"Is this the place?"

"Yeah." Joe frowned scratching at his beard. "Classy place. I hear they put fresh sawdust down every night." He shook his head. "What the hell was she doing in a place like this, Claire?"

"I don't know." She glanced at him out of the corner of her eye. "You okay, Joey?"

"Yeah..."

Her pager went off, loud and jarring in the car. She glanced at the glowing numbers. "Shit, it's Rellings."

Joe grinned suddenly. "Your secret admirer."

"Shut up, Joey."

He shrugged. "It's not me he's paging in the middle of the night."

"We'd better see what he wants." She nodded at the bar. "This can wait."

"No." Joe put his hand on the inside of the door. "Rellings hates me, it'd be better if you go talk to him. I'll talk to the bartender." He rubbed at his eyes. "I could do with a drink anyway."

"Okay. You want me to come back after I'm done with Rellings?"

"No, I'll get a taxi." He opened the door and got out of the car, leaning against the frame. "Go home and get some sleep."

"Okay."

He grinned again. "Have fun."

"Shut up Joey."

xxxXXXxxx

Reilling had learned long ago that he should interview a victim of a violent crime more than once. Having gone back to the hospital a second time after VanWingen had been treated had certainly yielded him more in the way of identifying his attacker. The young doctor's memory had improved as his distance from the attack lengthened. Not the opposite.

He had discovered it was a toss up. Some witnesses's memory got better, some got pathetically worse. Ya buys your tickets and ya takes your chances. This time the chance had paid off and VanWingen had come up with some more perceptions and description of the man who had tried to finish the job on Miles McCabe.

The one that helped the best right now was the sweat shirt. The one that read Marker's Pub, Belfast, Ireland. Not a common clothing imprint this side of the pond; in fact, uncommon enough that it would have stood up in court if Reilling had wanted to pick up its wearer for questioning. Not that that would do much good in this case.

Considering that the wearer was lying on his back in a congealed pool of his own blood, his throat slashed savagely from ear to ear–literally–it didn't look like Reilling was going to get much out of him in the line of questioning. But there were other ways of asking a man where he'd been, what he'd done that didn't require his being cooperative, or even his being alive.

Reilling already had gone pocket diving and fished out a hotel room key and the information that it probably wasn't a robbery, or it had been interrupted in progress. If this guy was as efficient and skilled as Reilling thought he was, then it was more like an interruption of some kind that forced him to leave the body there with identification on him and his pockets not cleaned out of anything that could track him. There was no wallet, but a wad of cash, the hotel room key and of all things a library card with the name Jack--the last name smudged into illegibility–and the address of the local homeless shelter on it as an address. The hotel would be the easy start and as soon as Claire... Detective Maryland... arrived, he intended to see what was behind door number thirty-one. She, of course, would be welcome to tag along if she wanted. Professional courtesy.

He tried to tell himself that it was just that hers was the first number on the card and that's why he called her instead of her partner, Kerrigan. Or that Kerrigan was just a fast car in the slow lane, flashy, impudent. The kind the women liked because they couldn't see past his dog and pony show. That he just didn't like the man.

Claire Maryland was out of his league anyway. Way out. Her kind of woman didn't go for his type of man. Simple as that. So there was no sense in adolescent fantasies. But it wouldn't hurt that she worked the case, that he got to be around her a little. She had seemed like a sharp cop, no reason it couldn't be her rather than her partner that he called to the scene in the middle of the night.

And right on cue...

The streetlights were faint in this area but the still caught the glitter of her hair, kind of a golden red in this light as she strode toward him, her gait not quite a woman's but definitely nothing masculine either. Purposeful. A graceful strength, like a lioness stalking the savannah. Oh, man, Reilling, he laughed at himself, get a life. And a grip.

Cause here she is.

xxxXXXxxx

The bar was almost deserted, just a few lone barflies remained, holding onto their drinks like they offered salvation. Staring up at the small tv screen, angled above the bar, casting its benevolent gaze across the bar. It was sad, a bar like this one, this time of night. There was a pall of desperation and loss that was almost palpable when he walked in the door. One of the women looked up from her drink. She smiled and brushed her hair away from her face in a gesture that might have been fetching when she was fifteen years younger and ten years less into the bottle. When he walked right on by, her face sagged and the frown lines settled back around her mouth as she hunched back over her drink.

Joe walked over to the bar, settling down on one of the unoccupied stools, playing with his cigarette and lighter.

The barman, a tall young man, his dark hair razored short, with a neatly trimmed goatee, pushed himself reluctantly away from the bar he was leaning against "What can I get you?"

"Whiskey."

"Coming up." The barman lifted a stocky tumbler, pressing it against the optic.

"You worked here long?"

"Every night, the last couple of years." The barman turned around, setting a beer mat on the bar, then the whiskey on top of it. "Why?"

Joe pulled the photo out of his pocket. "You ever see this girl before?"

The barman took a step away from him, his eyes narrowing suspiciously.

"Relax. I'm a cop. So. Do you know her?"

"Yeah I know her. Eva."

"She come in here often?"

"Often enough." The barman opened a beer and slid it down the bar to one of the barflies. "Two or three times a month."

"Did she come here by herself?"

"Yeah, usually." The barman hesitated for a second. "Although there was this one guy, early tonight..."

Joe felt his heart leap. "Yeah? What about this guy?"

He shrugged. "He had a thing for her. Kept staring at her all evening. I was going to throw him out." He shrugged again. "They started talking and seemed to hit it off. Left hand in hand. Lucky bastard."

"Could you describe him?"

"Not really. We were busy tonight and it was a while ago, early. Tall, well dressed, think he had a beard." A shout went up from the far end of the bar. "Anything else I can help you with?"

"No, thanks."

The barman drifted away.

Leaving Joe alone, staring at the photo of the beautiful lonely girl.

He lit a cigarette, letting the tendrils of smoke twist across her face, stroking her cheek with a gentle caress.

xxxXXXxxx

"What's going on Mark?" Claire put her hands on her hips and glanced around the crime scene. "Why did you page me?"

Mark Reilling swallowed hard, trying to moisten his throat long enough to speak. "I...eh...we think we found your boy." He glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, her body covered by the business suit, barely hinting at the curves he knew were hidden there. He looked away hastily.

'She's a married woman for Chrissakes. Get a hold of yourself!'

"Where is he?"

Her voice dragged him out of his daydream. "Eh? Oh he's over there." He led her over to the body and hunkered down next to it, conscious of her just behind him, of the smell of her perfume. "Somebody cut his throat. Did a good job of it as well."

"You find anything on him?" Maybe there was still a hope, still a chance to find Eva before it was too late.

"Yeah." Reilling fumbled briefly through his pockets and lifted out the hotel key, still perfectly reserved in the evidence bag. "I guess the killer got distracted before he could finish going through the vic's pockets."

She took the bag from him, her face suddenly pale in the lights of the emergency vehicles, her hands shaking. "I think we need to start looking for a second victim."

"Yeah?"

Claire nodded, brushing a curl off her forehead "Yeah. Her name's Eva Rossi."

xxxXXXxxx