IEUTENANT WESTER WAS IN A QUANDARY. HE NEEDED EVERY detective he had, but he didn’t want to jeopardize the case by muddying the waters with a conflict of interest. The conflict came only if Cahill allowed emotion to get in the way of his job. He figured Cahill could do the job; Cahill knew he could. It would hurt, but he could do it. It was best, though, if he was assigned to something else.

Cahill knew it was best, but it still pissed him off. Not that the lieutenant made the decision, but that there was a decision to be made at all. Cahill figured he should have been smarter than this; he’d missed something, somewhere. If Sarah had done all the killings—or had them done, he couldn’t forget that possibility—then he’d screwed up by not following his initial thought, and two more people were dead.

And if Sarah was innocent—a possibility that was looking more remote by the minute—then there was something colossally wrong. That thing with the pendant: had she picked up a stalker, or had she sent it to herself as a means of deflecting suspicion, if necessary?

Maybe he wasn’t on the case, but his brain was working anyway, sifting through all the possible scenarios.

He asked permission to see her. Part of him wanted to make certain she was all right, but the cop part of him wanted to see how she looked, how she acted. Body language and physical responses said a lot.

Sarah was in the bungalow, sitting on the sofa in the cozy living room while a medic put a dressing on her right knee and a patrol officer watched from the doorway. Her pants leg was torn, and Cahill could see the bloodstains, like rust, on her leg. Her face was paper white.

“What happened?” he asked, standing back and watching.

“She fell in the courtyard and hurt her knee,” the medic said matter-of-factly, taping a bandage over the bluish, oozing wound. “It’ll be sore tomorrow,” he told Sarah.

She nodded absently.

“When did you fall?” Cahill asked her. “And how?”

“I didn’t fall.” Sarah’s voice was so wispy it was almost transparent, and without inflection. She didn’t look at him. “I wobbled and went down on one knee.”

“When?” he repeated.

She made a vague gesture. “When I was hunting for a telephone.”

“Why were you hunting for a telephone?” From what he’d seen, there were telephones all through the house, including a shattered one in the kitchen.

“To call. About—” She made another vague gesture, this time toward the house.

“There are telephones in the house. Why did you come out here?”

“I didn’t know where she was. I didn’t... want to see her.” She paused, and for the first time made eye contact. “But I saw her anyway. They asked me to identify her. I saw her anyway.”

The symptoms of mental shock were very good, very convincing. Hell, maybe they were real. Her body language was consistent with shock, too, sitting motionless unless something was required of her, and then her movements were slow, sluggish. She was very pale. Makeup? Her pupils were dilated, too, but eyedrops could produce that effect.

He hated what he was thinking, but he couldn’t let himself be blinded. He might not be on the case, but that didn’t mean his analysis couldn’t be used.

Another thought occurred: Had she developed a relationship with him as a means of deflecting suspicion, maybe, or keeping tabs on any progress with the Roberts killing? If so, she must have been congratulating herself on her success, because the Roberts case was going exactly nowhere.

He wanted to keep questioning her, but it would be better if he backed off now, let the detectives assigned to the case ask the questions. Besides, there was something he needed to check.

He nodded to the patrolman and stepped out of the bungalow, taking a deep breath of the fresh warm air. He sought out Lieutenant Wester again. “Do we have a rough time of death?”

“The ME hasn’t made a determination yet, but I saw the bodies myself and rigor is pretty far advanced. I’d say”—he rocked his hand—“twelve hours. In that neighborhood.”

Fuck. That fell in the time span when he’d been out on call and she had made that sudden trip to the supermarket, even though she had bought groceries earlier in the day. The trip was nicely explained by a sudden, convenient craving for a banana split. Was she cold-blooded enough that she had come back here, killed two people, then stopped off for ice cream on the way back to his house? Or had she bought the ice cream as an excuse for being out? An alibi, so she could show him the receipt and say, “See? I was here. I couldn’t have been there.”

