The conditions were perfect, for once the brochures hadn't lied. A generous sprinkling of fresh powder snow had fallen on top of a good firm base, the air was clean, the sky was blue and the cover was total, real picture postcard stuff. Nick had been promising himself this break for two years and nothing was going to come between him and fourteen days of skiing and relaxation at Alpine Meadows. The name had put him off the place at first. Alpine Meadows sounded far too much like Mickey Mouse and friends go skiing, but Ben had been the year before, the resorts tenth, and had given it his enthusiastic blessing. Nick surveyed the perfect whiteness and smiled to himself at the recollection of how his best friend had told him that he would soon become a father for the first time.

"The pistes are almost deserted and they've got some phenomenal reds and blacks up there, Nick. And mogul fields like you wouldn't believe. You've just got to try one run they call the Wild Turkey, it's two miles of heaven and you won't find any lift queues 'cos the place ain't trendy yet. Barbara and I had our best holiday for years there and if I could have talked her in to it again this year it would already be booked".

Nick had been more than a little bemused at this because it was actually Ben's wife Barbara who was the real ski bum. In '72 she had been in contention for a slot in the US winter Olympic team and looked all set to blaze a trail of glory in that seasons world championships, but the car smash had put paid to all that.

"You mean Barbara actually doesn't want to go skiing?". Nick had asked incredulously.

"Well I can't seem to get her to listen to reason. Perhaps you could persuade her and then we can all go together. After all, If the doc's right our baby should be ten days old by then!"

A broad smile of delight had painted Nicks all too serious features. He had known Ben and Barbara since they had been at college and had been best man at their wedding. Typically, all their friends had seen the writing on the wall long before Ben had plucked up enough courage to ask her out. He and Ben had always maintained a close friendship that had endured even when supported only by an erratic correspondence whilst Nick had been travelling. As fate would have it, they had both ended up working for the same software house, Microwise based in Fenton, New Jersey. Ben and Barbara had both been in the little Nissan that wet November evening five years before when the truck had come around the bend on the wrong side of the road. It had just been one of those lousy pieces of luck that life sometimes sends along when things are going too well. Nobody had been to blame, the driver of the truck had suffered a massive coronary and was dead behind the wheel of his rig as it had cannoned in to the Nissan. It had taken the rescue services over two hours to cut them free. Ben had been badly concussed and had a broken wrist and a couple of cracked ribs, but it was Barbara who had been driving and had taken the worst of the impact. Her legs had been mangled when the engine compartment had folded up like a concertina. She had also sustained a whole litany of internal injuries the least of which was a ruptured spleen. She owed her life to the prompt attention of skilful paramedics who had set up a saline drip and had staved off the worst part of shock. As it was when they got her out she had needed heart massage by the road side. Mercifully, there had been a local hospital that received casualties no more than ten minutes drive away and Barbara had undergone fifteen hours of emergency surgery there. After ten days in intensive care she had finally been taken off the critical list. It had been touch and go as to whether or not her left leg could be saved, but the perseverance of a young and idealistic surgeon had won the day. Barbara had been hospitalised for five months and underwent a further four trips to theatre to repair the damage to her smashed left leg, but that and the countless hours of physiotherapy had paid off and she walked away from the hospital on crutches and in to the outstretched arms of her husband. They had both been so grateful to be alive and still have each other that the Olympic dream had faded like early morning mist on a summers day and had been of as little consequence. Nick knew that they had been trying for a child ever since Barbara had left the hospital and that desperation had reared its ugly head more than once. But at last all the waiting had been rewarded, the Carters were going to have a baby!

Nick finished his lunch and drained his beer class in a silent toast to his friends' good news. Ben Carter had been right, The Wild Turkey had been something else all right! To Nick who hadn't been skiing for four years it had been nearly fatal. Fortunately, nobody had been around to see his disgrace and as he skied one of the easier sections he had cursed his stupidity in loud and colourful terms for trying a difficult run without any warm-up after such a long lay off. By the time he had reached the bottom it had all come back to him and after a couple of beers and lunch in the altitude restaurant, his pride was on the road to recovery "Thank god Ben and Barbara weren't here to see me. Old Ben would never let me live that one down" he thought to himself as he contemplated buying a third beer.

The next morning, tired muscles told him just how long it had been since his last ski trip. He went out onto the small balcony of his hotel room and drank in a lung full of cold, clean mountain air. The mountains were always a source of wonder and renewal to him. Magnificent, brown outcrops of jagged rock towered majestically above virgin snow and the phalanx of pine trees on the lower slopes that ran down to the valley bottom, full of the promise of new life as winter slowly gave way to spring.

