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But was she sure of that? If he was what she was thinkingmonstrous that such a thing should even be in her mind, when all shed wanted just a half an hour ago was fresh batteries for the goddarn remote control-if he was, then hed been careful for a long time. And he was careful, he was neat, he was the original everything-polished, everything-clean boy, but if he was what those goddarn (no, goddamned) plastic cards seemed to suggest he was, then he must be supernaturally careful. Supernaturally watchful. Sly.

It was a word she had never thought of in connection to Bob until tonight.

No, she told the garage. She was sweating, her hair was stuck to her face in unlovely spikelets, she was crampy and her hands were trembling like those of a person with Parkinsons, but her voice was weirdly calm, strangely serene. No, hes not. Its a mistake. My husband is not Beadie.

She went back into the house. 5 -

She decided to make tea. Tea was calming. She was filling the kettle when the phone began to ring again. She dropped the kettle into the sink-the bong sound made her utter a small scream-then went to the phone, wiping her wet hands on her housecoat.

Calm, calm, she told herself. If he can keep a secret, so can I. Remember that theres a reasonable explanation for all this Oh, really?

and I just dont know what it is. I need time to think about it, thats all. So: calm.

She picked up the phone and said brightly, If thats you, handsome, come right over. My husbands out of town.

Bob laughed. Hey, honey, how are you?

Upright and sniffin the air. You?

There was a long silence. It felt long, anyway, although it couldnt have been more than a few seconds. In it she heard the somehow terrible whine of the refrigerator, and water dripping from the faucet onto the teakettle shed dropped in the sink, the beating of her own heart-that last sound seeming to come from her throat and ears rather than her chest. They had been married so long that they had become almost exquisitely attuned to each other. Did that happen in every marriage? She didnt know. She only knew her own. Except now she had to wonder if she even knew that one.

You sound funny, he said. All thick in the voice. Is everything okay, sweetie?

She should have been touched. Instead she was terrified. Marjorie Duvall: the name did not just hang in front of her eyes; it seemed to blink on and off, like a neon bar sign. For a moment she was speechless, and to her horror, the kitchen she knew so well was wavering in front of her as more tears rose in her eyes. That crampy heaviness was back in her bowels, too. Marjorie Duvall. A-positive. 17 Honey Lane. As in hey, hon, hows life been treatin you, are you upright and sniffin the air?

I was thinking about Brandolyn, she heard herself say.

Oh, baby, he said, and the sympathy in his voice was all Bob. She knew it well. Hadnt she leaned on it time after time since 1984? Even before, when theyd still been courting and she came to understand that he was the one? Sure she had. As he had leaned on her. The idea that such sympathy could be nothing but sweet icing on a poison cake was insane. The fact that she was at this moment lying to him was even more insane. If, that was, there were degrees of insanity. Or maybe insane was like unique, and there was no comparative or superlative form. And what was she thinking? In Gods name, what?

But he was talking, and she had no idea what hed just said.

Run that past me again. I was reaching for the tea. Another lie, her hands were shaking too badly to reach for anything, but a small plausible one. And her voice wasnt shaking. At least she didnt think it was.

I said, what got that going?

Donnie called and asked after his sister. It got me thinking about mine. I went out and walked around for awhile. I got sniffling, although some of that was just the cold. You probably heard it in my voice.

Yep, right away, he said. Listen, I should skip Burlington tomorrow and come back home.

She almost cried out No!, but that would be exactly the wrong thing to do. That might get him on the road at first light, all solicitude.

You do and Ill punch you in the eye, she said, and was relieved when he laughed. Charlie Frady told you that estate sale in Burlington was worth going to, and his contacts are good. His instincts are, too. Youve always said so.

Yeah, but I dont like to hear you sounding so low.

That he had known (and at once! at once!) that something was wrong with her was bad. That she needed to lie about what the trouble was-ah, that was worse. She closed her eyes, saw Bad Bitch Brenda screaming inside the black hood, and opened them again.

I was low, but Im not now, she said. It was just a momentary fugue. She was my sister, and I saw my father bring her home. Sometimes I think about it, thats all.

I know, he said. He did, too. Her sisters death wasnt the reason shed fallen in love with Bob Anderson, but his understanding of her grief had tightened the connection.

