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"4:09" Celluci shifted his barely focused gaze fro it a little close, aren&039;t you?"

She&039;d stayed in the shower longer than she&039;d in?tended, stayed until the approaching dawn drove her out fro water And then, wrapped in borrowed towels, she&039;d hesitated by the side of the bed, unwilling to wake him, afraid that he&039;d see See what? The blood had swirled around her feet and down the drain Nothing else showed At least, she didn&039;t think it showed

"Vicki?" When her head jerked up, he sighed and propped hi against his back Her diet ht now she intended to hide so"

Frowning slightly at her tone, he reached out and folded his hand around hers To his surprise, it was alht?"

"If you mean, have I been injured, I&039;m fine" No one had touched her Except for Henry "We haven&039;t got much time " The sun waited just beyond the crest of the ht to the chase If soa-nized cri about it They weren&039;t doing it, and they hadn&039;t heard ru the truth?"

Slowly lifting her head, she stared directly at hi just beyond the li lamp that stood on the bedside table A pair of silver sparks appeared within the shadowed oval of her face then disappeared again before Celluci felt their pull

"Okay You&039;re sure" He didn&039;t knohat the lih he suspected it wasn&039;t as all-powerful as both Vicki and Henry wanted hih perps over the years that he had to trust her ability to knohen one was lying "Lets just hope you didn&039;t give the"

Her voice lifted the hair on the back of his neck and iven theanized crime isn&039;t involved, then we lose our best support for selling organs as a host could&039;ve been killed for any nu a kidney, let&039;s follow this hypothesis for a while Maybe your Patricia Chou&039;s right about Ronald Swanson"

"She&039;s not , and Swanson has a com?pletely spotless life as far as the law is concerned"

"So, he has to start so people for their kidneys seeed noncoo Cops got that way occasionally, clinging to a theory based on nothing better than a hunch, often in the face of oppo?sition When it turned out they were right, they were said to have intuitive abilities beyond the nor, as was headed, self-absorbed, and unwilling to do the grunt work needed to break the case That Vicki had been right headed "Nohat?"

"I think we should stop working on who and take a look at where" Inore the sun Her shoulders hunched up as though expecting a blow froo"

He lifted a hand to touch his cheek where a strand of wet hair had brushed against hi pressure of her mouth, and the faint taste of tooth?paste, were all that remained to show she&039;d ever been in the roo on her back in the pink bedroom, a hastily folded towel under her head to keep the pillow dry, Vicki wondered why she felt no guilt at all for the for the She frowned, realizing she had no clear idea of how many men she&039;d actually killed in the warehouse The number had been washed away in blood

It didn&039;t matter Because they didn&039;t matter Not to her Not their lives Not their deaths

But Henry

"So the violence is fine, but the sex is a proble from temple to ear "Well, doesn&039;t that just sum up the ni "

4:16

Sunrise

Celluci stretched out an arlad when er Not that ive hiet the truth out of her

"Good lanced at her watch "It is almost 6:45 Not exactly early Did that blood work coht nurse passed over a ht"

"I didn&039;t ask" Envelope tucked under one are and let the door to the nurse&039;s office swing shut behind her

Bitch But none of the sentilanced back through the open blinds on the s that were the top half of the office walls-the clinic&039;s atte of security in its patients and to prevent the place fro too much like a hospital In a time of drastic health care cutbacks, the job paid too well to jeopardize For what they were paying her, faking friendly with the dragon lady was the least of what she&039;d be willing to do

Averting her gaze froe, Dr Mui crossed to the closer of the two consultation offices, pulling the lab work out of the envelope as she walked By the time she reached the desk, she was distinctly unhappy

"Stupid, stupid boy How could he be such a stu?pid boy?"

She sank into the chair and let the paper fall to the desktop This changed everything

The phone rang just as he was pouring the tea Al?though he drank coffee at the office, he drank tea at the house because Rebecca had always preferred tea to coffee-except when they were traveling in the States "Where," she&039;d re it in Boston Harbor with cold salt water and hadn&039;t ever quite gotten the hang of doing it differently"

He pulled the receiver out of its base, tucked it under his ear, and barked a terse "Hello" while he went to the refrigerator for milk

"It&039;s Dr Mui We have a probleht shows hiht he was clean?"

"He was I expect that when he heard the good news, he went out and celebrated"

"This is going to be very aard" He took the e and quickly closed the door It would only cost a few pennies to leave it open, but he hadn&039;tetting on a plane in less than two hours"

"It would be a lot more aard if we infect him"

They both considered the consequences for a ht" He took a s of the tea and then set the cup down on the table beside the bowl of fresh flowers Rebecca had always insisted on having in the kitchen "I&039;ll call As long as he&039;s not actually on the plane, I can get through to his father&039;s cell phone And the donor?"

