From Brooklyn Park, Mary drove directly to Uptown. The loft apartment Poppy had described was above a coffee shop. Uptown wasn't the cheapest place to live, but it was considered the hippest. In order to achieve that hip status, about a dozen people were occupying an apartment that looked more suited to two or three. Jennifer didn't ask her in. Instead, she stepped out into the dark hallway and shut the door behind her.

"Yeah, I got photos taken," she said, arms crossed below her breasts, shoulder blades sharp. She looked and sounded as if she had a bad cold. "But I got the idea I wasn't.what he had in mind."

Jennifer had light brown dreadlocks, tattoos, and more piercings than Poppy.

"What type of girl do you think he was looking for?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. He's a frat guy. Frat guys don't go for girls like me. He'd want somebody more conservative. Somebody more Minnesota."

"Minnesota?"

"Yeah, you know those blond blue-eyed girls with white teeth and perfect skin? One of those."

"Did he not take pictures of you?"

"Oh, he took pictures. Even though I wasn't perfect, he didn't seem to mind seeing me naked." She stiffened at the memory. "I thought I was going to get paid. That's the only reason I did it. I needed the money. But he takes the photos, and when I ask for cash he gets mad."

"How mad? Did he threaten you? Hurt you?"

"No, but he was really pissed. He said he was an artist. That I should be honored that he took my picture at all. I asked for the negatives, and he unrolls them, then tosses them at me. I just left them there. It ends up they weren't even the right ones, because… well… a couple weeks later I get this nude photo of me in the mail that says 'Ha, ha, ha' written across the bottom in black Magic Marker."

"Do you still have it?"

She shook her head. "I burned it."

"Did you contact the police?"

"What for? It was my fault, you know? My own stupid fault. But now I'm worried that when I get famous-" She sniffled and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "-he'll, like, sell the pictures to Playboy."

Chapter 19

Gavin cashed his check and headed for the nearest bar.

He loved alcohol.

During his time in prison, he'd forgotten how much he loved it. Its warm embrace. Its many moods, every high as different as a fingerprint. There were so many variables, so many small chemical factors that could tip the high one way or another-like the contents of a person's stomach, or how much sleep he'd gotten. The kind of alcohol. Wine was different from beer. Tequila, different from vodka. But most of all, his state of mind on any given night determined the path the evening would take.

Sitting at a bar where thousands of elbows had worn the wood smooth, Gavin looked around. Most of the patrons were working on the same project-becoming anesthetized as quickly as possible. Why was it cool to get wasted when you were a kid, and so pathetic once a guy passed thirty? Gavin had the answer. When a kid got drunk, he did it for sheer fun. An adult, on the other hand, did it to escape, to find oblivion.

Trouble was, oblivion never lasted, and you had to do it over again, enduring hangovers, humiliation, and shame for those few blessed hours of numbness.

Sometimes the alcohol turned on you. Instead of being a friend, it became the enemy. Instead of having a good time, you spent the evening sinking deeper and deeper into despair. When that happened, a guy had to go searching for another kind of drug to shut it off, to bring on that feeling of being satisfied in your own skin. And block out the things he didn't want to remember.

Kissing Gillian.

Attacking Gillian.

Almost raping Gillian.

The replay was like watching a movie, watching actors. Certainly the main character didn't seem like him at all. The attack wasn't something he would do or could do.

But he had done it.

Oh, God.

He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his fingers against the lids. He'd killed a girl once, but didn't remember it. Some people said he killed his grandmother too. His grandmother, the only person who'd loved him.

Why? Why did I do such a thing?

Then there was Gillian's sister, the FBI agent. She'd been to see him again, nagging at him like an annoying gnat. She thought he'd killed those girls, and sometimes he wondered if she was right. Maybe he had killed them. Even if he couldn't remember.

He heard a sound and lifted his head to see the bartender placing a shot of tequila in front of him. "From the lady at the end of the bar," the man said, pointing.

Gavin looked through the smoky haze to see a woman with blond hair seated at the other end of the L-shaped bar. She gave him a prissy wave. He nodded, lifted the shot glass-cheers-and downed the burning liquid.

His mother died of a heroin overdose when he was three. He couldn't remember much about his father except for the beatings. The one that gave him epilepsy had put him in the hospital. After that he was sent to Minneapolis to live with his grandmother-his mother's mother. He was young, maybe six, and he used to think that everybody lost time, had gaps they couldn't fill. Later it was explained to him that the gaps had something to do with his epilepsy, courtesy of dear old Dad.

"Hi," said a soft voice in his ear.

He looked up from the empty shot glass to see the woman who'd bought the drink standing next to him, an elbow on the bar. She was about thirty, too much makeup, too much sun. One of those women who fried herself on the beach all summer and cooked herself in a tanning bed all winter.

She wanted sex.

But what kind of sex? he wondered. That was sometimes hard to tell. Was she a whore? Or just horny?

"Hi," he said. "What're you drinkin'?"

She slid onto the bar stool. "Gin and tonic."

He bought her a drink, and another for himself.

She began talking about being in town for a convention, something about selling digital cameras or cleaning products or something. He didn't care. He didn't give a shit. He'd already shut her out. The company she was with had to be shaky, because she was hanging out in one of the seediest parts of town. Or it could be she was just feeding him a line of bullshit, wanting him to think she was alone and unfamiliar with the area. Whores, the kind that robbed you once you passed out, liked to do that. The world was a great place. Yessirree.

Whatever she was selling, he wasn't interested.

He worked his billfold from the back pocket of his jeans, flipped it open, and pulled out a piece of folded newspaper.

"What's that?" the woman asked, hanging over his shoulder.

"Something I saved."

He'd been closely following the Lucia Killer-which was what one of the local papers was now calling the guy. The other major paper, in a lame attempt to be original, had decided to call him the Scarlet Pimpernel since it was rumored that his signature had something to do with red roses. Gavin had read the killer's profile in the paper, trying to find some kind of connection, trying to find something that might spark a memory. It seemed familiar. But maybe that was because he'd read it so many times…

How was a guy to know?

He unfolded the paper; it was soft and creased. And even though he'd read it a million times, he read it again.

It could be him. Almost everything about the profile sounded like him.

"That an article about the Lucia Killer?" the woman asked. "I'm getting sick of hearing about him, aren't you? Every time I turn on the TV, they're talking about it."

For a moment he'd forgotten about her, forgotten he was in a public place. She didn't fit the victim profile. She was blond, but she was too old. – "Yeah." He refolded the clipping and put it back in his billfold.