At long last, Nick was finally at peace with the world; just nature, the mountains and him, no hassles, no computers, magic! Recently things seemed to have gone from bad to worse for him. His fathers' slow painful death from cancer last fall, the burglary and then Vicki leaving him. It was strange, Nick knew they had driven each other crazy and that they always would, but the vast emptiness of their bed and the disappearance of the tell-tale marks of her presence in his apartment had come as a shock. So for the past six or so months he'd wallowed in a destructive self-pity, argued with his friends, snapped at too many colleagues and made the acquaintance of far too many bar keepers. He had been feeling pretty disgusted with himself for weeks and had finally determined to take this vacation. He decided that if he couldn't get his act together after the ski trip then he would resign from Microwise and take up his wandering life again. He knew it was running away and that it hadn't solved anything the last time, but at least he wouldn't have to watch his friends feel sorry for him. But the mountains had worked their tranquil magic on him the way they always did, how could he have stayed away so long?, he wondered. He finished the last of the black coffee that constituted breakfast and set off for the chair lift. The only really annoying part of a ski holiday for Nick was having to walk any distance in ski boots. No matter how he set the clips or tried to flex his knees, walking was always uncomfortable. He wondered casually if the Spanish Inquisition had been responsible for their invention, but once he clipped them up tightly and set them into his ski bindings to take the chair lift, all sins were forgiven. The lift disgorged its human cargo a thousand metres further up the mountain and Nick skied off the landing area to adjust his gloves and batons. To his left lay the descent back to the village called The Devils Canyon. His piste map claimed it was a challenging blue run, just enough for Nick to limber up for the more serious stuff later- the lessons of The Wild Turkey were still fresh in his mind! He decided to go for it, a flat out run back down to the resort to set the adrenaline flowing and the thigh muscles begging for oxygen, before the run became too busy. Tightening the boots another notch and pulling his goggles down to protect him from the icy air that would shortly be whipping past his eyes, he took the path down to the first right hand bend. He took the curve high to give him more speed as he descended the run as close to the fall line as his nerve and ability would let him. He skied past a moderate slope off to his left where two trails crossed and noted the mogul field that had begun to form as skiers wakes and the wind sculpted snow into bumps and small hillocks. He rounded two more bends going flat out and found himself hurtling into a mogul field made by the criss-crossing of less experienced and more level headed skiers. He hit one bump square on and was launched in to the air landing some forty feet further down hill. The knees were working as biological shock absorbers as the skis responded to the changes in pressure his ankles exerted on their edges, steering them. He dug the edges in hard and made another left turn, throwing up a bow wave of snow as he slowed down before entering a trickier section of the piste. He straightened up for a while and let the skis run, he could feel the chattering of the tips as they vibrated furiously against crusty snow, hard from the previous nights' frost. The trail curved gracefully round to the right, but Nick selected a more direct approach. His left knee was high up on the bank with the ski tip just ahead of the downhill ski on which his weight was placed as he carved another short turn out of the snow. As he straightened to come out of the turn he crouched forward in to the schuss position, skis parallel, knees pushed forward, elbows tucked into the side and heart in the mouth. His streamlined form picked up speed as he held the position for two agonising minutes as his thigh muscles screamed for oxygen and the reason centre in his brain screamed for the caution that might just preserve his life. Only at the end of the run did he stand up and jump-turn his skis at ninety degrees to his path sending a huge cloud of snow ahead off him as he dug his edges in, braking him to a rapid stop. It was two late, one ski wandered of the piste into treacle-like un-compacted snow, whilst the other continued apace whipping him round like a top and sending him sprawling head first in to a bank of snow, the classic head-plant. He lay there for a moment, buried to mid shoulders in thick fresh snow and roared with laughter. After fifteen years off and on of skiing, that was far and away the most ridiculous of many bizarre falls. To the girl who skied tentatively over to help, the laughter muffled by almost eighteen inches of snow bore more resemblance to the agonised shrieks of the terminally injured than the peels of mirth of an over stressed software engineer. She cursed softly to herself, she had gone on holiday to escape the daily round of broken bodies and shattered lives that greeted her anew each shift in the busy A and E unit of the Los Angeles hospital where she worked. As she quickly took her skis off and put her professional mind in gear, the grinning mass of Nick Jones extricated itself from its' snowy hole.

"Are you all right?" the nurse enquired with a certain awe in her voice, she had seen the whole thing happen and was surprised and more than a little relieved not to be dealing with a corpse.

"Yes thanks, I'm fine. I do this sort of thing for a living!" Nick said, instantly regretting it. Lately he had been making a profession out of saying dumb things to pretty women, but this time he didn't have the excuse of being three parts drunk. He shook the snow from his hair. The girl must have been in her late twenties, she had full lips made white by sun screen, her jaw was strong yet feminine and came to a very slight point at her chin, a curl of blond hair peaked out from under her gaudy woollen ski hat but the rest of her face was hidden by the hat and a pair of mirrored sun glasses. She was a couple of inches shorter than Nick which, he thought, made her about five foot eight and although she hadn't got the plastic Ad agency beauty of a top model, from what Nick could see he thought she was the prettiest woman he'd seen for months.

"Look, are you really sure you are OK? I'm a nurse. I'd better have a quick look at you. Can't go littering up the slopes with dead bodies now, can we?". It was a voice that was used to getting its own way and despite his protestations, Nick found himself following her fingers and staring at his own reflection in her glasses feeling a little cheated that she hadn't removed them.

"You'll live" she announced. " Thanks for the entertainment, that was the best fall I've seen all week, but honestly I'm sure there must be easier ways of making a living". she said, grinning as she snapped her skis back on.

"Pleased to be of service" said Nick, a little pithily, not having noticed the smile, "Thanks for the check up". She waved a hand and skied off towards the village as Nick started to hunt for his skis in knee deep powder. By the time he had retrieved them, the nurse had disappeared from sight. "Fool", Nick cursed himself silently, "should have asked the lady out for a drink, bet she's married anyway." For the rest of the day his heart really wasn't in the skiing and he kept catching himself day dreaming about her and thinking up good reasons why she wouldn't want to see him. It had never really occurred to him that his lack of confidence was at the heart of his life long problem with women. Except for Vicki, only the more tenacious or the missionary types had ever hung on long enough to get to know him better. And there was the trouble, Nick couldn't stand reformers or dominating women so the relationships had been doomed from the start. Vicki had been a temporary secretary at Microwise and had got to know Nick at work when he wasn't so busy trying to make a good impression and they had got together when she had split up with her boyfriend. They had shared his flat for six months, but both knew after a week that it couldn't work. She was obsessively tidy in his opinion and he a slob in hers. She liked to plan her life months ahead and Nick was a spur of the moment sort of guy, but it had been fun whilst it had lasted. As he took the last chair lift of the day there was nothing else to do so his mind returned to the nurse, there was something about her, he told himself, something very attractive, a kindred spirit perhaps..... "Ridiculous" he said out loud.

