“No,” Creem told him. “That won’t be necessary.”

“Whether we’ll see last year’s kind of batting remains to be seen….”

“Well…can I help you?” Roger said. “Are you hurt?”

“Hurt?” Creem said. “Just my feelings, I suppose. You know, you could have at least called.”

Softly in the background, he could hear Josh laughing with a hand over the phone.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Roger demanded.

“A swing and a miss.”

“It’s me, Roger. Elijah Creem.”

That was all the fun Creem allowed himself. He produced the handgun from behind his back and fired into Roger’s left man boob before he could even try to turn away. So much for the heart attack. He dropped dead right there.

“Strike two! Maybe this isn’t José’s night, after all.”

Creem kept moving. He stepped over Roger’s heft and continued farther into the house. He’d been here for a few beers, a few dinner parties, and he knew the basic layout. The master bedroom was on the ground level, in its own wing off to the right.

As he left the great room behind, he could hear another TV up ahead, with whatever Annette was watching on her own back there.

“Roger?” she called out, just as Creem opened the bedroom door and fired his third shot of the night.

It caught her in the shoulder as she started to scramble off the bed. The next bullet hit her in the face, and she went down for good. She died in her husband’s Dallas Cowboys jersey, with little white pieces of cotton between her toes and a fresh coat of red on the nails.

A little knife work would have been more to Creem’s liking—probably Josh’s, too—but not tonight. There was no sense drawing any parallels for the police down here.

He emptied Annette’s drawers quickly, and bagged the two velvet boxes that fell out as he did. He dumped her purse, took the wallet, and then took Roger’s wallet as well, from the tall dresser in the closet.

That was enough. It didn’t really matter what he might have missed, and it was best to keep moving.

But then halfway out the door, Creem’s curiosity got the best of him. He turned around and went back to where Annette was laid out, all angles and wide eyes on the bed. With one gloved hand, he lifted up the hem of her nightshirt to have a look.

Sure enough, her breasts had a noticeable asymmetry, with the shadow of a scar still showing on either side. Roger had cheaped out on the one thing it made the least sense in the world to skimp on, and it showed. What a fool.

Two minutes later, Creem was back on the beach, walking north toward the lot where he’d parked his rental.

“That’s it, Josh,” he said. “It’s done. I’m calling it a night.”

“I still don’t get it,” Josh said. “What just happened?”

“Well, for one thing, I might have just single-handedly brought down the property values on this little stretch of Gold Coast. But more important? I made sure that Miranda and the girls are never going to want to use this place again.”

Not bad for a night’s work. Inside his mask, Dr. Creem smiled.

CHAPTER

70

THE NEXT DAY AT WORK STARTED WITH SOME DECENT NEWS. I GOT MY GUN and badge back from Sergeant Huizenga. The chief himself had to sign off on the Glock, so that felt like a vote of confidence in the right direction.

Too bad it didn’t change my work status. I was still stuck in the office, and basically spent the whole day doing three things—answering the phones, logging cold case reports in the file room, and taking the temperature of everyone I’d been working with up until now.

Technically I was off the Elizabeth Reilly case, off the Georgetown Ripper, and off the River Killer. But you don’t just work a multiple homicide one day and then stop caring about it the next. I wanted to know what was going on.

I also still had Ava on my mind, and Ron Guidice as well. In fact, my first detour that morning was over to Jarret Krause’s desk.

“Alex. How’s it hanging?” he said, sitting back as I came into his cube. I noticed he’d shut down whatever window he’d been working on, too.

“I’m fine,” I told him. “Just wondered if you have anything new on Ron Guidice.”

Krause leaned farther back, with his hands on top of his head, like he was trying to get them as far off the keyboard as possible.

“Jeez, I’m not sure what to say,” he told me.

“Meaning what?” I asked, just to keep the pressure on. I knew what he meant.

“Huizenga was pretty specific. You’re noncontact, right? And frankly, aren’t you supposed to be laying off of Guidice?”

I wasn’t going to answer that one. The truth was, I understood where Krause was coming from. He was a newbie, and probably more ambitious than he was bold. That can change over time, but right now he was working his way up by staying inside the lines. It wasn’t up to me to change that for him. So I moved on.

The person who was the most open to me that morning was Errico Valente. The last we’d really talked was at the double homicide on Cambridge Place, right before my big blowout with Guidice. I still had access to the investigative files online, but Errico let me look through his notes as well.

What I learned was that the knife work on the mother and daughter victims was strikingly similar. The incisions were close enough to each other in placement and scope to indicate some level of expertise. Most of the seemingly random flesh tears were secondary, almost as if the cutter had deliberately gone back and added some messiness to the whole thing. At a minimum, our killer was getting better with practice.

Errico had also been researching mask fabricators. Based on the security camera footage, he’d narrowed it down to three possible companies, in North Carolina, Texas, and California. It seemed doubtful that the Barbie Killer, or Georgetown Ripper, or whoever he was, would do anything so obvious as to have these things shipped to a traceable address. But either way, MPD was now talking about the masks publicly, including at the press briefings.

It was a good move. If nothing else, it might put the killer on the defensive, and maybe even push him to make some kind of mistake. Anything you can do to upset a serial killer’s pattern can be a potent tool, especially when you have nothing else to work with.

By the end of the day, I knew a lot more than I had when I walked in that morning. But I was still frustrated. I wanted to help. Instead, all I could do was pace around the outside of it all, just waiting to get back in.

And so far, there was no sign of that changing anytime soon.

CHAPTER

71

ANOTHER ADVANTAGE TO WORKING THE SO-CALLED RUBBER GUN SQUAD WAS the hours. I went in at eight and signed out at five. There’s only so much office work you can do.

For the first time in a while, I beat Bree home, and even better, sat down to dinner with the family. If there’s one thing I could change about my life, it might just be all those dinners I miss.

After the ice cream was eaten and the dishes were washed, I was helping Jannie with some algebra, when Sampson came up onto the back porch.

“Knock knock,” he said, coming in. We were all feeling pretty down about Ava, but Sampson’s family. He’s welcome anytime.

“How are you holding up, Nana?” he said, giving her a hug in her chair.

“I’m just fine,” she said, but I think she’d been on the same page of Madeleine Albright’s new book for the last half hour. “You want some ice cream, dear?”

“Actually, I was hoping to grab Alex and Bree for a minute,” he said, thumbing over his shoulder. “Maybe outside?” He leaned down to kiss Jannie on the cheek as we headed out to the picnic table in the yard.

“What’s up?” I asked, once John had closed the back door behind him.