“Not really. I talked with her a few times.”

“A few times. I guess she made an impression. I’ve got to figure there are better places you could spend your Sunday mornings than a Quaker meeting.”

I felt as if I was slipping into a version of the conversation I’d had with Margo. The difference was, Megan Lamb sounded genuinely interested. She placed her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands. “What gives?”

I shrugged. “Sometimes things get under your skin. You must know about that. Robin Burrell was ninety-nine percent a total stranger to me. A few short meetings, nothing more. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t like that someone thinks they can burst in on someone else’s life and take it away like that. It pisses me off.”

“You take it personally.”

“I don’t take it personally. Don’t try to put that on me. It’s one of the things I do. I root out the creeps who do this kind of thing to people. I get a better night’s sleep when I can drag them through your door and hand them over to you. If I’d been the priest my mother wanted me to be, I’d have a different take on it.”

“Good night’s sleep. I think I read about that once.” Megan released her chin and poured some milk in her coffee, stirring it slowly with her spoon, in miniature figure eights. “I’ve got a brother. Josh. A couple of years younger than me. Do you know what he makes me do? My little brother? Whenever I catch a body, Josh makes me describe the victims to him. He sits me down and draws out the details.”

“Is our Josh a moribund little fellow?”

Something flashed in her eyes. Just as quickly, it vanished. It looked like anger. She set down the spoon. “Not at all. Just the opposite, in fact. I’d be dead without Josh.”

“What’s with the curiosity?”

“It’s not curiosity. It’s for my own good. He doesn’t want it festering inside me. I’m sure it sounds silly, but Josh is a very intuitive person. It’s ugly. A murdered person is ugly. You’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. It’s ugly. I’m trained to overlook the ugliness and get on with my job. Josh thinks what I do is poison. His making me describe it to him in detail is sort of a detox, for lack of a better word. He thinks it helps me to get it out of my system.”

“Does it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you feel better after you’ve done it?”

“Better?” She weighed the empty space above her hands. “It’s nice that there’s someone who cares. I’d feel a lot worse without that.”

She looked out the window again. It wasn’t difficult to see that something troubling was rolling around in her head. When she turned back to me, her energy had shifted.

“You’re a cowboy on this case, Fritz. You’re just galloping in for reasons of your own. Whatever they are, that’s your business. I don’t really care. What I want is to catch the person who killed Robin and Zachary Riddick. And it’s not a pride thing with me. I don’t give a damn how I catch him. I’m not going to waste my breath telling you to steer clear. You know the drill. We’ve had this conversation before. You know the difference between inquiries and interference. Don’t interfere. That’s the message. The end. Pope and I are the leads on these killings, and don’t think Joe Gallo’s not right on my back. We can’t let this get out of hand. The city doesn’t need a mad slasher running around, turning our beautiful new snow red. Thank you for Mr. Anger. I’ll follow up. I’ll talk to the Poole woman, too. If it hadn’t been for my damn flat tire, I’d be reading you the riot act for interfering, but like I said, all I want is to nail this bastard. Whatever it takes. I really don’t like sitting in a chair describing dead people to my baby brother. It makes me feel like a cripple.”

“A cripple.”

“Yeah. I don’t like it.”

“Have you described Robin to him yet?”

“No, I haven’t.”

“So then the ugliness is still in your system.”

She didn’t respond. She didn’t have to.

13

I GRABBED A CAB uptown. My phone had vibrated while I was talking to Megan, but I hadn’t answered it. It was Margo. She’d left a message.

“Do you remember that time you came with me when I was meeting a bunch of other writers for drinks? We talked shop and about pitching ideas for articles and who’s the biggest ass on the ass-ignment desks? Do you remember what you said to me later? How you couldn’t find a way in? That it just wasn’t a language you spoke? Maybe…maybe you want to think about that when it comes to us sometimes. I’m sorry, Fritz. We’ve gone over this before. I don’t know these murdered people of yours, and I don’t want to. They’re dead. But you go and slip into their lives and get this whole thing going that I just can’t relate to. And I don’t want to relate to. It’s not a language I speak, you know? I…I don’t know exactly what I’m saying. Nothing. I’m saying nothing. Forget it. I hate leaving messages. Look…I’m having dinner with some friends tonight in the Village. How about you stay at your place tonight? Make it easier. I know you’ll be bereft without me, but you can handle it, tough guy like you. We can talk about all this when…God. Never mind. This is nuts. Margo Motormouth, signing off.”

I pocketed the phone and stared down the cabdriver, who was eyeing me in the rearview mirror. Tough guy like me. This wasn’t a new dance, this thing with Margo, though it had been a nice long stretch since the last time we’d gotten out of synch like this. I try not to be knee-jerk defensive, so I didn’t put the blame on her. Not all of it, anyway. The problem with what I do for a living is that it doesn’t stay at the office. Hell, I am the office. It’s mobile work, but as much of it gets done with the head as with the feet. Margo was right-I do slip into the lives of dead people. Usually, they’re already cold when I meet them, but sometimes not. Sometimes they’re like Robin Burrell, and I get a taste of the live item before he or she meets the abrupt fate. Margo wasn’t like Megan Lamb’s brother, Josh. That’s what she was reminding me in her phone message. Three’s a crowd, and when the third one is, to put a blunt point on it, fresh kill, Margo wants no part of it. Or, to be fair, a limited part. She’d been disingenuous during our argument earlier. She does get jealous. My focus turns to other people when I’m working. Sometimes too much of my focus. Tough guy like me. I hate the sight of broken bodies. It disgusts and disturbs me every bit as much as it drives me to seek out who the hell is responsible. I don’t blame Margo for not wanting to hear about it. I don’t want to share. “You just suck it up,” Charlie used to tell me. “A butcher’ll wash his hands before he heads home. You do the same. If you can’t do it, think about maybe not going home for a while.”

The cab dropped me off at the Church of the Sacred Heart just as the second service was letting out. Shirley Malone was standing at the door at the top of the steps, testing the staying power of Father Manekin’s ear. As the priest spotted me coming up the steps, I could have sworn he breathed a silent prayer.

“Fritz. How good to see you.”

“Father.”

“I’m afraid you’re too late. I’ve already issued the congregation its marching orders for the week.”

“Shame. What was your topic?”

My mother answered for him. “Equanimity. That means you’re no more important than anybody else.” She gave me her version of the evil eye, something to which I long ago developed a Kevlar-like resistance. Father Manekin saw his opportunity to make a break for it.

“Don’t remain a stranger, Fritz.” He gave my mother’s hand a squeeze. “I’ll remember what you said, Shirley.”

“What did you say?” I asked after the priest had slid off to another of his flock. Shirley presented me with her elbow so that I could walk her down the steps in regal fashion.

“That’s between Theo, myself and the Lord.”