Three hours later after a good meal in his hotels' restaurant and a long, luxurious bath, the reward every skier looks forward to at the end of a hard days skiing, he dressed and pulled on his soft near weightless moon boots (a sensual delight after his feet had been incarcerated in ski boots all day!) and went out for a tour of the more popular bars that Ben had told him to avoid. Nick told himself that he wasn't actually looking for the girl, but yet he rehearsed the "Gosh ! Fancy running in to you again here" speech for the hundredth time. Ben had been right, the bars were best avoided, pricey and full of noisy half drunk people having a good time, they were the last place Nick felt like being. He headed into yet another piano bar and ordered a final scotch from the bar. The small room was smoky and full of people in groups. A young man sat down behind the piano and Nick listened for half an hour as the singer did a very passable set of Bob Dylan numbers for an increasingly vocal and enthusiastic crowd before returning to his hotel grateful that he hadn't really been looking for the girl.

The next morning Nick awoke to a fresh fall of five inches of pristine white snow, unmarred by tracks. The sun had just cleared the last of the huge brown and white peaks that stood guard like sentries around the purpose built resort that nestled in a small col two thirds of the way up Mount Pilgrim. The sky was so deeply perfectly blue that it must have been practising. Nick went out on to his snow covered balcony. The air was still and refreshingly cool that late February morning and as he inhaled it deep within his lungs it filled him with a sense of well being that quite took the edge off his hangover. He treated himself to orange juice and toast to augment his black coffee, "After all", he thought "I am on holiday", then he went down to the ski locker, put reluctant feet into the ski boots, hefted his skis on to his shoulder and went out to the triple chair lift that would take him to the Eerie. He arrived at the lift just as it was starting up and had to wait a couple of minutes as the crew tested the equipment. It was five to eight and the village had hardly stirred. As the lift carried him higher, the only tracks Nick could see belonged to animals, unseen by day. Three more lifts took him to the roof of the resort, Mount Columbus, at 3897 metres. He stood for a couple of minutes by the transmitter mast bristling with aerials that beamed the world in to the TV sets of Alpine Meadows, a necessary disfigurement of nature because no American wants to commune with nature without soaps, football and Walter Cronkheit. Nick surveyed the majestic peaks that seemed to stretch away to infinity, unspoilt bastions of Americas' true splendour. No matter how often he came to the mountains, Nick was always overwhelmed by the sheer beauty of the peaks sculpted by the irresistible, unimaginable forces of nature over patient millennia. He loved to make this early morning pilgrimage to the highest point in the resort to listen to the silent stillness before the world awoke to the day. He felt that here he was literally above all the cares of the world and the troubles of his own life. In the distance he could just hear the clanking of a drag lift starting up and overhead a jet liner headed for Denver, leaving mans imprint across the sky.

"How's the head today?"

Nick turned his head in the direction of the voice to see a woman in a lurid green one-piece ski suit; good colour sense had little to do with ski fashion these days. The question threw him for a moment because she had been wearing a different outfit the day before and he was half way through saying "I beg your pardon..." before he realised that this was the girl he'd spent most of the previous evening cruising all those god-awful tourist bars not looking for. It was one of those truly fatuous replies that only the English could ever make sound right. Coming from Nick, it seemed to sound so pompous somehow and he cringed inwardly, but to his great relief when he looked at the girl she was smiling broadly at him, sensing his discomfort. She had been certain that she'd find him there and had gotten up especially early so as not to miss him. She didn't know how she knew he'd be there or quite why she wanted to be; they had hardly had much of a conversation the day before, but she was a girl who always found herself acting on impulses. Nick managed to tell her that he felt fine and that the only thing that really hurt was his pride.

"Isn't it so beautiful up here? When I'm up here in these mountains I just feel so relaxed and like I've left all the hassles and shit back home. I just wish I could make it up here for more than a week a year. This is my fourth straight ski vacation. I'm totally hooked."

She came out from behind the mirrored shades and her green eyes sparkled brightly in the early morning Colorado sunshine. Her cheekbones were gently rounded and her nose was slender and perfectly proportioned. A light mask of freckles spangled her face from cheek to cheek. Nick upgraded his initial impression: she was gorgeous.

"Yes." Nick replied feeling a response was somehow expected of him and finding himself not quite up to the task. A chasm of silence seemed to open up between them as the normally eloquent Nick struggled to find something to say that wasn't terminally dumb. He sought a refuge in the peace and splendour of their surroundings, thinking it was probably safe ground, and found himself telling her all about his early morning ritual, certain that he was convincing her that he had sustained brain damage in his fall yesterday. But he looked across at her and she smiled back with a look of understanding and even approval. They chatted amicably for several more minutes and the girl showed no clear signs of wanting to have him certified and gradually he started to feel more confident. The spell was broken by the arrival of a small knot of skiers chatting noisily about the previous nights' party.

"Come on, why don't we ski this red run together?" said the girl, indicating The Eerie.

"Great idea" Nick replied as it slowly began to dawn on him that the attraction he felt might be mutual. " But only if you let me buy you breakfast" he added not wishing to let her go too easily just in case.

The Eerie was a fast run, but with its generous snow cover augmented by the fall last night, it had not proved too difficult. Nick thought that she skied quite fluently, but had no idea that she was skiing her socks off trying to impress him. On her own, she would have made a dozen stops on the run and would have come down it at a fraction of the speed, but after her jibe about his fall she felt she had to look the part. At the bottom of the run, there was a strategically placed altitude restaurant with a huge wooden sun deck. The owner was busy trying to shovel the snow off it as they planted their skis in the snow and clomped up the stairs in their heavy boots. He set his shovel down and went into the bar. "What'll it be folks?" he enquired trying to suppress a yawn and putting on his best smile for the first customers of the day. He noted down their order and disappeared off into his kitchen. The help didn't arrive until mid morning when things usually started to get busy, so he always looked after early birds himself.

Nick looked across the table at her and in to a face that was bright and full of fun and life. He realised that he still didn't know her name, so he ventured "Oh, by the way my name is Nick Jones, the famous trick skier and head planter" as he extended a hand in mock solemnity.

