Without any note of accusation, David said, “Ronny, I’m sorry to have to say this, but the problem isn’t that you can’t remember. The problem is that you won’t.”

The big man raised his head, and unshed tears glimmered in his shallow eyes. “You’re such a really nice man, Mr. Thorne. You’re the best I ever knew. I don’t want you in a world of pain the way you are.”

David whispered, “Emily Carlino.”

“If I just knew why she’s so special, aside from being so pretty, I might remember.”

Before David came to Folsom the first time, Dr. Ross Dillon, a specialist in criminal psychology, who possessed personal knowledge of Jessup, had warned him that this killer wasn’t a standard-issue sociopath who faked human feelings. He was a homicidal psychopathic sentimentalist whose emotional life was as vivid as it was confused, who was the star of his own soap opera and something of a psychic vampire. His emotions—and the emotions of others on which he fed—were like a mild but continuous orgasm. If he were allowed to feed on David’s memories of Emily and on his feelings for her, Jessup would soon be sated on the subject, and he would have no motivation to answer any questions about her. The best way to draw him out was to tease him with the prospect of emotional sharing—but how to do that remained a puzzle.

“I really want to help, Mr. Thorne. It hurts me, knowing you suffer so bad about this girl and all.” The tears in his right eye remained contained, but one slipped free from his left and slid down his smooth pink cheek.

| 8 |

The encounter with Maddison Sutton had so shaken David Thorne that he was ready to take a step that Dr. Ross Dillon had advised against. He opened the manila envelope that he had put on the table . . . but hesitated to withdraw the contents.

Although he couldn’t explain why, with the sudden appearance of Emily Carlino’s double, he sensed that getting answers from Jessup was a more urgent matter than it had been twenty-four hours earlier. Maddison’s presence in that restaurant was something far stranger and darker than mere coincidence, and David sensed a pending momentum to events that might sweep him toward a mortal precipice.

The single tear curved down the prisoner’s face to one corner of his perpetually pouting lips. The tip of his tongue licked the droplet into his mouth, and he seemed to savor it.

As though some sixth sense made him aware of the intensity of David’s emotion, he fixed his attention on the envelope. If he felt he could risk offending, he might have raised his one free hand and torn it away from his visitor.

David produced a photograph, a head shot of Emily.

A dreaminess came over Jessup’s face. His eyelids drooped. His full lips parted, and he breathed through his mouth.

“This was her, Ronny.”