c h a p t e r  6 :

On what Gaspard thought was the third day, when Kate slammed the funnel down his throat and dropped the pills in, he swallowed them without fighting it. She put the funnel aside, and quickly taped his mouth shut again with a precut piece of duct tape she had ready.

She had said nothing today. She used a white hand towel to wipe off the saliva that had run down his face, and then she left. He waited for the pills to kick in, every cell alert to change. It became another way to measure time. He didn't know what the pills were, but suspected, a painkiller, some sort of hallucinogen. The tingling started at his nose and crept its way up to the top of his head. He forced himself to give in to it.

His mind started to go. He thought he saw a dark-haired man in the basement with them. He is a shadow. He flits behind Kate and then is gone. Gaspard wondered if the corpse had come to life, a walking man of rotting, bloated flesh and bone. But he told himself that it's just a hallucination. Not real.

He imagined the crime scene. His team would have traced him to the rundown motel, he called home. Crime tape. Media. Forensics. Evidence markers.

They moved through the scene as if he were just another victim. "It's been too long already," he told Richard and Natalie. "I'm dead." They all were so grim and desperate-looking. "Lighten up, it's all good! At least we know who the bloody killer is—Right? Right?" They stare at him blankly. Natalie cried. "You have to see this is connected to the case," Gaspard told them, his voice anxious. "It's not a coincidence."

They combed the entire property for clues. "Piece it together," he pleaded. They would have Kate's name, her ID badge photograph. He replayed her visit to his room, mining his memory for any surface she had touched, fibers she had left, some trace that she had been there. The coffee. He had slopped it on the rug. Gaspard pointed to the darkened stain.

"See it?" he cried to Richard. Richard stopped. Squatted. Waved a technician over. The lab would find traces of whatever she'd slipped him. It would confirm their suspicions. Had anyone seen her going in? What had happened to his car? He squatted next to Henry. "When the results come back, you have to do everything you can to connect her to the other murders. Release her photograph everywhere. When I'm dead, she'll leave. And when she leaves, do not stop until you catch her."

"You're hallucinating," said Kate.

He was wrenched from his dream back to the basement. She's there again, pressing a cool cloth against his forehead. He doesn't feel hot, but he realizes he's sweating.

"You were mumbling."

Gaspard was grateful for the duct tape. Grateful that she hadn't heard his half-cracked ramblings.

"I don't know how you stand the stench down here," she said, sliding her eyes to where the corpse still laid on the floor. She started to say something else, but he was tired of her, so he turned back into his mind.

And he goes to see Rachel.

She was sitting on the couch wrapped in a fleece blanket, eyes red from crying. Stomach swollen. "Have you found him?" she asked quickly when Gaspard walked in.

"No," he said. Gaspard leaned down to fetch a beer from the fridge and sat down beside her. Rachel's face is smooth and empty and her hands shook where she held the blanket under her chin.

"He's still alive,"she replied adamantly. The steely optimism in her voice broke his heart. "I know it."

Gaspard considered this. He wanted to be kind to her. But he can't lie. "Actually, chances are I'm dead," he told her. "You have to prepare yourself."

Rachel looked at him in horror, her posture hardening.

Flummoxed, he tried again to comfort her. "It's for the best," he said. "The sooner she kills me, the better. Believe me."

Her eyes filled with tears and her mouth shrunk small. "I think you'd better go now," she whispered.

"Look at me." It's Kate. He was back in the basement once again. Reality folded and skittered on the periphery of his vision. Eyes wet, he didn't want to give in to her, but he had learned his lesson, so he turned his head and gave her his attention.

There was nothing in her face. No anger. No pleasure. No pity. Nothing. "Are you scared?" she asked. She dabbed his forehead with the cloth, his cheek, the side of his neck, his collarbone. He thought he saw a flash of emotion in her eyes. Sympathy?

Then it's gone. "Whatever you think this is going to be like," she whispered. "It's going to be worse."