Southern Lights - A Novel Part 1

Southern Lights.

by Danielle Steel.

To my very wonderful children, Beatrix, Trevor, Todd, Nick, Sam, Victoria, Vanessa, Maxx, and Zara-who are the light of my life. May your lives always be full of joy and blessings, and happy times!With all my love, Mommy/d.s.

Chapter 1.

The man sitting in the threadbare chair with the stuffing pouring out of it appeared to be dozing, his chin drifting slowly toward his chest. He was tall and powerfully built with a tattoo of a snake peering out of his s.h.i.+rt on the back of his neck as his head s.h.i.+fted down. His long arms seemed lifeless on the arms of his chair in the small dark room. There was an evil cooking odor coming from the hallway and the television was on. A narrow unmade bed stood in the corner of the room, covering most of the filthy, stained s.h.a.g carpet. The drawers of a chest were pulled open and the few clothes he had brought with him were on the floor. He was wearing a T-s.h.i.+rt, heavy boots, and jeans, and the mud encrusted on his soles had dried and was flaking into the carpet. As peacefully as he had been sleeping, suddenly he was wide awake. He jerked his head up with a snort, and his ice-blue eyes flew open, as the hair stood up on his arms. He had an uncanny sense of hearing. He closed his eyes again as he listened, and then stood up and grabbed his jacket with a single stride across the narrow room. With his head erect, the snake tattoo disappeared back into his s.h.i.+rt.

Luke Quentin slipped quietly over the windowsill and made his way down the fire escape after closing the window behind him. It was freezing cold. January in New York. He had been in town for two weeks. Before that, he had been in Alabama, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, Kentucky. He had visited a friend in Texas. He had been traveling for months. He got work where he could find it. He didn't need much to live on. He moved with the stealth of a panther, and was walking down the street on the Lower East Side, before the men he had heard coming reached his room. He didn't know who they were, but he was smarter than to take a chance. They were cops more than likely. He had been in prison twice, for credit card fraud and robbery, and he was well aware that ex-cons never got a fair shake, from anyone. His friends from prison called him Q.

He stopped to buy a paper and a sandwich, s.h.i.+vered in the cold, and went for a walk. In another world, he would have been considered handsome. He had huge powerful shoulders, and a chiseled face. He was thirty-four years old and, with both sentences, had done a total of ten years. He had served his full time and hadn't been released on parole. Now he was free as the wind. He had been back on the streets for two years, and hadn't gotten into trouble so far. Despite his size, he could disappear in any crowd. He had sandy nondescript blond hair, pale blue eyes, and from time to time he grew a beard.

Quentin walked north, and west when he got to Forty-second Street. He slipped into a movie house just off Times Square, sat in the dark, and fell asleep. It was midnight when he got out, and he hopped on a bus and went back downtown. He a.s.sumed that by now, whoever had come to visit earlier would be long gone. He wondered if someone at the hotel had tipped the cops off that he was a con. The tattoos on his hands were a dead giveaway to those who knew. He just hadn't wanted to be around when they walked in, and hoped they'd lose interest when they found nothing in the room. It was twelve-thirty when he got back to the dreary hotel.

He always took the stairs. Elevators were a trap-he liked to be free to move around. The desk clerk nodded at him, and Luke headed upstairs. He was on the landing just below his floor when he heard a sound. It wasn't a footstep or a door, it was a click. Just that. He knew it instantly, it was a gun being c.o.c.ked, and moving like the speed of sound, he headed back down the stairs on silent feet, and slowed briefly only when he got to the desk. Something was off, very off. He realized they were behind him then, halfway down the stairs. There were three of them, and Luke wasn't going to wait and find out who they were. It occurred to him to try and talk his way out of it, but every instinct told him to run. So he did, he ran like h.e.l.l. He was already down the street by the time they made it out the door at a dead run. But Luke was faster than nearly any man alive. He had run track in the joint for exercise. People said that Q was faster than the wind. And he was now.

He was over a fence, behind a building, and grabbed the roof of a garage and swung over another fence. He was in the thick of the neighborhood, and he knew by then he couldn't go back to the hotel. Something was very, very wrong. And he had no idea why. He had a snub-nosed gun shoved in his jeans, and he didn't want to be caught packing arms, so he dumped it in a trash can, and ran behind a building into an alley. He just kept running and figured he had lost them, until he hit another fence, and suddenly a hand came up behind him and grabbed his neck in a viselike grip. He had never felt anything so tight, and he was glad as h.e.l.l he'd dumped the gun. Now all he had to do was get rid of the cop. His elbow shot into the ribs of the owner of the grip, but all he did was tighten his hold on Luke's neck, and squeeze, hard. Luke was dizzy almost instantly and despite his impressive size fell to the ground. The cop knew just where to grab. He landed a resounding kick into Luke's back, who let out a stifled groan between clenched teeth.

