Prologue

     He slid down the wall to the floor and stared at his bloody hands, horrified by what he had done. There hadn’t been any other way, and he knew that, but the terrified look in the man’s eyes was an image he would never be able to purge from his mind.
      He swiped at his face with the sleeve of his shirt and let out a heavy breath.
      The doctor had paved his own path, and he had only done what needed to be done. He grabbed the spiral notebook from the desk beside him and drew a line through the man’s name.
      He tossed the notebook and pen aside and fished his phone from his jacket. He clicked on the first contact and waited as the call rolled over to voice mail.
      “Hey, looks like you just missed me. I’m probably doing something super important, but if I like you, I promise I’ll get back to you!”
      The sound of her sweet voice made his heart ache, and he wished he could see her face-to-face. He ended the call and whispered, “I really need to talk to you.”
      He called the number again and the call went straight to voice mail. “Hey, looks like you just missed me . . .”
      He closed his eyes against a surge of tears and let the voice mail play out, wishing she would pick up the phone and tell him it was all just a terrible dream.

CHAPTER ONE

     It was like staring at an insect display—pinned in place with arms and legs outstretched and labeled for all to examine—only this display featured a man pinned in place by scalpels that had been driven through his hands into the tile of his kitchen floor.
     Detective Richard Marx crouched alongside the body with a thoughtful expression. In his twenty-six years as a cop with the NYPD, he’d seen more than his fair share of gunshots and stabbings, but this made the short list of unusual murders.
     His victim was a man in his late thirties, with russet features that placed his ancestry somewhere in the Middle East.
     The pattern of previous cases tempted him to consider this a hate crime, but there was nothing to indicate that the victim had been a believer in Islam. And the handwritten note pinned to his chest with a scalpel didn’t have the tone of racial or religious bigotry. It was a simple statement:
     I should have tried harder.
     Marx turned the message over in his mind, but there were too many possible meanings, and without more information to serve as a guiding light into the depraved mind of the killer, he was wasting his time.
     The note was written as an I statement, not a farewell to loved ones or even an apology, but a vague declaration of the man’s shortcomings—something he had failed to do.
     It wasn’t meant to be confused with a suicide note.
     The question was, why leave a note at all? Was it simply a thrill for the killer, an exercise in humility for the victim, or was it a message for the first responders?
     The story was hidden in the details, and he just had to piece it together. There was nothing remarkable about the gunshot that ended the victim’s life; the important details were the body position, the letter, and the scalpels.
     “Holland!”
     A young woman shoved past the officer posted by the open doorway and launched into the condo. The officer snatched her out of motion before she made it more than three steps inside.
     “Easy,” Marx told the officer who had the young woman locked in his grip.        As he approached, he caught the shimmer of grief in her eyes. “Let her go.”
The officer released her, and she melted to the floor with a cry that resonated with disbelief and pain. She stared at the body, her shoulders trembling with each ragged sob.
     Marx crouched between her and the body. No one should ever have to see the mutilated remains of someone they cared about.
     The thought sent his mind whirling back in time to Holly lying on a cement floor, bruised and dying. The memory, so vivid in its horror, gripped his heart and squeezed. He pulled his mind from the past and focused his attention on the woman in front of him.
     “What’s your name?” The Southern lilt of his voice—a leftover from his childhood in Georgia—seemed to soothe her.
     On a quivering breath, she answered, “Sarah. I’m . . . I’m Holland’s housekeeper. I’ve worked for him for years.”
     “So you knew him well.”
     She nodded and wiped at her damp nose with the sleeve of her shirt. “I called to tell him I would be late tonight, but he didn’t answer.”
     “What time was that?”
     “I don’t know. Six thirty, maybe. I usually come at eleven to clean, just after he leaves for work, but I have finals tomorrow and I needed to study.”
     “You’re a college student?”
     Another nod, this one more subdued as she began to settle. “I’m getting a master’s degree in social work.”
     Marx had dealt with a few social workers before. They were overworked and underpaid, and yet they pushed forward to help children who couldn’t help themselves.
     “I know you’re upset right now,” he said. “but this officer is gonna take you outside and get some information from you, okay?”
     “Okay.”
     “All right.” He stood and offered her a hand to her feet.
     She glanced back at Holland’s body one last time before letting the officer escort her out.
     “There’s something off about this scene,” the officer still standing by the body said, his black eyebrows pinched in thought.
     Marx looked over at Sam Barrera, the Latino officer who had spoken. Sam was the human equivalent of a brick wall, or so Holly had described him once. He was as broad and solid as a wall, and his face was as immovable and uncrackable as stone.
     “You mean aside from the fact that somebody used Dr. Wilder here as a human corkboard?” Marx asked.
     Sam’s voice was as impassive as his face. “Yes, aside from that.”
     “Personally, if I feel the need to leave a note, I find Post-it notes to be a lot less messy,” a woman said, and they both turned to see a woman in dress slacks and a button-up sapphire blouse striding through the front door of the condo.
     She looked like the kind of woman who should be sashaying down a runway in three-inch heels, not wading through a crime scene in blue rubber booties.
     “Of course I don’t usually stick Post-it notes on dead people,” she added after a thoughtful pause. “Just toe tags.”
     “Mornin’, Ella,” Marx greeted.
     Ella Foster was the assistant medical examiner for the county, and she smiled warmly as she approached. “In my opinion, it’s not morning until the sun comes up, Detective.”
     She brushed her long blond braid back over her shoulder, letting it trail between her shoulder blades, and snapped on a pair of gloves.
     “He looks familiar.”
     “He’s a general surgeon at New York City Hospital. Dr. Holland Wilder,” Sam explained.
     Ella’s pale eyebrows knitted together briefly as she peeled open an eyelid to stare into milky brown irises. “I think I met him at a medical conference last year. He offered to buy me dinner.”
     “You remember anythin’ about him?” Marx asked.
     “He was extremely flirtatious and pretentious. Very unlikable.”
     It was no surprise to hear that the man had been pretentious. It was reflected in everything he owned—from the leather furniture to the highest quality electronics.
     Marx’s mind lingered on that last thought as he looked at the television and stereo system. The killer hadn’t been interested in material things.
     “Cause of death appears to be a bullet wound in the forehead,” Ella said, drawing Marx’s attention back.
     “I figured that much out for myself,” he replied with a small smile.
     “I figured you figured that out, Detective. If you hadn’t, I would be concerned about your acuity.”
     Marx’s brow furrowed in confusion. “Concerned about my what?”
     “Your mental sharpness,” she clarified, pulling a meat thermometer from her bag.
     The coffee in Marx’s stomach rolled over in nauseating waves, and he looked away. He had used a meat thermometer just last night to make sure the dinner roast was thoroughly cooked. Seeing one shoved into a human body like it was nothing more than a Thanksgiving turkey was revolting.
     “Who reported the body?”
     “One of the couples a few condos down.” Sam glanced at his notes. “Sue and Jay. They were out walking their dog when they noticed the door was open. They know that Sarah, the housekeeper, comes by a few nights a week, and they were concerned that something might be wrong.”
     “Nice neighbors,” Marx said. “If I died in my apartment, my neighbor lady would probably pitch a fit that I was rude enough to smell up the second floor with my rottin’ corpse, then she’d request to have me evicted.”