“I just came inside to get out of the rain,” she said, reading his gaze. “I left my house this morning without my coat. It’s cold out there.”
“Yeah. Miserable.”
Drops of water glistened in the girl’s hair like tiny diamonds. She was wearing a thin white blouse, and her shoulders were wet with rain. Nick’s eyes were drawn despite himself to the lace straps of her bra, visible through the sheer material.
“When I saw this place by the fire, I thought I’d grab it.” She glanced out the slick window at the dark, windblown street. “I hope you don’t mind.”
Nick shook his head.
“Will you hold this chair for me, then?” She twisted around in her seat and checked the line in front of the counter, just as one of the servers raised his voice and announced, Keith, your non-fat cap’ is ready. Keith. “I think I’ll get a cup of coffee.”
Nick was unable to take his eyes off her as she walked to the counter. A number of other heads turned as well as she walked past. She was an extraordinarily beautiful woman. Assured and elegant, flawless. Nick wondered who she was and what she did. He imagined that she was at least twenty-five—too old to be an undergraduate at the university. She had distracted him from his computer, and he was still watching her a few minutes later when the server behind the counter called her name: Sara. Your tall low-fat latte is ready. She smiled at him on the way back to the table, and Nick felt his face flush. Once again, he was aware of the people watching her as she walked. She moved gracefully, and she seemed nearly to be glowing in her white blouse and tight jeans.
“So your name’s Sara,” he said as she sat back down across from him.
She was holding her coffee up to her lips, blowing on it. “Good job, Detective. Sara Garland,” she said. “And you’re Nick, I take it?”
Nick felt his eyebrows rise in surprise.
“It’s on your cup,” Sara said, smiling lightly. Nick followed her eyes down to the cup of coffee on the table between them, where indeed the server had scrawled his name with a thick black marker.
“Yeah. Nick Wilder.”
“I hope I’m not interrupting you. It looks like you’re pretty busy.”
Nick glanced at his laptop. The screen had long since gone black. “No. I’m glad for the break.”
She looked at him critically, trying to gauge his age as he had judged hers. “You’re not a student. A graduate student, maybe. Or a teacher?”
“I’m a reporter,” Nick said. “With the Seattle Telegraph.”
“That sounds glamorous.”
Nick shrugged. “Not really. It’s a lot of hours, and it doesn’t pay much. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this.”
“What are you working on now? Are you writing an article?”
Nick shook his head. Sara’s question had brought the image of Claire Scott’s corpse back into his mind. The contrast with the woman sitting in front of him was unsettling. He closed his eyes and brought his hands to his face, running his fingers through his hair, becoming aware at the same time how disheveled he was. He had left his apartment a few hours before without showering or shaving.
“Are you all right?”
Nick noted the concern in Sara’s eyes. “Is it that obvious?”
“You look upset, that’s all.”
“I have to admit,” Nick said, “I am a bit. I’m sorry. I’ve been with the paper for a couple of years now. I should be used to it.” He was surprised by his own candor. “I’ve been working as a photographer. I see things sometimes. It still gets to me.”
Sara was peering at him.
“I’m sorry,” he repeated. “I shouldn’t have said anything.”
Sara dismissed his apology. “No—don’t be sorry.” She hesitated. “It was a body. A murder. Wasn’t it?”
“Yes.” Nick was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I have a confession to make, too.”
Nick waited.
“I didn’t sit down here because of the fire. I was standing behind you for about two minutes before I approached the table. You were pretty absorbed in your computer.”
“You saw the pictures.”
Sara nodded. “I have to tell you,” she said, smiling wryly. “I was pretty relieved just now when you told me you were a reporter.”
Nick took a fresh look at the beautiful woman in front of him, intrigued that she would sit down with him after seeing the images on the screen of his laptop.
“You took those pictures today?”
Nick lowered his eyes.
“So you were there. Standing right there, I mean. Almost on top of her.”
“Yes.” Close enough to smell her.
“No wonder you’re freaked out.”
From the corner of his eye, Nick noticed Sara’s gaze traveling down his legs, taking in the mud drying on his shoes.
“It scares me”—Sara said, shivering slightly—“and I wasn’t even there. To see a body like that, it must be pretty frightening—no matter how many times you’ve been around crimes like that before.”
“It is,” Nick admitted.
“I didn’t really get a good look at the pictures. But I could see how violent the crime was. The guy who did it must have been crazy.”
“That’s not what scares me.”
Sara was silent, waiting for Nick to meet her stare, waiting for him to continue.
“It scares me more how sane he was.”
Again, Sara shivered. “What do you mean?”
Nick regretted that he had let them dwell so long on the murder.
“Tell me,” Sara said, prodding him.
“How the same person can be one thing at night,” Nick said at last, “and then something else during the day.”
Nick read Sara’s confusion.
“The guy stabbed this woman so many times—so brutally—she was nearly unrecognizable,” he explained. “This same guy, though, takes the time to gather her up and sneak her out to the bank of this river to dispose of the body. That’s what scares me. That the same person can somehow reconcile the two realities.”
“Because you think maybe we’re all capable of doing the same thing.” Sara’s eyes hadn’t left his face. “That’s what you mean, isn’t it?”
“To some degree—yeah, maybe.”
“Sane during the day. Killers at night.”
Once again, Nick looked down at the table.
“You think you’re capable of it?”
Nick turned Sara’s words over in his mind. He found himself wondering whether she was asking him a question. The truth is you’ve got to be a little insane to work a job like this. His own voice seemed to resonate in his head, and he felt his face flush.
“It still sounds pretty amazing,” Sara said into the awkward silence. “Your job, I mean.”
“And what about you?” Nick asked her, determined to change the subject. “What do you do? You’re not a student either, are you?”
A slight darkness clouded