“But it wasn’t going to be my complete revenge. As the years passed I began to wonder about my mother’s death… wondered if it was really an accident. I mean, I don’t know if he inherited money from her or carried a large insurance policy on her, or anything about his finances, but I know he never could have indulged his perversion with Mom around. But with her gone, he was free to do what he wanted with Thomas and me. So that was my revenge fantasy: discover some evidence of foul play and send him to jail, where he’d have no power, and everyone would have power over him. But of course, that’s impossible now.”

BZZZZZZT!

Jack didn’t want to know the answer, and yet he had to ask.

“Did he ever… touch you?”

She shook her head. “No, thank God—as if God has anything to do with this. No… he just liked to look, and our pictures were currency he could use to get more pictures to look at.”

BZZZZZZT!

She looked up. “Got some more?”

Jack shook his head. “Nope.” He pointed to the huge tangle of shredded paper mounded around her feet and the shredder. “You got them all.”

“No,” she said. “Not them all. Nowhere near them all.”

“It’s a start,” Jack said.

All the steam seemed to be seeping out of her. She was deflating before his eyes.

“Thomas has a set,” she said softly. “He has what he calls the master collection.”

“What’s that?”

“That’s what he calls that man’s personal collection of—what did you call it?”

“Pictures of children being sexually abused. Why would he want that?”

“To blackmail me, I think. But I think he’s bluffing. He’s in so many of those pictures… exposing me means exposing himself. He’s sunk pretty low, but not that low.”

“Yet,” Jack said. He had an idea. “You know where he lives?”

She nodded. “Not far from here. Why?”

“I’ve got a few questions I want to ask your half brother. Want to come along? Can you face him?”

She hesitated, then, “Yes. I can face him. I want to face him. Are we bringing the shredder?”

“Nah. Too bulky. But I’m sure we can think of other ways to get the same results.”

Alicia stood and reached for her coat. She seemed really into this.

“Let’s go.”

13.

13.

They were waiting in the darkened, stuffy, slightly rotten-smelling front room of Thomas’s apartment when he got home.

Alicia had watched with amazement as Jack, using just a few little wirelike tools, got them through one door after another in Thomas’s apartment building. They’d been waiting only twenty minutes or so before they heard the sound of a key in the lock. Jack sprang up and disappeared, leaving Alicia sitting alone.