Jonah Welch squirmed and tried to find a comfortable position on the cheap metal chair. But there was no comfort in the claustrophobically cramped interrogation room with its beige-gray concrete walls, where he had been held for far too long for his liking. He rattled the handcuffs that shackled him to the metal table and pounded on it with his free fist. The sound echoed from a speaker in the adjacent room, where Elizabeth and Katherine watched his frustration on a monitor.

"He's getting nervous," Katherine remarked with a frown, her arms crossed over her chest.

"And that's exactly how we want him," Elizabeth said, turning down the volume. "Usually we lock offenders in there, leave them in there for a while, and by the time we're ready to talk to them, they're snoring."

"You're sure you can do this?" asked Katherine.

Elizabeth took a deep breath. It was just after four in the morning, and she had been up for almost twenty-four hours. On top of that, Welch's arrest had been the first physical police activity for her in almost a year. Yet somehow she was more exhilarated than ever. "Yeah, I'm fine."

Her sister grinned wryly. "It's the adrenaline."

"Spoilsport," Elizabeth replied with a smile. "But let's hope it lasts. She tapped the folder in her left hand and walked to the door to the room where Welch sat.

"Good luck," Katherine wished.

"Thanks, I can use it," the detective replied before she opened the door and disappeared into the interrogation room.

Katherine took a deep breath and turned her head to the monitor, turning up the volume as her on-screen sister closed the door to the interrogation room.

Welch looked up. "About time," he growled. "Now will you tell me why I'm here?"

Elizabeth pulled out the chair opposite Welch and laid the folder on the table. "I already have. You gave false information as to your address on the sex offender registry."

"Bullshit. That's why you don't send cops with assault rifles."

"That's what we do once the man's been arrested for a crime involving the use of firearms."

"That was over twenty years ago. I haven't touched a gun since. And I made a mistake with the address, so what."

"It wasn't an accident, Jonah," Elizabeth replied, finally sitting down. "When a guy does that, I know he's hiding. A false address buys you time when the police get too close."

A bitter smile came across Welch's face. "You want to know the truth? Okay, I did it because it's nobody's damn business where I live."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, pulling the corners of her mouth down. "True. Fuck the people in Albany who make the laws. You drive a '98 Crown Vic. Where is it?"

"That's none of your fucking business, either."

"Jonah, if you're as innocent as you claim -"

Welch straightened with his version of righteous indignation. "This is the United States of America. I have a right to my privacy."

"You forfeited that when the jury found you guilty of raping that girl," Elizabeth countered, presenting him with the picture of his first victim.

"And I paid my debt. I didn't cause any trouble in prison. Never missed an appointment with my parole officer after I was released, and I was never out of a job in fifteen years. I was a good boy, and you know why? Because I made a fucking mistake when I was nineteen. I swore after my first ten years in the joint that if I made it out of Suffolk County alive and with a virgin asshole, I'd live like a saint for the time I'd left. Because I never want to go back to jail."

Elizabeth leaned back in her chair and took a deep breath as if Welch's smug speech had touched her emotionally. Then she burst into applause. "Yoho! Bravo!" she cheered.

This shocked Welch and drained him of any remaining resilience. "Stop it! Shut the hell up!"

"No, honestly," the detective said, clapping on and on. "Were you in the drama club in jail?"

Welch looked like he was about to start crying. "Why do you have to torture me like that?"

It was the perfect opening. Elizabeth took out a few photos from the folder and slammed them on the table, one by one. "You know all about torture, don't you, Jonah," she stated, her face more than scowling.

Welch looked at the pictures, three skeletons on metal tables in the morgue, and backed away in disgust. "What the hell is that?"

"You not only know what that is, you know who they are," Elizabeth said in a threatening tone. "And you're not going to leave this room until you tell me."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Welch countered, beginning to shake violently.

"That's right, Jonah, you have every reason to be afraid," Elizabeth pressed on. "When you kill someone, sooner or later it catches up with you."

"I swear I've never killed anyone in my entire pathetic life," Welch stammered.

"Let me refresh your memory," Elizabeth replied, tapping the first two photos. "You murdered those two over twenty years ago, boiled their bones so the flesh would come off, and then buried the skeletons -"

"Did you say boiled ... Are you crazy?" roared Welch now.

