neighbor.

My visitor is a neighbor who lives up the block at number 697 West Ninety-first Street. He’d just gotten home from work. A package was supposedly dropped off but it wasn’t there. The store thinks it might have been delivered to 679, my address. A misread of the numbers.

I frown and explain that nothing’s been delivered. He should check with the store again. I want to cut his throat for interrupting my tryst with Amelia 7303 but, of course, I smile sympathetically.

He’s sorry he’s bothered me. Have a good day you too glad they’ve finished that street work aren’t you…

And now I’m back to thinking about my Amelia 7303. But, closing the front door, I feel the jolt of panic. I’ve suddenly realized that I took everything from her—phone and weapons and MACE and knife—except the handcuff key. It must be in her pocket.

This neighbor has distracted me. I know where he lives and he’ll pay for it. But now I hurry back toward my Closet, pulling the razor from my pocket. Hurry! What’s she doing inside? Is she making a call to tell Them where to find her?

She’s trying to take it all away from me! I hate her. I hate her so much…

The only progress Amelia Sachs had made in Gordon’s absence was to control the panic.

She’d tried desperately to reach the key but her legs and arms remained frozen in the vise of newspaper and she couldn’t get her hips in position to slip her hand inside her pocket.

Yes, the claustrophobia was at bay, but pain was rapidly replacing it. Cramps in her bent legs, a sharp corner of paper digging into her back.

Her hopes that the visitor was a source of salvation died. The door to the killer’s hideaway opened once more. And she heard Gordon’s footsteps. A moment later she looked up from her spot on the floor and saw him gazing at her. He walked around the mountain of paper, to the side, and squinted, noting that the cuffs were still intact.

He smiled in relief. “So I’m Number Five Twenty-Two.”

She nodded, wondering how he’d found out their designation for him. Probably from torturing Captain Malloy, which made her all the angrier.

“I prefer a number that has a connection to something. Most digits are just random. There’s too much randomness in life. That’s the date you caught on to me, isn’t it? Five Twenty-Two. That has significance. I like it.”

“If you come in we’ll cut a deal.”

“‘Cut a deal’?” He gave an eerie, knowing laugh. “What kind of deal could anyone ‘cut’ me? The murders were premeditated. I’d never get out of jail. Come on.” Gordon disappeared momentarily and returned with a plastic tarp, which he spread out on the floor in front of her.

Sachs stared at the brown-bloody sheet, heart thudding. Thinking of what Terry Dobyns had explained about hoarders, she realized he was worried about getting his collection stained with her blood.

Gordon got his tape recorder and set it on a nearby stack of papers, a short one, only three feet high. The top one was yesterday’s New York Times. A number had been written precisely in the upper left-hand corner, 3,529.

Whatever he tried, he was going to hurt. She’d use her teeth or knees or feet. He was going to hurt bad. Get him close. Look vulnerable, look helpless.

Get him in close.

“Please! It hurts… I can’t move my legs. Help me straighten them out.”

“No, you say you can’t move your legs so I get close and you try to rip my throat out.”

Exactly right.

“No… Please!”

“Amelia Seven Three Oh Three… Do you think I didn’t look you up? The day you and Ron Forty-Two Eighty-Five came to SSD I went into the pens and checked you out. Your record’s pretty revealing. They like you, by the way, in the department. I think you also scare them. You’re independent, a loose cannon. You drive fast, you shoot well, you’re a crime-scene specialist and yet somehow you’ve made it onto five tactical teams in the past two years… So it wouldn’t make much sense for me to get close without taking precautions, would it?”

She hardly heard his rambling. Come on, she thought. Get close. Come on!

He stepped aside and returned with a Taser stun gun.

Oh, no… no.

Of course. Being a security guard, he had a full arsenal of weapons. And he couldn’t miss from this distance. He clicked the safety off the weapon and was stepping forward… when he paused, cocking his head.

Sachs too had heard some noise. A trickle of water?

No. Breaking glass, like a window shattering somewhere in the distance.

Gordon frowned. He took a step toward the door that led to the entryway closet—and suddenly flew backward as it crashed open.

A figure, holding a short metal crowbar, charged into the room, blinking to orient himself to the darkness.

Falling hard, the wind knocked from his lungs, Gordon dropped the Taser. Wincing, he climbed to his knees and reached for the weapon but the intruder swung the metal bar hard and caught him on the forearm. The killer screamed as bone cracked.

“No, no!” Then Gordon’s eyes, tearing in pain, narrowed as he gazed at his attacker.

The man cried, “You’re not so godlike now, are you? You motherfucker!” It was Robert Jorgensen, the doctor, the identity theft victim from the transient hotel. He brought the crowbar down hard on the killer’s neck and shoulder, two-handed. Gordon’s head slammed into the floor. His eyes rolled back and he collapsed, lying completely still.

Sachs blinked in astonishment at the doctor.!!!Who is he? He’s God, and I’m Job…

“Are you all right?” he asked, starting forward.

“Get these papers off me. Then take the cuffs off and put them on him. Hurry! The key’s in my pocket.”

Jorgensen dropped to his knees and began pulling the papers off.

“How did you get here?” she asked.

Jorgensen’s eyes were wide, just like she remembered from the cheap hotel on the Upper East Side. “I’ve been following you ever since you came to see me. I’ve been living on the street. I knew you’d lead me to him.” A nod back at Gordon, still immobile, breathing shallowly.

Jorgensen was gasping as he grabbed huge handfuls of paper and flung them away.

Sachs said, “You were the one following me. At the cemetery and the loading dock on the West Side.”

“That was me, yes. Today I followed you from the warehouse to your apartment and the police station and then to that office building in Midtown, the gray one. Then here. I saw you go into the alley and then when you didn’t come out, I wondered what had happened. I knocked on the door and he answered. I told him I was a neighbor looking for a delivery. I looked inside. I didn’t see you. I pretended to leave but then I saw him go through the door in the living room with a razor.”

“He didn’t recognize you?”

A sour laugh as Jorgensen tugged his beard. “He probably only knew me from my driver’s license photo. And that was taken when I bothered to shave—and could afford haircuts… God, these are heavy.”

“Hurry.”

Jorgensen continued, “You were my best hope of finding him. I know you have to arrest him but I want some time with him first. You have to let me! I’m going to make him undo every bit of agony he’s put me through.”

The sensation began to return to her legs. She glanced toward where Gordon lay. “My front pocket… can you reach the key?”

“Not quite. Let me get some more off you.”

More papers flew to the floor. One headline: DAMAGE FROM BLACKOUT RIOTS IN MILLIONS. Another: NO PROGRESS IN HOSTAGE CRISIS. TEHRAN: NO DEALS.

Finally she squirmed out from underneath the papers. She clumsily rose, on aching legs, as far as the cuffs would allow. She leaned unsteadily against another tower of paper and turned toward him. “The cuff key. Fast.”

Reaching into her pocket, Jorgensen found the key and reached behind her. With a faint click one of the cuffs unlatched and she was able to stand. She turned to take the key from him. “Fast,” she said. “Let’s—”

A stunning gunshot sounded and she felt simultaneous taps on her hands and face as the bullet—fired by Peter Gordon from her own gun—struck Jorgensen in the back, spattering her with blood and tissue.

He cried out and slumped into her, knocking her backward and saving her from the second slug, which zipped past and cracked into the wall inches from her shoulder.