He knew what it really did, too. It castrated him. Chemical castration. It made his head fuzzy, messed with his vision, and sucked away his sex drive. That was the price he was paying. For now, anyway.

“Anything else?”

“My hair is falling out. Not just on my head. And I feel tired all the time. Sluggish.”

“I’m afraid those are also common side effects.”

“Then why did you ask?” Stay calm, he told himself. You don’t want to blow it. Not when you’re so close.

“There’s a lot about this drug we don’t know. That’s why we’re conducting these trials. You know that.”

He nodded. He’d been briefed in detail, before he signed the release forms. As if he had a choice. If it would’ve gotten him out of that hellhole, he’d have agreed to a real castration. He would be their little lab rat. He’d let them shoot drugs into his body that turned him into a woman.

“How is your work going?”

“Very nicely, thank you. I manage now, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“I-I’m the manager.” Aravena had been in the States so long he had lost most traces of broken English. But he still occasionally had trouble coming up with the right word.

“That’s wonderful, Gabriel. I know some people over at FastTrak; they won’t make just anyone a manager.”

No, and they won’t pay them anything, either. But they are one of the few places that would hire a man with a record. Especially a sex crimes record.

“And at home? Any new developments?”

“No.” What did she expect? That he would have a girlfriend? Not likely. Not while he was on this drug.

“I know your father is deceased. Have you had any contact with your mother?”

“No. I think I’m better off… without contact with my mother. And she lives very far away.”

Bennett nodded. “Well, perhaps you’re right.” Aravena watched as she opened the file in her lap to the page covering Aravena’s childhood. A moment later, her face paled. How is it possible that a mother could do such things? she must be thinking. And what hideous effect must that have had on her poor, defenseless son?

“You know, Gabriel… Depo-Provera suppresses sex drive. But it doesn’t eliminate it. Nothing does.”

Aravena nodded. Even physically castrated men sometimes committed rape. He’d known one, back in the penitentiary.

“And of course, it’s well-established that most sex crimes aren’t about sex, anyway. They’re about anger. About power. Control.” She paused, as if waiting for an answer to a question she hadn’t asked.

“I feel very contented,” Aravena said, and indeed, in many respects he was not lying. “I feel no anger toward anyone.” Except you, you testicle-chewing bitch. You and everyone like you.

“That’s good, Gabriel. That’s very good.” She flipped through a few more pages in her file. “Tell me. Does your work at FastTrak bring you into contact with many children?”

“Some.”

“Young girls?”

Back to that, are we? “A few. After school mostly.”

“Is that a problem?”

Aravena tried to seem sincere. “I am no longer attracted to young girls. I don’t know that I ever was. That was just… just… I don’t know what it was. But it will never happen again.”

“You know what, Gabriel? I believe you. I really do. Do you know how long it is until your parole maintenance period ends?”

“Six days.”

“Yes. And then you’ll be a free man again. Of course, a condition of your release is that you continue to take the medication.”

“I understand that.” But I also know that you will cease to check. I will no longer be injected by an officer of the state.

“How old are you, Gabriel?” As if she didn’t have that information in her file.

“I’m thirty-seven.”

Bennett smiled. “You have your entire life ahead of you. I hope you’ll make the most of it.”

“I intend to.” Indeed he did.

“Good. Well, I think that’s enough for today.”

They shook hands. He was almost out the door when she said, “Gabriel?”

“Yes?”

“Your crime-I want you to know-I don’t hold that against you. No one will. You’ve served your time. You can start over again now with a clean slate. You have no reason to harbor feelings of guilt.”

“Thank you, Doctor. That is very kind of you.”

Kind indeed, he thought, as he made his way to the parking lot. The problem was, contrary to what she thought, she didn’t know everything. She thought that stupid incident with the eleven-year-old was his most heinous crime.

But Aravena knew better. That was not the worst thing he had ever done. That didn’t even come close.

Erin raised the joint to her lips and drew deeply, sucking the smoke down her throat and into the inner recesses of her lungs. Did it really help? she asked herself. Or was it just a home-rolled placebo? She wasn’t sure, but she wanted to believe it brought her relief. Because she very much needed relief.

She lay back in the bathtub, surrounded by bubble bath and eight scented candles, Enya on the CD player. One way or another, she had to calm herself. She had to make it better. She had to make up for what she had done.

Visiting Kincaid was a start, maybe, but only that. She was haunted by what he had said. You need to go to the DA. Tell them. At some basic instinctual level, she knew he was right. But what would be the result? Most likely, they would totally disregard what she said and do nothing. As the lawyer had pointed out, the law enforcement community was never anxious to admit that they had made a mistake, much less that they came perilously close to executing an innocent man. They would be more likely to write off what she said to the histrionics of a guilt-ridden girl. A sole survivor. A born-again babe trying to do her good deed for the day. There was no way she could make them act, could force them to listen.

Wait a minute. Maybe there was. She didn’t have to start with the prosecutors. What if she started at the Tulsa World? She could call up Debbie Jackson at the city desk, tell her what she knew. If the World heard that an innocent man was about to be executed, they would almost certainly run a story. Maybe several stories. The anti-death-penalty faction would take up the banner. This would be a dream case for them. A tormented young woman-and quite attractive, if she did think so herself-trying to prevent a gross miscarriage of justice. If they stirred up enough trouble, the law enforcement people would have to do something.

Now that was a plan, she thought, and she took another deep and satisfying drag. The hot water soaked into her skin. She could feel the tension-some of it, anyway-melting away. She did what she did, all those years ago, and there was no way she could justify it-not even to herself. All she could hope to do was make it better by telling the world her secret. One of them, anyway. Perhaps revealing the one would make it easier for her to live with the other.

That was the right thing to do, she realized. That’s what would make her daddy proud. Daddy was not… a perfect man. He did things that were wrong. Very wrong. But he would never have stood idly by and let an innocent man be killed without trying to stop it. She had been silent far too long already. She would do whatever she could and perhaps she would finally-

Erin ’s head jerked to one side. Did she hear something? Downstairs.

She would’ve heard a doorbell. Did someone knock? She wasn’t expecting anybody. She tried to remember whether she’d locked the door. Sheila was always hassling her about that. But she just never thought about it, not until she was locking up to go to sleep.

She sat up. The movement made the water in the bath slosh around, just enough noise to prevent her from hearing anything downstairs. But there was something. Wasn’t there? She wasn’t imagining it. She hit a button on the remote to shut off the CD player. Now if the water would just stop moving…