"And I'm Florence Nightingale, but I'm here on holiday so you can call me Sara Vanderwalt, or just plain Sara for short".

Nick looked and he couldn't see the least thing plain about her, but decided that now wasn't the best time to tell her. After all, they had only properly met half an hour before, yet..... Taking his courage in both hands he asked as nonchalantly as he could:

" So Sara, are you holidaying up here all on your own?" The next few seconds seemed unusually long to Nick.

" Oh no", she replied and reading the unspoken question on his face added " I'm here with Bob and Sue, but they aren't early risers like me". She didn't need to ask Nick the same question, that much was obvious, but she decided to tease him with the relationship between the three of them for a while longer. Now it was her turn to look. The cursory inspection she had given him yesterday had been largely professional and she hadn't bothered to think much about him until later that evening. He was probably about thirty years old, medium height, athletic build and his body moved well, she had seen that much on the slopes. His face seemed to have recently acquired some lines, but she could detect no traces of grey in his curly black hair. His eyes were blue and he had a kind, dependable sort of a face. She was certain that he would never let her down and she was very seldom wrong in such a judgement. They traded small talk until the owner returned with their food, Canadian bacon, egg and tomato with plenty of toast and coffee; a suitable reward for their early morning exertions. Then somehow they were talking about Nick. He found that Sara had the gift of a good listener, attentive interested and able to spot the moment when a little coaxing was needed, not that he was consciously aware of any of it. Her face was full of understanding and sympathy she would have made an excellent psychiatrist and at one time had thought about the career, but medical school was prohibitively expensive and Sara had no rich relatives to fall back on. Nick knew that he wasn't the first guy that life had ever been hard on, but as he talked to her he began to see just how much he had been wallowing in self pity lately. He was genuinely surprised at how easy it was to talk to this girl and how she seemed to understand him and what he had been going through. Nick had never really opened up to anybody, even Ben and yet here he was pouring his heart out to a pretty stranger. Although she made the occasional comment, Sara sensed Nicks' need to talk, which was far more than Nick had ever done, and as slowly the stream of his narrative built up, the dam that had held his emotions in check burst and the pent up anger, hurt confusion and frustration forced their way out. He began to feel a sense of relief and at last started to see his problems with some idea of perspective as the emotional tide ebbed and flowed away. He was an only child and his father had been his only living relative and although Nick loved and respected him they had grown apart ever since the death of his mother from breast cancer when Nick was sixteen. Little by little, father and son had stopped communicating and had almost become strangers by the time Nick had left for college, neither one of them knowing how to bridge the gulf that had opened up between them. Now it was too late. That was the root cause of this last year of misery and self-pity he had been grieving for his father and had sub-consciously put himself and those who cared most for him through a hell of self-recrimination and anger. Talking to this girl, he could see it all so clearly now, how destructive and futile it had all been and then he felt naked in front of her, naked weak and ashamed. Sara's hand felt for his and she reached across the table and kissed him fully on the mouth. It was a soft gentle kiss, her lips seeming almost to fuse with his own, but there was more to it than that, it held a kind of absolution for him. The moment passed but she didn't let go of his hand. Sara looked in to his eyes and said softly, "he knows that you love him, he always has and he feels just as hurt and sad as you do that you never made it out to Beaver Creek for that fishing trip he always promised you".

Somewhere in his mind a small voice wondered how the girl knew about Beaver Creek. It had been a personal Camelot for his father, a place that he had once visited with his grandfather, a magical place where troubles couldn't follow you. But with his own son he had never been able to find the time to go and now for Nick it was more like King Arthur's mythical kingdom, an ideal, a beautiful dream forever beyond his grasp. Nick felt like the sun had come out from behind a cloud in his soul, he knew somehow that all the depression was behind him now and that he had no need to apologise for pouring his heart out to an attractive stranger.

Nick took a final mouthful of cold coffee and glanced at his watch. "Christ! Its already ten thirty! Come on Sara, there's a lovely little mogul field I saw yesterday, let's go and ski it together and if you are a good girl, I'll treat you to lunch." then remembering Bob his heart sank "unless you've got to get back to your friends that is".

"Well, Bob is the jealous type" Sara replied mischievously, "even though we aren't sleeping together anymore".

The colour seemed to drain from Nicks' face and he felt his stomach contract and heart-rate sour. "Oh, um when did you two stop that, then?" Nick enquired, trying to sound casual and failing.

" Oh, let me see now, it would have been when we were about six! Bob is my twin brother and Sue is his girlfriend. He tells me that its the real thing again this time so I doubt they'll see the light of day much before lunch time. So if you want me I'm all yours this morning". Nick struggled hard but failed to keep the look of sheer delight off his face and Sara burst out laughing. It was a rich infectious laugh that had him joining in almost at once. They spent what remained of the morning trying to negotiate the mogul field Nick had passed the day before. It wasn't that it was difficult particularly, just the first time that Sara had ever tried to ski one so Nick had his revenge.

Nick tried to press her to join him for lunch, he was feeling very reluctant to let her out of his sight just in case she was a dream. He told himself that he was being stupid. Sara had promised to join her brother for lunch and was concerned that he'd be worried if she didn't show up. "Look Nick, we were planning to eat out tonight in the village, why don't you join us and make up the foursome?"

"I'd love to. Where are you staying?"

"A little place called The Summit. It's past the ski school and down at the bottom of the second street on the right, the one with the sports shop on the corner".

Nick laughed. "Sara, all the streets in this place have a sports shop on the corner! Never mind, I think I know where you mean, I went for a drink near there last night. Meet you in the lobby at eight?"

"Better make it eight thirty, OK?"

"Sure. Until then." They looked at each other for a moment uncertain whether to kiss or shake hands , so they settled for a slight wave and went their separate ways.