"That girl you raped twenty years ago was lucky you were disturbed, or she would have been number three. And I'm convinced you made an effort to suppress the urge when you got out of prison fifteen years ago." She tapped the photo of Rosa's remains. "But when you saw her, you knew that was her."

"You're insane!" cried Welch. "I wouldn't even know how to do what you're talking about." Elizabeth stood up slowly, mostly for effect, which made Welch recoil that he almost fell off his chair. "Don't hurt me," he whimpered.

"That would be too easy," Elizabeth replied before pursing her lips, grabbing a monitor hanging from a pivoting arm on the wall, and pulling it toward the table. "I'll show you how you messed up instead." She grabbed the remote from another table on the wall and turned on the monitor. A still image of the video appeared. "Does it look familiar?"

Welch looked at the image closely and frowned deeply. "What the hell is that?"

"Watch," Elizabeth replied and pressed play.

It was the video from the Spanish deli. As soon as it played, Welch saw himself coming through the door and jumped up from his chair.

"I guess you remember now," the detective said.

"What does that have to do with anything?" the man wanted to know.

She pointed to the screen as Rosa cashed him in. "This girl is your latest victim, you sick fuck."

"Because I was in the deli?"

Elizabeth was grinning now like she was excited. "The best part is yet to come."

Welch looked like he was on the verge of spontaneous combustion as Rosa handed him on the screen his coffee mug and receipt. Elizabeth paused the video. "See this mug?"

"Yeah, so?"

"We found it in the bag of her bones. With your DNA on it."

He was almost struck by it. "That's impossible!" he replied with tears in his eyes. "I drank the coffee and threw the cup away."

"Of course you did," Elizabeth replied, walking back to the table and pulling a new photo out of the folder. "And it's in the same burlap sack you stuffed Rosa Castillo's bones in." She let the video continue, and this time they saw a wide-angle shot of the street where Rosa's bones were found. "But it wasn't enough for you to throw her remains randomly somewhere," she said, gesturing to a figure on the screen who was walking toward the trash can on the corner with his back to the camera. "You also made sure her ex-husband, the garbage man, would find them!"

"What?" barked Welch as if out of her mind. "I don't know any garbage men, and I don't know this girl!" He pointed at the screen. "I don't even know where that is."

"And we know you were in the area that night because your credit card was charged. Just like the day you were at the deli and bought the coffee at Rosa Castillo's." The full scope of the allegations now dawned on Welch. He was speechless. Elizabeth took the opportunity to complete her argument. "You saw Rosa. You stalked her. You kidnapped her in front of her uncle's deli. You crisscrossed the city in your '98 Crown Vic and finally drove out to Danehy Park in Cambridge, where you cooked her bones."

"None of this makes any sense! Why would anyone do such a thing?"

Elizabeth leaned close to him. "Not someone, Jonah, but you. And you did it for the same reason you killed those other poor girls back over twenty years ago, so no one would know they'd been raped in case someone found them."

And then something happened that the detective had not expected: Jonah Welch burst into an almost maniacal laughter.

"You find something funny about that?" asked Elizabeth angrily.

"First of all, I can't pop a chub anymore, ask my doctor. So I can't have raped that Rosa or whatever her name is. And second of all, my car is parked three blocks from my apartment in a vacant lot owned by a friend, behind a board fence. I just saw it there the other day and I haven't driven it in weeks."

"Bullshit!" retorted Elizabeth sharply. The car was her ace up her sleeve, and she thought to use it profitably. She plucked another photo from the folder and more or less shoved it in Welch's face. "A surveillance camera caught your license plate at a toll booth, asshole. The day of Rosa's disappearance. You can try to talk your way out of it all you want. When we show all this to a jury, you'll wonder how a smart guy like you could be so fucking stupid. They'll put you away, Jonah, and this time for good."

Welch stared at the photo as if he were looking at his own tombstone. He shook his head, trying to comprehend what lay ahead for him.

