Maybe he was just stupid.

Starkey laughed.

I think he got off on the complexity. He was tempting fate by taking the pictures, and each time he got away with it he probably felt omnipotent, the same way bomb cranks feel strong through their bombs. The rush isn't so much the actual killing it's the getting away with it.

Okay.

Did Lindo talk to you about the composition?

I shook my head. Lindo hadn't mentioned the composition, and I hadn't thought about it. The pictures had all looked pretty much the same to me.

A picture isn't a part of the experience like a more traditional trophy it's a composition outside of the experience. The photographer chooses the angle. He chooses what will be in the picture, and what won't. If the picture is a world, then the photographer is the god of that world. This dude got off by being God. He needed to take the pictures because he needed to be God.

I couldn't see Lionel Byrd feeling like a god, but maybe that was the point. I tried to imagine him stalking these women with the clunky, out-of-date camera, but I couldn't picture him with the camera, either.

I don't know, Starkey. That doesn't sound like Byrd.

Starkey shrugged, then looked at the canyon again.

I'm just sayin', is all. I'm not trying to convince you.

I know. I didn't take it that way.

Whatever this jackhole did or however he was involved, you need to understand you aren't responsible for his crimes. You played it straight up and did your job. Don't eat yourself up about it.

I met Carol Starkey when Lou Poitras brought her to my house because a boy named Ben Chenier was missing. Starkey helped find him, and the friendship we developed during the search grew. A few months later, a man named Frederick Reinnike shot me, and Starkey visited me regularly at the hospital. We had been building a history, and the friendship that grew with it made me smile.

I ever thank you for coming to the hospital all those times?

She flushed.

I was just trying to score with Pike.

Well, thanks anyway.

She kept her eyes on the canyon.

Hear much from the lawyer?

The lawyer. Now I turned toward the canyon, too. Once upon a time I shared my life with a lawyer from Louisiana named Lucy Chenier. Ben was her son. Lucy and Ben had moved to L.A., but after what happened to Ben they returned to Louisiana and now we lived apart. I wondered what Lucy would think of Lionel Byrd, and was glad she didn't know.

I said, Not so much. They're getting on with their lives.

How's the boy?

He's good. Growing. He sends me these letters.

Starkey suddenly pushed from the rail.

How about we go somewhere? Let's hit the Dresden for a few drinks.

You don't drink.

I can watch. I'll watch you drink while you watch me smoke. How about it?