They had discussed this before, and David had nothing to say.

“Maybe an earthquake breaks open these walls or there’s a war and bombs fall, or a guard makes a mistake. If somehow I do end up outside, I don’t want to be stealing girls off the highway no more.”

“Then don’t.”

“But I know myself,” Jessup said. “I know myself, how weak I can be, and I know I will. Unless I have my fourteen hidden. They’ll be enough. I need to have my fourteen hidden, Mr. Thorne, to keep from having to steal new girls.”

Jessup sincerely believed in his ability to preserve the dead from decay and in his eventual discovery of a way to reanimate them.

“It can be done with electricity,” he declared. “I got it figured out. And when I resurrect them fourteen, I need to be the only one who knows their names. That’s just the way it needs to be.”

“There’s no way it can be done,” David disagreed. “No way, not ever. The dead stay dead.”

“I don’t want to steal no more girls. I got all I need with them fourteen.”

David was silent for a while, harnessing his frustration.

The prisoner watched him with bright, flat, button eyes.

The police had used cadaver dogs to search Ronny’s six acres and had excavated a few sites without success.

Finally David said, “You told me before that you knew all their names, even if you won’t reveal them.”

“Sure I did. They meant a lot to me, every one of them pretty girls. But they’re mine, waiting to be brung back, and nobody needs to know their names but me. Anyway, I don’t got a memory better than anyone’s, so there’s probably a couple names I forgot.”

“Tell me if one of them was Emily Carlino.”

She had disappeared ten years earlier, on one of the highways along that stretch of the coast from which Ronny Lee Jessup had snatched many of the other women.

“You asked me that name before.”

“I’ve asked you a lot of names.”

“That one more than any other. Why that one more?”

“I don’t think I’ve asked about her more than the others.”

“If that’s the line you want to sell me, I wonder why.”

“I don’t want to sell you any line, Ronny. I just want you to help me portray you exactly right in this book.”

Jessup nodded. His soft features formed a sad expression, and he hung his head. He sat in silence for a while and then said, “She must’ve been special to you. See, if I knew more about her than just a name that maybe I could have forgot, if I knew why this one is so special, maybe then there’s a chance I could remember.”

David dared not allow himself anger. When people were openly angry with Ronny Lee Jessup, his feelings were hurt, and he withdrew into self-pity, maintaining a silence that could last for days or even weeks.