Elizabeth, for her part, knew it was all a giant bluff. All she had was flimsy circumstantial evidence held together by a more than flimsy story. But she had already made murder suspects spill everything with a lot less. Jonah needed just one more little push. "I'll send forensics out to get your car," she said calmly and confidently, looking Welch straight in the eye. "They'll transport it to their garage on a flatbed truck and search every square inch. They're going to see if it's been moved, and they're going to find dirt on the tires or under the fenders that matches exactly where in the Danehy Park we found those bones. And then we'll have you by the balls, Jonah. It's time you quit talking that bullshit and stand by what you did. I know you did it, and you know it. So you need to make a decision, right here, right now, last chance. Are you going to sit here and keep playing dumb, or are you going to tell me what it was really like?"

"I ... I don't know anything," he stammered. "I had nothing to do with any of this." Then he seemed to gain new strength. "And now I'm not saying another word."

"Okay." Elizabeth gathered up the photos with pursed lips and slid them back into the folder. She was about to leave the room before Welch asked for a lawyer. "I'm going to leave you alone for a while to think. You need to think about what's best for you, Jonah, now that you know what we have on you." She headed for the door. "I'll be back in a while, and we'll talk more then. Hopefully, you'll realize there's no way out. You can make it easier on yourself and us, or you can let it go. Your choice." Then she walked out before Welch could even open his mouth.

She went into the observation room where she found her sister with Savarese and her mother.

Jane just put her cell phone away again. "I just instructed the uniforms to search all undeveloped properties with board fences until they find the car."

"We should wait until they have it before I go into the next round with Welch," Elizabeth said, glancing at the monitor where Welch was propping his elbows on the table and burying his head in his hands.

"You got him all steamed up, Liz," Savarese opined.

"This guy is either a moron or he's turning a blind eye to the truth," Jane said, furrowing her brows, "and my money's on moron."

Elizabeth glanced at Katherine, who was staring mesmerized at the monitor. Not only had Katherine not said a word since Elizabeth had walked in, but she didn't even seem to acknowledge her presence. "Do I have to make you talk first, too?" asked Elizabeth.

"Something's wrong," Katherine replied without taking her eyes off the screen.

"Well, that's a first," Jane sighed, rolling her eyes. "Knock yourself out, Kate, just out with it."

"He doesn't fit any profile of a serial killer I've ever heard of," the doctor replied.

"They come in all sizes, shapes, and personalities," the captain growled, crossing her arms in front of her chest. "The guy is emotionally out of control because he never in his life thought we'd nail him."

"I don't think so, Ma," Katherine replied, turning to look her mother in the eye. "A murderer who is so thorough that he precisely cuts up a victim to cook the bones isn't just doing it to destroy evidence and cover his tracks. He does it to destroy the victim himself, to erase it. As if it had never existed. Someone who dares to do this thinks he is smarter than everyone else. Smarter than all of us together. He'd keep up the facade, maybe even help us along if we got stuck somewhere, just to prove how smart he is. He'd be proud of his work." as if to emphasize her point, she looked back at the monitor, where Welch still sat with his head in his hands. "But our Mr. Welch here, he's on the verge of collapse."

"He's furious. Because he's not the evil genius he thought he was," Jane argued.

"No, Ma. He's lost. He just wants to know how the hell he got into this. Why you guys are trying to pin these murders on him. He's looking for a way out of something he didn't do, and that's exactly why he can't find one. The killer of those three women wouldn't deny what he did, he'd shake your hand and pat your back to congratulate you for figuring it out."

Jane was inwardly cursing herself again for bringing Katherine in and for her daughter being smarter, as was good for her. She looked at Elizabeth for support.

The detective shrugged her shoulders. "You said it yourself, Captain, it's a bunch of nothing that looks like something when you throw it all together. But even the DNA is only a partial match."

"We've put killers behind bars with less than we have in this case," Jane replied.

"I understand that, Ma," Katherine replied respectfully. "But none of us want to put the wrong man behind bars. I'm pretty sure Mr. Welch didn't murder Rosa Castillo."

Jane looked at Elizabeth with a sigh, praying that what she was about to do wouldn't backfire on her. "Kate, I can hardly believe I'm saying this myself," she began, "but if you want to try it once, he's all yours. Assuming you can be objective after Miss Castillo was your patient."

Elizabeth looked sharply at the captain, then glanced at her sister. The two of them had considered turning Katherine loose on him as a last ace in the hole in the plan they had devised before Welch's arrest. Instead, Jane had unwittingly now already given Katherine a chance to lay her cards on the table.

