I changed, splashed water on my face. I sat on the couch, trying to regulate my breathing. There was a knock at the door. The clock on the nightstand said 12:15. Mark. I needed to get him out of there as soon as I could. I had a sense that Khalika was going to visit soon, that more sparks would fly out of the ends of her fingers, would burn the loft, and everything in it, to a cinder. I didn’t want Mark getting a load of her—not yet, and I wasn’t sure it was safe for him to be around her. I let him in, but suggested we go downstairs to the coffee shop.

Once we were seated, I waited for Mark to talk. I knew what was coming, but I tried not to show it on my face, in my body.

“Violet, this whole case is getting more and more troubling. More… weird.”

“I didn’t think that was possible.” My voice seemed to be coming from somebody else—from across the shop. I could barely concentrate.

“Well, there’s no bottom to the universe. Isn’t that what the Buddhists tell us?”

“Yeah, I guess. I’d prefer not to dive down that far, but maybe it’s out of my hands?”

Mark stared hard at me, then his gaze softened, as if a war were going on inside him, one with no clear winner—so far. Mark reached over and took my hand, and I nearly lost it.

“Bottom line, Violet, and this may or may not come as a shock, I’m starting to think your wayward sister is at least somewhat involved in these latest hits, and I’ll give you a rundown of why I think so. And don’t get me wrong—I’m glad they’re dead, but I can’t let personal feelings get in the way of my work, not if I want to keep doing it.”

I must have gone white, because he paused, looked at me with concern. I managed to recover myself. The waitress brought our coffee, and Mark continued.

“There’s the female on the tape. Khalika looks just like you, so she’d have no problem walking around the Envy—no problem getting upstairs, promising sex, jabbing him in the neck.”

I closed my eyes.

“It looks like Khalika’s been around. Oh, and there’s the surgery on the skel in the alley. We managed to extract from the, um, patient that he was sliced and diced on the night you and your sister had your birthday reunion. He only remembered, he said, because it was the day of his appointment at the methadone clinic. He’s not dead, just paralyzed, a paraplegic with a scrambled bowl of oatmeal for a brain. He claims it was a woman, but that she was more like a demon from a hell that hadn’t been invented yet. There was a note left with that handiwork too.”

Mark pulled a slip of paper from his jacket pocket and read it to me. “Iniuriam furca in fluvium fuerit electus.”

“What does that mean? All I got was ‘river.’ ”

“Roughly, it means the victim chose the wrong fork—in the river, I mean. If that was your sister, she’s got a dark sense of humor. You both do. You must have witnessed it, Violet. Or at least she must have told you about it? It’s OK, I understand why you’d try to protect her. I’m on the fence here, but I’ve gotta get off it. I don’t want to do it without taking you with me. Because the truth is, Violet, that you might be left holding the bag.”

Mark reached into his pocket, opened his palm, and dropped two vivid red studs on the scuffed white table. “It looks like the doer got in by posing as an exterminator. We tracked down the doorman. He told us that whoever it was had blond cornrows, seemed too hot to be an exterminator, but what did he know? She wore the uniform and even had a badge with a name on it—which he forgot. He said he did remember that the lady had a couple of bright red earrings on. They stood out against her blond hair and olive skin. The doer was likely let in by Harvey. Then he went about his business. But instead of leaving, she opened and closed the door, but didn’t leave. She hid somewhere until Harvey decided it was bath time. Then, I figure, she struck. It looks like she made and ate part of a sandwich afterward and wiped the whole thing down, including the refrigerator and utensils. Why she went out on the terrace is anybody’s guess. Maybe she decided to take some sun or check out the exotic plants? Or maybe she just hid out there.”

He paused and looked at the earrings. “Anyway, I’m pretty sure these are the ones I gave you, Violet. One was on the dead guy’s terrace, as you know. The other one, I had to borrow from your dish, for comparison. They’re rubies—Burmese—nice ones, the gemologist claims. Unheated and untreated. I wish I could tell you something different, but that ship has flown.”

Then he gazed at me, sadly it seemed, across the table, and I stared back as I felt my stomach drop under the table, through the floor. My mind did cartwheels, back flips.

I lied again, clumsily.