As often as humanly possible he tried to put Suzanne out of his mind. Sometimes he achieved peace for a few hours or even managed to sleep through the night. It was the only way he could function, go about the daily business of living.

Did he still love her or only hate her? He could never be sure. She had been so beautiful, with those luminous mocking eyes, that cloud of dark hair, those lips that could smile so invitingly or pout so easily, like a child being refused a sweet.

In his mind she was always there, as she had looked in that last moment of her life, taunting him then turning her back on him.

And now, nearly eleven years later, Kerry McGrath would not let Suzanne rest. Questions and more questions. It could not be tolerated. She had to be stopped.

Let the dead bury the dead. That’s the old saying, he thought, and it’s still true. She would be stopped, no matter what.

Kerry smoothed down the skirt of her dark green suit, straightened the narrow gold chain on her neck and ran her fingers through her collar-length, dusky blond hair. Her entire afternoon had been a mad rush, leaving the courthouse at two-thirty, picking up Robin at school, driving from Hohokus through the heavy traffic of Routes 17 and 4, then over the George Washington Bridge to Manhattan, finally parking the car and arriving at the doctor’s office just in time for Robin’s four o’clock appointment.