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didn’t respond.
    “You go talk to niece mother. Sister. You say I ah sent.”
    “I don’t even know who you are.”
    “Tell her brother send. Car ah pick you up ah here tomorrow ah night. You be here or ah girl get it.”
    “Then ah,” I said, “I’ll ah be here.”

Chapter 10
    T he next morning I awoke in Ruth Ann’s bed to the smell of coffee and eggs and bacon. She was standing in the doorway holding a tray of breakfast, a paper on one side, a vase of fresh-cut flowers on the back corner of the other.
    There was something different about her and it took me a minute to catch up to what it was. She had dyed her hair and was now a brunette. It was fixed differently too—sort of down on one side.
    In fact, it seemed that everything about her was different.
    “Morning, soldier,” she said. “How ya feelin’?”
    I gave her a groan and tried to sit up.
    My shirt was off, my piece of right arm exposed—sending my already heightened self-consciousness into the hyperactivity of a hophead.
    It took a while, but I finally managed a sort of semi-upright position, the pain in my abdomen making me nauseous and lightheaded. Quickly and awkwardly, I yanked the thin sheet and bedspread up, using my still uncomfortable left hand to cover my right shoulder and stump.
    “Hope you’re hungry. You’re gonna need your strength, you keep doing all you’re doing, fella.”
    I gave her a half-hearted smile and thanked her.
    “Eat this and I’ll give you something for that pain,” she said, nodding toward my midsection as she placed the tray in my lap. Touching my stubbled face tenderly, she added, “I worry about you, soldier. I really do. You
trying
to kill yourself?”
    “Not actively, no.”
    “Trying or not … you’re doing a pretty damn good job of it.”
    “Sorry, Mom.”
    “Eat up. I’ll be back in a minute with something that’ll make you want to marry me.”
    When she left, I forced myself to eat a little though I had no appetite. The bacon was thick and crispy and the coffee was hot and strong, and I wondered again at how she was able to get such good food and medicine for me with all the rations and shortages.
    As I ate, I looked around the room. At some point while I was sleeping she had straightened up, unpacking and organizing my things, placing the picture of Lauren on the table beside the bed, stacking the recordings of her sessions next to a phonograph in what had been an empty corner the night before.
    And then I noticed the other thing that was different about Ruth Ann. She had swapped out prosthetic legs. Now the wooden crutch-like leg was propped between the dressing table and armoire and she was wearing the good one.
    When she returned to the room, I noticed how much more smoothly and quickly she was able to walk now.
    “Take this and eat a little more,” she said, handing me a large white pill.
    I did.
    “I got that information you wanted.”
    I had no idea what she was talking about and it must have shown on my face.
    “About those girls,” she said. “The victims.”
    I only vaguely remembered mentioning them to her, and I certainly didn’t ask her to get information about them for me.
    “My friend who works in the morgue says he’s never seen anything like it. The bodies are bisected and there’s no blood. But how they’re keeping something so bizarre out of the paper is the real mystery.”
    “Bisected?”
    “Cut in half at the waist. Completely in two. Can you imagine?”
    “I can,” I said, dropping my fork onto the plate and tossing my napkin over it.
    “Sorry.”
    “Don’t be. Keep on.”
    “All the girls are young and look alike. Dark hair. Dark eyes. He said the things done to the bodies and the way they’re displayed is the strangest thing you’ve ever seen.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like they should be in a museum or gallery or something … like the guy is making some sort of deranged art exhibit.”

Chapter 11
    C lip and I met Delton Rogers near the National