Washington took one of the files, then settled himself in an armchair.

"I saw the Flannery girl," he said.

"How did that go?"

"Not very well, as a matter of fact," Washington said. "She wasn't what you could call anxious to talk about it again. Not to anyone, but especially not to a man, and maybe particularly to a black man."

"But?"

"And,"Washington said, "I told you Hemmings was a good cop. It was a waste of time. I didn't get anything out of her that he didn't. And then I talked to him. He's pissed, Peter, and I can't say I blame him. Putting me on this job was the same as telling him either that you didn't think he had done a good job, or that he was capable of doing one."

"That's not true, and I'm sorry he feels that way."

"How would it look to you, if you were in his shoes?" Washington asked reasonably.

"When I was a new sergeant in Homicide, Jason," Wohl replied, "Matt Lowenstein took me off a job because I wasn't getting anywhere with it. The wife in Roxborough who ran herself over with her own car. He put the best man he had on the job, a guy named Washington."

"I told Hemmings that story," Washington said. "I don't think it helped much."

After a moment, Wohl said, "Thank you, Jason."

Washington ignored that.

"You read that file?"

"I was just about finished reading it for the third time."

"The one time I read it," Washington said, "I thought I saw a pattern. Our doer is getting bolder and bolder. You see that, something like that, too?"

"Yes, I did."

"If we get the abducted woman back, alive, I'll be surprised."

"Why?"

"That didn't occur to you?" Washington asked.

"Yes, it did, but I want to see if we reached the same conclusion for the same reasons."

"The reason we don't have a lead, not a damned lead, on this guy is because we don't have a good description on him, or his van. And the reason we don't is that, until the Flannery thing, he wasn't with the victims more than fifteen, twenty minutes, and he did what he did where he found them. In the Flannery job, he put her in his van, but in such a way that it didn't give us any better picture of him than we had before. He never took that mask off-by the way, it's not a Lone Ranger-type mask; the Lone Ranger wore one that just covered his eyes."

"I picked up on that," Wohl said.

"That was the one little mistake that Dick Hemmings made, and when I mentioned it to him, he admitted it right away; said that he'd picked up on that, too, and doesn't know why he put it in the report the way he did."

"Go on, Jason."

"In the Flannery job, he put her in his van and drove away with her. I think that convinced him he can take his victims away, and keep them longer. That's what he's really after, I think, having them in his power. That's more important to him, I think, than the sexual gratification he's getting; there's been no incident of him reaching orgasm except by masturbation."

"I agree," Wohl said, "that he's after the domination; the humiliation is part of that."

"So he now knows he can get away with taking the women away from their homes; he proved that by taking the Flannery woman to Forbidden Drive. And since that was so much fun, he took the next victim away, too. Maybe to his house, maybe someplace else, the country, maybe."

"And the longer he keeps them, the greater the possibility… that his mask will fall off, or something…"

"Or that the victim will look around and see things that would help us to find where she's been taken," Washington continued. "And this guy is smart, Peter. It is going to occur to him sooner or later, if it hasn't already, that what he's got on his hands is someone who can lead the cops to him; and that will mean the end of his fun."

Not dramatically, but matter-of-factly, Jason Washington drew his index finger across his throat in a cutting motion.

"And he might find that's even more fun than running around in his birthday suit, wearing a mask, and waving his dong at them," Washington added.

"That's the way I see it," Wohl said. "That's why I wanted you over here, working on it. I want to catch this guy before that happens."

"Dick Hemmings, if you'd have asked him, could have told you the same thing."

"It's done, Jason, you're here. So tell me what we should be doing next."

"Tony Harris has come up with a long list of minor sexual offenders," Washington said. "If I were you, Peter, I'd get him all the help he needs to ring doorbells."

"I don't know where I can get anybody," Wohl said, thinking aloud.

"You better figure out where," Washington said. "That's all we've got right now. Tony's been trying to get a match, in Harrisburg, between the names he's got and people who own any kind of a van. So far, zilch."

"Sabara's got some people coming in," Peter said. "Probably some of them will be here in the morning. I'll put them on it. And maybe I could get some help from Northwest Detectives, maybe even tonight."

"I wouldn't count on that," Washington said. "I think they're glad you've taken this job away from them."

"I didn't take it away from them," Wohl flared. "It was given to me."

"Whatever you say."

"Jason, it's been suggested to me that we might find a psychiatric profile of the doer useful."

"Don't you think we have one?" Washington said, getting to his feet. "Whose suggestion was that? Denny Coughlin's? Or Czernick himself?"

Wohl didn't reply.

"I'm going home, It's been a long day."

"Good night, Jason," Wohl said. "Thanks."

"For what, Peter?" Washington said, and walked out of his office.

Wohl felt a pang of resentment that Washington was going home. So long as Elizabeth J. Woodham, white female, aged thirty-three, of 300 East Mermaid Lane in Roxborough, was missing and presumed to have been abducted by a known sexual offender, it seemed logical that they should be doing something to find her, to get her back alive.

And then he realized that was unfair. If Jason Washington could think of anything else that could be done, he would be doing it.

There was nothing to be done, except wait to see what happened.

And then Wohl thought of something, and reached for the telephone book.

FOURTEEN

The apartment under the eaves of what was now the Delaware Valley Cancer Society Building was an afterthought, conceived after most of the building had been renovated.

C. Kenneth Warble, A.I.A, the architect, had met with Brewster C. Payne II of Rittenhouse Properties over luncheon at the Union League on South Broad Street to bring him up to date on the project's progress, and also to explain why a few little things-in particular the installation of an elevator-were going a little over budget.

Almost incidentally, C. Kenneth Warble had mentioned that he felt a little bad,vis-a-vis space utilization, about the "garret space," which on his plans, he had appropriated to "storage."

"I was there just before I came here, Brewster," he said. "It's a shame."

"Why a shame?"

"You've heard the story about the man with thinning hair who said he had too much hair to shave, and too little to comb? It's something like that. The garret space is really unsuitable for an apartment, a decent apartment-by which I mean expensive-and too nice for storage."

"Why unsuitable?"

"Well, the ceilings are very low, with no way to raise them, for one thing; by the time I put a kitchen in there, and a bath, which it would obviously have to have, there wouldn't be much room left. A small bedroom, and, I've been thinking, a rather nice, if long and narrow living room, with those nice dormer windows overlooking Rittenhouse Square,would be possible."

"But you think it could be rented?"