LITMIR.BIZ

       ONE

      When does murder begin?

      With the pull of a trigger? With the formation of a motive? Or does it begin long before, when a child swallows more pain than love and is forever changed?

      Perhaps it doesn’t matter.

      Or perhaps it matters more than everything else.

      We judge and punish based on facts, but facts are not truth. Facts are like a buried skeleton uncovered long after death. Truth is fluid. Truth is alive. To know the truth requires understanding, the most difficult human art. It requires seeing all things at once, forward and backward, the way God sees.

      Forward and backward …

      So we begin in the middle, with a telephone ringing in a dark bedroom on the shore of Lake Pontchartrain in New Orleans, Louisiana. There’s a woman lying on the bed, mouth open in the mindless gape of sleep. She seems not to hear the phone. Then suddenly the harsh ring breaks through, like defibrillator paddles shocking a comatose patient. The woman’s hand shoots from beneath the covers, groping for the phone, not finding it. She gasps and rises onto one elbow. Then she groans and picks up the receiver from the bedside table.

      The woman is me.

      “Dr. Ferry,” I croak.

      “Are you sleeping?” The voice is male, taut with anger.

      “No.” My denial is automatic, but my mouth is dry as a cotton ball, and my alarm clock reads 8:20 P.M. I’ve been out for nine hours. The first decent sleep I’ve had in days.

      “He hit another one.”

      Something sparks in my drowsy brain. “What?”

      “This is the fourth time I’ve called in the past half hour, Cat.”

      The voice brings up a well of anger, longing, and guilt. It belongs to the detective I’ve been sleeping with for the past eighteen months. Sean Regan. An insightful, fascinating man with a wife and three kids.

      “What did you say before?” I ask, ready to bite off Sean’s head if he asks me to meet him somewhere.

      “I said, he hit another one.”

      I blink and try to orient myself in the darkness. It’s early August, and the purple glow of dusk filters through my curtains. God, my mouth is dry. “Where?”

      “The Garden District. Owner of a printing company. Male Caucasian.”

      “Bite marks?”

      “Worse than the others.”

      “How old was he?”

      “Sixty-nine.”

      “Jesus. It is him.” I’m already getting out of bed. “This makes no sense at all.”

      “Nope.”

      “Sexual predators kill women, Sean. Or children. Not old men.”

      “We’ve had this conversation. How fast can you get here? Piazza’s hovering over me, and the chief himself may be coming down for a look.”

      I lift yesterday’s jeans off the chair and slip them over my panties. Victoria’s Secret, Sean’s favorite pair, but he won’t be seeing them tonight. Maybe not for a long time. Maybe never again. “Any gay angle on this victim? Did he use male prostitutes, anything like that?”

      “Not even a tickle,” Sean replies. “Looks as clean as the others.”

      “If he’s got a home computer, confiscate it. He might—”

      “I know my job, Cat.”

      “I know, but—”

      “Cat.” The single syllable is a probing finger. “Are you sober?”

      A column of heat rises up my spine. I haven’t had a sip of vodka for nearly forty-eight hours, but I’m not going to give Sean the satisfaction of answering his interrogation. “What’s the victim’s name?”

      “Arthur LeGendre.” His voice drops. “Are you sober, darlin’?”

      The craving is already awake in my blood, like little teeth gnawing at the walls of my veins. I need the anesthetic burn of a shot of Grey Goose. Only I can’t have that anymore. I’ve been using Valium to fight the physical withdrawal symptoms, but nothing can truly replace the alcohol that has kept me together for so long.

      I shift the phone from shoulder to shoulder and pull a silk blouse from my closet. “Where are the bite marks?”

      “Torso, nipples, face, penis.”

      I freeze. “Face? Are they deep?”

      “Deep enough for you to take impressions, I think.”

      Excitement blunts the edge of my craving. “I’m on my way.”

      “Have you taken your meds?”

      Sean knows me too well. No one else in New Orleans is even aware that I take anything. Lexapro for depression, Depakote for impulse control. I stopped taking both drugs three days ago, but I don’t want to get into that with Sean.

      “Stop worrying about me. Is the FBI there?”

      “Half the task force is here, and they want to know what you think about these bite marks. The Bureau guy is photographing them, but you have that ultraviolet rig … and when it comes to teeth, you’re the man.”

      Sean’s admiring misstatement of my gender is typical cop talk, and it tells me he’s speaking for the benefit of others. “What’s the address?”

      “Twenty-seven twenty-seven

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