Nell didn’t know, but she nodded.

“That doesn’t happen with me and Gina. I see her complete every day in the mirror.” Gina glanced up at the sky, then back down, her Adam’s apple working. “That’s about all I can tell you.”

“I guess it is,” Nell said. She smiled. “Thanks, Gina. Say hello to your mom and dad.”

“Sure,” Gina said. She returned the smile and jogged away toward her apartment building half a block down. She drew more admiring looks, a pretty girl catching the sunlight, hair flouncing with each stride. The young in New York. Nell knew they weren’t as enviable as they appeared. Gina, who certainly had her problems, was an example.

Nell stood and watched her until she started up the steps to her building entrance, thinking about what had died along with Gina’s sister. Thinking about the Justice Killer, how he was killing victims, and killing her trust in Terry. Evil really was like a rock thrown in a pond; the ripples eventually reached every part of it.

Well, she refused to let the ripples destroy her trust. Apparently there’d been no connection between Gina or Genelle and Terry. So there was a crime, Genelle’s murder, that he had no alibi for, and it might as well have happened in another galaxy. Absence of alibi didn’t mean likelihood of guilt.

Suspicion could eat like acid. Like guilt itself. The best way to face it was head on. Find out. Shine the truth on it.

Nell felt better after talking with Gina.

Gina felt better after talking with Nell.

She entered the lobby of her apartment building, stood hands on hips and let her breathing even out, then pushed the up button for the elevator. While she waited, she thought back on her conversation with Nell.

The detective didn’t seem to consider that Gina or her mother or father might have murdered Dudman, a copycat crime.

If Gina had gone beyond simply stalking Dudman as a kind of cathartic exercise, and actually used her gun, she might well have gotten away with it. After all, Dudman had simply been shot from a passing car. The police had nothing to go on. Gina had read that the most difficult crimes to solve were the simple ones. Criminals tended to outsmart themselves.

The elevator arrived. Mrs. Grubman, from the apartment above the Dixon’s, appeared when the door slid open. She smiled and nodded to Gina. She had her feisty and odorous little dog Worry on a leash. Gina nodded back and stood aside, giving Worry plenty of room to get past. The animal had a habit of snapping at people.

After suffering only a growl, Gina entered the elevator and pressed the button for her floor. She leaned back with her eyes closed. As the elevator ascended, she enjoyed the sensation; when she was younger she used to think she might rise all the way to heaven. Today she thought the elevator smelled like dog.

Nell, the detective, had for some reason been interested in the Carl Dudman murder, rather than the more recent murder of Cold Cat the rap star. Gina was more interested in Cold Cat’s sudden and violent death, and not only because it screamed daily from every news source, along with that idiot woman’s campaign to stop conducting trials. What interested Gina was that Cold Cat, Richard Simms, hadn’t been a member of a jury, or any other part of the judicial system. He’d been the defendant.

It wasn’t credible to Gina that the little man, Knee High, had killed Cold Cat’s wife. Or if he had, it was a scheme of some kind and the husband was involved. The husband was always involved. Cold Cat had been the guilty defendant who’d gone free. Simms was the first of such monsters to be murdered by the Justice Killer. The police must be trying hard to figure out what that might mean.

Gina knew one thing it meant. Richard Simms’s murder signaled open season on Bradley Aimes.

The elevator stopped, bobbed slightly to adjust itself, then dinged, and the door glided open.

Gina had reached her destination.

Homicide.

Murder.

Was there any difference now between him and the vicious killers the police hunted down and killed or placed in the hands of the bumbling, bureaucratic, and sometimes even kindly judicial system?

Not enough difference.

Not anymore.

Not after the murder of Richard Simms, an innocent man.

The scales of justice seemed wildly out of kilter, and the sureness and clarity they offered no longer applied. Suddenly nothing seemed concrete and certain. Nothing offered support or reason. Change could occur instantly, and not for the better.

It was unsettling.

The Justice Killer had been getting headaches lately, and right now he had a brutal one. A migraine?

He’d heard the term but really didn’t know what it meant. If it didn’t mean what he had, it should. He might as well have an axe buried in his skull.

Deep.

A guilt headache. That was how he actually thought of the pain behind his eyes.

But did he deserve it?

Was he a murderer?

He’d been afraid to go to a doctor; the fewer medical records—or any kind of records—he created, the better for him and more problematic for his pursuers. So he was limited to over-the-counter pain remedies and switched from brand to brand.

None of them seemed to help. He lay suffering in his bed and continued to ponder the question of his guilt.

A murderer?

No, not yet, he finally assured himself, a cold washcloth pressed to his forehead and covering his eyes. He was still an executioner. A force for justice. In a larger sense, genuine crime, genuine guilt, even murder, was in the intent, and his intent had been pure.

He’d been tricked into executing Richard Simms. The real killer had been sitting right in the courtroom during Simms’s trial, had even been one of the key witnesses. That Knee High creature. The jurors hadn’t taken him seriously enough to think he might be lying, deceiving, committing perjury.

But the little man with the big lie was being taken seriously enough now, by the police, by the system.

By the Justice Killer.

Whose headache raged like a fire behind his eyes.

58

When Beam entered da Vinci’s office, he found the deputy chief seated behind his desk, watching a DVD recording of the latest Free Adelaide demonstration on his new TV. The blinds were half open this morning, admitting bright sunlight over a narrow area. Dust motes played everywhere, threatening to make Beam sneeze. The television’s screen was a little difficult to see unless you found the right angle.

This demonstration had tied up traffic in Times Square for over two hours. The volume was barely audible on the TV. There was no sound in the office that wasn’t muted almost to nonexistence. A faint, acrid odor hung in the still air, like that of burning electrical insulation, as if the subject matter being shown were too hot for the television perched on top of the file cabinet.

Da Vinci glanced over at Beam. “Isn’t this a crock?” He motioned with his head toward the television.

“Crock and a half,” Beam said. “Console yourself with the fact that Adelaide doesn’t have TV in her cell.”

“She knows what goes on,” da Vinci said. “That lawyer-manager of hers, press agent—whatever the hell he is—tells her.” He pointed at the TV, muted mayhem on a small screen. “Look at the Free Adelaide signs! I count over a dozen. Free her to do what? I hear she’s already got a schedule of talk show appearances lined up, and a goddamned book contract. She’s writing the opening chapters in her cell.”

“Industrious,” Beam said, “but she never struck me as the writer type.”

“Got some uppity little editor who visits and tells her the difference between who and whom,” da Vinci said in disgust. “Or is it whom comes to visit her?”