O'Kelly gave me a disgusted grimace. "Someone stuck a knife in this girl's chest, Maddox. I'd say he knew there was a fair chance she could die."

I have years of practice in letting O'Kelly wash over me. "A chance, sure. But if someone had spent years thinking about killing her, he'd have it planned down to the last detail. He'd have every base covered, he'd have a script, and he'd stick to it."

"So maybe he did have a script," Frank said, "but it didn't involve anything like violence. Say it's not a grudge that has him chasing her, it's unrequited love. He's got it in his head that they're soul mates, he's planning a lovey-dovey reunion and happy ever after, and instead she tells him to fuck off. She's the one who breaks away from the script, and he can't handle it."

"Stalkers snap," I said, "yeah. But they do it a whole lot more thoroughly than this. You'd expect a frenzy of violence: multiple blows, facial disfigurement, serious overkill. Instead, we've got one stab, barely even deep enough to kill her. It doesn't fit."

"Maybe he didn't get the chance for overkill," Sam said. "He stabs her, she runs, by the time he catches up with her she's already dead."

"Still," I said. "You're talking about someone obsessed enough to wait years and follow her God knows how far. That level of emotion, when it finally gets an outlet it's not going to vanish just because the target's dead. If anything, the fact that she'd escaped him again would have made him even angrier. I'd expect at least a few more stab wounds, a couple of kicks in the face, something like that."

It felt good, getting stuck into the case like this, like I was just a Murder detective again and she was just another victim; it spread through me strong and sweet and soothing as hot whiskey after a long day in wind and rain. Frank was sprawled casually in his chair, but I could feel him watching me, and I knew I was starting to sound too interested. I shrugged, leaned my head back against the wall and gazed up at the ceiling.

"The real point is," Frank said, inevitably, "if she's foreign and he followed her over here, for whatever reason, then the minute he knows he's got the job done, he'll be out of the country like a hot snot off a slate. The only way he'll stick around long enough for us to catch up with him is if he thinks she's still alive."

A brief, heavy silence.

"We can run checks on everyone leaving the country," Sam said.

"Checks for what?" Frank inquired. "We haven't a clue who we're looking for, where he or she might be heading, nothing. Before we can get anywhere, we need an ID."

"We're working on that. Like I said. If this woman could pass herself off as Irish, then odds are English was her first language. We'll start with England, the U.S., Canada--"