She was always losing people.

Mallory closed her eyes and listened to footsteps in the hall. Now Riker’s voice called out, ‘It’s me. How’s it going?’

‘One possibility,’ said Charles, ‘though not what I had in mind. Here, take a look at this article.’

‘Foster Care Fraud,’ said Riker. ‘Catchy headline.’

‘That foster child ran away when he was twelve years old, but the police were never notified.’

‘And these people kept collecting his support checks?’

‘Right,’ said Charles. ‘The boy was put in their care the same year Natalie’s son was taken from the Qualens.’

Another hand, Riker’s, rested on Mallory’s shoulder a moment, then gently brushed the hair from her face. ‘I’ve never seen her sleep,’ he said. ‘I always figured she just hung from the ceiling like a little bat. Damn, I hate to wake the kid up.’

‘Then don’t,’ said Charles.

‘But I got her a present – Susan Qualen. The woman turned herself in. Janos is walking her over here now – in handcuffs.’

‘Why here?’ asked Charles.

‘More privacy.’

Stella pressed her back to the wall of the elevator and watched the man open a metal panel with one of a gang of keys hanging from his belt loop. A janitor? ‘So you work here?’

No answer. He was not aware of her on any level, and this was hopeful. It could all be one ghastly coincidence. This man worked here; he belonged here. Of course, he would give her a gift certificate from this store. He probably got an employee discount. And now he was merely rounding up a stray shopper and escorting her to safety. Stella acted the part of a woman who could believe all of this, but she could not sustain the role for long.

When he closed the metal panel, the light for the ground floor was no longer glowing. They were on their way to the basement level. Her heart beat faster and adrenaline gorged every muscle for flight. When the doors opened, her legs ran away with her, flinging Stella headlong down a wide aisle of cardboard cartons. There were no hurried footsteps behind her. He had no worries that she would get away. Why should he? It would be so easy to follow her by the clack of high heels.

Idiot.

She slipped off her shoes and ran in barefoot silence down a corridor of boxes, running from the light, swallowed by the dark.

All the television stations ran hourly updates on the plight of Stella Small, showing photographs of her early years and reading excerpts from letters to her mother and grandmother, known to locals as the Abandoned Stellas. The written words of the youngest Stella were upbeat and hopeful, full of the dream: she was going to be somebody, and fame could only be minutes or hours away.

‘What was that?’ Riker turned off the volume, and now he could more clearly hear a knock on the door in the reception area. ‘That’s gotta be her.’

He answered the door and greeted Detective Janos with a smile. Natalie Homer’s sister needed no introduction. Riker’s face was grim when he turned to the woman in handcuffs, only inclining his head a bare inch to say, ‘Miss Qualen.’

Stella shrank into a small space behind a carton, playing the mouse, shaking and listening to the footsteps coming closer, stopping now. A nearby box was being moved. Eyes shut tight, her thoughts went out to the Abandoned Stellas. How sorry she was to let them down, yet she knew they would cope well with her dying, for that was their strength of purpose. They were younger than she was now when they had committed themselves to their own slow deaths at the roadside diner.

But wait. This was New York City – different rules: no cowards allowed.

An inspired Stella sat in the dark and prepared herself for something finer than slaughter by box cutter. Adjusting her chin to a determined angle, she created the role of a lifetime, imagining her own heart engorging and growing into the part, pounding harder, louder – stronger.

Can you hear it, you son of a bitch?

The box was moved aside. A hand reached out for her, and the greatest thing that ever came out of Ohio jumped to her feet. She raked his chest with five long fingernails that left red streaks on his T-shirt. He stopped, as if his batteries had suddenly run down, stunned that an object would fight back. And then she clawed his face.

Stella had drawn first blood, and now she ran for the light at the end of the box corridor, screaming, ‘I’m gonna live, you bastard!'

Janos leaned against the door to the back office, making it clear to the prisoner that she was not going anywhere. Mallory and Riker closed in on Susan Qualen. The woman backed into a computer station and slipped. Her handcuffs bound her wrists behind her, and she could not break the fall. She awkwardly managed a squat, then rose to a stand and revolved slowly, looking from face to face. ‘Why am I under arrest?’ She jangled the chain of her manacles. ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘You got that part right,’ said Riker. ‘You wouldn’t help us. You ran away.’

The words were spoken in a monotone, but the woman behaved as if he had screamed at her. She bowed her head and stared at the floor. As a reward for this attitude of contrition, Janos removed the handcuffs, then stepped back.

Mallory kicked a chair toward the suspect. It fell over, and Riker commanded, ‘Pick it up!’

Susan Qualen did as she was told.

‘Sit down!’ said Janos.

‘That day you came around – ’ Qualen’s voice faltered and cracked. ‘I couldn’t help you. I didn’t – ’

‘You have to sign this.’ Riker held a small card that listed her rights under the constitution. ‘We’ll get you a lawyer if you want one. Do you understand your rights?’

‘I don’t need a damn lawyer. I didn’t do – ’

‘Then sign it!’ Riker was not play-acting. He was angry when he grabbed a clipboard from the desk, then attached the card and a pen. She accepted the board, fingers slowly closing around its edges, and quickly signed her name. Mallory tore the clipboard from the woman’s hands and threw it across the room. Qualen jumped as it skittered across the floor for the last few feet before hitting the wall.

‘And now,’ said Riker, ‘tell us that twisted freak didn’t look up his Aunt Susan the minute he got to town.’

‘It’s your fault!’ Qualen faced each of them in turn. ‘You lie to people. You don’t – ’

‘All those details in the papers,’ said Mallory. ‘You knew there was a link between the last hanging and – ’

‘And my sister? The police only told me Natalie was murdered. I read about her hanging in the newspapers – the fake suicide, a damn cover-up!’ Susan Qualen’s voice was in the high, wavering pitch of hysteria. ‘Nobody wanted to solve Natalie’s murder.’

‘Your nephew gave you all the details,’ said Mallory. ‘That’s how you knew. When you saw the story in the papers, it was Natalie’s murder all over again.’

‘Stop it! Junior didn’t tell me anything!' She was in tears. ‘That little boy could barely speak. He was almost catatonic’

‘So you sent him away. You conspired to hide the only witness who could’ve helped the police find your sister’s killer.’

‘Oh, that’s rich.’ Susan Qualen was not frightened anymore. She was angry. ‘Who do you call when a damn cop kills your sister – the cops?’ She wore a grim smile and took some satisfaction in their stunned faces.

Running toward the light at the end of the corridor, Stella turned a corner of boxes and saw a small office walled in glass. The door was ajar, and she pushed it wide open. At the point of slamming it behind her, she regained her sanity, then closed the door quietly and turned a knob to lock it. The desk offered the only cover in a room made of glass, and she crouched behind it, taking the telephone with her. She dialed 911, but the call would not go through. And now she listened to an automated recording that instructed her to dial another digit for an outside line.