The Cold Moon

killer looked toward the student, who was walking quickly away from them.
    Duncan turned to Vincent. “Have you ever killed anyone?”
    He couldn’t hold the man’s piercing blue eyes. “No.”
    “Wait here.” Gerald Duncan studied the street, which was deserted, except for the student. He reached into his pocket and took out the box cutter he’d used to slash the wrists of the man on the pier last night. Duncan walked quickly after the student. Vincent watched him catching up until the killer was only a few feet behind him. They turned the corner, heading east.
    This was terrible . . . Vincent hadn’t been meticulous. He’d put everything at risk: his chance for friendship with Duncan, his chance for the heart-to-hearts. All because he’d been careless. He wanted to scream, he wanted to cry.
    He reached into his pocket, found a KitKat and wolfed it down, eating some of the wrapper with the candy.
    Five agonizing minutes later Duncan returned, holding a wrinkled newspaper.
    “I’m sorry,” Vincent said.
    “It’s all right. It’s okay.” Duncan’s voice was soft. Inside the paper was the bloody box cutter. He wiped the blade with the paper and retracted therazor blade. He threw away the bloody paper and gloves. He put a new pair on. He insisted they carry two or three pairs with them at all times.
    Duncan said, “The body’s in a Dumpster. I covered it up with trash. If we’re lucky it’ll be in a landfill or out to sea before somebody notices the blood.”
    “Are you all right?” Vincent thought there was a red mark on Duncan’s cheek.
    The man shrugged. “I got careless. He fought back. I had to slash his eyes. Remember that. If somebody resists, slash their eyes. That stops them resisting right away and you can control them however you want.”
    Slash their eyes . . .
    Vincent nodded slowly.
    Duncan asked, “You’ll be more careful?”
    “Oh, yes. Promise. Really.”
    “Now go check on the flower girl and meet me at the museum at quarter past four.”
    “Okay, sure.”
    Duncan turned his light blue eyes on Vincent. He gave a rare smile. “Don’t be upset. There was a problem. It’s been taken care of. In the great scheme of things, it was nothing.”

Chapter 5
    The body of Teddy Adams was gone, the grieving relatives too.
    Lon Sellitto had just left for Rhyme’s and the scene was officially released. Ron Pulaski, Nancy Simpson and Frank Rettig were removing the crime scene tape.
    Still stung by the look of desperate hope in the face of Adams’s young niece, Amelia Sachs had gone over the scene yet again with even more diligence than usual. She checked other doorways and possible entrance and escape routes the perp might’ve used. But she found nothing else. She didn’t remember the last time a complicated crime like this had yielded so little evidence.
    After packing up her equipment she mentally shifted back to the Benjamin Creeley case and called the man’s wife, Suzanne, to tell her that several men had broken into their Westchester house.
    “I didn’t know that. Do have any idea what they stole?”
    Sachs had met the woman several times. She was very thin—she jogged daily—and had short frosted hair, a pretty face. “It didn’t look like much was missing.” She decided to say nothing about the neighbor boy; she figured she’d scared him into going straight.
    Sachs asked if anyone would have been burning something in the fireplace, and Suzanne replied that no one had even been to the house recently.
    “What do you think was going on?”
    “I don’t know. But it’s making the suicide look more doubtful. Oh, by the way, you need a new lock on your back door.”
    “I’ll call somebody today. . . . Thank you, Detective. It means a lot that you believe me. About Ben not killing himself.”
    After they hung up, Sachs filled out a request for analysis of the ash, mud and other evidence at the Creeleys’ house and packed these materials separately from the Watchmaker evidence. She then completed the chain-of-custody cards and helped Simpson and Rettig pack up the van. It took two of them to wrap the heavy metal bar in plastic and stow it.
    She was just swinging shut the van’s door when she glanced up, across the street. The cold had driven off most of the spectators but she noted a man standing with a Post in front of an old building being renovated on Cedar Street, near Chase Plaza.
    That’s not right, Sachs thought. Nobody stands on the street corner