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knowledge, either.
    The truth was, he was almost too tired to stand up, let alone think. And he was bugged, big-time, by the fact that the killer had not made contact since calling with the last clue. Up until now, there had been a clear pattern: a partial name first, called in not long after their arrival at the scene of the previous murder. Then two or three random clues that only made sense in retrospect. Finally, a hint to the city was always last, called in just a few hours before the next killing occurred. This time, they’d had to scramble to hop a plane from Houston, where they’d been en route to interview a Madeline Peyton who worked for Fitzgerald Securities, one of at least a hundred Madelines on their list who met the parameters of the information they’d been given so far, when the last clue had come in and they’d pinpointed New Orleans. It was as if the killer wanted to make a game of it—to see if he could pull off the crime while Sam’s team raced to make sense of the clues, raced to locate the victim, raced to stop him. So far, the killer was winning. The stats were grim: FBI 0, Insane Bastard 5—no, 6 if you counted Tammy Sue Perkins, which, since she was dead and he had killed her, you had to do. With this last victim, they’d been a good two hours behind the killer. Sam had barely gotten a glimpse of the victim as she was taken away, just enough to know that she was a woman, dark-haired, attractive, and dead. The crime scene was her hotel room. Apparently, the attack had occurred as she slept.
    But why? Why? Why?
    Sam hated to admit even to himself that he had no clue.
    His last contact with the killer had come—he glanced at his watch; it was 9:17 a.m.—at five minutes until seven p.m. the previous day. That was more than fourteen hours ago. Before, the bastard had always called him within no more than an hour of Sam’s arrival at the death scene to gloat—and to provide the first lead to the next victim.
    This time there’d been no contact.
    Maybe, this time, there was no next victim? Maybe the bastard had gotten it all out of his system? Maybe the game was over?
    Yeah, and maybe he was going to get a raise in his next paycheck, too, but he didn’t think so, Sam concluded gloomily.
    Still, he had to ask himself: What was different about this one? Why hadn’t the killer made contact afterward? There was a reason—there was always a reason. He just didn’t know what it was. Yet.
    The questions that crowded into his mind in the wake of that were so urgent and the answers so elusive that Sam banged his fist against the Plexiglas in frustration. Deland and her assistant glanced his way, their eyes frowning at him above their surgical masks.
    The message was clear: He was disturbing their work.
    Sam didn’t even bother mouthing an apology. He turned on his heel and went in search of Wynne.
    He found him outside, to the left of the frosted-glass front door, leaning against the four-story building’s grimy stucco wall. Located just off Canal Street, the coroner’s office was in a seedy area heavy on small shops and ethnic restaurants that swarmed with activity even this early in the day. Pedestrians clogged the sidewalks. Vehicles of all descriptions crawled bumper-to-bumper in both directions, creating a continuous background buzz that sounded like a swarm of angry wasps. The heat wrapped around Sam’s face like a hot, wet towel the moment he left the air-conditioning behind. Inhaling was like breathing in soup. The smells—car emissions, decaying plants, various kinds of spicy food cooking—would have been nauseating if he’d let himself pay attention to them, which he didn’t. Two tortured-looking palmetto trees struggled to survive in wrought-iron cages set into the sidewalk. Wynne—or at least as much of Wynne as could fit, which was about a fourth—stood in the spindly shadow of one of these. His