Jesus,what a pig.

    Timeto move. Lucy had four more rooms to clean before her lunch break and less thantwo hours to do it. Management knew exactly when she clocked into a room. Ifshe took longer than forty minutes, they noticed.

    In agiven day, each room attendant had fourteen rooms to clean. If you were fast -and Lucy, at nineteen, had energy to burn - you could buy 'credits,' or otherrooms to clean. Lucy often did. She was good at her job. She did not engage theguests in a lot of small talk in the hallways, she was always courteous andpolite, and with a little make-up she was not that hard to look at. With hercornflower-blue eyes, her butterscotch hair and slender figure, she never had aproblem fitting into her uniform and more than once had caught the male guestsfollowing her movement down the long hallways at the hotel.

    Althoughthe work was not particularly demanding, it was mentally taxing. The differencebetween a three-and-a-half-star and a four-star hotel was often in the attitudeand the details.

    Somethings were out of the control of the employees - the quality of the linens andtowels, for instance, or whether or not to include mouthwash in the bathroom,or services like an evening turn-down - while other things were clearly in thepurview of the 'ladies' in housekeeping.

    Todaythere was a convention checking into the hotel, booked for three days.Something called Société Poursuite, a group of people, as Lucyunderstood it, who looked into unsolved murders as some sort of strange hobby.They had purchased a third of all the rooms, including the entire twelfthfloor.

    Usingher finely tuned sense of logic, Lucy deduced that the word Sociétémeant Society. She just hoped the other word didn't stand for Pig.

    Asshe finished Room 1210, Lucy thought about her lunchtime appointment that day.

    Shehad seen so many so-called professionals in the past nine years, so many peoplewho thought they knew what was wrong with her. She had even taken part in apilot program on regression therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Hospital.Despite Lucy having no money to pay for the treatment, after three separateinterviews they had agreed to take her. It hadn't gone well. For five straightdays she'd sat in a group of eight people who'd pretty much talked about how,in previous lives, they were raped by Attila the Hun or played footsie withMarie Antoinette, or swapped spit with John the Baptist's severed head.Yuck. They had not really understood her problem. Lucy had yet to meetanyone who did.

    She didmeet some nice people there. The man who died and was brought back to life. Thewoman who was hit in the head and wandered around the city for three wholemonths, not knowing who she was.

    Lucyhad also been to a behavioral psychologist - exactly ten times. Her medicalbenefits at the hotel allowed her to see someone in the mental health field tentimes in a calendar year, paying only her co- pay, which was twenty-fivedollars. She could barely afford that.

    Today,if she was lucky, all that was going to change. Today she was going to see theDreamweaver.

    Shehad found his card just sitting on her cart one day, probably tossed there by apassing guest. For some reason she had put it in her pocket and kept it. Just aweek earlier she'd called the number out of the blue and had a briefconversation with the man, who had told her what he did.

    Hesaid he helped people explore their dreams. He claimed he could make hernightmares go away. She had made an appointment with him, an appointment for todayat noon.

    Lucysmoothed the top of the bedspread, scanned the room. Perfect. But while theroom was finished, she was not.

    Shewalked to the closet, stepped inside, and closed the door. She sat down, took theblindfold out of her pocket, wrapped it around her eyes, and tied it at theback of her head.

    Thedarkness drew silently around her, and she welcomed it.

    Ithad been this way for nine years, ever since the ground trembled beneath herfeet, the devil had taken her hand, and three days of her life had been stolen.

    WhileLucy Doucette sat in the closet, the ghosts of her past swirling around her, aman entered the hotel lobby, twelve floors below.

    Aswith many who were on their way to Le Jardin this day, his interests ran to themorbid, the darker sides of human nature, the bleak and terrifying landscapesof the sociopathic mind. His specific interests were the kidnapping and murderof young girls, the mindset of the pedophile.

    Hewould be renting Room 1208. The room had a history, a sinister fable with whichthe man was intimate.

    Room1208 was, of course, on the twelfth floor.

    LucindaDoucette's floor.

Chapter 16

    Atjust after ten o'clock Jessica and Byrne got a call from the Medical Examiner'soffice. The Kenneth Beckman autopsy had been scheduled for nine o'clock thatmorning, but Tom Weyrich's message said there was something he wanted thedetectives to see before the doctor started the cut.

    Onthe way to the ME's office Jessica made a call to the Department of HumanServices. She was told that Carlos had slept through the night - for the firsttime in two weeks - and was up and playing. Jessica hung up, revisited by thefeeling of paralysis, the feeling that, if she didn't make a move on this,Carlos would slip into the system. She had wanted to discuss adoption withVincent but with the upcoming move on top of them and all the stress involvedwith that, she had not seen an opening.

    Maybeshe would bring it up tonight, she thought. Maybe she would soften Vincent upwith a night of inebriated, lamp-smashing sex.

    ThePhiladelphia Medical Examiner's Office was located on University Avenue. Thepurview of the office, among other things, was to investigate and determine thecause in all sudden, violent deaths in Philadelphia County, includinghomicides, suicides, accidents, and drug-related deaths.

    Inrecent years, the MEO had investigated an average of six thousand cases ofdeath annually, of which almost fifty percent required a post-mortemexamination. Other functions of the MEO included positive identification,preparation of autopsy reports, and expert testimony in court, as well as griefassistance for family members.

    WhileJessica and Byrne waited in the intake room next to the autopsy theaters, theywere serenaded by the constant zap of insects, courtesy of the largerectangular blue bug light on the wall. The continuous drone of bugs, mostlyblowflies, being flash-fried was maddening.

    Jessicachecked the schedule on the wall. It included the autopsies performed theprevious week. Tom Weyrich approached them.

    'Idon't get it, Tom,' Jessica said. 'There're twelve autopsies and only elevennames.'

    'Youdon't want to know,' Weyrich said.

    'See,now I have to know,' Jessica said. 'It's my naturally curious nature.'

    Weyrichran his hand over his chin. Jessica noticed that he had cut himself no fewerthan four times while shaving that morning. 'You sure?'

    'Dishit.'

    'Okay,last week we get a call from Penn. It seems someone threw an internal organonto the front steps of Tanenbaum Hall.'

    TheNicole E. Tanenbaum Hall was on the campus of the University of Pennsylvaniaand contained, among other things, the Biddle Law Library.

    'Somebodythrew body parts?'

    Weyrichnodded. 'What a world, huh?'

    'Whata city.''

    'Westill had to treat it like normal John Doe remains. We ran all our standardpathology tests, did a standard cut.'