Nick poured himself a beer from the stock in the fridge and went to run a bath. He found his radio and tuned it in to WKCT and retired to the tub with a paperback and the beer. As he settled into the warm water he thought to himself "Jeez, ain't life a bitch!" Finally things might just be looking up. He was half listening to the radio when the six PM news came on, but then an item caught his attention.

"and further details are slowly coming in on the double slaying in Ronse, New Jersey. The bodies of the two victims who were found brutally stabbed to death in their apartment have been identified as Ms Cathy Gale and her boyfriend Daniel Devito. Police were called in by a suspicious neighbour and found the couple dead at the scene. A police source said that both had been the victims of a frenzied knife assault and that Ms Gale had been bound and raped by her assailant. We will let you have further details on this story just as soon as we receive them......"

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Nick half remembered a story he had heard whilst serving in Nam. But it was all mercifully so long ago that he couldn't quite recall it "Just another of those sick crazy bastards this country seems to be so full of these days" he thought and turned his attention to the sports results.

Chapter 2 Fenton, New Jersey, 1977

"Looks like they've found another one, Lieutenant. Double homicide at Archers Motel. You know the place, off inter-state six just outside Preston." The desk sergeant's voice was tired and flat, after thirty one years on the force he could no longer be shocked by the job.

"OK, Stan. Who's dealing with it?" It was not the sort of news that Dave Svenson wanted to hear at the start of the Saturday morning early shift.

"Officers Brady and Sherwood. They were due to come off shift at four, but they're waiting for you. Sherwood's that new kid we got assigned from the academy at the start of the month. This will be the kids first pair of stiffs. You never know how a kid like that'll react."

"Shit Stan, if this one is the work of that animal from over in Ronse you don't know how anybody will react. Did you see the SOC photos of what that bastard did to the Gale woman?"

"Yeah, Carl gave me a looksee. He sure carved her up a bit. She was a pretty broad for a black."

Svenson picked up the late shifts' report and went to his office. He was in no mood for a debate on the finer points of race relations with the sergeant. He tossed the file onto his desk, closed the door and draped his coat over the beaten-up coat rack that stood in the corner of the room. He lit a cigarette and helped himself to a black coffee from the Cona that was on permanent shift in the detectives office. He sat down at his desk and with a sigh of resignation, picked up the report. It was just a transcript of radio traffic between patrol men and the station and calls from the public to the 9-1-1 service. It was the usual run of the mill Friday night stuff. A few calls to deal with drunks, some burglary, a few kids joy riding and a couple of fights, nothing serious. The call Svenson was looking for came in at 2:15 am, the night manager of the motel, Arthur Miller, had called it in himself. It had been a report of a prowler seen on the premises and the duty sergeant had dispatched a car to investigate. Svenson knew he was going to be in for a long day. Fenton was a sleepy, small community, respectable and quiet. They got through most years without a single homicide, now there had been two double killings on his patch in as many months.

It was about forty five minutes later when Svenson pulled into the parking lot at Archers Motel on Jackson Plaza. The motel was of the chalet style with ten little bungalows crowded around a small tennis court that had long ago known better times. There was quite a lot of shrubbery and the grass had been cut back as close to the bushes as you could get with a mower, but the litter and rubbish that congregated around the roots told a story of neglect. The same state of dilapidation was mirrored in the flaking paint and rotting wooden barge boards of the dingy chalets. Clearly, maintenance and image were low on the list of priorities of the management. In fact, the motel had had a reputation locally for being the place to go for intimate encounters for the past thirty years and was a favourite haunt of prostitutes and couples having elicit affairs. It was tolerated by the authorities because it was out of the way and kept a low profile, but once in a while the vice boys or the narcotics agents would pay it a visit. Svenson glanced at the report once more. The patrol car had radioed in at 3:05 am notifying the station about the homicides and requesting detectives and an ambulance to attend. Normally, Svenson would want to know why it had taken almost an hour to answer the call, but nobody dropped everything to rush to a place like Archers Motel to respond to a prowler call. It was just gone five thirty so Svenson himself could not have been accused of racing to the scene. He took in a deep breath of the cold early morning air and exhaled hard as if trying to prepare himself for something. "OK, Nash, where are they?"

"Room number 13 lieutenant, not so lucky for them, huh?" Officer Nash hadn't seen the bodies himself and was just standing guard outside, not that there were that many passers by at that time of day.

"Guess you could say that", Svenson replied as the images of Cathy Gale's apartment flooded his brain. "Who's here?"

"Me and Tim Hallaran, he's with the manager, Brady and that new kid. Oh yeah, somebody from the coroner's office showed up about ten minutes ago. He's in there now with Brady. Don't rightly know where the kid is."

Svenson opened the door and went in. " Hi Kiel, surprised to see you here. I didn't think you guys got called in until we asked for you"

The two men didn't shake hands; the blood stained latex gloves on Kiel Braun's hands were far from sterile.

"Personally, Dave, I'd just as soon not be invited to this kind of party, if it's all the same to you. I was the poor bastard on duty at the ME's office tonight and getting out of a nice warm bed to deal with this isn't my idea of fun. The paramedics got here first, I think your boys called them in. Anyway, one of them is a Hispanic and soon as he saw the bodies he started screaming about Voodoo and evil spirits and wouldn't go near the place, not that there was much for those guys to do anyway. I guess they'll hand him his pink slip over it. Anyway, some bright spark down at Memorial figured they should cut out the middle man and call me in directly or something, so here I am. Having been here a couple of minutes, I think I can see what the para was on about. Place gives me the creeps."

"Well, on the assumption that this isn't the work of the New Jersey Chapter of Zombies, what can you tell me that I might dare to write down for my captain?", Svenson asked, trying to keep calm and not submit to the epidemic of mass hysteria that slowly seemed to be gaining ground, as it had done in Ronse.