"You sonofab.i.t.c.h," Luke said, grabbing for the other man's legs, and suddenly the cop was down, and they were rolling on the ground. The cop had him pinned in a matter of seconds, he was younger than Luke, in better shape, and he had been waiting for the pleasure of Q's company for months. He had followed him all across the States, and had already been in his room twice that week and once the week before. Charlie McAvoy knew Luke Quentin better than he knew his own brother. He had gotten special permission from an interstate task force to track him for almost a year, and he knew that if it killed him, he was going to get him, and now that he had, he wasn't going to lose him. Charlie got on his knees and slammed Luke's face into the ground. Luke's nose was bleeding profusely when he looked up, just as the two other detectives came up behind Charlie. All three of them were plainsclothesmen, but everything about them screamed cops.

"Easy boys, play nice," Jack Jones, the senior detective, said as he handed Charlie the cuffs. "Let's not kill him before we get him to the station." There was murder in Charlie's eyes. Jack Jones knew Charlie had wanted to make him, and why. Charlie had told him in confidence one night when he got drunk. Jack had promised him not to say anything to anyone when he saw him the next morning. But he could see what was happening to Charlie now, he was shaking with rage. Jack didn't like personal vendettas getting into business. If Luke had moved a hair to break free and run from them, Charlie would have shot him. He wouldn't have winged him or shot him in the leg, he would have killed him on the spot.

The third man on the team radioed for a patrol car. Their own car was several blocks away, and they didn't want to move Luke that far. They weren't going to take that chance.

Luke's nose was bleeding copiously onto his s.h.i.+rt, and none of them offered him anything to stop it. He would get no mercy from them. Jack read him his Miranda rights, and Luke looked arrogant despite the ferocious nosebleed. He had icy eyes, and a stare that took them all in and gave nothing away. Jack thought he was the coldest sonofab.i.t.c.h he had ever met.

"I could sue you b.a.s.t.a.r.ds for this. I think my nose is broken," he threatened, and Charlie gave him a scathing glance as the other two men pushed him toward the car. They shoved him into the car, and told the cops driving they would meet them at the station.

The three men were quiet on the way back to their car, and Charlie glanced at Jack as he turned on the ignition and then slumped against the seat, looking pale.

"How does it feel?" Jack asked him as they drove downtown. "You got him."

"Yeah," Charlie said quietly. "Now we gotta prove it and make it stick."

By the time they got downtown and into the station, Luke was looking c.o.c.ky. There was blood all over his face and s.h.i.+rt, but even cuffed, he was strutting his stuff.

"So what are you guys doing? Looking for someone to pin a mugging on, or stealing an old lady's purse?" Luke laughed in Charlie's face.

"Book him," Charlie said to Jack, and walked away. He knew he'd get credit for the collar. He'd been following him for way too long. It was just sheer luck Quentin wound up back in New York. Providence. Fate. Charlie was happy to have nailed him in the city where he worked. He had better connections here, and liked the DA they worked with. He was a tough old guy from Chicago, and more willing to prosecute than most. Joe McCarthy, the DA, didn't care how full the jails were, he wasn't willing to let suspects go. And if they proved everything Charlie hoped they would about Luke Quentin, it was going to be the trial of the year. He wondered who McCarthy was going to a.s.sign the case to. He hoped to h.e.l.l it was someone good.

"So what's the beef you trumped up for me?" Luke asked, laughing in Jack's face, as a rookie shackled him and started to lead him away. "Shoplifting? Jaywalking?"

"Not exactly, Quentin," Jack said coolly. "Rape, and murder one, actually. Four counts of each so far. Maybe you'd like to tell us something about it?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow, as Luke laughed again and shook his head.

"a.s.sholes. You know it won't stick. What's the matter? You got a bunch of murders you can't solve, so you figured you'd do some one-stop shopping and pin them all on me?" Luke looked totally undisturbed, and almost amused, but his eyes were like steel, and an evil shade of blue.

Jack wasn't fooled by the bravado. Luke was slick. They had evidence that he had committed two murders, and they were almost sure of two others. And if Jack's guess was right, Luke Quentin had killed over a dozen women in two years, maybe more. They were waiting for a more conclusive DNA report on the dirt from his shoes that Charlie had gotten out of the s.h.a.g carpet in Quentin's hotel room. If the dirt was a match, as Charlie hoped it would be, Quentin had just been on the streets for the last time in his life.

