Her voice became tiny. “Like I’m sitting . . . way up high and seeing this girl in the woods . . . how he grabs her . . . and when he runs away, it’s like all of a sudden I’m gone too.”

“That must be very upsetting.”

She nodded, and to her horror, tears came to her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m okay, really. I just . . . I just . . .”

Dr. Horowitz handed her a tissue. “Gillian, it wasn’t your fault. You have no reason to be ashamed or embarrassed about what happened.”

She brought her knees to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “If that’s true,” Gilly said, “then of all the people in the world, why did he pick me?”

The solitary cell had a river of urine in its upper right corner and shiny, dried splotches on the cement block wall, the legacy of the last inmate to be confined. As the door was slammed shut, Jack sank down onto the metal bunk. The silver lining: He was wearing his clothes. His own clothes. He thought of all the Super Bowl winners who’d edged out the first goal, of countries that had won the first battle of an ultimately victorious war.

If the Carroll County Jail had custody of his body, then Jack would damn well keep custody of his own free will.

He felt along the metal links of the bunk and beneath the mattress, over the upper rim of the shower and in the drain, even around the base of the toilet. A pen, he prayed. Just a single pen. But whoever had neglected to disinfect the solitary cell had managed to strip it clean of anything that might be used for diversion.

Jack sat back down and inspected his fingernails. He scratched at a loose thread in his jeans. He unlaced his sneaker, and then retied it.

He closed his eyes, and immediately pictured Addie. He could still smell her on his skin, just the faintest perfume. Suddenly he felt his chest burn, his arm creep and tingle. A heart attack-Jesus, he was having a heart attack. “Guard!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. He shook the bunk, rattling it against the clamps that moored it to the wall. “Help me!”

But no one heard him-or if anyone did, no one came.

He forced himself to concentrate on something other than this pain. If you have pogonophobia, you’ll probably be avoiding these.

Focus, Jack. What are beards.

The unique food you’d give a butterwort plant.

Inhale. Exhale. What are insects.

An archtophilist would have a pile of these.

What are teddy bears.

He spread his hand over his chest as the pain ebbed, eased, stopped. And was not really surprised to find that he could no longer feel the beat of his heart.

Gillian watched the last of the candle flame sputter and sink into a pool of wax. A piece of paper with her mother’s name on it sat smoking down to ash in a silver dish. Gillian stared at the candle, at the make-shift altar. Maybe the reason she doesn’t come is because she hates the person I’ve grown up to be.

It wasn’t a new thought for Gillian, but today, it nearly brought her to her knees. She stood up slowly, drawn to the mirror. Picking up a pair of scissors, she stood in front of the glass and lifted a thick strand of her red hair. She chopped it off at the crown, so that a small tuft stood up, and the rest cascaded to the floor like a silk scarf.

She lifted another section, cutting it. And another. Until her skull was covered with uneven spikes, short as a boy’s. Until her bare feet were covered with hanks of her hair, a pit of auburn snakes. Until her head felt so light and free that Gilly thought it might lift from her neck like a helium balloon and soar as far away as possible.

Now, she thought, he wouldn’t look twice at me.

The conference rooms at the jail were narrow and ugly, with battered legal books stacked on a scarred table, windows that had been sealed shut, and a thermostat cranked up to eighty degrees. Jordan sat on one of the two chairs, strumming his fingers on the table, waiting for Jack St. Bride to be brought through the door.

St. Bride was clearly a loser-getting himself caught in a similar situation twice. But to learn that Jack had also managed to get thrown into solitary within an hour of his arrival . . . well, defending him was like being given a sow’s ear and told to make a silk purse.

The correctional officer who opened the door pushed Jack in. He stumbled once, glancing over his shoulder. “Nice to know the Geneva Convention doesn’t apply here,” he muttered.

“Why would it? This isn’t a war, Jack. Although, rumor has it you’ve been ready for combat from the moment you stepped in here.” Jordan came to his feet in one smooth motion. “Frankly, it doesn’t do me any good to find you in solitary after just one day. I had to offer my balls on a silver platter to the guards to get to meet with you in private in a conference room instead of through the slit in the steel door down there. You want to play the rebel here, fine-just be aware that everything you say and do here is going to wind up getting back to the prosecutor, and that you might feel the ripples all the way through your case.”

The speech had been intended to put the fear of God into Jack; to scare him into good behavior. But Jack only set his jaw. “I’m not a prisoner.”

Jordan had been a defense attorney long enough to ignore him. Denial was something his clients excelled at. Christ, he’d once stood up for a guy who was arrested in the act of plunging a knife into his girlfriend’s heart, and who maintained all the way to the State Pen that the cops had mistaken him for someone else. “Like I said yesterday, you’ve been charged with aggravated felonious sexual assault. Do you want to plead guilty?”

Jack’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding?”

“You did the last time you were charged.”

“But that was . . . that was . . .” Jack couldn’t even get the words out. “I was wrongly accused. And my attorney said it was the safest course of action.”

Jordan nodded. “He was right.”

“Don’t you want to know if I committed this crime?”

“Not particularly. It isn’t important to my job as your defense attorney.”

“It’s crucial.” Jack leaned over the table, right in Jordan’s face. “The last thing I need is another lawyer who doesn’t even listen to me when I tell him the truth.”

“You listen to me, Jack. I didn’t put you in jail last year, and I didn’t get you arrested this time around, either. Whether you get acquitted or convicted, I get to leave that courtroom free and clear. My role here is simply to be your advocate, and to translate that into the simplest terms possible, it means I’m your best goddamned hope. While you’re sitting in solitary, I get to go out and fight on your behalf. And if you cooperate with me rather than jump down my throat every other fucking minute, I’m bound to fight considerably harder.”

Jack shook his head. “You listen. I didn’t rape her. I was nowhere even close to her that night. That’s the God’s honest truth. I’m innocent. That’s why I don’t want to wear their clothes and sit in their cell. I don’t belong here.”

Jordan returned his gaze evenly. “You were willing enough to do it before when you accepted a plea, in spite of your . . . innocence.”

“And that’s why,” Jack said, his voice breaking, “there’s no way I’m going to do it again. I will kill myself before I sit in jail again for a crime I didn’t commit.”

Jordan looked at Jack’s rumpled clothing, his wild eyes. He’d had clients before who seemed to feel that an impassioned cry for justice was the only way to muster an attorney’s enthusiasm for a case; they never seemed to realize that a good lawyer could identify bullshit by its stink. “All right. You weren’t there that night.”

“No.”

“Where were you?”

Jack picked at his thumbnail. “Drinking,” he admitted.

“Of course,” Jordan muttered, amazed that this case could get any worse. “With whom?”

“Roy Peabody. I was at the Rooster’s Spit until they closed up.”