Kurtz held his jaw, keeping his head lowered so that his face was in shadow. "I 'eed to see a dentist. It 'urts."

The big man started to close the door. Kurtz got his boot in the opening. "P'ease."

"You fucking asked for this, pal," said the big man, jerking the chain off, flinging the door open, and reaching for Kurtz's collar.

Kurtz kicked him in the balls, took the big man's offered right hand, swung it around behind him, and broke his little finger. When the man screamed, Kurtz transferred his grip to his index finger and bent it far back, keeping the hand and arm pinned somewhere around where the big man's shoulder blades were buried under fat. "Let's go upstairs," Kurtz whispered, stepping into a foyer that smelled of cabbage. He kicked the door shut behind them and wheeled the man around, helping him up the first stairs by applying leverage to his finger.

"Timmy?" called a quavery voice from the second floor. "Is everything all right? Timmy?"

Kurtz looked at the blubbering, weeping mass of stumbling flesh ascending the stairs ahead of him. Timmy?

The second-floor landing opened onto a lighted parlor where an old man sat in a wheelchair. The man was bald and liver-spotted, his wasted legs were covered by a lap robe, and he was holding some sort of blue steel.32-caliber revolver.

"Timmy?" quavered the old man. He squinted at them through pop-bottle-thick lenses set in old-fashioned black frames.

Kurtz kept Timmy's mass between him and the muzzle of the.32.

"I'm sorry, Howard," Timmy gasped. "He surprised me. He… ahhhhh!" The last syllable erupted as Kurtz bent Timmy's finger back beyond design tolerances.

"Dr. Conway," said Kurtz, "we need to talk."

The old man thumbed the hammer back. "You're police?"

Kurtz thought that question was too stupid to dignify with an answer. Timmy was trying to lean far forward to reduce the pain in his arm and finger, so Kurtz had to knee him in his fat buttocks to get him upright in shield position again.

"You're from him?" said the old man, voice shaking almost as much as the gun's muzzle.

"Yes," said Kurtz. "James B. Hansen."

As if these were the magic words, Dr. Howard K. Conway squeezed the trigger of the.32 once, twice, three, four times. The reports sounded loud and flat in the wood-floored room. Suddenly the air smelled of cordite. The dentist stared at the pistol as if it had fired of its own volition.

"Aww, shit," Timmy said in a disappointed voice and pitched forward, his forehead hitting the hardwood floor with a hollow sound.

Kurtz moved fast, diving around Timmy, rolling once, and coming up fast to knock the pistol from Conway's hand before the crippled dentist could empty chambers five and six. He grabbed the old man by his flannel shirt-front and lifted him out of the chair, shaking him twice to make sure there were no more weapons hidden under the slipping lap robe.

French doors opened onto a narrow balcony at the far end of the room. Booting the wheelchair aside, Kurtz carried the struggling scarecrow across the room, kicked those doors open, and dangled the old man over the icy iron railing. Dr. Conway's glasses went flying into the night.

"Don't… don't… don't… don't." The dentist's mantra had lost its quaver.

"Tell me about Hansen."

"What… I don't know any… good Christ, don't. Please don't!"

With one hand, Kurtz had literally tossed the old man backward and caught him by the shirtfront. Flannel ripped.

Dr. Howard K. Conway's dentures had come loose and were clacking around in his mouth. If the old piece of shit hadn't been a silent accomplice to a dozen or more children's murders, Joe Kurtz might have felt a little bit sorry for him. Maybe.

"My hands are cold," whispered Kurtz. "I might miss my grip next time." He shoved the dentist back over the railing.

"Anything… anything! I have money. I have lots of money!"

"James B. Hansen."

Conway nodded wildly.

"Other names," hissed Kurtz. "Records. Files."

"In my study. In the safe."

"Combination."

"Left thirty-two, right nineteen, left eleven, right forty-six. Please let me go. No! Not over the drop!"

Kurtz slammed the old man's bony and presumably unfeeling ass down hard on the railing. "Why didn't you tell someone, Conway? All these years. All those dead women and kids. Why didn't you tell someone?"

"He would have killed me." The old man's breath smelled of ether.

"Yeah," said Kurtz and had to stifle the immediate urge to throw the old man down onto the concrete terrace fifteen feet below. First the files.

"What will I do now?" Dr. Conway was sobbing, hiccuping. "Where will I go?"

"You can go to—" began Kurtz and saw the old man's rheumy eyes focus wildly, hopefully, on something low behind Kurtz.

He grabbed the dentist by his shirtfront and swung him around just as Timmy, who had left a bloody trail across the parquet floor, fired the last two bullets from the pistol he'd retrieved.

Conway's body was too thin and hollow to stop a.32 slug, but the first bullet missed and the second hit Conway in the center of his forehead. Kurtz ducked, but the spray of blood and brain matter was all from the entry wound; the bullet had not exited.

Kurtz dropped the dentist's body on the icy balcony and walked over to Timmy, who was clicking away on empty chambers. Not wanting to touch the weapon even with his gloves on, he stepped on the man's hand until he dropped it and then rolled Timmy over with his boot. Two of the original.32 slugs had hit the big man in the chest, but one had caught him in the throat and another had entered below the left cheekbone. Timmy would bleed out in another minute or two unless he received immediate medical assistance.

Kurtz walked into what had to be Dr. Conway's study, ignored the row of locked filing cabinets, found the big wall safe behind a painting of a naked man, and tried the combination. He thought that Conway had rat tied it off too quickly, under too much stress, to be lying. and he was right. The safe opened on the first try.

Lying in the safe were metal boxes holding $63,000 in cash, stacks of bonds, gold coins, a sheaf of stock certificates, and a thick file folder filled with dental X-rays, insurance forms, and newspaper clippings. Kurtz ignored the money and took the folder out into the light slamming the safe door and scrambling the lock as he did so.

Timmy was no longer twitching and the viscous flow of blood ran out onto the cement balcony where it had pooled around Dr. Conway's ruined skull and was coagulating in the process of freezing. Kurtz set the folder on the round table next to the empty wheelchair and flipped through it. He didn't think that this was a neighborhood where people would dial 911 at the first sound of what could be a gunshot.

Twenty-three news clippings. Fifteen photocopies of letters to various urban police headquarters, dental X-rays attached. Fifteen different identities.

"Come on, come on," whispered Kurtz. If Hansen's current Buffalo identity wasn't here, this whole mess had been for nothing. But why would it be here? Why would Conway know Hansen's current alias before it was necessary to identify him to the next round of homicide detectives?

Because Hansen has to have the cover story ready in case the old dentist dies. Timmy would do the honors then. But there has to be a dentist of record.

The next-to-last paper in the folder had the record of an office visit the previous November—a cleaning and partial crown. No X-rays. There was no bill, but a handwritten note in the margin read "$50,000." No wonder Dr. Howard K. Conroy accepted no new patients. Beneath it was an address in the Buffalo suburb of Tonawanda, and a name.

"Holy shit," whispered Kurtz.