“Look,” Bordain said, snatching up his cigarettes and lighter. “I had nothing to do with Marissa’s murder. I did not send severed breasts to my mother in the mail. I did not try to run her off the road. Wherever Gina is, I didn’t put her there.”

“Would you be willing to take a polygraph?” Hicks asked.

“No, I would not,” he said. “And you have no reason to keep me here, so—”

“You’re free to go at any time,” Mendez said. “We just need to get a quick photo of you before you leave.”

“For what?”

“For Haley. We’ll be showing her photographs of all the men in her mother’s life to see if she has a reaction—”

“Absolutely not,” Bordain said, angry. “You’re going to put me in a lineup for a four-year-old child who’s been traumatized and is probably brain damaged? Go to hell.”

They watched him go to the door and stand there. Mendez got up and made his way over to let him out.

“Some people who come in here aren’t as free to go as others,” he said.

Bordain said nothing, but walked out and wasted no time getting to the end of the hall. Vince came out of the break room to watch him go.

“He didn’t take that well,” Mendez said.

Vince shrugged. “Go figure.”

Chapter 62

62

Halfway up the ladder the world went silent. Gina had no idea how much time it had taken her to get this far. It seemed like days must have passed. Each step up was more difficult than the last, her body was more exhausted, her mind drifting in and out of reality. With each step she had to rest longer, and with each rest she felt more inclined to just go to sleep and fall into the next dimension.

She thought she might be crying, but it was as if all aspects of her—body, mind, spirit—were drifting apart and losing the connection to one another. Marissa had stopped talking to her. Silence rang in her ears.

She was close to giving up. The little bit of rotten food she had eaten had come back up from the pain and the effort of moving. What adrenaline she had used to start the climb was spent.

Starving and dehydrated, she had no energy reserves to draw on. Unknown to her, the concentrated acid in her empty stomach had begun to eat through the stomach lining. She was aware of that pain because it was new and sharp. The pain in her broken ankle was so enormous and had been so continuous that in a weird way it had become like deafening white noise in her head. The pain in her shoulder where she had been shot throbbed now like a bass drum. Infection had begun to set in.

I just want to lie down.

No one told her not to.