More Twisted

“Wait.”
    But the sheriff’s deputies didn’t wait. They firmly shepherded Monroe into the back of their car and drove out of the driveway.
    It was as they passed the man and Monroe glanced at him from a different angle that he recognized him. It was the commuter—the one who’d sat next to him on thetrain yesterday morning. The rude one who’d asked him to be quiet.
    Wait . . . Oh, no. No!
    Monroe began to understand. The man had heard all of his conversations—with Shapiro, with Carmen, the jewelry store. He’d taken down the names of everyone Monroe’d been talking to, taken down his MasterCard number, the name and address of his mistress and the details of his meeting with Hank Shapiro . . . and the location of his house in the country! He’d called Foxworth, he’d called Cathy, he’d ordered the hunting knife . . . .
    And he’d called the police too.
    Because he was the South Shore Killer . . .
    The man who murders because of the least affront—a fender bender, a barking dog.
    With a wrenching gesture, Monroe twisted around and saw the man gazing at the receding squad car.
    “We have to go back!” Monroe shouted. “We have to! He’s back there! The killer’s back there!”
    “Yessir, now if you’ll just shut up, we’d appreciate it. We’ll be at the station house in no time.”
    “No!” he wailed. “No, no, no!”
    As he looked back one last time he saw the man lift his hand to his head. What was he doing? Waving? Monroe squinted. No, he was . . . He was mimicking the gesture of holding a telephone to his ear.
    “Stop! He’s there! He’s back there!”
    “Sir, that’ll be enough outta you,” the large deputy said.
    A block behind them, the commuter finally lowered his hand, turned away from the street and started down the sidewalk, walking briskly in a contented lope.

T HE W ESTPHALIAN R ING

    T he Charing Cross burglary had been the most successful of his career.
    And, as he was now learning, it would perhaps be the one that would permanently end this vocation.
    As well as earn him a trip to a fetid cell in Newgate prison.
    Sitting in his chockablock shop off Great Portland Street, wiry Peter Goodcastle tugged at the tuft of wispy hair above his ear and below his bald head and nodded grimly at his visitor’s words, just audible amid the sound of Her Majesty’s Public Works’ grimy steam hammer breaking up the brick road to repair a water main.
    “The man you robbed,” his uneasy companion continued, “was the benefactor to the Earl of Devon. And has connections of his own throughout Parliament and Whitehall Street. The queen speaks highly of him.”
    The forty-four-year-old Goodcastle knew this, and considerably more, about Lord Robert Mayhew, as he did all his burglary victims. He always learned as much as he could about them; good intelligence was yet one more skill that had kept him free from Scotland Yard’s scrutiny in the twelve years since he’d returned from thewar and begun plying his trade as a thief. He’d sought as much data as he could about Mayhew and learned that he was indeed well regarded in the upper circles of London society and among the royals, including Queen Victoria herself; still, because of the man’s massive wealth and obsession for amassing and hoarding rare jewelry and valuables, Goodcastle assessed, the rewards would be worth the risk.
    But in this estimate he’d clearly been wrong.
    “It’s the ring he’s upset about. Not the other pieces, certainly not the sovereigns. No, the ring. He’s using all his resources to find it. Apparently it was handed down to him by his father, who received it from his father. It’s of great personal value to him.”
    It was, of course, always wiser to filch items to which the owners had no sentimental attachment, and Goodcastle had decided that the ring fell into such a category because he’d found it sitting in a cheap, unlocked box on Mayhew’s dressing counter, covered by a dozen pieces of worthless costume jewelry and cuff links.
    But the thief now concluded that the casual treatment was merely a clever ruse to better protect the precious item—though only from thieves less skilled than Goodcastle, of course; he had inherited the family antiquities business ten years ago and of necessity had become an expert in valuing such items as music boxes, silver, furniture . . . and old jewelry. Standing masked in Mayhew’s dressing chamber, he’d frozen in shock as he uncovered