“So you’re thinking he stopped for eight years?” he said. “Why? He was in prison, maybe, for some other crime?”

“I don’t know. He may have been killing somewhere else and the cases haven’t been connected,” I replied as wind made unearthly sounds.

“There’s those serial cases in South Africa,” he thickly thought out loud. “In Florence, Germany, Russia, Australia. Shit, now that you think of it, they’re friggin’ everywhere. Hey!” He put his hand over the phone. “Smoke your own damn cigarettes! What do you think this is? Friggin’ welfare!”

Male voices were rowdy in the background, and someone had put on Randy Travis.

“Sounds like you’re having fun,” I dryly said. “Please don’t invite me next year, either.”

“Bunch of animals,” he mumbled. “Don’t ask me why I do this. Every time they drink me outa house, home. Cheat at cards.”

“The M.O. in these cases is very distinctive.” My tone was meant to sober.

“Okay,” he said. “So if this guy started in Dublin, maybe we’re looking for someone Irish. I think you should hurry back home.” He belched. “Sounds like we need to go to Quantico and get on this. You told Benton yet?”

Benton Wesley headed the FBI’s Child Abduction Serial Killer Unit, or CASKU, for which both Marino and I were consultants.

“I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet,” I replied, hesitantly. “Maybe you can give him a heads-up. I’ll get home as soon as I can.”

“Tomorrow would be good.”

“I’m not finished with the lecture series here,” I said.

“Ain’t a place in the world that don’t want you to lecture. You could probably do that and nothing else,” he said, and I knew he was about to dig into me.

“We export our violence to other countries,” I said. “The least we can do is teach them what we know, what we’ve learned from years of working these crimes . . .”

“Lectures ain’t why you’re staying in the land of leprechauns, Doc,” he interrupted as a flip-top popped. “It ain’t why, and you know it.”

“Marino,” I warned. “Don’t do this.”

But he kept on. “Ever since Wesley’s divorce, you’ve found one reason or another to skip along the Yellow Brick Road, right on out of town. And you don’t want to come home now, I can tell from the way you sound, because you don’t want to deal, take a look at your hand and take your chances. Let me tell you. Comes a time when you got to call or fold . . .”

“Point taken.” I was gentle as I cut off his besotted good intentions. “Marino, don’t stay up all night.”

The Coroner’s Office was at No. 3 Store Street, across from the Custom House and central bus station, near docks and the river Liffey. The brick building was small and old, the alleyway leading to the back barred by a heavy black gate with MORGUE painted across it in bold white letters. Climbing steps to the Georgian entrance, I rang the bell and waited in mist.