Carlo wouldn’t know that I hadn’t put the acid in the nasal spray, that I thought it was only on the bag that would burn Beaufort’s hand. I thought Gemma-Kate was giving me a capsicum solution that would temporarily blind him. This wasn’t capsicum, this was the really bad stuff. I was going to shoot him to put him out of his misery. I was also going to do it for the Clutters, the Walkers, Father Santangelo, and Detective Meadows. And Gloria.

“Oh my God, Gloria,” I said, and ran through that closed door with my gun raised.

I found her quite still on the bed, a plastic bag over her head and one of the bed pillows at her side. I dropped the gun at the foot of the bed and bent over her, whipping off the bag and placing my fingers at the side of her throat.

Here was the final victim in a long trail of death that stretched from Richard Eugene Hickock and Perry Smith’s meeting in that cell in Leavenworth, before they were killers.

I wanted to scream at her. I didn’t.

Then, as it always happened at a time like this, thinking of her death made me think of all the other innocents I hadn’t saved. And I thought of all the bad guys I hadn’t killed, and especially one who didn’t suffer enough, who didn’t take long enough to die because a shotgun blast to his back ended the pain too soon.

Carlo was right, for reasons he could not imagine. Not shooting Beaufort was much more satisfying.

I picked up the gun, came out of the room, and put the gun on the table, my voice getting a little cold when I said, “She’s dead. Again, I advise you not to touch him.”

I went into the kitchen area, where I ran cold water over my hand to stop the burning, then turned back to them.

While I was doing that, Carlo had staggered to Beaufort’s side, either still in shock or sore from having spent God knows how long tied to the chair. He fell to the floor on his knees, and crawled the rest of the way to Beaufort, who had ceased thrashing about.

Then he looked up at me. “Call an ambulance, for God’s sake,” he barked.

I pointed out spots on the rug that were burnt as I said, “Be careful. There could be acid anywhere.”

If he had questioned whether I knew what was happening to Beaufort, he understood now. I could tell by the way he looked at me, grieving at what he saw. He stayed on his knees but lifted his hands off the carpet. He made a mark with his thumb on Beaufort’s forehead, near his hairline where the skin was not burning.