Nikki had yet to immediately step onto the property where her mother's house stood. She turned once more and let her gaze wander over the old villas that lined the streets.

"You're going for broke with her, aren't you?"

The voice snapped Nikki out of her thoughts. She turned in the direction it had come from. "Ben? Did you sneak up on me?"

Her younger brother looked much better than he had the day before. Although the slightly too elegant clothes and the unkempt, tousled hair on his head had suited him well, in jeans and sneakers, with precisely styled hair and a tight-fitting T-shirt, he looked far more coherent and more in keeping with his type.

Benjamin smiled broadly before embracing his sister. "Ma does care about your case, Nikki, she absolutely do. She's just going through a change that all menopause is a joke against. I'm sorry, but you'll have to find your magical assassin yourself."

Nikki took a step back and eyed Benjamin demonstratively. "You heard the whole thing yesterday?" She lowered her eyebrows. "But from the sounds, you were totally engrossed in your video game when I talked to Ma."

Benjamin didn't make a face. "I was, too."

Nikki grinned and rolled her eyes. How could it be otherwise? A Benjamin Rizzoli could now play one of the most complicated video games while listening to a complex conversation about a mysterious crime on the floor above.

"I'm here because Ma says she found out something important. The matter didn't leave her alone after all."

"But that's not as good as you might think." Now Benjamin, who was usually relatively carefree, suddenly sounded severe, and there was a note of emphasis in his voice. "There are good reasons why Ma has withdrawn. It's a bit like a junkie. Her gift gives her kicks that you can't imagine. Her brain spins like a thousand merry-go-rounds. In all possible directions, at all possible speeds. And absolutely everything that spins is with her. At the same time. It was as if all the visitors to a football stadium stepped out of an alley at the same time, and you noticed every button on every piece of clothing of every person at the same time."

Nikki exhaled deeply. "Recognition is like a rush for Ma; the stronger it is, the worse the pain afterward."

"You seem to know a thing or two about intoxication!" Benjamin smiled like a child who had played a prank on his grandmother.

Nikki's cell phone rang before she could say anything back. She automatically reached for her smartphone. With a finger wave, she asked her brother to take the call, "Mike, what's up?" Her expression suddenly brightened, and a gleam came into her eyes.

"I will get something from your favorite Italian place after work. How does that sound to you?" He sounded as if nothing and no one could upset him.

"I can't tell you until later. I'm going to talk to Ma now. What I have to do today depends on that."

Mike suddenly sounded more serious. "About your case?"

"Yeah, I'll get back to you later. I love you!" She ended the call.

"Wow, someone's still got a crush." Benjamin grinned all over his face.

"And you?" Nikki gave her brother a shove and put her cell phone away again. "And you? No relationship in sight?"

"I don't think I want one at all. The more people I have in my bed, the more certain I become that I don't want anyone around me. At least not as a life partner."

Nikki nodded slowly and licked her lips. "You're pretty open about sexual relationships, aren't you? I'm surprised our parents haven't tried to send you to a convent yet."

Benjamin pulled the corners of his mouth down. "But that's rather unromantic, part of my training, so to speak. It's about smells, about being able to judge people by their scent. I'll tell you about it when you have more time." He pointed to the front window of Elizabeth's house. "Ma's waiting for you; you'd better go in and see her. She doesn't grant audiences very often."

"I really hope she has something helpful for me. Because I'm at a dead end. The boys need help; the public finally wants to see on the news that we've found them, and the only one who wants to help me so far is Lucifer himself!"

Benjamin drew his eyebrows together. "Lucifer? That doesn't sound so bad. At least with him, you know where you stand!"

xxx

"He wanted you to come across the old case and reopen the investigation. That's what we know by now."

Nikki sat quietly and attentively in the same spot on the couch where she had sat the day before. She listened to her mother and former captain with extreme concentration; after all, any words she said could be the last she would dedicate to Nikki's investigation. "You said on the phone that I was looking for the wrong person. What did you mean by that?"

"Your magician wants you to find the culprit who kidnapped Carl and Dennis that time. We initially thought the guy from back then wanted to be found for some reason, but that was a mistake. The current perpetrator knows the old case but doesn't know it in detail. He doesn't know how the person you're supposed to be looking for did it back then. He murdered his victims in many different ways. Always more brutal, but each time with a different method. You thought he wanted to show his cruel determination, that he is unpredictable and capable of anything. In reality, however, he is simply fishing in the mud! He is aware that the twins' parents were cruelly murdered back then, but he doesn't know how. I was at the crime scenes in my imagination. I looked around carefully. One thing was obvious: what your perpetrator did was not a repeat of the old crime. It was his interpretation of it! He wasn't reproducing the crime, but his feelings about it. The emotion with which he looks at his memory of what he knows about these old murders."

"So you think I'm looking for one of the victims from back then?" Nikki narrowed her eyes into slits. "In that case, only the twins themselves would come into question. I'm unaware of anyone from the files who is still alive or has a strong enough motive. Do you think that the magic trick in the kidnappings can be explained by the fact that two perpetrators look exactly the same?"

"No." Elizabeth shook her head slowly. "Even if Carl and Dennis look identical, they couldn't have been in seven locations simultaneously. Besides, although they have the same DNA, their fingerprints are still different. Still, you have to find them. Either way, the twins are the key to the solution."

Nikki took a deep breath and stretched her back. "As if the idea hadn't already occurred to me. But they have been hiding in witness protection for twenty years, completely untraceable. There's not a single piece of information about them twenty years ago. But why would the two of them suddenly become active in their own kidnapping case now, after so long? And in such a cruel way? You don't become a brutal murderer because you want another brutal murderer to be brought to justice."

