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Peterbilt. Hard-core truckers thought of Peterbilts the way hard-core bikers thought of Harley-Davidson motorcycles. Peterbilts were a trucker’s truck. That she suggested otherwise, she hoped, might get a rise out of him.
    It didn’t.
    He said, “My truck is in the impound lot.”
    â€œBut that’s your new truck,” she said. “What happened to the old one? The black one?”
    â€œI don’t know what the hell you’re asking me.”
    â€œSure you do. You used to have a black truck and now you’ve got a yellow one.”
    He took a big breath and held it. She knew she’d hit a nerve. But he didn’t take the bait and talk about his black truck.
    â€œFor years,” she said, “you used that black truck to pick up prostitutes at truck stops. You called them ‘lot lizards’ and yourself the ‘Lizard King.’”
    Another hit, she thought. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply, as if counting to ten. But when he reopened them, there was nothing.
    She said, “It took a while, but we found where you hid the bodies, or at least some of them. Why don’t we talk about that?”
    In fact, no bodies had ever been located, despite searches by dogs and sonar finders. Every inch of the small ranch the Lizard King and his associates had used for their crimes was searched. Cars were found buried, but not a single body of a female murder victim. The only identifiable body found had been of Cassie’s partner, Cody Hoyt.
    Cassie listened for footsteps outside the door in the hallway, half expecting Behaunek to enter the room and shut down the interview.
    Instead of talking, he revealed a slight knowing grin as if to say, I know what you’re doing. You didn’t find any bodies.
    â€œI think I’ve had enough of this,” he said. “You’re just making things up.”
    â€œI’d never do that,” she said. “So back to Montana. Emigrant, specifically, where you used to live when you were home off the road. What was it like going to high school in Livingston? Was it tough being kind of chubby and unathletic? Were you bullied by the other boys?”
    She expected another hit, but he didn’t react at all. It was as if he’d shut himself off from her, as if he’d taken his rage and anger with him someplace else and left his hulking shell in the room. Cassie felt a twinge of panic.
    She’d once read that some reptiles had a transparent membrane like a second eyelid that covered their eyes. Spradley seemed as if he had the same adaptation. His eyes were open but shielded from images he didn’t want to see. And they seemed incapable of showing emotion.
    â€œHelp me make sure I’ve got everything that happened in Montana two years ago in the right order, okay? It’s something I think about a lot because there were loose ends and nobody left alive to tie them up—except you.”
    Spradley let out another heavy sigh as she methodically went through the events when the Sullivan sisters from Colorado were abducted on the highway after their car broke down. She recounted finding the concrete bunker on the ranch that served as the staging location for the horrendous abuse and murder of dozens of women by Ronald Pergram and his two associates. She described encountering one of them on the stairs down into the bunker and shooting him dead. He’d been a Montana state trooper named Rick Legerski.
    And she recalled standing helplessly by the smoldering ruins of Pergram’s childhood home. At the time, she said, they didn’t know if Pergram’s body was inside. After it was carefully investigated, they did find a body. But it wasn’t Pergram. The body belonged to Pergram’s mother.
    He listened to her with his dead-eye stare, but he didn’t interrupt. She reasoned that despite his denials and subterfuge, he was interested to hear what Cassie was telling him. All he