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Dmitri is more and more a liability. He must be replaced. Perez, too.

His desk phone began to trill softly, and when Antonov glanced at the phone’s touchscreen display, he snorted and shook his head.

How does he always know?

He cleared his throat, then smoothly picked up the receiver.

“Ah, Yuri,” he answered in Russian. “How are you? . . . What—? . . . No, no. Everything is perfect. And I’m very glad you called. I was just about to call and update you on the dealings with our good friend the senator. . . .”

[TWO]

Kensington, Philadelphia

Monday, November 17, 9:08 P.M.

“And I thought that room full of pot plants was surreal,” Matt Payne said, shaking his head. “This is beyond surreal. It’s . . .”

“Evil,” Jim Byrth said, finishing the thought.

After searching the upper floors and finding no one in the house, they now stood in the basement.

The largest object in the room was the most disturbing one—an orange 110-gallon drum near the back wall. It had a natural gas line fueling the fire box beneath it and a tin vent tube leading from its metal lid up to the ceiling. And metal ductwork ran to a hole in what was the main room of the first floor.

Coming from the drum was the same stench, though somewhat fainter, that had burned their nostrils and throats as they had approached the back door.

Byrth gestured at the long wall where “El Pozolero” had been spray-painted in highly stylized graffiti-like four-feet-high lettering.

“The sick bastard takes a perverse pride in being called the Stew Maker,” he said. “Like it’s something to boast about. Incredible.”

In the middle of the room was a heavy cast-iron incinerator the size of an office desk. It also had a natural gas line feeding it, a vent tube, and metal ductwork that ran to the first floor. A digital gauge on its ductwork read CAUTION! CO2.

Beside the incinerator, on the raw concrete floor, were two cardboard boxes, each labeled “Technical Grade Sodium Hydroxide Lye Beads.” One was empty.

—

“This is getting worse by the second,” Matt Payne said ten minutes later, kneeling by the cardboard box. It was half full of women’s clothing, and he was using the tip of his pen to carefully look through it.

He had just put back a leather string necklace with an Eleguá medallion threaded on it—the clay disc of a child’s face that was the Santería god of destiny—and uncovered an unusual purse.

Some damn destiny, he thought.

He looked at the purse for a long time, dug some more, then looked back at the purse. He pulled out his cell phone and went to the folder he had made with the files Kerry Rapier had sent him in the Keys. He opened one and clicked through the images.

“How can it get worse?” Byrth said.

“Here. Look at this photograph of the Spencer girl.”

Byrth saw that it showed the tall twenty-seven-year-old in jeans and a Temple University sweatshirt and carrying a gold sequined purse that was glinting in the sunlight.

“Okay, the same photo from her file,” he said. Then he turned to look in the box. “Jesus Christ . . .”

Payne met his eyes. “I didn’t find a Temple sweatshirt in any box, and I’m sure there’s more than one purse like this in Philly, but . . .”

Byrth nodded. “There will be plenty of DNA in that purse to see if it’s a match,” he said.

Payne pulled out his phone and hit a speed-dial number. “Mickey, drop whatever you’re doing. I’m about to call in this scene. You’re not going to believe this. . . .”

After he gave O’Hara the address and broke off the call, he saw Byrth watching him.