"We don&039;t want hiht, no difference between hiet him out of the clinic as soon as possible"

When the doctor had hung up and the e, he pressed the power but?ton and dialed the buyer&039;s number from memory The conversation was, as he had anticipated, very aard However, in order toVancouver ood salesh he hadn&039;t personally sold a property for some time, the old skills were still sharp, and it cer?tainly didn&039;t hurt that he was still the son&039;s best chance

By the time he returned to his tea, it was cold He drank it anyway Rebecca had never minded cold tea and had often shared it with the cat The cat had died for no apparent reason three ht have been due to a broken heart

He envied the cat; itshad ended

"And in city news, violence connected with orga?nized criht with death tolls up into double digits"

Fork full of scras halfway to hiscri, were found dead in a Rich warehouse when e Soed by an anianization run by Adan Dyshino, police are assuotia?tions of some sort erupted into violence They are not yet certain that the death of Sebastien Carl in East Vancouver is connected and are now atte to find his wife Anyone with information about these or other crimes is invited to contact Criht" He snorted and continued eating No one ever ca about organized crianized Witnesses were efficiently dealt with

So Vicki was safe

And then it hit him Eleven men Maybe twelve

Maybe more; unreported, made to look like accidents or like natural causes

All at once, he wasn&039;t hungry He stared down at the eggs, searching for answers in the pattern the salsa ainst the yellow Eleven anization and, the odds were good, probably all killers All men the world was a lot better off without

But still

The law had to apply to everyone, or it applied to no one Whoever killed these ht have is, had broken the law Probably several laws If it was Vicki

"You&039;re ju his chair away from the table "Henry was out there, too It wasn&039;t necessarily Vicki"

If it was Henry, did that make it any better?

It didn&039;t have to be either of theether in an enclosed space, that sort of stuff hap?pens Probably had dogs with the not to slalass set into the doors, he found three coue memories of a laundry room sent him down the hall It was behind the second door he opened and had obviously been used thatmachine was a Europeancommercial machines and was supposed to use half the water They were still incredibly expensive in North America and Celluci, who&039;d had to listen to one of his aunts extolling their virtues, wondered what happened in five years when the seal went and they flooded the laundry room Vicki&039;s clothes-jeans, shirt, sweater, underwear, sock, high tops; everything she&039;d worn the night before-were lying in a damp heap, cradled in the bottom curve

Eleven s

He put the clothes in the dryer, grabbed a garbage bag from the utility closet in the corner and was on his way back to the kitchen when he heard a quiet tap at the apart in the hall looked as if she were about to cry "I&039;eneral direction of the open door as she dug in her purse for a tissue with the other "It&039;s just coht it all back"

"Mrs Munro?" Celluci hazarded

Mrs Munro blew her nose and nodded "That&039;s right I&039; pot, but it just sort of hit one"

Celluci knew he should ood reason now for her not to coot a vampire asleep in here, so could you come back after sunset just didn&039;t cut it

"I&039;ve just coht Miss Evans passed on" She looked up at hih?ter&039;s waiting in the car"

There didn&039;t see else he could do so he stepped aside

"So you&039;re a friend of Mr Fitzroy&039;s" Sighing deeply, she walked purposefully through the entrance hall, her gaze darting fro on any one object "Miss Evans thought the world of Mr Fitzroy He flirted with her, you know, and thatfriends of his stay here And you&039;re a police detective, aren&039;t you? Just like on television Are you and your lady friend having a nice visit to Vancouver?"

Wondering exactly what Henry had told her, Celluci said they were and then, as she headed straight for the pink bedroo in a voice calculated to disared women, "Uh, Mrs Munro, we have a bit of a proble the door?knob, and frowned slightly "A problem, Detective?"

"My, uh, lady friend is asleep in there"

"Still?" Her watch had large black numbers on a plain white face "It&039;s almost ten She isn&039;t sick, is she?"

