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What were they doing out here alone, and why couldn’t they get in?
Burt headed in that direction to find out. “Moe? Larry? Curly?” he shouted as he pushed his way through the evergreens.
At the sound of Burt’s voice, they came bounding toward him, their leashes dragging behind them, creating such a din that there was no mistaking this for anything but urgency.
“Where’s Sloane?” he asked them, already stooping to grab hold of the looped handles of all three leashes. They responded by half dragging him across the lawn and back to their front door.
Burt rang the bell three times. No response. He then knocked until his knuckles turned white. Again, nothing. Finally, he used the spare key Sloane had given him and his mother for those times when they needed to get in for “hound-sitting.” He unlocked the front door, and pushed it open. “Sloane?” he yelled.
Silence.
He checked every room, only to find them empty. In the kitchen, a mug and today’s newspaper were laid out on the table. And the coffeemaker, which had been program set for six-thirty, had already brewed four cups.
Burt didn’t waste another second. He picked up the phone and dialed the police.
FBI New York Field Office
26 Federal Plaza, New York City
7:05 A.M.
Derek wasn’t happy. He’d wanted to spend last night with Sloane. Stoic as she was, she was badly thrown by Elliot’s murder. And after a long day of grilling people and hearing the gory details of Elliot’s death over and over, she needed comfort, not a train ride home—accompanied by one of Manny’s people—and a night alone with the hounds. But Derek had been tied up with frantic meetings, phone calls, and paperwork until 3 A.M. He’d never even gone home, just crashed in the office for a few hours, then showered and changed clothes.
Now back at his desk, he glanced at his watch. Sloane should be back from her morning run. He was just about to call and check up on her—under the guise of determining what time she was meeting him at John Jay for day two of mouth-swabbing and interrogating—when his phone rang.
“FBI,” he answered briskly.
“Agent Parker?” It was a young woman’s tentative voice.
“This is Parker. Who am I speaking with?”
“Deborah Culmen. I am—I was—one of Dr. Lyman’s graduate assistants. There were two of us helping him monitor his AI system. The instructions he left us from the beginning were that in the event he was unreachable, we should call you if any results materialized.”
“And have they?” Derek leaned forward, his body taut with anticipation.
“The computer system just spit out a model based on all the information Dr. Lyman fed it. I think you should come over here and take a look at it right away.”
“I’m there.”
Derek left the federal building and drove his Bureau car up to John Jay in record time. He took the steps two at a time and strode through the door to Elliot’s office.
Deborah was waiting. White-faced, she handed him the screen print. She was actually shaking.
It took Derek three seconds to figure out why.
What he was looking at was a chilling, one-page analysis in the form of a table:
Goddess Name
Characteristics
Date Taken
Victim’s Name
Aphrodite
Beauty
