He gave a facial shrug. “I smelled it. Whiskey. And I remember wanting some.”

“Where were you?”

“On the side of some road outside of some bumfuck town in the middle of nowhere. Dutton,” he spat it out. “I wish I’d never heard of the place.”

That makes two of us, Daniel thought, then looked at Alex. Three of us. “Do you remember what time it was?”

He shook his head. “I didn’t never carry a watch. But it was bright again, all the time. I could finally see where I was. I’d wandered… I guess I was lost.”

Bright again? Daniel made a mental note to check the phase of the moon on the night Alicia was murdered. “All right. So you smelled whiskey. And then?”

“I followed my nose to the whiskey down into this ditch. There was a blanket and I thought I’d take it. My blanket was nasty.” He swallowed hard, his eyes still focused on Alex. “I grabbed the blanket and yanked. And she just… fell out.”

Alex flinched. Her skin was ashen, her lips bright pink from her lipstick, and Daniel thought of Sheila, dead in the corner, her hands still gripping her gun. He considered stopping the whole interview and rushing Alex out of this place where she’d be safe. But they’d come this far and he knew she was made of sterner stuff. So he swallowed the emotion and kept his voice level. “What do you mean, Gary, ‘she fell out’?”

“I grabbed the blanket and she rolled out of it, naked. Her arms were all limp and rubbery and they flopped, all spread out. One of her hands landed on my foot.” His tone had gone hollow. His eyes never left Alex’s face. “Then I saw her face,” he said, pain in every word. “Her eyes were starin’ at me. Empty. Like empty holes.” Just like Alex’s stared at him now. Empty and blank. “I was… wild. Scared out of my mind.”

He said nothing, lapsing back into a memory that still obviously had the power to scare him out of his mind. “ Gary, what did you do?”

“I don’t know. I wanted her to… stop lookin’ at me.” His clenched fists punched at the air twice, hard and fast, sending chains jangling. “So I hit her.”

“With your hands?”

“Yes. At first. But she wouldn’t stop lookin’ at me.” Fulmore was rocking now, and Alex continued to stare at him blankly.

Daniel poised himself to hold Fulmore back in the event he became unable to distinguish Alex in the now from Alicia in the then. “Where did you get the tire iron?”

“In my blanket. I carried it with me always, in my blanket. But then it was in my hands and I was smashing her face. I hit her again and again and again.”

Visualizing it, Daniel drew in a quick breath. And in that moment knew this man had not killed Alicia Tremaine.

Tears streaked Fulmore’s face, but his clenched fists stayed frozen in front of him. “I just wanted her to stop lookin’ at me.” His shoulders sagged. “And then, finally, she did.”

“You’d beaten her face.”

“Yes. But just her eyes.” He looked childishly beseeching. “I had to close her eyes.”

“So then what did you do?”

Fulmore wiped his face with his shoulder. “I wrapped her up. Better.”

“Better?”

He nodded. “She was kind of loose in the blanket before. I wrapped her up tight.” He swallowed again. “Like a baby, only she weren’t no baby.”

“What about her hands, Gary?” Daniel asked, and Fulmore nodded absently.

“She had pretty hands. I folded them across her belly before I wrapped her up.”

They’d found Alicia’s ring in his pocket. A glance at Bell from the corner of Daniel’s eye told him the lawyer was thinking the same thing.

“Did she have anything on her hands?” Bell asked him, using the same soft tone.

“A ring. It was blue.”

“The stone was blue?” Daniel asked, and watched Alex stretch out her hands and stare at her fingers, then slowly curl her hands into fists.

“Yeah.”

“And you wrapped her up with the ring on her hand,” Bell murmured, and Fulmore’s eyes shot up to meet Daniel’s, panicked and angry.

“Yeah.” The faraway tone was gone. “They said I took it, but I didn’t.”

“Then what happened, Gary?”

“I don’t remember. I must have taken some more PCP. The next thing I knew, I had three guys on top of me and they were beating me with their clubs.” Fulmore’s chin jutted out. “They said I killed her, but I didn’t. They wanted me to take a plea, but I wouldn’t. I did a terrible thing to that girl, but I did not kill her.” His final words were evenly spaced and very deliberate. “I did not.”

“Do you remember going to the autobody shop?” Bell asked him.

“No. Like I said, I woke and three guys were holding me down.”

“Thank you for your time,” Daniel said. “We’ll be in touch.”

Fulmore looked to Bell, a glimmer of hope in his eyes. “Can we get a new trial?”

Bell’s eyes met Daniel’s. “Can we?”

“I don’t know. I can’t make promises, Bell, you know that. I’m not a DA.”

“But you know the DA,” Bell said cagily. “Gary’s told you what he knows. He’s cooperating without guarantee of recourse. That should mean something.”

Daniel’s eyes narrowed at Bell. “I said I’d be in touch. Now I have to get back to Atlanta for a meeting.” He urged Alex to her feet. “Come on, let’s go.”

She came willingly, more like a doll than a live person, and once again Daniel’s mind was assaulted with the memory of Sheila’s dead body in that corner. He put his arm around Alex’s shoulders and propelled her from the room.

They were almost to Daniel’s car when Bell shouted for them to wait, then jogged the length of the parking lot, breathing hard. “I’m going to file for a new trial.”

“Premature,” Daniel said.

“I don’t think so and neither do you, or you wouldn’t have driven all the way down here and put her through that.” He pointed to Alex, who lifted her chin and gave him a cool look. But she said nothing and he nodded, satisfied he’d hit the truth. “I’ve been following the news, Vartanian. Somebody’s re-creating these murders.”

“Could be a copycat,” Daniel said, and Bell shook his head.

“You don’t think so,” he said again. “Look. I know your sister was killed, Miss Fallon, and I’m sorry, but Gary’s lost thirteen years of his life.”

Daniel sighed. “When this is over, we’ll meet with the state’s attorney.”

Bell nodded briskly. “That’s fair.”

Atlanta, Wednesday, January 31, 5:30 p.m.

They were close to Atlanta when Daniel finally spoke. “Are you all right?”

She was staring at her hands, a frown puckering her brow. “I don’t know.”

“When he said Alicia ‘fell out’ of the blanket, it was like you went into a trance.”

“I did?” Abruptly she turned to look at him. “Meredith wants to try hypnosis.”

He agreed with Meredith, but in his experience the person undergoing hypnosis had to be open. He wasn’t sure Alex was open right now. “What do you want?”

“To make this all go away.” She whispered it fiercely.

He reached for her hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“Thank you. Daniel… I… I didn’t expect to feel that way when I finally saw him. I wanted to kill him myself.”

Daniel frowned. “You mean you’d never seen Fulmore?”

“No. I was in Ohio the whole time of the trial. Aunt Kim and Uncle Steve wanted to protect me. They were good to me.”

“Then you’re lucky.” The words came out more bitterly than he’d expected. He kept his eyes on the road, but he could feel her eyes studying his profile.

“Your parents weren’t good to you.”

It was such a simple statement, he almost laughed. “No.”

Her brows lifted. “What about your sister, Susannah? Are you two close?”

Suze. Daniel sighed. “No. I’d like to be, but we’re not.”

“She’s hurting. You’ve both lost your parents and even though they died a few months ago, for you, it was really just last week.”

Daniel huffed a mirthless laugh. “Our parents were dead to us a long time before Simon killed them. We were what you’d call a dysfunctional family.”