"No, she&039;s not sick" And then, because there was nothing like the truth for that ring of sincerity: "She has an eating disorder"

"Oh, dear"

"And she had a bad night" He aze and smiled hopefully down at her, an expression that had caused innumerable witnesses to suddenly reet a cou?ple more hours&039; sleep"

"Well "

"If you leave a list, we could have Henry bring any?thing you need to your daughter&039;s this evening"

"No, no, there&039;s no need to disturb Mr Fitzroy He&039;s already been enerous, and, well" Her pupils dilated as she remembered the unexpected visit " he asked me not to come by while you&039;re here"

Celluci&039;s heart started beating again when she let her hand drop and turned from the door My persua?sions were, for the most part, monetary, he heard Henry say For theimportant I wouldn&039;t have even cohter-in-law can be hter-in-law had been able to overwhelm one of Fitzroy&039;s re?quests, evena word to use when describing her There were other words, but Vicki&039;d pretty rateful that you&039;re allowing us the use of your ho room "Yes I suppose it is my home now Miss Evans left it to me, you know"

"No, I didn&039;t know"

"Yes, but I expect I&039;ll sell it" She picked up a sh she&039;d never seen it before, and slowly put it down again "This is all too grand for s a little cozier"

Cozy was not a word Celluci would&039;ve used to de?scribe the pink bedroo He trailed silently behind her as she crossed back to the apartment door

"I&039;m sorry to have bothered you, Detective If you could ask Mr Fitzroy to call me at my son&039;s when you leave"

"If we&039;re an inconvenience, Mrs Munro "

"No, not at all" She s in sudden puzzle thethe ested this explained everything "You&039;re a friend of Mr Fitzroy&039;s!"

By the tione-which was just as well because his reaction was succinct and profane

Breakfast had been pretty good for hospital food There hadn&039;t been enough of it, but at least it hadn&039;t coed on the bed, he s him back his clothes Or just his boots He&039;d had to panhandle tourists for alet the ti he wanted, but that wasn&039;t the point Those boots were his

He ground the butt into a pitted metal ashtray and lit another It was kind of weird they let his he guessed it didn&039;t matter

When the door opened, he blew a cloud of smoke toward it, just to show he didn&039;t care; that he wasn&039;t freaked by what he&039;d agreed to do

Her lips pressed into a thin line, Dr Mui stopped short of entering the thin, gray fog and stared at him with distaste "It&039;s tiled It was tooout of a bad horror movie "Eet&039;s time for your shot," he repeated in a thick, German accent "And then you steal le syllable left no roo opinion

"Fuck,his head, he went to pinch out the cigarette, but the doctor raised her hand

"You may finish"

"Thanks, I&039; He took two long drags and pinched the end, tucking the still warm butt back into the pack for later "Okay" His chin lifted and he gave her his best I don&039;t give a fuck about anything glare "Do it"

"Lie down"

He snorted but did as he was told, ot a better bedside ainst his skin as she pushed up the sleeve of his paja as she swabbed his elboith alcohol

"Hey? You gonna take aze fro to her face, but her eyes were locked on the liquid rising in the syringe When she was satisfied, she pulled it from the small brown bottle cradled in her left hand, put the bottle back in her lab coat pocket, and looked down at him

The hair lifted off the back of his neck All at once, he didn&039;t want that shot

"I&039;ve changed h shit" As he spoke, he shot out of the bed and as far away froet and still be in the rooainst the outside wall, fists held waist-high

Dr Mui looked pointedly at the gy tucked up behind the pillow "You took the money," she re?minded him "Do I take it back?"

"No!" He stepped forward, stopped, and stared at the gyet out He didn&039;t knohere to, but he was intio back After a ain, more quietly What the hell was he afraid of anyway? They weren&039;t going to do anything to him They needed him healthy The floor was cold under his bare feet as he walked back to the bed He shivered and slid under the covers

"Is this it?" he asked, refusing to flinch as the nee?dle pierced his skin

"Yes" With one efficient er "This is it"

She left the room while the sedative did its work

"We don&039;t want a repeat of what happened the last ti in the hall, her tone inti that what she did or did not as all he should be concerned with His expression sug?gested he agreed "I don&039;t care how he dies, but he is to be properly disposed of Do you understand?"

"Yes, Doctor"

"Good" She stepped away fro let off his leash

Suppressing the urge to remain in the apartone, Celluci locked up and headed for the elevator The sooner they solved this thing, the sooner they could go hoet on with their lives

Their theory about those responsible for Henry&039;s ghost had been off base Unfortunately, now that they knew organized crime wasn&039;t involved, that left only a couple s were growing as fast as the media reported

Of course, it also left Ronald Swanson Multimil?lionaire philanthropist, bereaved husband, and all around nice guy

The elevator arrived alan-legging Since the police hadn&039;t yet identified the corpse, it seeh conventional surgery Since they knew he&039;d lost it locally, organ-legging was beginning to an? That was the only easy answer Profit