He turned his back on the bookshelf, but didn’t look at her. Didn’t look at anything.

“I used to come home late,” Kai said, “and see lights flicker in my living room, and I’d know you were there, reading by candle. I’d walk to the door, and if you forgot to pull the curtains I could see you through the window, on the couch. Once I found you on the carpet with your feet resting on the cushions, holding the book open over your face.” His shoulders twitched, but he made no sound. “You smile as you read, you know that? Lost in those books. Velasquez, LeClerc, Probst, Evander. Lost, and happy. I tried to read Velasquez because I wanted to see what made you smile like that. I watched you, happy, as I stood on the porch, in the dark. I knew once I walked in the door that smile would break, and I’d be the reason.”

“You weren’t,” he said, of course.

“Oh, I know,” she lied.

“I was messed up,” he said. “I’m still messed up. And hells, you remember what I was like before the Penitents. There are nine kinds of evil inside my head. None of that’s your fault.”

“Still. It was nice to see that you could be happy, once in a while. After we split, when I came home late, I’d imagine you on the couch. As if the light was still on. It was on somewhere, I guess, just not near me.”

“It wasn’t.”

“Wasn’t?”

“The light. Wasn’t on. I couldn’t read for a long time after we broke up. Whenever I opened a book the words swam.”

One corner of her mouth quirked up, then down. “I sort of wish you hadn’t told me that.”

“I wish a lot of things.”

“I’m sorry about last night,” she said. More words rose to her tongue unbidden, and she closed her mouth to keep them in.

“You didn’t come here to apologize.”

“No.”

“This is a business call.” That sentence should have been a question, but his voice didn’t rise at the end. He sat back behind the desk, frowned at his half-eaten lunch, and slid it aside.

“Yes.” She’d rehearsed many versions of this conversation, but the strange start had skewed her. “I need to report something. Anonymously.”

“Coming to me is hardly anonymous.”

“No. But it’s my best alternative.”

“Why not go to another officer?”

“Come on, Claude. We dated for years. Bitter separation. Do you think there’s a watchman on the force who doesn’t know my name by now? I could feel their contempt from the bottom of the ridge. I doubt any of them like me, or trust me, which means I can’t trust them. Which leaves you.”

“Or a Penitent.”