"Right. The guy seems pretty straight forward. One obvious wound right across the throat. Judging from the path of the cut and the blood that's all over the place, I'd say the jugular was severed, probably a sharp knife, maybe the type a hunter uses, might be able to help you there after the autopsy. The lady, well see for yourself". Braun stepped over to the bed and pulled the sheet back. The woman's hands were tied to the head board of the bed with her stockings and she was still wearing a garter belt. Her whole body was a mass of blood from literally dozens of separate knife wounds. Svenson glanced down at the mattress and got the momentary impression that she was floating in a sea of her own blood.

"Yeah, that's exactly how I felt", said Braun reading Svenson's emotions from his face. "Promise me you'll get this one Dave. I don't like the idea of this type of sicko walking the streets of the town where I live." I counted well over forty separate incisions on the girls torso, but the one that did the business is right side of the chest, just above the sternum. Can't tell you right away if she was raped. She obviously had it with her boy-friend first, if his blood type and the assailants are different I can let you know for sure, but I'd say its odds on. Oh don't worry, I didn't disturb either body, they're where they were when I came in". Kiel Braun had done a three year stint on the Medical Examiner's staff in New York and knew his way around a crime scene. He was experienced enough to realise that he had arrived before the scene of crime officers and had been careful not to touch anything important. "Time of death is probably about two to three hours ago, no signs of rigor yet. He could have died maybe an hour earlier than she did. He's colder than she is. Body temperature falls by about a degree an hour and he is a degree cooler than she is. The other thing is the clotting of the blood. Some of the wounds on her body had clotted while others are fresher that could suggest quite an ordeal. I'll let you have a full autopsy just as soon as I can, but largely this one will be as it looks." Braun gathered his things together and dropped the latex gloves into a polythene bag. When he shook hands, Svenson noticed that his hands were trembling slightly.

"All right Doug, I'd like you and Officer Sherwood to fill me in on what happened. I'll get Nash to keep the scene secure until the lab boys get over here. There's no point in discussing it in here, place gives everybody the creeps. I've got to talk to the manager first so lets borrow the bar. Do you know where Sherwood is?"

"I think Nick is with the manager. I don't know though, he seemed awful cut up about the girl. Tell you the truth we was both pretty scared. It's real strange, I mean the perp. was long gone, but its kinda like there's an atmosphere in this room, sorry lieutenant, guess that sounds pretty whacky".

Their conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the scene of crime team and as they set about their task of evidence taking and photographing the bodies from all angles the two men left the room. Both were privately very relieved to be out of there.

They found Officer Sherwood over in the dining room drinking a cup of coffee. He seemed to be shivering and looked slightly green, the air was tainted with the faint smell of vomit and Svenson guessed rightly that he was in shock. He started to rise when he saw his superior but Svenson motioned him to remain seated.

"You OK, son ?", he enquired gently.

"Yeah, lieutenant, I'm all right. It's just ...."

"It's OK, I know, but there was nothing you could have done so don't go blaming yourself, huh? OK guys, let's just make it a brief report for now then you can both go home for a couple of hours sleep, but I'd appreciate it if you would both come by the station to make a full report by ten thirty, I'll see if we can squeeze you a bit of overtime for it. This one is going to get very hot, very soon so we'd better make damned sure we cover all the bases. Doug ?"

"Well, me and Nick were on patrol in sector three when we got a call from dispatch to come over to the Archers Motel, must'a been 'bout three o'clock. It was a report of a prowler. When we got here the manager, Miller, chewed us out, said he called it in nearer to two, but he was pretty freaked out and I reckon he lost track of time or sumin. Anyways, he says he saw some guy out back of one of the chalets. Nick went round the back and the manager come with me. We knocked on the door, but there was no answer so I gets him to open up and then we saw the bodies."

"Where were they, Doug?"

"The guy was lying on the floor at the right side of the bed and she was on the bed, tied to it with her stockings. Her mouth was taped shut and I undid it just in case she was still alive. Then we radioed in for an ambulance and you, lieutenant. She was badly cut up, I didn't reckon there'd be much for the medics to do, but you never know."

"Any ID on them?"

"Yeah, his wallet says John Derek, 55 Garnier Close, Denver. He's 26 and married but not to her. He had a hundred bucks plus change and credit cards on him. Couldn't find any ID on the girl."

"Her name is Agnes Schultz, she's a hooker, 'bout 20 years of age. She was at school with my kid sister, they used to be close once. Sorry, lieutenant, I don't know where she lives these days" Sherwood spoke to the table in a soft, flat voice.

"Great Nick, don't worry. We will be able to trace her easily enough. I'll get somebody over to tell her folks. Right. Is there anything else that you want to tell me about now?"

Neither man said anything, so Svenson said, "OK guys, thanks. Now beat it it's been a hell of a night all round. I'll see you both down at the station house at 10:30". Svenson left his men and went to find Arthur Miller.

