I was out early that morning and at my bank by the time the doors opened. Before I left the vault area, my safety deposit box was some pounds heavier with a lovely cache of precious stones. I'd figure out what to do with them later. For the time, I decided just to hold onto them.

Naturally, I also decided to hold onto the queen stone. She didn't go into the deposit box, however. I kept her with me, and from time-to-time I pulled her out of my pocket and gave her a little wink or a loving kiss.

I know what you want to say. It was foolish of me to keep that precious thing on my person. There might be dangerous people out looking for it. Yes, it's true, all too true. But I have a rare gift for being cautious without being timid. Life is meant to be lived, and what's the point in having a gorgeous little bauble if not to enjoy the tactile love of the thing?

More important, there was a very strong chance the queen stone would end up draped around Fallon's immaculate neck, so I needed to have it checked, appraised, and insured. Diamond owners were a careful lot. Large stones of that quality almost always were registered and marked in some way, usually with a laser inscription of some sort.

I just wanted to be doubly careful. It didn't seem likely that my new trinket would have such a marking. These stones were not stolen, of that I was nearly certain. They were too many and too similar in color and quality. Likely they had been smuggled into the country from the same overseas source, and I would bet my eye teeth that, other than the stone cutter who had perfected them, no diamond professional had laid hands or eyes on my spectacular new trove.

There are a few people I trusted to provide an honest and discreet appraisal, even if I needed to go out of the city to find a qualified specialist. One can never be too vigilant.

After swinging by the same diner I'd visited earlier in the morning, having a quick bite, and sending off yet another affectionate note to my dearest, I was back on my block by 9:30 in the morning, only to find two people already at my door. One of those was none other than the lovely Special Agent Gaudin of the FBI.

My, my, my. To what did I owe this rare pleasure?

"I gave at the office," I called out to the agent as I approached the front steps to my home. I very much wanted this person, and all law enforcement people, to go the fuck away. "No need puttering about."

"I was hoping to ask you a few questions," the young woman replied. She hesitated but only a moment. "I'm dreadfully sorry about how things went before. Is there a chance I could buy you a cup of coffee?"

"No," I said. Something stirred inside me. I really didn't want any more police involvement. Nothing good ever came of it. But there was something plaintive and appealing in the agent's voice. As I so often did, I cast caution into the maelstrom and followed an impulse. "But if you ditch Special Agent Whoozit there, I might let you inside for a splash of caffeine."

The two agents parlayed, the whispers of which I didn't trouble myself to listen to. By the time I had the front door unlocked, Agent Gaudin already was moving up the stairs and her partner was heading down the block toward an old-style café on the corner.

"Sure you want to be alone with a hardened killer like me?" I asked as I pulled the door wide and waved her in.

"I really wanted to apologize for that whole cluster fuck," she said. Her voice was friendly and not the least bit cop-like at that moment. "Sam Moreland chewed ass all around after you left the other day."

"He's a sweety, Detective Moreland," said I. "But I can't imagine that's the only reason you came by today."

The woman took a nervous breath. "I do really need your help with something."

"My help?"

"Yes, I know that's asking a lot, but you seem plugged in hereabout."

"Okay. This is definitely going to take some coffee. Make yourself comfortable, and I'll be right back."

It took only a minute or two to throw on a pot, and by that time the agent truly had made herself comfortable in a living room chair not three feet from where Detective Keebler had breathed his last.

There really was something appealing about this woman, something I couldn't put my finger on. It certainly wasn't her looks. She was pretty, no doubt, with a nice figure, but she was no comelier than a score of other women I'd encountered in the last week. Whatever it was, I hoped desperately that things would not end the same as they had for my last visitor.

"Are you having work done?" she called from the living room.

"No. Why do you ask?"

"Oh, nothing. It looks like someone left a tool here."

I glanced through the doorway and realized she was looking at the 4-pound sledge that I'd used to bash in the brains of my enemy a year before. I'd cleaned the thing up and left it on the mantel as a trophy. It was quite the conversation starter.

"Oh, the hammer?" I said as I returned to the living area. "Just an old memento."

"You have a gorgeous place," she said as I took a seat opposite.

"This old shack? I paid for it by pillaging the corpses of my many victims. Been making out like a bandit that way for hundreds of years."

The agent very nearly laughed, but instead she turned a flattering shade of red at what she presumed was my innocent dig. She did blush well. I had to give her that. When she again spoke, that plaintive and sincere tone returned to her voice.

"I'm having a hard time selling a theory about a series of murders that have gone down in the city lately."

"Is this more questions about that fellow whose picture you showed me the other day?" I asked. "Because if so, I really don't have ...."

"No! It's not that," she said in a sudden eruption of words. When she spoke again, her voice was more controlled. "That all was such a mess. We took some bad intel from one of the detectives in the precinct—Detective Moreland's partner. And now it ends up ... well." She took a breath. "It ends up he got caught up in something we haven't quite figured out and was found dead last night."

"Detective Keebler?" I'm a great liar, and the shock in my voice was the perfect mix of surprise and concern. "He's dead? ... Hold on. That was the guy who came up with the absurd notion that I'm some sort of local executioner? What the fuck?"

"My words exactly," the woman said. "People are still sorting things out. Poor Sam Moreland is beside himself. Ends up that Keebler already was under investigation by internal affairs for some sort of irregularities." She shook her head, as if to clear her thoughts. "Sorry, I'm talking too much."

"Don't worry about it," I said. "And I am sorry to hear about Detective Keebler. That's all so ... I don't have the words. What happened?"

