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and Scarlett was no exception. Sliding the ice pick, which was masked as a nail file, from the waistband at the small of her back, she aimed the tip at the nape of Hake’s neck and plunged the steel into his brain as hard as she could.
    Her breasts muffled his squeal.
    Bang, bang went the bed next door as Hake dropped dead.
    The next day, the Vegas cops hauled her in for questioning. “Ice Pick Killer Strikes!” screamed the newspapers. Her relationship with Hake trapped her in suspicion like a spider’s web. But stabbing him had felt so good that Scarlett yearned to stick another pig. If she got free, she knew she could become another Aileen Wuornos—“Ice Pick Killer Strikes Again!” read the headline in her mind. Since the cops didn’t have the weapon and their case was circumstantial, her lawyer advised her to say nothing. So she kept her mouth shut.
    “You’re free to go,” a cop said a short time later. “Lucky for you, your alibi checked out.”
    What alibi?
    A mystery man fell into step beside her outside the station. “I’m the guy who sprung you,” he said. “May I buy you a coffee? You owe me nothing, but I do have a proposition.”
    “My life is one big proposition.”
    “Money, not sex,” he replied. “I need someone with your looks. And your … cool .”
    She laughed. “Save your breath. I won’t confess.”
    “I don’t expect you to. You obviously didn’t speak to the police. That’s why the alibi worked.”
    “What alibi?”
    “Don’t you remember? I hired you to strip for a private poker party. When I arrived to pick you up at the stage door after your show, a man was bugging you. He ran off when I approached. Turns out he was a child abuser who got iced while you were stripping for us.”
    “Says who?”
    “All four players at the party.”
    “Why?”
    “Let’s just say I have the means. The cops had zilch on you except your past ties to a child pornographer. I came forward because of what I read in the paper, and you were cleared.”
    “So what’s your proposition?”
    “I’m offering you a fortune for about a week’s work.”
    “Doing what?”
    “Nothing you haven’t done before.”
    *     *     *
     
    So here she was a few months later, in Whistler, British Columbia, shedding her overcoat and following the man who’d given the Ice Pick Killer an alibi across to the plants lining the sill of the window overlooking the El Dorado Resort.
    “This colorful beauty,” the man said, “is Sarracenia purpurea , the purple pitcher plant. An insectivorous meat-eater, it’s the floral emblem of Newfoundland.”
    He picked up a jar squirming with bugs, opened the lid, and extracted a beetle with tongs. The pitcher plant was a squat tube with a frilled, sloping hood bristling with stiff hairs. Gingerly, the botanist released the bug on the crest of the garish trap.
    “Watch,” he said.
    The hood was patterned with red veins baited with nectar. Slowly, the beetle followed the veins down the purple spout to the gaping mouth. The downward-pointing hairs kept it from climbing back up. At the rim of the pitcher, in which water had collected, the foothold changed to wax. The bug slipped and fell into the deadly pool.
    Scarlett peered in and watched it thrash around.
    “Cool,” she said. “Will it drown?”
    “Yes, then enzymes in the water will digest the beetle. That’s how the plant feeds.”
    “I’ll bet the bug is male.”
    “Why?”
    “In my experience, men are more likely to succumb to the pitfall of a deep, wet cavity.”
    The headshrinker grinned maliciously.
    “Well put,” he said. “When you meet the Mountie tonight at ten, I want him killed with this.”
    He picked up a jewelry box from the sill next to the pitcher plant.
    “For you,” he said.
    Lifting the lid, Scarlett peeked inside. Her eyes widened as she began to understand.
    “Wicked!” she exclaimed.

Waif
     
    Vancouver, British Columbia
    “Dad!”
    Searching the hordes of people