“Conor,” I said. “We need to talk.”

Conor said, “I want to go back to the cell.”

“And I want a date with Anna Kournikova. Life’s a bitch. Do you know what else I want, Conor?”

He shook his head.

“I want to know why this happened. I want to know why Jenny Spain is in the hospital and her family’s in the morgue. Do you want to do this the easy way, and just tell me now?”

Conor said, “You’ve got everything you need. I told you I did it. Who cares why?”

“I care. So does Detective Curran. So do plenty of other people, but we’re the ones you need to worry about right now.”

He shrugged. As I passed behind him, I pulled the evidence bag out of my pocket and threw it down on the table in front of him, hard enough that it bounced. “Explain this.”

Conor didn’t flinch: he had been ready for this. “It’s a badge.”

“No, Einstein. It’s not a badge. It’s this badge.” I leaned in over his shoulder, slapped down the summer ice-cream photo and stayed there, practically cheek to cheek with him. He smelled of harsh jail soap. “This badge right here, that you’re wearing in this photo right here. We found it in Jenny’s stuff. Where did she get it?”

He pointed at the photo with his chin. “There. She’s wearing it. We all had them.”

“You’re the only one who had this one. Photo analysis shows that the image on yours is off-center, to exactly the same degree as the image on this one here. None of the others match. So let’s try again: how did your badge get into Jenny Spain’s stuff?”

I love CSI: our techs don’t need to work miracles these days, because all the civilians think they can. After a moment Conor shifted away from me. He said, “I left it in their house.”

“Where?”

“Kitchen counter.”

I moved in again. “I thought you said you weren’t trying to scare the Spains. I thought you said no one would ever have known you were in the house. So what the hell is this? You figured they’d think it had materialized out of thin air? What?”

Conor’s hand came out to cover the badge, like it was private. “I figured Jenny would find it. She’s always the first one down in the mornings.”

“Get your hands off the evidence. Find it and what? Think the fairies had left it?”

“No.” His hand hadn’t moved. “I knew she’d guess it was me. I wanted her to.”

“Why?”

“Because. Just so she’d know she wasn’t on her own, out there. So she’d know I was still around. Still cared about her.”

“Oh, God. And then she’d dump Pat, run into your arms and live happily ever after. Are you on drugs, chum?”

A quick, vicious flash of disgust, before Conor’s eyes slid away from mine again. “Nothing like that. I just thought it’d make Jenny happy. OK?”