If I had to guess, she is thinking about decades of nightmares she might have been spared had she known that the demon in them was dead. “Yes, ma’am,” I say again. “He died on the floor of my father’s medical office. His chest was crushed in an industrial accident.”

Relief shines from Dolores’s eyes.

“Would you be willing to look at some photographs?” I finally ask.

She instantly draws back from me. “I’d rather not. Do you really think any of those men are still alive?”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Which ones? Not the blond man.”

I dread answering her, but I have no choice. “He might be, yes. He might be just the man we’re after.”

She closes her eyes once more. “Oh, God. I knew it.”

“What?” asks Serenity, leaning closer. “What is it?”

“They were all bad . . . but in some way, he was the worst. Not the most brutal, but . . . the most twisted. It was him who turned me over, who—”

“It’s all right,” I say quickly. “You don’t have to tell us that right now.”

“I’d rather get it out. I never thought I would, you see. But now . . . maybe because of what you’ve told me, I feel I can.”

“What did the blond man do?” Serenity asks softly.

“He sodomized me. Several did, after that. But that wasn’t the worst of it. The blond one used a stick on me. A piece of bamboo. He said something about the Japanese doing the same thing in China. He called them ‘Japs,’ of course. I—”

Dolores’s voice dies suddenly, as if her air has simply run out.

“Are you all right?” asks Serenity, starting to her feet.

“I thought I was going to die that night,” she whispers. “They tore me up so badly. That’s why I have no children. I couldn’t conceive after that.”

“That had to be Snake Knox,” I say with conviction. “He’s the missing piece in that scene. Frank and his buddies took trophies off the Japanese during the war. Snake probably did the same in Korea. They were obsessed with that kind of thing.” And Snake used a bottle on Viola during the machine-shop rape . . .

Serenity has reached out and taken hold of Dolores’s hand. “I’m right here with you,” she almost croons. “They can’t hurt you now.”

“I need to find out if Snake Knox was wounded in Korea,” I think aloud. “Or if he had any sort of abdominal scars at that time.”

“No, you don’t,” says Dolores.

I look up in surprise. Did I go too far? “I’m sorry, Dolores. I’ve just been hunting this guy for so long. You don’t want me to pursue this?”

She shakes her head. “You don’t need to worry about the scars. Because I saw his face.”