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look at her.
    “ Why?”
    “ People pay me a lot of
money to do this, and I don’t want them to know,” Seth
said.
    Éowyn’s lip lifted into a kind of sideways
smile. The rest of her face held her sorrow and exhaustion. She
seemed to be searching for something to say.
    “ You make a lot of money as
a cop?” Éowyn asked.
    “ Sex,” Seth
laughed.
    She gave him the gift of a genuine
smile.
    “ What are you working on?”
Éowyn asked.
    “ Little mystery brought to
me by an old friend,” Seth said.
    She went to the wall to look at the map.
    “ And the flags?”
    “ Cities with murders that
fit the profile,” Seth said.
    “ That’s a lot of murder,”
Éowyn said. “One city per state?”
    “ Looks that way,” Seth
said. “It’s hard to tell because the records only go back so
far.”
    “ This has been going on a
long time?”
    “ I think so,” Seth said.
“Ava thinks so. That’s part of the mystery.”
    “ And the FBI?”
    “ No standard protocol; no
standard weapon . . .”
    “ No M.O.,” Éowyn nodded.
“That is a good
mystery. Serial killer?”
    “ Murder-for-hire,” Seth
shrugged. “I think. Mostly it’s a lot of unsolved murders that span
the country and go on for a lot of years. Or . . .”
    Seth’s eyes shifted to the map.
    “ Or?”
    “ Or there’s a bunch of
detectives who like Maresol’s cooking enough to massage their
unsolved cases to fit this project,” Seth said.
    “ We know that’s true,”
Éowyn said. “What’s your next move?”
    “ I have a call in to
someone I knew in the Army,” Seth said. “We’ll see what he knows
about murder-for-hire. Otherwise, I don’t have a clue who is behind
this. I’m still collecting murders.”
    “ How many people were
killed a year?”
    “ Four,” Seth said.
“Sometimes three. In the fifties, it was only two or three. But
it’s been four for a while.”
    “ Odd how no one noticed all
these years,” she said.
    “ It’s hard to imagine,”
Seth said. “But computers are pretty new. These murders went on for
at least seventy years before cops had access to computers and
another twenty before they were common.”
    Seth’s eyes shifted to look at Éowyn. Thin
and technically beautiful, Ava’s elder sister had an exacting
nature that came through in her perfectly arched eyebrows, her
manicured fingertips, and her stern social grace. This morning, all
of that perfection made her look lost and very alone.
    “ How are you?” he
asked.
    “ Wondering what I want to
know.” Her eyes flitted over his face. He nodded. “What I wanted to
see, with my Dad, you know?”
    He waited for her to add more to her
thoughts. When she didn’t, he turned back to look at the map.
    “ Want to play mystery?”
Seth asked.
    “ I’m not going to play
sex,” Éowyn said the words as if they were daggers.
    “ You know, you can talk to
me,” Seth said. “I might actually be one of the few people who
understand.”
    “ Oh yeah?” Her lip made an
effort to sneer. If she hadn’t been so exhausted she would have
seemed cruel. But today, she seemed lost. “What do you
understand?”
    “ I know what it’s like to
do what you’re supposed to, be what you’re supposed to be, and feel
like you’re missing something because you’re so miserable,” Seth
said.
    Éowyn became still. As if she was ready to
strike, her eyes watched him with exacting intensity.
    “ I don’t know why I knew
how to play the piano,” Seth said. “It was like having blue eyes or
black hair . . .”
    “ Or having an analytical
mind,” she said.
    “ I was ten when I was
shipped off to Eastman,” Seth said.
    “ I was twelve when I won my
first national debate tournament,” she said.
    “ You see?” Seth smiled. “We
have a lot in common.”
    She nodded.
    “ Can I ask you a question?”
she asked.
    “ Of course.”
    “ Do you love it?” she
asked.
    “ Piano?” Seth’s eyebrows
went up with the question and she nodded. “It’s more than