"What a crock of s.h.i.+t," Luke mumbled as he shuffled away. "You know you won't make it stick. You're just fis.h.i.+ng. I have an alibi for every night. I hardly left my hotel room in the last two weeks. I've been sick." Yeah, Jack thought to himself, very sick. They all were, guys like him, sociopaths who didn't bat an eye after they killed their victims, dumped them somewhere, and then went out to lunch. Luke Quentin was handsome and looked as though he could be charming. He was the perfect type to spot some innocent young girl, and lure her to a secluded spot where he could rape her and then kill her. Jack had seen guys like him before, although if the stories were true about this one, he was one of the worst. Or the worst they'd had in a long time anyway. Jack knew there would be a lot of press on this, and every last detail had to be handled right, or Quentin would get a mistrial on some finicky detail. Charlie knew it too, which was why he had let Jack handle the booking, and after Luke was taken away to be searched and get his mug shot done, Jack called the DA himself.

"We got him," Jack said proudly. "All our hunches paid off, and luck was on our side. That and Charlie McAvoy, who ran his a.s.s off and caught him. If I'd had to run down all those alleys and hit all those fences, he'd have been halfway to Brooklyn before I got over the first one." Jack was in good shape, but he was forty-nine years old, and he and the DA teased each other about their weight. They were the same age. The DA congratulated him for his good work, and told him he'd see him in the morning. He wanted to meet with the arresting officers to decide how they were going to handle the press.

By the time Jack left the station half an hour later, Luke was already in a cell. They had decided to put him in a cell alone. He was being scheduled for arraignment the following afternoon, and Jack knew the press would be all over them by then. Arresting the man who may have killed a dozen women or more in seven states was going to be big news. And if nothing else, it was going to make the NYPD look extremely good at what they did. Now it was up to the DA's office, the prosecutor, and the investigators they used to do the rest.

He drove home with Charlie that night, after they made the arrest. It had been a long day watching the hotel all afternoon. They had seen Luke when he left, and Charlie had wanted to grab him then, but Jack told him to wait. Since he didn't suspect they were on to him, they knew he'd be back. And there were too many people around then, Jack didn't want anyone in the hotel to get hurt. It had worked out just right for them in the end. And not so well for Luke.

Luke Quentin was sitting in his cell then, staring at the wall. He could hear all the familiar sounds of jail. In an odd way it was like coming home. And he knew that if he lost, this time he was home for good. His face gave away nothing, as he stared down at his shoes, and then he lay on his bunk and closed his eyes. He looked totally at peace.

Chapter 2.

"Hurry! Hurry, hurry!" Alexa Hamilton said to her daughter as she shoved a box of cereal and a carton of milk at her. "I'm sorry for the lousy breakfast, but I'm late for work." She had to force herself to sit down and glance at the paper, and not stand there and tap her foot. Her seventeen-year-old daughter Savannah Beaumont had miles of pale blond hair. She wore it straight down her back, and she had a figure that had made men whistle at her in the street since she was fourteen. She was the hub of her mother's life. Alexa looked up from the paper with a smile. "You're wearing lipstick. Someone cute at school?" It was Savannah's senior year in a good private New York school. Savannah was working on her applications to Stanford, Brown, Princeton, and Harvard. Her mother hated the thought of her going away to school. But she had fantastic grades and was as smart as she was beautiful. So was Alexa, but she had a different look. Alexa had a long lean body and a model's looks, except she was healthier and prettier. She pulled her hair back tightly in a bun, and never wore makeup to work. She had no need or desire to distract anyone with her looks. She was an a.s.sistant DA and was thirty-nine, turning forty later that year. She had gone to the DA's office straight out of law school, and had worked there for seven years.

"I'm eating as fast as I can." Savannah grinned and rea.s.sured her.

"Don't make yourself sick. New York's criminal population can wait." She had gotten a text message from her boss the night before that he wanted to meet with her that morning, hence the rush, but she could always tell him the subway had been slow. "How did the essay for Princeton go last night? I was going to come in and help, but I fell asleep. You can show it to me tonight."

"I can't." Savannah smiled broadly at her, she was a gorgeous girl. She played varsity volleyball at school. "I have a date," she announced as she scooped up the last of the cereal, and her mother raised an eyebrow.

"Something new? Or should I say someone new?"

"Just a friend. We're going out with a bunch of people. There's a game in Riverdale we all want to see. It's no big deal. I can finish the application this weekend."

"You have exactly two weeks to finish all of them," Alexa said sternly. She and Savannah had been alone for almost eleven years, since Savannah was six. "You'd better not screw around, there's no give on those dates."

"Then maybe I'll just have to take a year off from school before college," Savannah teased her. They had a good time together, and a loving relations.h.i.+p. Savannah wasn't embarra.s.sed to tell her friends that her mom was her best friend, and they thought her mother was cool too. Alexa had taken several of them to the office with her for Career Day every year. But Savannah had no desire to go to law school. She wanted to be either a journalist or a psychologist, but hadn't decided yet. She didn't have to declare her major for the first two years of college.

