Dead Hunt

for Clymene. It would have been the same if we did it manually. It would just take years. David’s funny sometimes, have you ever noticed that?’’
    ‘‘Occasionally,’’ said Diane, smiling. ‘‘Did you come in for a reason or are you just wandering around the building?’’
    ‘‘Oh, yeah, sure. This is good. We’re finding so much good stuff, looking for Clymene’s starting to get fun. The blood on the bedframe in apartment 1-D in your former apartment house belongs to Clymene Red,’’ he said.
    ‘‘Clymene Red?’’
‘‘Yeah, remember the Christmas trees? There’s Clymene Prime—she’s the murderer. And there’s Clymene Red and Clymene Blue, the two sisters I named after the colors of the ornaments.’’
Diane nodded. ‘‘Okay. So the blood on the bed is one of the sisters,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Yes,’’ said Jin. ‘‘But the epithelials in the IV needle we found belong to Clymene Blue, the other sister.’’
It gave Diane a chill to think they were living just a floor below her all that time and she didn’t know it. She wondered how long Clymene had been planning her escape.
‘‘Good work,’’ she said. ‘‘Did you find anything else in the apartment?’’
‘‘No, and David vacuumed the place good. You know how he is. The three Clymenes washed that place down with bleach before they left. They missed the blood on the bed, and we almost did too. It had dripped and run under the frame. The needle was caught in the corner between the floorboards. Lucky for us, they just didn’t see it. Clymene and company are not perfect,’’ said Jin.
‘‘Any sign of the young male who was with them?’’ asked Diane.
‘‘No. Nothing from him or Clymene Prime in the apartment,’’ said Jin.
Diane started to comment when the phone rang. She picked it up.
‘‘Fallon.’’
‘‘Dr. Fallon, this is Alex Kade.’’ He had a slow drawl and a gravely voice. ‘‘How are you doing today?’’ he said.
‘‘Colonel Kade. I’m fine. I hope you have some news for me,’’ she said.
‘‘I do. But please call me Alex,’’ he said. ‘‘ Colonel was a lifetime ago.’’
‘‘I will if you call me Diane,’’ she said.
‘‘Deal. I think I found your woman.’’ He paused. ‘‘You said it’s too late to save her?’’
‘‘She’s alive, but . . .’’ Diane let the answer fade away.
‘‘I don’t need to know. I’m sorry I wasn’t around to save this little girl,’’ he said.
‘‘I don’t think she was ever reported missing. We think, though this is not confirmed, but we think her father sold her,’’ said Diane.
‘‘Aw jeez. Aw jeez.’’
Diane could hear the pain in his voice.
‘‘She looks to be fifteen or sixteen. I’m sending you just her face. I don’t think you need to see the rest of the picture. I’ll send the whole pics along if you need them, but—’’
‘‘I don’t really want them in my head,’’ said Diane. ‘‘Is there any information with the pictures?’’
‘‘I do have some information. This set of pictures has been on the Internet porn sites for years. A favorite collection, it seems. It was originally posted by a man who called himself Jurgen Heinrich, but his real name was Simon Greene. He’s from the U.S. but lived all around Europe in the seventies, eighties, and early nineties. Had family money but made his real fortune selling sex slaves. He was a mean one. I’d like to have had him at the end of my fist.’’
‘‘Is he still out there selling slaves?’’ asked Diane.
She had called up the browser on her computer and found Alex Kade’s e-mail. She looked at the pictures. He had cropped out everything but the head and tops of the shoulders. Diane was glad. As she listened to Kade, she looked at the face in the images. She was so young, but it was Clymene. Clymene when she was about fifteen. In the photographs her mouth was always in some kind of seductive pout, but the eyes told the story. They were angry.
‘‘No. Greene was murdered. One of them misdemeanor homicides, if you ask me. Someone doused him with kerosene and lit a match to him. He lived for a few months before getting an infection and dying. A bad end to a totally miserable human being.’’
Clymene’s first murder, Diane was willing to bet. Kingsley had told her the first murder usually set the pattern for the rest. This Heinrich, or Greene, died violently and painfully. Clymene may have changed her method of killing to suit the