He placed his hands down flat and leaned forward. He looked like he was ready to bound right out of his chair. “I want to see twelve heads nodding. Now.”

3

THE SNOW HAD NEITHER let up nor intensified but was still coming down like finely sifted sugar. Nearly a dozen police cars, along with two ambulances, were clogging the narrow street, their lights flashing blue and red tattoos on and off the snow-powdered trees, the parked cars and the gawkers. The latter were growing in numbers and animation by the minute. Yellow crime-scene tape embraced the front of five attached brownstones. But it was the middle one that was receiving most of the attention, the one with the oversize Christmas tree all atwinkle in white in the high front windows.

I followed the scores of footprints to the edge of the onlookers. A bank of spotlights had been set up and directed at the brownstones. The illuminated area looked not so much like daylight as like the light of a flashbulb stilled at the moment of going off. Inside the apartment with the Christmas tree, real flashbulbs were going off.

Not a good sign.

Having gotten as far as I could, I pulled out my cell phone and hit the code for Margo. She answered immediately.

“Fritz! Where are you? You’re never going to guess what’s happened.”

“One of your neighbors has been murdered.”

“Oh. You know.” She sounded disappointed.

“Poke your head out the window.”

I looked up at the top floor of a brownstone across the street from where all the activity was taking place. Several seconds passed, then I saw a form pass in front of a window. The window went up. Margo Burke leaned out into the abyss, holding the phone to her ear. In my ear, her voice said, “I don’t see you.”

“Down here. Not too tall, not too short, just right.” I waved my free hand.

“There you are!” She waved back. “I’ve been watching out the window for about an hour. It’s a murder, right?”

“I believe it is.”

“Oh, Jesus. And you see who it is?”

“I see whose apartment it is,” I said.

“Oh, Fritz, come on. It has to be her.”

“You’re jumping to conclusions.”

I saw her switch the phone to her other ear. “I’m not jumping to conclusions. Come on, this was Marshall Fox’s lover, for Christ’s sake.”

I reminded her, “Former. And what of it? Since when do you have to be involved with a celebrity to get whacked in this town?”

“Whacked. Well, aren’t you Mr. Mob tonight?”

“Besides,” I said, “we don’t know yet if it’s her.”

The line crackled. Even though we were separated by only a few hundred feet, I guess our signals first had to travel untold miles up into space before bouncing back down to us. “You know the policeman’s secret handshake. Why don’t you go find out?”

Which is what I did. And, of course, she was correct. The first official homicide victim of the New Year in the borough of Manhattan was Robin Jane Burrell. Age twenty-seven. Originally from New Hope, Pennsylvania. Or, as one of the tabloids would put it the following day in a caption beneath the grim photo of the woman lying trussed beneath the Christmas tree: NO HOPE.

KELLY COLE WAS REPORTING from the dark snowy steps of the courthouse. Even though there was no logical reason for it, the news department still felt that the courthouse steps were the appropriate backdrop for the story about the fracturing Marshall Fox jury and Judge Deveraux’s refusal to accept a deadlock. The other breaking story, the discovery of the body of Robin Burrell in her uptown apartment, was tag-teaming with the jury story. Margo and I were watching the news on TV.

“Kelly Cole told me no one pays attention to her syntax.”

Margo’s hand froze halfway to her open mouth. The popcorn remained poised for the toss. “Her what?”

“Her syntax.”

“When did she tell you this?”

“At the courthouse. We were shooting the breeze before Deveraux cleared the room. May I add, it was a very light breeze.”

Margo’s wrist snapped. As she chewed the popcorn, her eyes traveled several times between me and the television. “She’s pretty.”

I shrugged. “If you like them blond and curvy.”

“Well…” Munch-munch. “She has lovely syntax.”

We were in Margo’s living room, keeping the couch company. I was also keeping a short glass of whiskey company, dipping into it like a crow at a birdbath, making it last. The bowl of popcorn was on Margo’s lap, and she had her arms wrapped around it like she might sing it a lullaby later. The spines of Margo’s several thousand books stared back at us from the solid wall of bookshelves, along with the television set, which Margo had rolled over from its usual resting place in the corner of the room. The dimmer was on low. The snow outside the window was still sifting down like an ever-falling veil. But the reportage of murders and contentious jurors pretty much killed the mood.

“It looks like they’re not going to mention it,” Margo said.

The coverage had switched from the courthouse steps back to the scene outside Robin Burrell’s building. The reporter on the scene wasn’t saying anything different from what he had said at the top of the newscast. An anonymous call to 911 at around 8:40 had led police to the scene, where they had discovered the murdered body of Robin Burrell lying on the floor in her front room. All that police were saying was that the woman’s death “did not appear to be accidental.” No mention was made of the cuffing of the victim’s feet, or the trail of blood stretching from the blood-soaked bedroom to the front room, or the mirror shard that had been jammed into her throat. But what Margo was referring to specifically was the fact that no one was reporting that the body of Robin Burrell had been arranged in the same fashion as the bodies of the two women for whose murders Marshall Fox, America ’s favorite television bedtime companion for the past three years, was being tried. Not so much the handcuffs, which had appeared on only one of Fox’s alleged victims. And not the mirrored glass, which was unique to the Burrell killing. But the hand placed over the heart. Fox’s signature sign-off. In the case of the first victim, a ballpoint pen had been used, a crude but effective enough means to hold the hand in place. Ten days later, the killer had upgraded to the hammer and nail.

“They’re not telling because the police haven’t let it out,” I said.

“Except they told you.”

“That’s because I know the secret handshake.”

“Besides which, you’re not likely to stand up in front of a television camera and start blabbing.”

“Only if they tickle me in the right spots.”

“Hey. How long have I known you, and I still don’t know the right spots.”

“But I applaud the tenacity of your efforts.”

Before coming upstairs to Margo’s, I’d gotten the lowdown from homicide detective Joseph Gallo, of Manhattan ’s Twentieth Precinct. Gallo was normally a cool customer, a regular Mr. Ice. But this one had rattled him. His face had been pale and grim as he briefly sketched out the scene for me. He was especially grim when he told me about the hand being nailed over the heart. He’d fixed me with a look I’m not used to seeing on Joe Gallo’s face. Little bit of dread, little bit of fear.

“We might not have him. I’d have bet my father’s farm it was Fox. I swear I could see those two dead women in his eyes. But Jesus, Fritz. It might actually not be him. After all this. This thing here is a pure carbon copy. The freak who did those women might still be out there. I don’t even want to think about it.”

I declined Margo’s gesture to refresh my drink. She fixed me with her frankest look. “You are staying the night.” If there was a question mark attached to her words, it was completely silent. I confirmed that I was staying. “That’s good,” she said. “You won’t think less of me if I confess that I’m a bit spooked?”