Seven Minutes to Noon

it. We don’t know who wrote that message on the window. It’s convenient to think Pollack did it, but we won’t know until we pick him up and have a chance to ask him.”
    “What about Ivy?”
    “Her umbilical cord may have been cut,” Frannie said. “Some tissue was found that might be leftover cord. If it is, if someone made the effort to tie the cord, it would indicate that whoever did this meant to keep the baby. That it was the motivation for the crime.”
    Who, Alice wondered, had wanted Ivy that badly other than Lauren and Tim? Was it Ivy the monster had wanted, or any baby?
    “What about Pam?” Alice asked. “She was shot with the same gun.”
    Frannie took a long drink of her coffee, then nodded. “Yup. There’s that.”
    Just then a small man with graying blond hair, one of the lab techs who had been working outside, came into the kitchen and knocked lightly on the archway’s molding. Frannie twisted around to face him.
    “Hey, Jerry.”
    “We’re almost done here,” he said. “We were able to lift one good print. Is this a rush?”
    “Top priority.”
    “We’ll take it over to the lab right now, ask them to skip it to the head of the line,” he told her, “if they can.”
    “Thanks,” Frannie said. “Call me when it’s in. We want to run it through Printrak ASAP, see if we get a hit.”
    Jerry nodded and went back outside.
    Frannie turned to Alice. “You’ve had quite an afternoon.”
    “We all have, haven’t we?”
    “Oh yes,” Frannie said. “But in a way it’s just the beginning. This is when we start to find out what’s really going on. You should get some rest. You look wiped out.”
    “I’m waiting for Nell and Peter to get home,” Alice said. “Mike’s picking them up. I won’t be able to rest until I see them.”
    “Why don’t you lie down anyway,” Frannie said. “I’ve got to make some calls, find out what’s up with Dana, check in with Paul.”
    Alice headed over to the couch, feeling unbearably exhausted, as if her twins had quadrupled in weight in the last hour alone. She carefully bent down to pick up the blanket where it lay pooled on the floor, and had just tossed it back on the couch when she heard a commotion in the hallway.
    Dana rushed into the living room and dumped the contents of two large shopping bags onto the floor. She had bought three more of Judy Gersten’s pillows at the Women’s Exchange, miniscule floral arrangements on pale backgrounds: rose, baby blue, dove gray. They all shared the immaculate needlework of the peony pillow.
    Frannie bent down and picked up one of the pillows. She held it up close to her eyes, turning it slowly around. Then she held the pillow still. “ZL,” she said, handing it to Alice. The pink-on-rose initials were almost imperceptible until you noticed them, and then they screamed.
    Dana handed Frannie another pillow. “PS.”
    When they looked at the next pillow, with its blue-on-blue CC in the corner, there was dead silence. Finally, Frannie spoke.
    “Lauren Barnet, Pam Short, Christine Craddock,” she said. “It can’t be a coincidence.”
    “Who’s ZL?” Alice asked.
    “Don’t know,” Frannie answered. “We’ll have to find out.”
    “Judy Gersten,” Alice said, vividly recalling the framed photograph in Judy’s apartment of her and SalCattaneo, pressed together, smiling like an old couple. Except he was married to someone else. “She’s involved in this.”
    Frannie and Dana glanced at each other. No assumptions.
    “Open them,” Frannie said.
    Alice hurried to the kitchen for a pair of scissors.
    Dana started with the peony pillow, carefully slicing open the pillow’s seam to reveal a neat track of tiny stitches. Dana continued to snip away until she had opened one side. Then she ripped apart the needlework canvas and velvet backing and peered inside.
    “Can you bring me a clean sheet?” Dana asked Alice.
    Alice went upstairs to the linen closet, found a neatly folded white sheet, returned downstairs and handed it to Frannie, who flipped it open and laid it on the floor.
    Kneeling down, Dana upended the pillow’s stuffing onto the sheet.
    Masses of long brown hair tumbled out.

Chapter 36
    “It’s Lauren’s hair.” Alice knelt in front of the pile of long, soft hair. She wanted to reach her hand into this last bit of Lauren, but was she allowed to? Was it evidence now?
    “Are you sure?” Frannie asked.
    The officers and forensics techs who were still milling around