Nobody had ever asked Gillian that before. "No." She couldn't imagine any other answer.
"If you had to, would you?"
Point a gun at someone and pull the trigger? Could she do it? "Yes. If I had to. If someone's life was in danger."
Had Mary ever shot anybody? Gillian wondered. Had she ever killed anybody?
"But isn't that why you're here? To kill him if you have to?",
"Catch him, not kill him."
A knock sounded on the closed door; then Mrs. Lindstrom said, "Better get to sleep, girls. School tomorrow."
Gillian raised her eyebrows in surprise, and Holly pressed her face against the bear to stifle a giggle.
Once they were in bed and the candles were blown out, Holly had another question to ask: "Why did you become a cop?"
Gillian wondered how much she should divulge and decided upon a watered-down version of the truth. "When I was a little younger than you, something happened to me that made me question who I was and what I really wanted out of life. I had a friend who was put in prison for something he may not have done, or something that may not have been his fault. That led to my interest in crime investigation."
"What did your friend do?"
Gillian hesitated, then decided to be forthright. "He was found guilty of murder."
Holly gasped. "But you don't think he did it?"
"I never used to feel that he was capable of murder. But now… lately, I'm not so sure… I always thought I knew him so well, but I'm beginning to wonder if I was just fooling myself. My sister says I see things the way I want them to be, not the way they really are, and maybe that's true."
Holly was quiet for so long that Gillian thought she was asleep.
"I lied," Holly suddenly said, the confession coming out of the darkness. "When I said I wasn't afraid, I lied. I'm always afraid now. 1 think about him all the time. I can't think about anything else." Her words came in a panicked rush. "You'll catch him, won't you? You'll kill him or put him in prison so I can quit thinking about him, won't you?"
Mary headed for the U of M campus and the fraternity where Sebastian Tate lived. They'd uncovered some new incriminating information about him, and she wanted to get her own interview.
Three days had passed since Gillian had gone undercover, and Mary wasn't feeling any better about it now than she had that afternoon in Wakefield's office. The thought of her sister exposing herself to a warped killer scared the hell out of her. But Gillian was a grown-up, and Mary couldn't do a thing if Gillian decided to act like an idiot. Not that she'd ever listened to Mary before-not even when they were kids. Gillian may have been the youngest, but she'd always had a mind of her own.
Mary spotted the address Wakefield had given her and parked her rental car. It wasn't fair that obnoxious, partying frat guys got the coolest houses, but there it was. Sebastian Tate lived in a massive three-story stone building with an equally impressive wraparound porch and defaced cement lions guarding the front steps.
Dave Matthews was blasting from a radio somewhere, and two guys on the roof of the porch were rolling out sod. The temperature was in the low fifties, but that didn't keep them from going shirtless while they worked.
She shaded her eyes and shouted up at them. "Does Sebastian Tate live here?"
One of them straightened. He wore khaki shorts and a curled cap with a band logo on the front. "Tate? Yeah, most of the time. Go on in."
"What's the grass for?" she asked, curious.
"Homecoming. We're having a kegger, and we're gonna put lawn furniture out here. You aren't a cop, are you?" he asked, laughing.
She pulled out the leather case that held her photo ID and flipped it open.
"Oh, shit."
The other guy stopped working. "Nice going, Carver."
"Hey," he called down to her, "nobody here will be under twenty-one."
"I'm sure they won't," Mary said dryly, slipping the badge back into her pocket. She had zero interest in their drinking habits. "Where'd you say Tate is?"
"His room's on the third floor. Go on in."
"Thanks."
The place reeked of stale beer. As she took the stairs, she met two students on their way down, laughing and struggling to transport a half-finished keg.
She found Tate in a room that may once have been a library. Sunlight managed to filter through windows that looked as if they hadn't been washed in years. Two unmade double beds were shoved against opposite walls. Clothes littered the hardwood floor, and the room smelled like sweat and dirty socks. The radio she'd heard outside was blaring, the DJ shouting nonsensical patter.
Tate sat at a table, deeply engrossed in something she couldn't see.
She knocked on the molding of the open door.
He didn't hear her.
She walked over to the radio and turned it off.
"Hey!" He looked up. "Who the hell are you?"
She introduced herself, flashed her ID, and said she wanted to talk to him.
In his hand was an X-Acto knife he was using to cut out mat board for photos.
"You're pretty good at that," she said, noting the precise lines. Shewmsmbnrt trying tv cut mat board and knew it was excruciatingly hard to do. In the right hands, an X-Acto knife could do as much damage as a scalpel.
"I've already been downtown." He leaned back, one hand braced on the table in front of him. He was shirtless. Didn't anybody wear shirts around there?
"I'd really like to talk to you myself." She found a chair and pulled it close, sitting down. "You don't mind, do you?"
"Cantrell… You aren't related to Gillian, are you?"
"You mean Officer Cantrell? She's my sister."
He gave her a big, predatory smile. "I'd rather talk to her."
Of course he would. "What kind of photography are you interested in?"
"Black-and-white."
"Nature?"
"People." He tossed down the knife. "I like taking pictures of people."
She fished around in her coat pocket and pulled out a page torn from City Pages, the Twin Cities free weekly entertainment paper. "Is this your ad?"
He glanced at the clipping, but couldn't have looked closely enough to see anything. When he didn't answer, she read it aloud.
"Models. Female. Eighteen to twenty-five. Blond. Some nudity required." She read the ten-digit number. "According to the phone company, that number belongs to you."
"So?"
She sensed his restrained rage, and maybe an urge to hit her.
"That's not against the law, is it?" he asked, his face taking on an angry flush.
"No. Not as long as they're willing participants."
"Oh, they're willing. If they answer the ad and find out it's not up their alley, they don't do it. Simple as that." '
She wasn't letting this creep off so easily. "Would you mind showing me some of your photos?"
"I've got buddies in law school. I know I don't have to show you anything without a search warrant. And there's no way a judge or DA's going to give you one."
He was absolutely right. They didn't have anything to justify a search warrant. "How about names?" she persisted. "Do you have names of the girls you've photographed? I'd like to talk to them. Just to put my mind at ease. Just to confirm what you're saying."
He shoved himself to his feet, rummaged through a pile of papers in the corner of the room, and finally came back with two phone numbers written on a scrap of paper. "There," he said, angrily thrusting it into her hand. "Call them. They'll tell you I was a perfect gentleman."
"Thanks," she said, pocketing the numbers.