"No problem," said Coffey. "Be as thorough as you like." He stepped up to the unbloodied section of wall, then turned to survey the room from a murderer's point of view. "How do you know the Reaper stayed to watch his victim die?"

"She's right about that," said the medical examiner. He held up a plastic bag with a note inside. "This was stuffed in the mouth – most likely after he was dead or there'd be more blood on the plastic."

A gloved crime-scene technician took the bag from the doctor's hand, opened it and extracted the typewritten note with tweezers. He read the message aloud, "'I'm too stupid to go on living.' That's all it says."

"I thought that was part of the message the Reaper always left on the walls," said Coffey.

"No, never," said Johanna. "But that's what the reporters were told. The note in the victim's mouth was the only detail the FBI could conceal from the media and Ian Zachary's fans."

Mallory stepped forward, eyes on Johanna, saying, accusing, "And now we've established that Agent Kidd gave you crime-scene details. Or maybe you – "

Riker caught Mallory's eye, and unspoken things passed between them. The younger detective fell silent and stepped back into the fold of police.

"Timothy thought I could help," said Johanna, "if I knew more about the ritual aspects." Head bowed, she stared at her clasped hands.

"Dr. Apollo?" Lieutenant Coffey touched her shoulder. "Does anything else resemble the crime scene for the dead FBI agent?"

"There was no note stuffed in Timothy's mouth," she said. "Nothing in Bunny's mouth, either. The ritual elements were only for the jurors. And Timothy didn't panic and run around in circles like this. There was a single line of blood on one wall of my reception room, a light splatter pattern from the blade. But the rest of the blood was confined to a small area. When his throat was cut, he just sat down in a chair and died quietly." Glances went from cop to cop all around the room, and she knew that she had not been believed.

Lieutenant Coffey was incredulous. "The FBI agent never put up a fight?"

"There were no defense wounds," said Johanna, "if that's what you're asking. He just sat down and died. He would've lasted longer that way, less movement, less blood lost. Apart from that, Timothy's death had more in common with Bunny's. They were a different class of victims, more wary of their surroundings. Their jugular cuts actually did less immediate damage. If I can guess your next question – yes, those two could've been saved with pressure on their wounds and prompt medical attention. Given the aspect of heightened paranoia, the Reaper wasn't quick enough to do his usual thorough job on either of them. Bunny might have screamed, but I doubt that anyone would've paid any attention to him."

She heard the sound of the body bag zipper, but kept her eyes cast down as the medical examiner's men rolled their gurney into the hall. She might have expected the crime-scene technicians to take over now. Instead, she watched the shoes of detectives returning to the room and surrounding her. Johanna took shallow breaths and braced herself for a new attack.

"What about Agent Kidd?" Coffey's shoes were only a few feet away. "You're saying he could've screamed, too? So you figure he was just sitting there in your reception room – patiently waiting for help – quietly." That last word carried the unmistakable tone of disbelief. "Was he waiting for you, Doctor?"

Mallory's running shoes stepped forward. "You were in the next room, isn't that right, Dr. Apollo?"

"Yes."

"But you never heard a thing." Janos's massive brogans lumbered toward her. "No screams, no scuffle – nothing."

All the detectives converged on her, all firing questions at once, enclosing her in a circle of bodies. One of Dante's outer rings? No. Johanna decided that hell was not a place after all, but an ongoing, endless event, a traveling creep show that followed her about.

She closed her eyes.

Her right hand was gently pulled away from her side, fingers intertwined with her own, and then – silence. She opened her eyes to see Riker standing beside her. The other police were backing off in a show of respect for this angry man.

Victor Patchock set his red wig on the dresser and surveyed his world of one room and a bath, bare walls and a patch of floor. Some time ago, he had removed the doors to the closet and the bathroom, and even the cupboard doors of the kitchenette, for they might also give cover to the enemy. But he could not remove the very walls to get at the smallest invaders, the mice. He could hear them tunneling day and night, the soft crumbles of plaster falling away under quick pink feet. Their movements inside the walls and the ceiling were constant, and he was alert to their every sound. They invaded his dreams. He dreamed them now, eyes wide open, staring at a bit of sky, all that he could see of it from the barred air-shaft window. The street window had been recently boarded up, lest he be seduced into exposing himself to the outside world on those shut-in days when the view of the air shaft was not enough.

His former life was so far removed in time and memory. It must have belonged to someone else. Victor wanted to go home again. He could not. And he was so changed, no one would recognize him. He ran one hand over his bald head, suddenly shocked, forgetting that he had mutilated himself by shaving off his hair.

He crossed the room to peer through a crack in the boarded-up front window. The street below had sparse pedestrian traffic, but soon people would be coming home from work, filling up the spaces all around him, above and below him, a hive of people stressed out and strung out. But the mice were always with him.

Victor selected a white cane from the four in his umbrella stand and whacked one wall to scare the rodent army that he could hear but not see. He beat the plaster harder, making cracks and gouges, infuriated that he could not get at them. His cane snapped; his mind snapped. He walked back to the air-shaft window and looked upward to the small square of daylight. The walls crumbled around him as the sky grew darker, and this was his only proof of hours passing, for he no longer had any clear sense of time. And now a new sound had been added. He could hear a thin stream of tinny music coming through the walls. The mice had a radio.

Lieutenant Coffey stood beside the sound engineer known as Crazy Bitch. She had introduced herself that way, as if she had no other name. Detective Janos waited outside in the hall, for her sound booth was a small space. Jack Coffey wondered if she had bathed or changed her clothes in recent memory. Her bare feet were dirty, and the matted spikes of her hair stuck out at odd angles. She sounded rational. Speaking into the microphone of her headset, she introduced the police lieutenant to her boss in the studio on the other side of the window glass.

Though it was not yet airtime, Ian Zachary was interviewing a guest with a baby face, torn jeans and new T-shirt with the call letters of the radio station. If this was the SoHo fan, then Mallory's information had been correct. Coffey wondered if she really did have an informant at the station. Or had she planted an illegal bugging device in the studio? He was a long ways from collecting his pension, and it was best not to dwell on that.

The shock-jock held up two fingers to tell the lieutenant that he would have to wait a few minutes.

Not likely. Jack Coffey gently removed the headset from the sound engineer's dirty hair and boomed into the mouthpiece, "NOW!"

Zachary flinched with the sudden pain from his earphones, and the lieutenant could hear a buzzer sounding in the hall as the security door was unlocked. When Coffey and Janos entered the studio, the Englishman stood up to shake hands with them. "Hello, gentlemen. Pull up a couple of chairs."