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night and this morning,” Fedderman said.
    Pearl simply nodded. Quinn thought she looked beautiful in the bright morning light that would expose other women’s flaws.
    She noticed the way he was looking at her and stared at him until he averted his gaze.
    â€œNothing jumped out at me that’d crack the case and make me a hero,” Fedderman said. “I’m sure the police profiler will have plenty to say about the victims being dismembered. And that impaling business. Phallic symbolism. They’re always quick to find that.”
    â€œThere’s a lot of it going around,” Pearl said. “Maybe our guy is impotent.”
    Fedderman shrugged. “Just because some guy shoves something other ’an his dong up some broad doesn’t mean he can’t get it up.”
    â€œHow would you know that, Feds?”
    â€œI’m a detective, Pearl.”
    Quinn was looking at Pearl. “Something bothering you?”
    â€œA niggling doubt.” she said. “These two murders were obviously committed by the same psycho, but still there were only two of them. It’s possible both women did something that set this guy off, maybe even together, and he doesn’t have a grudge against other women, or some kind of fixation and compulsion to kill more. Maybe the two victims and the killer shared some kind of past that led to violence. I mean, do two victims make a serial killer?”
    Fedderman said, “It’s a good question.”
    â€œThe media seem to think two’s enough,” Quinn said.
    Pearl said, “It’s still a good question.”
    Quinn leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers behind his head. “We all know how we’ll find out the answer.”
    The truth of what he’d said sobered all of them.
    Pearl sniffed the air. “You been smoking in here?”
    â€œIt’s a good question,” Quinn said.

7
    Jill Clark sat in front of her computer staring at her screen saver of great Impressionist paintings gliding past. There went a Renoir, delicate and graceful in composition and color, so unlike the struggle and ugliness just outside her window.
    She watched the painting disappear at the edge of the monitor screen.
    She’d been sitting for a long time staring at the screen and had come to the conclusion that it was time to take stock.
    The paintings were beautiful, but her own life seemed to be getting uglier and more of a struggle by the day. This was a hard city. Hard and merciless. If it were possible for a city to have a killer instinct, this one did.
    Jill was twenty-nine years old with shoulder-length blond hair that often had a way of being enchantingly mussed. Her features were symmetrical, with perhaps too much chin. She had full lips, strong cheekbones, and an undeniably good figure, from jogging almost daily in her neighborhood or in the park. Her eyes were blue and she had a scattering of freckles on the bridge of her nose. Men seemed to find that an attractive combination.
    She had a degree in accounting and a background in sales: office furniture, then insurance policies for antique and collectable cars.
    Along with a nice smile, those were her assets.
    Then there were her liabilities, mostly credit card debts. Revolving accounts to which she paid only interest while the balances ballooned. From time to time, Files and More, the temporary employment agency that found her part-time work, would land her a decent-paying job, but this was temporary employment. Jill would earn enough to make some headway with the charge accounts, but then there would be periods of inactivity and she’d fall further behind than ever. This seemed to be a cycle she couldn’t break.
    Jill had, in fact, come to think of herself as a professional temp. That was how she might fill in job applications and various other forms under “occupation.” Temp. It at least kept prospective employers from thinking she might have just