Keegan looked back down at the photographs, mind reeling. They lay spread out on the table in front of him: another set of three to tally with Catling’s photos from a week ago—also eight by ten, also black and white. Keegan was again in the dark, in the company of a man who held all the cards. “Are these real?” was all he could think of to say.

“They’re real,” the lieutenant said. His voice no longer filled the small room. “Some fishermen found her at the high tide line this morning. Venice. Just south of the pier.”

Keegan moved his lips but made no sound. The blood had drained from his face and hands. Did Eve now lie on the same steel table Marilyn had occupied a couple of weeks before? “Drowned?” he said.

Moore shook his head. “Shot,” he said. “Twice in the chest. Both bullets exited the body. No slugs, no cartridges. No real crime scene.”

Keegan remembered the fat cop coming down the cottage’s front steps with Lusk’s Colt revolver in a plastic evidence bag. He understood the real reason he was here.

“Just tell me, Jimmy,” the lieutenant said. “Tell me once and for all you had nothing to do with this.”

The photos in front of Keegan were colorless and starkly lit in the photographer’s flash—cold and still, sterile as a scalpel. He thought of Eve’s scalding flesh beside him on the bed, the gentle rise and fall of her chest as she slept. “She wanted me to come to her,” Keegan said, finding his mouth dry. “I was going to, but I bailed out at the last minute. I turned around and went back home. I left her out there waiting for me in the dark.”

“So, this was not your doing?” Moore asked. There was something leading about the way he asked the question—like he was pleading for Keegan to deny it. “You didn’t kill her?”

Keegan shook his head. “Jesus,” he said. “Of course not.” His words were lifeless and seemed to hang in the air like a foggy breath. “Not on purpose, anyway,” he said. “I didn’t kill her. But maybe I could have—” He had neither the heart nor the words to finish the thought.

“Do you have any idea who would have done this?” Moore asked.

Keegan thought of the actor in the Sucrets ad on the grocery store TV. Was Simon Catling even real? A man with money and a motive? A man who had killed Eve’s lover and was happy to do it again?