"If you take a year off, maybe I'll do it with you. I've had a run of c.r.a.ppy cases for the last month. The holidays bring out the worst in everyone. I think I've had every Park Avenue housewife shoplifter in town to prosecute since Thanksgiving," she complained as they left the apartment together, and got in the elevator. Savannah knew that in October her mother had prosecuted an important rape case, and put the defendant away for good. He had thrown acid in the woman's face. But since then, work had been slow.

"Why don't we take a trip when I graduate in June? By the way, Daddy's taking me to Vermont for ski week," Savannah said breezily as the elevator headed down. She avoided her mother's eyes when she said it. She hated the look on her face whenever she mentioned her father to her. It was still a mixture of hurt and anger, even after all these years-nearly eleven. It was the only time her mother looked bitter, although she never said anything overtly rotten about him to her daughter.

Savannah didn't remember much about the divorce, but she knew it had been a bad time for her mother. Her father was from Charleston, South Carolina, and they had lived there until the divorce, and then she and her mother moved back to New York. Savannah hadn't been to Charleston since, and didn't really remember it anymore. Her father came to see her in New York two or three times a year, and when he had time, he took her on trips, although his schedule changed a lot. She loved seeing him, and tried not to feel like a traitor to her mother when she did. Her parents communicated by e-mail, and hadn't spoken or seen each other since the divorce. It was a little Charlie's Angels Charlie's Angels for Savannah's taste, but that was just the way it was, and she knew it wasn't going to change. It meant her father wouldn't come to her high school graduation. Savannah was hoping to work on both of them in the four years before she graduated from college. She really wanted both of them there. But her mother was great, in spite of the animosity between her parents. for Savannah's taste, but that was just the way it was, and she knew it wasn't going to change. It meant her father wouldn't come to her high school graduation. Savannah was hoping to work on both of them in the four years before she graduated from college. She really wanted both of them there. But her mother was great, in spite of the animosity between her parents.

"You know he'll probably cancel at the last minute, don't you?" Alexa said, looking irritated. She hated it when Tom disappointed their daughter, and he so often did. Savannah always forgave him, but Alexa didn't. She loathed everything he did and was.

"Mom," Savannah scolded her, almost sounding like the mother and not the daughter. "You know I don't like it when you do that. He can't help it, he's busy." Doing what? Alexa wanted to ask, but didn't. Going to lunch at his club, or playing golf? Visiting his mother between her United Daughters of the Confederacy meetings? Alexa pressed her lips tightly together, as the elevator stopped in the lobby and they got out.

"I'm sorry," Alexa said with a sigh and kissed her. It wasn't so bad now, at seventeen, but Alexa had been furious when Savannah was little and he didn't show up and her big blue eyes filled with tears and she tried so hard to be brave. It broke Alexa's heart to see it, but Savannah could handle it better now. And Savannah excused her father for nearly everything he did. "If his plans change, we can always go to Miami for the weekend, or skiing. We'll figure something out."

"We won't have to. He promised he'd be there," Savannah said firmly. Alexa nodded, they kissed each other goodbye quickly, and then Savannah ran for her bus, and Alexa walked through the freezing morning to the subway station. It was bitter cold outside and there was snow in the air. Savannah didn't feel the cold as much as she did, and after a stop-and-start ride on the subway, Alexa was frozen to the bone when she got to work.

She saw Jack, the detective, and one of his young a.s.sistants heading for Joe McCarthy's office, just as she strode toward it herself.

"Early meeting?" Jack asked easily. He had worked with her often over the past seven years, and he liked her a lot. He would have liked to ask her for a date, but she seemed too young to him. She knew her stuff, and was a no-nonsense kind of person, and he knew the DA thought the world of her. Jack had worked with her on the big rape case three months before. They had gotten a conviction. Alexa always did.

"Yeah, Joe sent me a text last night. He's probably just catching up on all the two-bit cases I've had lately. I've had every shoplifter in New York," Alexa said with a grin.

"Nice," he laughed, and introduced her to Charlie, who said h.e.l.lo, but nothing after that. He looked distracted, as though he was thinking about something else. "Good holidays?" Jack asked as they reached the DA's office, and he told Charlie to wait outside.

"Quiet. My daughter and I stayed home, and I took a week off. College applications. This is her last year at home." She said it sadly, and he smiled. She talked about her daughter frequently. He was divorced, but had no kids, and an ex-wife he would have been happy to forget. She had married his partner twenty years before, after cheating on him for two years. Jack never wanted to get married again. He always suspected that Alexa felt the same way. She wasn't a bitter person, but she was all business, and he didn't know a single soul in the police department who had ever dated her. He thought she had gone out with one of the a.s.sistant DAs five years before, but mostly she kept to herself and never talked about her personal life-except about her daughter.

