Elizabeth drove down the street. She had just been to a meeting at City Hall, where she had met with staff from the Senate Justice Department to coordinate the press campaign. The city's major press outlets were to run Missing Persons on their landing pages.

That was the plan.

Unfortunately, the whole thing didn't get off the ground as quickly as the detective would have liked, especially because she had to explain the connection between the 'first and second order victims' at length. In the process, the high officials had behaved decidedly obtusely.

At the same time, Elizabeth had to pay a visit to a major daily newspaper with three officers. The editor-in-chief had claimed that he had information on Jason Walton but that he would have to use it in an article before he could make it available to the police.

"After all," the man had told Elizabeth with a slimy grin, "our readers have a right to know things first."

"Okay," Elizabeth had replied, "if you wanna play hardball, we can do that too." Then she'd gotten an emergency warrant from Maura to search the editor's house, grounds: urgent suspicion of withholding pertinent information and obstructing the investigating authorities in an ongoing investigation. In the end, a squadron of BPD cops would have searched the editorial offices and confiscated all computers, hard drives, and USB sticks. Then the editor-in-chief would still have had his story but no longer a platform to publish it.

Faced with this prospect, the man had volunteered the information after all. However, it had not been the Jason Walton Elizabeth was looking for, but a semi-celebrity who happened to have the same name and had changed from male to female after undergoing a sex change.

The BPD hadn't only put the pictures of the missing people - Jason Walton, Joseph Hurts, and Samantha Conway - on all the police websites, all the media outlets were now expected to put the pictures on their websites as well. This worked well. Because to the media, bad news was good news.

The media, Elizabeth thought. Sometimes they were friends, sometimes foes. She was sorry that there were sometimes disagreements between her and the media. Because the media, especially the tabloids, were her friends and allies. They pointed the finger, showed the horrors in this city, and provided Bell, the Chief of Police, and Jane with enough ammunition when it came to the annual budget negotiations. If the media didn't always turn over the stones of that city and show what bodies were there, Elizabeth wouldn't be sure if there were any police left in Boston at all.

The media had also bitten on the current story right away.

After all, a story about a missing person that everyone was searching for at full speed was always a good story. Elizabeth had once learned what journalists wanted to hear in a media training course for BPD employees. Things had to be news: rock star blah blah blah beat up his wife. Or it had to be taboo topics: Rockstar blah blah blah is into anal sex with dogs.

That's why the Nameless One whom the media had dubbed the 'Facebook Ripper,' had been so popular. Even when he had gone to press himself. Exclusive reports about events from which the 'normal' citizen was usually excluded were also always a hit: star gala at the Ritz followed by snow polo, for example. Or when it was about things associated with danger, such as the motto: If the financial crisis continues like this, we'll all be out of our savings.

But in the end, it all came down to the same topics.

Tits, animals, tears, dead people.

And if there was no exciting topic, the simple rule applied:

If you don't have one, make one up.

Elizabeth's job was with the media, as it was privately with men and women. You couldn't do it with them. But neither could you do it without them.

Elizabeth drove past a group of demonstrators. Several placards and banners read: Abolish the police.

Several police officers stood around the group to protect these demonstrators who were demanding the abolition of the police.

Police protection for a demonstration demanding the abolition of the police, the detective thought. Sometimes she wondered if she had the right job and what was wrong with this strange country she lived in and worked for. And whether she shouldn't better emigrate with her wife and children.

xxx

Back at the BPD, the desk bent under the weight of files, and her mailbox overflowed. Work piled up like the snow in Boston every winter because it was never cleared. But the snow, even in Boston, eventually melted. The work, unfortunately, didn't melt.

Winter, Elizabeth thought. It was midsummer, and she was thinking of winter as she had been just when she had been at the crime scene, and Shakespeare's poem had run through her mind.

She met Jane in the break room. The Chief had torn open various windows to provide cooling. "How's it looking?" she asked with furrowed brows.

Elizabeth nodded slowly. "The Senate knows," she said. "Of course, they don't know everything. We don't want the whole connection to be in the papers tomorrow, and we want the papers to say who we're looking for."

"Victims of the first and second orders," Jane puffed in annoyance. "What kind of dumbass came up with those stupid terms anyway."

Elizabeth grinned while pouring herself a cup of coffee. "I think it was you, Ma."

Jane rolled her eyes. "Whatever." She drank from her coffee.

"How's it going here?" the detective played the ball back.

"Tedious," Jane replied. "Nick is feeding data into the BPD's mainframe computer to see when and where the missing persons might have any commonality in the past."

Elizabeth raised her cup to her lips and frowned. "So?"

The chief shrugged and pulled down the corners of his mouth. "Drags on forever." She gingerly drank from her coffee. "Coordination is still in its infancy here compared to the NSA and the FBI." She glanced outside. "Come on, let's go see Nick."

xxx

Nick crouched in front of a monitor in BRIC, looking strained.