This was practically a mirror situation of the Roberts murder. She had no eyewitness alibi to definitely say she was somewhere else at the time of the killing, but she had the receipt from where she’d been shopping.

On the other hand, she couldn’t have known he’d be called out last night. She couldn’t have planned anything ahead of time. Had she just been waiting, knowing he would eventually be called out at night, and when he did, she’d make her move? She wouldn’t have been in any hurry; she could afford to wait for the right moment. After all, she was collecting that hefty salary, and if she had her eye on the missing yellow diamond ring, it wasn’t going anywhere.

She hadn’t kept the receipt from the supermarket. He clearly remembered her putting the plastic bags and the receipt in the trash. If she was that sharp, that organized a killer, throwing away the receipt was a sloppy thing to do. Or a smart one. She could then say, “If I thought I’d need an alibi, why would I have thrown away the receipt?”

God, this was driving him crazy. No matter what angle he came up with, a tiny shift put an entirely different light on the most significant, or insignificant, actions.

He went home and went through his kitchen trash can. The plastic bags were right there, practically on top, with only the fruit peelings and empty yogurt container from breakfast on top of them. He pulled out the bags—there were two of them— straightened them out, and looked inside. There was the receipt, crumpled but nice and dry, without any smears.

He looked at the time on it. Eight-fifty-seven. That was about the time he’d gotten home. Where had she been for the rest of the time he’d been gone?

The interview room was small, utilitarian, nonthreatening, with a camera attached to the ceiling recording the interview.

The detective, Rusty Ahern, was a good interviewer. He was about five-nine, with sandy hair and freckles and an open expression that invited confessions. Very nonthreatening, very sympathetic. No matter how neutral Cahill made his expression and his voice, he could never be as nonthreatening as Rusty. He was too big, and as Rusty himself had pointed out, “Your eyes always look like a shark’s.” Rusty was particularly good with women; they trusted that Howdy Doody expression.

Cahill, along with the lieutenant and two other detectives, watched the interview on a monitor as it was recording. Sarah sat practically motionless, for the most part staring at nothing, as if she had shut down emotionally. Cahill remembered she’d acted the same after the first killing. A protective response, maybe? A way of distancing herself? Or a very good act?

“Where were you last night?” Rusty asked gently.

“Cahill’s house.”

“Detective Cahill?”

“Yes.”

“Why were you there?”

“I spent the weekend with him.”

“The entire weekend?”

“Not Saturday. There was a party Saturday night. I worked.”

“What time did you get to Detective Cahill’s house? After the party on Saturday.”

“Four o’clock?” she said, making it a question. “I don’t remember exactly. Early. Before dawn.”

“Why did you go so early in the morning?”

“So we could be together.”

Rusty didn’t ask any questions about their relationship, thank God. He moved right on with establishing a time line. “Were you together all day Sunday?”

“Yes.”

“And you spent Sunday night with Detective Cahill?”

“Yes.”

“What about yesterday? Monday. When Detective Cahill went to work, what did you do?”

“Damn, Rusty must think he’s a lawyer,” Detective Nolan muttered. “Listen to those questions.”

The questions were unusually detailed, step-by-step. Usually an interview was less structured, inviting the suspect to just talk. But Sarah wasn’t chattering; she was answering only the questions asked, and most of those as briefly as possible. Since she wasn’t volunteering information, Rusty was dragging it out of her.

“I worked out. Bought groceries.”

“Is that all?”

“I had a manicure.”

“Where did you work out?”

“The basement.”

“The basement, where?”

“Cahill’s house.”

On and on, establishing when and where she got the manicure, where she bought groceries, what time she was there. What did she do then? Cooked supper. Spaghetti. Had it ready when Cahill got home. Then he got a call and had to leave. He said he’d be gone for several hours.

Rusty looked down at his notes. He had the exact time of the call to Cahill, as well as what time he’d arrived back home. He had the checkout time of the receipt for the ice cream. If she tried to screw with the timing, he’d know. “What did you do then?”

“I cleaned up the kitchen, and watched television.”

“Is that all you did?”