Alexa had noticed that the cop with him looked young and intense. The earnest look on his face made her smile. Young cops always looked like that to her.

Jack and Alexa walked into Joe McCarthy's office at the same time, while Charlie waited outside. The DA looked happy to see them both. He was a good-looking man, of Irish origins, with a thick mane of white hair that was always a little too long. He said he'd had white hair since he was in college. It suited him. He was wearing jeans and cowboy boots and a worn-out old tweed jacket and a cowboy s.h.i.+rt. He was known for wearing western gear, even at meetings with the mayor.

"Did you two talk on the way in?" the DA asked, looking at Jack, who shook his head. He didn't want to steal the DA's thunder and knew better than that.

"Do we have a new case?" Alexa asked with interest.

"Yeah, I figured we'd keep it out of the paper for another day, until we get everything nailed down," he said as they sat down. "It'll probably leak by this afternoon, and then all h.e.l.l will break loose."

"What kind of case?" Alexa's face lit up as she asked him. "Not another shoplifter, I hope. I hate the holidays," she said, looking disgusted. "I don't know why they don't just give them the stuff and forget it. It costs the taxpayers a h.e.l.l of a lot more than it's worth to prosecute."

"I think we'll be putting the taxpayers' money to good use on this one. Rape and murder one. Times four." Joe McCarthy smiled at Jack as he said it.

"Times four?" Alexa looked intrigued.

"Serial killer. Young women. We had a tip. It didn't seem like a good lead at first, and then bodies started showing up, and the info we had started making sense. There's been a small task force following him from state to state for the last six months, but they could never catch him at it. All we had were victims and no way to link them to him. The snitch tipped us, from prison, but there was no evidence to support the tip for over a year. I guess our guy p.i.s.sed someone off before he left the joint, so they gave us a call. The guy is very cool. We had nothing solid on him till last week, and now we've got him on two murders almost for sure, and probably two more. We're going to try and make all four stick. That's your job," he said to both Jack and Alexa, as they listened with interest. And then he mentioned that Charlie McAvoy, the kid outside, was on the task force that had been following him around. He said the suspect crossed state lines, so the FBI got into it, but Jack and Charlie had made the collar last night. "All four victims are in New York, so the case is ours," he explained.

"What's his name?" Alexa asked him. "Have we seen him before?" She never forgot a face or a name, not so far.

"Luke Quentin. He got out of Attica prison two years ago. He pulled some robberies upstate. We've never had him in our court or on anything like this before. Apparently he told someone in Attica that he likes snuff films and watching women die during s.e.x and wanted to give it a try when he got out. He's a pretty scary guy." He smiled at Alexa then. "He's your boy." Alexa's eyes opened wide, and she smiled. She thrived on hard cases, and putting away the people who deserved to be segregated from society forever. But she'd never had one as bad as this. Four charges of rape and murder one was a major case.

"Thank you, Joe." She knew that it was a tribute to her that he had given her the case.

"You deserve it. You're good at what you do. You've never let me down. We're going to get a lot of press on this one. We have to mind our p's and q's. We don't want the guy getting a mistrial because we f.u.c.ked up. The task force is working to collect data from the other states he's been in. If he's who we think he is, he's been on a killing spree for the past two years. His MO is always pretty much the same. First his victims vanish into thin air. Then we find the bodies but have no way to link them to him. We found two of them last week, and we got lucky. McAvoy got into his hotel room and got some dirt off his boots from the carpet. There was dried blood in it, and we're waiting for a final DNA match. It's a start. We had two other victims murdered in exactly the same way. Raped and strangled during s.e.x. We found both of them in the East River, and two hairs off his carpet that match. That gives us four victims. Anyway, you two are going to have your hands full. I'm putting Jack in charge of the investigation, and you've got the case," he said, looking at Alexa. "Arraignment is at four o'clock."

"We'd better get busy," Alexa said, looking anxious. She was itching to bolt out of the office and start reading about the case. She wanted to be sure just how much they could charge him with that day, although they could always add more charges later on, as they got more information, more matches from forensic, and if more bodies turned up when they started checking unsolved crimes. All she wanted now was to put Luke Quentin away. This was what the taxpayers paid her to do. And she loved her job.

They left the DA's office after a few minutes, and he wished them luck. Charlie followed them out of the office, and Jack sent him back to work to check with the forensic lab for progress, and said he'd come back to him later on. Charlie nodded and disappeared.

"He's a quiet one," Alexa commented.

"He's good at what he does," Jack rea.s.sured her, and then decided to share some private information with her. "This is a tough case for him."

"How so?"

"If this is the guy, he killed Charlie's sister in Iowa a year ago. It was pretty ugly, and Charlie got himself on the task force after that. He had to do a lot of talking to get them to allow it, even though it's a personal vendetta for him. But he's a great cop, so they let him do it."

