Rizzoli brought home a pizza from the deli round the corner and excavated an ancient head of lettuce from the bottom of her refrigerator vegetable bin. She peeled off brown leaves until she reached the barely edible core. It was a pale and unappetizing salad, which she ate out of duty and not for pleasure. She had no time for pleasure; she ate only to refuel for the night ahead, a night that she did not look forward to.

After a few bites, she pushed her food away and stared at the vivid smears of tomato sauce on the plate. The nightmares catch up with you, she thought. You think you’re immune, that you’re strong enough, detached enough, to live with them. And you know how to play the part, how to fake them all out. But those faces stay with you. The eyes of the dead.

Was Gail Yeager among them?

She looked down at her hands, at the twin scars knotting both palms, like healed crucifixion wounds. Whenever the weather turned cold and damp, her hands ached, a punishing reminder of what Warren Hoyt had done to her a year ago, the day he had pierced her flesh with his blades. The day she had thought would be her last on earth. The old wounds were aching now, but she could not blame this on the weather. No, it was because of what she had seen today in Newton. The folded nightgown. The fantail of blood on the wall. She had walked into a room where the air itself was still charged with terror, and she had felt Warren Hoyt’s lingering presence.

Impossible, of course. Hoyt was in prison, exactly where he should be. Yet here she sat, chilled by the memory of that house in Newton, because the horror had felt so familiar.