“What are you doing here? I didn’t ask for the police.”

“I saw you being brought in,” Megan said.

“Is that so? Why don’t I believe you?”

“What happened, Mrs. Fox?”

Rosemary tried to sneer, but her cuts and stitched lips rendered the attempt pathetic. “Nothing happened. I fell down a flight of stairs.”

“The doctor says there are no other injuries indicating a fall. Are we to assume you bounced all the way down on your head?”

“Assume what you wish.”

Megan turned a rolling chair backward and dropped into it. “And the sexual assault. That occurred where? Midway down the stairs?”

Rosemary’s natural imperiousness was made a parody by her neck brace. Megan noticed that Rosemary had arranged her long thick hair to conceal the restrictive device as best as possible. “Sexual assault, as you put it, is the fantasy of that lecherous doctor.”

“You’re saying you weren’t sexually assaulted?”

“If anyone will listen, yes.”

“But you have had sex recently. This morning sometime. The lecherous doctor isn’t wrong about that, is he?”

Rosemary felt the shaking coming on again, and by a force of will, she stilled it. She’d be damned if she was going to allow this incident to turn into a horror show. It was already surreal enough, all of it.

“I don’t discuss my personal life with strangers.”

Megan asked, “Does your husband know that you’re seeing someone while he’s in prison?”

“Who says I’m ‘seeing’ anyone?”

“It’s just a hunch. You’re protecting somebody. I’m guessing it’s someone who is more than just a one-night stand.”

“Oh, please. Stop it already.”

“You’ve managed the loyal-wife thing wonderfully, Mrs. Fox,” Megan said. “You had most of us fooled.”

Rosemary remained cool. “Marshall needs my support. You might have noticed that his reputation is a bit tainted. I hardly think I gain anything by running off on him or ganging up on him.”

“Let’s get back to your assault.”

“I told you, that is my business.”

“From the look of things, somebody was pretty angry with you.”

Rosemary snapped, “Well, I’m pretty fucking angry with him, too.”

Good, Megan thought. Bonding. “Just a word of advice, Mrs. Fox. You’re going to need a better story than I-fell-down-a-flight-of-steps.”

“Who says I’m going to need a story at all?”

“You’re a public commodity. People are going to insist on hearing what happened to your beautiful face.”

“Since you ask, I’ve been thinking of taking my beautiful face away somewhere for a while. It’s a big world, Detective. I know how to hide in it when I have to.”

“I thought you just said you gained nothing in running away from your husband.”

“Who says I’m running away? My lawyer tells me that the judge is about to declare a mistrial. Marshall might be released on bail soon. I wouldn’t be running away. Perhaps I’d be preparing a place where my husband could get some long-needed privacy.”

“I’m afraid that even if your husband is allowed out on bail, he’s going to be required to keep very much in plain sight. I can assure you, he is not going to be given a leash so long that he can fly off and join you somewhere halfway around the world. It just doesn’t work that way. Perhaps it would be wiser if you were to stay close to home as well.”

Rosemary’s eyes narrowed. “I can go anywhere I damn well please.”

Megan backed off. Her mind was racing. She needed to get it in control. She needed to layer her thoughts calmly, one atop the other. “I suppose your personal life is none of my business, Mrs. Fox,” she said, rolling back in her chair away from the woman. “If you want an assault and rape to go unreported, I guess that’s your affair. We can’t force a wife to testify in court against her husband, and I guess we can’t force a woman to prosecute her abusive lover.”

“Former lover, Detective, if that makes you feel any better.”

“Former? So what am I looking at? Was this your boyfriend’s idea of a swan song?”

“It’s my fault for letting it drag on so long,” Rosemary said. “Lesson learned.”

Drag on so long. Megan was dying to know just how long it had dragged on. Months? A year? Just how long after her husband was put behind bars had Rosemary taken her mystery lover? For that matter, had Rosemary perhaps been cheating on Fox even prior to the murders?

“Would you like me to drive you back to your home?” Even before Rosemary could begin to answer, a second thought came to Megan. “Wait. That’s not such a good idea, is it? I’m sure there are photographers hanging around your building. One look at you in this condition…Is there someone you can call who’d come get you and take you somewhere more private? At least for the day? I’m sure you don’t need the aggravation.”

Rosemary gave the idea some thought. She liked it. In fact, she knew exactly where she’d like to go. The Hamptons. In the dead of winter it was like a morgue out there. She could give Gloria a call and have a car sent. In a matter of hours, Rosemary could be sitting in front of a fire in that big ugly empty house, glass of wine in hand, looking out the glass doors at the misty ocean. Nobody around to take pieces of her. It sounded nice. She could do her thinking there, start to get her exit strategy sorted out. No way was she going to abide sitting around through a whole new trial. She knew that much. Sorry, Marshall, but the time had come. She could begin to plan the next phase of her life in earnest. Getting banged around might have been the best thing that could have happened to her.

Rosemary looked over at the detective and gave her what, on any other day, would have been her killer smile. “Lady, I like the way you think.”

MEGAN MOVED right past her car. She waited until she was a block away from the hospital before she pulled out her phone. It wasn’t as if she was afraid that Rosemary Fox could hear through walls; what Megan needed was the trudge up York through the snow to think things through. Before she could punch in the number, her phone went off. It was Joe Gallo.

“Got him!”

“Who? Got who?”

“Who do you think? Spicer. You’ll never guess where we grabbed him. Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. He managed to spend the night there, then went off into the wrong restroom this morning. A nun came into the women’s room, and there he was in one of the stalls, screaming fire and brimstone over his phone to Jimmy Puck. The nun fetched a pair of cops from out in front of the church. We just got him in the box a few minutes ago. He says he doesn’t want a lawyer. I’m putting him on a low boil until you can get back here. What’s up on your end, anyway? Do we know who beat up Mrs. Fox?”

“She didn’t give a name.”

“Didn’t give a name? What does that mean? She has a name but she wouldn’t give it?”

Megan chose her words carefully. “She’s in shock, Joe. And she’s very bullheaded. When a woman like that wants to clam up, she clams up.”

“Okay. You can fill me in later. I need you back up here. Spicer’s already blowing off like Vesuvius. If he killed Burrell and Riddick, I don’t think we’re going to have any trouble coaxing it out of him. This is a man who is proud to be angry.”

Megan clicked off the call and pocketed the phone. Bruce Spicer was in police custody. A man with a motive-several of them, in fact, however perverse they seemed. Megan knew she should be hightailing it back to the car and hitting the cherry lights and getting back uptown as quickly as possible. This was the moment of the kill.

Except it wasn’t. Megan closed her eyes and tilted her head back to face the falling snow. Her lips parted slightly as she took the flakes with her tongue.

It’s not him. It’s not Bruce Spicer.

She knew it in her heart. In her gut. Yes, the man had made the threatening phone calls. Unquestionably, the very existence of Robin Burrell and the other women he had phoned-or attempted to phone-had inflamed him to no end. And he had desperately wanted his wife off the jury. The man was eminently capable of causing havoc, no question about it. But it wasn’t him. And Megan knew she was right. The person who had gone on a killing rampage was the man Rosemary Fox was protecting. What was worse-much worse, Megan realized-was that a horrible mistake had been made. And she had made it.