John Stallings took several seconds to ease the front door of his home shut. The lock clicking sounded like a cymbal in the silent house. He didn’t want to wake anyone, and he was so tired that just standing still at the door almost caused him to doze off. Not only was he exhausted by a day of following up leads and ideas that Peep Morans and Ernie had given him about narcotics dealers who specialized in prescription drugs, but he had a raging headache from lack of food and he was just too tired to eat.

He turned to head straight to his bedroom and noticed Charlie sound asleep on the living room couch. He snored lightly with his body twisted in an odd position that only a kid could sleep in.

Stallings felt a smile wash over his face despite his exhaustion as he bent to pick up the boy and carry him to his room. As he bent down he heard Lauren entering the living room from the kitchen.

“Hey Dad. Where’ve you been?”

“Work.”

“I tried to call.”

“My phone ran out of juice before me. Why? What’s wrong?” He no longer had time to be eased into bad news.

“Just worried, that’s all. Aunt Helen is here.”

“Why, what’s wrong?” It was a question he had asked too often.

“She came by and hung out this evening.” Lauren looked over her shoulder toward the kitchen as if to prove she wasn’t hallucinating about his sister visiting. Then she said, “Dad, you look really beat. Is the case going okay?”

He looked at his thirteen-year-old in a new light. In that moment, this beautiful young girl had done everything she could to assume many of Maria’s roles. She showed interest in his life outside the house, she helped her brother with his homework, gave pep talks to Stallings, often cleaned the house, and always made sure she knew where everyone in the family was. The last thing Stallings wanted was to have another daughter robbed of her childhood. The simple question about the Bag Man case made him hesitate. He didn’t want to suck his daughter into his obsession with this killer. He didn’t even want her to know how far outside the law he’d already gone to gain any information possible. What the hell was he doing in homicide anyway when he had these wonderful kids at home worried about him? Then he thought about Lee Ann Moffit, Tawny Wallace, Trina Ester, and now Stacey Hines and knew why he was on the case. Jeanie. He blew it with his own daughter, but knew he might be able to help someone else’s daughter or at least avenge them. That wasn’t why he started police work, but he was wondering if that was how he’d end his career.

He stepped across the room without answering Lauren and scooped her up in a tight hug. Her spindly, awkward teenage arms wrapped around him as well. As he stood there holding his surprisingly tall daughter, Helen stepped into the room from the kitchen.

Stallings released Lauren. “What’s up, Helen?”

“Just wanted to see the kids. Is that okay?”

His years on the street taught him to read people even though he tried not to use his unique abilities on his own family. Now the sense that there was more to his sister’s visit was overwhelming.

He smiled to put her at ease, then said, “It’s fine with me. Did you get to see Maria, too?”

The hesitation in his sister, her pretty face frozen as she formulated an answer, told him everything he needed to know. He turned abruptly and started quick-stepping for the master bedroom. Behind him he heard Helen call out, “Wait, Johnnie.”

But he was on a mission to find out the truth, and as soon as he opened the bedroom door and Maria sluggishly turned in bed and gave him that familiar grin and sleepy-eyed look he knew what had happened to draw Helen to his house, where she had felt unwelcome since Jeanie disappeared.

Maria gave a breezy, “Well, hello there,” as he moved to the bed and immediately noticed her dilated pupils even with the bright bed stand lamps both burning brightly.

He didn’t need another complication in his life right now.

William Dremmel felt as if he was handling his business better than ever before. Instead of indecisiveness he was taking action, instead of quiet loneliness he was making efforts to never be alone again, and instead of fear he felt confidence. He knocked on the door lightly, knowing it was late and Lori would be the only one awake at this hour. She’d told him many times of her insomnia and habit of watching movies in the living room after her father and brothers went to bed.

Dremmel had a few things to say to Lori, but he also needed to gauge the threat she was to him and his experiments. Would she really continue to harp on his relationship with Stacey Hines, or was it a passing comment? He couldn’t risk it. He also wanted to tell her how he really felt about her.

He tapped the door again and heard someone pad across the wooden floor of the slightly elevated house wedged in the neighborhood known as Durkeeville. Predominantly African American, the area had seen a renaissance in recent years, and Lori’s family had always kept the little house and yard neat. He’d driven her home several times over the years and knew his way around the streets.

The old wooden door creaked open and Lori stood alone wearing simple shorts and a T-shirt. Her natural beauty didn’t need cosmetics to make her stand out, but she usually wore them at work anyway. Now in the soft light from inside she looked like the girl next door if the girl was a modern dancer with dark smooth skin and a bone structure any Venetian artist would kill to paint.

“Billy, what are you doing here at this hour?”

He smiled and said, “I wanted to talk to you away from work. Is it too late?”

She looked over her shoulder into the house and shook her head. “No, my daddy’s asleep.” She stepped onto the wooden porch and shut the door quietly. “Now, what’re you doin’ over here at this time of night, Billy?”

He placed a hand on her arm and leaned in close. “I needed to talk to you.”

“’Bout what?”

“About how I feel. I don’t want to scare you off or make you uncomfortable.”

Her eyes reflected the streetlight, but he could also see her interest. She leaned in to kiss him.

He stepped back and said, “I really do think you’re great. I care about you.” That was absolutely true.

She stepped toward him again ready to show how she felt.

He said, “Let’s walk around the side of the house so no one gets the wrong idea right out here on your porch.” He turned and took the three wooden stairs to the ground and immediately turned down the potholed, cracked cement driveway. He didn’t want to risk kissing her and then changing his mind over what had to happen.

She followed him eagerly in her simple bedroom ensemble and bare feet.

He stepped into the shadow of the house and kept moving, making Lori follow him without time to think.

Dremmel carefully stepped around a puddle of water in the deepest part of the shadow, quickly added two more steps to get farther away, then turned to face Lori and watch the spectacle he’d spent an hour setting up quietly earlier in the evening.

Lori didn’t notice the puddle, which was really a pothole with more than six inches of water. She stepped into the small pool of water and froze, then convulsed onto the hard cement driveway, still shaking as her left leg dipped into the water.

Dremmel was fascinated by any form of death and this was a new challenge. He’d set an electric cord running from an outdoor socket into the water. He had jammed open the automatic GFI breaker in the utility room attached to the open carport. The juice running through her was just a powerful shock except that he allowed the shock to continue while she lay there for what was termed “low-level electrocution.” This was more spectacular than the stun gun. The little device had given him the idea for this stunt. The current essentially caused her heart to drop into arrhythmia.

He stepped closer and looked into her twitching eyes. Was that her or the electricity? Stepping away from the water he unplugged the heavy cord.

Lori stopped moving. He rolled up the cord, stuck it in his pocket, then leaned down and placed two fingers along Lori’s long, graceful neck. There was no pulse.

It took him only a minute to remove his block from the circuit breaker and pick up a CD player he’d seen in the carport. He plugged it in the wall and dropped it in the pool of water. The unit sparked, then shut off as the water on the line tripped the GFI breaker.

He surprised himself by feeling a lump in his throat for his lovely coworker, then squatted down and kissed her forehead gently.

Now there were no links whatsoever between him and Stacey Hines.