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treated me badly,” she volunteered.
    “Really?” said the cop sympathetically.
    “Yeah. If one of his customers needed, you know, a favor, I was there for them.”
    “You mean a sexual favor?” asked Shanlian with quiet, seemingly naive interest.
    “Yes.”
    She wasn’t a prostitute, but her husband had prostituted her.
    “And what business was he in?” the detective asked, knowing the answer.
    “Drugs,” she replied.
    It was quite common for drug dealers to offer their girlfriends to regular buyers. The girlfriends agreed. It was a business arrangement. Sex occasionally with clients, in return for being taken care of—cars, money, whatever they wanted.
    Carol Giles, Shanlian felt, was the kind of woman who would tell a man what he wanted to hear. She may not have been a prostitute but in that sense, she acted like one.
    “How long were you dating Tim Collier?” the detective wondered.
    “Several months,” she replied.
    “Carol, would you pass a lie detector test if you were asked if Tim Collier had murdered Nancy Billiter?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Are you scared of Collier?”
    “Yes, yes,” Carol said, practically jumping to answer that question.
    “Why?”
    “Timmy told me that he had done seven people, seven murders, while he was involved with a gang in Sacramento, California.”
    “What can you tell me about those homicides?”
    “I can’t remember. When me and Timmy were in Port Huron recently, he wanted to get a seven-man tattoo to represent the killings.”
    “What about sex? Between Nancy and Collier?”
    “Nah, I don’t think they were involved together.”
    Shanlian remembered the burn marks on Billiter’s body and the bong on the coffee table in Giles’s house.
    “Has Tim Collier ever burned you with a bong?”
    Carol had been looking down at the table. After the question was asked, she looked up and began to cry.
    “Tim used to use acid to do that,” she blurted out. “It’s still in my car at my house. The acid is. And,” she sobbed, “Nancy and Tim, they had been smoking crack in the basement on Wednesday night.”
    She looked over at Shanlian.
    “Yes?”
    “And they were talking about the burglary. See, I didn’t believe Nancy that a burglary had occurred, because I found my daughter’s coin bank in the car I’d loaned to Nancy.”
    In Carol’s mind, that meant that it was Nancy who had stolen the VCR and other stuff and she had made up some cock-and-bull story about a burglar.
    “What happened after Tim and Nancy smoked crack? What time was that?”
    “About eleven-thirty. Then about one-thirty, I went upstairs to check on my children, who were sleeping. When I got back to the basement, Nancy was on the bed, tied up with nylons, and she was screaming.”
    Shanlian knew that would explain the ligature marks he’d noticed on her wrists. Now we’re getting down to it , Shanlian thought.
    “What happened then?”
    “Nancy’s pants leg was off.”
    Shanlian remembered that from the scene.
    “And Tim was beating her with a .45,” Carol continued.
    That explained the beating and bruise marks.
    “I was scared because Tim pointed the gun at me, so I went upstairs.”
    Now that was strange. If a guy pointed a gun at Shanlian, he’d freeze. Guy points a gun at Carol Giles and she responds by saying, “Excuse me, gotta go,” and leaving the room. That just didn’t make sense, unless she had more guts than any man or woman alive.
    “I smoked two cigarettes upstairs and then Tim came up, and after that, I didn’t hear Nancy screaming anymore. Could I use the bathroom?”
    “Sure.”
    Shanlian got up and opened the door. He asked one of the detectives to show her to the ladies’ room.
    “Stand outside while she does her business,” Shanlian advised.
    With Carol gone, and his concentration momentarily broken, Shanlian was able to note how hot the interview room had gotten. Two bodies were in the overheated air and both reeked of sweat, one of fear. Shanlian