“What’cha got?” my niece’s voice came back.

“You in the middle of something?”

“Finishing up.”

“Can you meet us in front?”

“On my way.”

My relief was apparent, and McGovern smiled at me as lights strobed and water arched. Firefighters were black with soot and sweating. I watched them moving slowly in their boots, dragging hoses over their shoulders and drinking cups of a green thirst quencher that they mixed in plastic jugs. Bright lights had been set up in a truck, and the glare was harsh and confusing as the scene became surreal. Fire buffs, or whackers, as ATF agents called them, had crawled out of the dark and were taking photographs with disposable cameras, while entrepreneurial vendors hawked incense and counterfeit watches.

By the time Lucy got to us, the smoke had thinned and was white, indicating a lot of steam. Water was getting to the source.

“Good,” McGovern commented, observing the same thing. “I think we’re almost there.”

“Rats chewing wires,” Lucy said first thing. “That’s the owner’s theory.”

She looked oddly at me.

“What brings you out?” she asked.

“It’s looking like Carrie is involved in the Lehigh arson-homicide,” McGovern answered for me. “And it’s possible she’s still in the area, maybe even here in Philadelphia.”

“What?” Lucy looked stunned. “How? What about Warrenton?”

“I know,” I replied. “It seems inexplicable. But there are definite parallels.”

“So maybe this one’s a copycat,” my niece then said. “She read about it and is jerking us around.”

I thought of the metal shaving again, and of the point of origin. There had been nothing in the news about details like that. Nor had it ever been released that Claire Rawley had been killed with a sharp cutting instrument, such as a knife, and I could not get away from one other similarity. Both Rawley and Shephard were beautiful.

“We’ve got a lot of agents on the street,” McGovern said to Lucy. “The point is for you to be aware and alert, all right? And Kay.” She looked at me. “This may not be the best place for you to be.”

I did not answer her, but instead said to Lucy, “Have you heard from Benton?”

“No.”

“I just don’t understand,” I muttered. “I wonder where he could be.”

“When did you have contact with him last?” Lucy asked.

“At the morgue. He left saying he was going to the scene. And he what? Stayed there maybe an hour?” I said to McGovern.

“If that. You don’t think he would have gone back to New York, or maybe Richmond?” she asked me.

“I’m sure he would have told me. I’ll keep paging him. Maybe when Marino gets here, he’ll know something,” I added as fire hoses blasted and a fine mist settled over us.

It was almost midnight when Marino came to my hotel room, and he knew nothing.