"Sure," she said, smiling sweetly at him. She kissed his chin, ran her fingertips over his eyebrows, kissed his nose. "You're better now?"

"Getting there," he said, and kept kissing her.

They stopped only when they heard Candice say from the floor, "If the two of you make out in front of me, I'm going to call the police. Then you'll both be arrested."

Lacey began to laugh; she couldn't help it. Savich said, "Would you like a cup of coffee before you leave, Mrs. Madigan?''

"What I want is for the FBI to protect my husband."

"But you flew all the way here to get us off him."

"Look, I know I haven't been really nice to either of you, but Douglas, he's different. He needs me. Please, if you truly believe he's in danger, protect him."

Savich walked to the phone, dialed, then said, "Reinstate the surveillance on Douglas Madigan. Yes, that's right. Thank you." He hung up, then turned to Candice. "It's done."

"Thank you," she said. "Really, thank you very much." Then she turned to Lacey. "As for you, you're nothing but trouble. You're going to bring trouble to this very nice man who doesn't know you at all. Stay away from Douglas!"

With that, she was gone.

Savich stood there, looking toward the front door. "She is one strange woman," he said. "I guess she didn't want coffee."

"Did you really have surveillance on Douglas?"

"Oh yes."

"Did you take it off then put it back on?"

"Nope. Douglas is a suspect. I want an eye kept on him. Hey, if it protects him as well, so be it."

"She loves him," Lacey said. "She really truly loves him."

"The two of them deserve each other. I hope they live happily ever after. Now, if you're ready for bed, I'll race you."

She'd been so depressed, then she'd wanted to srpot Candice, but now, looking at Dillon Savich, she felt relief pouring through her. "Let's go."

32

MARLIN JONES WAS STILL free on Thursday at noon. His photo was shown on TV special bulletins throughout the day and evening. Hundreds of sight-ings from Boca Raton to Anchorage had flooded in.

Savich tried to work, tried to concentrate on the killings in South Dakota and Iowa, but it was tough. He called everyone together Thursday afternoon to announce that Hannah Paisley had been reassigned. He would let everyone know where she would be going when it was decided. No one was particularly sorry to see her go.

As for Lacey, she felt as if a hundred-pound weight had been lifted off her back.

An hour later, there was a resolution to the nursing home murders in Florida. Savich, Ollie, and Sherlock were all hooting when they walked into the conference, giving everyone high fives.

Savich, grinning from ear to ear, rubbing his hands, said, "Good news. Great news. It turns out our murderer is an old man-Benjamin Potter from Cincinnati who's been a magician for thirty years-he's a master of disguise, which all of you know. Also, he's never done a bad thing in his life. He easily entered the nursing homes as just another old person in need of round-the-clock attention. Sometimes he passed himself off as an old woman, other times, an old man. Because he was in basic good health, no nurse ever saw him without his clothes on, important since he could have been playacting an old woman. He never had difficulty escaping after each murder, because he didn't. Nope, he always stayed on until a 'relative' came to take him home to his family. He paid the 'relative' fifty bucks for this service." Savich turned to Ollie. Ollie said, "The cops found the 'relative' in Atlanta. He denied knowing anything about the murders. He said only that the old man was a kick and it was easy money." He nodded to Lacey.

"Benjamin Potter wouldn't have been caught after the sixth murder except that he happened to trip on a used syringe on his way out of the victim's room and suffered a heart attack. He died before he could tell anyone why he'd killed six old women."

Ollie picked it up. "Yep, the relative is my part. He said he had no clue. The old man always seemed happy and well adjusted to him. So go figure."

They all tried to figure it out, but no one could come up with anything that sounded like the perfect fit. Although Savich said that MAXINE thought it just might be that the old man had always wanted to be an old woman and he was killing off his competition.

"A real big one down," Savich said. "Everybody to the gym for celebrations." There was groaning from around the table. Lacey was still on a high when she went to the women's room in the middle of the afternoon, a redone men's room that looked it. When workmen had removed the urinals, they hadn't patched the wall tile very well. The big room was always dank and smelled like Pine Sol.