Kaiser is watching me like a bomber pilot deciding whether to flatten a suspected enemy village. The slightest sign could tilt him either way.

“If you let them put me in jail,” I tell him, “you’ll be losing your best chance to solve this case.”

“Why?”

“Dr. Malik told me I already know the truth about what happened to me, that I just have to find a way to pull it out of my head. I think the same is true about this case. They’re connected, somehow.”

“Maybe Malik was talking about some alternate identity inside you.”

“Jesus, would you get real? You’re talking to a woman who’s pregnant by a married man. I’m trying to quit drinking, and I just found out I was sexually abused by someone in my family. I don’t have time to run around killing people for fun or profit. Okay?”

There’s a flash of something in Kaiser’s eyes, humanity, maybe. Then he looks over my shoulder at Piazza again. Kaiser is my only hope of staying free.

“I talked to Malik on the phone,” I admit. “He told me some things about the case. You arrest me, you’ll never find out what they are.”

“What things?” he asks, his eyes narrowed.

“Did you find a box inside that room?”

“No. What was in the box?”

I shake my head.

Kaiser grabs my wrist. “Come with me.”

As he pulls me toward the Crown Victoria I rode in the other day, I glance over my shoulder. The two NOPD detectives are coming after me. Kaiser puts me in the backseat and climbs in after me. Closed into this small space with him, I feel again the personal magnetism I felt in my house that afternoon with Sean.

“What’s about to happen?” I ask.

His face is taut. “I don’t know, but it should be interesting.”

One of the detectives knocks on the window.

“Don’t get out of this car unless I tell you to,” Kaiser says.

“I won’t.”

Kaiser gets out of the backseat and locks the door behind him. A heated discussion begins outside, but Kaiser moves the detectives steadily away from the car, so I only hear part of it. Words come to me out of an audio blur. Arrest. Conspiracy. Aiding and abetting. A woman’s voice joins the fray. Captain Piazza is talking about jurisdictional control and federal interference. The word “psycho” reaches my ears. Kaiser must be speaking quietly, because I can’t hear anything he’s saying. Yet after a couple of minutes, it’s Kaiser who returns to the car and gets inside with me.

“Are they going to arrest me?”

“They want to. Piazza thinks you’ve been lying to us from the start. That you’ve been feeding Malik information about the investigation. She’s suspending Sean, and she wants your hide nailed to the barn wall. She wants to interrogate you herself.”

“Great.”

Kaiser’s eyes bore into mine. “What was in the box you mentioned, Cat? At this point, that may be the only thing that could keep you out of jail.”

“A film.”

I see connections happening at light speed behind Kaiser’s eyes. “The video production equipment,” he says. “The stuff we found at Malik’s secret apartment. That’s what it was for?”

“Bravo.”

“What kind of film is it?”

“Malik’s making a documentary about sexual abuse. About an experimental therapy group he was working with. Group X.”

“I’ll be damned.”

“Female patients only. He said it was radical stuff. It was his life’s work. No way would Malik have killed himself before he finished that film. And he seemed to think a lot of people didn’t want anyone to see it.”

Kaiser takes some time to process this. “Did he tell you who any of the patients in Group X were?”

“No.”

“Was your aunt one of them?”

“He didn’t tell me, and I don’t know.”

“Have you spoken to your aunt?”

“No.”

“ Shit. With Malik dead, we may never find out who was in Group X. Not unless your aunt can tell us.”

That’s not all we’ll never know, I think with desolation. The secret of my life may have died with Malik. Unless Ann knows it. Knows it and will tell me

“But the film shows the women in Group X?”

“Yes. They supposedly relive their abuse in front of the camera.”

“I guess Malik’s killer took it.”

I give Kaiser a thin smile. “I’d say so.”

He glances back toward the NOPD detectives, who are staring angrily at the car. “Goddamn it. Tell me about that motel room, Cat.”

“I didn’t know where Malik was until five minutes before I got here. He gave me a phone number to call. When I arrived, the door was open. I went in and found him in the bathroom. The blood on the wall was fresh. Then I saw the gun in his hand.”

“What if Malik was the killer, and he offed himself because his work was done after all? After the sixth victim, I mean?”

I shake my head. “You know better, John. Malik’s work was his film, not murder. Tell me about the sixth victim.”

Kaiser looks back at the motel. Piazza is standing with her detectives again. “His name was Quentin Baptiste. He was an NOPD homicide detective.”

“What? Shit.”

“Yep. It was probably Baptiste who was feeding information to the killer, knowingly or not. That’s one reason Piazza would like to pin that on you.”

“How old was Baptiste?”

“Forty-one.”

“The youngest victim yet. Is Sean at that crime scene?”

“He was on his way there when I left. He’s probably heard about this by now. We need to get you out of here.”

“What about female relatives?”

“What?

“Have you checked out Quentin Baptiste’s female relatives? One of them could have been a patient of Malik’s. One of them could be in Group X. If he was only forty-one, I’d check daughters, step-daughters, and nieces. Also brothers or fathers of those women.”

“I was starting that when we got the tip to come here. Since Baptiste was a cop, it shouldn’t be hard to-” Kaiser’s face tightens. “Shit.”

A dark green Saab screeches to a stop a few yards away from us. As Sean leaps out and races toward the motel, Kaiser lifts a walkie-talkie to his lips. “Richard, get out here now. Don’t tell Detective Regan where Dr. Ferry is.”

“Is Sean living at home again?” I ask.

Kaiser meets my eyes. “I think so, yeah. Trying to reconcile with his wife.”

“Make sure he knows I’m not hurt.”

“I will.”

The front door of the Crown Vic opens, and a gray-suited FBI agent jumps behind the wheel. As he starts the engine, Sean bursts from room eighteen and scans the parking lot. Our eyes lock. He sprints toward the car, but Kaiser’s driver screeches onto Williams Boulevard before Sean can reach us.

We’re three blocks away from the motel when a revelation hits me like a body blow. “Turn around!”

“That would be a mistake,” Kaiser says firmly. “For both of you.”

“It’s not Sean! It’s the skull. I need to see that skull.”

“Why?”

I try to rein in my excitement. “The teeth in that skull made the bite marks on the victims. I’d bet anything on it.”

“Turn the car around,” Kaiser orders.

Richard gets us back to the Thibodeaux in less than a minute. Sean’s Saab is already gone. Captain Piazza must have made it clear to him that following us could be a catastrophic career move.

Summoned by Kaiser via radio, a female evidence technician walks out to our car carrying the skull in a large Ziploc bag. Kaiser reaches across me, rolls down my window, and takes the skull from the tech. Then he sets it in my lap.

The polished skull stares up at me with the ironic grin I saw in the motel bathtub. The bone has a slightly yellowish color, probably from aging of the varnish someone put on it.

“I need gloves.”

“Give her your gloves,” Kaiser orders the tech.

My heart pounds as I struggle to put on the technician’s latex gloves, which turned inside out when she removed them. Even without opening the skull’s mouth, I can see that its lateral incisors are slightly pegged, as were those that wounded the flesh of our victims. Once the gloves are on, I open the Ziploc and remove the skull.