“Just saw her in passing. She walks fast but not due to nervousness, if that’s what you mean. More like it’s her normal pace.”

A few moments later, Grant Fellinger rang in, wanting to know if any progress had been made locating Meredith Santos. When Milo said, “Not yet,” Fellinger said, “You really need to be taking this seriously,” and gave him the Arizona home phone number of Santos’s parents. “Obviously you’re going to want to touch base with them.”

Muttering “obviously,” Milo reached the Santoses, did a lot of listening and torturing his necktie. He hung up saying, “Nice people in a terrible situation—okay, time for a beer. Or six. I need to get outta here. You with me?”

We were walking to the stairway when Sean Binchy phoned, excitement making him sound like a birthday boy. “Nothing in New York, Loot, but I talked to a captain at New Haven and he referred me to a city nearby called West Haven and they connected me with their chief. He had something just like it. Same year Williams was a student at Yale. Fantastic, huh?”

Milo whipped out his pad. “Good work, Sean. Go.”

“Victim was Loretta Sfiazzi, twenty-five, waitress at one of their better seafood restaurants. She didn’t report to work, was found by her landlady in her apartment, laid out on the floor, no sexual assault but strangulation and multiple stab wounds just like Ms. Hennepin. Dinner for two on the table, but not fancy like ours, just canned chili and an unopened bottle of red wine. A couple of ex-boyfriends were questioned but they alibied out and after that no suspect was ever developed. What he—Chief Donald Molinaro—thought was strange was the chili. Loretta worked at a high-level restaurant, it didn’t come from there and when she entertained she was known to take food home regularly, all the employees were allowed to. Her folks said she never ate chili and her table was set with nice dishes and flatware—they’d belonged to her grandmother. The wine fit, though. Parents confirmed it as a Christmas gift from them, Loretta was saving it for a special occasion.”

“He comes with a can in his pocket, borrows the rest,” said Milo. “Premeditating at eighteen.”

“That’s what I figured, Loot. Anyway, West Haven had no idea what to make of it, they were shocked to hear what I had to say. Not that I could tell them much, just that Williams was our prime suspect.”

Milo filled him in.

“Bizarre,” said Binchy. “I asked Chief Molinaro if Williams could’ve worked at the same restaurant as Ms. Sfiazzi. Unfortunately the place closed down, everyone’s gone or dead. But I did compare the date of the murder with Williams’s peep bust and it happened real soon after—ten days.”

“Expelled, so he takes it out on a woman.”