the 1500s. People grew nervous and irritable, then their limbs started twitching. They thought it was a form of hysteria and hiked off to the saint. Then what about Saint Anthony? The fire. Saint Anthony?s fire. Something to do with ergot in grain. Didn?t it also make people act crazy?

I thought about cities I?d like to visit. Abilene. Bangkok. Chittagong. I?d always liked that name, Chittagong. Maybe I?d go to Bangladesh. I was in the D?s when Julie came out of the St. Vitus and walked calmly up the block. I held my ground. She was no longer my mark.

I didn?t have to hold for long. My prey was also leaving.

I gave him half a block, then dropped in behind. His movements reminded me of the trash rat. He scurried, shoulders hunched, head tucked, bag clutched to his chest. As I followed, I compared the figure ahead to the one I?d seen bolt from the Berger Street room. Not a good match as memory went, but St. Jacques had been too quick and his appearance too unexpected. This could be the same man, but I just hadn?t gotten a good enough look the other time. This guy was definitely not moving as fast.

For the third time in as many hours I wove my way through a labyrinth of unlit side streets, tailing a quarry as close as I dared. I prayed he wouldn?t stop off at another beer joint. I wasn?t up to any more surveillance.

I needn?t have worried. After snaking through a maze of tributary streets and side alleys, the man made one final turn and went directly to a bow-fronted graystone. It was like a hundred others I?d passed tonight, though a bit less seedy, the stone a little less dirty, the rusted stairs curving to doors slightly less in need of paint.

He took the stairs quickly, the metallic slap of his footfalls sharp against the air, then disappeared through an ornately carved door. A light went on almost immediately on the second floor of the bow, showing windows half open, curtains hanging limp and lifeless. A shadowy figure moved about the room, veiled by the graying lace.

I crossed the street and waited. No alley this time.

For a while the figure shifted back and forth, then it disappeared.

I waited.

It?s him, Brennan. Outa here.

He could be visiting someone. Dropping something off.

You?ve got him. Let?s go.

I checked my watch-eleven-twenty. Still early. Ten more minutes.

It took less. The figure reappeared, raised the windows to full open, and vanished again. Then the room went black. Bedtime!

I waited five minutes to be sure no one left the building, then needed no more convincing. Ryan and the boys could take it from here.

I noted the address and began winding my way back to the car, hoping I could find it. The air was still leaden, the heat as intense as midafternoon. Leaves and curtains hung motionless, as if laundered and left to dry. The neon of St. Laurent glowed over the tops of the darkened buildings, backlighting the maze of streets through which I hurried.

The clock on the dash said midnight when I pulled into the garage. I was improving. Home before dawn.

The noise didn?t register at first. I was across the garage and singling out my key when it finally intruded on my conscious mind. I stood still to listen. A high-pitched beeping was coming from behind me, near the main auto entrance.

As I walked in that direction, trying to pinpoint its source, the tone clarified into a sharp, pulsating beat. When I drew near I could see that the noise came from a door to the right of the car ramp. Though the door appeared closed, the lock was only partly engaged, thus triggering the alarm.

I pushed, then pulled on the safety bar, slamming the door fully shut. The beeping stopped abruptly, leaving the garage deathly quiet. I reminded myself to mention the apparent malfunction to Winston.

The condo felt cool and fresh after my hours in hot, dirty crevices. For a moment I just stood in the hall, allowing the refrigerated air to roll over my hot skin. Birdie brushed back and forth against my leg, arching his back and purring in greeting. I looked down at him. Soft, white hairs clung to my sweaty legs. I stroked his head, fed him, and checked my messages. One hang-up. I headed for the shower.

As I lathered and relathered I ran over the events of the evening in my mind. What had I accomplished? Now I knew where Julie?s lingerie loony lived. At least I assumed that?s who he was since today was Thursday. So what? He might have nothing to do with the murders.

But I couldn?t quite convince myself. Why? Why did I think this guy was hooked in? Why did I think it was my job to nail him? Why was I afraid for Gabby? Julie had been fine.

After my shower I was still keyed up and knew I wouldn?t sleep, so I dug a chunk of Brie and a wedge of tomme de ch #232;vre de savoie from the refrigerator and poured myself a ginger ale. Wrapping myself in a quilt, I stretched out on the couch, peeled an orange, and ate it with the cheese. Letterman couldn?t hold my attention. Back to the debate.

Why did I just spend four hours packed in with spiders and rats to spy on some guy who likes to see whores in lingerie? Why not let the cops handle it?

It kept coming back to that. Why didn?t I just tell Ryan what I knew and ask him to roust this guy?

Because it was personal. But not in the way I?d been telling myself. It wasn?t just a threat in my garden, an attack on my safety or Gabby?s. Something else was causing me to obsess over these cases, something deeper and more troubling. For the next hour, little by little, I admitted it to myself.

The truth was that, lately, I was scaring myself. I saw violent death every day. Some woman killed by some man and thrown into a river, a wood, a dump. Some child?s fractured bones uncovered in a box, a culvert, a plastic bag. Day after day I cleaned them up, examined them, sorted them out. I wrote reports. Testified. And sometimes I felt nothing. Professional detachment. Clinical disinterest. I saw death too often, too close, and I feared I was losing a sense of its meaning. I knew I couldn?t grieve for the human being that each of my cadavers had been. That would empty my emotional reservoir for sure. Some amount of professional detachment was mandatory in order to do the work, but not to the extent of abandoning all feeling.

The deaths of these women had stirred something in me. I ached for their fear, their pain, their helplessness in the face of madness. I felt anger and outrage, and a need to root out the animal responsible for the slaughter. I felt for these victims, and my response to their deaths was like a lifeline to my feelings. To my own humanity and my celebration of life. I felt, and I was grateful for the feeling.