“And so far, Jimmy Puck doesn’t seem to have gotten the word.”

Gallo took a beat. “We both knew that Blair’s pregnancy was bound to come out sooner or later.”

“It would have been nice if it had come from us. I mean officially.”

“There’s a message for either of us to call Cynthia’s mother in Tucson,” Gallo said. “If it doesn’t make any difference to you, I’m going to make the call.”

“ McKinney should make the fucking call,” Megan said pointedly.

“You wouldn’t do that to the Blairs.”

“No, I guess you’re right. You know, he’s already started, Joe. Just now I had to do a little dance with him about Nicole. For Christ’s sake, she’s practically still warm.”

“No one ever accused McKinney of bucking for the Mr. Sensitivity merit badge.”

“Let’s forget him,” Megan said. “I’m sorry I brought him up.”

“Look, maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe the word on Cynthia being pregnant will bring someone forward. Contacting every obstetrician in the city to see if they were seeing Blair hasn’t exactly been the lean-and-mean approach. It could prove to be a decent leak.”

“Do you want to pin a badge on Jimmy Puck and make it official? This is our case. How about we control the flow of information? Well, forget it. It’s done. Cynthia’s going to be background noise anyway, now that there’s fresh blood. Nicole Rossman was a pretty little sexpot, to put it bluntly. I’m sure you know there’s already a pool on how many days in a row her photo will make front page of the Post.”

“We need a connection between the two, and quick,” Gallo said. “If this is just random women…Well, how many random women do we have in Manhattan alone?” Gallo’s phone rang. He grabbed it. “Yeah? Okay. Tell them I’ll be right out.” He hung up the phone and straightened his tie. “Nicole Rossman’s parents are here.”

Megan groaned. “Take a look through all those papers on your desk, Joe. I know my resignation is in there somewhere.”

MEGAN CALLED a Thai restaurant for takeout. When the delivery guy showed up, she had to walk down the narrow steep stairs of her building to the first floor. One day the buzzer would work again, she just knew it. Josh had offered to fix it, but that wasn’t what she wanted. She wanted the landlord to fix it, like he was supposed to do. Of all the battles a person might choose, Megan knew that this one was among the most ridiculous. She couldn’t explain clearly why she allowed her slovenly landlord to get under her skin. She could have opted to avoid him more often, work around him, call a truce, go on a charm offensive, ignore her apartment’s problems, any of a dozen options.

That she chose to keep him as an object of her anger might have been amusing if it weren’t so pathetic. Josh had been the one to suggest that maybe it was because Helen had always been the one to square off against the landlord and that, in her absence, Megan was taking up the battle. When Josh had floated the theory, it had sounded too pat to Megan’s ear. Typical Josh-think. But as she reflected on it, she had seen the logic. She didn’t want to see it, but it was there and hard to deny.

She paid for her pad thai, giving the delivery guy a good tip. On her way back up the steps, her toe caught a frayed pocket of the runner and she stumbled, almost falling to her knees. The blood rushed into her face. I’ll trip and fall down the steps and I’ll paralyze myself and I’ll sue that fat prick for every fucking cent he’s got.

While eating her noodles in the small kitchen, Megan went through the two sets of crime-scene photographs. She laid them out on the tiled floor, Cynthia Blair on the left, Nicole Rossman on the right. The photographs covered nearly the entire floor. Forensics had determined that Cynthia Blair’s attack had taken place essentially where the body had been discovered, on the west side of the Obelisk, the side facing away from the park roadway. Apparently, Nikki’s attack had taken place elsewhere and she was transported to the site, presumably dead already. Tests were being run on the tire tracks that had been lifted from the wet ground. Megan had sent a team of investigators moving out in widening arcs from the Egyptian monument in search of more evidence of Nikki or her attacker, but by nightfall nothing of consequence had turned up. The teams were going to resume work tomorrow. However, the farther from the Obelisk the teams moved, the less certain Megan was that they would be turning up anything. Still, even notwithstanding the lack of the actual murder site and any evidence that might be gleaned from it, it was significant that whoever had carried out the attack on Nikki had moved the body so that it would be found exactly where Cynthia Blair had been found. Significant of what, Megan didn’t yet know.

The photographs told her nothing she didn’t already know. One a choking with the victim’s own scarf, the other a bashed skull and a knife to the throat. Megan sat with her elbows planted on the kitchen table, scissoring the pad thai with the red lacquered chopsticks she had given Helen for some occasion she could no longer recall. Her eyes trolled back and forth along the sets of photographs. As she seared the photographs into her brain, Megan found value in trying to imagine the killer in the moment before he quit the scene. The crime-scene photographer had taken shots from nearly every angle. At least one of these angles had to approximate the view of the killer as he looked down on his handiwork. Megan rose from her chair and stood over the photographs, casting her own shadow on them.

I’m the killer, she thought. I’m taking one last look at what I’ve done.

She stepped carefully around the photographs of the two slain women, sampling the different angles. Clutching the chopsticks in her right fist, she assumed a sense of being heavier than she was. Taller. With her free hand, she pushed her hair off her face and held it there, clutching it tightly, using the hair to pull her head back, exposing her neck. She looked at a close-up of Nikki’s left hand. Two of her sculpted nails were broken off. Megan placed her own short fingernails against her neck and pressed. She imagined a heavy guttural breathing, sharp grunts as the knife worked its way from one side to the other. She lowered herself to her knees and stared at the open eyes of Nikki Rossman. Then it came to her. The utter loathing for the person who had done this, the person whose actions she was aping in the privacy of her small kitchen. Megan caught her breath. She placed the tips of the chopsticks against her abdomen and pressed them there. Softly at first but then harder. The chopsticks were pressing into her skin. They were hurting. Hurt him, she thought. Let him feel what it’s like. And not a quick slashing cut, either, but something slower and deliberate. Something meaningful. Her hand was beginning to tremble with the effort, and Megan closed her eyes, trying to picture the killer. Faceless. A face in shadow.

Suddenly, as if a fork of lightning had ripped through her imagination, a face did appear. The Swede. Of course. The goddamn Swede. The broad brow. The large dull mouth. Him. She pressed the chopsticks even harder as she imagined Albert Stenborg and his large, oafish smile. She wanted to see blood seeping its way out of the Swede’s mouth. She wanted to see his heavy blue eyes freeze in sudden bewilderment, followed by the awareness. Hands-on this time. Not from a distance. Not with a handgun. So much more meaningful this way. Megan imagined she could move as close to his face as she wished. Close enough to feel his foul breath. Close enough this time to see her own reflection in his eyes, and to see in them the last thing on earth the murderous bastard was ever going to see.

Her.

The chopsticks snapped. The broken ends fell lightly to the floor, landing on the photograph showing a close-up of Nikki Rossman’s hand. The one nailed into her heart. Megan opened her eyes and looked down at her own belly. A tiny pink strip. A quarter-inch cut. In the scheme of things, nothing. On her hands and knees, she gathered up the photographs of the two murder victims, squared off the pile and placed it reverently on the kitchen table. There was enough pad thai in the container for two people. Or for a second meal. Megan finished it off. She took a shower, got into her faded robe and took the photographs into the front room, where she spread them out again on the floor, this time in front of the couch. She poured herself a small glass of bourbon and got onto the couch.