Brandolyn Madsen had been struck and killed by a drunk snowmobiler while she was out cross-country skiing. He fled, leaving her body in the woods half a mile from the Madsen house. When Brandi wasnt back by eight oclock, a pair of Freeport policemen and the local Neighborhood Watch had mounted a search party. It was Darcys father who found her body and carried it home through half a mile of pine woods. Darcy-stationed in the living room, monitoring the phone and trying to keep her mother calm-had been the first to see him. He came walking up the lawn under the harsh glare of a full winter moon with his breath puffing out in white clouds. Darcys initial thought (this was still terrible to her) had been of those corny old black-and-white love-movies they sometimes showed on TCM, the ones where some guy carries his new bride across the threshold of their happy honeymoon cottage while fifty violins pour syrup onto the soundtrack.

Bob Anderson, Darcy had discovered, could relate in a way many people could not. He hadnt lost a brother or sister; he had lost his best friend. The boy had darted out into the road to grab an errant throw during a game of pickup baseball (not Bobs throw, at least; no baseball player, hed been swimming that day), had been struck by a delivery truck, and died in the hospital shortly afterward. This coincidence of old sorrows wasnt the only thing that made their pairing seem special to her, but it was the one that made it feel somehow mystical-not a coincidence but a planned thing.

Stay in Vermont, Bobby. Go to the estate sale. I love you for being concerned, but if you come running home, Ill feel like a kid. Then Ill be mad.

Okay. But Im going to call you tomorrow at seven-thirty. Fair warning.

She laughed, and was relieved to hear it was a real one or so close as to make no difference. And why shouldnt she be allowed a real laugh? Just why the heck not? She loved him, and would give him the benefit of the doubt. Of every doubt. Nor was this a choice. You could not turn off love-even the rather absent, sometimes taken for granted love of twenty-seven years-the way youd turn off a faucet. Love ran from the heart, and the heart had its own imperatives.

Bobby, you always call at seven-thirty.

Guilty as charged. Call tonight if you-

-need anything, no matter what the hour, she finished for him. Now she almost felt like herself again. It was really amazing, the number of hard hits from which a mind could recover. I will.

Love you, honey. The coda of so many conversations over the years.

Love you, too, she said, smiling. Then she hung up, put her forehead against the wall, closed her eyes, and began weeping before the smile could leave her face. 6 -

Her computer, an iMac now old enough to look fashionably retro, was in her sewing room. She rarely used it for anything but email and eBay, but now she opened Google and typed in Marjorie Duvalls name. She hesitated before adding Beadie to the search, but not long. Why prolong the agony? It would come up anyway, she was sure of it. She hit Enter, and as she watched the little wait-circle go around and around at the top of the screen, those cramps struck again. She hurried to the bathroom, sat down on the commode, and took care of her business with her face in her hands. There was a mirror on the back of the door, and she didnt want to see herself in it. Why was it there, anyway? Why had she allowed it to be there? Who wanted to watch themselves sitting on the pot? Even at the best of times, which this most certainly wasnt?

She went back to the computer slowly, dragging her feet like a child who knows she is about to be punished for the kind of thing Darcys mother had called a Big Bad. She saw that Google had provided her with over five million results for her search: o omnipotent Google, so generous and so terrible. But the first one actually made her laugh; it invited her to follow Marjorie Duvall Beadie on Twitter. Darcy felt she could ignore that one. Unless she was wrong (and how wildly grateful that would make her), the Marjorie she was looking for had Twittered her last tweet some time ago.

The second result was from the Portland Press Herald, and when Darcy clicked on it, the photograph that greeted her (it felt like a slap, that greeting) was the one she remembered from TV, and probably in this very article, since the Press Herald was their paper. The article had been published ten days before, and was the lead story. NEW HAMPSHIRE WOMAN MAY HAVE BEEN BEADIES 11th VICTIM, the headline screamed. And the subhead: Police Source: Were Ninety Per Cent Sure

Marjorie Duvall looked a lot prettier in the newspaper picture, a studio shot that showed her posed in classic fashion, wearing a swirly black dress. Her hair was down, and looked a much lighter blond in this photo. Darcy wondered if her husband had provided the picture. She supposed he had. She supposed it had been on their mantel at 17 Honey Lane, or perhaps mounted in the hall. The pretty hostess of the house greeting guests with her eternal smile.