"I want Rosa's killer more than you do, ma'am," Katherine replied with furrowed brows. "Telling you that Mr. Welch didn't dismember her is about the most objective thing I've ever had to do."

Welch kept his head buried in his hands as Katherine opened the door.

"Five minutes, is that all you're going to give me?" he asked sullenly, without looking up. It wasn't until Katherine walked toward the table that the sound of her heels made him lift his head. "So you are a cop after all," he said.

"Actually, I'm a psychiatrist, Mr. Welch," she corrected him.

"But you work for them," Welch said, upset. "If they think I'm more likely to confess to a shrink wearing a skirt, they can stick it, because I didn't do what they're accusing me of."

"Then how do you explain all the evidence against you?"

"How do you explain why they sent you in here?" fired Welch back.

"Okay, agreed," Katherine replied, sitting down across from the man. "Rosa Castillo was my patient. They sent me in here because I informed them you didn't kill her."

Welch laughed. "You're full of shit," he growled. "You're trying to reel me in, not let me go."

"I answered your question, so it would be nice if you answered mine."

The authority in her voice drove the grin off Welch's face. "You want to know how I explain this so-called evidence? Either the cops made it up, or someone is setting me up."

"For simplicity's sake, let's rule out that the cops are behind this. If they were trying to frame you, there's no way they would have let me see you. Can you think of anyone who would go to that much trouble to frame you?"

He looked at her as if he sincerely wished he could trust her. "How should I know?" he asked pleadingly. "As I was saying, what I'm supposed to have done to that woman ... I can't even imagine how -" He broke off when he saw Katherine's expressionless face.

"I believe you," she said simply.

"Bullshit!" exclaimed Welch, upset.

"If you give me a minute, I'll prove it."

"How?"

"Emigrant hasta."

"Huh? Emigrant what?"

"You heard me."

Welch slammed his fist on the table. "Are you trying to trick me here?"

"I want you to tell me what emigrant hasta means."

"It doesn't mean anything!" yelled Welch. "I may be an ex-con, but I'm not illiterate. It doesn't make any sense at all!"

Katherine slammed her notepad down on the table, the words written on the top sheet. As fiercely as a police officer in an interrogation, she shoved the paper across the table. "Damn it, you tell me what those words mean. Right now!"

Welch eyed the paper, fearing he would pay for a wrong answer with life in prison. Their eyes met, the pressure finally breaking him, a tear running down his cheek. He was afraid. "Emigrant hasta? Why are you doing this to me?"

Katherine picked up the pad from the table. "Thank you, Mr. Welch," she said.

"Wait, where are you going?" cried Welch in surprise. "Thank you? What does that mean? You can't just leave me here. Tell them I want a lawyer."

Katherine turned to him, striking a softer tone for the first time. "You won't need a lawyer," she assured him.

"But she was your patient. You want to see me on the electric chair as the rest of them."

"Only if you killed her, Mr. Welch," Katherine replied, opening the door. "And I know for a fact now that you didn't." She closed the door and returned to the observation room, where she found her sister alone. "Where are the others?"

"Got called into the chief's office," Elizabeth replied.

Katherine glanced at her watch and furrowed her brows. "At five in the morning?"

Elizabeth stifled a yawn and raised her shoulders. "The chief is an early riser. And this isn't their only case."

Katherine rubbed the back of her neck wearily. "Are you satisfied?"

"I have to think he would have let on if he knew what those words meant," the detective replied. "There would have been some kind of recognition, even if the rest was just theater. A guy who ice-coldly slaughters three women would want us to pay respect to his massive ego, and this idiot here hardly has an ego at all. Is that about right?"

Katherine smiled a little. "I couldn't have said it better myself."

Elizabeth turned to the monitor, where Welch had his head in his hands again, but this time his shoulders were shaking with crying. "I don't understand it," she said more to herself. "Ma was right, we only had circumstantial evidence. But the good kind of circumstantial."

"Maybe a little too good," the doctor replied with a frown.

"Now don't start me fantasizing," the detective rebuked. "I thought you were the science person here."

Katherine chewed the inside of her cheek and nodded slowly. "I thought so, too. But I don't know what I am anymore."

Elizabeth looked at her long and hard. "What do you mean?"

