Then she was limp, and the tears on his face dried in the autumn air. He laid her gently on the concrete and absolved her in the old tongue. After pinning the note to her sweater, he blessed her.

She was at peace. And for now, so was he.

“There’s no reason to kill us getting there.” Ed’s tone of voice was serene as Ben took the Mustang around a corner at fifty. “She’s already dead.”

Ben downshifted and took the next right. “You’re the one who totaled the last car. My last car,” he added without too much malice. “Only had seventy-five thousand miles on it.”

“High-speed pursuit,” Ed mumbled.

The Mustang shimmied over a bump, reminding Ben that he’d been meaning to check the shocks.

“And I didn’t kill you.”

“Contusions and lacerations.” Sliding through an amber light, Ben drove it into third. “Multiple contusions and lacerations.”

Reminiscently, Ed smiled. “We got them, didn’t we?”

“They were unconscious.” Ben squealed to a halt at the curb and pocketed the keys. “And I needed five stitches in my arm.”

“Bitch, bitch, bitch.” With a yawn Ed unfolded himself from the car and stood on the sidewalk.

It was barely dawn, and cool enough so you could see your breath, but a crowd was already forming. Hunched in his jacket and wishing for coffee, Ben worked his way through the curious onlookers to the roped-off alley.

“Sly.” With a nod to the police photographer, Ben looked down on victim number three.

He would put her age at twenty-six to twenty-eight. The sweater was a cheap polyester, and the soles of her sneakers were worn almost smooth. She wore dangling, gold-plated earrings. Her face was a mask of heavy makeup that didn’t suit the department-store sweater and corduroys.

Cupping his hands around his second cigarette of the day, he listened to the report of the uniformed cop beside him.