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and North after dark, even for Sports Illustrated .
    “I thought they tore that school down.”
    Asbestos in the ceiling and floor tile—a common occurrence in buildings constructed in the fifties and sixties—was making a lot of contractors a lot of money.
    “Next week. I guess Sanducci wanted to work his magic in the gymnasium where it all began.”
    I could see it—dusty faded court, broken wooden bleachers, old school uniform, the photo in black-and-white. Stark, beautiful, as only Jimmy Sanducci could make it.
    Hammond studied me. “You don’t think he’ll actually show up there, do you?”
    I shook my head. Jimmy wasn’t that dumb. But if not there, then where?
    “Anything else I should know?” I asked.
    Hammond tensed. Landsdown scowled.
    “What?”
    “There’ve been odd disappearances in some of the cities he’s frequented,” Hammond said.
    “There are always odd disappearances in cities. You know that as well as I do.”
    Joe Citizen had no clue how many people disappeared each year and were never seen again.
    “You know why there might be ash residue at Ruthie’s?”
    I kept my face carefully blank. “She didn’t even have a fireplace.”
    “Right. Looked like someone tried to clean up in a hurry, but they didn’t do a decent job.”
    I knew exactly where the ashes had come from. The bizarre shape-shifting monsters I’d seen in my coma. But who had killed them?
    I had a pretty good idea.

Chapter 6
    “Thanks for your time, Detectives.” I rose. “Could you let me know when you get the autopsy report?”
    “Anything special you’re interested in?” Hammond asked.
    “Cause of death would be nice.”
    “Considering the state of the body and the presence of the knife, we’re going with knife wound.”
    I nodded, but I didn’t believe it. Not anymore.
    “This is an ongoing homicide investigation, Phoenix. We aren’t going to give you any autopsy results, and you know it.”
    I had, but it never hurt to try. I had my own sources anyway.
    As I headed out of the police station I caught sight of the Yankees cap, encased in plastic as all evidence should be and perched on a filing cabinet.
    I knocked it to the ground, then knelt to tie my shoe. Shielding my movements with my shoulders, I slipped a finger into the bag and brushed the bill. Then I rose and continued on my way, leaving the cap on the floor. Better for someone to find it there later and think the evidence had fallen than for them to see me picking it up, wonder if I’d touched the thing, decide I had and start to follow me.
    Where I was going, I didn’t need an audience. Just in case I gave in to temptation and kicked the living hell out of Sanducci.
    I should have known where he’d run. If I hadn’t been off my game—between the coma and the cops, the visions and the berserker, being off was kind of understandable—I’d have figured it out on my own. Jimmy had gone to his safe place.
    I jumped in my car and took the grand tour of the town to make certain I hadn’t picked up a tail. Sliding slowly past City High, I noted several unmarked cars. Even if Jimmy was dumb enough to show up, he’d never be blind enough to miss the stakeout.
    I waved at the detectives, earning a scowl, and in one case a rude hand gesture, before I headed west.
    While at Ruthie’s, each of us had spent a month every summer between the ages of thirteen and eighteen working for someone or learning something. Ruthie believed in that almost as much as she believed in reading the Bible before bedtime.
    I’d been sent to New Mexico, to the edge of the Navajo Reservation, to learn more about what I was and how to use it.
    Jimmy had been sent only an hour away, to a dairy farm between Milwaukee and Madison. He had loved it.
    Not so much the milking, the plowing, the planting, but the place, the people and the animals. The photos he’d taken at that farm had been some of his best, and had led to his receiving a scholarship in photojournalism from