"I used to think that the world is logical. That you could explain everything empirically, with facts and figures. But lately, I can't explain things anymore."

"You mean like world hunger or wars?"

"More like why I'm always at war with myself," the doctor replied, giving her older sister a long look.

"About what?"

Katherine was about to answer when Jane burst into the room.

"We have to go," Jane said flatly. "You too, Kate."

"Wait, Ma. You have to listen to me," Katherine said, caught off guard. "Mr. Welch is innocent -"

"I know that, Kate."

"How can you know that? You weren't even -"

"A patrol just discovered a new bag of bones in South Boston, recently deposited," the captain replied. "And we had Mr. Welch under surveillance for more than eighteen hours. It couldn't have been him." She was halfway out the door when she said this. Her daughters hurried after her to the elevators.

"Do we just leave Welch in there?" the doctor wanted to know.

"He's just moved from the role of the prime suspect to that of an indispensable witness," Jane replied, repeatedly pressing the elevator button. "If you're right and he's been double-crossed, then he's practically wearing a target on his back from the guy who did all those murders."

"If he keeps killing, we should have a hard time keeping everything under wraps," Elizabeth remarked, giving her mother a long meaningful look with furrowed brows.

"Oh, it's not a secret anymore, Liz," Jane complained with a deep sigh. "The son of a bitch just dropped his pants. He called WCVB Channel 5 and led them right to the crime scene."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

The sun was just rising as Jane, Katherine and Elizabeth left downtown Boston in Jane's car, in time for rush hour traffic. With blue lights and sirens blaring, they made it to still crime-ridden South Boston in less than half an hour.

A little ahead, they saw a crowd held back by a gaggle of cops and a yellow police tape stretched across. Many people were wearing pajamas as if they had been evacuated from their homes. News station reporters and photographers moved among them, their broadcast trucks with their radio masts set high beaming reports into the newsroom.

"Just in time for the goddamn morning news," Jane growled through clenched teeth. "That's no coincidence."

"Neither is the location," Elizabeth added as a patrolman waved them through the barrier. "The guy's really rubbing it in our faces this time."

"The place?" asked Katherine, who would have been no more lost in Baghdad than she was in South Boston.

"He's trying to prove something to us."

Jane laughed maliciously. "Yeah, that we're a bunch of idiots. We can walk from here." She stopped behind a phalanx of police cars, fire trucks, the coroner's van, and the new mobile forensics lab, a vehicle the size of a tour bus.

It wasn't until they got out of the car that they saw the charred remains of the scene itself: a two-story brown brick apartment building from whose basement Dr. Ross was just emerging, behind her two co-workers with a wheeled stretcher holding a body bag that presumably contained the bones.

But Elizabeth focused on Ross' face. The normally unflappable pathologist looked as if she had literally encountered a ghost. Elizabeth had never seen her like that. "Are you all right?" she asked with honest concern.

"Whoever that monster is, he's getting on my nerves," said Ross, who was uncharacteristically not one for jokes. She glanced only briefly at Katherine, whom she took for another cop without question.

Jane closed her eyes briefly. "Can you tell us anything, Doc?"

"Same crap as last time," Ross sighed, glancing briefly over her shoulder. "Again, the circumference of the pelvic girdle bones indicates an adult female," she continued to report. "No soft tissue, yellowish color, an indication they were cooked like last time, and they were put in the same kind of jute bag."

"Anything with the sack?" asked Jane with a deep frown. "You know, another coffee mug, or a receipt, or maybe a business card with the psychopath's name and address?"

Elizabeth rolled her eyes and Katherine pressed her lips together to keep herself from grinning.

"Not this time," Ross replied. "Would you make the same mistake twice if you were him?"

"It wasn't a mistake," Elizabeth said, now stepping beside her mother. "He has no one else to pin it on."

"And Jonah Welch has no idea who he is," Katherine added.

Jane looked at her youngest daughter for a long moment. "Maybe you should go back to BPD with Liz then, to jog his memory a little more."

"Is that a request or an order?" the doctor replied.

"A request," Jane returned with a slightly softer tone. "He's been eating out of your hand. If he opens up at all, it's to you. And that's what we're depending on, Kate. Because unless this guy has left a sign that will lead us to him, and he's too smart for that, this miserable fool Welch is our only chance."