Elizabeth's gaze changed as if she suddenly no longer saw her daughter. In the past, when they were together at the BPD, Nikki had made her feel insecure. In the meantime, however, she had come to understand that whenever Elizabeth's gaze went blank in this way, she was really just looking at something completely different—something that could only be seen in her mind's eye.

"The trigger is something that tells you to hurry." Now Nikki felt herself being looked at again; her mother had obviously returned from her pondering. "Something that makes the perpetrator feel a very high brutality is justified. He's done something that will drag him down one way or another, and he was fully aware of that when he planned it. Nevertheless, it didn't stop him. But why? Perhaps because he is already spending his whole life in an abyss? He probably has nothing to lose; the worst thing that can happen to him is a life in prison. But his soul is a far worse prison than any maximum security jail, and if he gets the satisfaction he craves from his murders, life behind bars is worth it to him."

Nikki shook her head slowly. "The worst thing he faces is not prison, but death! He might incur wrath by messing with the perpetrator from back then."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and waved it away. "Death doesn't scare him. Not with the life he leads. Or that they both lead. Carl and Dennis. Locked deep inside for twenty years. Left in a bunker in the woods."

"So you really think the twins from back then are the culprits?"

Elizabeth looked at her daughter the way a mother would look at her daughter when she had something unpleasant to tell her. "The fact that the murdered parents were all involved in criminal activities could well be explained by the fact that the perpetrator was simply looking for victims that he didn't think were a pity. And as sorry as I am for you, that could mean that Sokolov had nothing to do with it. I know what that could mean for your career. I also can't say with certainty that it was the twins, just as I can't rule out the possibility that there might somehow be a connection to Sokolov. Neither piece of information appears in your documents. But Carl and Dennis are involved in this. And if they're not the perpetrators, they're at least the reason for all this happening."

"That makes perfect sense. We should finally bring the murderer of Carl and Dennis' parents to justice. But whoever wants to force us to do that should be able to assume that we can't suddenly pull some knowledge out of a hat twenty years later that we didn't have at the time. The investigation wasn't put on hold because our colleagues didn't make an effort back then or didn't try absolutely everything."

Elizabeth's expression changed. As if there was something she hadn't told Nikki. "Something else gives the perpetrator hope. And that's perhaps the biggest problem."

Nikki noticed how her mother began to smooth out her jeans, even though they fit perfectly as always. She knew her mother to be a woman who couldn't be rattled easily, so even this faint flash of possible insecurity didn't help to calm her down. She frowned a little. "What are you trying to tell me, Ma?"

"This is about revenge. About late satisfaction. The one you're looking for doesn't want to get away with it; he doesn't care. He wants the perpetrator from back then to finally be brought to justice. And that's why he's started something he certainly won't abandon without results. If you don't give him what he wants from you soon, he will continue to murder. He will increase the pressure on you more and more. I don't think he wants to kill the kidnapped boys. In terms of his message, that would be like killing Carl and Dennis. No, he's not going to do that. And this realization buys you some time. But he won't release the children until he has what he wants, and in the worst-case scenario, that could mean they starve to death in their hiding place. After all, Carl and Dennis were only found back then because there was someone who, against all reason, kept looking for them."

Nikki raised her eyes resolutely. "Esther Wallace! She even took unpaid leave back then to search for the twins around the clock. I have to see her again. If anyone can help me, it's her."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, but it seemed rather casual. "You do that. Carl and Dennis may still be in contact with her. You don't just give up the connection to your lifesaver like that. But Wallace won't be able to help you. She and the entire BPD haven't found this killer for twenty years. The new perp is unlikely to assume Wallace will suddenly have an epiphany now that she's retired."

Nikki looked Elizabeth in the eye and realized that something was hidden in her gaze—something that was apparently just waiting to be brought out. "What did you mean when you said there is something else that gives the perpetrator hope? And that's perhaps the biggest problem?" She thought her mother had smiled at her, but she could have been just as wrong.

"I investigated a case a few years ago. You were there yourself; it was about Leonore."

Nikki took a deep breath and nodded. She remembered the case like it was yesterday.

Never before had her mother been so close to her intellectual limits. The investigation had almost cost her her life, and in retrospect, it had also been the beginning of the end of her career as a cop. Never again had Elizabeth worked as unencumbered as before.

"The perpetrator had also re-enacted an old crime you could never solve. You, the genius who can usually solve any crime."

Elizabeth took a deep breath before leaning back in her chair. "The case was all over the media at the time. Do you understand what I'm trying to tell you?"

Of course, I do! Why hadn't Nikki already figured it out for herself? If it is as I suspect, I am facing a huge problem!

"He came up with this inexplicable procedure, this remarkable magic trick, because he wanted me to do exactly what I did. He wanted me to come to you and bait you with his impossible crime. His ingenious kidnapping method was supposed to get you back into the police force. The genius he heard about in the media is the only one he trusts to be able to solve this old case about Carl and Dennis decades later.

Elizabeth furrowed her brow. "And therein lies the problem."

"You mean --" Nikki didn't dare finish her sentence.

"That's exactly what I mean! Once again, my mind has conjured up a demon that wants to compete with me and use me as a tool. And for that reason alone, I have to tell you what you definitely don't want to hear: I am still unavailable. That's my last word."

Nikki took a deep breath and stood up to leave, then paused and looked at her mother closely. "You should finally attend a family dinner again, Ma."

Elizabeth nodded slowly, pursing her lips. "I'll think about it."

Nikki nodded as well and left Elizabeth's house without another word.