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into the water. Tucker thought the exhausted man was too far from shore to make it back.
    Poor bastard ...
    Tucker pressed the back of his head against the sun-warmed wheelhouse, closed his eyes, and thought of England.
    There was no talking now, no sounds other than the steady thrum of the engines and the waves slapping against the hull.
    Tucker finally dared to admit it to himself. It was possible, maybe even probable, that he would again see home.
    Just past mid-channel, German planes appeared on the horizon.

8
    New York, the present
    Â 
    T he media went bonkers, and why shouldn’t they? Six dead women, five of them still in their teens. It was a grisly sensation.
    National news picked up on the story. Fox News did a special. The media argued with itself over who was covering the story too much or not enough. The muddled and misguided came forward and confessed to the horrible crime at the rate of a dozen a day. A man in Oregon sent Quinn a written confession complete with photographs. That one was taken seriously until the police lab determined that the grisly photos were shots of published NYPD photographs. Surprise, surprise. Someone in the department was leaking.
    That was Renz’s problem.
    The rest was mostly Quinn’s. He knew that if there wasn’t another D.O.A. murder the papers and TV news eventually would stop running photos of him and bits of the video of his only press conference. But only if the killer ceased in his gruesome harvest.
    And of course there were some who would never stop.
    Quinn’s answers to the media wolves’ barrage of questions hadn’t been satisfactory, and he knew they’d be after him for more. Minnie Miner, whose talk show Minnie Miner ASAP ran daily on local television, was the most persistent of the media types. And the call-in segment of her show was keeping New Yorkers not only interested, but afraid. Minnie was to New York what a mixer was to a milk shake.
    Quinn did owe Minnie a favor. But then almost everyone newsworthy in New York owed Minnie a favor. She saw to that. Favors were the currency of her realm. Hers and Quinn’s.
    Renz held his own press conferences, often defending his decision to pit Quinn and the killer against each other a second time. It hadn’t worked out so well the first time, which only added to this time’s dramatic impact. Yet Renz’s press conferences weren’t as lively and well attended as Quinn’s. Quinn, with his bony thug’s countenance and perpetually shaggy haircut, simply made for better television than Renz, and that was that. Renz had to live with it.
    Which Renz did for a while. Then he forbade Quinn to waste any more time on the media; he was to concentrate on the investigation. He, Renz, would be the link between the investigation and the media. If he needed more charisma he would grow some.
    â€œ ’Bout time,” Pearl said, when she learned of Renz’s instructions.
    Quinn thought so, too. “You know how he is,” he said.
    â€œYeah. Renz waited for you to take all the heat and test the waters. Now he’s ready to jump in and hog the publicity and whatever glory might come to pass.”
    â€œThat’s Renz,” Quinn said, in his mind seeing Renz do a cannonball into a small pool.
    Quinn and Pearl were sitting in the Q&A office on West 79th Street. It was arranged almost like a precinct squad room, with desks out in the open, some of them facing each other. There were fiberboard panels that could be moved around when privacy of a sort was required, but right now they were stacked back near the half bath.
    Both Quinn and Pearl knew what the other was thinking. If Q&A didn’t locate or apprehend the killer this second time around, it might result in losses of reputation and business. In no more Q&A.
    Add to that the fact that this killer was prey that tended to morph into predator. A lot was on the line here.
    â€œWhat’s Renz?” Larry