He stood up and followed her to the courtroom entrance. A bailiff nodded at them and opened the doors to Gretchen Lowell’s sanity hearing.

The sun streamed through the tall windows and glimmered on the hardwood moldings and benches.

Archie stopped.

He could see Gretchen sitting at the defendant’s table, her back to him, her blond hair golden in the light. She slowly turned her head and looked at him. She still hadn’t spoken since her second arrest. Not a single word. Her face was unmarred by incarceration. Her skin glowed. She reached up with her manacled hands, brushed her hair behind her ear, and smiled at him.

“You can sit here,” the ADA whispered, ushering him to slide onto a back bench. “Just a few minutes.”

Archie took a seat, and the ADA slid in next to him.

It was a closed hearing, so attendance was limited to witnesses and court personnel.

The judge shuffled some paperwork on his desk. “Ms. Lowell. The court has been notified that you’ve decided not to testify on your own behalf, is that correct?”

Gretchen leaned close to her attorney. Her hair fell like a curtain between their faces and Archie couldn’t tell if she was telling him something or just tilting her head. After a moment, her attorney stood. “Actually,” he said, “if it pleases the court, Ms. Lowell would like to make a brief statement.”

Even with so few people in the courtroom, the murmur of surprise was audible.

“Go right ahead,” the judge said.

Gretchen pushed her chair back from the defendant’s table and rose to her feet. She moved languidly, relaxed but purposeful, as if she were excusing herself after just paying the tab for lunch at a restaurant.

She walked to the witness box and sat down. She was wearing prison-issue orange cotton pants, an orange cotton shirt over a T-shirt, and flip-flops. The male and female inmates all wore the same clothes. The T-shirts, along with the underwear, were dyed pink, after years of attrition from inmates filching underwear when they were released.

Gretchen looked right at Archie. The pink collar of the undershirt made her look girlish. Her skin glowed. Her perfect, pretty features still made his gut hurt.

“I just wanted to make it clear that I don’t regret anything,” she said. Her blue eyes left Archie and skirted around the court, finding everyone, making each person shift in his or her seat as her gaze settled and then lifted. “You can justify killing anyone, really,” she said. “You just need to give yourself permission. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for a reason.” She looked back at Archie and smiled that beauty queen smile. “I knew you’d come, darling,” she said.

He’d been subpoenaed.

Archie didn’t look away. He reached into his left pocket and rolled a pill between his fingers.