It was stuffy in the house. Julie continued to yawn and talked about going to bed early. Michael was unusually quiet. The TV was his world. Kelly set her drink aside and ran her fingers over the barrel of her Glock. Even in hell, she imagined, the steel would feel cool. It troubled her that the Acid Man had held her gun. Fortunately, he had mocked her by placing it on the table beside the bed where he had tied her down. That had been his single biggest mistake.

But had he made other mistakes? When he had talked to her perhaps?

“But I need to bring Julie and Michael back here and show them your body. The acid works swiftly. Since he will be first, he needs to see how it will be for him.”

The remark had always bothered Kelly. It did not fit into the Acid Man’s basic scenario—punishment for those who betrayed. She had not betrayed her husband. Yet he had explained that he needed to kill her for the sake of Julie and Michael. He needed her as an example of the horror they were about to face. That rationale had always struck her as weak. Julie was the source of his pain. She was all that mattered to him. Michael was merely a pawn in the betrayal. Yet Banks had insisted Michael had to see ahead of time what was to befall him.

Naturally, Kelly could understand how he could hate Michael as much as his wife. She had despised Tony’s new girlfriend. Nevertheless, it didn’t add up. It should have been enough for Banks to kill Michael in front of Julie. And a disfigured FBI agent did not belong in the equation at all. A bullet in the brain of the brave girl should have been enough. Banks had deviated from his established pattern when he had tried to burn a hole in her heart. And change was unusual for a serial killer. In their sick minds, there were only so many options and that was it.

Michael flipped to CNN. Julie kept yawning.

Kelly wanted to speak to Michael but didn’t have the energy.

Why didn’t the Acid Man tell them where the bodies were?

What was he hiding? Not the condition of the bodies themselves, surely. Had he chopped the women into pieces or disemboweled and stuffed them with straw, it wouldn’t have mattered to the Bureau. He knew that, he was a smart guy. So if it was not the state of the bodies he wished to conceal, it must be the location. It must be that the place they were buried revealed something secret he wished to keep hidden. Kelly tried to imagine what it could be and ran into a wall. Even if the women were buried here—in his garden, for example—what would that tell them?

On the other hand, his wife continued to live here, with her lover.