The manager was a small, rumpled little man in his mid forties. He was dressed in slacks and a loose fitting cardigan that had last been washed when the Democrats were in office. He was chain smoking Lucky Strikes when Svenson found him in his small, untidy cubby hole of an office. Svenson had seen his type before, a nobody just minding his own business, a consummate professional at turning his head the other way. All that he had seen was a dark shadowy figure coming out of the rear window of cabin thirteen when he had gone to the bathroom. He had been half asleep and half drunk from keeping company with the bottle of cheap whisky that stood on his desk almost empty. At first he hadn't thought much about it, there wasn't much worth ripping off in the rooms and he wasn't the owner in any case. But later on he had started to feel shivers running up and down his spine and suddenly became frightened out of his wits so he had had to break with a lifetimes instinct and call the cops. He was a lousy witness sober, but in his present state Svenson wouldn't have used him even if they had caught the killer. He described the shadowy form as Mr Average, Svenson thought sadly to himself that he would probably have applied the same description to King Cong in a tutu. Miller couldn't say if the man was black or white or give any useful description. It didn't matter much, Svenson had been given a reasonable description of the suspect from the lab boys and the ME's report from the Ronse killings. The assailant was male, right handed, probably between 5'9" and 5'11" tall. An unmatched hair sample that could have come from the killer suggested that he was probably a Caucasian. He was also probably very strong and quite athletic and from the semen sample recovered from Cathy Gale's body they knew his blood type was group "o" (Devitto had been wearing a rubber, meaning that the semen sample had to come from the attacker). Much of this information had been deduced from the angles and depths of penetration of the knife wounds and an experienced pair of eyes that "read" the crime scene. Examination of the wounds had identified the type of weapon as a combat knife with a hooked point, wickedly sharp blade with a jagged or serrated back edge. One side of the wounds were cleanly cut from the razor sharp cutting edge on penetration, the inward thrust, whereas the exit wound was rough and torn suggesting a jagged upper portion of the blade. This meant that the killer was probably a soldier, former soldier, someone who knew a soldier or anybody who had bought such a formidable weapon from an army surplus store or hunting goods shop. It was maddening. They had a steadily growing mountain of physical evidence, but none of it pointed towards anybody in particular. One thing was clear in Svenson's mind: whoever the killer was he had to be seriously out to lunch to have done the things he had to anybody. It was also certain that the MO of the Preston killer was the same as the Ronse killer, he didn't need full forensics to tell him that. Neither set of victims had been robbed so unless he could find a mightily powerful link between the two crimes to suggest another motive, Svenson knew he was looking for a seriously deranged man, a serial killer who would be likely to go on killing until he was caught.

After a silent, internal battle of nerves, Dave Svenson steeled himself and returned to chalet 13. He didn't have to return, he had already seen anything useful that the room could tell him, but he felt the welling up within him of fear, his own inner voice telling him to get away from the Motel, get away from that room with its sinister atmosphere and he knew that if he was going to be effective in solving this crime that he had to run the gauntlet of his fear. Svenson had been a New York city homicide detective for five eternal years and had seen more than his fair share of murder scenes and their victims. After a while a cop gets hardened to the brutality in much the same way that a doctor or nurse must maintain a kind of detachment from a terminal patient in their care, if they don't then the job would drag them down. For a cop, it could often be easier since usually the killings were pimp on pimp, gang member on gang member, pusher on pusher, the dregs of humanity for whom few tears need be shed, but of course there were also the innocent victims of street muggings or a spaced out junkie, domestic arguments that went to far and just occasionally, the murder of somebody who knew or had seen too much. In the end, Svenson had found that dealing with the carnage that daily crossed his desk in the form of reports, statements and photographs, visiting death scenes, interviewing witnesses and family members was turning him into somebody he didn't like, so he had transferred to Fenton. But it would seem that he could find no respite, now death had followed him to his sanctuary: death more bloody and foul than he had ever known. He entered the room where three men from the scenes of crime unit were silently doing their jobs of photographing, fingerprinting and harvesting fibre and other forensic evidence. Blood seemed to be spattered everywhere, probably Derek's blood as it sprayed from his severed jugular vein forming a grotesque abstract painting as it ran down the walls, now slowly turning black brown as it coagulated and dried. The bodies had been taken down to the morgue to await identification and post mortem and Svenson could clearly see the imprint of Agnes Schultz's body on the bed where it had protected the sheet from the tide of her own blood, a macabre white on red testimony to her last moments.

"Well stranger, how was the ski vacation?" Ben asked as Nick sat down at his desk in their office on Decker Avenue. Nick looked tanned and fit and a good five years younger than his thirty four years.

"Well, I did do a little skiing, I remember", Nick grinned and proceeded to tell his friend about the new lady in his life. After that first night together in his hotel room, they had become totally inseparable and their love-making had taken on new dimensions of passion as each had gradually learned what pleased the other. Their last night together had been very bitter sweet. Their love-making was as tender and passionate as human love could be. It was well beyond lust or mere physical attraction, it had become an expression of the growing love between them, each drawing delight out of pleasuring the other. Outside the bedroom, each moment they shared together seemed special and was filled with joy. But they both knew that that evening marked a parting and it would be weeks or months before they could be together again, separated by the width of the USA. The idea that theirs could just be a holiday romance never crossed either’s mind, but love always carries some price and part of theirs was to be the pain of separation. Sara had wept bitterly and despite a hollow aching feeling at his core, Nick had done his best to console her and kiss away her tears telling her over and over that it would be all right. It was decided that Sara was to fly up to Fenton in three weeks time for a long weekend and Nick had agreed to come to LA for a whole week at Easter, for a while, happiness had to be snatched in bite size pieces.

Over the next couple of days it became obvious to Ben that Nick was a reformed character having come through the storm of the last few months. The irritability and air of gloom had gone, whoever this Sara was, Ben was going to buy her a large drink! He mused to himself that ever since he had met Nick back in the fall of 69 as they had started their second year of college, that this was the first time he had ever seen him truly content and at ease with himself. It was as if he had finally found something he had long been searching for.

