She tries for a jaunty air. “Well, I don’t feel very furious at the moment.”

“And yet you smell of gunpowder.” He smiles directly at her. “You and Kristin each have a doorway in your mind that you keep firmly closed.”

Emma can’t help but feel she’s botching this conversation, struggling along two steps behind. “Kristin said you enjoy unraveling mysteries.”

“There are twenty-five feet of intestines in the human body—did you know that? I enjoy unraveling lots of things.”

She grimaces. “Now you’re just being disgusting to get a reaction. Are you trying to make me furious?”

“Maybe. Would you say you feel angry pretty much all the time?”

“Yes.” Her face feels tight. “In your questionnaire answers, you wrote—”

“And what do you feel when you don’t feel angry?”

“Tired. When you wrote, Let me know when he starts taking their hair, how did you predict that?”

“No.” Simon slashes with the blade of his hand. “I answered your questionnaire, Emma. Now I’d like you to tell me something.”

She tries to stay firm. “There’s nothing about me that could possibly be interesting to you.”

“Why don’t you let me decide?”

“Seriously, come on.” Her hold is slipping. “I’m just a… a regular, normal, boring girl—”

“Oh, Emma, you’re anything but boring.” He tilts his head. “And I have a certain professional curiosity. None of my models survived their transformations—I didn’t get to talk with them afterward. But here you are.…”

“Here I am,” Emma says. Suddenly and inexplicably, she feels like crying.

She works to control herself. Is this what it will take to get answers about the Pennsylvania case? What does it matter if she goes over with Simon Gutmunsson the things she’s gone over with the authorities a hundred times?

And the photos of the Pennsylvania killer’s victims keep coming to her, in her mind’s eye: not the grainy xerox horror copies but the identification photos, the smiling, youthful faces.…

She inhales, releases. “I don’t know what you want me to say. Huxton was deranged. There’s a proper medical term for it, but I don’t—”

“No, no, no.” Simon turns his head askance. “I don’t want the litany you’ve already recited to the police and the papers. Did you think I would pummel you with questions about Huxton? I’m not the FBI.” He turns back to screw his eyes into hers. “I don’t care about Huxton. Huxtons are a dime a dozen.”

“Then what?”

Emma can’t remember seeing him move, but Simon is now sitting on the floor near the front of his cell, long legs crossed. His arms are lifted, hands suspended from the horizontal crossbar, and his face is visible through the gap between the metal rods that keep him caged. Emma wants to look away from his gaze but finds she can’t. The dark motes in his eyes go back and back without end.

His voice is soft. “You’re so very prickly, Emma. However did he catch you?”

“I used to be a more trusting person.” A great lassitude is sweeping over her, like a narcosis. Fighting it is hard. Simon is sitting down. Maybe she could sit down, too.