A woman answered, ‘Hello?’ One more stranger out of a thousand calls from the street said, ‘Hello? Is anyone there?’

Mallory had not forgotten the ritual. She knew what came next, the words, It’s Kathy, I’m lost, but she could not say them anymore.

‘Hello?’ The stranger’s voice was climbing into the high notes of alarm.

Oh, lady, can you hear the rats on the telephone line?

Charles abandoned his previous theories. The child had neither believed in heroes, nor had she relied on fictional people for friends. Far from it. She had once ruled a stable of prostitutes bound to her by stories. It was an ancient lure dating back to the cave, the need to know what happens next.

Brilliant child.

He pulled another chair into his cubicle for Gloria and Maxine. The women were not related, but resembled one another and even dressed in twin red halter tops and shorts. They were younger than the rest. Their makeup was low key, and they were not battered where it showed. The two prostitutes had insisted on being interviewed together.

‘We do everything together.’ Gloria’s smile was very friendly. ‘Everything, hon.’

On request, Charles was about to finish a story begun in The Cabin at the Edge of the World.

‘And don’t tell us that preacher made it rain,’ said Gloria.

‘Oh, no, nothing like that. When Wichita comes out of the fever, the cabin is still in flames. Now if you recall the clifflianger in the previous book – ’

‘Like we’d forget that,’ said Gloria. ‘The farmers think the old woman’s a witch and she caused the drought. They move burning bushes in front of all the windows and the doors. Every wall is on fire, and Wichita’s dying. That’s what the old woman thinks. So she gets down on her knees and screams to God for mercy.’

‘Right,’ said Charles, recalling the final sentence, ‘ „A scream that shivered the stars in the firmament.“ Well, in the next book, Wichita wakes up and soaks the old woman with a bucket of water.

He slings her over one shoulder, then leaves by the front door. Walks right through a wall of fire.’ And now he thrilled the prostitutes with another quotation from the page, ‘„… stripped to the waist, his long golden hair flying in the wind and burning with sparks, his skin steaming with the burnt sweat of his fever.“ It’s an imposing sight on the heels of a very loud prayer from the old woman. Now the fake preacher gets religion. He falls down on bended knee and declares the outlaw is an angel. Well, as you can imagine, that gives a few of the farmers pause. Then the Wichita Kid draws his six-gun, and the rest of them have second thoughts about this business of witch burning.’

The prostitutes were enthralled. ‘The Kid walked through fire.’

‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘But then, toward the end of the book, he guns down another man.’

‘Oh, he always does that,’ said Gloria. Apparently, this credential of a serial killer was a character flaw she could live with. ‘So the Wichita Kid walked through fire.’

‘Now,’ said Charles, ‘I believe you mentioned running into Sparrow recently.’

‘Last week,’ said Gloria. ‘Maxine and me, we were cruising for Johns at the computer convention in Columbus Circle. Sparrow was there. Wasn’t she, Maxine?’

‘She was.’ Maxine resumed chewing her gum.

‘She was workin’ the crowd, same as us,’ said Gloria. ‘But nothin’ obvious – no flash. She didn’t look like a whore no more. She looked real nice, didn’t she, Maxine?’

‘Very nice.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Charles. ‘Did you ladies notice anything odd that day? Something out of the – ’

‘You mean Sparrow’s new nose job? Or the guy who slashed her arm with a razor?’

Deluthe sat at a squad-room desk, very close to Maxine, as the woman concentrated on the computer monitor. They were attempting to create their own monster with photographic slices of other people’s faces, eyes and noses, ears and mouths, assisted by FBI software.

A few desks away, a sketch artist was working with Gloria and using an old-fashioned pencil. ‘Can you describe him a little better?’

‘Yeah, he was a cold one,’ said Gloria.

‘Well, that doesn’t – ’ The exasperated sketch artist saw Riker’s hand signal to keep his mouth shut, and the man fell silent.

‘The color of his hair,’ said Riker. ‘Was it light or dark?’

‘Blond,’ said Gloria, raising her voice to be heard across the room. ‘His hair was blond, wasn’t it, Maxine?’

‘No,’ her friend called back. ‘It was brown, average old brown.’

‘Maxine, you’re nuts. He was blond, I tell ya. But real natural.’ The prostitute glanced at Ronald Deluthe’s head. ‘Not a bleach job.’

Hoping to strike a compromise, Riker said, ‘Maybe it was blond hair that went dark when he grew up.’

‘Yeah,’ said Maxine. ‘That’s it. His hair looked like Gloria’s roots.’ She turned to Deluthe. ‘Make it brown.’

The sketch artist’s version was gray charcoal pencil. ‘No, this isn’t working,’ said Gloria. ‘Start over. Make it a profile picture -like a mug shot, ‘cause that’s all I saw of him. Maxine saw his whole face.’ She called out to her friend. ‘Didn’t you, Maxine?’

‘I did.’

Gloria went on with her story of the encounter for Riker’s benefit. ‘Well, I was gonna say hi to her when this stiff-lookin’jerk comes up behind her. So I just stand there. Didn’t wanna say nothin’ to queer it for Sparrow. But the John, he don’t say nothin’, either. Sparrow hasn’t even noticed him yet. Then this freak pulls a box cutter out of his gym bag.’

Gloria looked up at Charles, who wore the expensive clothes of a man unfamiliar with box cutters. ‘It’s a big metal grip with a razor.’ She turned back to Riker. ‘He cut her arm. I couldn’t believe it. All them people around, and he cut her right there. Cold as you please. Then he walks away, real calm, like he does this kind of thing every day. He stuck the box cutter back in his bag before Sparrow even knew she’d been slashed. She didn’t know till I told her. I said something like – Hey, you’re bleedin’. Isn’t that what I said, Maxine?’

‘That’s close.’ Maxine was no longer listening to her friend. She was staring at Deluthe’s monitor. The computer-generated image was taking shape faster than Gloria’s drawing. Deluthe had picked up on the other woman’s cue of a cold stare. A pair of vacant eyes slipped into place on the screen.

‘It’s better,’ said Maxine, ‘but it still needs work.’

Charles crossed the room with a photograph retrieved from the cork wall of Butler and Company. He handed Maxine a wedding portrait of Erik Homer, the scarecrow’s father.

‘The eyes aren’t the same.’ She turned to Deluthe. ‘The mouth is, but don’t make him smile like that.’

Riker handed Gloria a roast beef on rye. ‘Do you remember anything about the bag he was carrying?’

‘Nothin’ special. Right, Maxine? His bag wasn’t special.’

Maxine shook her head. ‘It looks just like my gym bag. Got it on sale at Kmart. Paid almost nothin’ for it.’

Riker moved to Maxine’s chair and handed her the container of soup she had ordered from the deli. ‘What did the bag look like?’

‘It was gray with one stripe.’

Deluthe stopped work. ‘A red stripe?’

‘Yeah, just like mine.’

The young cop stared at the image on his screen, then crossed the room to look at the sketch artist’s pad. ‘I’ve seen this guy. He was in the crowd outside the last crime scene. I remember his bag. I’ve got one just like it. But his had a red stripe. That was the only difference.’

‘Kmart?’ asked Maxine. ‘Nylon, right?’

‘No, L.L. Bean.’ Deluthe turned to Riker. ‘My bag is canvas, and so was his.’

Riker turned to Charles. ‘Keep the ladies company.’ He grabbed Deluthe by the arm and propelled him down the hall to the incident room. They walked to the wall where exterior crime-scene photos were pinned up alongside autopsy pictures of Kennedy Harper.