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not taking it that way the cop had made her feel dumb.
    Monroe evidently realized this too. 'Also,' he added, quickly, 'There's something else. I need you.'
    'Nah, you don't,' she said, shaking her head firmly. 'You got plenty of other bitches. Some of them bright sparks even understand causality, I'll bet.'
    'Nina, I came a long way to see you and I don't have a lot of hours to spend on this.'
    'So fly back to LA. Have a safe trip. Call ahead next time and bring flowers or muffins or something. You were evidently very badly brought up.'
    'I'm not going back to California. The FBI have been asked to assist a homicide investigation in Virginia. It's messy and it could be a serial killer, or that's what the local cops think. I want you to come with me.'
    Nina shook her head again. 'I'm not…'
    'Nina — they think a woman did it.'
    ===OO=OOO=OO===
    Nina was down by the lake shore. She had been there ten minutes. I knew every second that passed meant it was more likely she was going. Her stance said that everything near her, the trees, the lake, the mountains and probably even me, was insubstantial to her now. I stayed up at the cabin with the others. Neither of the men made any attempt to start a conversation with me. Olbrich checked his watch several times.
    'So explain this to me,' I said. 'You've got a body out east and maybe it's Fed business, maybe it's not. What I don't understand is why your pal Olbrich is here. I don't care how you define LAPD's jurisdiction, but Virginia is a long plane ride away.'
    The men looked at each other. 'Tell him,' Monroe said. He got up gingerly, stepped down off the porch. 'This is his business, even if nothing else is. And we have now run out of time.'
    He walked straight down past me and towards Nina.
    'The Henrikson person,' Olbrich said, when the other man was out of earshot. 'He's your brother, right?'
    He was referring to the killer we had caught in the forest, a man who would soon go on trial for the murder of a woman called Jessica Jones in Los Angeles, and another from Seattle, Katelyn Wallace, whose body had been found forty miles from where we now sat. The case was ironclad. Following that a further trial would take place concerning the deaths of a number of teenage girls in LA five years previously, a series the LA media had called the Delivery Boy Murders. Matters there were more complicated.
    'We're twins,' I said. 'But I never knew him. His real name is Paul. He calls himself the Upright Man — the Delivery Boy crap was Monroe's idea, remember. Paul doesn't work alone, either. You know all this. It's in Nina's report.'
    'Actually, it's not,' Olbrich said, looking away. 'It was determined that your more general allegations confused the case.'
    'What I said was true,' I said. 'Nina knows it. Paul worked for a conspiracy of killers, procuring victims to order. He did other things too.'
    'Monroe's in charge of the investigation, not Nina.'
    'Monroe is in charge of his career. Anyway — what about it?'
    'After your brother was discharged from hospital he was transferred to Pelican Bay. The supermax near the border with Oregon.'
    'I thought that was for gang psychos, the Aryan Brotherhood and Low Riders and Black Guerrillas.'
    'Usually it is. But Monroe was convinced your man needed to be in a Secure Housing Unit until trial — 24/7 solitary lockdown in a place with no windows and guards who regard fatalities as paperwork. After seeing what he did to those women, it was hard not to agree. So Monroe swung it. The Corcoran and Tehachapi facilities wouldn't take him, so he was sent north to the Bay. In three months he survived three murder attempts, one from a member of staff — who's still in hospital. But then…'
    Olbrich breathed out heavily, and that was enough to steal his thunder. Especially when I saw Monroe talking down by the waterline, and Nina suddenly raising her head to look up at me. She started walking back fast.
    'Don't tell me this,' I said. I could hear the blood