Archie sat at his new desk, listening to his taped interview with Fred Doud. Kristy Mathers was dead. And now the clock restarted. The killer would take another girl. It was just a matter of time. It was always a matter of time.

The office lights were on, but Archie had turned off the fluorescent overheads in his office and now sat in near darkness, the only light streaming in from his open door. He had finally sent Henry to drive Susan Ward back to her car, and he and Claire Masland had followed the medical examiner’s vehicle to the morgue, where they met Kristy’s father and he identified her body. Archie had become an expert at shattering families. Sometimes he didn’t have to say a word. They just looked at him and knew. Other times, he had to say it over and over again, and still they blinked at him dumbfounded, heads shaking in disbelief, eyes stubbornly bright with denial. And then, like a wave, it would crash and the truth would flood in. It took a lot of effort to remind himself that he was not the cause of their anguish.

But Archie did not mind being around grief. Even the most blatant assholes seemed to function in a state of grace when confronted with the brutal loss of a loved one. They moved through the world differently than other people. When they looked at you, you had the feeling that they were really seeing you. Their entire universe was just this one thing, this one event, this one loss. They seemed, for a few weeks, to have things in perspective. Then the inconsequential shit of their lives would start to seep back in.

He looked up. Anne Boyd was leaning in his doorway, watching him in that way she had, like a parent waiting for a confession.

He rubbed his eyes, smiled wearily, and waved her in. Anne was a smart woman. He wondered if her psychological training allowed her to see through his pretense of sanity. “Sorry. Daydreaming.” He punched the tape recorder off. “You can get the light,” he added.

She did, and the room was flooded with jumpy white light, causing the vise of pain that gripped Archie’s head to crank a turn tighter. He stiffened, and stretched his neck until he heard a satisfying pop.

Anne flung herself down in one of the chairs facing him, crossed her legs, and flopped a fifty-page document on his desk. She was one of the few female profilers at the FBI, and the only black woman. Archie had known her for six years, since the Bureau had sent her out to profile the Beauty Killer. They had spent hundreds of hours in the rain going over crime sites together, staring at photographs of wound patterns at four o’clock in the morning, trying to get into the mind of Gretchen Lowell. Archie knew that Anne had kids. He had heard her talk to them on the phone. But they had never once, he realized, in all the time they had worked together, talked about their respective children. Their professional lives were too ugly. Talking about children seemed crude.

“That it?” he asked, nodding at the document.

“The fruit of my labors,” Anne said.

Archie’s ribs hurt from sitting so long and acid burned in his stomach. Sometimes, he would wake up in the middle of the night and find himself in the right position, and realize that he wasn’t in pain. He’d try to remain still, to stretch out the blissful interlude, but eventually he’d have to turn over or bend a knee or stretch an arm out, and then there’d be that familiar twinge or burn or ache. The pills helped, and sometimes he told himself that he was almost getting used to it. But his body still proved a distraction. If he was going to concentrate on Anne’s profile, he needed some air. “Let’s take a walk. You can give me the topic sentences.”

“Sure,” she agreed.

They walked through the empty squad room, where a custodian was uncoiling a vacuum cleaner cord, and Archie held the big glass bank door open for Anne and then followed her out onto the sidewalk. They started walking north. It was cold and Archie tucked his bare hands in the pockets of his jacket, and there were the pills. He was, as usual, underprepared for the weather. The streetlights looked blurry in the dark, and the city looked dirty in the flat yellow light that they threw on the pavement. A car went by, going ten miles over the speed limit.

“I think we’re dealing with a budding sociopath,” Anne said. She was wearing a long chocolate-colored leather trench coat and leopard-print boots. Anne always could put together an outfit.

“You like them?” Anne asked, noticing him looking at her feet. She stopped and lifted her long knit skirt a few inches to show off the boots. “I got them in the ‘large and in charge’ department. They’re extra wide. For my enormous calves.”

Archie cleared his throat. “You said he was a budding sociopath?”

“You don’t want to talk about my calves?” Anne asked.

Archie smiled. “I’m just trying to avoid a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

Anne let the skirt drop and grinned at Archie. “I do believe that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile in two days.”

They started walking again and Anne continued her profile: “He raped and murdered these girls but he feels remorse,” she said, her demeanor serious again. “He cleans them up. Returns them.”

“But he kills again.”

“The need overpowers him. But it’s about the rape. Not the murder. He’s a rapist who kills, not a murderer who rapes. It’s not part of his fetish. It’s not necrophilia. He kills them to spare them from experiencing the rape.”

“What a guy,” said Archie.

They walked past a darkened paint store, past a shuttered espresso drive-thru booth, past a hipster dive bar. The window of the bar was filled with neon beer signs: PBR, RAINIER, SIERRA NEVADA. A half-assed marquee advertised a band called Missing Persons Report. Nice. Archie glanced inside as they went past and caught a flash of people, mouths open wide, laughing, the sound of drunken levity.

Anne continued: “I don’t think the murder gives him pleasure per se. He doesn’t linger with it. He doesn’t use his hands. I think we need to look at where he came from. I think he’s raped before. And if he has, it will be within the victim profile.”

Archie shook his head. “We’ve pulled every unsolved rape over the last twenty years. No good fits.”

They came to an intersection. If Archie had been alone, he would have walked against the light, but because Anne was there, he pushed the pedestrian button and waited.

“Look out of state. If you can’t find anything, it means that the rapes weren’t reported, which is useful in itself.”

Archie considered this. “He has power over women.”

“Or used to,” Anne commented.

“He loses his power; he compensates with violence.”

Anne nodded several times, her jaw working. “I’m thinking a steady evolution of sexual assaults, followed by some sort of stresser at work or home. He’s probably had violent sexual fantasies since he was a child, but he was able to quell them with porn and the early rapes. Then he decides to take it further. Plans it. Carries it off. And he gets away with it.”

“So he does it again.” Archie sighed. The light changed, finally, and they walked across to the other side of the street and started heading back south. It wasn’t much of a walk. But it felt good to move.

“Yes. And gets away with it again. So now the societal boundaries that he’s always been uncomfortable with are seriously eroding. I think that part of him, that first time, fully expected to get caught. Maybe he even wanted to get caught, to be punished for his deviant fantasies. But he wasn’t. So now he’s thinking that the law doesn’t apply to him. He’s feeling special.”

“And the bleach? Is it a purification ritual, or is he studiously destroying forensic evidence?”

He could see Anne bite her lip. “I don’t know. It doesn’t fit. If he cares about them enough to kill them, why is he bathing them in corrosive chemicals? But it’s overkill as a cleansing agent. And I think our guy is meticulous enough to avoid overkill. He would know exactly how much, and not use any more.”