She taps her shoes. Her fingertip on the table. Thinks of that night in Chaps. Can still see the innocent woman’s face bruising beneath her fists.

“Why doesn’t she come after you?” she asks.

McGowan is playing into the man’s fantasy. How else to get him to talk? Is there a clubhouse for fans? Are there meetings? Can Peter Lords give her a list of people who have pledged their hearts to Daphne?

“I wish she would,” he says.

And she sees in his eyes he means it.

“Friends, fellow fans, I need names,” she says. Her voice is as unstable as it was in that Chaps interrogation room.

“I told you—”

“We’ll let you go for breaking into the Lamb house if you give us names.”

She knows Pollen has stood up on the other side of the glass. The chief is no doubt on her way to the interrogation-room door.

“Give us names, Peter. And we’ll let you go.”

The door opens behind her.

“Now, Peter,” McGowan says, her eyes locked on his.

“Everybody in Samhattan loves—”

But he doesn’t get to finish the sentiment.

And McGowan’s hand hurts before she even realizes she’s leapt across the table and hit him.

An officer has her by the shoulder. He’s pulling her toward the door.

“Peter…” McGowan calls, even as an officer checks the man’s bloody nose. Even as Pollen yells inches from her face.

“Peter…” McGowan says.

She’s holding onto the doorjamb. Refusing to be taken from this room.

Peter wipes blood from his nose. Says:

“Zach Gold.”

The officer stops pulling her arm. Even Pollen faces the man.

“Who is Zach Gold?” Pollen asks.

“He’s part of the metal scene in Samhattan,” Peter says. “There, I gave you your name.”

McGowan doesn’t look to Pollen. With no trace of guilt or wrongdoing in her voice, she says:

“I lied.”

Then she’s out of the room. In the hall. Thinking: Zach Gold.

Peter is yelling about his rights, his voice muted as the door closes, as McGowan moves quickly up the hall. Chief Pollen moves just as fast behind her.

But she only hears two words.

Zach Gold.

Pollen can reprimand her until she’s blue in the face (Daphne was blue in the face; they found her that way in her muscle car, McGowan read). McGowan is going to solve this case.

Pollen grabs her hard by the arm.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Pollen says.

McGowan doesn’t hesitate. She pulls away and continues up the hall.

“Fire me,” she calls over her shoulder. “Send me to jail. But give me time to find Zach Gold first.”

And as she exits the station, she thinks of the remaining girls, the ballers who no doubt are thinking of Daphne more than she is, more than even Peter Lords is, imagining her like a denim-clad wrecking ball swinging slowly toward their homes, their bedrooms, their lives.

And McGowan no longer walks fast.

She runs.