Pollen frowns down at her beer. McGowan’s never known the woman to avoid eye contact before.

“I didn’t request a warrant because—”

“Shut up, Carla.”

McGowan does. The two women have set their phones close to their right hands. As if guns on the table in the Old West. As if loaded.

“They call themselves that because that’s her last name,” Pollen says.

“Who?”

“Daphne Vann.”

McGowan’s dealing with a lot right now: The fact that her superior isn’t chastising her for breaking into a young man’s house, for starters. The fact that she has in her notes the names of four people she needs to question now. And this…this almost too-easy talk about Daphne.

“She was a bad person,” Pollen says. “A kidnapper. All seven feet of her, though I wonder if that’s an exaggeration. I never measured. She lived alone. She made no friends. She held no jobs. Whether or not she was born here, I do not know. But you don’t have to be born somewhere to become part of the local fabric. And that she most certainly has.”

“Do you—”

“I haven’t thought of Daphne Vann in close to ten years. And it must’ve been close to that before that last time I did too. The journals you read, I read them. I suppose she must’ve crossed my mind then. But I have no recollection of that. Just as I imagine I’ll have no recollection of this conversation we’re having not long after it ends.”

“What are you saying?”

Pollen looks her in the eye now. It’s not a pretty feeling. Whatever the chief is going on about, it’s something much more complex than warrants and procedure.

“You’re not from here,” Pollen says. “You’re still new. For that, I think maybe you can do something about it. But I don’t know. And so it’s possible I’m giving you the green light to go kill yourself. It’s possible I’m killing you by talking about her, by giving you more information to chew on, more thoughts, until all you can think about is that terrible woman in her jean jacket, always a little closer in your imagination than the last time you thought of her, always closing in on you.”

“What did she do exactly?”

McGowan wants to know because a superfan, a copycat, would likely do the same.

Pollen slides her phone across the table.

“The photos are up. You need to see these.”

McGowan takes the phone, lifts it, but pauses. She thinks of the images from Tammy Jones’s bedroom on her own phone.

What might she see here?

“The problem with being so tall,” Pollen says, “is that there’s no costume to hide behind.”

McGowan touches the screen. The first photo is of a kitchen sink. A swirl of dark colors and unrecognizable objects beneath the faucet.

McGowan zooms in.

“You got any trauma in your life?” Pollen asks. “Anything you don’t intentionally ignore, but ignore all the same?”

“Jesus,” McGowan says.

She looks away from the phone. Looks to Pollen’s half-drunk pint of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer.