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I could detect a mixture of curiosity and animosity in myself as I judged him despite my best efforts, and some of that must surely have communicated itself to him. I saw how he looked at me, glancing up and sideways, not quite meeting my eye. Dignity and shame fought for primacy within him, with guilt and anger bubbling beneath. I sensed it all, saw it all, and wondered what else he might have hidden away in the locked cabinet of his heart. Of the anger I was certain: I picked up on it in the same way that animals are said to be able to scent disease in humans. I was good at scenting the poisons in men, and Haight’s anger was like a pollutant in his blood, infecting his system. It would always be there, waiting to well up, seeking an outlet: a complex, many-headed thing; a hydra within. It was anger at himself for what he had done, fed by his own self-pity; anger at the girl who had died, as hers was not a passive role, and dying is itself an action; anger at the authorities who had punished him, blighting his future; and anger at his accomplice in the killing, for Aimee had informed me that Randall Haight had not acted alone. There was another with him on the day that the girl died, and Aimee’s view was that Haight’s relationship with this individual was deeply conflicted.
    Anger, anger, anger. He had tried to contain it, isolating it by creating a persona and a lifestyle that allowed it no opportunity for expression. In doing so he had rendered it more dangerous, and more unpredictable, for being denied an outlet. Maybe he knew this, maybe not, but it was how he had chosen to deal with all of his emotions. He was afraid that if he allowed even a little real feeling to emerge, his entire persona would be swept away in the tide that followed.
    All these things I thought as he sat next to me, smelling faintly of soap and inexpensive cologne, and prepared to expose himself before his silent judges.
    ‘I’ve shared with Mr. Parker only a little of what you’ve told me,’ said Aimee. ‘I felt that it was better if he heard the rest of it directly from you.’
    Haight swallowed hard. The office was warm, and there was a sheen of sweat on his face. He seemed about to remove his jacket, but as he shifted it from his shoulders he noticed the sweat patches beneath his arms and instead shrugged it back on. He did not want to feel more vulnerable than he already did, so he resisted the lapse into informality, even at the cost of his own comfort.
    There was a mini-fridge beside a filing cabinet in the office. Aimee removed two bottles of water from it and handed one to Haight. I took the second, even though I wasn’t thirsty. Haight drank deeply until he noticed that neither Aimee nor I was doing the same, and I saw in his face that he was simultaneously grateful to her for seeking to alleviate his distress and embarrassed at even this small demonstration of weakness on his part. A little of the water dribbled down his chin and he wiped it away with his left hand, frowning at himself and at us as he did so. He gave me another sideways glance. He knew that I was sizing him up, taking in every small movement.
    ‘Clumsy of me,’ he said.
    He removed a padded manila envelope from his leather satchel. Inside the envelope was a series of photographs, probably printed from a home photo printer. There were five in total. He spread them on the desk so that all the images were visible. In each case, the subject matter was the same, even if the specific object was different in every photo.
    They were all photographs of barn doors. Two were red, one green, one black, and the other was a reproduction of a black-and-white photo from a newspaper, but the door in question looked so weathered and old that it was impossible to tell if it had ever been painted any color at all. The grain reminded me of wrinkles on skin, an effect aided by two holes in the upper portion of the barn doors, and the way that the lock bar hung lopsidedly like a