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Friday.” Jaworski stopped suddenly, half propping himself against one wall with a stiff arm. He sucked a deep breath of stale air. A shallow, wet cough hacked up, and he swallowed its spawn back down again. He looked straight at Ariel. “Let me tell you something, Agent Grace–off the subject. They may save my life, but until the day I do kick I will hate every doctor who ever lived for practically killing me with this cure.”
    She made no comment to what he’d said. Simply let him take a few more breaths and compose himself.
    “Four men, two women,” Jaworski went on. “All found in either Jersey, Pennsylvania, or our dear Empire State. He...uses them. Makes ‘art’ out of them. And I’m not talking recreating The David. This freak goes for shock value.” He paused, took one more deep breath, and continued on down the hall. “He treats the men and women differently.”
    “How?”
    “Couple of ways. There’s mutilation of the males’ genitalia. ISU and some outside shrinks have looked at everything and decided either he’s gay or not, afraid he’s gay or afraid he’s not, was abused or was an abuser. You get the picture, Grace?”
    “He’s not easily profiled.”
    “I hate that term, Jesus. Sometimes there are just monsters. Freaks. Evil pieces of human garbage that need to be hunted down. The only pigeonhole this guy fits into is fucked up...pardon my Polish.”
    “Pardoned, sir,” she said, smiling at his back. “So he doesn’t mutilate the women?”
    “Oh, hell, he’ll mutilate the hell out of them. But he’s not interested in their genitalia. Plus we don’t get any letters on the women.”
    “He writes?”
    “After each male murder a letter arrives at the Metropolitan Museum of Art addressed to the chief curator. Gives us the ‘titles’ of his ‘works’.” Jaworski shook his head. “Since the first one we’ve been able to intercept them.”
    “Prints?”
    Jaworski stopped again, this time outside a door just before another intersection of corridors. His breathing was not terribly labored.
    “Oh, he’s not afraid of leaving prints. We’ve got them by the hundred.”
    “So he’s never been arrested, in the military, or had certain jobs.”
    “He’s been a careful boy,” Jaworski said, and reached into his pocket for a small ring of keys.
    Ariel looked to the door they stood at and noticed now a makeshift sign tacked above it: GALLERY .
    “Did you eat breakfast, Agent Grace?”
    Ariel shook her head.
    “That’s probably a good thing.”
    He inserted a key into the lock on the door but didn’t turn it. “That agent you saw on your way in...”
    “Yes...”
    “That was Vargas. He’s the gatekeeper. No one gets into this building unless they have business here. Any tabloid photographer worth his salt would give a limb to get shots of what’s behind this door.”
    “More rats to deal with,” she observed, and Jaworski turned the key and opened the door to a darkened room.
    “After you.”
    She stepped in and heard the door close behind her, making the space black for a second before Jaworski switched on the lights and set the walls to scream.
    “Dear God,” Ariel exclaimed softly, as though to speak too loud might stir the madness fixed upon three of the room’s four walls to life.
    Jaworski himself gave the room a long look, taking it in yet again. It stoked the fire. Helped him to hate the freak that was his to catch.
    Ariel was in the center of the room, her eyes tracking from right to left, vibrant and vicious hues assaulting her from dozens upon dozens of stills the Bureau photographers had captured. A visual symphony of horror.
    In one a man’s penis had been grafted to his forehead, making him a unicorn.
    Jaworski saw where she was looking and stepped that way. He tapped the photo holding her rapt. “Calvis Winkler, the one our freak made into a unicorn, was victim number one. Twenty three years old, an auto mechanic from Shakes Ferry.” He pointed to a