"Do we have anything yet?" Elizabeth wanted to know.

"Yes," Nick looked at her good-naturedly, expecting his sister-in-law to ask further. So she did, as a favor to him.

"And what?"

"There's a commonality between all the second-order victims. So between Jason Walton, Joseph Hurts, and Samantha Conway."

Elizabeth folded her arms in front of her chest. She was getting tired of the questions. "Which ones?"

"From the looks of it, all the missing people were involved in a trail in which a Chantal Hebert played a central role."

"Chantal Hebert." The detective's eyebrows furrowed. "Where can we find her?"

"In a cemetery," Nick replied tersely. "It was about a homicide on this woman."

"Okay," she said, "so Chantal Hebert isn't the one we're looking for. The victim is already eliminated as uninvolved because she's dead. But there's a perpetrator for every victim, and who else do we have."

Nick clicked through the documents. "There's one more." He typed in some search terms. "Must have been a defendant in the trial. A guy named Kevin."

"Kevin?" asked Elizabeth. Kevin wasn't usually a name but a perp description. If any guys were beaten to death or beat others to death, in most cases, they were named Kevin.

"Kevin Burns.

Elizabeth wrote the name on a piece of paper. "What did he get?"

"Doesn't say here. But it doesn't look like acquittal."

Elizabeth glanced at her mother. "Could he be the culprit?"

Jane pulled the corners of her mouth down and shrugged. "We'll find out. Drive up there, bag the guy, and question him. Or do you have a better solution?"

Elizabeth shook her head. "No." She turned to Nick. "That Burns guy isn't in the cemetery, too, is he?"

"No, he's still here. In Boston. He lives in North Dorchester."

Jane clapped her hands. "Let's go, then. Get the word out to the RRT. We're going to get this, Burns. Sift and destroy!"

Elizabeth glanced at the clock. "How long will it take the RRT? Ten minutes?"

Jane nodded.

Elizabeth leaned down to Nick. "It says something about the trail. What was going on?"

Then she saw the word.

Manslaughter.

xxx

"Now I finally see through it," Nick said, putting a stack of printouts on the table and pushing the papers together. "Kevin Burns. Ten years ago, there was a trial against him, and he was charged with assault resulting in death."

"Then he killed Chantal Hebert?" wanted Elizabeth to know.

Nick nodded slowly. "His girlfriend, Chantal Hebert. He pushed her down the stairs, and she died of a broken neck from the fall."

"What did he get?"

"Twelve weeks of rehab. At the time, he was a heavy alcoholic and skirted real punishment because of it."

Elizabeth chewed the inside of her cheek with a deep frown. "Did it do anything good?"

"Probably not. But that's not the point."

"But?"

"Everyone who is a second-order victim of our killer was involved in the trail at the time."

"Including Jason Walton?"

"Yes. He was the cop who testified as a witness in the Burns trial. At one point, neighbors called him to the Heberts' apartment because of constant fighting and yelling."

"And Joseph Hurts?"

"He was Burns' defense attorney."

"And Samantha Conway?"

"She was a psychiatrist by then. She wrote the report for Burns."

"Then what could this be?" asked Jane, looking from one to the other. "Some kind of vendetta."

Nick shrugged and bent a paper clip, looking at the stack of files. "Could be. Burns is getting revenge on everyone who put him through this punishment. The cop who testified against him, the defense attorney who didn't defend him properly --"

"... and finally," Jane concluded, "the psychiatrist whose report sent him to the penitentiary."

Elizabeth frowned deeply. "Twelve weeks probation?" She looked at Nick and Jane, then glanced at the file. "That doesn't strike me as too draconian a punishment to warrant such a vendetta, though." Her gaze flew over the files. "It also says here that the cop rather downplayed the numerous beatings at the Hebert apartment that neighbors called the police about. None of this adds up!"

"Well," Jane replied. "The ways of the Lord, and also the ways of men, especially the ways of justice, are notoriously inscrutable. Besides, who else could it have been? Chantal Hebert? The victim? She's dead." She turned to her son-in-law. "Surely others are standing there who are involved in the trail?"

Nick nodded another time. "The judge, a juror, the prosecutor --" He looked at the two women with wide eyes.

Jane's eyebrows drew together when he didn't continue. "What's wrong?"

Elizabeth's eyebrows had also drawn together, but then they shot up as she understood why Nick had abruptly fallen silent. "Mom," she said, and Jane looked at her with wide eyes. "Mom was the one who brought charges against Burns then, wasn't she, Nick?"

Nick only nodded.

Jane's eyes danced back and forth restlessly as her brain processed the information. "Good," she said as she started to walk. "The judge and this juror are to be placed under police protection immediately."

Elizabeth took a step toward her mother. "And what are you going to do?"

Jane stopped and looked at her daughter for a long moment. "I'm going to Maura's office." She pointed to the two detectives. "You two are going to pay Burns a visit!"