Frank Snow: he knew the name. Anyone watching the news ten years ago would have recognized it—a synonym for when things went so wrong the adjectives no longer sufficed. Knowledge of the man’s crimes felt both practical and primordial, a built-in cautiousness that came along with a grown-up fear of dark places and sudden noises. Mike didn’t even have to actively engage his memory to recall grainy newspaper photos of a remote barn with black-stained ropes and chains on the floor, notes, piles of clothes, and sneakers in one corner.

Snow turned his head toward Jolie’s camera, the flash leaping off his skin. A vein twitched in the back of his hand and Mike saw what looked like needle tracks on his arm, some possibly infected. Who knew what kind of diseases Snow might’ve picked up in prison? Had anybody even bothered obtaining an adequate medical history? He was suddenly struck by the realization that everything about this procedure felt poorly thought out by people with no stake in the outcome.

An older cop, who had introduced himself as McPhee, removed the last of the leg restraints. He glanced briefly at Jolie, narrowed his eyes, and turned toward Mike. “Ready when you are.”

Mike put on a pair of rubber gloves and walked over to Snow, who stood gazing back at him, expressionless once more, though now it seemed to come from deep within a man who had abandoned his body completely. His eyes were warehouse-empty. Within arm’s reach, Mike smelled a churchgoer’s bouquet of aftershave and the eye-watering sting of eucalyptus mouthwash.

“This way,” he said, nodding Snow through the doorway. Beyond it was the room where the scanner sat waiting, a long, narrow table protruding like a white tongue. Silver foil ventilation pipes squirmed from the top of the plastic housing straight up to the ceiling, where they passed between floors and eventually to the outside world.

The last ten steps to the scan table seemed to take forever. Snow shuffled forward as if shackled to the air itself. His head hung down, eyes to the floor, and as he turned to sit on the table, Mike noticed something rising from his collar up the back of his neck.

It was the spiny crest of a black serpent, its scales and pigmentation painstakingly engraved in a mesh of lines that must have taken months to accomplish. What would such a thing look like fully revealed? Had Snow gotten it done before he’d been caught? What Mike glimpsed now already looked far too sophisticated for prison ink.

“Lie down on your back,” he said, keeping his voice as flat as possible. “The test takes approximately thirty minutes. You’ll hear a series of loud knocking sounds, like a jackhammer. During that time you should hold perfectly still.” He settled headphones over Snow’s ears and slid the plastic head coil down over the man’s face, where it fit like a mask. “If you move during the scan…”

He hesitated, losing his train of thought. Snow’s smell had changed somehow. The aftershave and mouthwash were gone, overcome by a thick, feral stink pouring through the prison uniform. When he glanced down, Snow was grinning at him, his green eyes bright now, lips skinned back to the gum line. His arm shifted sideways along the jumpsuit.