We had chased him now for several years, and a complete inventory of the damage he had caused was impossible to take. We did not know how many people he had savaged, but there were at least five, including a pregnant woman who once had worked for me and a thirteen-year- old boy named Eddie Heath. We did not know how many lives he had poisoned with his machinations, but certainly mine was one of them.

Wesley was behind me with his headset on, and my seat back was too high for me to see him when I glanced around. Interior lights were extinguished and we began to slowly lift, sailing sideways and nosing northeast. The sky was scudded with clouds, and bodies of water shone like mirrors in the winter night.

‘What kind of shape’s she in?’ Marino’s voice sounded abruptly in my headset.

Wesley answered, ‘She’s frozen.’

‘Meaning, she could’ve been out for days and not started decomposing. Right, Doc?’

‘If she’s been outside for days,’ I said, ‘you would think someone would have found her before now.’

Wesley said, ‘We believe she was murdered last night. She was displayed, propped against…’

‘Yo, the squirrel likes that. That’s his thing.’

‘He sits them up or kills them while they’re sitting,’ Wesley went on. ‘Every one so far.’

‘Every one we know about so far,’ I reminded them.

‘The victims we’re aware of.’

‘Right. Sitting up in cars, a chair, propped against a Dumpster.’

‘The kid in London.’

‘Yes, he wasn’t.’

‘Looks like he was just dumped near railroad tracks.’

‘We don’t know who did that one.’ Wesley seemed certain. ‘I don’t believe it was Gault.’

‘Why do you think it’s important to him that the bodies are sitting?’ I asked.

‘It’s his way of giving us the finger,’ said Marino.

‘Contempt, taunting,’ Wesley said. ‘It’s his signature. I suspect there is a deeper meaning.’

I suspected there was, too. All of Gault’s victims were sitting, heads bowed, hands in their laps or limply by their sides, as if they were dolls. The one exception was a woman prison guard named Helen. Though her body, dressed in uniform, was propped up in a chair, she was missing her head.

‘Certainly the positioning …’ I started to say, and the voice-activated microphones were never quite in sync with the tempo of conversation. It was an effort to talk.

The bastard wants to rub our noses in it.’

‘I don’t think that’s his only …’

‘Right now, he wants us to know he’s in New York…’

‘Marino, let me finish. Benton? The symbolism?’

‘He could display the bodies any number of ways. But so far he’s always chosen the same position. He sits them up. It’s part of his fantasy.’

‘What fantasy?’

‘If I knew that, Pete, maybe this trip wouldn’t be happening.’