“Which accomplishes?”
“The Justice Killer will know that if he wants to kill Knee High, the clock is ticking. His opportunity is limited to the time until Knee High’s taken back into custody.”
Da Vinci rubbed his chin a while longer, then smiled. “A rattrap with a timer, and Knee High will be the very nervous cheese.”
“Run it by Helen and see what she thinks of the idea,” Beam suggested.
Da Vinci reacted as Beam thought he would. “I don’t have to run it by anyone. You’re the one I put in charge of the investigation, and you ran it by me. I like it. We’ll do it. But keep in mind, it’s your ass if it goes wrong.”
“Always,” Beam said.
Da Vinci seemed mollified. He sat back and appeared to be more relaxed. “You’re an even more devious bastard than I thought.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll run it by Helen anyway.”
“I don’t look outside without seeing a cop,” Nola told Beam that afternoon in Things Past. The shop seemed brighter than usual. The display window had been washed, and the stock was less layered with dust and more neatly arranged. Beam could actually walk along the aisles without brushing something a hundred years old and sending it plummeting to the floor.
He glanced out beyond the display of antiques, through the window and across the street. “I don’t see anyone out there now.”
Nola looked exasperated, for her. “Of course not. There’s a cop in here with me.”
“Are you sorry about that?”
She leaned forward and kissed him on the chin. “Not really.” She walked around behind the counter and began sorting through some papers. It occurred to him for the first time that she didn’t need glasses for reading. He was pretty sure she didn’t have contact lenses.
Aging well…
Despite her initial reticence, once they’d become lovers, her sexuality amazed him. Made him amaze himself.
“Ever think about sex in the back room?” he asked.
“These days, I think about sex now and then whichever room I’m in.”
Beam grinned.
Nola tapped the edges of whatever it was she was sorting through and laid the neatened papers aside. “This is a place of business,” she said. “Besides, we’re both a little old for the kind of thing you have in mind.”
“You’re only as old as-”
“-you are,” she finished for him. “Any progress in tracing where the duplicate ring came from?”
“Not yet.” He didn’t tell her that NYPD personnel had already been diverted from the task of finding the ring’s origin to protecting the soon-to-be-released Knee High. The ring itself wasn’t in its usual spot on a shelf next to a rose-colored vase. “Did you put the ring in your safe?”
“In a drawer. I’m hoping somebody will steal it.”
“You should give it to me. It might become evidence.”
She moved to the far end of the counter, reached down and opened an out-of-sight drawer, and tossed him the ring.
Beam caught it and stuck it in his pocket. “Do you want a receipt?”
“You’re my receipt.” Nola looked at him in a way that made him uncomfortable. “When this business with the ring, the Justice Killer, is over, Beam…”
“What?”
“I guess that’s what I’m asking.”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet,” Beam said honestly. “I’d like to think it’s happily ever after for us.”
“Such bullshit, Beam.”
“Well, maybe tolerably ever after.”
Nola smiled. “That’s more like it.”
The bell above the door tinkled, and a short, middle-aged woman in jeans and a T-shirt lettered NO FEAR entered the shop. She gave Beam and Nola a blue stare through rimless glasses and smiled. Beam pretended to be interested in a shelf lined with cut-glass vases that all looked pretty much alike.
Nola asked the woman if she was looking for anything in particular and the woman said she was just browsing. Which she did for about five minutes before buying a beat-to-hell looking antique doll and leaving.
Beam had heard the conversation before the sale. “She really pay two hundred dollars for that?” he asked.
Nola nodded. “It’s nineteenth century, and it’s eyes close when you lay it on its back. It’s worth three hundred.”
“What did you pay for it?”
“Ten.”
Beam glanced around the shop. “Maybe there’s more to this antique business than I thought.”
“Oh, there is,” Nola said. She walked over and turned the deadbolt on the door, then put up the Closed sign.
“Lunch time?” Beam asked.
“Already had lunch.”
“Back room?”
“Let’s go see.”
“He’s coming undone,” the police profiler, Helen, was saying in a television interview done outside One Police Plaza. “He’s finding more and more pleasure in his murders, and more and more hell.”
“He’s conflicted?” asked the interviewer, a man six inches shorter than the statuesque Helen.
“I thought I made that clear,” Helen said. “Inner conflict is what started his string of increasingly brutal murders, and inner conflict will destroy him. That’s the way it works with serial killers. The process is already well underway. It’s like acid produced by the soul it’s destroying.”
“That’s very poetic.”
Helen smiled grimly. “I guess it is. What it means is that the killer’s thought process is breaking down. It will eventually lead to his arrest or suicide.”
“He’ll get careless?”
“He’ll take larger and larger risks,” Helen said. “He won’t be able to stop himself.”
“You’re saying he’s going mad?”
“Oh, he’s already quite mad.”
The taped interview with the police profiler was too much to bear. The Justice Killer felt like throwing the remote at the TV. Instead he merely switched channels.
And there was another interview. This time with the intrepid Beam, saying something about Knee High.
Justice listened, turning up the volume.
A few minutes later he sat back, shaking his head.
Released on his own recognizance!
Goddamned judges!
A commercial came on the cable news channel he was watching. A duck, or some other kind of fowl, talking about term insurance. He used the remote to switch to another channel.
There was a photograph of Knee High, a mug shot taken shortly after his arrest. The hash marks and numerals behind him indicated he was five-foot one with his hair combed almost straight up. He wore a cocky, nervous smile, as if made apprehensive yet enjoying his notoriety.
“-released this afternoon,” the newscaster was saying. He was a full-faced man in a gray suit with some kind of pin on the lapel. “The court ruled that it didn’t consider the accused a risk to do public harm or to flee. He is not required to wear an electronic anklet.” The anchorman turned to a guest. “Now, if Martha Stewart-”
Justice switched to another twenty-four-hour news channel. A female anchor with teased red hair was sharing a split screen with the same mug shot of Knee High. They were both smiling.
Why was Knee High smiling minutes after being booked? Advice of counsel? Was he already working toward
