friend would call up to tell her that everyone was ordering prints from Pussy-R-Us.

So the question was, was he going to make a move? Or did he only want her body in a computer file?

Coombs was a lighthearted sort, like her mother, and while she carefully chose her clothing for the way it looked on her, she didn’t use much in the way of makeup. That was trickery, she thought. She did use perfume: scents were primal, she believed, and something musky might get a rise out of the painter. If not, well, then, Ron might be missing out on a great opportunity, she thought.

She dabbed the perfume on her mastoids, between her breasts, and finally at the top of her thighs. As she did it, her thoughts drifted to Lucas Davenport. The guy was growing on her, even though he was a cop and therefore on the Other Side, but he had a way of talking with women that made her think photography wouldn’t be an issue. And she could feel little attraction molecules flowing out of him; he liked her looks. Of course, he was married, and older. Not that marriage always made a difference. And he wasn’t that much older.

“Hmm,” she said to herself.

JESSE BARTH USED a Bic lighter to fire up two cigarettes at once, handed one of them to Mike. The evening was soft, the cool humid air lying comfortably on her bare forearms and shoulders. They sat on the front porch, under the yellow bug light, and Screw, the pooch, came over and snuffed at her leg and then plopped down in the dirt and whimpered for a stomach scratch.

Two blocks away, Jane Widdler, behind the wheel, watched for a moment with the image-stabilizing binoculars, then said, “That’s her.”

“About time,” Leslie said. “Wonder if the kid’s gonna walk her home?”

“If he does, it’s off,” Jane said.

“Yeah,” Leslie said. But he was hot. He had a new pipe, with new tape on the handle, and he wanted to use it.

LUCAS WAS DRINKING a caffeine-free Diet Coke out of the bottle, his butt propped against a kitchen counter. He said to Weather, “There’s a good possibility that whoever killed Coombs didn’t have anything to do with the others. The others fit a certain profile: they were rich, you could steal from them and nobody would know. They were carefully spaced both in time and geography—there was no overlap in police jurisdictions, so there’d be nobody to compare them, to see the similarities. Still: Coombs knew at least two of them. And the way she was killed…”

Weather was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a raw carrot. She pointed it at him and said, “You might be wasting your time with Coombs. But in the lab, when we’re looking at a puzzle, and we get an interesting outlier in an experiment—Coombs would be an outlier—it often cracks the puzzle. There’s something going on with it, that gives you a new angle.”

“You think I might be better focusing on Coombs?”

“Maybe. What’s the granddaughter’s name?” Weather asked.

“Gabriella.”

“Yes. You say she’s looking at all the paper. That’s fine, but she doesn’t have your eye,” Weather said. “What you should do, is get her to compile it all. Everything she can find. Then you read it. The more links you can find between Coombs and the other victims, the more likely you are to stumble over the solution. You need to pile up the data.”

A STRETCH of Hague Avenue west of Lexington was perfect. The Widdlers had gone around the block, well ahead of Jesse, and scouted down Hague, spotted the dark stretch.

“If she stays on this street…” Jane said.

They circled back, getting behind her again, never getting closer than two blocks. The circling also gave them a chance to spot cop cars. They’d seen one, five minutes earlier, five blocks away, quickly departing, as though it were on its way somewhere.

That was good.

They could see Jesse moving between streetlights, walking slowly. Leslie was in the back of the van, looking over the passenger seat with the glasses. He saw the dark stretch coming and said, “Move up, move up. In ten seconds, she’ll be right.”

“Nylons,” Jane said.

They unrolled dark nylon stockings over their heads. They could see fine, but their faces would be obscured should there be an unexpected witness. Better yet, the dark stockings, seen from any distance, made them look as though they were black.

“Why is she walking so slow?” Jane asked.

“I don’t know…she keeps stopping,” Leslie said.