“I do thank you.” McMurtry’s face lights at the sight of the tobacco, his pale tongue flashing out as he licks the paper before putting the end in his mouth. The match is a puff of red. “Now, what was I goin’ on about?”

Emma sits back in her chair and smiles. “You were telling us about the murders.”

CHAPTER FIVE

The interview takes nearly an hour. By the time they return to the world outside, it’s almost three thirty and there’s a long drive ahead. Clouds are coming in from the west. Bell looks at her all the way to the car.

“What?”

“Nothing.” He grins and scuffs the gravel as he walks. “Those kinds of details we tend to take note of. Jesus.”

Emma tips her head back. The sky looks very big, and the joy of release is keen. “You should wear that suit when we go to see Gesak. It seems to impress the prison staff.”

“McMurtry even filled out the blue subject forms.”

“The parts he could write.”

“That was a good day’s work.” Bell unlocks the pickup, looking satisfied.

Emma walks around to climb in the passenger side. The air in the cab is warmer. “You want to split the driving on the way back?”

“If I get tired, yeah.” Bell exhales, sets his shoulders. “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.”

He drives them back out the way they came in. Emma steadies herself against the bouncing of the Dodge as she examines the paperwork scrawled with McMurtry’s messy handwriting.

“How’s it looking?”

Emma flicks the pages. “Like it needs retyping.”

“That boy couldn’t spell worth a damn.”

“Bad at spelling, good at strangling women. He can put that on his résumé if he ever gets out of jail.” The adrenaline is wearing off and now her own comment sickens her. She looks away. “Sorry.”

“Nothing to be sorry for,” Bell says. He waits a beat. “Do you think he feels regret? He never really expressed anything like remorse.”

“These guys never do.” Emma’s surprised at the way her words lash out, but she can’t seem to stop herself. “They just keep protesting they’ve been hard done by. If they regret anything, it’s that now they’re stuck in a ten-by-ten-foot cell. McMurtry’s no different—he doesn’t really care about the things he’s done, the women he’s killed.…”

When the delayed reaction hits her, it’s as though all the blood leaves her upper body and pools in her feet. A sea of images and sensations rolls over her: the constant slow, circular motion of the vents stirring the air in the interview room; the pulse of her blood in her ears, like listening to the whoosh and rush inside a conch shell; the way McMurtry pinched his cigarette between finger and thumb.…

In the basement in Emma’s head, other fingers perform the same action: stubby digits with bitten nails, stained at the tips. She sees grease-dark overalls stitched in yellow; smells the scent of tobacco, of body odor and blood; hears the sound of screaming.…