“Do the police respond when you call them?” He snorted. Bitter. “I wonder how far they’d have to come. Whether they’d make it in time.”

“Look, I don’t know who you are—”

“You don’t?” The man’s brow dipped just once. Genuine shock. “Really?”

He grabbed the baseball bat from the floor and came toward me. My stomach plummeted.

“Please don’t.”

“You really don’t know who I am?”

“Please.”

I squeezed my eyes shut. He grabbed my jaw and shoved my head against the cupboards until I opened them.

“Look at me,” he snarled. “Look at my face.”

I could hardly breathe. If I didn’t get the picture soon he was going to kill me. I could see him losing control again. Twitching in the muscles of his tight, red neck. His heart was hammering—jugular ticking fast in his neck. I searched his face and cringed as it came to me.

“Oh, god. You’re Claire’s father.”

The baseball bat was in his fist. I cowered into the corner, expecting another blow as he rose to his feet.

“That’s right, shithead.”

I’d hardly looked at my victim’s parents during my trial. Not my victim. Claire. I had to stop thinking about her that way. The way the rest of the country was looking at her. Because I didn’t deserve this. There were angry tears on my face as a brief swell of defiance prickled in my chest.

“What took you so long?” I asked. “I expected you to be out there with the mob when they televised where I lived six months ago.”

“Yeah?” He sat down again. “Sorry. I wanted a more personal visit.”

“What are you gonna do?” I asked. It wasn’t a challenge. I was serious. Because whatever he’d told himself about coming here and finding child porn and having me sent back to jail wasn’t going to pan out, and he was starting to realize that. He could do whatever he wanted to me out here, and no one would hear me scream. I wasn’t sure a beating would satisfy him. If he was going to kill me, all I wanted was to be sure he wouldn’t touch my fucking geese. I started working my way mentally toward an argument for them. Toward getting him to make me a promise. But it was hard to maintain complete consciousness. He’d really smacked me around, maybe even after I’d passed out. The lights above me weren’t completely clear. I had the feeling I’d been kicked in the chest a few times. Things were crunching and rattling as I breathed.

He was back in the chair, ignoring me. Head in his hands, fingers gripping his hair, thinking, as I was thinking.

“I kept a picture of you,” he said. He drew a long breath, let it out slow. “Since Claire picked you out of the photo lineup. I asked the cops to show me the lineup, show me who she’d identified. You. I asked if I could take the picture. I kept it in my wallet. I would look at it sometimes to remind myself that you were just a man. That you weren’t some … thing. A ghost.”