In the Woods

"Mark's got the same kind of problem," I said. "Mel says she was with him, but she's his girlfriend, and they're not much more reliable than mothers. A little, but not much. So here we all are."

"And if you've got anything to tell us, Damien," Cassie said softly, "now's the time."

Silence. He took a sip of his 7-Up and then looked up at us, all transparent blue eyes and bewilderment, and shook his head.

"OK," I said. "Fair enough. There's something I want you to look at, Damien." I went through the file, making kind of a big deal of it-Damien's eyes followed my hand, apprehensively-and finally pulled out a bunch of photos. I laid them out in front of him, one by one, taking a good look at each before I put it down; letting him wait.

"Katy and her sisters, last Christmas," I said. Plastic tree, garish with red and green lights; Rosalind in the middle, wearing blue velvet and giving the camera an impish little smile, her arms around the twins; Katy straight-backed and laughing, waving a white fake-sheepskin jacket, and Jessica smiling uncertainly down at a beige one, like a reflection in some uncanny mirror. Unconsciously, Damien smiled back.

"Katy at a family picnic, two months ago." The snapshot with the green lawn and the sandwich.

"She looks happy, doesn't she?" Cassie said, aside to me. "She was about to go off to ballet school, everything was just beginning… It's good to know she was happy, before…"

One of the crime scene Polaroids: a full-length shot of her curled on the altar stone. "Katy just after you found her. Remember that?" Damien shifted in his chair, caught himself and sat still.

Another crime-scene shot, this one a close-up: dried blood on her nose and mouth, that one eye a slit open. "Same again: Katy where her killer dumped her."

One of the post-mortem shots: "Katy the next day." The breath went out of Damien. We had chosen the nastiest picture we had: her face folded down on itself to reveal the skull, a gloved hand holding up a steel ruler to the fracture above her ear, clotted hair and splinters of bone.

"Hard to look at, isn't it?" Cassie said, almost to herself. Her fingers hovered over the photos, moved to the crime-scene close-up, stroked the line of Katy's cheek. She glanced up, at Damien.

"Yeah," he whispered.

"See, to me," I said, leaning back in my chair and tapping the post-mortem shot, "that looks like something that only a raving psycho would do to a little girl. Some animal with no conscience, who gets his kicks out of hurting the most vulnerable people he can find. But I'm just a detective. Now Detective Maddox here, she's studied psychology. Do you know what a profiler is, Damien?"

A tiny shake of the head. His eyes were still riveted to the photographs, but I didn't think he was seeing them.

"Someone who studies what kind of person commits what kind of crime, tells the police what type of guy to look for. Detective Maddox, she's our resident profiler, and she's got her own theory about the guy who did this."

"Damien," Cassie said, "let me tell you something. I've said all along, right from day one, that this was done by someone who didn't want to do it. Someone who wasn't violent, wasn't a killer, didn't enjoy causing pain; someone who did this because he had to. He didn't have any choice. That's what I've been saying since the day we got this case."

"It's true, she has," I said. "The rest of us said she was off her head, but she stuck to her guns: this wasn't a psycho, or a serial killer, or a child-rapist." Damien flinched, a quick jerk of the chin. "What do you think, Damien? Do you think it takes a sick bastard to do something like this, or do you think this could just happen to a normal guy who never wanted to hurt anyone?"

He tried to shrug, but his shoulders were too tense and it came out as a grotesque twitch. I got up and wandered around the table, taking my time, to lean against the wall behind him. "Well, we'll never know for sure one way or the other, unless he tells us. But let's just say for a moment that Detective Maddox is right. I mean, she's the one with the psychology training; I'm willing to admit she could have a point. Let's say this guy isn't the violent type; he was never meant to be a murderer. It just happened."

Damien had been holding his breath. He let it out, caught it again with a little gasp.

"I've seen guys like that before. Do you know what happens to them, afterwards? They go to fucking pieces, Damien. They can't live with themselves. We've seen it, over and over."

"It's not pretty," Cassie said softly. "We know what happened, the guy knows we know, but he's scared to confess. He thinks going to jail is the worst thing that could happen to him. God, is he ever wrong. Every day, for the rest of his life, he wakes up in the morning and it hits him all over again, like it was yesterday. Every night he's scared to go to sleep because of the nightmares. He keeps thinking it has to get better, but it never does."