As Kaminsky returned to the living room, where Charlie stood by the door, Charlie snapped, “Is it me you have a problem with, or just psychiatry in general?”

Kaminsky looked about as surprised as she might have if a cat had barked. Then her eyes narrowed. “The day you explain to me how you, through some kind of psychiatric mumbo-jumbo, can tell that an unsub has a red heart stamped on his hand is the day I’ll believe that psychiatry has a role to play in solving a case like this.”

Kaminsky had her there. But not entirely. “Are you saying you think it’s a bad lead?”

The other woman’s mouth thinned. “No. But …”

“But nothing. I got this investigation a solid lead it wouldn’t otherwise have, and I’d appreciate it if you would respect that.” Charlie opened the door. The brightly lit hall beyond looked incongruously cheerful. “If you’re confident the bogeyman isn’t here, lying in wait for me, I’ll say good-night.”

Kaminsky looked at her, seemed about to add something else, then didn’t, and walked out the door.

“Good-night,” she said stiffly over her shoulder.

Charlie closed and locked the door.

After her own quick search of the apartment, in case Garland had shown up—he hadn’t—Charlie kicked off her shoes, found the Tums and aspirin, and washed both down with a glass of water. Exhausted but too wired to just immediately fall into bed, waiting for the aspirin to kick in and take the edge off her headache and the Tums to do its thing on her stomach, worried about Garland although she hated to admit it even to herself, she took a quick shower. In the process she discovered the heart stamp was pretty much impervious to soap and water and filed the information away as something to be mentioned later. Then she pulled on her nightie and robe, grabbed her laptop, and curled up in the big green recliner in the living room.

Her avowed purpose was to do a quick check of her e-mail.

She was not waiting for Garland, who might very well have crossed the Great Divide permanently and be gone for good. She did not feel like the parent of a teenager who’d missed his curfew. She was not even thinking about Garland.

If he’s gone, good riddance.

But still, after a cursory glance at her e-mail, she found herself opening Garland’s file, which she had downloaded to her personal laptop for convenience when she had first acquired him as a research subject at Wallens Ridge.

You want to know what kind of interaction with my “father figure” I had when I was eleven years old? I’ll tell you: I shot the bastard dead.

The savagery in Garland’s voice as he’d told her that echoed in her head.

A history of violence as a youth: this mark of a serial killer was present in every single case she’d studied. It was textbook. Charlie had a hazy memory of glancing through a long list of qualifying offenses in Garland’s past. At the time, she hadn’t been paying that much attention. Garland had been just one more monster in a world surprisingly thick with them.

However, now he was sort of her monster.

So she paged impatiently through a file that, printed out, would be as thick as a brick, searching for his juvenile record. When she found it, she saw the offense right off: subject, 11, murdered stepfather with victim’s shotgun.

The entry was recorded in a social worker’s neat, sloping penmanship beside Admitting Offense on the form used to remand Garland to a Georgia state facility for juvenile offenders. He had stayed there until the age of fourteen, when he had run away.

The body of the entry, a single handwritten paragraph in the space allowed on the form, said:

Subject was adopted by Stan and Susan Garland as a three-year-old, after having been in foster care from the age of seven months. Stan Garland subsequently left the family and Susan Garland filed for divorce. Susan Garland married Barry Davies, the victim. This marriage took place when subject was seven. Police records indicate multiple domestic violence calls to house before the time of the offense. Susan Garland Davies states that the victim was “a crazy drunk” and would beat her and subject regularly. Susan Garland Davies and Barry Davies both have numerous documented instances of alcohol abuse. Susan Garland Davies states that on the night of the offense, victim had beaten her and subject and subsequently left the house. When he returned, subject shot victim with a 12-gauge shotgun victim kept for household protection. Susan Garland Davies expresses anger at subject for killing victim, and is in the process of giving up her parental rights. Susan Garland Davies states that subject is “a mean little shit” and she wants nothing further to do with him now that he has killed her husband

.

Charlie was surprised to find that she had a lump in her throat as she finished reading. She was even more surprised to realize that her sorrow wasn’t for the victim, but instead for the abused eleven-year-old boy whose mother described him as “a mean little shit” and deliberately gave up her rights to him. Probably, given what Charlie knew of the juvenile corrections system, just when he needed her the most.

Suddenly her own mother, difficult as her alcoholism had been to deal with, seemed worthy of mother-of-the-year honors. At least Charlie had never doubted she was loved.

Charlie was just clicking through to the next page in Garland’s file when there was an urgent knock on the door.

“Dr. Stone.” It was Kaminsky.

“I’m coming.” Kaminsky’s tone set off alarm bells in Charlie. Shoving the laptop onto the nearest table, she jumped up and hurried to answer the summons. Before she could reach the door, Charlie heard a key in the lock. Kaminsky had sounded like something was wrong, and now she was coming in without waiting for Charlie to admit her.

Whatever it is can’t be good.…

Charlie discovered that her heart was pounding even as Kaminsky, still fully dressed, down to her shoes, burst through the doorway. Their eyes met for a pregnant instant. Trouble, was what Charlie read in that look, and then Kaminsky glanced around wildly.

“What?” Charlie registered Kaminsky’s drawn gun and surrendered to a full-blown case of the nervous jitters.

“Did someone come in here?” The agent’s voice was sharp. Shutting the door, she looked around with more care. Then, shaking her head at Charlie in a gesture that warned her to stay where she was, she started moving carefully through the living room, two-handing her gun, glancing behind the furniture and into corners before eyeing the kitchen suspiciously.

“No one’s here but me,” Charlie assured her.

“I saw a man in the hall right outside your door. I had just come up from the kitchen and stepped inside my room, and I caught a glimpse of him behind me out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t see where he went, but there wasn’t time for him to go anywhere else. I—I’m almost sure he came in here.” There was the tiniest degree of hesitation in that last sentence, which told Charlie that Kaminsky was growing less sure by the second.

“You saw a man?” Charlie’s eyes narrowed as a possibility occurred to her, but it wasn’t anything she could share. “What did he look like?”

Having checked out the kitchen, Kaminsky was doubling back to search the bedroom. “Tall. Blond. Built. Way hot.” Kaminsky cast a suspicious look at Charlie before she stuck her head inside the bathroom and glanced around. “Naked.”

Charlie blinked. “Naked?”

“Starkers.”

Charlie saw a shimmer moving through the air near the bathroom. Keeping a wary eye on it, she called to Kaminsky, “Believe me, there’s no naked man in here.”

Just as soon as she said it, the shimmer turned solid and, sure enough, there was a naked man in there. It was Garland, of course, in all his tanned and muscular splendor. He cast Charlie an unfriendly look and disappeared into the bathroom.