“Oh, baby girl,” Ann says in a breathy voice, “I’ve worried about you so much. But you really should talk to Nathan about this, not me.”

Is she telling me she was abused? Why else would she worry about me? “Why have you worried about me so much?”

“You’re a lot like me, Cat. Gwen told me they diagnosed cyclothymia, but that’s just bipolarity under another name. We’ve got it in the blood. Nathan’s the expert, though. I’m not in shape to give anyone advice.”

Kaiser is mouthing words to me. It looks like he’s saying, Group X.

“Dr. Malik told me about something called Group X. It sounded really cool. He told me about the film, everything. Were you part of that?”

Ann starts to reply, then catches herself. In the hiss of the open line, I can feel her listening to me. Listening with the concentration of the manic mind in its focused state. It makes my skin crawl. I know the feeling of hyperconcentration you experience when your mind is on that plateau. If you listen to the grass, you can hear it growing.

“Catherine?” she says, her voice so imperious that it could have come from my grandfather. “What are you not telling me?”

“What do you mean?”

“You know exactly what I mean.”

Kaiser is watching me anxiously. “I don’t. This is me you’re talking to, Ann. And this is a dangerous situation we’re in. Even Dr. Malik knew that.”

“ Knew? ”

I grimace, and Kaiser curses silently.

“You just used the past tense, baby girl.” The crafty voice again.

“Well, Dr. Malik’s in jail now. And for murder this time.”

“I hear your voice, Cat. You’re afraid of something. Or someone. Or for someone.”

“No. You’re reading things into this.”

“I want to talk to Nathan.”

“Come to New Orleans. You can see him at the parish prison.”

This time the silence drags forever. “I can’t come there until you tell me the truth, Cat.”

I grit my teeth and try to keep my voice even. “I’ve told you what I know. I’m worried that you don’t trust-”

The hissing line takes on a deadness like a blanket dropped over my heart. “She hung up on me.”

The FBI field office is a four-story brick fortress on the southern shore of Lake Pontchartrain, between Lakefront Airport and the University of New Orleans. We stop at the heavy-iron gate topped with fleur-de-lis, so Kaiser can show an armed guard his credentials. Once inside, we park and hurry through an entrance adorned with flags, black marble, and the FBI motto: Fidelity, Bravery, Integrity.

There’s red tape to be handled in the vestibule, where a woman waits behind bulletproof polycarbonate glass. Afterward, Kaiser ushers me through a metal detector, and we’re on our way to the fourth floor, where the special agent in charge runs the field office and the 150 FBI agents spread across Louisiana.

When we get out of the elevator, Kaiser leads me down a hallway like those in every other corporate headquarters in America. Muted decor, more doors, more hallways. Kaiser knocks on a closed door, then enters and beckons me inside. Beyond the door is an empty office with four cots in it. Two are bare, but two are made up with sheets, blankets, and pillows.

“Best I can do, I’m afraid.”

“It’s better than a cell in the parish prison.”

Kaiser gives me an obligatory chuckle. “I need to go straighten this mess out with the SAC. He may want to talk to you.”

“I’m good. Whatever.”

“Good or not, I’m going to send up a nurse. Her name is Sandy.”

“I’ll be asleep before she gets here.”

He nods, then starts to leave.

“May I have my cell phone back?”

“Can’t do that. Sorry.”

“Nobody’s read me my rights.”

Kaiser’s patience is straining at the seams. “Cat, you’ve obstructed justice and maybe acted as an accessory to multiple murder. If I let you interfere in this case anymore-which your cell phone would make it very easy for you to do-the SAC will throw you out the front gate and give you to the NOPD. And there won’t be a damn thing I can do about it. Okay?”

“Fair enough. But you’ll tell me if Ann calls?”

“Absolutely. I’ll bring your phone in here and have you call her back.”

He looks at me as if he’s sure I have another question, but I don’t. I do, however, have an idea. “I’ve been thinking about the skull, John.”

“What about it?”

“From the very beginning, I figured the bite marks could be staged. Did Sean tell you my theory about the killer using dentures or an articulated model to make the marks?”

A smile touches Kaiser’s lips. “Let’s say he took partial credit for that.”

“Par for the course. Well, my theory proved out. The killer was using the teeth from that skull to make the marks. Next question: Whose DNA have we been testing? Where does the saliva come from? We know it’s not Malik’s.”

Kaiser nods. “Sure, but until we have a suspect, we have nothing to compare our samples to.”

“Yeah, but I was thinkingsaliva contains more than DNA, you know. We need to know everything we can about that saliva.”

“Like what? What do you want to do?”

“Some basic nineteenth-century science. Everybody treats DNA analysis as the be-all and end-all of forensics. Fine, great. But the average mouth contains strep bacteria and all kinds of other bugs. Let’s take the fresh saliva out of Quentin Baptiste’s wounds, put it in a petri dish, and see what grows out. Maybe we’ll get a strange germ that can tell us something. Sort of like the way we track where a corpse ate dinner by looking at its stomach contents. Impurities and things, you know?”

Kaiser looks skeptical. “What could we really learn?”

“I don’t know. We might find our suspect suffers from a certain disease. We should give it a shot, right? Like Sean calling that bail bondsman back and figuring out that Ann paid Malik’s bail.”

“You’re right. I’ll tell the forensic team to do it.”

“Tell them quick. Baptiste has the only viable saliva for this, and cultures take time.”

“Done.” He goes to the door, then turns back to me and speaks in an apologetic voice. “Hey. Are you really pregnant?”

I nod silently.

“Sean’s?”

“Yes.”

He closes his eyes for a moment, then looks at me again. “Are you going to have it?”

“Yes.”

He doesn’t blink. “Good for you.”

I never saw or heard a nurse come into my room. The Valium carried me away from the waking world like a gentle river of Grey Goose. Maybe my alcohol withdrawal has made me hypersensitive to drugs. Whatever the reason, I slid down the bright coral wall into my dream ocean without interference, and the myriad images of my subconscious surrounded me like children penned up in a house all day.

Time flows forward and backward in my dreams. Not at my whim, of course. If intruders are chasing me and about to grab me from behind with clawed fingers, I can’t reverse time and save myself. But events in my dreams don’t always unroll in a forward sequence. Sometimes I’m getting younger as my dream life progresses-or re gresses, I suppose-turning from nine to eight at a birthday party, for example. I’ve never gone back beyond eight, though. The age I was when my father died is like an obsidian wall, an immutable fact of physics laid down by Newton or Einstein or even God. The sign on that wall doesn’t read BEYOND THIS POINT LIE MONSTERS, like the legend on ancient maps. It reads BEYOND THIS POINT LIES NOTHING.

Nothing. Does such a thing exist? I’ve heard children ask this question: Isn’t even “nothing” something? Space is something, isn’t it? Time exists there. And gravity. Invisible things, perhaps, but they’re real enough to kill you. I existed before I was eight, even though I don’t remember it. I know that I existed then the way I know that doctors took out my tonsils while I was under anesthetic. Something happened, even if I wasn’t mentally present.