“And then she went right back to him,” says John. “Knowing he’d beat the crap out of her.”

“She’s alone in the house right now,” Lenz says thoughtfully, his eyes on me. “Gaines is at Wal-Mart.”

“Damn it,” says Baxter, only now realizing what the psychiatrist already has. “Jordan, you almost got killed yesterday. You haven’t had enough?”

“Hoffman’s dead. Gaines isn’t home. Wire me up and send me in there with the girl. If Gaines starts home, knock on the door and I’ll get the hell out of there.”

Baxter is not convinced, but SAC Bowles looks like he has no objection, and John knows better than to get involved at this point.

“You know a woman has a better chance with her than any of you,” I insist.

“We have plenty of female agents,” says Baxter.

“Not one who knows this case like I do. Not one with something personal at stake. Knapp will feel that from me.”

“She’s right,” says John. “We can’t turn Gaines’s woman against him with some bullshit come-on. And Knapp knows her already.” His eyes lock onto Baxter’s with dark intensity. “It’s all we’ve got, Daniel.”

“Goddamn it,” mutters Baxter, throwing up his hands in surrender. “Let’s get over there before Gaines fills up his shopping cart.”

Baxter and Dr. Lenz are hunched in the surveillance van one block from Gaines’s shotgun house on Freret Street. I’m parked behind the van in my Mustang, John’s featherweight.38 strapped to my right ankle beneath my jeans. John leans into my window and points toward my foot.

“Everything secure?” he asks, knowing Baxter and Lenz can hear me over the wire.

“Good to go.”

Seeing worry in his face, I slip my hand into my blouse and flatten the pad of my thumb over the microphone clipped there. “I’m not going to need it.”

“That’s just when you do need it,” he whispers. “Like the camera in your fanny pack.” He lays his hand on my upper arm. “I’ve never seen a female serial killer of the classic type, but we do get women who help men carry out vicious murders. Serials, even. And Linda Knapp fits the profile of that type of woman. Poor self-image, dominated by an abusive male-”

“I’m just going to talk to her, John. If she comes at me, I promise I’ll shoot her. Now let me get going, before Gaines gets back.”

He squeezes my arm, then backs away from the car. I wave and pull into the street.

Gaines’s neighborhood is a sad sight in the early morning. I have a feeling that even the old people don’t start stirring until well after daylight. Wheeling over to the broken curb in front of Gaines’s shotgun, I kill the motor and sit for a moment. I don’t want to appear too eager or rushed. Like an actress preparing for a scene, I let the worries of the present bleed away, and allow the emotions I keep buried in my heart to rise to the surface. My fears for Jane, my longing for my father, the humiliation of my rape – things I loathe, but which can be my allies now.

Gaines’s stairs creak as I climb to the porch. The surveillance team says their thermal imaging camera shows Knapp still in the bed. I considered calling her first, but everyone agreed that would give her an easy chance to refuse to see me. Before doubt can assail me, I knock on the door. Three times, hard.

There’s no answer, so I knock again, hard enough to bruise my knuckles.

“Come on,” I say softly.

She doesn’t come to the door.

“Maybe she overdosed in there,” I say to the mike clipped to my bra.

Getting on tiptoe, I peer through the window set high in the door. Inside is the same dark and depressing cavern I wanted out of so badly the other day. Dirty clothes and pizza boxes litter the floor. The easel stands to my left, bare as a skeleton now. To my right is a blank wall that farther down becomes the wall of the hallway. Without warning, apprehension raises the hairs on my neck and arms.

Something is out of place.

What am I seeing? “Wrong question,” I murmur, as apprehension escalates into anxiety. It’s what I’m not seeing. The small abstract by Roger Wheaton, the one that hung on the wall to my right. It’s no longer there. Why would Gaines take it down? In answer, Frank Smith’s voice plays eerily in my head: Pond scum… Roger gave him a matched pair of abstracts as a gift, small but very fine. Leon sold one of them two weeks later – for heroin, I’m sure. Gaines took the painting with him because he’s going to sell it. For what? Drugs? Or money to run?

I grasp the handle and try the door. It’s locked, but the old wood panel rattles loosely in its frame. An eight-year-old could kick it open. Of course, if I do, Daniel Baxter will jerk me out of the house so fast I won’t even reach the bedroom.

Gripping the handle firmly with both hands, I set my shoulder against the door and lean forward. Wood and metal creak, even under the marginal stress of my 130 pounds. Keeping my leg against the door, I lean back, then lunge forward with the pad of my shoulder. The door gives way with a soft crunch.

“Hello, Linda,” I say for the benefit of the boys back in the van. “I wanted to talk to you if I could.”

The smell of feces hits me in a wave. I recoil, sensing death, but my brain reassures me that for thermal imaging cameras to see Linda Knapp on the bed, she has to be alive. Or very recently alive, says a small voice. I could have the guys in the van busting in here with one word, but if I do, I’ll lose any chance to question Linda Knapp alone. She may just be sleeping. The stink could be coming from an unflushed commode.

Bending over, I pull John’s featherweight.38 from the ankle holster and move quickly through the front room, holding the gun in both hands. I keep my eyes forward, not focusing on specific objects, but staying alert to any movement, the way a British soldier once taught me.

The hall closes around me with a claustrophobic closeness. There’s an open door ahead on my right. Crouching low, I ease my head past the frame. There’s no bed, just a mattress lying on the floor, piled with blankets and surrounded by dirty clothes. The room looks empty, though a closet door stands partly open in the corner. It looks empty – but the thermal camera says it’s not.

As I stand erect, the blankets piled on the bed suddenly coalesce into a recognizable shape. A human shape. With my eyes on the closet door, I dart to the mattress and jerk the blankets off the bed.

The stench nearly makes me vomit, but the sight is worse. Lying on the bed is a woman gagged with duct tape and wrapped in a blanket, the side of her head matted with blood, one eye open and staring sightless at the ceiling.

“John?” I whisper, but nothing audible comes out. “John, I need help. Help!”

The woman on the bed is Linda Knapp; the hard line of her jaw and the lank blond hair confirm it in my mind. Crouching over her, I put two fingertips beneath her jawbone and feel for a carotid pulse. There’s a weak throb against my hand.

As carefully as I can, I pull the duct tape away from her mouth to free her airway. Then the little house begins shaking under the pounding of male feet, and a voice roars: “Federal agents! Throw down your weapons!”

John and Baxter crash into the room with guns drawn, but there’s no one for them to shoot.

“She’s alive!” I cry. “She needs an ambulance! Hurry!”

While Baxter issues orders over a radio and John checks the closet, Dr. Lenz rushes to the bed, bends over,‘ and examines the beaten woman.

“Severe head trauma,” he says. “He hit her with something heavy.”

John points at a shadeless metal lamp lying on the floor with a shattered bulb. Its base is square and heavy and stained dark.

“Arrest Gaines right now,” Baxter orders over the radio. “Presume him armed and extremely dangerous, but try not to shoot him. Confirm as soon as it’s done.”