I would definitely try my damnedest. I was on the murder case.

I was chasing down the chimera as best I could.

My mind was working overtime already. A child molester? Boys and girls. Now a child killer? Chop-It-Off-Chucky? Was he real, or had he been made up by frightened children ? Was he a chimera ? Had he murdered Shanelle Green ?

I needed to pound the piano on our porch for a little while after Nana went up to bed. I played “Jazz Baby” and “The Man I Love,” but the piano wasn't the ticket that night.

Just before I fell off to sleep, I remembered something. Senator Daniel Fitzpatrick had been murdered in Georgetown. What a day it had been. What a nightmare.

Two of them.

Sam and Sara.

Whoever they really were, the two of them lay on their stomachs on a tasteful, knock-off Persian rug in the small living room of her Washington pied-hid-terre. It was a kind of safe house. A fire blazed and crackled; fragrant apple logs were being crisped. They were playing a board game on the rug, which covered a hatched parquet floor. It was a special game. Unique in every way. The game of life and death, they called it.

“I feel like a damn Washington, D.C., Georgetown University white liberal yuppie,” Sam Harrison said and smiled at the unlikely image created in his mind.

“Hey, I resemble that remark.” Sara Rosen made a pouting face. She was kidding. She and Sam weren't yuppies. Sam certainly wasn't.

And yet a guinea hen was roasting in the kitchen, the aroma sweetening the air. They were playing a parlor game on the living room rug.

The game wasn't anything like Monopoly or Risk, though.

Actually, they were playing a game to choose their next murder target. In turn, they calmly rolled the dice, then moved a marker around a rectangle of photos. The photos were of very famous people.