Byrne shot to his feet. “Let’s move.”

The eight detectives spilt into two groups of four. Seconds later, they sped off into the rain.

THIS AREA OF JEFFERSON was blighted and bleak. There were only a few lights on in the scattered freestanding blocks of row houses. Gentrification came slowly to this part of the city, if at all. The block was dotted with boarded up structures, separated by weed-blotted lots, abandoned cars.

At just after 2 AM, two teams pulled up to the address. Byrne checked the street number, then checked it again.

It was a vacant lot. The overhead map showed a building, but there was no telling how old the photograph was. This had been a corner building, almost a perfect triangle. They hurried out of their vehicles, scanned the block, the nearby buildings, the empty parcel. And saw it. There, against a low stone wall, at the back of the lot, amid the debris and wild flowers sat a Chinese red lacquer box, decorated with gold dragons.

Josh Bontrager hit the ground at a run. He bolted across the lot, opened the box.

Byrne glanced at his watch. It was 2:02.

Bontrager turned back, and the look on his face told them everything they needed to know. They were too late.

The next piece of the tangram had been placed.

SEVENTY-SEVEN

2:13 AM

LILLY CRINGED IN the darkness. The footsteps had drawn to within ten feet or so, and then stopped. She had no idea how much time had passed. Ten minutes, maybe more. She had held her breath as long as she could.

Where had he gone? Had he left this room? Was he in the room with Claire? Had Lilly abandoned the girl and now something bad was happening to her? Unable to wait any longer, Lilly slowly crept out from beneath the bed, got to her feet. She did not know what she was walking into, but could not stay where she had been, just waiting for her terrible fate.

She felt like a blind person. She took a few small steps, feeling the air in front of her. She reached something that felt like a mirror—smooth, cool to the touch.

And that’s when the overhead lights came on.

Lilly looked up. She was in an enormous room. The high ceiling was gilded, coffered, but covered in cobwebs. Overhead was a huge bronze chandelier missing half its bulbs.

“Odette.”

Lilly spun around. An old man stood behind her. An ancient man, next to a portable oxygen unit. His skin was gray, stretched over a skeletal skull. He wore an old silken bathrobe, crusted with food, stained with urine.

In the faint light, Lilly saw the deep red welt around his neck.

She fainted.

SEVENTY-EIGHT

2:20 AM

FIVE DETECTIVES STOOD on the corner, blank-faced. The sixth detective, Kevin Byrne, paced like a wild animal. There was no consoling him. EMS had arrived at the scene, as had an investigator from the medical examiner’s office. The girl was pronounced dead at 2:18. There had been no air in the red lacquer trunk. She had most likely suffocated.

They had just over ninety minutes to find the next girl.

Jessica took the laptop out and clicked on the killer’s GothOde web page. There were still only four performance videos on the page. The fifth video, the one with the killer in front of City Hall, had been deleted.

“Anything?” Byrne asked.

“Nothing yet.”

“We have to think like he does,” Bontrager said. “We have to get inside his head. There’s one diamond, and one square left.”

“I’m open to suggestions here,” Byrne said.

The homicide division was an investigative unit that ran on interviews, forensic data, time inside an interrogation room. Everything was quantifiable, except the whims of a madman.

Jessica refreshed the page, over and over again. Finally, there was change.

“There’s another one,” she said.

Everyone crowded around the laptop.

THE GIRL IN THE SUB TRUNK

The video opened with the same curtains as the first four videos.

This time, center stage, was the Chinese red lacquer box covered with gold dragons. The box was on a pedestal. After a few moments the killer stepped into frame. He wore the same cutaway tuxedo, the same goatee, the same monocle. He stood no closer to the camera.

“Behold the Sub Trunk,” he said. He gestured offstage. Moments later a teenage Asian-American girl stepped onto the stage, and then on top of the box. She reached down, picked up a large hoop of silken fabric. She looked terribly frightened. Her hands were shaking. “And behold the lovely Odette,” the man said.

The killer walked offstage. The girl lifted the fabric to just beneath her chin. From off camera a shout could be heard.

“One, two, three!”

On three the girl lifted the hoop over her head, then immediately dropped it. It was now the killer standing on the trunk.

Fade to black.

There was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the girl in the video was the girl they had just found in the box.

Byrne raised Hell Rohmer on radio. “You watching this?” he asked.

“I’m watching it.”

“I want hard copies of that girl’s face in every sector car in East Division as fast as possible.”

“You got it.”

Byrne’s phone rang. He belted his handset, answered. It was David Sinclair.

“I’m going to put you on speaker,” Byrne said. He put the cell phone on the hood of the car.

“I got your e-mail,” Sinclair said. “I think I know what’s going on here.”

“What is it?”

“This is a pretty famous tangram. The puzzle is in the shape of a bird. A problem invented by Sang-hsia-k’o.”

Byrne told Sinclair of the most recent crime scene. He left out the gruesome details.

“Was this anywhere near the other buildings?”

“Yes,” Byrne said. “Another corner building.”

“Is it northwest of the Shiloh Street address?”

“It is.”

“East of Fifth?”

“Just.”

“So that makes five triangles.”

“Yes.”

“And this was the largest so far, so I’m thinking it is the central part of the problem.”

Suddenly, the night fell quiet. For a few electrifying moments there was no music, no traffic, no barking dogs, just the sound of a distant barge on the river, just the buzz of the streetlamps overhead. Byrne looked at Jessica. Their eyes met in wordless understanding, and they knew.

They were on the phone with the killer.

The man who called himself David Sinclair was Mr. Ludo.

Jessica walked quickly away, out of earshot. She opened her cell phone, dialed the communications unit. They would begin to triangulate this call.

The killer spoke first.

“In the world of magic, do you know what a flash is, Detective Byrne?”

Byrne remained silent. He let the man continue.

“A flash is where the audience has seen something it was not supposed to see. I know that I just flashed. You did not give me the address of the latest crime scene, so I could not have known it was the largest. Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about just so you can buy some time to trace this call. If you do, I will kill the next girl now, while you’re listening.”

“Okay.” Byrne thought of the man sitting across from him at the Magnolia Grill in Chester County. His anger built. He fought it. “What do you want?”

There was no hesitation. “What does any puzzle master want? To be solved. But only by the best and the brightest. Are you the best and brightest?”

Byrne had to keep the man talking. “Hardly. I’m just another flatfoot.”

“I doubt that. A flatfoot wound not have seen the Jeremiah Crosley clue and followed it to the Girl Without a Middle.”