Gingerbread Man

other way every time a needy woman had crossed his path. Up until he met Sara Prague.
    He wasn't going to make that mistake again. No more playing the hero. No more promises that would haunt his nights when he couldn't keep them.
    Cute or otherwise, Holly Newman was strictly off-limits. It was important that he acknowledge this up front. It would save complications later on. He hated complications.
    What he needed to do was analyze the woman's behavior from a purely objective point of view. She was obviously nervous about him being in town. She'd come out here to snoop and apparently had interrupted someone else who was also nervous about him being here, and snooping. Or she'd imagined the intruder, which seemed just as likely. There was no evidence anyone had been inside the cabin. The lock hadn't been broken, but it wasn't much of a lock. He supposed Holly could get hold of a key easily enough, since her uncle owned the place. He wondered if she had been inside rummaging through his stuff. Nothing too revealing in here. Not yet anyway.
    Her fear had been real, though. Whether she was lying, imagining, or had really seen someone, she had been scared into a panic attack. And it seemed unlikely a shadow and a snapping twig were enough to bring that on all by themselves. No, they'd probably acted as a trigger for something else. Something old. She told him as much when she admitted she hadn't had an attack in years.
    He wondered briefly about the source of her fear—the kind of fear that could come back to knock her flat on her ass, years later, at the slightest scare. Then he reminded himself that was beyond his strictly defined area of interest. Back on track.
    Just suppose there actually had been someone in the cabin. Who could it have been? Hell, he'd only been in town just over a day. Who could know what he was up to? He headed out to his car, unlocked it, and slid his laptop case out from under the passenger seat. He noticed his groceries still scattered in the dying grass out by the side of the cabin. A bag of coffee. Coffee filters. A six-pack of beer and a few other essentials. They would have to wait.
    Inside the cabin he dialed his cell phone while he waited for the laptop to boot up. A woman picked up on the fourth ring.
    "Katie? It's Vince, I need to talk to Jerry." He could hear his partner making motor sounds in the background, his four-year-old twins mimicking him and squealing with delight.
    "Nice to hear from you, too, Vince," Kate muttered.
    Chagrined, he said, "Sorry. How are you, hon? How are the kids?"
    "Molly wants her ears pierced, and Sydney is arguing her case for her," she replied. "I figure I have a fashion model and a litigator on my hands."
    "Just as long as they don't grow up to be cops," he said. "I really need to talk to Jerry."
    He heard the phone shift hands, heard Katie call to her husband, and then Jerry's voice came. "Vince? Where the hell are you, anyway?"
    "I'm fine, lounging in a nice little rustic cabin on a lake. It's freaking paradise, pal."
    "So what's wrong, Vince?"
    Vince frowned at the phone. "What makes you think anything's wrong?"
    "You called me."
    Vince drew a breath. His partner knew him too well. "I need a favor."
    "I knew it."
    "A discreet favor, Jerry."
    "You're working the Prague case, aren't you? Dammit, Vince—"
    "I have a name I want you to run for me. Not just for a criminal record—I really don't think you'll find anything there. But check anyway. And newspapers, too, old files. I'll take anything you can come up with, going back..."—he paused to flip open a notebook, for the date he'd found stamped on the library book—"go all the way back to eighty-three, just for the hell of it."
    Jerry sighed and said nothing.
    "You want to put away the creep who murdered those kids or not, partner?"
    "You know damn well I do. I'd also like to keep my job long enough to collect my pension, you know what I mean?" Another sigh. "What's the name?"
    "Newman," Vince said. "Holly. Mother's name is Doris. They lived in Syracuse until five years ago. That's about all I have."
    He heard Jerry scribbling. Then, "Vince, you know most of these types of crimes are committed by men."
    "I know. But this woman knows something, I'd lay money on it."
    Silence, long and drawn out. Then, finally, Jerry said, "Tell you what. I'll run the info if you'll tell me where the hell you are."
    "Place called Dilmun, on Cayuga Lake," he said. "That's between you and me."
    "For now, it is," Jerry