Stuart Kaminsky - Deluge

"And the others?" asked Flack.

"Others?" Sunderland repeated, seemingly having trouble taking in what he was being told. "They were all sexual predators. My specialty. Adam isn't court ordered. He came in to see me on his own."

"Did they know each other?" asked Mac.

"Yes," Sunderland said. "We have…had a weekly group session here, in the next room."

"Anyone else in the group?" asked Flack.

"Yes, one more person. Ellen Janecek."

"I know that name," said Flack. "She's the teacher who seduced a thirteen-year-old student."

"Fourteen," said Sunderland. "He's sixteen now I think. She spent nine months in prison. Now she's out and fighting a relapse."

"Relapse?" asked Flack.

"She still wants to be with the boy. They're all dead?"

"Yes," said Mac.

"And Adam did it?" said Sunderland.

"Ellen Janecek," Mac reminded him.

"She's not making much progress," said Sunderland. "Normally I wouldn't be telling you all this about a patient, but- "

"Her address," said Flack.

Sunderland nodded and pulled a thick leather-bound notebook from his desk drawer.

"I've got everything on my computer but I keep the computer in an alcove, right behind those doors."

He nodded toward the doors to his left.

"Patients don't talk as easily with electronics of any kind in the room. A computer is particularly intimidating. Here."

He handed Mac a sheet of paper on which he had written the addresses of Ellen Janecek and Adam Yunkin.

"What can you tell us about Adam?" asked Flack.

"Quiet. Hard to get him to talk. Close to impossible. Strange."

"Why?" asked Mac.

"He voluntarily joins the group and then says almost nothing. I'm going to…was going to give him another month or so and then tell him to either start participating or to see me on an individual basis. That he did not want to do."

"The limp," said Mac. "How did he get it?"

"War, he said, but he didn't say which war and I think there was something else. Something he didn't want to talk about."

"Thank you, Doctor," said Mac, rising.

Sunderland nodded in understanding. "I hope you find Adam before…This is horrible, isn't it?"

"It is," said Mac.

"You must see a lot of horrible things, people traumatized?" asked Sunderland.

Flack had now risen as well. He felt a twinge in his chest. Not quite pain. He resisted the urge to wince or touch the jagged surgical scar on his chest.

"I'm afraid so," said Mac.

Sunderland reached across his desk and took a handful of business cards from a shiny steel rack.

"I also specialize in dealing with people who have suffered extreme mental trauma. I treat many relatives of nine-eleven victims."

Flack looked at Mac, knowing that Mac's wife had been one of those victims, wondering if Sunderland had figured it out as well. When Sunder-land held out the cards, Flack took them.

"If you come across any crime victims who could use my help…" the doctor said.

"We'll keep that in mind," said Mac.

Sunderland came around the desk. He accompanied the two detectives to the office door.

"This is horrible," he repeated, opening the door for them. "You think the media will- "

"Yes," said Flack.

"They'll find me," said Sunderland. He paused, considered this.

"Maybe that could lead to more referrals," said Flack.

"I wasn't thinking of that," Sunderland said defensively.

"Right," said Flack.

THE LIGHTS HAD BEEN turned off and the shades drawn in the classroom that had been the office/laboratory of Alvin Havel. Danny and Lindsay moved slowly, scanning the floor, tabletops, and desk with hand-held ALS devices.

"He took it with him," said Lindsay.

"Or put it back," said Danny.

"Back in the closet?"

"Back in the closet," said Danny.

"Good news is they're alive," said Devlin, standing at the edge of the pit. "Bad news is it looks like it's going to come sliding down on them sooner than we thought."

"How soon?" asked Stella.

"Don't know," said Devlin, taking off his helmet and wiping his soot-darkened face with his sleeve. "Fifteen minutes. Maybe less."

"What are you going to do?" Stella asked.

"I'm going to go down there and get them out."

Stella wanted to say "no," but she couldn't. Hawkes was in that hole.

"The man who blew up this building is down there," she said. "He may have a gun. I'm a detective. I should go."

"Simple as that?"

"Simple as that."

"What would you do when you got there?" he asked.

"Whatever you told me to do to get them out," she said.

"No. You find killers and bombers. We go into burning buildings and flooded pits," said Devlin, waving at another fireman across the rubble.

"You win. Be careful," she said.

"I'm trained to be careful," he said. "Want to hear a crazy and totally inappropriate question?"

"Why not?" she said.

The fireman Devlin had waved to was on his way, carrying an armload of equipment and a rope coiled over his shoulder.

"When this is over, will you have dinner with me?"

Stella smiled. "Save my partner," she said. "Then we'll talk."

They had decided to split up.

Flack headed for the address Sunderland had given them for Ellen Janecek. Mac headed for the address for Adam Yunkin.

Adam Yunkin wasn't home. There was no home. The address he had given Sunderland was a phony, a gourmet food store on Lexington.

It got worse. When he got back to his office, Mac ran the name through more than a dozen databases. He came up with one Adam Yunkin, fifteen, Newark. Adam Yunkin was dead, a suicide. Hanged. Reason unknown.

A dead end except for one detail. Adam Yunkin had killed himself on June 16. Today was June 16.

Whoever was calling himself Adam Yunkin needed one more victim before midnight, one more sexual predator, into whose thigh he could carve that last M to spell "Adam."

Ellen Janecek was at home, a one-bedroom apartment in a subdivided Brooklyn brownstone. She opened the door when Flack knocked.

Flack remembered seeing Ellen Janecek on television during her trial and in the media interviews. Pretty, very pretty, long, straight blond hair, near perfect figure. On television she always appeared with a pleasant smile and a far distant look. That was the look that met Flack when she opened the door. She was wearing jeans and a tight black T-shirt. She was even prettier than she looked on television, but the look was not a seductive one.

"Miss Janecek," he said, showing his badge.

She held the door open and continued to smile blankly. He stepped in. She closed the door.

"I haven't been in touch with Jeffrey," she said.

"That's not why I'm here."

The room they were standing in looked like an ultraclean movie set. Bright flower-patterned sofa and two chairs, polished walnut dining room table with four chairs lined up. Flack was sure that if he measured the distance between them and their distance from the table, it would be exactly the same for each chair. There were color photographs on the wall, three of them, framed, about two feet by three feet. All three were of Ellen Janecek.

In one she was wearing almost exactly what she wore now. She smiled at the camera, thumbs tucked into her front jeans pockets. In another she wore a sleek, form-fitting red dress. Her hair tumbled across one eye. In the third, she sat in a chair, book open in her lap. She wore a prim skirt and white blouse and looked at the camera over her round, rimmed glasses.

"Nice photographs," he said. "Jeffrey like them?"

She didn't answer.

"Adam Yunkin," he said. "What can you tell me about him?"

"Why?" she asked.

"Because I'm going to ask you to pack some things and come with me so Adam Yunkin won't come here and find you."