“She didn’t come back for that either.”

“Then what did she come back for?”

Ray shook his head. “It’s not important. She’s gone. She won’t be back.”

“So she just came back to mess with your head?”

Ray played with his napkin. “Something like that.”

“Cold.”

Ray did not reply.

“But you know what’s interesting, Ray?”

“No, Fester, why don’t you tell me what’s interesting?”

“Jennifer broke my heart, sure, but she didn’t break me. You know what I mean? I still function. I got a business. I got a life. I moved on. Yeah, I drink sometimes, but I didn’t let it destroy me.”

“Again with the subtle,” Ray said.

“I know there are few things worse than a broken heart, but it is nothing that you shouldn’t be able to recover from. Do you know what I’m saying?”

Ray almost laughed. He knew. And he didn’t. A broken heart is bad, but there are indeed things worse. Fester thought that a broken heart had crushed Ray. It had, no question about it. But you do recover from a broken heart. Ray would have, if that had been all. But as Fester had noted, there are a few things worse, more scarring, harder to get over, than a broken heart.

Blood, for example.

* * *

BROOME DIDN’T LIKE CONFIDING IN MEGAN.

He still didn’t believe that she was coming totally clean, but that just made it more important, not less, to hit her with the full horrible, awful facts of the case. So on the drive down to Atlantic City, he told her enough to scare the crap out of her—how he believed that many men, not just Stewart Green and Carlton Flynn, went missing on Mardi Gras, how none of them had ever been seen again.

When he finished, Megan said, “So are these men dead or did they run away or did someone kidnap them or what?”

“I don’t know. We only know of the fate of one—Ross Gunther.”

“And he’s dead.”

“Yes. A man is serving time for his murder.”

“And you think that man is innocent?”

“Yes.”

She thought about it for a moment. “So how many men have you found that fit this Mardi Gras pattern?”

“We are still working on it, but for now we have fourteen.”

“No more than one a year?”

“Yes.”

“And always around Mardi Gras.”

“Yes.”

“Except, well, now you have another body in Harry Sutton. He doesn’t fit the pattern at all.”

“I don’t think he’s part of the Mardi Gras group.”

“But it has to be connected,” she said.

“Yes,” Broome said. “By the way, does that holiday mean anything to you? Mardi Gras, I mean.”

Megan shook her head. “It was always a wild night, but other than that, nope, nothing.”

“How about to Stewart Green?”

“No. I mean, not that I know about anyway.”

“Stewart Green is the only one we have a possible sighting of. You get now why I need to talk to anyone who might have seen him?”

“Yes,” Megan said.

“So?”

She thought about it, but in truth, there was no option but the truth here. “Lorraine saw him.”

“Thank you.”

Megan said nothing. Broome explained how he didn’t want Megan to give her a heads-up, that he’d visit her soon.

“I’ve known Lorraine a long time,” Broome said.

Megan smirked, remembering how Lorraine said she’d thrown him a one-timer. “Yeah, I know.”

Broome parked the car and brought her into the precinct through the side door. He didn’t want Goldberg or anyone else to know she was here. He set her up in a storage room on the ground level. Rick Mason, the sketch artist and all-around computer weenie, was there.

“What’s with the secrecy?” Mason asked.

“Think of it as witness protection.”

“From your fellow cops?”

“Especially from them. Trust me on this, okay?”

He shrugged. Once Megan settled in, Broome headed back to his car. He quickly called Erin. Earlier he had asked her to check for any surveillance cameras around Harry Sutton’s office, see if they could get an image of this young couple. She told him now that she was still working it. He had also asked her to find the whereabouts of Stacy Paris, the girl Mannion and Gunther had battled over.

“Stacy Paris’s real name is Jaime Hemsley. She’s living near Atlanta.”

“Married?”

“No.”

Atlanta. He wouldn’t have time to get down there. “Maybe you can reach her by phone, see what she can tell us about the night Gunther died.”

“I already called. No answer, but I’ll keep working on it. Broome?”

“What?”

“If Mannion is innocent,” Erin said, “I mean, if he’s spent eighteen years in jail for the work of a serial whatever… man, that would really blow.”

“You got a way with insight, Erin.”

“Well, you didn’t just fall for me because of my hot bod.”

“Yeah, I did,” he said. “Talk to Stacy. See what she knows.”

He hung up. The ride to La Crème was a short one. The lunch crowd was pouring in, many lining up for the suspect buffet before ogling the girls, begging the question, “How hungry were these guys?”

Lorraine wasn’t at her customary post behind the bar. There had been a night many years ago when the two of them had a textbook one-night stand. It had been fun and empty, the kind of thing that paradoxically made you feel alive and wishing it had never happened—the way all one-nighters do, Broome thought, even by the most jaded of participants. Still, when you sleep with someone, even when drunk and stupid and with no desire for a repeat, there was a bond. He hoped to use that now.

Broome headed to the back of the club. Rudy’s door was closed. Broome opened it without knocking. Rudy was trying to pull his too-tight shirt over his thick head and then past down the bowling-ball gut. There was a girl in the office, helping him. She was young. Probably too young. Rudy shooed her out the side door.

“She’s legal,” Rudy said.

“I’m sure.”

He invited Broome to sit. Broome shook him off.

“So,” Rudy said, “you’re here two days in a row.”

“I am.”

“What, you got a thing for one of my girls?”