“How did the killer get in here with the body?”

“Window in the kitchen in the back of the house,” Wallace said, gesturing. “He cut a hole in the window, slipped in, then unlocked the back door. It’s a quiet neighborhood. If he did it late at night, no one would have even noticed.”

Rossi asked, “Have you identified the victim?”

“White male, early twenties, no ID, still dressed, partially buried in the crawl space under the house.”

Morgan nodded toward the innocent-looking, nondescript bungalow. “House is vacant?”

“Has been, off and on, since Gacy,” Wallace said. “No one with even a vague idea of what went on in there has ever wanted to live in that house. Of course, there’s nothing vague about thiskilling— looks like it was done by someone who knew about the original crimes.”

“What makes you say that?” Rossi asked.

Wallace jerked a thumb at the bungalow. “I was a rookie when this went down back in ’seventy-eight and ’seventy-nine. I hadn’t been on the force six months when the excavation started. I hate this goddamn house. The body? To me, it looks like the killer, to pull this off? Hadto’ve been in the house with us back then.”

Rossi said, “It could be as simple as he saw photos. This thing was heavily covered.”

“Yeah, well, what we saw didn’t make the papers or any of the magazines or even the books about the case.” Wallace’s tone and his expression were grave. “He must’ve seen the actual crime scene photos.”

“Who had access to those?”

Wallace shrugged. “Really, just cop shop people.”

“From just around here, or Greater Metropolitan Chicago?”

“You know how it is, Agent Rossi. Cops cooperate. Somebody wants a look at famous crime scene photos, you show ’em.”

“But there’d be no record of who looked at them.”

“No. Nothing like that.”

Rossi and Morgan traded a wary glance. Rossi figured their UnSub would be a police buff, but maybe he was more than just a buff. He had never met this Wauconda detective, Jake Denson, but Hotchner had told him about the encounter. Now, Rossi wondered if Denson had some tie to their new John Doe, too.…

“Excuse me,” Dryden said. “But… I’veseen them. The photos?”

They all turned to him.

“And so have a lot of people all over the country, who have no connection to Chicago.”

Rossi frowned. “How’s that?”

“Well, I’ve seen the Gacy shots at forensic photography seminars, crime scene analyst seminars, and, frankly… if you know where to look… some of ’em are even on the Internet.”

Rossi sighed, shook his head. This news did not make their lives easier.

“We canvassed but got bubkes,” Wallace said. “This guy’s a ghost.”

Rossi laughed humorlessly. Then he said, “ ‘Even then the cock crew loud, and at the sound it shrunk in haste away and vanished from our sight.’ ”

Morgan’s forehead frowned and his mouth smiled as he said, “ Hamlet?”

Rossi gave up a rumpled grin. “It was either that or ‘I ain’t afraid of no ghosts.’ ”

After her meeting with SAIC Himes, Jennifer Jareau had returned to the conference room to find it empty.

This was not unusual. Though much of the public, and even some cops, thought what the BAU did was hocus pocus and that they sat in an ivory tower divining their profiles from crystal balls or tea leaves, the truth was they spent most of their time out in the field… which meant the media/police liaison spent a great deal of her time alone, or at least away from the rest of the team.

None of the agents had ever made her feel like anything less than a one hundred percent participant in the BAU, but it still nagged her, sometimes, that they were off busting their humps while she was sitting here in the office.

In her worst moments, she felt like the team mascot or the little sister who wanted to tag along and rarely got to. She worked hard and contributed to the effort, she knew that. Still, they were out in the field now.

And she wasn’t.

Going to her laptop, she hooked up a video feed with Garcia.

“What’s up?” her friend asked.

Jareau shook her head. “Everybody’s in the field.”

“But you,” Garcia said. “Listen, while you were—”

“Meeting with SAIC Himes?” Jareau offered.

“Yeah, while you were doing that, they got a call about another body.”

Jareau straightened, surprised she hadn’t been alerted. “Where?”

Garcia’s eyes widened, and—with much more melodrama than a mere address would seem to warrant—she said, “8213 Summerdale in Des Plaines.”

Jareau shrugged. “Oh-kay—what am I missing?”

Garcia stared at her a long moment. “That’s the former address of John Wayne Gacy.”

A momentary wave of nausea passed through her. “Great. Just swell.… All right, I better sign off, then. It’s going to get ugly around here. Uglier.”

“Sometimes,” Garcia said, “I’m very happy to be sequestered in my little domain.”

Then she was gone.

Jareau wondered why her cell phone wasn’t ringing itself crazy already. She snapped it off her belt to see if it was turned off or the battery’d gone dead. But the phone was on and the battery indicator read full.

The police, the media, someoneshould be calling her for help or a comment or something.

She continued to eyeball the device, confused by why it remained mute. She was concentrating so hard, she couldn’t help but flinch when the thing vibrated in her hand, and she almost threw it, reflexively, against the wall.

“Jareau.”

“Hotchner. You heard?”

“Yes, Garcia told me. I’ll get right out to the scene.…"

“No—sit tight. The Des Plaines Police are waiting for your call—they’re going to join the task force.”

“Yes, sir.”

“The victim at this crime scene is a John Doe, male, white, early twenties. Garcia’s working on the identification.”

“All right.”

“I guess I don’t have to tell you.…”

“That the media’s going to run wild with this? No. You don’t.”

Hotchner said, “Just a heads-up. I wouldn’t wish this on anybody, but I know we’re in good hands.”

“Thanks, Hotch.”

“We should be back soon,” Hotchner said, and clicked off.

The phone remained silent for almost ten whole seconds before it rang again. “Jareau.”

“Supervisory Special Agent Jennifer Jareau?”

She didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes. May I help you?”

“My name is Logan Brinkley. I’m managing editor of the Chicago Examiner.”

That didn’t take long,Jareau thought as she said, “What can I do for you, Mr. Brinkley?”

“I think it might be what I can do for you, Special Agent Jareau.”

“Please explain.”

A momentary pause. “I just received several photos via e-mail.”

“Yes?”

Again Brinkley hesitated before continuing. “They are very… disturbing.”

Jareau felt another wave of nausea, only this one hung on a while.

“They were photos of murders that have occurred in the Chicago area over the last few months— homicides that the involved communities have no idea are related. And it’s clear the policehave known.”

Jareau wondered how many other media outlets had been sent the pictures. The Trib? The Sun-Times? The television stations? The potential media onslaught was almost too much to consider.

The overriding factor, however, was that she had to tell Hotch. Not just to alert him that the media was going to be more intrusive now, but to tell him that the UnSub’s behavior had escalated.

Taunting the police was one thing; sending full-color press releases another.…

Managing editor Brinkley was saying, “The publisher wants to run all the photos in tomorrow’s edition, despite their… graphic nature. I can’t blame him, since the police behavior here is certainly questionable. Still, I managed to convince him that we should call the FBI first. So, here I am.”

“Running those photos,” Jareau said, “could seriously impede a federal murder investigation.”