"Sometimes that's not a good thing," Alexa said, looking worried, as they walked back to her office. "If he's going to help us, he needs to be clear-headed. I don't want him misinterpreting information or being overzealous because he wants to nail him. It could blow our case." She didn't like what she had just heard at all. She wanted everything about this case to be picture perfect, so the guilty verdict she got couldn't be overturned. And she knew she would get one. She was relentless in her prosecution and meticulous in her work. She had learned it from her mother, who was a lawyer too, and a good one. Alexa hadn't gone to law school until after the divorce. She had been married right out of college to the first and only man she had ever loved. And she had been madly in love with him. Tom Beaumont was a handsome southerner who had gone to UVA and was working, more or less, at his father's bank in Charleston, where the spirit of the Confederacy had been kept alive, in part by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, of which Tom's mother was the head of the local branch, and a very grande dame. Tom was divorced and had two adorable little boys who were seven and eight at the time. She had fallen in love with them immediately, and Tom, and everything about the South. He was the most charming man she had ever known. Tom was six years older than she was, and much to their delight she had gotten pregnant on their wedding night, or maybe the day before. Everything had been idyllic for them for seven years, she had been the happiest woman alive and the perfect wife, and then Luisa, his ex-wife, came back, when the man she had left him for died in a car crash in Dallas. And the Civil War was fought again, and this time the North lost, and Luisa won. Tom's mother turned out to be Luisa's strongest ally, and Alexa never had a chance. To clinch the deal, Luisa got pregnant, while Tom sneaked off to see her, dazzled by her once again, as he had been when they met in college. Tom's mother showed him where his duty lay, not just to the Confederacy, but to the woman who was carrying his child, the mother of his "boys." Tom was torn between the two women and drank far too much while he tried to sort it out. In the end, Luisa was the mother of three of his children, Alexa only one. His mother kept reminding him of that and convinced him that Alexa had never really fit into their way of life.

It all happened like a very bad movie-a real-life nightmare. Everyone in town was talking about it, and his affair with his first wife. Tom explained to Alexa that he had to divorce her and marry Luisa. He couldn't let this child be illegitimate, after all, could he? He promised to work it out as soon as Luisa had the baby, but by then she was running his life again, and it seemed as though everyone had forgotten, including Tom, that there had ever been another wife-and child. Alexa had done everything she could to reason with him and talk him out of the insanity he was committing, but she couldn't stem the tides. Tom was too determined, and insisted that marrying Luisa for the baby's sake was the only option. It was the only one he saw.

Alexa felt as though her heart was being torn out of her body when she left Charleston. Luisa was actually moving her things in while Alexa packed. She took Savannah and her broken heart, went back to New York, and stayed with her mother for a year. The divorce had come and gone by then, and Tom didn't know how to explain it to her, but he said it just seemed better to leave things as they were. Better for him, Luisa, and his mother, and the little girl Luisa gave birth to. Alexa and Savannah had been banished, and went back to the North from whence they came, Yankees.

Luisa forbade Tom to bring Savannah back to Charleston, even for visits. She was back in full control. Tom came to New York to see his daughter a few times a year, usually when he came on business. Alexa wrote to her stepsons for a while, who were fourteen and fifteen when she left, and she worried about them both. But they weren't her children, and she could sense in their letters how torn they were between their two mothers. Their letters dwindled off within six months, and she let it happen. She started law school then, and tried to shut them all out of her heart. Everyone except her daughter. It was hard not sharing her anger with Savannah, and she tried not to, but even the six-year-old could sense how wounded her mother was. Her father was like a handsome prince whenever he came to see her, and sent her beautiful presents. But eventually even Savannah figured out that she wasn't welcome in her father's life. She didn't resent him for it, but sometimes it made her sad. She loved the time she spent with him. He was so much fun to be with. The fatal weakness that had led him back into Luisa's trap didn't show when he visited his daughter in New York. All that showed was how good-looking and fun and polite and charming he was. He was the epitome of a southern gentleman with the looks of a movie star. Alexa had fallen for it too, and so did Savannah.

"And the backbone of a worm," Alexa would say to her mother when Savannah wasn't around. "A man without a spine. Wasn't that a movie?" Her mother felt sorry for her, but reminded her not to be bitter, it did no one any good and would hurt her child. "She has no father!" Alexa would lament for her.

