Fasken hesitated a moment before pulling the door further open. Barefoot, in ripped jeans and a T-shirt that reached his navel, Jake Fasken was of average height. He had greasy blondish hair and a thin face scattered with pimples. The pupils of his pale blue eyes were dilated. He yawned and stretched, exposing more of his indrawn abdomen. “What do a pair of doctors want with me, anyway?” he asked blankly.

“Not you,” Lopez said. “We’re looking for Angie Fischer.”

Fasken yawned again. “She’s not here.”

Lopez looked over his shoulder into the room. “Mind if we see for ourselves?”

Fasken folded his arms across his chest defiantly. “Matter of fact, I do.”

“Okay.” She reached for her phone and started to dial.

“Who are you calling?” Fasken asked.

“I promised I’d let your parole officer know if there were problems,” she said without breaking the rhythm of her finger.

“Okay, okay. Shit!” he huffed. “You can come in.” He stepped out of the way.

They walked into the filthy apartment, which reeked of cigarettes, beer, and stale mustiness. A mattress lay askew on the floor with blue sheets and a gray blanket wadded into a ball on top. The only sofa in the bachelor unit was covered with empty beer cans and old pizza boxes. Plates, cans, and plastic wrappers were piled on every square inch of countertop in the galley kitchen. “See?” Fasken sneered. “You want to leave now?”

“Sure,” Lopez said. “Soon as I borrow your bathroom.”

Fasken hesitated a moment then shook his head. “Ah, fuck!” His eyes rolled back until only the whites appeared. He ambled over to the only door in the room and banged on it. “Come out, Ange. They’re not going anywhere.”

The door opened. A girl with dyed blue hair, wearing a red halter top and tartan skirt, stumbled out. Her arms and legs were skinny to the point of bony. Sallow in coloring, she had hollow cheeks and thin lips; her strikingly high cheekbones, however, complemented her sculpted facial features. Her eye color was hard to determine, because her widely dilated pupils made them look entirely black.

Kilburn had seen enough drug addicts at St. Michael’s to recognize the signs of crystal meth intoxication from eight feet away. He wondered if that was why she was hiding. Or maybe her brother had given her the heads-up that the authorities were searching for her. He realized he probably would have done the same for Kyra.

He glanced down to Angie’s left thigh where, at the skirt’s hem, he noticed a sore with a half-inch-long crusted opening surrounded by salmon-pink skin. He judged that the wound was healing despite the lack of proper attention to it. It looked so innocuous—like ones he had seen countless times at St. Mike’s. But he knew the pus inside had proven lethal to Tom Mallek and Parminder Singh and possibly, indirectly, to countless others.