The recording stops abruptly, mid-sentence. I steady myself with a hand to the wall, squeeze my eyes shut, lower my head, then slowly raise it. Marshall Rivers. Marshall—

Okay.

I remember him. I remember Marshall Rivers.

I remember a bad guy. Pure evil.

I remember a scared witness, a young woman.

I remember what I did to him.

And when he got out, he came back to pay me his respects. He came to my office in disguise, assumed a different name, and watched me sit helplessly while he carved up five women on the north side of the city.

Marshall Rivers is “James Drinker.” Marshall Rivers is the North Side Slasher.

“Finally,” I mumble. Then I look at Alexa, remembering the truncated nature of the voice mail. “Did you pause the message or did it just stop there?” I ask. “Is there more?”

From her dark corner, Alexa stands slowly and inches toward me, crossing the line of the television light, blocking it out, leaving us in darkness, her features changing with each step—

—the face of a ghost, a haunted figure, piercing eyes, a wry grin, a scowl, terror and rage and panic and fear—

“There’s more,” she says to me. “There’s a lot more.”

EIGHT YEARS AGO

90.

Jason Kolarich

Assistant County Attorney

The shower water scalded his skin, the way he liked it. The heat would stay on him for hours, keep him refreshed. It was little things like that—small meals, lots of coffee, catnaps when you could get them, and hot showers—that kept him on his game.

Whoever it was who decided to put Felony Review prosecutors on seventy-two-hour shifts had a sadistic streak. He had until tomorrow morning at ten before his shift ended and he could really sleep—unless, of course, he caught a case and had to see that one through post-shift.

He dried off, dressed in the same underwear and the same clothes, knotted his tie and finger-combed his hair. The door in the police locker room popped open, and cool air hit his skin.

“Counselor, we need you.”

“Coming, dear,” said Assistant County Attorney Jason Kolarich.

He was upstairs five minutes later, his shirt still wet from beads of water, his brain foggy. He walked into the detective squad room’s small kitchen, which served as Kolarich’s makeshift office. He put his hand out, and Officer Richard Nova dropped the report in it. Kolarich read it over quickly and then looked up at Nova, looking for any facial expression, finding none.

Kolarich read the report again. “We have the gun.”

“Right.”

“And eyes.”

“Right.”

“Whose eyes? Yours?” Kolarich looked up at Nova. Richie Nova was stocky and fit, young and sometimes too eager, but one of the by-the-book guys, one of the good ones. Most cops were good ones. Some of them were not. It made a difference to Kolarich.

“Mine and Gina’s. Happened right in front of us, the gun toss.”

Kolarich flipped past the officer’s report to the suspect’s priors. Something similar in the past, five years ago—an aggravated assault pleaded down to simple; he’d accosted a woman with a firearm. With the plea, he avoided prison. Six months later, he was arrested for the rape of a teenage girl in an alley off Marquette; the witness had a change of heart and he was released when she refused to testify. In another six months, a gun charge and possession of cocaine that got him three years, give or take. He’d been out just about a year, and now he was back to his first crime, abducting women at gunpoint.

That made three women, including this one tonight, that he’d attacked.

“Marshall Rivers,” said Kolarich. “He sounds like an aristocrat.”

“He’s no aristocrat, this one.”

“Okay. Where’s the witness?”

“She’s in Two,” said Nova.

Kolarich grabbed a notepad, stuck a Bic pen in his front shirt pocket. In Interview Room Two, a young woman was standing over a small wooden crib, where an infant slept with blankets wrapped tightly over her. Kolarich didn’t know where the crib had come from, but they must have kept it around for situations just like this.

It was almost ten o’clock at night. The attack had happened around six, as dusk had settled over the city in early spring.

The woman, the mother, was really just a girl, all of eighteen years, with dark, kinky hair pulled back with a rubber band, a thin face, and large brown eyes. She was wearing a pink cotton long-sleeved shirt and jean shorts, denim cut off a respectable length down her thigh.

Kolarich trod lightly, lifting the wooden chair off the hardwood floor to avoid scraping. “Miss Flores?” he said.

“Yes,” she said with some effort, a hint of j on top of the y. English was not her first language. It might not be her language at all. She sat in the chair opposite Kolarich and laced her hands together, as if in prayer.

“Hablas inglés?”

“Un poquito,” she answered with apology. “Lee-tle.”

“Bueno.” Where the hell was Witness Services? Why didn’t Nova bring up a translator? Gina Alvarez, Nova’s partner, spoke Spanish, but he needed the official translator. It was a union thing. Pass over the certified translator and someone would file a grievance. It took another half hour before Lisa from WitServ showed up.

“Tell her I’m a prosecutor, and would she please tell me what happened?” said Kolarich, which Lisa translated to Caridad Flores.

She felt more at ease with the translator in the room. The story came out in short bites, because each sentence had to be translated, even when Kolarich thought he understood it, so it had an odd quality to it, not simply a freewheeling, natural conversation. Caridad Flores spoke in a soft, restrained voice, fear shaking her words. Fear from what happened, Kolarich thought, or maybe fear of him, of law enforcement.

She was walking on the sidewalk on the 7100 block of South Briar Way with her baby in one of those travel pouches you wear over your shoulders and drop your baby in, so the baby’s back is against your chest, facing forward, that kind of thing. A nice walk in the fresh air before she put her baby daughter, Gracelia, down for a nap.

But then a car pulled up to the curb. A man got out. He had a gun. He blocked her forward progress and motioned toward the car. She may not have spoken English, but a gun to your infant’s head requires no translation.

Then she did something that the offender probably didn’t expect. She did something smart. She realized that if she got into that car, she and her baby would never get out.

So she ran. And she flagged down a patrol car, around the corner and a block away.

Kolarich knew the rest from the police report. Patrol Officers Nova and Alvarez did a drive-around, found the vehicle that fit the description and the partial plate, and lit their overheads. The offender sped forward. Two blocks into the chase, a gun flew out the driver’s side window and bounced against the curb. Nova jumped out of the car and retrieved it while the driver, Officer Alvarez, continued the chase and cut off the offender with the help of a second patrol unit two blocks farther down. Marshall Rivers was taken into custody without incident. A search of his person and vehicle revealed a crowbar, switchblade, and rope.

Caridad had described the man who confronted her as muscular, bald with a goatee, a white T-shirt, and a tattoo on his right forearm of a knife and snake.

“Okay,” he said. He nodded to Lisa. “Explain the lineup to her.”