The handwriting was a woman’s, a clear, graceful script-in ink. Ink. The note had been written with a fountain pen—and now Devlin knew who had written it. He hadn’t remembered Marcia Feldman, and at this moment, he couldn’t be sure if he ever would have. But he knew a woman who collected fountain pens. He had known her for over thirty years, and she was now an assistant district attorney for Queens County. Her name was Liz Becker Weinstein. Liz Becker, to Devlin. She wanted to talk to him urgently enough to have walked from her apartment to slip a note under his door. She knew enough about something to keep from signing her name. It had been her voice on the tape last night, Devlin realized now. Maybe she had been the one who had called him at the Ninth Precinct this morning. Certainly. But what did she want to tell him? What did she know, and how did she know it?

“Oh, boy,” Devlin murmured. He slid the lever on the answering machine that rewound the message tape. It stopped after only a moment.

That was wrong. Not how Devlin had left it, he was absolutely sure. Nelson’s message had been at the end of a series of incoming calls, and in order to save it, Devlin had left the tape advanced to a point after the Nelson message. This latest call this morning, the single flash Devlin had seen, would have followed all those other messages, including Nelson’s and this rewinding would have taken longer than it had.

Devlin slid the lever so the message tape would play. “Major, here, Devlin. What the hell are you doing, trying to kill me? Let me know before two P.M. if you’re going to do anything about tonight, because I have to go to the V.A. about my fucking blood pressure.”

The Mets must have won; Devlin had forgotten all about taking them yesterday morning. The machine beeped, signaling the end of the message, and then the tape hissed evenly. Devlin couldn’t even hear voices not fully erased from previous cyclings. He opened the machine to look at the message cassette. It seemed the same—what he remembered, if he remembered anything at all. He didn’t know. Had he looked at the damned thing since he had set it up? The tape was all but fully rewound. Devlin slid the lever and saw the tape back up to the beginning as quickly as before, almost instantly.