Gentlemen prefer blondes because they get tired of squeezin them blackheads.

One of Bobs sayings. She had never much liked that one, and hated having it in her head now.

Marjorie Duvall had been found in a ravine six miles from her house in South Gansett, just over the North Conway town line. The County Sheriff speculated that the death had probably resulted from strangulation, but he couldnt say for sure; that was up to the County Medical Examiner. He refused to speculate further, or answer any other questions, but the reporters unnamed source (whose information was at least semi-validated by being close to the investigation) said that Duvall had been bitten and sexually molested in a manner consistent with the other Beadie killings.

Which was a natural transition to a complete recap of the previous murders. The first had occurred in 1977. There had been two in 1978, another in 1980, and then two more in 1981. Two of the murders had occurred in New Hampshire, two in Massachusetts, the fifth and sixth in Vermont. After that, there had been a hiatus of sixteen years. The police assumed that one of three things had happened: Beadie had moved to another part of the country and was pursuing his hobby there, Beadie had been arrested for some other, unrelated crime and was in prison, or Beadie had killed himself. The one thing that wasnt likely, according to a psychiatrist the reporter had consulted for his story, was that Beadie had just gotten tired of it. These guys dont get bored, the psychiatrist said. Its their sport, their compulsion. More than that, its their secret life.

Secret life. What a poison bonbon that phrase was.

Beadies sixth victim had been a woman from Barre, uncovered in a snowdrift by a passing plow just a week before Christmas. Such a holiday that must have been for her relatives, Darcy thought. Not that shed had much of a Christmas herself that year. Lonely away from home (a fact wild horses wouldnt have dragged from her mouth when talking to her mother), working at a job she wasnt sure she was qualified for even after eighteen months and one merit raise, she had felt absolutely no spirit of the season. She had acquaintances (the Margarita Girls), but no real friends. She wasnt good when it came to making friends, never had been. Shy was the kind word for her personality, introverted probably a more accurate one.

Then Bob Anderson had walked into her life with a smile on his face-Bob who had asked her out and wouldnt take no for an answer. Not three months after the plow had uncovered the body of Beadies last early cycle victim, that must have been. They fell in love. And Beadie stopped for sixteen years.

Because of her? Because he loved her? Because he wanted to stop doing Big Bads?

Or just a coincidence. It could be that.

Nice try, but the IDs shed found squirreled away in the garage made the idea of coincidence seem a lot less likely.

Beadies seventh victim, the first of what the paper called the new cycle, had been a woman from Waterville, Maine, named Stacey Moore. Her husband found her in the cellar upon returning from Boston, where he and two friends had taken in a couple of Red Sox games. August of 1997, this had been. Her head had been stuffed into a bin of the sweet corn the Moores sold at their roadside Route 106 farm-stand. She was naked, her hands bound behind her back, her buttocks and thighs bitten in a dozen places.

Two days later, Stacey Moores drivers license and Blue Cross card, bound with a rubber band, had arrived in Augusta, addressed in block printing to BOOB ATTORNEY JENRAL DEPT. OF CRINIMAL INVESTIGATION. There was also a note: HELLO! IM BACK! BEADIE!

This was a packet the detectives in charge of the Moore murder recognized at once. Similar selected bits of ID-and similar cheerful notes-had been delivered following each of the previous killings. He knew when they were alone. He tortured them, principally with his teeth; he raped or sexually molested them; he killed them; he sent their identification to some branch of the police weeks or months later. Taunting them with it.

To make sure he gets the credit, Darcy thought dismally.

There had been another Beadie murder in 2004, the ninth and tenth in 2007. Those two were the worst, because one of the victims had been a child. The womans ten-year-old son had been excused from school after complaining of a stomachache, and had apparently walked in on Beadie while he was at work. The boys body had been found with his mothers, in a nearby creek. When the womans ID-two credit cards and a drivers license-arrived at Massachusetts State Police Barracks #7, the attached card read: HELLO! THE BOY WAS AN ACCIDENT! SORRY! BUT IT WAS QUICK, HE DID NOT SUFFER! BEADIE!