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then, that this was going to be a case that would not leave him alone. It was going to haunt him until he caught or killed whoever had done this.
    What accursed hand hath made thee handless?
    â€œShit,” he said again.
    These verbal quirks, these teasings of thoughts that pinged around in Mangan’s brain on occasion, always began in the same way: snatches of words, lines of poetry, minisoliloquies in his mind. And when they came to him, he paid attention, because in some strange way he knew they were there to help him. They helped him to find murderers. And no, he wasn’t crazy, this wasn’t ESP or psychic detecting or voodoo magic, or any fruity woo-woo crap like that.
    It was just true.
    A t about five thirty in the morning, her mouth still tasting of sleep, Jillian did as she did every morning: filled her thermos with coffee, hobbled out her back door, and headed to her writing studio. A hazy, warm morning, muggy. She tugged open the rotted wood door of the carriage house and tripped over a lawnmower.
    â€œDamn it.”
    Michael had left it just inside the doorway again. The first floor of her carriage house was filled with more crap than Jillian knew what to do with. She’d promised herself that spring, as she did every spring, that she was going to clean it out. It was now late August, her next installment on the Ellison murder was due, and she didn’t have time to clean her kitchen, never mind the garage. The summer was flying by. The first few installments had gone well, but for the last week or so her writing had begun to slow. This morning it was practically sloth-like. She needed more material, but her interview with the police chief in Winsome Bay was still a day away.
    She poured a cup of coffee and read through the first few installments again to see what she’d already covered. Shit, she suddenly thought, has this been done before? This whole idea, which she’d been thinking was so original—true crime, creative nonfiction—had it already been done by someone else? There’s probably a movie about it already, or a TV series with absurdly beautiful people playing the leads.
    Relax, she told herself, stop it. The murder was original, it couldn’t help but be. So were the characters. Besides, Lachlan liked her writing. She was being published. She was getting paid. It was all okay. She stopped the looser thoughts in her brain, which, monkey-like, had a habit of leaping around unexpectedly.
    She looked at the framed quote she kept next to her computer.
    Just write something, she told herself.
    Anything.
    J. McClay/Killing/American Forum
    . . . . . . . .
    Â 
    Nothing.
    Nothing was coming.
    She started looking around her office. I should vacuum in here, she thought. She checked her e-mail. She called Mara, who didn’t answer. She left a long message. She wondered if she should repaint.
    Focus, she told herself.
    Again she read through what she’d already written. It all felt wrong. The pacing was slow, there was too much back story, too many quirky details and locations and new characters, not enough action—
    Stop it, she thought, scolding herself, don’t start rushing. It’s not a movie script, it doesn’t need heart-stopping action in every chapter, it doesn’t need the obligatory sex and violence scenes this early. Pace will come, action will come. He will come. Whoever murdered Deborah Ellison, that is, and when he’s caught she’d have a wealth of material to write about: the arrest, the trial, maybe a jailhouse interview with the killer, his final words dictated to her on death row, then the call from Oprah—
    A wisp of shame blurred Jillian’s thoughts for a moment. She looked away from the computer and took a sip of coffee. Was she sensationalizing this girl’s murder merely to make a buck? Was it only about fame and money? Was she becoming the kind of writer that she’d looked down at all her life,