Grant managed to pull himself together by looking at Rachel’s computer screen and the work at hand. “Whoever is doing this, I think it’s clear there isn’t anything random about it. There has to be a connection here and this is the probably the best way we’ve got to go looking for it.”

“I don’t have a better suggestion at this point,” admitted Frankel. Rachel’s response was a nod of agreement and a resumption of her computer chat with Sergeant Hawley.

The two cops took their leave and let her get back to work.

The rest of the day was spent doing what all cops spend most of their time doing—good old-fashioned grunt work. Whether one was a commander at Scotland Yard, a first-grade NYPD detective, a sheriff in a Long Island suburb, or even a constable in a Northern Ireland village that Rachel had talked to about a former killer who had moved there, nothing substituted for working a real case.

Back when Grant first started, most investigations had been done on foot or by putting lots of mileage on their personal vehicles. It had taken longer but questions were answered face-to-face. Nowadays, ninety percent of what a detective needed to know could be discovered without leaving his desk, courtesy of the internet, cell phones, and satellite tracking. True, it was accomplished quicker, but Grant still missed talking to people in person. It was the only way to get a true read on someone.

One more reason Grant was convinced he was retiring at the right time.

But he held out hope that before he was done, he’d get to sit across from the person responsible for this chaos. It might be the only way to find out what was motivating the person that he, Frankel, and now his daughter were hunting for.

Frankel and Grant went over a few lists as well—the ones culled from various databases about possible Number Six victims, the men and women currently residing in the Tri-State area that had once taken a life themselves.

“These lists are longer than the ones Rachel and Hawley are looking at,” Grant observed, sitting across from Frankel in the detective’s office. They had chosen to work here because Frankel’s room had a window, even though it looked directly into the rear of another building.

They spent the next few hours contacting names on the lists. Frankel mentioned that one of the good things about the Ten Commandments being out in the open was that they could be upfront with people.

As for the few ex-killers they couldn’t reach, uniforms were dispatched to make sure they weren’t lying in their apartments, on a street corner, or on a Hudson or East riverbank with a Roman numeral VI carved in their foreheads.

Frankel had Philly cheesesteaks brought in from Shorty’s around one o’clock, which they devoured, washing them down with cold Coca-Colas.