We approached the ambulance as white lights flickered like fireflies in adjoining yards, cops and tech people searching with flashlights for a murder weapon, a pipe, a tool, anything. Two K-9 units were working the scene, one on either side of the street.

A red-eyed woman sat inside the ambulance, mid twenties or thereabouts, black leggings, a blue silk T-shirt to mid thigh, bright beads encircling her neck, her hair a bouffant of braids dangling to her shoulders. She would have been pretty, but crying had melted mascara down her cheeks and her pink lipstick was smeared. She wore black fingerless biking gloves, which explained the sleek Orbea bicycle in the grass beside the vehicle.

“This is Wenda Bronstein,” Vince said gently. “Miss Bronstein, I know you’ve told your story to me, but could you please repeat it to Detective Ryder.”

She nodded and swallowed hard. “I was – I was biking home, one block down. I couldn’t make out what was happening, it seemed so weird. I got closer and saw the police car and the … the policeman lying in the street under the streetlamp. A man was standing over him, saying words. It was like he was praying. I heard ‘Jesus’, and ‘Accept this sinner.’ Then he bent over the policeman and did that hand thing. Like in church.”

She made the sign of the cross. I shot a look at Vince.

“Th-then he got inside a white van,” Bronstein continued. “Not fast, but like he didn’t have a worry in th-the world. I swear he was grinning.”

“How close were you?”

“When I saw the blood I freaked and ran up on to the sidewalk. My feet came off the pedals and it took a second to get them back. He sp-spoke to me, just one word.”

“What was it?”

“‘Whore.’”

“What was he driving, did you see?”

“Just … a white van. There was some kind of sign but … I’m sorry, I was too scared, trying to get away.”

“We’ve got BOLOs out on white vans with signage,” Vince said, unnecessarily. A lot of white vans were going to be stopped tonight. I was thanking the young woman when we heard a yell from a yard two houses down.

“Over here. OVER HERE!”

We bolted past a pair of howling dogs, their handler pulling them back, leashes straining. I slipped on suddenly wet grass, Vince grabbing my arm to keep me from going down. “Easy,” another MDPD detective said. “There was a lawn sprinkler running. Everything’s soaked.”

We walked the last few steps to see legs beneath a stand of purple bougainvillea fronting the porch of a yellow duplex. I feared another death until the bushes flashed white and I heard the clicking of a camera, relieved to realize it was a forensics tech beneath the bougainvillea.

“I’ve got the shots,” the tech said. “I’m bringing it out.”

The tech was Martin Petitpas, a rail-skinny black guy in his early thirties who’d grown up in South Louisiana and whose nickname was Pittypat. He reminded me of a younger version of Wayne Hembree back in Mobile, same dry humor, same moon-round face. But there was no humor in Petitpas’s face as his wet clothes cleared the thorns and he displayed an evidence bag containing a rubber-handled masonry hammer, the label denoting an Estwing Big Blue, twenty-two ounces, forged steel, one face a hammer, the other a chisel curved like a fang, its four-inch length smeared with blood and cerebral tissue.

“Jesus,” Vince whispered. “Can you get prints, Pittypat?”

“Composite handles can be tough, Vince,” Petitpas said quietly, anger printed on his normally jovial features. “And it’s been soaking. But if this SOB wasn’t wearing gloves, we’ll get you prints.”

We retreated from the sodden yard as Officer Jason Roberts’s body was loaded into an ambulance, grim-faced cops watching the second of their own to die violently in under two weeks, first Menendez, now Roberts.

“What do you think, Carson?” Vince said. “Any connection to the burned girls? The religious thing you talked about?”

“Our boy has a thing about women, Vince. If he’s targeted a male cop it’s a …” I paused, a weary mind suddenly making connections.

“What?” Vince said.

“Get your people to knock every door in the area,” I said, almost yelling. “Wake everyone up. If no one answers, find out who lives there.”

Vince was a fast study. “You think your perp made a grab and got caught in the act?”

“Knock those doors,” I said. “See if a woman is missing.”

Vince hustled away and I found a support group passing out Styrofoam cups of coffee, grabbed one and went to the Rover to escape the surging, angry cops. A half-hour later I heard my name being barked from a bullhorn.

“Detective Carson Ryder! Detective Ryder … you’re wanted at the front of the white apartment building!”

I sprinted the distance, found Vince looking for me. He gestured to follow him down a wide hall to apartment 22-A, a pair of thirtyish males outside the adjacent unit.

“We’ve got an empty here, Carson. No one’s answering. Her neighbors, these gentlemen, say the occupant is a medical-equipment salesperson named Sissy Carol Sparks.”

“We thought we heard Sissy earlier,” the nearest male said. “Her door. But she’s out a lot on business.”

“Thanks, guys,” Vince said. “You can go back inside.”

The pair nodded and retreated into their unit. When the door closed Vince turned to me. “I ran the name, Carson. Miz Sparks may be selling something, but I doubt it’s medical equipment.”

“Prostitution?”

“Remember Madame Cho’s house of horrors? Sparks was a masseuse. She went down in last year’s bust. She also had a possession arrest a month before that, heroin, but skated because it was her first.”

“Since then?”

“Nothing. Clean record.”

We heard footsteps and saw a pair of uniforms flanking a plump and bespectacled man in his mid forties, a brown jacket over khakis, the apartment manager bearing keys.

We stepped inside. A blind person would have known it was a woman’s space, the smell of female lotions and potions thick in the air. The living area was furnished sparsely, but with an eye to color, the couch and flanking chairs a roseate pastel, the walls a soft blue. There were a dozen framed photos on the walls, sky-heavy landscapes, vast tracts of blue over lonely, unpopulated beaches or flat plains of desert.

“Got blood on the carpet,” I said.

“And a picture on the floor,” Vince said, lifting a decorative photo of a seascape. “There’s where it came from,” he said, tapping a bent hanger on the wall as a possible scenario unfolded: the perp gains entry, punches the occupant to chill her out, as she spins backward her flailing hands knock the photo from its hanger.

“It’s my guy,” I said, stomach churning. “He’s got another one.”

47

Vince added the Sparks woman’s name and description to the van BOLO and scurried back to his department to monitor the search. I was too charged with adrenalin to sleep. Back in Mobile Harry and I would have headed to the Causeway, an eight-mile-long stretch of low road traversing upper Mobile Bay, sipping beers and staring into the dark water lapping at the reeds, or watching the lights of a freighter angling into the Port of Mobile. The Causeway was where we could retreat into ourselves as the stars wheeled above and the nightbirds called from the trees.

But my partner had retired and the Causeway was now just a place to visit in memory.

With no Harry and no Causeway, I followed the hammer to the forensics lab, passed hand to hand like an Olympics torch, the bearers hoping it could light the way to Officer Roberts’s killer. Martin Petitpas handed the hammer to Dr Arun Chandrakant, the Acting Director, who passed it to Dean Hogue, the specialist in latents. When I arrived Hogue had the hammer from the bag and was studying it stem to stern with a high-powered loupe as Petitpas looked over his shoulder.