When he entered the shop and the little bell tinkled above his head, Nola looked at him from where she was standing behind the counter. He watched her deadpan glance travel up and down. He might have to bleed from every artery and pore to impress this woman. With a slight surprise, he realized that might be one of the things that so attracted him to her.

“What happened, Beam?”

He told her about his futile pursuit of the man in the long raincoat.

“And you’ve seen him before?” she asked.

“I think so. Somewhere.”

She disappeared for a moment from behind the counter, then reappeared with a folded white towel. She tossed the towel to him, and he caught it and began rubbing his hair dry.

“He’s been following us?” Beam heard her ask, his head beneath the towel.

“I think so. That’s no surprise.” He rubbed harder with the towel. “Twenty years ago—ten—I could have nailed the bastard.”

“It’s not ten years ago.”

“No.” He raked back his wet hair with his fingers, then used the towel to dry his hands.

“You saw him watching us,” she said, as if trying to fix the notion in her mind.

He tossed the towel back to her. She caught it absently and dropped it on the floor behind the counter. “Watching you,” he said.

Her dark eyes didn’t change expression. She didn’t seem at all frightened or even perturbed.

Beam thought that someday he might be so accepting and unafraid. It seemed a long way off.

It was a small thing, but it was something.

Street sounds found their way into Nell’s bedroom. She’d just arrived home, just turned on the window air conditioner, and the stillness and stuffiness hadn’t been chased. It smelled almost as if someone had been smoking in the bedroom, but that couldn’t be.

She opened her dresser’s second drawer to see if she had clean panties or would have to do a wash before Terry picked her up.

Nell stood before the drawer and studied its contents. Her panties and bras seemed to have been rearranged, but only slightly. And the nine-millimeter Glock handgun she kept there unloaded seemed to be pointed more toward the window rather than the wall. Seemed.

A faint scent, a subtle shifting of symmetry. Of course, it could always be her imagination. Probably was her imagination. She knew that lately she’d been irritable, uneasy, perhaps looking for something to spoil what was otherwise beautiful. Her mother had told her some people refused to be happy, and if they didn’t learn to change, they’d be unhappy all through life. The message was clear. If only her mother had told her how to change, life to this point would have been a lot easier.

Nell knew that two things kept her from trusting someone enough to fall completely and unreservedly in love—her job, and her recent divorce. Those were the reasons she was standing here sweaty, skeptical, and maybe paranoid, trying to find a reason to distrust Terry and tell him to return the key to her apartment.

The truth was, she hadn’t felt completely at ease since she’d given him the key. It was supposed to be an act symbolizing her love and the seriousness of their relationship. If a guy had your key, he had it all.

What had also come with Nell’s key was her subtle distrust.

Terry deserved better. She understood that now. She told herself she understood.

The person Nell distrusted was herself.

She shut the dresser drawer and pressed it firm. Then she drew a deep breath and made herself smile.

Terry had her key. He had her. It was going to stay that way.

Jack Selig did not have her key.

Of course, he could always buy the building.

53

St. Louis, Christmas, 2001

Time had healed nothing.

A brisk wind whipped across the cemetery, shaking the leafless trees and causing a lone crow to flap sideways into the gray sky and veer toward the shelter of the mausoleum that stood like a small Greek temple on the hill. The gusting wind drove particles of sleet that stung the eyes and anywhere skin was exposed.

Justice was wearing jeans, thick leather boots, a sweatshirt, fur-lined gloves, and a green parka with the hood up, but he was still cold. He bowed his head, staring at the dates on the modest tombstones. Seventeen years since Will died. Thirteen since April died.

The pain was unabated.

There had been no escape from it. The doctors hadn’t helped, the pretending to be other people hadn’t helped, the fierce dedication to his perishable work, the drinking, the medication, the soul-searching, the loss of soul, it all seemed to feed rather than subdue the monster in the basement of his mind. He could restrain the monster no longer.

He’d become obsessed with those who killed, who placed no value on human life other than on their own destructive lives. Over the years he’d seen too many of them go free, or serve brief sentences only to return to the streets to murder again. Killers like the one who murdered Will. Killers who, in their own evil and indirect way, also killed people like April.

April herself. It had taken time, but finally they’d killed her, even if her death had been by her own hand.

There must be a reckoning.

Always one to plan carefully, he knew that if harm came to his son’s killer, or to anyone connected with his acquittal, he, Justice, would be the prime suspect. So he’d decided to exact his revenge by executing those who were involved in the acquittals of other violent criminals who were obviously guilty—starting with the forepersons of the juries that set them free. It was the system that had failed and continued to fail, that bore responsibility, that would be the target of his revenge.

There would be nothing to connect him to those cases or to those victims. And there would be a wide pool of potential victims, making it impossible for the police to protect them all. He would be performing a public service. And because of him, April’s death, and the death of their son, would mean something in the chaos that he now knew life to be.

There would be meaning and purpose to the rest of his own life.

Justice and balance and purpose.

He had access to a gun, and to a silencer, and he’d obtained both. What he needed now, all he needed now, was April’s understanding, her approval.

The wind kicked up again, moaning through the columns of the mausoleum and driving the distant crow back up into the roiling gray sky. Justice was unmoving, his feet spread wide, his head bowed, staring steadily at his wife’s tombstone.

And from the grave she gave him her blessing.

54

New York, the present

Not right…Not right…

Cold Cat sat hunched over the control panel, toying with the equalizer, raising the volume of the second track. He was in his home studio on the Upper East Side. Self-contained in a corner of the vast living room, it was a small room with sound baffles all around to appease complaining neighbors. The apartment was violently furnished, with Chinese red carpet, thick green drapes that puddled on the floor, orange leather chairs, and a fifteen-foot leopard-skin sofa. The walls were festooned with gold-framed oils of nude women in various lewd positions. Such bad taste had to be deliberate. Cold Cat called it In-Your-Face decorating, and had threatened to open a chain of shops. When Edie had been alive, she didn’t like to spend time here.