John Lutz - Single white female

When the elevator doors opened on the lobby, two plainclothes detectives and two uniformed officers were waiting. In the background hovered the mesmerized pale faces of onlookers, silent, watching intently, their expressions unreadable, their thoughts and fears too deep to reach the surface.

Kennedy appeared, breathing hard and looking angry and concerned. He must have ridden down in the other elevator. He'd lost his cigar, and black ash was peppered over his white shirt front. "You okay?" he asked Allie.

"Okay," she said, pressing her trembling palm to her ear, aware of a trickle of blood snaking down her arm.

One of the plainclothes detectives, a tall handsome man with neatly parted dark hair, entered the elevator and helped Hedra to her feet.

She glared at him, an accusation of unspeakable betrayal in her eyes. Her lips quivered. Parted. "You're not Andy. You pretended."

He gave her a fading, lazy smile as he gripped her elbow and ushered her from the elevator, almost as if escorting her onto a dance floor. He said, "What's in a name?"

Allie moved out of the Cody Arms the next month. Out of the city. She'd been offered a job in the actuarial department of a large insurance company in Rockport, Illinois. The company's real-estate division found her an affordable place to live, a small house on an acre of wooded land just outside of town.

It was always quiet there. Her mail was delivered to a rural box on a cedar post at the end of her driveway. Her nearest neighbors, a retired carpenter and his wife, waved to her whenever they saw her in her yard. Cars passed only occasionally.

Her old apartment in the Cody Arms was leased and occupied within days after she'd gone. To a pair of single women who said they were sisters.