There was something in the way he said “girlfriend”-a tone of sneering distaste-that hit Tess’s ear hard.

“You don’t much like gay people, do you?”

“I don’t mind them, as long as they leave other people alone. But they don’t, do they? They’re always trying to… recruit.”

He seemed to be speaking from personal experience, or his twisted version of personal experience.

“Bobby?”

“No, Bobby was okay.” Daniel’s face was tight with some memory, and color rose to his face.

“Shawn Hayes.” Not a question this time.

“Look, you don’t have much time,” Daniel said impatiently. “Don’t waste it talking. This is what I need from you. First of all, I need money, a lot of it. I’m guessing your bitchy friend Whitney can put her hands on quite a bit of cash, even at this time of night. And I need that damn dog, Miata.”

“Miata?”

“Well, not the dog, just her collar.” He laughed, and the sound was startling precisely because it was so hearty, so natural sounding. “Talk about things in plain sight. I have to give Bobby his props; he managed to pull one more double-cross before he died. He hung the locket on Miata’s collar, then passed the chain and the bug to the Visitor. It’s white gold and he turned it backwards, so it looks like just another ID tag. Why do you think I was so buddy-buddy with Crow? I kept looking for a chance to get that locket off the collar, but Miata would never sit still long enough. I don’t think she likes me much.”

“You tried to kill her master,” Tess pointed out.

“The dog doesn’t know that. Bobby had taken her for a walk. Remember, I offered you that scenario just the other day? I couldn’t bear to hear you nattering on about the whole thing anymore, when it should have been obvious what happened. Jesus! I don’t know how you make a living, doing what you do.”

“What did happen, Daniel?”

He pointed to an old-fashioned mantel clock. “You don’t have time for this. Or, I guess I should say, Cecilia doesn’t have time for this. You need to get me money, and you need to bring me the locket. I’m resigned to never having the gold bug, and I understand I have to leave most of my things behind, but I’m not going without the locket. I’ll have something to show for all I’ve been through.”

“All you’ve been through? You killed two men and left another near death, all for a couple of pieces of jewelry that may or may not have belonged to Edgar Allan Poe.”

Daniel stretched his long arms over his head, lacing his fingers and then cracking his knuckles with a hideous sound.

“I gave Cecilia a mild sedative before I buried her. She’s sleeping now, her breathing slow and regular, her heartbeat slower than usual. But she’ll be coming awake soon. Waking up in a small cramped space where she can’t see, can’t move. Imagine how terrified she’ll be. It’s a nightmare come true. Her heart will start to race and she’ll begin breathing in deep, frightened gasps, wasting so much energy and air.”

“I don’t believe you,” Tess said. “The ground is too hard to bury anyone this time of year.”

He produced a wallet, flipped it open to show Cecilia’s driver’s license.

“It’s possible to steal someone’s wallet without her even knowing it,” Tess said.

“Yes, but it’s much harder to remove all her jewelry.” He put two small turquoise studs on the table and the silver ring that Cecilia wore on her ring finger, a sign of her commitment to Charlotte.

“I can’t leave here until I know she’s alive and where she is.”

“But I’m not telling,” Daniel said. “So go ahead, shoot me. I don’t know how you’ll justify it to the cops, but I won’t be here to worry about it. But if I die, she’ll die too. Wouldn’t it just be easier to give me what I want?”

Tess still didn’t put her gun down.

“What do you want, an explanation, a confession? It’s not like I’m going to be here to face charges, but- fine, I confess. I stipulate to everything. I beat Shawn Hayes. I killed Bobby because he double-crossed me- claiming to have given the jewelry away when he had it on him all along. I went to the grave that night because I planned to follow the Visitor home and rob him. But when I saw the second figure, and realized how Bobby had deceived me, I couldn’t help myself.”

“And Yeager? Did you fall for Yeager ‘s claim that he had Bobby’s black book? Because he didn’t. It was just a stupid prop.”

“Yeager?” Daniel repeated, as if he couldn’t quite recall the man. “Yeager. I killed Yeager-I killed Yeager because I could. Like a special at one of those cheap men’s clothing stores-buy one suit, get a second pair of pants for free. Yeager was a freebie, and he helped me frame the Visitor.”

In the silence that fell, Tess became acutely aware of breathing, hers and Daniel’s. Breathing is one of those odd things people take for granted-until they lose it. The air comes in, the lungs fill, the air goes out, the lungs deflate. Where was Cecilia? Was she still breathing? He had said four hours, maybe three. She cautioned herself to use the time, not rush from the room in a blind panic to do his bidding.

“You and Bobby were partners in this. You helped him pull off these burglaries.”

“Not all of them. I didn’t start out to do most of what I did, but who does? I ran into Bobby at the Midtown Yacht Club last spring, and he was flashing all this cash. He was dying to tell someone what he was doing. It was gossip to him, nothing more. It was my idea to start stealing things back. Rare items belong to the people who truly appreciate them, who can care for them. That’s why I had to liberate all these books from the library. I couldn’t stand to see other people touching them, defiling them. Someone had to protect them. I thought the Pratt was close to figuring it out, back when Bobby stole the pillbox. So I ratted on him. He never knew. Bobby was such an innocent in some ways.”

“So you were involved in the burglaries at Ensor’s house, and Pitts’s?”

“Of course,” he said, laughing at her. “Do you think Bobby Hilliard could carry a thirty-one-inch television by himself? Not likely.”

“What went wrong at Shawn Hayes’s house?”

Daniel’s laugh died abruptly. “That was Bobby’s idea. The security system was too elaborate; we couldn’t break in. It was his idea that we should go to a local bar that Shawn Hayes frequented, strike up a conversation, go home with him. You see, Shawn didn’t know me, and Bobby said I was his… type. ”He likes Eddie Bauer boys’ was how he put it. I was to get Shawn to give me a tour of the house while Bobby walked the dog. He pocketed the items on the way out, and it was his plan to hide them somewhere, a place where we could get them later. It was easy enough. After all, Pitts had bragged about the rare things he and his friends owned, told Bobby where Shawn kept the bug and the locket.“

Daniel fell into an abstracted silence, chewing his bottom lip. Tess assumed he was thinking about that night. It was the night he had crossed over, when his carefully rationalized crimes of “liberation,” as he would have it, had entered a violent territory he had found all too pleasing.

“Shawn Hayes made a pass at you.” She tried to make it sound as a statement of fact, as if she knew what happened.

“Not exactly. He asked me if I was interested, and I said no. He seemed unfazed but a little offended. He called me a tease and said it wasn’t the first time. He said… he said he had met other men like me. Like me, as if he knew anything of me! ”Fence sitters’ was his term. He said, “You’ll be happier when you admit what you really are.” But I’m not-I would never-and I didn’t have to take that from some sick fag. A fag who was a thief, who stole from his friends, who wanted to own everything worth owning. Who was he to have all those wonderful things? That’s what made me angry. I could steal the locket and the pin, but he would still have so much, so much more than I could ever have. If I could have owned what he owned-but I couldn’t. I don’t. It’s not fair, when such coarse people can own such fine things.“