He and Barclay had each made a promise. Martin promised to tell the Witch Hunter's unvarnished side of the story. The truth, exactly as Barclay saw it. No matter how crazy it might sound.

The killer only agreed to be interviewed by Martin because of what he called their "kinship." During those several weeks of interviews, he'd been allowed special visiting privileges in the psychiatric facility because of his own infamy, his own special relationship with death.

"Just don't kill this one, pal," a guard said one day with a dry chuckle.

It was meant as a joke, but it hadn't been to Martin, nor to Barclay.

This was their kinship. Martin had taken a life with his own hands, so James Barclay held him in high regard.

In the end, he published things Barclay hadn't agreed to, things which might be considered libelous if they were written about anyone other than a convicted murderer. Additions the publisher may have requested, but mostly he'd decided to add on his own, because he was aware of the requirements of the market.

Readers of true crime books were savvy, with reality television and procedural crime dramas and 24-hour news. They expected not only to read about motivation but criminal profiling.

They wanted to hear about the killer's troubled childhood. His bedwetting, his shyness around women, his propensity to torture small animals.

Sheila Tanner, the criminal psychologist who testified during the Barclay trial as an expert witness, had given Martin plenty to work with. But he'd known his readers would want more.

They wanted to hear about molestation and cigarette burns and mothers who prostituted themselves to pay the bills. Things that might not exonerate the murderers of their crimes, but had shaped them into the monsters society deemed should be kept behind bars for the rest of their lives, or put to death.

He gave his readers what they craved. Much more than was necessary. He'd spoken to Barclay's childhood bullies and his estranged mother, his teachers, the men he'd served with in Vietnam, the local police where he'd grown up.

What James Barclay had promised Martin was a sequel. During the last visit, after the promotional book tour and all the TV interviews, Barclay guaranteed enough material for a second Witch Hunter book, which Martin would write with a knife at his throat.

It would be Martin's curtain call, the killer said. A posthumous success.

"An' while the ink's still dryin," Barclay told him, presumably thinking Martin wrote his books with a pen or a typewriter, "I'll cut off yer balls and choke you to death with the cord."

Martin's gaze fell on the girl's breasts, swelling toward him with each hot, angry breath. The ankh shifting between them. The cinnamon smell of her gum made him think of mummification. Ancient Egyptians had used cinnamon during the process, he'd read once. The Pharaohs were believed to live forever. The ankh symbolized their belief in eternal life.

Nobody lives forever, he thought.