You worked at your restaurant until three in the morning last night, didn’t you? Busy, busy girl! Then you walked two long blocks by yourself to your car. That’s what you thought, isn’t it? That you were all alone?

But you weren’t, Carmen. I was right there on the sidewalk with you. I didn’t even try to be careful. You made it easy for me. Not too bright. So into yourself. Me, me, me, me.

Maybe you don’t watch the news. Or maybe you just ignore it. Maybe you don’t care that someone is out there looking for people just like you. It was almost like you wanted me to kill you. Which is good, I guess. Because that’s what I wanted, too.

Watching you, trying to be you, I had to wonder if you ever told your two darling children to look both ways when they cross the street. You sure didn’t set a good example for Anthony and Martina last night. You never looked around, not once.

Which is too bad for all of you, the whole damn pretty-as-a-picture family as seen on your cooking show.

There’s no telling when your children might end up alone on the curb without you, is there? Now they’ll have to learn that important safety lesson from someone else.

After you got

Chapter 40

Chapter 40

IT ENDED JUST LIKE THAT—in midsentence.

Even if it hadn’t, this was a whole new wrinkle in the case. Carmen D’Abruzzi wasn’t dead, and they had the death-threat note. That was something positive, right?

Jeanne Galletta squeezed her eyes shut, trying to process the new information quickly and correctly. Maybe Mary Smith drafted her messages ahead of time and then finalized them posthomicide.

But why leave this one here? Would she do it on purpose? Was this even her at all? Might not be.

Jesus Christ, the questions never ended on this one. So where the hell were the answers? How about just one answer for starters?

She thought about Alex Cross—something he’d said in that book of his. “Keep asking until you find the keystone, the one question at the heart of it all. Then you can start working your way back out again. That’s when you start finding answers.”

The one question. The keystone. What the hell was it?

Well, six hours later it was still a mystery for Galletta. Just after dark, she finally let the last of the morning’s customers go home. Five people had given five different eyewitness accounts about who was sitting at the computer in question; the rest of them had no clue.

No one Detective Galletta spoke to struck her as remotely suspicious, but all twenty-six would require follow-up. The paperwork alone was more than she wanted to think about, now or ever.