LITMIR.BIZ

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doesn’t eat much,” Rica said. “That’s because she’s grieving and has no appetite.”

      Stack grunted his agreement and sipped coffee through the little triangular hole in the plastic lid. He thought maybe it was time to tell O’Reilly that Helen Sampson checked out okay. That they were probably wasting time and effort that could be spent on other crimes instead of the Danner murder. Stack had a gut feeling this was one of those times in a case where the best thing to do was sit back and wait and see what—if anything—developed.

      “We just gonna sit here?” Rica asked beside him. Something in her tone suggested she thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea. She seemed to have edged closer to Stack on the car’s bench seat. If she weren’t so pushy…

      “There wouldn’t be any point in that,” Stack said tersely. Throw some cold water on her. Them.

      She said, “The city’s got more than its share of unsolved homicides. Maybe it’s time to think this might be another one.” She knew he wouldn’t consider her a quitter. Nobody ever accused her of that. It was just that they were going in circles on this Danner thing. “My gut tells me we should move on,” she added.

      He lowered his coffee cup from his lips and glanced over at her, obviously a bit surprised and pleased.

      “Are our guts in sync?” she asked.

      “In sync,” he said, starting the car with his free hand. “Let’s cut Helen Sampson loose and concentrate our efforts somewhere else while we wait for any new developments.”

      “O’Reilly might not like it,” Rica said.

      Stack put the car in drive and accelerated away from the curb, sloshing a little coffee from the triangle in his cup lid so it ran down his thumb. “Screw O’Reilly.”

      “In sync,” Rica said.

      TWELVE

      Dr. Lucette remembered now.

      At least some of it.

      He’d thought Sharon was back from downstairs, from her pedicure at Shear Ecstasy. But when he’d turned to look up at the figure standing near his chair, it wasn’t Sharon. He wasn’t sure who…

      He winced as he recalled the object descending toward him, a club or sap of some sort. The flash of light and pain behind his right ear, then a dark downward spiral.

      Above him a bright object sent out waves of glitter, making his eyes, his entire head ache. He tried to call out, to ask what was going on, but he couldn’t speak. Something covered his mouth so tightly that he couldn’t so much as part his lips. He could only moan. When he tried to raise a hand to rip away whatever was keeping him from speaking, he found that he couldn’t move his arm. Nor his other arm or either leg. He strained every muscle against whatever was binding him. So immobile was he that he might as well have been sealed in amber.

      He heard a strangled whimper. His own.

      For God’s sake, don’t lose it! You’ve been in tougher spots. In Vietnam. Not so long ago. Take inventory. Figure this thing out!

      He was lying on his back and must have been bound tightly for some time. His arms, folded beneath him, were numb from lack of circulation, his legs firmly pressed together at ankle and knee. The brilliant object above him—steadier and with less glitter now—was the kitchen light fixture. So whoever had struck him and knocked him unconscious in the living room had dragged him in here and tied him up.

      But why?

      A sole or heel made a scuffing sound, ever so softly, on the tile floor. Someone moving beyond the top of his head, beyond his vision. He tried with little success to turn his head, rolling his eyes, as he attempted to see whoever was there. But he couldn’t. They remained just outside his field of vision. And now there was a strong smell, familiar, almost like gasoline.

      Gasoline!

      The doctor screamed against the tape over his mouth and his entire body vibrated so that his heels hammered on the tiles. Cool liquid splashed on the floor near him, then on his shoulders and chest. Into his eyes so that they stung. An instant before he had to clench his eyes tightly shut, he saw a wavering dark form looming above him, holding an object, a container. More of the cool liquid splashed on his stomach, his pelvic area, his thighs, and down his legs. He felt the coolness in his crotch, then beneath his buttocks. For God’s sake!…

      He smelled smoke!

      Smelled fire!

      At first the sensation in his legs and sweeping up his body was incredibly cold. He was reminded of the time years ago when as a child he’d fallen through the ice in the shallow lake behind the house. His mother—

      Then came the heat. The pain! Even through his panic he knew enough to hold his breath as long as he could. Minutes! Hours! Sharon!

      The air trapped in his lungs rushed from him in a hopeless sob.

      He sucked in the pain! It entered him like a demon. The world was pain that would never end! He was choking! Either the floor was moving violently beneath him or he was writhing on it.

      My God! Sharon! Help me! Mother!

      Then he was floating through the pain. Into darkness as something in his chest exploded over and over again. He wondered if it would ever stop exploding.

      Into darkness…

      Dr. Lucette hadn’t been a heavy man, but once the fat in his thighs caught, he burned well. As in more than a few prewar New York buildings, the apartment wasn’t supplied with a universal sprinkler system, and he continued to burn. He wouldn’t need any further attention.

      “I’m really sorry about this,” Sharon Lucette told Bonnie, her pedicurist, down in Shear Ecstasy off the lobby, “but cherry red looks more like vampire red to me. It’s my fault. I thought I wanted it but when I looked at it, Yech! Don’t hate me, okay?”

      “It doesn’t matter,” Bonnie said. She wouldn’t even think of hating anyone who tipped as well as Sharon. “It was only one foot and it’s no trouble to paint over it.” She adroitly dipped her small pointed brush into the new shade of enamel.

      “Apple red,” Sharon said, smiling down at her left big toe. “Much, much better!”

      On the fortieth floor, the flames greedily consuming Dr. Lucette’s foot sent out an exploring tendril, found the rubber kick plate beneath the sink cabinet, then snaked up a dish towel draped over a steel ring inside a wooden door. A few minutes later a slender tongue of flame emerged from the top of the cabinet door and cautiously tasted the glue where counter met cabinet, found it to its liking, and followed the bead of adhesive beneath the countertop to the corner, flicked out, and sampled the wallpaper seam where the paper had separated and protruded because of long exposure to dishwasher heat. It traveled up the thin edge of wallpaper…found the roll of paper towels and devoured it.

      Found the drapes.

      THIRTEEN

      The dark form that was settled in the shadows beneath the trees in Central Park had a clear view of the fifty-first-floor apartment window in the Pierpont Building. Made visible from the park by the contours of the New York skyline, the window was four blocks away, but brought much closer by powerful binoculars. Flimsy blinds or curtains appeared to be closed, and there was no lamp glowing on the other side of the high window, so patience was required.

      It was good that there was a breeze coursing through the park, even if it was a cold one. The stench of the dead doctor still clung to clothes and to porous flesh itself. The breeze would carry the odor of death throughout the city. People would breathe it in and not know, or choose to know—

      Ah! The figure beneath the shadows sat straighter, peering intently through the binoculars.

      There was a light now in Myra Raven’s apartment window.

      In a moment

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