David didn’t know himself. Lying concealed behind the wrapped remains of Isabella Lopez, he’d never been more of a stranger to himself, not even when he had lied to Emily and spent two sordid days with the actress. The human heart might be, as they said, deceitful, but it seemed to him that it was no less stoic than deceitful, and glorious in its capacity for charity, devotion, friendship, tenderness, and love. One of his novels had explored three questions. What would you do for love? Would you die? Would you kill? He had thought that he’d found the limits of a man’s capacity for sacrifice in that story, but he realized that he had failed to plumb those questions adequately. His answers had been superficial. He knew now that a self-aware and self-critical man, grown past the callowness of youth, would do anything for the object of his love if he felt her to be good and worthy. Not merely die. Not merely kill. But kill and die and go to Hell for his actions, supposing Hell was real and his actions warranted damnation. Stuart Ulrich deserved death, and David would kill him, if he could, not for love, but for self-preservation and for the innocent girl whom Ulrich would eventually imprison. However, having discovered this capacity in himself, he knew that he was also capable of killing for Maddison, not merely to protect her from men like Ulrich, but to ensure her safety, her honor, her happiness. In a world long on hate and short on love, he would stake his soul on the defense of the latter, and though society limited capital punishment to murderers—and often even excused them—he would not. He scared himself, but he could live with whom he was becoming—if he could live at all.

Peering over the mummified body of Isabella Lopez, he saw Ulrich appear on the steps. He lowered his head and waited.

“Holy shit,” Ulrich said, “his hidden harem, just like the crazy bastard said, all wrapped tight as Tootsie Rolls.”

| 83 |

Ulrich stood about five feet ten. The topmost catafalque was perhaps a foot above his head.