Secret of the Seventh Son Read Online Free PDF Page A

was deciding whether to retreat or respond, they both heard quick light footsteps approaching, a woman trying to run in heels. "Sue alert," Will called out melodramatically. "Sounds like she's got something we don't have."
    Around their shop, information endowed the bearer with temporary power, and Sue Sanchez seemed to get a jazzy rush from knowing something before anyone else.
    "Good, you're both here," she said, shooing Nancy inside the cube. "There's been another one! Number seven, up in the Bronx." She was giddy, borderline juvenile. "Get up there before the Forty-fifth Precinct screws it up."
    Will threw his arms into the air, exasperated. "Jesus, Susan, I don't know a goddamned thing about the first six yet. Gimme a break!"
    Bang. Nancy chimed in brightly, "Hey, just pretend this is number one! No biggee! Anyway, I'll catch you up on the way."
    "Like I said, Will," Sue said, cracking an evil grin, "she's a pistol."

    Will picked up one of the department's standard-issue black Ford Explorers. He pulled away from the underground garage at 26 Liberty Plaza and navigated the one-ways until he was pointing north, heading up the FDR Drive in the fast lane. The car was detailed and running smooth, the traffic wasn't bad, and usually he enjoyed a nice run out of the office. If he'd been alone, he would have tuned in WFAN and satisfied his sports jones, but he wasn't. Nancy Lipinski was in the passenger seat, notebook in hand, lecturing him as they passed under the Roosevelt Island tramway, its gondola slowly gliding high above the choppy black waters of the East River.
    She was as excited as a perv at a porn convention. This was her first serial murder case, the champagne of homicides, the defining moment in her prepubescent career. She pulled the assignment because she was Sue's pet and had worked with Mueller before. The two of them got along famously, Nancy ready and willing to fortify his brittle ego. John, you're so smart! John, do you have a photographic memory? John, I wish I could conduct an interview like you.
    Will struggled to pay attention. It was relatively painless to get three weeks of data spoon-fed, but his mind wandered and his head was still fogged up from his late night tryst with Johnnie Walker. Still, he knew he could get into the groove in a heartbeat. Over two decades, he had taken the lead in eight major serial killing cases and kibitzed in countless others.
    The first was in Indianapolis, during his inaugural field assignment, when he wasn't much older than Nancy. The perp was a twisted psycho who liked to put out cigarettes on his victims' eyelids until a discarded stub broke the case. When his second wife, Evie, got into grad school at Duke, he pulled a transfer to Raleigh, and sure enough, another crackpot with a straight razor started killing women in and around Asheville. Nine agonizing months and five diced-up victims later, he nailed that creep too. All of a sudden, he had a reputation; he was a de facto specialist. They bumped him, messily divorced again, to headquarters to work Violent Crimes in a group headed by Hal Sheridan, the man who trained a generation of agents how to profile serial killers.
    Sheridan was a cold fish, emotionally detached and tightly wound to the point where he was the butt of an office joke: if a killing spree broke out in Virginia, Hal would have to be on the hot list. He doled out the national cases carefully, matching the criminal's mind to the mind of his agents. Sheridan gave him cases involving extreme brutality and torture, killers who directed massive rage at women. Go figure.
    Nancy's recitations began to penetrate his fog. The facts, he had to acknowledge, were pretty damned interesting. He knew the broad strokes from the media. Who didn't? It was the story. Predictably, the perp's moniker, the Doomsday Killer, came from the press. The Post nabbed the honors. It's blood rival, the Daily News , resisted for a few days, countering with the header POSTCARDS