She reached for the phone. ‘Hmm. No sir, I don’t need to know.’ She dialed. ‘I don’t need to know nothing, no not me. Dr. Horowitz? This is Bonita with security. I got a Dr. Scarlett.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know.’

She looked at me. ‘How you spell that?’

‘S-c- a-r- p-e- t-t- a,’ I patiently said.

She still didn’t get it right but was close enough. ‘Yes, sir, I sure will.’ She hung up and announced, ‘You can go on and have a seat over there.’

The waiting area was furnished and carpeted in gray, magazines arranged on black tables, a modest artificial Christmas tree in the center of the room. Inscribed on a marble wall was Taceant Colloquia Effugiat Risus Hie Locus Est Ubi Mors Gaudet Succurrere Vitae, which meant one would find little conversation or laughter in this place where death delighted to help the living. An Asian couple sat across from me on a couch, tightly holding hands. They did not speak or look up, Christmas for them forever wrapped in pain.

I wondered why they were here and whom they had lost, and I thought of all I knew. I wished I could somehow offer comfort, yet that gift did not seem meant for me. After all these years, the best I could say to the bereft was that death was quick and their loved one did not suffer. Most times when I offered such words, they weren’t entirely true, for how does one measure the mental anguish of a woman made to strip in an isolated park on a bitterly cold night? How could any of us imagine what she felt when Gault marched her to that ice-filled fountain and cocked his gun?

Forcing her to disrobe was a reminder of the unlimited depths of his cruelty and his insatiable appetite for games. Her nudity had not been necessary. She had not needed it telegraphed to her that she was going to die alone at Christmas with no one knowing her name. Gault could have just shot her and been done with it. He could have pulled out his Glock and caught her unaware. The bastard.

‘Mr. and Mrs. Li?’ A white-haired woman appeared before the Asian couple.

‘Yes.’

I’ll take you in now if you’re ready.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said the man as his wife began to cry.

They were led in the direction of the viewing room, where the body of someone they loved would be carried up from the morgue by a special elevator.