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when her phone rang.
    “We finally got into Scanlon’s TracFone,” said Frost.
    “We have access to his calls?”
    “We have everything. And you won’t believe what’s here.”

    She saw the excitement on Frost’s face when she walked into the crime lab. He sat in front of a computer screen as a printer churned out pages of documents.
    “He hardly made any calls on this phone,” he said. “But he did use it to send text messages.” He pointed to the computer screen. “We’ve got them all here, dating back four years. About a dozen of them. And they were all sent to the same recipient.”
    Jane frowned at the date of the most recent text. “Scanlon sent one Saturday night. Eight thirty PM .”
    “Look at what he wrote.” Frost clicked on the body of the text, and one sentence appeared. It was an address in Brookline. Maura’s .
    “ This is how Scanlon told his partner where to find the next catch,” she said, and she gave Frost an excited slap on the back. “We’ve got the second perp!”
    “Wait. You need to see something else. The other texts.” He scrolled down the list. “See the dates? This one here, eighteen months ago, corresponds to the attack on Sarah Shapiro. And this one, just before it, was Kitty O’Brien.”
    “So we have a record of every attack. Every victim’s address.”
    “Right. Now look at this one.” He clicked on a text from nine months earlier.
    Jane stared at the address. Swampscott. “It’s Monica Vargas! She was a victim, too?”
    “Only she never reported it,” said Frost. “And Julia Chan, the woman who gave Sarah Shapiro her alibi? Her address is in here as well. Somehow, these women managed to connect. They found each other. We’ve got a whole nest of victims here, and they’re covering for each other. We can’t trust anyone’s alibi.”
    “Which means Harry O’Brien could have killed Scanlon. He could have been … oh Jesus.” Jane snatched up her cell phone.
    “What?”
    “Maura spoke to Harry O’Brien this evening. She recognized him.”
    “Does he know that?”
    Jane hung up. “She’s not answering her phone.”

    It was dark when they arrived at Maura’s house. There were no lights on inside, and the front door was unlocked. Jane and Frost glanced at each other, a grim acknowledgment of what could very well await them. They both drew their weapons, and Jane gave the door a nudge. She slipped through first, moved into the living room.
    Suddenly a lamp came on. Jane froze.
    Harry O’Brien stood clutching Maura as a shield in front of him, his gun pressed to her temple.
    “Drop it, O’Brien!” Jane ordered, her weapon raised. She heard Frost move beside her, caught a peripheral view of his gun, clutched in both hands.
    “We don’t want violence, Detective,” another voice said, and Jane glanced in surprise at Sarah Shapiro, who rose to her feet from the armchair. “Harry just wants to settle things, once and for all.”
    “By killing a witness?” said Jane. “The one person who remembers he was here that night?” She looked at O’Brien. “You were stalking Scanlon. Oh, it was in the name of justice, I get that. The scum deserved to die, and any jury will sympathize.”
    “I don’t want to go to jail,” he said.
    “You should’ve thought of that before you stabbed him.”
    “Did I?” He shook his head. “I told you, I was with a friend that night.”
    “She’s covering for you. That alibi will fall apart.”
    “No, it won’t. We built a fortress, Detective. You just haven’t realized it yet, because you haven’t finished your job.”
    “I know you’re all in this together. And I know this is not helping your case.” She tightened her grip on the Glock. “Drop the gun.”
    “Why? I have nothing to lose.”
    “Your life?”
    O’Brien’s laugh was bitter. “My life is over. It ended when Kitty died. I’m just tying up loose ends.”
    “Like Scanlon?”
    “And his partner.”
    He knows there’s a second man .