Brig stood in the parking lot in the strip mall while the woman who had called in the crime scene wept and hiccuped and talked all at once. Which made the interview an exercise in frustration.

“He... he... he... said he’d be here early. He was going to do a... a body aura reading... for me. And... and... and then we were going to share... share... our... share our essences.”

Brig considered that for a moment, did a quick mental translation from New Age Bullshit-ese to Guy on the Make, and got the picture. Yeah. A before-work quickie. Or, since she was here at seven in the morning and the place wouldn’t have opened until ten, maybe not such a quickie.

Very smooth.

“...So I got here... and his... his car... car was here, and I had the key he... key he... key he... key he...”

Record skipping a groove there, honey, Brig thought, curbing the urge to thump her once on the side of the head to see if he could unstick her.

“And the guy you were going to share essences with is...?”

“Ben... Ben... Ben... Margolies.”

For Brig, everything screeched to a halt. He’d been called to the strip mall for a homicide, and the responding uniform had shoved this bleached-blonde, fake-titted, gym-bunny bimbo in her spandex leotard in his face as the witness, and nobody had said which store in the strip mall was the problem. The crowd was in front of Hot Bodies Gym. And Brig had assumed the body was in the gym.

But the gym sat next to Moonstruck New Age Shoppe.

Which Brig had visited the day before, to talk to Ben Margolies about Phoebe Rain. Hadn’t been a particularly interesting talk.

But now Ben Margolies was dead?

Fuck.

Brig bolted past the chippie, leaving her protests to fade behind him in the drizzle and the grinding, steaming early-morning humidity. He zigged around the ambulance and the black-and-whites and the medical examiner’s van that had blocked his view of the doors to both businesses, jumped the crime scene tape in front of Moonstruck with badge in hand, and skidded to a halt just inside the door. Where he found himself beside techs and the medical examiner, and face-to-face with Ben Margolies, taped to a chair, sitting cross-legged with his eyes open and the corners of his mouth taped into a weird smile. A placard around his neck read, SURPRISE. With a signature in the lower right-hand corner, forty-five-degree angle upward. Sign of an optimist, Brig thought, and shook his head. The signature said, “Best wishes, Michael Schaeffer.”

Ben’s arms ended halfway down the forearms in bloody, ragged stumps. The amputated hands were nowhere in sight.

“Hands?”

“Not on the premises,” the ME said.

Brig fished out his wallet. Found the card that Toeller had given him the day before. Flipped it over, located the handwritten cell phone number on the back.

Called.

“Toeller.”

“Detective Brig Hafferty. We met yesterday.”

“Go ahead, Detective.”

“I’m at a crime scene that I think is related to your case. Guy named Ben Margolies, was one of our suspects briefly.”

“Right.”

“Missing his hands, wearing a little note from Michael Schaeffer. Note says, ‘Surprise.’ ”

“How do you know it’s from Michael?”

“He signed it.”

A whispered “Shit.”

“Yeah. You want to have your guys check on Phoebe for me real quick? Maybe run next door and see if Alan’s okay? This is — this is creepy.”

“Yeah,” Toeller said. “She was... they were fine at five. I saw both of them. The doctor got called into the hospital for a disaster. Prior to that they spent the night together at his place.”

“Thought she was going to stay at her place.”

“She’s just been full of surprises,” Toeller said, sounding pissed.

Brig stared at the cell phone. She’d gotten by them? Hell. He listened to Toeller on the radio, trying to raise his guys. Getting nothing.

Ice formed in Brig’s stomach, in his veins. To the techs he said, “I’ll be back. I’m going to check on something I think is tied in to this case.”

And in his ear Toeller said, “Not getting them. We were good half an hour ago when we did our last check-in.”

But they weren’t good anymore.

Surprise.

“I’m heading over now,” Toeller said, sounding like he was running, and Brig, running, too, kept the phone jammed to his ear as he jumped into his car. Put it on speakerphone, slammed it into its cradle, put the siren and the lights on and drove like hell through the nearly empty streets.

He was halfway there when he heard Toeller kick the door in.

Heard the hoarse “Sweet Jesus” an instant later.

And shouting. And the sounds of running feet. Upstairs. Downstairs. Doors slamming.

“Oh, my God,” from Toeller, and a second later, “That sick fuck.”

People shouting to each other in the background — nothing calm, nothing orderly. Brig heard chaos.

And Toeller saying, “Phoebe Rain is nowhere on the premises.”

And then someone yelling, “Found it!” and a pause, and the sound of running and heavy breathing, and then Toeller proved he knew how to swear.

“There’s a door cut through the downstairs bedroom closet, on the back wall,” he shouted as Brig pulled into the parking lot, screeched to a stop, and jumped from the car. In his ear Toeller said, “Not the west wall into the listening post we found. The fucking north wall into the townhouse behind his! And... oh, holy hell, I think we just found the doctor who called MacKerrie to the disaster.”

Which was the last thing Brig heard before he walked into the nightmare.