Silence, but he hasn’t hung up.

“I said I don’t know of any connection,” he says. “It doesn’t mean there isn’t one. For all I know, one of them sold me clothes or served me coffee or cleaned my teeth or deposited my check at the bank.”

“That’s not motive for murder,” I say.

“Maybe I liked them,” he says. “Maybe I coveted them. Maybe I watched them, everywhere they went, obsessed over them, learned their habits, and then followed them home one night and killed them.”

I don’t say anything. I feel a decided change in temperature.

“Maybe that’s exactly why I chose them,” he goes on. “Because my encounter with them was so casual and short that nobody would even remember it.”

I push myself out of my chair, my head dizzy, my heartbeat drumming. I breathe out. The warm rain still attacks my window. The remnants of my burger, the pink chewy flesh, bring a surge to my throat.

“I’m not going to the police, Jason,” he says.

I start to form words but can’t find them. The call disconnects a moment later.

I call Joel Lightner right away. “The mother,” I say. “James Drinker’s mother. He said she lives in a nursing home. I want you to find her.”

“What are you going to do with his mother?” Joel asks.

“I’m not sure,” I say. “Find out where she is and then I’ll decide.”

A pause. He’s scribbling something down, presumably. “Okay, princess, anything else?”

“One other thing,” I say. “And this one isn’t free of charge. Put this on my tab. Because it’s going to be expensive.”

“Okay.”

“I want twenty-four-hour surveillance on James Drinker,” I say.

29.

Jason

Thursday, June 20

Another night of fitful, interrupted sleep, the sensation of shadows looming large behind me, nightmares of serial killers removing bodily organs with steak knives. I avoid the bathroom mirror entirely and, on the drive to the office, actually look down to ensure that I am wearing pants.

My stomach is empty and grumpy this morning, a dull ringing in my ears as I sit in my office, rereading everything in the news reports on the four dead women. By eleven, I finish a first draft of a response brief to a Santiago proffer, a case in federal court where prosecutors are trying to link my client with a dozen other gang members in a drug conspiracy so they can use his statements in court without that pesky rule against hearsay. I have trouble focusing for any number of reasons. First, because I’m going to lose this argument; Judge Royster is going to declare this one gigantic conspiracy and throw the hearsay rule out his twentieth-story window. Second, because I can’t get my redheaded client out of my mind. And third, even I can tell, in rare moments of clarity and self-confrontation, that I am not right in the head these days, that I am slipping.

“Knock, knock.” It’s Joel Lightner, gently rapping on my office door.

“Hey.” I sigh. “What’s up?”

“In the neighborhood. Thought I’d stop by.”

“Did you put the tail on James?”

“Yeah, we did. Yesterday, he left work and went home. This morning, he got up and went to work. So far, nothing else.”

I sit up straight. He didn’t come all this way to tell me that. “You found James’s mother?”

“Yep. Yep, yep.” He takes a seat across from me and grimaces. “She’s at the corner of Nicholas and Artisan Avenues, out west. Part of the Saint Augustine campus?”

I grab a notepad, stationery Shauna got for me, the name TASKER & KOLARICH in royal blue at the top, then JASON KOLARICH, ESQ., below it in a subdued font.

“Saint Augustine has a nursing home?” I ask.

“Saint Augustine has a cemetery,” Joel says. “James Drinker’s mother is dead.”

“Dead?” I drop my head into my hands, my elbows on my desk.

“She died this March. Just a few months ago. So your client lied to you,” he says. “Is that the first time a client has lied to you?”

I shake my head with wonder. “But—why even come to me, then? He comes and tells me all these scary murders are happening and then lies about his alibi? To me, his defense lawyer? It’s not like he’s been charged or anything. This whole thing is so . . .”

“Unsolicited?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Exactly.”

“So he’s a sick fuck.”

Right. That fits him. A sick fuck.

“Saw on the news there was a fourth murder on Tuesday night,” Lightner says. “You’ve probably seen the papers. It’s all over television, too. This thing is getting hot, Jason. They’re calling him the North Side Slasher. The police superintendent is telling women to lock their doors, that kind of thing. We . . . have . . . a . . . serial killer. Nobody’s denying it anymore.”

I’d seen some of the coverage, probably not as much as Joel. But he’s right. The police are now openly warning that there is a killer of women in our fair city.

I look at Joel. He stares back. Down the hall, Marie is laughing at something Bradley said. Inside this office, there is silence, heavy and dark.

“Is he our offender?” Joel asks carefully.

“Yeah,” I say. “Yeah, I think he is.” That was all it took, I guess, that one confirmed lie about his mother, to validate the notion that has swirled through me all along.

“You’re sworn to secrecy, right?” he asks me, knowing the answer already.

“Of course I am. Unless I know for certain he’s going to do it again.”

I scratch at my hand, searching in vain for that indefinable itch, until I draw blood.

Joel makes a face as he stands up. “Heavy lies the crown, my friend,” he says.

30.

Shauna

Thursday, June 20

I shake hands with Rory and Dylan Arangold at the end of a three-hour meeting. We’re doing what you do as you near trial in a civil lawsuit: working on a dual track, considering an acceptable settlement while preparing for a trial if there isn’t one. Yesterday, the lawyers for the city said they’d accept $5.5 million from us to “make the case go away.” But $5.5 million will make Arangold Construction go away. It’s above the surety bond they obtained, and they don’t have that kind of money lying around, not in this economy.

The Arangolds are old-school males in the construction business, hotheaded at times but totally uncomfortable showing fear. Which is why it’s so unsettling to watch them sweat so profusely as we cover every aspect of this case, as Rory taps at that calculator at the various permutations of damages a jury could award, as we consider the risks and rewards of the certainty of a settlement versus the likelihood of victory at trial.

“So you think Jason’ll be at the next meeting?” Rory asks. “Is that trial almost done?”

I’ve created an excuse for Jason, a major trial (the details vague) that has consumed him entirely. I won’t deny that I find it a little insulting that they keep asking for my law partner, but then again, they probably wouldn’t have handed me this case without him. I’ve handled some smaller matters for the Arangolds for years, transactional work and mechanic’s liens and a few smaller contract matters, but I didn’t really expect to get this case. I didn’t expect two guys who still call waitresses sweetheart and who always compliment me on my appearance to hand over this bet-the-company case to someone with a vagina.