“I went for ice cream.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. After eight.”

“Where did you go?”

She told him the name of the supermarket.

“What time did you leave the supermarket?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can you estimate how long you were there?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Fifteen minutes.”

“Where did you go when you left the supermarket?”

“Back to Cahill’s house.”

“Was he there?”

“Yes. He got back sooner than he’d expected.”

“What time was this?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t look at the time.”

“Did you stop anywhere else between the supermarket and Detective Cahill’s house?”

“No.”

“You said you bought groceries earlier in the day. Why didn’t you buy the ice cream then?”

“I wasn’t craving it then.”

“You had a sudden craving for ice cream?”

“Yes.”

“Do you crave ice cream very often?”

“Once a month.”

Rusty looked a little puzzled. “Why just once a month?”

“Right before my menstrual period. I want ice cream then.”

“Whoa,” Nolan said in Cahill’s ear. “TMI.” Too much information. He didn’t want to hear about menstrual cycles.

Rusty looked a little nonplussed, too, as if he didn’t know where to go with that information. Cahill kept his expression impassive as he watched. This was tough enough as it was, having his private life brought into an investigation. What was she thinking? What was going on behind those dark eyes?

Hell, what did he know? When it came to women, he was evidently both blind and stupid; he was a detective, and it had still taken him over a year to realize Shannon was cheating on him. But it was one thing to be duped by a cheating wife, and another to so totally miss the boat with a killer. He’d had sex with this woman. Slept beside her. Laughed with her. He’d have bet his life that she was one of the straightest arrows he’d ever met, and he was having a tough time reconciling what he knew of her as a woman with the circumstances that said she might be a stone-cold killer.

That was the bitch. Everything was circumstantial. The coincidences stretched beyond credulity, yet they didn’t have a shred of physical evidence to tie her to the murders.

“My wife craves chocolate,” Lieutenant Wester said. “I always know when she’s going to start her period, because she’s shoving Hershey’s Kisses in her mouth like a squirrel stocking up for the winter.”

“God, can’t we talk about something else?” Nolan groaned.

Rusty had her up to the time she arrived at the Lankford house. “What did you do then?”

“I went to the main house to start the coffee.”

“Did you notice anything unusual?”

“The alarm wasn’t set. It didn’t beep when I unlocked the kitchen door and went in.”

“Was that unusual?”

“When I’m there, I always set the alarm. Mrs. Lankford sometimes forgets, though.”

“So it wasn’t unusual.”

“Not really.”

“What did you do then?”

“I started the coffeemaker, then took the newspaper... I was taking the newspaper to the den. Mr. Lankford liked to read it there, while he watched the news. The lights were on,” she said, and her voice trailed away to nothing.

“The lights?”

“The hallway lights. They were on. And the lamps. They shouldn’t have been on that early.”

“Why not?”

“I’m the only one up that early, and I had just gotten there.”

“What did you think?”

“I thought... I thought someone must be sick.”

“Why did you think that?”

“The smell. I noticed the smell.” She gripped her arms tightly, holding herself, and she began to rock a little, back and forth. The rocking was a sign of distress, the automatic attempt of the body to find comfort. Someone should be holding her, Cahill thought, his stomach knotting even tighter than it already was.

“What smell was that?”

She stared blankly at him, then abruptly stopped rocking and clapped a hand over her mouth. Rusty sprang for the trash can and got it to her just in time. She leaned over the can, retching violently, though nothing but fluid came up. Cahill clenched his teeth. She must not have eaten anything since breakfast, and that was hours ago. She kept retching, straining, even after her stomach was empty, and the sounds she made were painful to hear.

“I’ll get you a paper towel,” Rusty said, stepping to the door.

Sarah remained bent over the trash can, her body occasionally heaving in spasm. The monitoring room was silent as they watched. Cahill fought the need to go to her, take care of her. He had to stay out of this. He had to let Rusty do his job.

