Stuart Kaminsky - Blood On The Sun

Joshua shrugged.

"When you left your parents, you did time for holding up a convenience store," she said.

"I was falling," Joshua said. "Like so many of the saints, I had to go to the depths before I raised myself up with the help of the Lord. How can one expect salvation without experiencing sin?"

"Your congregation knows you were in prison?" asked Aiden.

"Yes."

"When you got out," said Stella, "you became an apprentice to a carpenter."

"Humbly in the footsteps of Jesus, who never renounced his Jewish identity," said Joshua.

"Then," Stella continued, "you joined a Messianic temple."

"A gathering of the timid, the cowardly," said Joshua. "They didn't even turn the other cheek. They never stood up to let the first cheek be struck. I left them and started my own congregation."

Joshua looked at the two women and shook his head.

"I know how to fire a gun," he said. "I know how to wield a hammer and drive a nail. I am left-handed. But I did not kill Asher Glick. We believe in converting, convincing, not killing. If we kill, our cause is set back by years, decades."

"Look at this photograph," Aiden said.

He took it. It was the wall of the synagogue library on which was written CHRIST IS KING OF THE

JEWS. He handed it back to Aiden.

"That's what you believe, isn't it?" Aiden pressed.

"Yes," said Joshua. "Is there anything else you wish to say to me?"

"That you're free to go," said Stella, "but we'll be talking to you again."

SHELDON HAWKES, listening to Dinah Washington singing Love for Sale, made the first incision into the naked corpse of Becky Vorhees after examining all the wounds in the girl's body, six in her chest and stomach, one in her neck. He reported the wounds, including the location, size and shape of each penetration, and the depth of each thrust of the knife, into the microphone above his head, which was attached to a recorder on a table nearby. He also recorded that, while there were signs of slight bruising and shallow penetration, she did not appear to have been raped.

There were many possible reasons and, if asked, he would give them, but he was sure Mac would have his own thoughts on the reason for the lack of deep penetration. Three would be obvious. One, the rapist had changed his mind. Unlikely given the violence of the attack. Two, the girl had fought him off. Three, the girl had not fought him off, but the rape had been interrupted.

The girl's mother had been stabbed five times, four times in the stomach and once in the chest, a deep hard thrust that broke through bone to the heart. There were no signs of recent sexual activity on the woman.

Finally, almost two hours later, Hawkes had the last body on the table. Howard Vorhees was a big man, more than two hundred pounds, in good shape, obviously worked out. He had been stabbed once in the back and twice in the stomach. Besides these wounds, the only other thing Hawkes found of possible interest was a purple bruising just above the man's right wrist. The bone beneath the bruise was not broken. If he were still alive, Vorhees would have been in pain.

"The blood from the victims has been typed and the DNA is being determined," Hawkes said into the microphone. "Assuming the wounds were all made by the same weapon, which I believe is likely, a determination will be made to conclude from the layering of the blood the order in which the victims were killed."

Hawkes flipped off the tape recorder and looked down at the dead man. If he could see the knife, he'd be able to confirm what he suspected.

For now, however, he could determine the order in which the three members of the Vorhees family had been killed. For example, if the blood in the wounds of Becky Vorhees was hers alone with no traces of blood from any other family member, then she had almost certainly been murdered first. If the blood in the wounds of Howard Vorhees contained both his blood and that of his daughter but not his wife's, then he had been killed second. Once he had the blood reports, he would know with certainty.

He looked down at the placid pale face of Howard Vorhees. Hawkes had listened to sixteen Dinah Washington songs. The last, Destination Moon, was just ending.

Long before the days of the iPod, Hawkes had listened to Maxine Tucker, Sarah Vaughn, Dinah Washington over and over again. On one of those days, Hawkes had been sewing up a skeletal homeless man with a liver that looked like bulbous gray silly putty when a new body was wheeled in.

"Put it over there," he had told the paramedics, pointing to his left without looking up as he finished sewing the cavity closed.

After putting the corpse back in its assigned drawer, Hawkes had put a CD in his stereo and turned to the body that had been brought in moments earlier.

Behind him came the bittersweet voice of Maxine Tucker singing, "I wonder if it's worth the dyin.' " And in front of him lay the body of Maxine Tucker.

Hawkes had stood silently listening until the end of the song.

Hawkes sat next to Mac at the counter at Metrano's. Mac had coffee. Hawkes ate a gyro sandwich.

"Well?" asked Hawkes, reaching for a large glass of Coke.

"I think you're right," said Mac. "The girl was killed first. Then the mother. Mother's blood in her wound was over hers. The father was killed last."

"Makes no sense," said Hawkes. "You have three people to kill. The one you go after first is the one most likely to cause you trouble, the father, but he was last."

"Maybe he came into the girl's room after she and her mother had been stabbed," said Mac.

"He didn't hear all the noise?" asked Hawkes. "He wasn't taking sleeping pills or any other drug. I would have found traces in his stomach. Nothing wrong with his hearing that I could see."

"So," said Mac. "What was he doing when his wife and daughter were murdered?"

Hawkes shrugged.

"And why were the women laid out on the bed but the father was crumpled on the floor?"

Mac was looking into the tan depths of the coffee in his mug. Hawkes looked at him.

"You have an idea?" said Hawkes.

Mac nodded.

"You know where the boy's body is?" asked Hawkes.

"Maybe," said Mac. "I need to find Kyle Shelton."

"The Beast," said Hawkes. "It would also help if you could find the knife."

"We're working on that," said Mac.

Mac didn't like what he was thinking. Didn't like it at all.

Danny sat in the chair across from Sheila Hellyer. Her office was small, clean, as identified by polished wood as the CSI lab was identified by shining steel.

Sheila Hellyer was somewhere in her forties, good looking, classy, short gray hair, every strand in place, large silver earrings.

"Hold up your hand," she said.

He did. The tremor was there. Sheila Hellyer wrote something on the yellow lined pad in front of her.

"When did it start?" she asked.

"Noticed it this morning when I got up," Danny said, trying not to look uncomfortable.

"What did you think had happened?" she asked.

"My grandfather had Parkinson's."

"It come on him suddenly?" she asked.

"No, a little at a time according to my mother," he said.

"I don't think you have Parkinson's, but we'll run neurological tests."

"You've seen this before?" Danny said.

"Many times," she said. "Sometimes a tremor, a tic, a slurring of words and uncontrollable blinking of the eyes. It comes with the job. This happened to you once before."

Danny looked puzzled and said, "No."

Sheila Hellyer flipped through the papers in the folder, found the one she was looking for and said, "Two years ago you underwent a mandatory psych evaluation," she said. "You had shot and killed an armed murderer on a subway platform."