If Good and Evil could talk to each other, what would they say?

Then how had Kevin and Slater talked to each other? The FBI had a recording. How, how? Unless . . .

A second cell. He’s using another cell phone!

Sam ran for Kevin’s room. Dear God, let me be wrong!He hadn’t moved. She crept up to him. Where would he keep the phones? The one Slater had left him was always in his right pocket.

There was only one way to do this. Quickly, before she awakened him. Sam slipped her hand into his right pocket. He wore cargo pants, loose, but his weight pressed her hand into the mattress. She touched the phone, felt the recording device on the back. Slater’s.

She rounded the bed, crawled up for better access, and slid her hand into his left pocket. Kevin grunted and rolled to his side, facing her. She stayed still until his breathing returned to a deep slow rhythm and then tried again, this time with his left pocket exposed.

Her fingers felt plastic. Sam knew then that she was right, but she pulled it out anyway. A cell phone, identical to the one Slater had left for Kevin, except black instead of silver. She flipped it open and scrolled through the call history. The calls were to the other cell phone. One to the hotel room phone. Two to Kevin’s home phone.

This was the cell phone Slater had used. To talk, to detonate the bombs. Sam’s mind throbbed. There could be no doubt about it.

They would crucify him.

23

SAM ROLLED OFF THE BED, closed Kevin’s door, and flew downstairs. She gripped the phone Slater had used to make his calls in her right hand—for now Slater wouldn’t be making those calls, at least not on this phone. She didn’t bother being discreet on her exit but walked right out the back, turned up the street, and ran for her car.

I, Slater, am I, Kevin. And that had been Samantha’s greatest fear. That her childhood friend had a multiple personality disorder as she’d suggested to Jennifer a day earlier, and then immediately rejected because Kevin was in the room when Slater called. But it struck her as she lay trying to sleep last night that Slater had not talkedto her while Kevin was in the room. The phone had only rung while he was in the room. Kevin was in the hall before she picked up and heard Slater. Kevin could have simply pushed the send button in his pocket and then talked to Sam once in the hall. Could multiple personalities work that way?

She’d been with Kevin in the car when Slater called, just before the bus blew. But she had no proof that Slater was actually on the line then. They had no recording of that call.

It was absurd. It was impossible! But try as she might in sleepless fits, Sam couldn’t account for a single definitive situation that necessarily proved they couldn’t be the same man. Not one.

Mere conjecture! It had to be coincidence!

Now this.

If Good and Evil could talk to each other, what would they say?

Sam reached her car, stomach in knots. This might not be enough. She’d been irresponsible to suggest the possibility to Jennifer in the first place. The man you think you might be falling in love with is insane. And she’d said it so calmly for the simple reason that she didn’t believe it herself. She was only doing what she was trained to do. But this . . . this was an entirely different matter.

And Kevin wasn’tinsane! He was merely role-playing, as he had learned to do with Balinda for so many years. He had split into a divergent personality when he first began to comprehend true evil. The boy. He had been the boy! Only he didn’t know that he was the boy. To Kevin at age eleven, the boy was an evil person who needed to be killed. So he killed him. But the boy had never died. Slater had simply remained dormant until now, when somehow this paper on the natures of man had allowed him to resurface.

She could still be wrong. In true cases of multiple personality disorders, the subjects were rarely conscious of their alternate personalities. Slater wouldn’t know that he was Kevin; Kevin would not know that he was Slater. Actually they weren’teach other. Physically, yes, but in no other way. Slater could be living right now as Kevin slept, plotting to kill Balinda, and Kevin wouldn’t have a clue. Some things Slater did would be merely imagined; others, like the bombs and the kidnapping, would be acted out.

She tossed Kevin’s phone on the seat and punched Jennifer’s number into her own.

“Jenn—”

“I need to meet you! Now. Where are you?”

“Sam? I’m down at the PD. What’s wrong?”

“Have you gotten the lab reports on the shoe prints and the recordings yet?”

“No. Why? Where are you?”

“I was just in Kevin’s house and I’m headed your way.” She pulled onto Willow.

“How’s Kevin?”

Sam took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “He’s asleep. I found a second phone on him, Jennifer. It was the phone used to call the cell with the recording device. I don’t know how else to say this. I think Kevin is Slater.”

“That’s . . . I thought we’d already been over this. He was in the room when Slater—”

“Listen, Jennifer, I’ve come at this from a hundred different angles in the last twelve hours. I’m not saying that I can prove it; God knows I don’t want it to be true, but if it is, he needs help! He needs you. And he’s the only one who can take us to Balinda. Kevin won’t know, but Slater will.”

“Please, Sam, this is crazy. How could he have pulled this off? We’ve had people on the house. We’ve been listening to him in there! How did he get out to kidnap Balinda?”

“It’s his house; he knows how to get out without your boys catching on. Where was he between 3 A.M. and 5 A.M. last night?”

“Sleeping . . .”

“Kevin may have thought he was, but was he? I don’t think he’s had six hours’ sleep in the last four days. Trace it back. He hasn’t gotten any phone calls while you were listening, at least not in the house. I hope I’m wrong, I really do, but I don’t think you’ll find a discrepancy. He’s too intelligent. But he wants the truth out. Subconsciously, consciously, I don’t know, but he’s getting sloppy. He wants the world to know. That’s the answer to the riddle.”

“ What falls but never breaks? What breaks but never falls?Night and day,” Jennifer said. “Opposites. Kevin.”

“Kevin. Kevinwas the boy; that’s why I never saw the boy when we were kids. He was in that warehouse cellar, but only him, no second boy. He hit himself. Check the blood type. The confession Slater wants isn’t that Kevin tried to kill the boy, but that he wasthe boy. That Kevin is Slater.”

“I am my sin,” Jennifer said absently. There was a tremor in her voice.

“What?”

“Something he said last night.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Sam said. “Don’t let Kevin leave the house.”

“But only Slater knows where he has Balinda? Kevin truly doesn’t know?”

“That’s my guess.”

“Then we need Slater to find Balinda. But if we send the wrong signal, Slater may go into remission. If he does and Kevin doesn’t know where Balinda is, we may have our first actual victim in this case. Even if we hold Kevin in a cell, she could starve to death.” Jennifer was suddenly sounding frantic. “He’s not the Riddle Killer; he hasn’t killed anyone yet. We can’t let that happen.”

“So we let him walk out?”

“No. No, I don’t know, but we have to handle this with kid gloves.”

“I’ll be right there,” Sam said. “Just make sure Kevin doesn’t leave that house.”

The sound of his bedroom door closing pulled Kevin from sleep. It was 3:00. He’d slept over four hours. Jennifer had insisted that he not be bothered unless absolutely necessary. So why were they in his house?

Unless theyweren’t in his house. Unless it was someone else. Someone like Slater!