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Dad and Alice would recognize.
    But a girl whose very own mother believes she is capable of murder…police who have a confession…
    Alice reminded herself that forensics was a very advanced science. The pathologist would establish that Dad had not been killed in the condo. Couldn’t have been.
    Alice’s face twitched, as if she had tasted something awful, and could flinch off the disgusting flavor with muscle spasms.
    It was imperative to get away, take the disks and read them, find out what was on them, do something more sensible than steal a van. Maybe—maybe—maybe what ? There were too many choices and no choices.
    The lights of the approaching car cast quickly changing shadows across her face.
    It occurred to her that maybe Dad had not been killed someplace else.
    Maybe the man had brought a living Dad into his own bedroom and killed him there. Maybe that was the inhuman groan she had heard.
    Alice’s own inhuman moan whimpered out of her mouth. She stifled it, and panted tiny shallow breaths, like a desperate dog.
    Alice decided to do what any girl would do in a similar situation.
    Shop.

Chapter 4
    A LICE RAN BETWEEN THE rows of cars, following the direction the fat woman had taken. The underground mall entrance was small and dark, without the gleaming two-story pillars of the main entrances.
    Should I look back? Alice wondered. Letting her eyes move in the Corvette’s direction would show her face to the policeman, like a deer caught in the headlights. But she had to know.
    The door rotated automatically, letting one person enter at a time, so Alice could not linger on the threshold, considering things. Yanking her long hair out of her eyes, Alice looked fast over one shoulder, and there, partially visible among cement pillars, was a police car.
    Alice stepped into the mall. Instantly she was part of a swirling crowd of anonymous people. Wednesday must be a big shopping day. Nobody looked at her, because nobody cared. They cared about themselves and their purchases.
    The door had led Alice into the downstairs area of a low-end department store, among appliances and hardware. It amazed her to see couples stroking washing machines, women opening vegetable drawers in refrigerators, men examining the gears on yard tractors. It was so normal. She wanted to explain to these people that nothing was normal now.
    A scream was sitting inside her, waiting to leave. If she let go of her control for a single second, the scream would barrel out with as much force as the Corvette. Alice fastened her jaws together hard enough to break fillings.
    She found the escalator with the ease of a practiced mall-woman and went to Clothing on the second floor. She moved swiftly among the racks, getting a pair of generic jeans, a pale pink T-shirt size L, the cheapest sneakers in the world, which would probably fall apart in an hour, and from a bin of generic baseball-style caps, grabbed the one on top. There was a vertical rack of sunglasses, and old-people reading glasses, the kind where you didn’t go to the eye doctor first, and Alice chose a pair with nerd rims, wide and black.
    She didn’t try anything on.
    She didn’t insist on brand names.
    She didn’t even read the logo on the cap.
    There was a line at the cash register, and this time Alice did not let herself look around, nor think of police, but stayed close to a woman her mother’s age, as if they were together. Her charge card startled her. When she signed the sales slip, she thought: This is a paper trail. I am leaving a trail.
    The mall was a vast T, with soaring ceilings, and anchor stores at the ends of the cross. There were ledges and seats and perches, three-story strips of hanging ivy, odd little wagons for crystal earrings or photos printed on T-shirts. There were families and strollers and canes, there were sweats and high heels and flapping sandals.
    A jutting balcony, as large as a gym, was filled with tiny food shops: chocolate, french fries, Orange Julius,