He didn’t answer right away. He looked down at his near-empty glass, and a couple of vertical frown lines creased his forehead. He said, “I see what you mean.”

“How would you have pegged it?”

“The way we did before you called. A psycho. You know we’re not supposed to call ’em that anymore? There was a departmental directive went out about a year ago. From now on we don’t call ’em psychos. From now on it’s EDPs.”

“What’s an EDP?”

“Emotionally Disturbed Person. That’s what some asshole on Centre Street’s got nothing better to worry about. The whole city’s up to its ass in more nuts than a fruitcake and our first priority is how we refer to them. We don’t want to hurt their feelings. No, I’d figure a psycho, some new version of Jack the Ripper. Calls up a hooker, invites her over, chops her up.”

“And if it was a psycho?”

“You know what happens then. You hope you get lucky with a piece of physical evidence. In this case fingerprints were hopeless, it’s a transient hotel room, there’s a million latents and no place to start with them. Be nice if there was a big bloody fingerprint and you knew it belonged to the killer, but we didn’t have that kind of luck.”

“Even if you did—”

“Even if we did, a single print wouldn’t lead anywhere. Not until we had a suspect. You can’t get a make from Washington on a single print. They keep saying you’re gonna be able to eventually, but—”

“They’ve been saying that for years.”

“It’ll never happen. Or it will, but I’ll have my six years by then and I’ll be in Arizona. Barring physical evidence that leads somewhere, I guess we’d be waiting for the nut to do it again. You get another couple of cases with the same MO and sooner or later he fucks up and you got him, and then you match him to some latents in the room at the Galaxy and you wind up with a case.” He drained his glass. “Then he plea bargains his way to manslaughter and he’s out in three years tops and he does it again, but I don’t want to get started on that again. I honest to Christ don’t want to get started on that again.”