And suddenly there were screams and awful tearing sounds, cracking bones and joints that came apart like thick, soft balloons stretched too far. And the wild desperate screams of the singer.

"No, no, no, no. No I" It was a wail, it was a chant, it was a prayer. And it wasn't answered. Snap! Pop! And there were no more screams. Waldman heard the heavy crunch of plaster, and it hit the ground with a splash. Probably in a pool of blood. Plaster, then splash.

"Lovely." The flat voice. This time it echoed through the room. Then the door closed on the tape.

Inspector Waldman rewound the tape to where the screaming had begun. He played it forward, watching the second hand of his watch. A minute and a half. All that done by one man. In eighty-five seconds.

Waldman rewound the tape and played it back. It had to be one man. There were the voices of the four victims and their references to their guest, their one guest. He listened carefully. It sounded like power tools at work but he did not hear any motors. Eighty-five seconds.

Waldman stumbled trying to straighten up. He had been kneeling too long for his fifty-year-old frame. You knew you were getting old when you couldn't do that anymore. A young patrolman with a happy, glad-to-meet-you smile entered the basement room.

"Yeah?" said Waldman. The patrolman's face was familiar. Then he saw the badge. Of course. It must have been the model for the recruiting poster. Looked just like him, right down to that artificial friendly grin. But that couldn't be a real badge. The commercial artist hired by the police department, some radical freak, had done his defiance bit by giving the poster model a badge number no one had… "6969" which meant an obscenity.