Rusty came back with a wet paper towel. Sarah took it with violently trembling hands, and washed her face. “I’m sorry,” she said in a muffled voice, then buried her face in her hands and began to weep in long, shuddering sobs that reminded Cahill of how she had wept after Judge Roberts was killed.

God. He couldn’t watch this. He got up and paced around the room, rubbing the back of his neck to ease the kinks.

If she had done those killings, then she was the world’s best actress, bar none. What he saw on the screen was a woman in shock and grieving. People sometimes reacted that way if they had killed in the heat of the moment, then realized with horror what they had done. Killers who coldly executed their victims with well-placed shots to the head didn’t grieve for them afterward. The circumstances were so suspicious they stank to high heaven, but the details didn’t fit. She didn’t fit.

She didn’t fit. No matter what the circumstances were, she didn’t fit. “She didn’t do it,” he said softly, suddenly, completely certain. Okay, so he could be blind when it came to romantic shit, and he’d taken a hard kick in the chops because of it; as a cop, he saw very clearly, and she wasn’t guilty.

Lieutenant Wester gave him a sympathetic look. “Doc, you’re sleeping with her. Don’t let your little head do the thinking for your big head.”

“You can mark it down,” Cahill said. “I know her. She couldn’t have done it.”

“You’re too involved,” Nolan said. “Just let us do our jobs. If she didn’t do it, we’ll find out. And if she did do it, we’ll find that out, too.”

They all looked back at the monitor. Rusty had waited silently as the storm of weeping subsided, and now he asked softly, “Would you like something to drink? Coffee? Water? A Coke?”

“Water,” she managed to say, her voice thick. “Thank you.”

He got a cup of water for her, and Cahill turned to watch the screen again as she took a couple of sips, cautiously, as if she wasn’t certain the water would stay down.

“What happened after you noticed the smell?”

The rocking started again, subtle and heartbreaking. “I... I almost ran. I remembered the smell. When the Judge was murdered, the smell was... was the same. I couldn’t go in there. I wanted to run.”

At least she was talking a little more, rather than answering the questions with monosyllables.

“Did you run?”

She shook her head. “I kept telling myself it was just that someone was sick. A stomach virus. It was my job to handle things, clean up any mess...” She trailed off again.

“What did you do?”

“I went to the door of the den and looked in. He was... lying there. His neck was bent.” Unconsciously she cocked her head to show the position Sonny Lankford had been in. Rusty waited to see if she would continue talking, but she lapsed into silence until prodded by another question.

“What did you do then?”

“I b-backed to the kitchen and tried to call nine-one-one. I wanted to call Cahill first. I wanted him there. But nine-one- one... the medics... maybe they could help. So I tried to call nine-one-one first.”

“Tried to call?”

“I couldn’t—I was shaking so hard I hit the wrong buttons. The phone wouldn’t work. I banged it down on the counter and it broke. The phone broke.”

“You banged the phone down on the counter?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“It wouldn’t work. It wouldn’t work!”

“Then what?”

“I threw it.”

Sarah was the most self-possessed person he knew, Cahill thought. If she had lost control to that extent, she had been hysterical. She was frightened, and hurting, and he hadn’t so much as touched her hand when he’d gone to see her in the bungalow. No wonder she was hugging herself; someone needed to do it.

“I needed another phone,” she said, for the first time speaking without being prompted by a question. “I couldn’t think, couldn’t remember where one was. I haven’t worked there very long, and the house is complicated. I didn’t want to hunt for a phone, because I didn’t know where Mrs. Lankford was and I didn’t want to find her, I didn’t want to see her.” New tears streaked down her face. “So I went to my quarters, the bungalow. I know where the phone is in there. I didn’t have to hunt for it. I called nine-one-one and they kept me on the line. I wanted to hang up, but they wouldn’t let me. They kept me on the line.”

“Why did you want to hang up?”

“Cahill,” Sarah said, her voice wobbling, her eyes blind with tears. “I wanted to call Cahill. I needed him.”

Cahill abruptly left the room. He went into the bathroom, locked the door, then bent over the toilet and vomited.