D.D. gestured back to the inner sanctum. With another shrug of her shoulders, Adeline retreated as D.D. followed. D.D. was thinking fast, adjusting and readjusting her expectations. Given the ritualistic nature of the two murders, she’d figured they’d get lucky with the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program. But matching their current murders to a string of forty-year-old homicides, the killer long dead, was more of a complication than a true development. Perhaps they were talking a copycat; God knows serial killers seemed to rack up larger fan bases these days than most movie stars. Given the number of websites and chat rooms dedicated to glorifying psychopaths, anything was possible.

But then to have her new doctor, a pain specialist she’d seen only twice, automatically know the killer’s name, even have a personal connection to him . . . That crossed over the line of coincidental in D.D.’s book and entered the land of creepy.

D.D. didn’t take her usual seat but remained standing across from Adeline, her throbbing arm and shoulder tucked protectively against the wall.

“Tell me about your father,” D.D. said.

“Dr. Adolfus Glen,” Adeline began.

D.D. rolled her eyes, immediately holding up a hand. “Yeah, yeah, yeah. Got the point. You consider your adoptive father your real father. He raised you, loved you, gave you everything a daughter could need, including a golden ticket out of psycho express.”

“Well, now that you mention it . . .”

“Tell me about Harry Day.”

The shuttered look on the doctor’s face relented. She sighed and sat back, not happy but apparently resigned to her fate. “I only know what I’ve read; I was still a baby when Harry’s crime spree came to an end. The way I understand it, one of his victims, a young waitress, got away. She ran to the police station. By the time the officers mobilized and came to arrest him, Harry was already dead, multiple cuts to each wrist. My mother suffered a breakdown and was carted off to a mental hospital, while child services assumed care of my older sister and me. The police spent the next six weeks systematically dismantling our house, unearthing two bodies beneath the family room and six more beneath Harry’s woodworking shop around back. Harry was a carpenter. He had a fondness for tools.”

“He tortured his victims,” D.D. said flatly, having been told that much by Phil. “Some of them took weeks to die.”

“But that’s not why his name came up in relation to these two murders, is it?”

“No, that’s not why.”