“I didn’t say that. We’ve come to believe that the defendant did have that addiction, yes. It’s nice to hear you admit it. I didn’t realize you would.”

Nice jab. The addiction is the third rail in this trial. It plays a significant role in the prosecution’s narrative, a major piece of Roger Ogren’s story that ends with my killing Alexa. Given our choice, Shauna and I would have liked to deny the whole thing. But the problem is that I’ve been treated in jail for the problem, so I can’t really deny it. So instead, we’re embracing it, trying to make the most of it. Shauna will argue to the jury that I was impaired when I submitted to the interview with the police. It can explain some of the—ahem—ambiguities in my statements.

But it cuts the other way, too. It gives the jury a vision of me that is not flattering—out of control, desperate, irrational, quite possibly dangerous, capable of doing things that, ordinarily, would be beyond a well-heeled attorney. Picture those old meth commercials—This wasn’t supposed to be your life!—or the old egg-frying-in-a-pan, This is your brain on drugs ads.

Addiction freaks people out. It scares them.

And it makes it far, far more plausible to the jury that I killed Alexa Himmel.

FIVE MONTHS BEFORE TRIAL

July

42.

Jason

Monday, July 1

My town house has shrunk in on me over the last thirty-six hours, since I paid the visit to James Drinker and found out I was chasing a ghost. I’ve kept Alexa away, ignored phone calls from Joel Lightner, secluded myself in my house to think.

Who is this guy? Who is this man who waltzed into my office in disguise, giving an alias, and telling me about dead women?

I think through every permutation and always come back to the same thing: I have history with this man. I prosecuted him. I prosecuted someone he cares about. Or I defended him, or someone he loves, with a result he didn’t like, and now he wants to blame the lawyer.

I’ve tried to create a list of every case where I appeared as counsel, but it’s impossible to get it anywhere close to complete. When you’re a prosecutor in a major system like ours, you start with small stuff, traffic and misdemeanor and drug courts. Then you do a stint in juvenile courts, where the records are sealed. Then you’re third-chairing bigger cases, and then after several years, you start handling your own major crimes.

I’ve prosecuted hundreds of people, probably thousands, each of whom has loved ones. The list of suspects is endless. And that’s only the ones I can remember. The county attorney’s office doesn’t keep a list of such things. And with all the courtrooms I bounced around, all the different kinds of cases, it’s impossible to come up with anything close to a complete list.

I need to talk to this guy. I need to search for clues. But I don’t have a phone number for him. He never gave me one and he always calls from an unknown number, probably one of those throwaway cell phones, ten bucks at a convenience store, another ten for a hundred minutes.

He probably knows I went to 3611 West Townsend, apartment 406, and accosted the real James Drinker on Saturday night. He probably knows I’m twisting myself inside out trying to come up with something to make sense out of all of this.

I remove an Altoid and chew it up. I’m not keeping track. I’ve been good, if that’s the word, about holding down these tablets to one every two hours. I think I’m off that now. I don’t know. I’m not focused. I’m wide awake but half asleep at the same time. I’m buzzing with adrenaline while dozing off. All color is muted, tamped down with gray. All lines are blurry and shifting.

Alexa sends me a text message at two o’clock—I’M OUTSIDE YR DOOR, PLS LET ME IN!—so I go downstairs and open up. She puts her hands on my cheeks and peppers me with kisses like a child, wraps her arms around me, reassures me that everything will turn out fine, just fine. I’ve given her the highlights of what happened, so she recognizes as well as I the emptiness of her words.

When my cell phone buzzes at close to three o’clock in the afternoon, I nearly come out of my skin. I’ve received plenty of calls, and every time, my nerves rattle and my stomach revolts. I’m dreading the very thing I want—a call from the mystery man.

I approach the kitchen counter with trepidation, looking at the phone and mumbling something when I see that word on the face of the phone: Unknown.

What an appropriate word for him.

“Jason!” It’s him. James Drinker, but not James Drinker.

I don’t say anything. This guy does everything for a reason. He has a reason for this call, too.

He chuckles, makes sure I can hear his amusement. Part of the game. “I guess we both know my name isn’t James Drinker. What would you like to call me?”

Asshole? Lowlife? Dead man?

“Your call,” I say.

“Ooooh. Maybe I’ll give something up, he thinks. Maybe I’ll give a name that will tip him off, he thinks.”

“Tell me why this is happening,” I say. “Tell me what you want. You want me to say I’m sorry for something I did? I’ll say it. But don’t take it out on innocent people. These women did nothing to you.”

“How do you know they did nothing to me, Jason? You don’t know that.”

“You said you didn’t know Alicia Corey or Lauren Gibbs.”

“That doesn’t mean they didn’t do something to me. People can be cruel to people they don’t know. In my experience, crueler than they are to people they know.”

I don’t respond to that. If I’m going to get anything out of this conversation at all, he has to do most of the talking. He knows that, of course. He knows I’m searching for a clue. It doesn’t mean he won’t give me one, though. He may not be able to resist.

“Come after me,” I say. “Take it out on me, not them.”

“How do you know I’m not?”

My hands ball into fists. One day, I think to myself, one day I will get my hands on this creep.

“They’re going to catch you,” I say. “However good you may think you are, serial killers get caught.”

“Not all of them. The Zodiac Killer didn’t. The BTK guy basically handed himself over. So did the Unabomber, unintentionally. It’s amazing, isn’t it? How easy it can be to kill people and get away with it?”

“You’ve made mistakes,” I say. “You’ve left a trail, even if you don’t know it.”

“Oh, I’ve left a trail, all right. But it won’t lead to me. You haven’t been paying attention, Jason.”

The line disconnects. I drop the phone and wipe sweat off my forehead. I look over at Alexa, who is watching me, eyebrows raised. I go upstairs to find my computer.

43.

Jason

Monday, July 1

I go online and start with Google. I put in the name of the first victim, Alicia Corey, the stripper from Knockers.

“You’re going to get a thousand hits because of the press coverage,” Alexa says, standing over my shoulder.

“I don’t know how else to do it.”

She’s right, though; the coverage was even more intense than I’d realized. There are dozens of articles from newspapers in the Midwest and even some in The New York Times and the L.A. Times, articles picked up from a wire service, no doubt, as the small string of words that accompany each hit are usually identical. There are also numerous entries from Facebook and Myspace, “Alicia Corey” being a fairly common name. There’s even a professional fighter by that name.