After they had graduated they had both got dragged into the maelstrom of Vietnam. By that stage, the war was winding down, but people on both sides were still being killed and maimed as their political masters met in secret talks in Paris trying to find a formula acceptable to both sides. Ben and Nick had been assigned to different units and only met up once during their tour of duty. That had been towards the end of the war, a couple of months before the pull out had really begun in earnest. Ben had poor eyesight and with a background in computers had been given a relatively safe job in Saigon. But with elements of the Vietcong able to penetrate and attack installations apparently at will in the southern capital, no place could truly be called safe. He knew Nick had seen some combat, but it was never a subject they chose to talk about either then or when they were safely home. When they'd met that one time in Saigon Nick had looked like a walking ghost, his eyes seemed wild and his cheeks were pinched and hollow, Ben had hardly recognised him. They had gone out on the town that night, had a reasonable meal together and then had done their best to drink several bars dry. In truth, Ben's recollection of it all was very hazy, but he vaguely recalled a brothel and a couple of ancient whores of fifteen or sixteen that had obliged them both for ten dollars and a packet of cigarettes. It had been in a sordid back room of what laughingly called itself "The Moulin Rouge Nightclub", a low class dive that tried to capitalise on the connection with Vietnam's former French colonial masters. He recalled feeling very guilty at the time for his cheating on Barbara, by that time they were all but engaged, however Nick could be persuasive and they were both very drunk. Nick clearly needed the solace of some female company - even if it had to be bought. When death and mutilation are your constant companions you live how you can. If you can forget the insanity and terror that has been all about you for as long as you can remember in the arms of some girl for a few short minutes then you are grateful for the sanctuary. Away from the field, Nick drank himself unconscious most nights, others did drugs but a lot tended to get their brains blown out by the VC as a result and Nick was determined to go home in one piece; at least physically. In fact, he had recently been attached to an intelligence unit working with "friendly" sources within enemy infiltrated territory and a part of his job was to track down and rescue GI's where ever possible. It was a very dangerous assignment since the "friendly" sources had a nasty habit of unpredictability and could change allegiances without a second thought, leading the Americans into traps. More than once, he and his men had been fortunate to escape with their lives when a source "went native" on them. He learned to trust his instincts and had developed a keen nose for situations: if it didn't smell right he was always prepared. But it really was living on the edge and it took a tremendous toll from him and his men both physically, but more importantly psychologically. His post gave him access to classified reports detailing US atrocities which were not so rare as the public at home was led to believe and sometimes he could all to easily understand the causes of such outrages. One particular report had caught his attention a day or two before his meeting with Ben which had happened quite by chance when he had a forty eight hour pass in Saigon. The report came from the usual mixture of sources and couldn't easily have been confirmed in any event. It centred on a series of isolated attacks on peasants marked by such particular savagery that they had been lain at the door of Ragatha, a shape shifting demon who could trace his history back to the dawns of time. Stories of the accounts had spread amongst the population like wild-fire and seemed to provoke quite real fear in a culture that had as many different spiritual influences as there were religions and beliefs. As an addendum to the report, there was an unconfirmed report of a sighting of a US commando in the same vacinity. Nick had taken the story to his CO, but he couldn't get passed the Ragatha angle. Even so Nick filed the report of the sighting of the GI and he was assigned a code name, but the file was buried in the pending tray and the account of the atrocities was marked NFA - for no further action. By the time Nick had returned from leave, he too had forgotten all about the report.

When at last he had finished his tour and had come safely back home from the cauldron of madness that was Vietnam, Nick had felt strangely dislocated from his former life. He spent two years wandering, at first in the wild interior of the USA in search of he knew not what. When at length he tired of the solitude and vastness of the country he had bought a one way plane ticket to Europe and tried to soak up some European art, culture and civilisation as an antidote to the barbarism and waste of Nam.

Europe was so different to anything Nick had experienced before. The sense of continuity was almost staggering with buildings charting every age from before Roman times to futuristic architectural experiments that were the next sentinels in the long line. He was astounded by the scale of Europe, the relative proximity of the towns and cities and the distances between different countries. The money had run out quickly, so Nick adopted a minstrels life, travelling from place to place working where he could in bars, on farms, in hotels, what ever was available and mixing with the global tribe of wanderers, the back-pack brigade.

His travels took him grape picking down through the Rhone valley and into the Provence, with its famous wines and scenic landscapes on to Marseilles. There he worked his passage on a cargo boat across to the Caribbean and after spending the summer driving a speed boat for water-skiers off the beach at Negril in Jamaica he returned to the States and looked Ben up.

As luck would have it, Ben was working for Microwise in Fenton, New Jersey, and they had an opening for another software guy so Nick was hired. Microwise were a small computer consultancy mainly working on short term contracts for a wide range of clients from a local detective agency and dating service through to stock control systems and accountancy packages for a dozen local stores. They were in at the start of the personal computer boom when it seemed everybody had to have one, but nobody knew how to program it. At that stage, there were few companies producing generic software packages for use on any given system and Microwise were going from strength to strength, so much so that there was already talk of expansion to other cities and a possible listing on the stock exchange to finance the deal. That had been four years ago. Nick had settled in rapidly and was well liked by his colleagues although tempers had begun to fray with his recent problems. But as Ben had remarked to Si Hamilton, the managing director, Nick had returned from Colorado a new man - and everybody was pleased by the reincarnation.

Sara would phone Nick every other evening since there was no phone in the small apartment she leased from the hospital and for some obscure reason the phone in the lobby couldn't accept incoming calls. The calls lasted anything up to an hour and the fortune in small change that she had to carry with her was rapidly wearing out the pockets in her favourite jacket. But the calls seemed to be over in seconds, it was just the ticking of her watch and the dwindling of her bank balance that marked their true duration.

At long last, the weekend of their first reunion in Fenton had arrived and Nick felt like a teenage kid on his first date: nervousness mixed with heady anticipation. His apartment had undergone radical surgery the night before and was now clean, tidy and remarkably inviting. Nick had even impressed himself, since Vicki had walked out on him, the place had looked like a cross between a garbage tip and a hamster’s cage -judging by all the things strewn across the floor a casual observer could have been forgiven for assuming that Nick lived underground. But everything was ready now. He had gone shopping at Safeways and stocked up on groceries and wine and he had even remembered to put the cripplingly expensive bottle of Chardonay into the fridge to chill. One hangover from his sojourn in France was that he couldn't bear cheap white wine and if he drunk it at all it had to be crisp, fruity and served at the right temperature. He had had to hunt to find the right wine, but he felt certain that the occasion warranted it. All he was missing was the girl.

Pan AM flight 482 was delayed by forty minutes because of an air traffic control snarl up at LAX, but ten minutes after it touched down Nick saw an anxious Sara scouring the faces of the crowd outside the arrivals lounge and then they were in each others arms.