Cold Light

The Story

For Dana Matthieson, the annual Christmas Eve office party had turned into a disaster: fighting off her boss's sloppy sexual advances, Dana had by evening's end lost her temper, the heel off one of her party shoes, and, quite possibly, her job. In the cold light of Christmas Day, it was beginning to look as if she'd also lost her roommate. It was a run-of-the-mill Christmastime crime wave as far as Charlie Resnick could determine. A Pakistani cabdriver had been beaten and robbed; a half-dozen men and one woman were up on drunk-and-disorderly charges; there were fewer than the usual number of break-ins and burglaries. A possible child abuse case had made for some messy moments with Social Services, but all in all, things were under control. Until Dana Matthieson picked up her phone to report a missing roommate. Nancy Phelan had been missing for nineteen hours by the time the police were notified. As her blunt-spoken, no-nonsense father put it to Resnick: 'Forty-eight hours, that's what they reckon, isn't it? Forty-eight hours. If you don't find them in that, likely they're sodding dead!' It was considerably more than forty-eight hours before the police had the chilling proof that Nancy Phelan had been abducted. And it was the New Year before the first tape arrived and they knew that they were dealing with a psychopath ... and possibly, a psychopathic killer.