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grew up in a bad neighborhood. I blame the schools.”
    “You put a gangbanger in the hospital.”
    “And this is the thanks I get.”
    “So you’re a badass,” Larson gives me the hard stare. In a weird way it calms me down. Guys like Larson are easy. Their only weapon is fear.
    “I don’t like bullies,” I say.
    “That why you broke Vasquez’s jaw?”
    “The only way to quell a bully is to thrash him,” I say.
    Larson glares at me, his face getting pink. He reads from my file again. “Third place Golden Gloves regional welterweight…”
    “Second place. If you’re gonna intimidate me with expunged juvie records, at least get your facts right.”
    Larson’s jaw muscles start flexing. He wants to hit me so bad I can taste it.
    “Alright, take it easy,” Marsh lets his chair down on all four legs and leans toward me, his elbows on the table, his steady stare unchanged. Guys like Marsh are harder to deal with. They don’t rattle. They don’t try to intimidate. If Marsh boxed he’d be an out-fighter, keeping his distance, controlling the pace of the match and methodically wearing his opponent down.
    “Let’s take it a step at a time,” Marsh says. “You published your book in February of ‘02. But you obviously wrote it before then.”
    “Of course.”
    “When did you write it?”
    “A year or so before. I don’t remember the exact date I finished.”
    “Do you remember when you submitted the manuscript to a publisher? Did you give it to a friend before then, or an agent? Another writer, maybe?” Marsh asks.
    “My agent read it and he submitted it to several publishers. If you want names and exact dates you’ll have to ask him. Or my attorney,” I add, just to say the word aloud in the room. “But I finished it in the spring.”
    “In 2001?” Marsh asks.
    “Yes.”
    Marsh nods slightly. Then we go back to the silence. I’m starting to feel claustrophobic.
    “Was your book based on any…personal experience?” Larson asks.
    “Of course not. It’s fiction.”
    “We recognize that,” Marsh says affably. “We just have a set of unusual circumstances here and we’re covering all the bases.”
    “You said she was reported missing in 2001,” I say.
    “Right,” Marsh says.
    “Was that when she was killed?” I ask.
    “Hard to say,” Marsh admits. “Forensics is still breaking it down.”
    “Well, all I can tell you is I wrote the book and sent it off to my agent sometime in the spring of 2001 and it was published in February ‘02 and that’s it,” I say. My shirt is sticking to my back and I want out of this little room with these two men. “Is that it? Because I have some other business in town I need to deal with before I go back to Vermont.”
    They glance at each other.
    “We’re just trying to put together a time line,” Marsh has left the crime scene photo turned toward me so I can look at it: a headless, handless corpse these men have to account for. A real woman who had family and friends and boyfriends, a young woman living her life until…
    Then Marsh does something I have seen detectives do before. He slips out another photograph: an 8x10 of Beverly Grace, alive and happy. He places it right next to the police photo of her decayed, mutilated corpse so I can see them side by side.
    I open my mouth to tell them I know this trick. I have the words already formed in my head: I know what you’re trying to do, Detective, but it won’t work on me because I don’t know this woman —
    And then it hits me.
    I do know her.
    The photograph—the happy one—the high school yearbook photo...
    I know this picture.
    The back of my neck chills as I look at Beverly Grace’s smiling face before me. I know this girl—class of ’97. Long, straight hair. A brunette with large, sweet eyes and a soft, oval, pretty face and that black turtleneck sweater with the delicate gold cross hanging around her neck on a gold chain as fine as angel hair…
    The room constricts and I