“Maybe,” Malloy reminded her. “What else?”

“He asked me… He wanted to know which of Gerda’s friends was most likely to have had a beau that Gerda would want to steal. I told him Lisle. Oh. Malloy, I led him right to her!” she wailed.

“We don’t know that for sure,” Malloy said with a kindness that surprised her. He was trying to assuage her guilt, but it wasn’t working.

“Yes, we do! I killed her, Malloy, just as surely as if I beat her myself!” The tears were welling in her eyes, hot as lava, burning and stinging and begging to be shed.

“Don’t be a fool! He would’ve figured it out himself eventually. Or else he would’ve just killed every girl who might’ve led us to him. You probably saved some lives by giving him Lisle’s name.”

She couldn’t bear his vindication, and she certainly didn’t deserve it. She’d caused Lisle’s death, and she would carry the knowledge to her grave. The only hope she had for retaining her sanity was to put a noose around the killer’s neck.

“What can we do now?” she asked. “Will you take him in and question him?”

“Not likely, a man in his position,” Malloy said. “If I did and couldn’t prove he was the killer, he’d have my job. More important, he’d be free to keep on killing, because he’d know the other detectives wouldn’t dare detain him again either, for fear of what he’d do to them.”

“Then we need some proof,” Sarah said, her mind racing as she considered and rejected one idea after another. “Maybe some of the other friends of the dead girls would recognize him.”

“And what if they did? We already know he knew the victims. Unless one of the friends saw him committing a murder, which we know they didn’t, then he’d still go free.”

Sarah felt the old frustrations welling up, the helpless, powerless feeling she’d had when her husband Tom was killed and no one could find his murderer. Behind that came the wave of guilt and shame for her part in all this. “Then I’ll get him to confess,” she said.

Malloy reared back at that. “And exactly how will you do that?” he asked, his voice heavy with sarcasm.

“I don’t know yet, but I’ll figure it out. I was thinking maybe I’d take him back to Coney Island. He’s never killed anyone out there, so I should be safe.”

“Are you crazy?” Plainly, he believed she was. She’d never heard that tone in his voice before. It sounded almost like panic.

“I assure you, I’m perfectly sane. You’ve already said the usual methods won’t work with Dirk. He’s too rich and powerful for you to take him into the Mulberry Street cellar and beat him into confessing. He isn’t likely to come to you voluntarily to clear his conscience, either. That leaves us no other choice but to trick him.”

“Mrs. Brandt, you’re not a detective,” he reminded her with more than a hint of condescension. “You couldn’t trick a man like that.”

She gave him a disdainful glance. “Women of my social class are trained to trick men like Dirk Schyler from the time we can talk, Mr. Malloy. All I need is some time to decide the best method to use.”

He was looking at her as if he’d never seen her before. “And exactly how will you do that?”

He still didn’t believe her capable of such a deception. He obviously knew far too little about upper-class society.

“First of all, I have to figure out why he’s doing these terrible things.” She waited a moment while the ideas formed in her mind. “Unfortunately, it’s not all that difficult to imagine. Dirk has been a slave to social conventions all his life. That sort of constraint can drive people to do strange things. It drove me to become a midwife,” she confessed with a shrug. “I think it’s probably the reason he chose to spend his time with shop girls. With them he didn’t have to worry about all the rules that he’d been taught to obey, and he certainly didn’t have to observe any sexual restraint,” she went on, thinking aloud.

“Why not just go to a prostitute then, if that’s all he’s interested in?”

Sarah considered. “Possibly he has some compunction about using the services of prostitutes. Perhaps he doesn’t like the lack of romance he encountered with them. But the shop girls were different. They actually liked him, or at least pretended to, and they willingly granted their favors in exchange for trinkets instead of money. This would remove some of the taint. That was what he wanted, but when he got what he wanted, for some reason he couldn’t accept it. Perhaps he felt he had to punish these girls for not adhering to the stringent rules of morality he’d been taught. He might even believe they deserved to die. If I could get him to admit that…”

“And what if you can’t? What if he decides you know too much and kills you, too?” He was furious or outraged or perhaps simply exasperated. She was too distracted to figure it out, and besides, it didn’t matter.

“He won’t kill me, Malloy, because you’ll be following us, ready to arrest him the instant he admits what he’s done.”

THIS WAS CRAZY. The whole idea was crazy. Sarah Brandt was crazy for thinking of it, and Frank was crazy for agreeing.

Not that he’d had any choice. She was going ahead with her plan whether Frank helped her or not. Guilt was a terrible thing, and he knew she felt guilty for causing Lisle’s death. Maybe it was even a little bit her fault, but she didn’t deserve a death sentence for it. If Dirk Schyler really was the killer, that was what she might very well get, too.

Frank had gone over and over it in his mind. He didn’t like Schyler. He rarely liked men of that class, probably because men of that class usually treated him like Irish scum. Schyler was less discreet about it than most, which made it even easier to hate him.

And then there was the matter of him taking liberties with Mrs. Brandt. She wasn’t the kind of woman men took liberties with. He’d known that the first time he’d set eyes on her, and his opinion had been confirmed many times since then. When he thought of Schyler forcing himself on her, he wanted to commit murder himself.

Frank wanted Schyler to be the killer so he could cart him off to prison and watch the bastard sizzle in that fancy electrical chair. What he didn’t know was whether he was letting his personal feelings color his professional judgment. Was he overlooking some important clue in his quest to lock Schyler up? Was he damning an innocent man just because he happened to be obnoxious?

Frank had a lot of time to consider all this while he paced at the Coney Island trolley station and waited for Sarah Brandt to appear with Schyler. They’d discussed various methods of surveillance, and they’d quickly discarded the idea of having Frank follow them out from the city. Dirk knew what he looked like, and he’d be hard to miss in the close confines of the trolley. So Frank had assigned Broughan the task of overseeing their trip out. He only hoped Broughan was sober enough not to lose sight of them. Frank didn’t think Schyler had any reason to kill Sarah Brandt just yet, but he hadn’t really had any understandable reasons to kill anyone else, either. Frank didn’t want to take any chances.

He scratched absently at the false beard he wore in an effort to keep Schyler from recognizing him. He doubted the beard would fool anyone, though. His best bet was simply to stay out of sight, which was what he planned to do most of the time. Now, if Mrs. Brandt could be trusted not to go looking for him in the crowds and tip Schyler off that they were being followed, he would be fine.

He’d been pacing for over an hour, watching trolleys arrive and disgorge their passengers without seeing his quarry. Another one was approaching the station, and Frank stepped back inside the building, where he could watch without being seen.

He saw her at once, even before she got off. He’d seen her wear that hat many times, but he probably would have recognized her no matter what she was wearing. She was the kind of woman who stood out in a crowd. Something about the way she carried herself. He’d never known another like her. Not even Kathleen, with all her sass, would have gone after a killer all alone. At what point did courage become folly? Frank only knew he was not the proper person to judge such a distinction.