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the wheel. There she sat, staring at a scene that was Christmas card–pretty, the sun glistening on icicles, the snow-frosted houses decked in tasteful wreaths and holly. No garish Santas and reindeer on this street, no rooftop extravaganzas like the ones in Revere, where she had grown up. She thought of Johnny Silva’s house, just down the street from her parents’, and of the long lines of rubberneckers from miles around who’d detour onto their street, just to gape at the eye-popping light show that the Silvas put up in their front yard every December. There you’d find Santa and the three wise men and the manger with Mary and Jesus and a menagerie of so many animals it would’ve sunk Noah’s ark. All lit up like a carnival. You could have powered a small African nation with the electricity the Silvas burned through every Christmas.
    But here on Brattle Street, there were no such gaudy spectacles, only understated elegance. No Johnny Silvas lived here. She’d rather have that moron Johnny for a neighbor than the woman who lived in this house.
    “She knows more about this case than she’s telling us.”
    “How do you draw that conclusion?” asked Frost.
    “Instinct.”
    “I thought you didn’t believe in instinct. That’s what you always tell me. That it’s nothing better than a lucky guess.”
    “But I know this woman. I know what makes her tick.” She looked at Frost, whose winter pallor seemed even more pronounced in the weak sunshine. “She got more than a hang-up call from the killer last night.”
    “You’re guessing.”
    “Why did she erase it?”
    “Why wouldn’t she? If the caller left no message?”
    “That’s her story.”
    “Oh man. She got to you.” He shook his head. “I knew she would.”
    “She didn’t get close.”
    “Yeah? When she started talking about Regina, that didn’t light your fuse? She’s a shrink. She knows just how to manipulate you. You shouldn’t even be dealing with her.”
    “Who should? You? That weenie Kassovitz?”
    “Someone who doesn’t have a history with her. Someone she can’t touch.” He gave Jane a probing look that made her want to turn away. They had been partners for two years now, and even though they were not the closest of friends, they understood each other in a way that mere friends or even lovers seldom did, because they had shared the same horrors, fought the same battles. Frost, better than anyone, even better than her husband, Gabriel, knew her history with Joyce O’Donnell.
    And with the killer known as the Surgeon.
    “She still scares you, doesn’t she?” he asked quietly.
    “All she does is piss me off.”
    “Because she knows what
does
scare you. And she never stops reminding you of him, never forgets to bring up his name.”
    “Like I’m the least bit afraid of a guy who can’t even wiggle his toes? Who can’t pee unless some nurse shoves a tube up his dick? Oh yeah, I’m real scared of Warren Hoyt.”
    “You still having the nightmares?”
    His question stopped her cold. She couldn’t lie to him; he’d see it. So she said nothing at all, but just looked straight ahead, at that perfect street with its perfect houses.
    “I’d be having them,” he said, “if it’d happened to me.”
    But it didn’t,
she thought.
I’m the one who felt Hoyt’s blade at my throat, who bears the scars from his scalpel. I’m the one he still thinks about, fantasizes about.
Though he could never again hurt her, just knowing that she was the object of his desires made her skin crawl.
    “Why are we talking about him?” she said. “This is about O’Donnell.”
    “You can’t separate the two.”
    “I’m not the one who keeps bringing up his name. Let’s stick to the subject, okay? Joyce P. O’Donnell, and why the killer chose to call her.”
    “We can’t be sure it
was
the perp who called her.”
    “Talking to O’Donnell is every pervert’s idea of great phone sex. They can tell her their sickest fantasies, and