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his past was after him, it would help to know exactly what he had done to deserve it. She remembered the broad outline but not the details.
    Ordinarily she would use the Internet to track down that info. Since she was already at the library, she decided to try it the old-fashioned way. It took her only a few minutes to locate the true-crime shelf. Naturally there were books on Faust, including one he’d written himself. In addition to his other accomplishments, he was an author—an internationally best-selling author, according to the cover of the paperback.
    She didn’t start with his memoirs, though. First she flipped through a hefty volume providing an overview of notorious criminals from A to Z. Under F, she got the gist of Faust’s biography.
    He was born in Bonn, Germany, in 1962, an only child, the son of upper-middle-class parents. His father was an economics professor, his mother a high-ranking bureaucrat in social services. He had an uneventful childhood and adolescence, marked only by pronounced unsociability and a single arrest, at age thirteen, for animal abuse. He had been caught using a hot fireplace poker on a neighbor’s cat.
    During his young adulthood he worked a variety of jobs, never holding any of them for more than a few months. He seemed to have artistic aspirations but was not known to have sold any artwork. He attracted a small band of followers who considered him a neglected genius. He had several affairs, all short-lived. One of his girlfriends went on to commit suicide; another was confined to a psychiatric hospital.
    At age thirty-five, still drifting from one employment opportunity to another, he found himself in Hamburg, known as the Venice of Germany for its intricate system of canals and its bohemian cafes. It was there that he met, kidnapped, and killed Emily Wallace, an American civilian working at the U.S. military base in Wiesbaden, who was visiting Hamburg on leave, sightseeing with a friend.
    Faust held Emily captive for three days in his apartment before killing her. He said later that he enjoyed postponing the actual “execution,” as he called it. “I wanted to be sure the victim suffered well,” he said.
    Although he made efforts to dispose of the body and cover his tracks, he was quickly arrested by the local police after Emily’s traveling companion reported her disappearance. Someone had spotted him in the vicinity of the salvage yard where the body, sans head and hands, had been dumped. His description was circulated. He was identified. What the police found in his apartment erased any possible doubt as to his guilt.
    Faust never denied the crime. His parents obtained expensive legal counsel who insisted that their client was “psychologically abnormal” and suffering from “diminished responsibility.” Astonishingly, the prosecution agreed, merely requesting a slightly longer period of institutionalization. The trial lasted four days and ended with a sentence of six years in a “secure psychiatric facility.” Within three years he was released. There were rumors that his parents, politically well connected, had put pressure on the government to spring their son from confinement.
    The murder had taken place a decade ago. Faust had been a free man for the past seven years, and had capitalized on his notoriety with the publication of his memoir even before his release. Once free, he had been interviewed on many TV shows, had done book readings and book signings in dozens of cities, and had been the subject of two documentary films. A big-budget feature film based on his life story had been in development for some time, though the project had stalled for lack of financing.
    Emily Wallace’s family had attempted to sue for damages, only to find that Faust’s growing pile of money was salted away in Swiss bank accounts, untouchable.
    Faust now divided his time between Europe and America. He had homes in Berlin and Los Angeles. He went skiing in Saint Moritz and