"Well, thanks for calling. I'm glad to see you, too." She gave him a rueful smile. "I'd like to see Emma and the baby later if they're around, but business first. I need your help."

Jason smiled. "So what else is new?"

"Look, we've got our own profilers. The FBI, they've got theirs, too. Everybody's got a profiler, and everybody's in this."

"Of course. So how can I help you?" These were the words Jason said to every potential patient who came to him. Just the way the cops said to each other, "What do you need?"

"How much time have you got?" April crossed her legs and relaxed a little in the chair.

"I'm done for the day; take as much time as you want, as long as it takes."

"Okay, did you read that piece about coincidence and terrorism in the Times a few months back?"

Jason frowned. "About the confluence of a dozen weird and weirder deaths of people involved in bio-medical research following the anthrax scare?"

"Gee, anybody ever tell you that you speak in full paragraphs, Jason?"

He laughed. "My wife."

"But yes," she said. "The idea was that the world is big enough for lots of very odd things to happen at the same time, but the world is also small enough for people to take note of odd occurrences and study them. And that even though it seemed logical that terrorists were killing off the experts, in fact, their dying the way they did was really just coincidence. Do you believe that?"

"I don't know. It's a very profound concept, but what's your point?"

"Last week my former supervisor-the man who'd promoted me to detective-was murdered in Washington Square on the way home from his retirement party. He'd left without saying good-bye, so I followed him out. I was the one who found his body." She put her hand over her eyes for a second, then went on. "I was supposed to call for help, but I didn't. I ran after the killer and ended up in the hospital. So did another man. He saw me being throttled and risked his own life to save me. New York isn't so bad, right?"

Jason frowned and started to say something, but April held up her hand. "That's not the weird part. Last night Birdie Bassett was on her way home from a York U dinner, and was murdered in a similar way in pretty much the same place. Coincidence?"

Jason opened his mouth, but again April held up her hand.

"They both had come into money very recently. They both had been alums of York, and they both had known their killer."

"Not coincidence. Someone from the university," Jason said. Being a detective wasn't so hard.

"Not necessarily. Berardino's wife died five weeks ago of natural causes. He inherited her lottery money.

Now four million of it is missing. He's murdered exactly thirty days after his wife's death. Circumstantial evidence points to his son, who maybe didn't want to wait for his dad to die of natural causes to get it, and his former partner, who gave two hundred thousand away to a girlfriend."

"Interesting, but you already told me some of this. How much money did Bernardino get?"

"Fifteen million. Now Birdie. When her husband, your friend Max, died, she inherited more than thirty million, his houses, and his foundation. The lawyers won't give the details yet. Anyway, she got hit the same thirty days later. Sounds like the same killer is working a pattern? A natural death, wait a month, then kill the heir?"

"Yes, sounds like a pattern."

"Maybe it is; maybe it isn't. In both cases the children of the deceased had something to gain by the deaths, and only one of the four has an alibi."

"Does one of the children work at York U?"

"No, but that is a good question."

"So what's troubling you, April?"

"The third coincidence. The man who tried to save me and ended up with a broken arm is Jack Devereaux."

Jason drew a blank. "Who's that?"

"Don't you read the newspaper, Jason? He's Creighton Blackstone's son."

"I don't know who that is." Jason's head was beginning to swim with this.

"Oh, for heaven's sake, he was one of the billionaire founders of the Internet. He left a son no one knew he had."

Jason brought his lips together. "Oh, yes. Now I remember. This is a little out of my depth. Where are you going with it?"

"Jack Devereaux walks his dog every night in the square. He was there the night Bernardino was killed.

He's an alum of York U, and the same caller at the university called both him and Bernardino."

Jason frowned and finally let his breath out. "Before or after he intervened with you?"

"Another good question. Before."

"Well, who's the caller?" Jason asked.

"We don't know yet. York U is a big place."

"April, I'm a little lost. What's your question for me?"

"Probabilities, Jason. Bernardino and Devereaux happen to be connected by calls from the university, but the perpetrators of the two murders could still be the children. You following me?"

"Right."

It had been a long, nerve-racking day. Jason was hungry and wanted to see his girls. For the first time he thought April was acting like a nut. Her voice was scratchy. Maybe she was sick. He gave her a speculative look. "So you're saying that just as the anthrax cases seemed to be connected to Arab terrorists because they occurred directly after 9/11, one of the murders appears to be linked to York University by a phone call, but in fact both murders might have been committed by the children in the end."

"Yes." April looked pleased.

Jason blinked. "Okaaay. Now what about your Jack Devereaux, who happens to be a billionaire himself now, and was walking his dog on the night of your supervisor's murder-did I hear you say he's a York U alum, too?"

"Yes, Jason, you did."

Jason blew air out. "Then you'd better tell him to stay home at night. What do you need from me?"

"I need everything you have on Max and his children. You said he wasn't a patient, so you have no confidentiality issues here. And I need to know everything about Birdie and her relationship with her stepchildren."

"That's easy. Is that it?" He glanced at his watch.

"No, Jason. I also need a profile. What kind of person in a university would target alums who became millionaires?"

"Somebody with a grievance." Jason lifted his shoulder.

"Maybe. We have the hows. Now we need the whys. Will you help me?"

Now Jason really was puzzled. "Well, sure, I'll help you. But you just said you suspected the children."

"I do, but what are the probabilities of that?"

Jason rolled his eyes. Cops.

Forty

By evening, NYPD brass had been informed of the York U connection between the two murder victims, but it was one of only a few facts they had under wraps about the cases. The talking heads were all over the Washington Square chop murders. Connie Chung, Larry King, and the rest of the gang were deep into their ritual prime-time dance with people in the know. Just under twenty-four hours after Birdie Bassett's death, her mother was on TV talking about the tragic loss of her daughter, Martha. The police commissioner appeared live to make some general remarks about beefed-up security in the Washington Square area. When pressed for more information on the two murders, he hedged.

On the TV in the war room, Mike, Chief Avise, and some other important bigwigs watched their boss do business as usual. They thought the PC did pretty well until he was followed by former LA medical examiner Henry Lao. Lao always made everyone in law enforcement from coast to coast foam at the mouth with his pronouncements about high-profile cases he knew nothing about. Tonight, from three thousand miles away, Lao spoke authoritatively about retired lieutenant Bernardino's and Birdie Bassett's cause of death from karate blows. The detail with which he described what happened to the two victims happened to precede the New York City medical examiner's preliminary report on Birdie Bassett, and made both the detectives on the cases and the PC look like idiots. In fact, in the case of Bernardino, he was dead wrong. Birdie had been choked and chopped, but Lao didn't know that.