They bought a newspaper, picked up Joss's car and drove to the neighborhood of the subway station. As he read, Reese's heart sank. There was no doubt, Moreno was going to be furious.

When they reached the station they found it deserted, the metal gate pulled across and everything dark and silent. Apparently Finch was as exhausted as everyone else and had gone home to sleep. They pulled the gate open, switched on the lights and sat down dejectedly in the subway car. Reese considered whether it was worth waking Finch for this and decided to let him sleep.

"I need my whiteboard," said Joss grumpily. "Can't think without it."

"We have a window," Reese offered.

Carter walked rapidly over to the desk, grabbed a marker pen and began to write. "Okay, we know our killer has a minimal digital footprint. We know they have some sort of connection with Karen Smith, since the Machine sent her number, am I right? "

She looked in Reese's direction for confirmation, and he nodded.

"We know he blacked out a whole city block, so he has connections or expertise or both." She stepped back and looked at what she had written. "Not much to go on," she said. "But sooner or later he'll make a mistake. Every little piece of information gets us that little bit closer to him." She shot an encouraging smile in his direction, then turned back to the window. She put out a finger to rest on Karen Walker's name. "That's your entry point. The Machine gave us her number. There's a connection there, he plotted to kill her so he must know her, or at least know of her existence. So we need to investigate Karen Smith. Friends, family, workmates." She paused again. "But not so much family. If the killer was someone close to her she'd have been the first victim, not the third. So someone a bit more fringe in her life. A workmate?..." Her brow furrowed as she thought intently.

Just then Reese's phone went. He pulled it out and saw with dismay that it was Moreno calling.

"Captain?" he answered carefully.

"Riley, I need you down here right now," she said without preamble. Obviously she had seen the papers.

xxxxxxx

As it happened, Moreno wasn't that worried about the media reports of the killings. She wasn't pleased, but she seemed to regard the situation as a breach of media protocol rather than a leak as such. "We have people to deal with that stuff," she told Riley. "As long as they stay far, far away from me, everyone's happy."

He nodded gratefully.

"No, it's much worse. Look at this." She pushed a piece of paper across her desk to him. "A Journal reporter got this via email about an hour and a half ago."

The paper said

RUN RUN AS FAST AS YOU CAN

YOU CANT CATCH ME IM THE GINGERBREAD MAN.

Underneath this it said THE NEXT ONE WILL BE SHOT :-)

He was lost for words as he gazed at the note. Moreno watched him grimly. "As you can see, Riley, this turns it into a whole new ball game. This guy is taunting us, and there's no way I can get the Journal to sit on the story for more than twenty-four hours." She looked hard at him, slipping a piece of nicotine gum from its pack and inserting it into her mouth. "So tell me about this morning," she added through her gum. "I see you haven't filed a report yet."

Riley shrugged his shoulders. He figured he would get a little leeway under the circumstances – it was less than three hours since the attack on Karen Smith, and he had fully intended to file the paperwork that day. Truly.

"I had a gut feeling that he might be operating again early this morning," he said, "and so Fusco and I went down to see if he would show in one of the camera blind spots. We got lucky in that we prevented a murder, but the whole block lost power suddenly and he slipped past us in the dark. I think that's what the note means. I went sprinting after him but I lost him." He devoutly hoped Moreno wouldn't examine that "I had a gut feeling" statement too closely. It seemed a pathetically thin veil over the truth, but it was all he could come up with on the spur of the moment and with far too little sleep lately. Hoping to distract her, he added "Weren't there supposed to be extra foot patrols in the area last night? There seemed even fewer unis than usual when we were down there."

Moreno frowned. "There should have been a cop on almost every corner. Thanks, Riley. I'll follow that up." She made a note on her scratch pad. "The reporter who received the note wants an interview. She doesn't usually cover crime stories, but this one's shaping up to be so sensational she evidently can't resist it. And with the killer contacting her like this I guess she has a right. We've taken her entire computer system away for the forensic techs to look at, which she wasn't at all happy about, so we need to try to keep her sweet. Here's her number, you better get on it today." She passed another slip of paper across to Riley. He saw the name on it and nearly choked. Maxine Angelis. A former Number. The reporter he'd dated briefly, trying to protect her without giving himself away. The one who'd wanted to put The Man in The Suit on the cover of every newspaper in the country.

xxxxxx

"Oh, my," said Finch as they sat in the subway car. Joss had gone home to sleep, and Shaw was nowhere to be found. "This is an extremely tricky situation."

"You can say that again," said Reese grimly. He was beginning to feel like a deer caught in the headlights. "I could send Fusco to do the interview, but it would really only delay things. If she's covering the case she's bound to see me sooner or later."

"Any chance she might not remember you?" Finch glanced up at him and answered himself. "No. Not really." He sighed. "We have only two choices, John. We could draw her to the inside by telling her the truth, or at least some portion of it." His mouth tightened - in distaste at the thought of voluntarily disclosing information, perhaps. "Or we could find some sort of cover story which would explain why you're a homicide cop and not an actuary." He stared absently at the computer screens in front of him. "One choice is extremely dangerous, the other even more so. A devil's alternative."

"Well, we need to make a fast decision, Finch. I could maybe spin things out until tomorrow, but no longer."

Finch considered for a long moment. "I think," he said slowly, "that the best option is to stick as closely as possible to your new cover identity. You were never really an actuary, you were an undercover narcotics cop."

"So why was I dating her?"

"The dates were genuine, but you were unable to disclose your true occupation and in any case wanted to impress her with wealth and sophistication. That flashy car you arrived in was from the evidence lockup."

"My apartment?"

