“Hey!”

“Object.”

“Sustained,” said the judge. To Farrato: “You know that kind of behavior is inexcusable, counselor.”

“I’m finished, your honor.”

“Not quite, but you’re getting close. We’ll adjourn until tomorrow.”

As usual, everyone rose when the judge did, and waited for her to leave before making their own exits. Too much ceremony and tradition, as far as Melanie was concerned. The truth could get lost in all that following the rules.

The last question, about Clark’s wife possibly lying for him, had been interesting to Melanie. She thought about it as she stood up and filed with the rest of the jurors from their chairs and toward the doors. Farrato had as much as told them Clark’s wife would corroborate Clark’s account of leaving their apartment to take a walk. If the jury believed her, Farrato knew they might very well believe Clark. Which is why he was trying to impugn her testimony, along with her husband’s, even before she took the stand and testified.

Might Clark be lying? Melanie didn’t think he looked like a perjurer. He wore a conservative suit, a maroon tie with a matching handkerchief peeking from its coat pocket. His blue eyes and pug face suggested no guile whatsoever; he looked nice, like a man who’d never entertained an evil thought.

But he had beaten his wife, according to Farrato.

So why would she lie for him? Her husband had hurt her, and she’d want to lie to hurt him back, not help him. If Clark was an opportunist committing perjury in the expectation that an acquitted Cold Cat would see that he received some money, there was no guarantee that he’d share it with his wife, the wife whose cheekbone he’d shattered.

Maybe she’d lie under oath because she was afraid of him.

Or maybe Clark’s battered spouse would commit perjury simply because she loved him. Melanie didn’t quite understand why a wife would do that, but she knew it happened frequently.

Some women would do the strangest things for love.

26

“It’s not getting any easier,” Looper said.

“Because you’re getting older,” Nell told him.

“You know what I mean.”

They were standing with Beam at Rockefeller Center, near where the row of colorful flags waved in the breeze above the sunken level where there was a restaurant and, in the winter, an ice skating rink. Business people in suits and ties scurried past, dodging the slower moving and more casually dressed tourists, some of whom were gawking and photographing. A few people glanced at the shapely, elfin woman with the short and practical hairdo, wearing jeans and a black blazer, standing between the angular man in the cheap brown suit, and the tall, athletic older man who wore a well-tailored gray suit and might easily have been a banker or top CEO were it not for a certain set of his shoulders and roughness to his oversized hands. Maybe he was a former big-time football or baseball player the tourists should recognize. Unless they’d happened to catch him in a rare TV interview or seen his photo in the paper, they wouldn’t guess he was a cop on the trail of a serial killer. So they didn’t approach him or aim their cameras his way, even though he was the kind of man who looked like somebody.

“The techs haven’t been able to do much with the security tape,” Beam said. “Looks like the killer’s at least average size, judging by the relative size of Tina Flitt’s car, but they can’t clean up the tape so any of his features are visible.”

“What about race?” Nell asked.

“No way to know. On the tape, he’s really not much more than a shadow.” Beam knew Helen Iman, the case profiler, had the killer down as a white male, but that was because most serial killers were white males.

A man paused walking past and attempted to light a cigarette in the breeze with a book match, but gave up after three matches, flipped away the barely burned cigarette, and walked on. The cigarette bounced, rolled, and dropped through a sewer grate. Looper looked as if he were torn between springing toward the wisp of smoke carried on the wind, or the cigarette itself.

Beam noticed Nell give her partner a disdainful glance. This investigation was wearing on everyone. The killer might be starting to come unraveled. Nell and Looper were getting on each other’s nerves. Da Vinci was starting to react to pressure from inside and outside the department. And of course there was the rest of the city, and all those former and prospective jurors—prospective victims. Beam found himself getting edgy, and thinking more and more about Nola Lima, so maybe he was coming unraveled like the killer he was pursuing.

The increasing pressures of the investigation—not unusual at this stage, when there’s a growing number of pieces and none of them fit.

But that didn’t explain Nola somehow becoming more and more confused with Lani in Beam’s thoughts, in his dreams.

“So far nothing connects the Justice Killer with Tina Flitt’s murder,” he said, “other than the letter J written in blood on her car window. I’m still thinking copycat.”

“Now we’re getting nowhere,” Looper said with mock enthusiasm, taking a last, lingering look in the direction of the fast-dissipating smoke. “And that letter J is some connection,” he added. It didn’t pay to be too much of a smart-ass with Beam.

“There’s no way to get much of a handwriting sample out of one letter,” Nell said, “unless the killer writes in Gothic script or some such thing.”

“Like a German?” Looper asked.

Nell didn’t bother to answer, knowing he was being deliberately obtuse to get under her skin. Seeing the smoker trying to light a cigarette had set off Looper; it was making him irritable and irritating. Nell had been here before. “Different murder weapon,” she said, “different kind of victim. A juror, not a jury foreperson. I’m with Beam. We could have a copycat killer.”

“Using a different murder weapon on a different kind of victim.” Looper said. “Some copycat.”

“The bloody J could have been an afterthought, to throw us off the scent of the real killer.”

“I don’t remember any scent,” Looper said. “And the victim was on a jury whose foreman was her husband. A jury that let a killer walk.”

“That’s why a copycat might think it would work if he killed Tina and wrote the J with her blood.”

“I thought you said that was an afterthought,” Looper said.

Beam decided he’d better stop this before his detective team got in a fistfight.

“We can’t rule out a copycat killer on this one,” he said. “And we’re all feeling the pressure. That would include the killer.”

“What about the human hairs found in Tina Flitt’s car?” Looper asked, not looking at Nell.

Back on point, Beam thought with relief. “Lab said four of the hairs were hers. Two others, from the back of the car, were her husband’s.”

“Think hubby might be sticking it to somebody other than wifey in the car?” Looper asked.

Nell looked at him in disgust.

“Or maybe hubby and Tina got it on in the backseat.” Looper still speculating, maybe to aggravate Nell. “Some couples get a sexual kick outta that. Takes ‘em back to the first time, maybe.”

Nell seemed about to say something, so Beam said. “There were no pubic hairs.”

Looper looked disappointed.

“Lab said the breeze from an open window, or even the car’s air conditioner, might have carried hairs shed by hubby back there. Hairs from his head. The point is, none of the hairs were the killer’s.”

“So maybe the killer did wear a hat that kept him from shedding any hairs,” Looper said.

“Or he was—”

“I know,” Beam interrupted Nell. “Bald. I’ve been through all this with da Vinci. Lab says it’s possible a hat would have prevented normal hair shedding that you might otherwise expect under the circumstances. Everyone sheds about eighty individual hairs per day.”