"Right now, NYPD is keeping it all close to the vest."

"Jeez," I said, striking an appropriately confused pose. A thought flashed through my mind. Was this all a trap? Did the agent know that Keebler had been here? Was she hoping for me to lie about it? I thought not, but it was best to come clean. "You know, he was just here yesterday morning."

"Keebler?"

"Yeah. It was sort of strange."

"How so?"

I paused, feigning embarrassment. "Well ... he started out by apologizing for the events at the precinct, claimed that Moreland was behind it all ...."

"And?"

"And ... I rather think he just came by to ask me out." It appeared as if the agent was about to speak, but I continued with some haste. "Nothing really came of it. He was only here a few minutes, was a little flirty, but before he popped the question he just left. Said he remembered something that he needed to do."

"And that's all?"

"Yeah. I mean, he was hardly here any time at all. I nearly forgot about it."

"I'll have to tell the investigating officers about that," she said.

"That's fine. I'll help any way I can. The poor fellow." I gave the woman my deepest sympathetic look, which she appeared to take hook-line-and-anchor. "But you said you had something else you wanted to talk about?"

"I do." She reached into a small case she'd brought with her and fished around for some papers. "You seem to have your finger on the pulse of what's going on around here. I was hoping you might look at some photos."

"Agent Gaudin, I haven't even lived in this area a year. It's not like I have deep knowledge."

"Moreland says you have a keen eye, and you're not afraid to talk about what you've seen."

"Fair enough," I said. "But wouldn't the local patrol officers have better information?"

"That ...," she began. "That's complicated. I have some fairly unconventional ideas about what's transpired in this part of the city over the last months. They aren't always ... welcome, even by my own team."

By that time, the coffee pot was beginning to make noises, so I invited the agent to have a seat at the table while I fished us each a cup. When I returned to the table, she'd created several orderly stacks of papers, graphs, and photos. It was all very professional.

"So, what are these unconventional ideas that you want to talk about?"

She sat back in her seat. "You've heard of the D-Train Killer, haven't you?"

I suppressed a laugh. "Of course. Everyone has."

"There's a local character that's been working in this neighborhood, some sort of vigilante. They call her ... or him, the Bruja—the Witch. I think the Bruja and the D-Train Killer are one and the same."

I about shit myself, but nearly laughed at the same time. I did neither in fact. But it was then and there that I realized what I found so appealing about Special Agent Gaudin. She was fucking brilliant, a quality that I had always prized among my friends.

"The Bruja, you say? Yeah, I've heard that name before. What makes you think they're the same."

Over the next 20 minutes, the agent went over the details of her thinking, and it was bloody genius. How was it that she wasn't running the FBI?

"So," I said as she finished, "the fact that crime stats are down in this area and the fact that they are up elsewhere leads you to believe that two people are the same?"

"More than that," she corrected. "All of the killings attributed to the D-Train Killer ...."

"The Defenestrator," I corrected.

"Silly name, but yes. All the killings attributed to the Defenestrator are of people who have gang affiliations in this area." Her finger circled an area on the map that included my neighborhood and the areas adjacent where I'd been sewing my sweet mayhem. "But they were all killed elsewhere, well out of this area."

"And at the same time...?"

"Exactly," she said. Her finger continued to circle the tiny area on the map. "At the same time, crime in this location began to drop, slightly at first. Later, drastically. The area just south of the park used to be one of the city's hotspots. A year later, and it's now one of the safest places in the city. ... If you believe the stats."

Hoisted on my own fucking petard, I very much wanted to scream. I again wanted to laugh but continued to maintain my calm and concerned face. Part of me also wanted to wring this lovely young woman's neck, but that would never happen. I quickly was falling in love with her in that silly way I sometimes did when I found someone I truly admired. Man or woman, young or old, it didn't matter. My quirks and fancies were beyond any reckoning or explanation, even beyond my own most careful scrutiny.

"Do you believe the stats?" I asked.

"Of course."

"What are the chances that the drop in crime in this area is because some developer is spreading money around to make the bad elements move away?" In fact, a company I owned had been buying land in that area in anticipation of a sudden increase in land values. But don't tell anyone.

The questions seemed to take her by surprise. "Do you know this to be true?"

"No, I don't. But there are a lot of reasons a neighborhood might make a turnaround without there being anything nefarious." I gave her a moment to think before adding, "What makes you think that this serial killer and the local vigilante—if this person really is a vigilante—are one and the same?"

"They're both women."

"I beg your pardon?"

"They're both women," she said again.

"And how do you know this?"

"I didn't until one witness saw the D-Train Killer throw someone off a building."

"Ah!" said I. "And then Detective Keebler conveniently brought you a name."

The agent's blushing wasn't quite so profound this time, and she said with a sweet smile, "I'm beginning to think he wasn't the most reliable source. I had a theory and a pattern, and he conveniently brought me someone that matched my criteria."

"He asked you out, didn't he?"

"Several times," she said.

"The bloke had good taste," I said with a smile.

The blushing resumed, but I had more questions.

I said, "What makes you think this local vigilante ...."

"The Bruja."

"The Bruja," I repeated. "What makes you think this Bruja is a woman? I mean, other than the name. I first heard it was a 'him.'"

"Just intel reports from the streets. When they are generous, the NYPD has a fairly thorough human intelligence network."

"But they aren't giving you anything now?"

"No," she admitted. "No one buys into my theory."

I nodded. "Show me what you have there, and maybe we can make them believe."