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else that’s tech, set aside for Jerry Lido.”
    Lido was the alcoholic but brilliant tech analyst for Q&A.
    â€œNo problem,” Renz said. “So let’s go get some waffles.”
    â€œI’m gonna wait for Pearl,” Quinn said.
    â€œSoon as the CSU people and photographer give the word, I’ll send these dead folks to the morgue,” Nift said. “If that’s how you wanna do it.”
    â€œThat’s how,” Quinn said. He’d looked enough at the dead women.
    â€œOr I could wait around for Pearl with you,” Nift said.
    Quinn gave him a look. “I think not,” he said.
    He went outside with Renz and watched the corpulent and corrupt commissioner lower himself into the back of his personal limo. Watched as the long black vehicle drove to the end of the cordoned-off block. A uniform moved a blue wooden sawhorse to make room for the limo to glide through and continue on its way.
    Quinn stood in the sunlight and leaned against the stone face of the Fairchild Hotel, waiting for Pearl.
    He thought about the D.O.A. initials carved in the victims’ foreheads. The same bloody initials had been the “signature” of the infamous D.O.A. killer who’d murdered four young women in Manhattan two years ago.
    That killer was the one that had flown away from Quinn. Had shot him and left him for dead beside a lake in Maine. And then died himself when his plane went down.
    That had been the assumption.
    Now the killer—or a copycat—was back. That was why Renz was so sure Quinn would take the case. That Quinn would jump at it.
    With Renz the case was political. With Quinn it was personal.
    Quinn caught familiar movement among the knot of pedestrians crossing with the signal down at the corner. He pushed away from the sun warmed stone wall and his day immediately brightened.
    Here came Pearl.
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    Pearl saw Quinn right away, standing in front of the Fairchild Hotel. When she strode closer to him, she could see the look on his face, and she knew why it was there and what it meant. It took a lot to make Quinn look like that. Like a Mt. Rushmore figure only pissed off.
    She’d heard what was upstairs in the hotel. And she knew what it would mean to Quinn. “The last time you and this killer met, he almost made you one of his victims,” she said.
    â€œAlmost,” Quinn said.
    â€œI don’t want that to happen,” Pearl said.
    Quinn smiled. “Neither do I.”
    â€œWould it do any good to beg you not to get involved with this killer again?”
    â€œIn all honesty, no,” he said. And then, “I’m sorry.”
    She knew that he was. Which made her want to curse him and cling to him and kiss him all at the same time. “You know you’re obsessive,” she said.
    â€œPersevering.”
    â€œObsessive.”
    â€œYou’ve been talking to Renz.”
    â€œOf course I have. He doesn’t mind if you get yourself killed.”
    â€œMore than you might think.”
    Pearl felt herself approaching the point where frustration would become ire. Men! she thought. Some men!
    â€œI’m going upstairs to the crime scene,” she said.
    For a second she thought he was going to advise her against that, for her own good. Forbid it, in fact. But he knew her better than that.
    â€œNift is still up there,” he said.
    â€œSo are maggots.”
    â€œPearl . . .”
    â€œScrew Nift.”
    Pearl pushed through the tinted glass revolving door, somehow not missing a step, as if dancing in concert with its myriad moving images.
    She noticed how cool the lobby was.
    Like the morgue.

7
    Dunkirk, France, 1940
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    T he day could hardly be bleaker. There was blood on the uniform of British Expeditionary Force Corporal Henry Tucker. He checked carefully with hurried hands and decided with immense relief that none of it was his own.
    He looked up and down the beach and saw people running and diving