'Then you think she might be alive?'

'There's a chance, yes.'

She finally raised her head. The eyes were wet. 'You do what you have to do to find her, Myron.' Her voice was surprisingly steady and strong. 'She's my daughter. My baby. She has to come first. No matter what.'

Myron waited for Carol Culver to continue, but she fell back into silence.

After nearly a full minute, Myron said, 'Dr Culver just pretended he was going to that medical conference.'

She took a deep breath and nodded.

'You thought he'd left that morning.'

Another androidlike nod.

'Then he surprised you here.'

'Yes.'

Myron's soft voice seemed to boom in the room. An antique clock ticked maddeningly. 'Mrs Culver, what did he see when he arrived?'

Tears began to flow. She lowered her head again.

'Did he see you,' Myron continued, 'with another man?'

Nothing.

'Was the man Paul Duncan?'

218

She lifted her head. Her eyes met his. 'Yes,' she said. 'I was with Paul.'

Myron waited again.

'Adam set a trap,' she continued, 'and we got caught.' The words were once again steady and strong. 'He had become suspicious. I don't know how. So he did just what you said - pretended to go to a conference in Denver. He even had me arrange his flights, so I would be sure he was gone.'

'What happened when your husband saw you?'

Shaking fingers rubbed her cheeks. She stood, turned away. 'Exactly what you'd expect to happen when a man finds his wife and best friend in bed.

Adam went crazy. He'd been drinking pretty heavily, which didn't help matters. He shouted at me, called me horrible names. I deserved that. I deserved a lot worse. He threatened Paul. We tried to calm him down, but of course that was impossible.'

She picked up the tea again. Each word was making her a little stronger, making it a little easier to breathe. 'Adam stormed out. I was scared. Paul went after him. But Adam drove off. Paul left after that.'

'How long have you and Paul Duncan…?' His voice just sort of mumbled away.

'Six years.'

'Did anybody else know?'

Her composure gave way. Not slowly. But as if a small bomb had blown it off her face. She crumbled, weeping freely. A realization came to Myron. He felt his blood freeze.

'Kathy,' he whispered. 'Kathy knew.'

The sobbing grew more intense.

'She found out,' he continued, 'during her senior year.'

Carol tried to stop her tears, but that took time. Myron remembered how Kathy had worshiped her mother, the perfect woman, the woman who balanced old-fashioned values with a sense of the modern. Carol Culver had been a homemaker and a shop owner. She had raised three beautiful children. She had instilled in her children more than just a sense of what is now popularly called 'family values.' For her values had been a rigid doctrine that she insisted her children follow. Jessica had rebelled. So had Edward. Only Kathy had been successfully locked in, like a lion kept in too small a cage.

And she had finally broken free.

'Kathy…' Carol Culver stopped, shut her eyes tightly. 'She walked in on us.'

'And that was when she changed,' Myron finished.

Carol Culver nodded, her eyes still squeezed closed. 'I did that to her.

Everything that happened was because of me. God forgive me.' Then she shook her head. 'No. I don't deserve forgiveness. I don't want it. I just want my baby back.'

'What did Kathy do when she saw you two?'

219

'Nothing. At first. She just turned and ran away. But the next day she broke up with her boyfriend Matt. And from there - she made sure I paid for what I'd done. For all the years I'd been a hypocrite. For all the years I lied to her. She wanted to hurt me in the worst way possible.'

'She began to sleep around,' Myron said.

'Yes. And she made sure I knew all about it.'

'By telling you?'

Carol Culver shook her head. 'Kathy wouldn't talk to me anymore.'

'So how did you find out?'

She hesitated. Her face was drawn, her skin pulled tight against her cheekbones. 'Photographs,' she said simply.

Something else clicked into place Horty and the camera. 'She gave you photos of herself with men.'

'Yes.'

'White men, black men, sometimes more than one.'

Her eyes closed again, but she managed to say, 'And not just men. It started slowly. A couple of nude pictures of her. Like the one in that magazine.'

'You saw that same picture before?'

'Yes. It even had the name of a photographer stamped on the back.'

'Global Globes Photos?'

'No. It was something like Forbidden Fruit.'

'Do you still have the picture?'

She shook her head.

'You threw them away?'

She shook her head again. 'I wanted to destroy them. I wanted to bi them and pretend I'd never seen them. But I couldn't. Kathy was punishing me. Keeping them was a form of penitence. I never told anyone about them, but I couldn't just throw them away. You see that, Myron, don't you?'

He nodded.

'So I hid them in the attic. In an old storage box. I thought they'd be! there.'

Myron saw where this was going. 'Your husband found them.'

'Yes.'

'When?'

'A few months ago. He never told me about it. But of course I knew by the way he was acting. I checked the attic. The pictures were gone. He assumed that Kathy had hidden them up there. He had no idea she'd shown them to me. Or maybe he did. Maybe that's how he became suspicious of Paul and me. I don't know.'

'Do you know what your husband did with those pictures, Mrs Culver? 'No. They were so awful. So painful to look at. I think Adam destroyed them.'

220

Myron doubted it. They both sat in silence for several minutes. Finally Myron said, 'Jessica is going to want to know.'

Carol Culver nodded. 'You tell her, Myron.'

She showed him to the door. He stopped at his car and turned back around. He studied the gray Victorian house. Twenty-six years ago a young family had moved in. They'd put up swings in the backyard and a basketball hoop in the driveway. They'd owned a station wagon, carpooled to Little League and choir practice, attended PTA meetings, hosted birthday parties.

Myron could almost see it all happening, like a life insurance commercial playing in his head.

He slid into his car and drove away.

221

42

Myron was thinking about threads again.

Threads like Gary Grady. Dean Gordon. Nancy Serat. Carol Culver.

Christian Steele, Fred Nickler. Paul Duncan. Ricky Lane. Horty and the thugs. But there was one thread he had overlooked.

Otto Burke.

Suppose Jake was right. Suppose the magazines had been sent out to wreak vengeance or maybe to satisfy some misguided or irrational anger.

Either way, it meant that everyone who had received a copy of Nips was in some way connected to Kathy Culver.

Except Otto Burke.

How did he fit in? Otto hadn't even known Kathy Culver.

Or had he?

Myron got off Route 4 at the Garden State Plaza Mall and took Route 13 south to Route 3. New Jersey, land of routes. He pulled into the Meadowlands and parked near the Titans' executive offices. He found the general manager's office and asked for Larry Hanson.