"Neither did you," her mother reminded her practically. Alexa's father had died of a heart attack on the tennis court when she was five, a congenital anomaly no one had known about or suspected. Her mother had been very brave about it, and went to law school, just as Alexa had. But it was no subst.i.tute for a good marriage, the one Alexa thought she had and didn't. "And you turned out fine," her mother reminded her often. Muriel Hamilton was proud of her daughter. She had made the best of a bad situation, but it had taken a toll on her, and her mother could see it. Alexa had a hard outer sh.e.l.l that no one could get through except her daughter, and her mother. She had only dated a few men since the divorce. Another a.s.sistant DA at one point, one of her investigators, and the brother of a college friend, and all of them briefly. Most of the time she didn't want to date and focused her attention on Savannah. The rest didn't matter to her, except her work, which she was pa.s.sionate about.

Alexa had made a vow when she left Charleston. No one was going to break her heart again. No one could find it. She had locked it away in a storage vault, except for her daughter. No man was ever going to get near her again and hurt her. There was a wall around Alexa a mile high, and the only one who had the key to the door was Savannah. Her daughter was the light of her life. That was no secret. Her office was full of photographs of her, and she spent every weekend and spare moment she had with her. She was home with her every night. The hard part was going to come when Savannah left for college in the fall. Alexa had cautiously suggested NYU or Barnard, but Savannah wanted to go away to school. So they had nine months left of living together and enjoying each other. Alexa tried not to think about what would happen after that. Her life would be empty. Savannah was all she had and all she wanted.

Alexa carefully pored over the files that Jack had on Luke Quentin, his rap sheet, and the list of victims they were trying to match him up with sent by other states. They had been watching him for months, and a cop in Ohio had tied him to one of the killings, not conclusively or enough to book him, but enough to cause concern. There was no evidence to prove it, but he had been in the right place at the right time, as he had on several occasions since. The murder in Ohio was the first one that had made them think Quentin was their man. But they didn't have enough for an arrest. They had brought him in for questioning, and again on another case in Pennsylvania, which had turned up nothing. And he had laughed in their faces. It was only in the past two weeks in New York that Charlie McAvoy had been sure it was him when they found the bodies of two young women and fished the other two out of the river after that. They were exactly Quentin's type, and had all died in the same way, raped and strangled. There were no other signs of abuse. He didn't stab them or beat them up. He raped them and killed them while he did it. The only wounds on his victims other than the bruises on their necks from strangulation were the cuts and scratches they had gotten after their deaths, when their a.s.sailant dragged them away. Those cuts and scratches had provided the blood the forensic lab needed for DNA.

Alexa looked over the files that had come in from other states since the arrest the night before. They were trying to cross-check Quentin with a dozen victims. The photographs of the girls who had been killed were heartbreaking, and looked uncannily like Charlie's sister. There was a photograph of her in the stack too. All of the victims were between eighteen and twenty-five, most of them were blond and had a similar appearance. They had the look of wholesome young girls next door. All had been raped before they died-the bruises on their necks showed that all had been strangled, asphyxiated while their a.s.sailant raped them, which was consistent with his supposed desire to reenact "snuff films" and kill women during s.e.x. All the young women had parents and friends who had loved them, brothers and sisters and boyfriends and fiances whose lives had been forever changed when they died. Some of the bodies still hadn't been found, but many had. Some had just disappeared, and no one knew for sure if they had died, but the computer had spat them out as possible victims, and they had the same look as the others. In all, including those who hadn't been found, there were nineteen of them. Twelve whose remains had been located. Seven more whose hadn't.

Luke Quentin had a clear affinity for a certain type, if it was him. And if he wasn't, the killer liked a certain kind of woman, young, blond, beautiful, usually tall and lanky. Several of them had been models or beauty queens, the pride of their community, young girls on their way to happy lives and success, until they met him. He wasn't picking up sleazy women in bars, or killing hookers. He was on a rampage, seeking out the All-American Girl Next Door, which had left a trail of heartbroken, shocked, outraged parents across several states. Jack and Charlie and the rest of the investigation team and task force were all convinced he was the killer they were looking for. Now they needed to prove it, and the dried blood and hair in the soles of his boots and in his carpet was a first step. It had been their first lucky break, but that was all it took. One misstep on the killer's part, one infinitesimal forgotten detail, and sometimes the whole house of cards came down and got them their man.

It was hard to believe that one man could kill so many women, but it happened. There were sick people in the world. It was Jack's job to find them, and Alexa's to put them away. And she knew as she looked at the photographs that she was going to put Luke Quentin away, if he was the killer. If so, Alexa was going to be relentless and stop at nothing to convict him.

It would be small consolation to the families who had lost their daughters. She knew that in many cases they were astonis.h.i.+ngly forgiving, and even spoke with the killers and said they forgave them. Alexa never understood it, although she had seen it often. She knew that if anything had happened to Savannah, she would never forgive the person who did it. She couldn't. The very thought of it made her tremble.