Finch thought for a moment, then smiled slightly. "A wealthy, somewhat secretive contact was generous enough to loan it to you for a few days."

"The dog?"

"Oh, the dog's genuine. If it ever becomes necessary, Bear can spend a few days at Riley's place. But it hardly seems it will be necessary. You now have a significant other, an ADA who worked on some of your narcotics cases before your promotion to Homicide, and you'll only be seeing Ms Angelis in a business capacity during this case." He sat back, looking pleased at this recital.

Reese sat still for a moment, turning all of this over in his mind. It seemed to hold water, but there was something one of the ADA's he'd met liked to say – what was it? It's the cast iron alibis which sink the fastest. After a long pause in which he sought for, and failed to find, any serious holes in the story, he nodded. "I guess I'd better call her, then."

xxxxxx

Angelis was happy to come over to the Eighth and interview him in a conference room there. As he'd expected, she did a classic double-take when he met her at the front desk to escort her upstairs. Then her brows drew in. "John Anderson? What are you doing here?"

He smiled weakly. "Umm, Ms Angelis, Maxine...I guess I need to explain a few things." He held the "Authorized Personnel Only" door open for her and steered her up the stairs to the second floor. The small meeting room they were to use had only a table and four chairs – not even a coffee machine. He closed the door behind them and pulled a chair out for her.

She had obviously been thinking fast during the brief walk up the stairs, and she stared hard at him. "You weren't an actuary. I always had a feeling you weren't what you said you were."

He gave an embarrassed grin. "No, I wasn't one. I just thought it sounded like a high-paying job which would impress the ladies."

"So what were you really?" Her eyes were hard and suspicious.

"I was a narcotics cop, working undercover in the financial district trying to infiltrate a designer drug racket. I couldn't tell you any of that, of course. I'm sorry for the deception." He managed to inject the right amount of chagrin into his tone, he thought. Angelis looked slightly mollified.

"To be honest," he was inspired to add, "I was a little relieved when you broke things off. I was finding it harder and harder to live a lie with you. It was hard enough in my working life without bringing constant deception into my private life as well." He clenched his jaw a little and allowed his eyes to go slightly misty.

Angelis relaxed a little. "So when did you become a homicide cop?" she asked, flicking through her cellphone's list of apps to find the voice recorder.

"Just a few months ago. I had a lucky break, made a big bust and got promoted." He watched her carefully. She seemed to have bought the story, for the time being at least. Doubtless she would do some checking – he would in her position – but what he had told her would hold up. Most of his record as an undercover cop was heavily redacted for anyone apart from IAB and the FBI, and he didn't think she had sources in either of those. Certainly not the FBI anyway - after the Zambrano fiasco her name was pretty much mud in that quarter.

After that the interview ran on rails. No, they had no firm leads at present. He mentioned the possibility of the killer using gloves, cautioning her to withhold that information in her story. He exuded confidence that the NYPD could and would catch this deviant before he could strike again. She knew about the morning's work thanks to the time-honoured tradition of chasing ambulances and listening in to police coms. He modestly disclaimed any particular merit in his actions – that part was easy enough to put across, he was still smarting from the morning's defeat – but agreed that it would be necessary for the staff of Manhattan General to be exceptionally vigilant until the killer was caught. That brought them to the matter of the note.

"Do you see any significance in the way the note was worded?" she asked. "I couldn't help but notice the absence of any punctuation."

He smiled cynically. "Apart from the fact that we can eliminate English teachers from the list of suspects, no." She looked surprised. "My gut feeling is that this guy likes to tease," he explained. "He may well have taken out the punctuation just to get us running around looking for significance in the fact. Until I can see some good reason to, I'm not going to waste much energy trying to figure that bit out."

She nodded at this. "So what about the last bit? That the next one would be shot."

"That would represent a departure from his established MO, which would be unusual in a killer of this sort. We just need everyone to stay calm, live their lives normally and take sensible precautions..." He went into a little riff of the standard platitudes offered by the Department. Moreno had people to handle this sort of thing, he thought to himself. Why didn't he?

At last the interview ended. He conducted Angelis to the door, smiled as he said goodbye, yes of course you have my number, feel free, any time at all...He almost melted with relief as she vanished around the corner to the visitor car parking. It was over.

xxxxxx

By the time he had made it back to the brownstone and showered it was late afternoon. He caught up with Finch briefly by phone. The older man was relieved to hear the interview had gone off smoothly and that Angelis had appeared to buy the story, but he agreed with Reese that Angelis would need to be closely watched for the next few weeks to make sure she didn't stray too close to the truth. Finch was worried that she might have a contact in IAB who could access Riley's unredacted file, but he agreed that it was a risk they had to take.

Reese realised as he lay back on his bed that he hadn't had a full night's sleep since he had run into Carter in the lift at the court house – how many nights ago? Four, or five? The daylight was only beginning to fade when he drifted off to sleep.

By some miracle he slept right through to the morning. It was just getting light as he stirred, woken by an achingly distended bladder. His phone began to ring as he made it back from the bathroom. Fusco. With a sigh, he answered.

"Riley? We got another development." Fusco sounded grim.

Reese's heart contracted. "Tell me, Lionel."

"We got another body. This one over at City General. A nurse, just off shift, assaulted in a camera blind spot."

Reese's jaw clenched. "Oh, no."

"It gets worse. This one was choked and beaten about the head. Then shot, execution-style. And this time, raped, either pre- or postmortem."

He swallowed bile, unable to speak, and swore to himself that he would not stop until he had his hands on the bastard who could do this to an innocent woman.

"Riley? You okay?"

"I'm fine, Lionel," he forced himself to say. "I'll be down at the precinct in twenty."

To be continued...