“How bad is it?”

“I could show you,” Ellie said, “but you’ve already puked once this week.”

She plopped herself onto the sofa and took a long draw from the beer.

“So are you going to stand there looking all sorry for me, or are you going to tell me what was so important that you needed me to come home?”

He shrugged. “This whole feeling-sorry-for-you-thing, my brain’s having trouble processing it. It’s usually the other way around. And I called you before I knew some crazy dude stabbed you.”

She was really getting tired of that word. “Out with it.”

Jess took a seat next to her on the couch, and she knew it was serious. He had a determined, almost somber look on his face. She hadn’t known her brother’s facial muscles were physically capable of such an expression.

“You got a phone call about an hour ago. God knows how the wench got your number, but it was from an editor at Simon & Schuster. She was trying to verify facts in a book proposal she received from Peter Morse.”

Ellie didn’t know what to say. It had been only three days since Peter had called the book pie in the sky. He certainly hadn’t mentioned sending a proposal to any editor.

“What kinds of facts?” she asked.

“Well, it’s not like she dictated a list of questions, but she was saying all kinds of stuff about Dad and the College Hill Strangler case. The book’s not just about First Date, Ellie. It’s about you. I don’t get it, El. You’ve been a vault when it comes to that stuff and now it’s in the hands of some reporter?”

Ellie wanted to defend Peter, to say he wasn’t just some reporter. He was the first man she’d met in a long time whom she could actually picture herself with. He cared about her. He could be trusted. But instead she sat in silence on her sofa, wishing she had never spoken to Peter about William Summer.

“Ellie, are you listening to me? You need to call that editor and tell her Peter’s full of shit and that you never said any of this to him.”

“I can’t lie, Jess.”

“Oh, Jesus. Not this Girl Scout shit. He’s the one who’s the fucking liar.” He flipped open her laptop on the coffee table. “There’s something you need to see, Ellie. He’s still online. I’m really sorry.”

And, sure enough, there he was. “Unpublished,” the journalist and struggling author she’d first noticed online two months ago, was still listed on the very Internet dating service where they had first met.

Same profile. Same photograph. Same just-out-of-bed brown hair and piercing green eyes. All the same, as if he hadn’t met anyone yet. As if they hadn’t spent those nights together before she left for Kansas. As if they hadn’t spoken every day while she was gone.

“I’m sorry, El. He’s not the guy he pretended to be.” He placed a hand on her outstretched leg.

Ellie wiped her face, suppressing a sniffle. “I’ll call him first.”

“No. Don’t call him. Don’t talk to him. Ever.”

“I at least owe it to him to let him explain.”

“No, you don’t. You met him, what? Two months ago? And you were out of town for almost all of it? Jesus, I’m sorry if this is harsh, but you’re such a 1950s monogamist. Just because you go on a few dates with a guy doesn’t make him your husband. You know how many women I’ve dated who just stopped taking my calls one day? I’ve been dumped by text message. My e-mail address is blocked from, like, half the women in Manhattan.”

She gave him a sad smile.

“Trust me, he’ll get over it. I mean, it’ll take a while. This is, after all, the one and only Ellie Hatcher we’re talking about.” His tone became serious again. “I mean it, El. You’re one of the last single girls to make it to thirty without some asshole doing a number on your head. You know how many good guys are out there who’d kill for a chick like you? Don’t let this guy turn you into a basket case for the next good one who comes around the corner. Save the drama for your mama. You need to cut him loose.”

Her cell phone rang. She recognized the prefix as a courthouse number.

“Hatcher.”

“It’s Max Donovan. I heard what happened at Symanski’s. Knight wants to talk to you.”

“I’m not sure that’s going to work. My lieutenant seems to have sidelined me.”

“That’s why Knight wants you to come in. It would just be the three of us.”

“I don’t hide anything from my partner.”

“Fair enough. We’re not trying to get in the middle of things. Knight just wants to make sure everything’s getting a proper look. He can help you out with Eckels; he just wants to meet with you first.”

“What time?”

“He’s tied up until six.”

That gave Ellie an hour before she would need to leave her apartment.

“Yeah, okay.”

“And, not to press my luck, but I’m pretty much sitting here waiting around with nothing to do until then.”

“Why do I sort of doubt that?”

“Okay, fine. But I do have time for coffee. If, you know, if coffee sounded good to you.”

Ellie looked at her brother’s worried face. She pictured Peter boasting to some editor about his relationship with her to sell a book. She remembered his attempt that morning to blame his boss for the story about Chelsea Hart’s shorn hair. She looked at his smiling photograph on her open laptop screen.

“Coffee would be good.”

AN HOUR LATER, the man sat at his desk and watched another minute tick by on his computer’s digital clock. He had a little time to spare.

He opened Mozilla Firefox and typed “youtube” in the address box. Once he was on the site, he entered the search he had memorized as the quickest method for pulling up the clip he wanted: “Dateline College Hill Strangler.”

A list of videos filled the screen. He clicked on the top one and waited while the data loaded. There she was, face to face with Ann Curry against a severe black set, in her white turtleneck sweater and black skirt. He’d seen the entire segment many times-her walking in front of the site of William Summer’s first kill, kneeling at her father’s grave, the childhood photograph with those little blond pigtails-but this was the part he liked best.

It wasn’t about her childhood. It was about the present. It showed the woman she had become-smart, cocky, joyously uppity with that I’ve-got-your-number half-smile.

“How do you explain the fact that it took the Wichita police thirty years to capture this man? Was he that much of a master criminal?”

There was the half-smile. “Oh, no. My father had a profile that was spot-on: he’d be a man who craved authority, maybe a badge bunny. Like a wannabe cop,” she said, quickly clarifying her use of the police slang. “The people who worked with him would describe him as petty and autocratic. He might be in a relationship but would frequent prostitutes. All of it turned out to be right. The problem is, the WPD shut down the investigation. My father was one man working out of his basement around his other cases, and without any support. This person was no master criminal.”

“So if the department dropped the ball, how did they finally catch the killer?”

“He did himself in. It was his own desire for recognition and notoriety that led police to him. His desire to taunt and to show off-the letters, the drawings, the poems-were the equivalent of a billboard pointing directly to him. Killers like William Summer get caught because of their insatiable egos.”

The man hit the pause button at that moment. Such confidence.

Killers like William Summer get caught because of their insatiable egos.

On that point, he had to take issue. Summer got caught because he was stupid. He, however, was not.

Still, he hoped he had not made a mistake getting rid of the gun he’d fired only three hours earlier. In a straight contest of strength, he would always have the upper hand against a girl, so he had avoided guns until this afternoon. Too noisy. Too unpredictable.