Jack went to the arraignment early with her at three-thirty. She had read all the pertinent files by then, and knew Quentin's history. She watched as they brought him into the courtroom in shackles and an orange jumpsuit. He was wearing jail-issue light canvas shoes, since his own boots had been taken as evidence for forensic, to a.n.a.lyze what was on them.

Alexa watched him move across the courtroom. He was a big man, powerful, but graceful. He moved with an arrogance that struck her the moment she saw him. And she didn't know why she thought it, but there was something subtly s.e.xual about him. She could see why girls were attracted to him, or would be lured away to a quiet place to talk. He didn't look ominous, he looked s.e.xy, handsome and appealing, until you looked into his eyes and saw how cold they were. They were the eyes of a man who would stop at nothing. As a prosecutor, Alexa had seen eyes like that before. He chatted easily with the public defender who had been a.s.signed to him, a woman. And Alexa saw him laughing. It didn't seem to bother him at all that he was there, accused of four counts each of rape and murder. Murder in the first degree, premeditated, with intent to kill. They were throwing the book at him, and at the sentencing, if he was convicted, she was going to ask the judge to give him consecutive sentences. He was going to be in prison for the next hundred years at least, if Alexa had anything to do with it, and she hoped she would. This was going to be a long and complicated case to try to a jury, if he didn't plead guilty, and guys like him usually didn't. They brazened it out, and had nothing to lose. They had nothing but time on their hands and taxpayers' money to spend. In some cases, it was a media circus they enjoyed. Luke Quentin didn't look bothered by it at all, and as they waited for the judge to come out of chambers, Quentin turned slowly in his chair and looked straight at Alexa. His hands were cuffed, and his feet were shackled, and a deputy stood near him, and his eyes looked right through Alexa as though he had X-ray vision, and Alexa felt a chill run down her spine. When you looked into those eyes, it was terrifying. She s.h.i.+fted her gaze after a moment and said something to Jack, who nodded. It was suddenly easy to believe that Quentin had killed nineteen women, or maybe more. Charlie McAvoy was sitting in the courtroom, staring at him, and wanting to kill him. He had seen his sister's body and what the killer had done to her. All he wanted now was justice. No punishment would be enough for Charlie.

The judge came out of chambers then, and Alexa spoke for the people of the State of New York and stated the charges. The judge nodded as he listened, and the public defender spoke for the defendant and said he pleaded not guilty, to every charge, which was standard procedure. It meant that he was not going to admit guilt or plea-bargain for the moment, but none had been offered. It was too soon. No attempt was made to set bail, not on four counts of rape and murder, and Alexa said they would be seeking an indictment from the grand jury. And a few minutes later, Quentin was led back to the door where the prisoners entered, and taken back to jail. Just before he left the room, he turned and looked at Alexa again. He smiled an eerie smile, and then walked through the door another deputy had opened. It was as though he was looking Alexa over. She was older than he was, and twice the age of his victims, but his look said he could have her if he wanted. Alexa felt as though no woman would be safe from this man. He defined "menace to society," and he was outrageously c.o.c.ky. Nothing suggested remorse or fear or even worry. He looked like a big, handsome guy who had the world by the tail and could do whatever he wanted, or acted that way.

There had been no press in the courtroom, because no statement had been made yet, but Alexa knew that almost immediately the media would be following the case. She was feeling uneasy when she left the courtroom. It was though he had run his hands over her, and she wanted to hit him. She was still feeling that way when she put her coat on in her office an hour later and went upstairs to another courtroom. Court was still in session, and a woman judge was on the bench, admonis.h.i.+ng a man for having been delinquent in his child support for the last six months. She threatened to put him in jail, and he promised to pay promptly. It was the family law court, and half a dozen dramas were unfolding, as they always were.

Alexa waited until court adjourned, and followed the judge into her chambers. She knocked and opened the door, as the judge was stepping out of her robes. She was wearing a black skirt and a red sweater, and she was an attractive woman in her early sixties. She smiled at Alexa immediately, and came to give her a hug.

"Hi, sweetheart. What are you doing here?" Alexa didn't know, but she had needed to come here after her unsettling afternoon watching Luke Quentin in court.

"I just got a big case, and I went to the arraignment. The guy is so frightening, it freaked me out."

"What kind of case?" the judge asked with interest.

"Serial killer, and rapist. He seems to prey on young women between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five. We have nineteen murders we're trying to link to him, and four almost for sure here in New York. I hope we'll be able to nail him on the rest, but we don't know yet." As she listened, the judge winced. The sign on her desk said Muriel Hamilton. She was Alexa's mother and the family court judge.

"G.o.d, I'm glad I don't get cases like that. It would make me sick. It's bad enough watching guys who won't support their children but go out and buy a new Porsche. I made one of them sell his to give back support to his ex-wife. Sometimes guys can be such jerks. But this sounds ugly." And Muriel didn't like it. Not at all.