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    Next to this article I found the photograph of the two officers arresting a barefooted Carl Iverson. Using the knobs on the microfilmreader, I enlarged the picture. The two cops wore coats and gloves, in contrast to Iverson's t-shirt and jeans. The uniformed officer had his gaze set on something behind the photographer. From the hint of sadness in his eyes, I speculated that he might have been looking at Crystal Hagen's family, as they watched the arrest of the monster that killed and burned their daughter. The plain-clothed cop had his mouth open, his jaw slightly crooked, as if he were saying something, maybe even yelling something at Carl Iverson.
    Of the three men in the photo, only Carl Iverson looked at the camera. I didn't know what I was expecting to see in his face. How do you hold yourself after committing murder? Do you strut as you walk past the charcoal-black aftermath of the shed where you burned her body? Do you wear a mask of nonchalance and pass by the ruins with no more interest than if you were walking to the corner store for some milk? Or do you flip out with fear, knowing you've been caught, knowing that you've breathed your last measure of freedom and will spend the rest of your life in a cage. When I zoomed in on Carl Iverson's face, on his eyes as he looked at the photographer, I saw no pride, no false calm, and no fear. What I saw was confusion.

There is an odor that permeates old apartment buildings. When I was a kid, I noticed its effect on the people who came by to visit my mother's apartment, that split second of corruption as the taint of decay hits them square in the face, the twitch of the nose, the flutter of blinking, the reining in of the chin. When I was little, that mustiness was what I thought all homes smelled like. Not scented candles or fresh-baked bread, but dirty sneakers and unwashed dishes. By the time I was in junior high, I found myself looking away in embarrassment any time someone came to the door. I swore that when I grew up and got my own apartment, I would get one that smelled of old wood, not old cats.
    As it turned out, that was not easy to do on my budget. The triplex apartment building I lived in had an ancient cellar that breathed dankness up through the floorboards, filling the structure with a pungency born of wet dirt mixed with the tang of rotting timber. The odor was strongest immediately inside the common front door where our letter boxes were bolted to the wall. Within that foyer, the steps to my apartment rose to the right, and to the left a door led to the main-floor apartment where a Greek family, the Kostas, lived. Sometimes the aroma of rich cooking spices seeped through that door, mixing with the cellar funk to overwhelm the senses.
    I made a point of keeping my apartment clean, vacuuming weekly, washing dishes after every meal; I'd even dusted once in the short time that I had lived there. I wasn't a clean freak by any stretch. I simply refused to let my apartment succumb to its natural state of entropy. I went so far as to plug an air freshener into an electric socket that pumped out spurts of apple and cinnamon to welcome me home everyday. But what caught my attention that day, as I walked through my door, wasn't the pleasantry of the artificial air freshener; it was Jeremy sitting on my couch beside the girl I knew only as L. Nash, and they were giggling.
    â€œNow that's what you call ironic,” L. Nash said.
    â€œNow that's what you call ironic,” Jeremy repeated. Then he and L. Nash broke into another laugh. I recognized the line from Jeremy's Pirates of the Caribbean movie. It was another one of Jeremy's favorite lines. They were watching the movie together. Jeremy was sitting, as he usually does, in the center of the couch directly in front of the TV, his feet flat on the floor, his back straight against the curve of the couch back, his hands balled up on his lap where he could fidget with them if needed.
    L. Nash sat in the