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. . .”
    A bearded man with a pilot’s scarf stepped up next to Serge. They didn’t acknowledge each other.
    Several customers pointed at once. “And here comes the Doberman!”
    A new motorcycle flew out the back of a semi and wiped out in a row of garbage cans.
    The bearded man, from the corner of his mouth: “It’s time.”
    Serge nodded slightly. He tugged Coleman by the arm, and the trio slipped into the darkness behind the Nu Bamboo.
    E vidence techs combed the room.
    Mahoney stood in the motel doorway.
    White looked down at the registration card in the agent’s hand. “What alias did he use?”
    Mahoney glanced at the name. “Dr. Richard Kimble.”
    White rubbed his chin. “Kimble, Kimble . . . why does that name sound so familiar?”
    “David Janssen’s character in The Fugitive .”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “It’s personal,” said Mahoney. “He’s taunting me.”
    White looked across the room as someone from the medical examiner’s office photographed the head-slumped body tied to a chair in a large puddle of water. Eyes permanently open. “You sure that’s Serge’s work?”
    “Solid MO.” Mahoney opened a manila folder. “Vic’s ID: one Arthur Franklin Kostlerman the Third, registered sex offender, decade stretch in Raiford; nothing since but a series of flatfoot rousts for hinky hoofing near schools and parks. Vehicle orphaned at playground Tuesday.” He turned a page: “Eyewitnesses bumped gums about some sap getting a trunk tour.” The agent looked up and nodded as a camera flashed. “Hands-down Serge. Trademark joker-deck snuff scene.”
    “But what am I looking at?” said White. “In all my years I’ve never seen anything so sick, except I have no idea what I’m seeing.”
    “M.E.’s still stumped,” said Lowe.
    “Got this one,” said Mahoney. “Serge rides the home-improvement pony.”
    “Come again?”
    Mahoney walked over and knocked on the deceased’s chest like it was a door. He looked back at White. “Nobody home.”
    “That sounded hard as a rock.”
    “Gibraltar.”
    “But what is that damn thing around his chest?”
    “Plumbing aisle. Pressure line repair.” Mahoney picked up an excess roll of tape from the bed. “Like gauze you’d dress a wound with, except it’s been spiked. Serge wrapped his chest with a few hundred feet of the stuff.”
    “How’d that kill him?”
    “Didn’t.” Mahoney pulled a fountain pen from his pocket, leaned down and stuck it through a trigger guard so as not to smudge any latent prints. He held up a small plastic squirt pistol. “This did.”
    “What was in it? Poison? Acid?”
    “Tap water.” Mahoney raised it to the light. “Gem, too. Vintage early fifties, shaped like an alien ray gun.”
    “Jesus! A man is dead!”
    “The big snooze. Water activates slime on the film, which contracts and dries to form a concrete-hard fitting around a plumbing leak. Except a sex offender is no match for a lead pipe, and the death squeeze continues like an iron maiden. My guess? Serge explained the science to the perp, that his ribs would start cracking like a slow Buddy Guy drumroll, puncturing internal organs—but if it was his lucky day, his lungs would have trouble expanding and he’d pass out first. Maybe. Then Serge took it slow, real slow, standing back and squirting him with the pistol. This one was particularly heinous.”
    “Why?”
    Mahoney held up the water gun again. “He had to reload.”
    White stared off. “What kind of demented bastard?”
    “But you gotta give him points for style.”
    “How’s that?”
    “Molester killed with a child’s toy.”
    “I’m not laughing.”
    “You’re also not paddling.”
    “What do you mean?”
    Mahoney placed a hand on the victim’s chest. “Chemical reaction creates heat transfer. This just happened.” He turned back around. “Serge is slipping the net.”
    “Shit.” White summoned nearby uniforms. “Top priority. Standard roadblock matrix. Get