unknown.
A dead end except for one detail. Adam Yunkin had killed himself on June 16. Today was June 16.
Whoever was calling himself Adam Yunkin needed one more victim before midnight, one more sexual predator, into whose thigh he could carve that last
Ellen Janecek was at home, a one-bedroom apartment in a subdivided Brooklyn brownstone. She opened the door when Flack knocked.
Flack remembered seeing Ellen Janecek on television during her trial and in the media interviews. Pretty, very pretty, long, straight blond hair, near perfect figure. On television she always appeared with a pleasant smile and a far distant look. That was the look that met Flack when she opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt. She was even prettier than she looked on television, but the look was not a seductive one.
'Miss Janecek,' he said, showing his badge.
She held the door open and continued to smile blankly. He stepped in. She closed the door.
'I haven't been in touch with Jeffrey,' she said.
'That's not why I'm here.'
The room they were standing in looked like an ultraclean movie set. Bright flower-patterned sofa and two chairs, polished walnut dining room table with four chairs lined up. Flack was sure that if he measured the distance between them and their distance from the table, it would be exactly the same for each chair. There were color photographs on the wall, three of them, framed, about two feet by three feet. All three were of Ellen Janecek.
In one she was wearing almost exactly what she wore now. She smiled at the camera, thumbs tucked into her front jeans pockets. In another she wore a sleek, form-fitting red dress. Her hair tumbled across one eye. In the third, she sat in a chair, book open in her lap. She wore a prim skirt and white blouse and looked at the camera over her round, rimmed glasses.
'Nice photographs,' he said. 'Jeffrey like them?'
She didn't answer.
'Adam Yunkin,' he said. 'What can you tell me about him?'
'Why?' she asked.
'Because I'm going to ask you to pack some things and come with me so Adam Yunkin won't come here and find you.'
'Why would he?'
'Because we think he may have killed the other three people in your therapy group, the one run by Paul Sunderland.'
She shook her head, trying to clear it, trying to absorb what she had been told. 'But…'
'It looks like he's going after people in the group. You're the only one left.' He didn't add that by 'one' he meant 'sexual offender.'
'No,' she said.
'I'm afraid it's true,' Flack said.
'No,' she said. 'I mean I'm not the last one. There's another one.'
'Another one?'
'Yes,' she said. 'Another sexual offender. Paul Sunderland. He was arrested twice when he was twenty for allegedly molesting an eight-year-old boy. He wasn't charged or convicted.'
'How do you know this?' asked Flack.
'He told us,' she said.
'He's a psychologist. He couldn't- '
'He's a psychologist,' she said, 'but he's also a predator like the others. He doesn't have a license anymore. The others felt comfortable with a fellow offender, someone who knew how they felt. Join-ing the group was not mandatory. It was uncomfortable, but my lawyer said I should do it. I'm not a sexual predator, Detective.'
'You're not?'
'No,' she said. 'I had a relationship with a fully developed young man. I didn't hurt Jeffrey and he was more than happy to be with me. As soon as he's old enough, we plan to be married and I'll work while he goes to school. Does that sound like a predator to you?'
'I don't make the laws,' said Flack.
'Maybe you should,' she said dreamily. 'Maybe you should.'
Flack flipped open his phone and speed-dialed Mac Taylor.
Outside a clap of thunder could be heard in the distance.
At least, thought Flack, the rain had stopped.
'Officer Maddie Woods, Brooklyn,' Maddie said when she finally got put through to Danny Messer.
She had asked who was in charge of the Alvin Havel murder. The first person she talked to said she should call back tomorrow. The whole department was out dealing with looters, small disasters; assaults; the aftermath of an assault by nature.
Maddie hadn't given up. She pushed.
Finally she got Danny.
'Polish is all he talks,' she said. 'But we found a translator.'
'And?' asked Danny.
'He says his son was diddling one of his students,' Maddie said.
'He say which one?'
'Doesn't know,' she said. 'He says he tried to talk his son into stopping. Dark story. He says his son threatened the kid with a failing grade. She wasn't a virgin and Alvin was a good-looking man, but that was his father speaking. You know what I mean. Was he?'
'Good looking?' said Danny, imagining the dead man with his face in a pool of blood on his desk and red pencils sticking out of his neck and eye. 'Not the last time I saw him. Does Havel's wife know her husband was having an affair with a student?'
'Waclaw, the dad, doesn't know,' said Maddie. 'Want me to talk to her, see what she knows?'
'Yeah, thanks.'
'She know her husband's dead?'
'Yes.'
'I'll take Waclaw home and talk to the widow.'
'Thanks, Woods.'
'Nothing,' she said. 'It gives me an excuse to get out of this office and see the damage. I'll call you if I find anything.'
'Anything,' said Danny.
'Right down to the victim's shoe size,' she said.
A row of thick, empty glass containers that looked like test tubes with flat bottoms were lined up in the storeroom at the back of the chemistry lab. The containers were empty, waiting for an experiment that might never take place.
Danny and Lindsay began by lifting every container from the shelf and inpsecting it with their ALS units. Less than ten minutes later Lindsay held up something that looked like a clear, thick-walled peanut butter jar with a heavy base.
'This could be it,' she said.
Danny moved over to look. Turning the light on the jar they saw the telltale dark dots that signaled blood. Small. The killer probably thought he'd wiped off all the blood. He was wrong.
Holding the jar at the bottom, Lindsay unscrewed the top and inserted her fingers inside. She turned the jar upside down and they both examined it. The bottom was rough, chipped, with traces of blood.
