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they come in here. They don’t put the church together with murder and violence yet. These places are still sacred for them. So it gives the killer extra time.”
    “Unless they were altar boys,” Z said. “Right, Ab? Altar boys.”
    Abbie shook her head. She was studying Ryan’s thick brown hair. It was matted down in a ridge behind the ears, the hair packed down tight in a straight line.
    “Look at this,” she said.
    “What?”
    Z came next to her, stooped to see her finger as it drew a line around the back of Ryan’s head.
    “Blindfold?” he said.
    “Could be. But then the killer took it off. He made Ryan look at something. But what?”
    Z stood. “Fucked if I know.”
    “Let’s go upstairs. Call the techs and get them started down here.”
    The nave was silent and dark.
    “Got to knock on County doors,” Z said as they approached the front door. “Get ready for stupid time.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    T WO HOURS LATER, THE SUNLIGHT HAD TURNED THE COLOR OF DIRTY PEWTER , as if iron filaments were hanging in the air, leftovers from the blast furnaces at Bethlehem Steel. Dusk was two hours away and the forecast called for continued snow squalls off the lake. Z was off to talking to the neighbors, but Abbie wanted to find Ryan’s trail before it was covered over.
    The rope was standard work issue from National Grid. It was from the back of Ryan’s truck, which they’d found parked three blocks away in front of a Dollar Store. Abbie had let Z process that scene, expecting little. The killer wouldn’t have taken Ryan at the truck, but in one of the backyards of the County, scanning the windows that looked out on the yard to make sure there were no invalids, grannies, stay-at-home moms looking down on the scene.
    But how did he get Ryan to the church?
    Abbie pulled the zipper of her jacket up to her chin. Her lean body had never held heat well, and she could feel the temperature beginning to plummet.
    She walked to the rear of St. Teresa’s. There was a parking lot here closed in on three sides. The rear service door had been forced open, the one that let out into the northeast corner of the parking lot. This is where the killer had brought Ryan in.
    Buzzing fluorescent lights beamed down on eight inches of snow, crisscrossed by footpaths. The killer’s footprints were here somewhere, but it was just as she’d feared. The County gossip machine, known as the newswire, had already revved up, and the lot was covered with footprints streaming in from every angle. Boots, shoes, sneakers, not to mention tire tracks. The people around here would lead their own investigation, probably better staffed and financed than her own. Some of the people looking into the death of Jimmy Ryan would probably be cops like her, but not working for the Department. Off the clock. County hours.
    They protected their own here, and when one was culled from the pack, the killer was hunted down, dealt with, and then disappeared. The County was an organism that didn’t push much into the outside world. It consumed everything it produced, good and bad. Its official motto was “A Good Neighborhood to Grow Up In,” but it should have been “Nothing Escapes Us.”
    Abbie knew there were a hundred phone conversations going on in the phone lines that hung from the poles above her, not to mention the chatter bouncing off the local cell towers. She had to get to the witnesses before friends and relatives did, telling them to be smart and shut their goddamn mouths.
    She followed the footprints southwest across the parking lot, her eyes scanning left and right as she did. She came to the building that stood across from the church—the old rectory, which bordered Hayden Street.
    The killer had either come this way or off of Seneca. Abbie guessed the former. Seneca, even though it looked like a second Depression had hit it, was still crawling with life during the day. Hayden, its dark canopy of trees blocking the light from above, was a much more