That was one busy needle. First, it was injected into Alicia Corey. Then it was sunk into the skin of Lauren Gibbs. Then it was hidden behind a certificate on my wall. Then it was tucked safely away in my bedroom.

Then it was sunk into Alexa’s jugular vein.

But ultimately, it made its way back to the apartment of Marshall Rivers.

It’s kind of ironic, when you think about it. Marshall was using that needle to implicate me for murder. And it ends up being used as evidence that exonerates me of a different murder.

“Ms. Tasker,” says the judge, flushed, after she finally brings the courtroom back to silence. “Do you have any further questions?”

Shauna glances at her notes, then at me. I write something on a piece of paper and show it to her. She looks at it and walks over to me. There is such a looseness to her stride, such a relaxed look on her face, that I almost don’t recognize her.

“You never said what happened to Marshall,” I whisper.

“I didn’t? I guess I didn’t,” she acknowledges. “But everyone knows what happened. Everyone knows all about him.”

We look at each other for a long time. Then she leans in and whispers into my ear.

“He killed himself,” she says. “Right, Jason?”

Shauna draws back, looks me over with a poker face. But she doesn’t wait for an answer. She returns to the podium to address the judge.

Marshall Rivers was found dead in his apartment on the evening of Friday, August 2, nearly three full days after Alexa was found dead in my town house. And two days after his rent was due. His landlord let himself in and found Marshall lying in a pool of blood. The police responded, and it wasn’t long before the search of that apartment led them to conclude that Marshall Rivers was the infamous North Side Slasher. The bloody knife, the hypodermic needles, the packets of fentanyl, all told the story. The suicide note on his computer didn’t hurt, either.

The timing of Marshall’s death was a difficult one for the medical examiner to pin down. The circumstantial evidence helped somewhat. Marshall hadn’t been scheduled to work at the dry cleaner’s on Wednesday, July 31, but he did miss work the next day, Thursday, August 1, so it looked like he died before the morning of August 1. The medical evidence? Rigor mortis had long come and gone by the time he was found that Friday night, so sometime before August 1 made sense to the coroner. The best estimate, from the larvae present, was that Marshall Rivers had been dead approximately seventy-two hours when he was found.

Marshall Rivers, in other words, died within relatively the same window of time that Alexa Himmel died.

“I have no further questions,” says Shauna. “And the defense rests.”

THE DAY OF ALEXA HIMMEL’S DEATH

Tuesday, July 3

105.

Shauna

9:05 P.M.

I sit upstairs on Jason’s bed with my iPad, doing research on addiction recovery centers around here. They certainly aren’t hard to find. But finding the right one could be a chore. So I’m looking for reviews, as well. Some of these clinics specialize in painkiller addiction, which is probably a better fit, but how the heck do I know?

I check my watch and do the math. Jason got the call from Alexa at a quarter past eight. Even with bad traffic—and I doubt traffic is bad this time of night—Jason would have reached Alexa’s house by now.

What’s going on there? It didn’t feel right, the way Jason popped up and left. Alexa calls in a breathless panic and he goes running.

She could have told him anything. Jason wouldn’t tell me, but it’s not hard to imagine. I’m going to kill myself, I swear I will! Or: “James Drinker” just tried to kill me. Anything.

I should have gone with him. He said no. That will make it worse, he said to me, undoubtedly true, but still—I should have gone.

And his ultimate rationale: I have to get my cell phone, anyway. He’d left it at Alexa’s house earlier today, after reading that threatening e-mail from Alexa about telling the Board of Attorney Discipline about his drug problem. I need to get it sooner or later.

True. And maybe that’s all it was. Sure, she’ll beg him to take her back. But he won’t. He knows better.

Maybe he’s hoping that this one last time with her will do the trick, will finally calm her down and make her go away. Fat chance, but I could see Jason thinking that, giving her the benefit of the doubt.

And I can’t discount the level of guilt he’s feeling, however misplaced it may be. No matter how much she manipulated him, he assumes responsibility for her broken heart.

Is she capable of something more? She wouldn’t hurt him, I tell myself. Would she? No. No?

But if I really didn’t see Alexa as a threat, then why did I run upstairs to Jason’s closet to retrieve his gun, hidden in the old pair of wingtips in the back of his closet? Even though I despise guns, can’t stand the sight of them, detest the very idea of them, I carried down the gun, the Glock handgun, the creepy black instrument of death, and put it in Jason’s hands.

Take your gun and be careful, I said to him.

I let out a long, nervous sigh, my stomach stirring. Then I continue my search of rehab clinics.

106.

Jason

9:10 P.M.

Blaring out from the speakerphone on my phone, held in Alexa’s hand, is Joel Lightner’s voice:

“Get ready to be happy, sport. I found him. I found our fucking guy! We were looking for cons recently released from a state penitentiary. This guy came out of a federal facility in January. You got him to confess to a gun charge, like, eight years ago, but you handed him over to the feds and they prosecuted him. We were looking in the wrong damn place! His name is Marshall Rivers. He’s got a history of violence against women and, since he got out, he’s been working at a dry cleaner’s two doors down from Higgins Auto Body! He probably saw James Drinker every day! Anyway, Marshall Rivers, does that ring—”

The recording stops abruptly, mid-sentence. I steady myself with a hand to the wall, squeeze my eyes shut, lower my head, then slowly raise it. Marshall Rivers. Marshall—

And then I remember him. I remember what happened. I remember what I did to him.

Marshall Rivers is “James Drinker.” Marshall Rivers is the North Side Slasher.

“Finally,” I mumble. Then I look at Alexa, remembering the truncated nature of the voice mail. “Did you pause the message or did it just stop there?” I ask. “Is there more?”

From her dark corner, Alexa stands slowly and inches toward me, crossing the line of the television light, blocking it out, leaving us in darkness, her features changing with each step—

—the face of a ghost, a haunted figure, piercing eyes, a wry grin, a scowl, terror and rage and panic and fear—

“There’s more,” she says to me. “There’s a lot more.”

She pushes a button, and the recording continues.

“—a bell with you? Anyway, it’s him, Jason, I know it! He lives here in the city. He’s on Hampton, 2538 Hampton, Apartment 1. Call me back, man. We fucking got him!”