She knocked on the adjoining door Mich.e.l.le style, not waiting for an answer. Carla followed her upstairs. Mich.e.l.le and Janka were both reading at the table. Tammyfaye was sitting in Janka's lap and glared at them resentfully when they entered.

"Tell them what you told me in the car," Alison demanded, too excited for amenities like greetings.

"Hi, I'm Carla," Carla said coyly. She wanted to make sure that her moment in the limelight lasted as long as possible.

"Tell them," Alison urged impatiently.

"Well, Alison showed me the picture... " began Carla.

"Carla is the woman who was attacked last night," Alison interrupted.

"Alison showed me the picture," Carla repeated in a louder voice, determined to hold onto the reins, "and I knew I had seen that woman somewhere..."

"Melanie Donahue," inserted Alison.

"...and I even got the idea I had talked to her, or had at least listened to her talk. So I thought and thought about it, but I couldn't remember where I'd been. Then my mom called and she was all upset because she had read about the attack in the paper and she was saying," here Carla's voice became high pitched and almost sing-song, "'Oh, no, I told you what would happen if you hung out with those people, Reverend Malcolm was right, no good can come from this, it's a sin against G.o.d and this was his way of warning you that you still have time to repent. Satan must have blinded my eyes for me to ever think that I could accept this'," Carla took a deep breath, "'you've got to go back to The Group and we'll help you fight this!' So, of course I said, 'No. I don't want you to call me if you're going to say this kind of c.r.a.p, and if you have anybody from that place call me I'm going to get another restraining order.' She said, 'Oh, this is killing your father, and won't you reconsider and I'm praying for you,' and right in the middle of the whole mess I got this flashback!" Janka and Mich.e.l.le were sitting side by side, watching Carla as intensely as if they were attending a Broadway first. The girl had missed her calling as an actress. "I remembered that was where I had met her! At the support group." She sat back, beaming.

The two women looked at each other. Mich.e.l.le said tentatively, "All, did we miss something? Like, what the h.e.l.l are you talking about?"

"The Crusaders," Alison prompted impatiently. "Remember our undercover operation? Remember what they told Janka about 'support groups' and how they would come to her house if they needed to? Well, Carla was in one of those groups! And so was Melanie Donahue!"

There was a moment of silence while everyone digested this information.

"So what are you doing working in a d.y.k.e bar, then?" Mich.e.l.le asked bluntly. "Change your mind?"

"Hey," Carla defended herself, "I wasn't at those meetings because I wanted to be. Hardly anybody was. I was only seventeen. I was still in high school, and I had this kind of unspoken deal with my mom and dad that if I went over to the storefront once a week and listened to other people talk about how bad it was to be queer they wouldn't have me thrown in the loony bin again. Okay?"

"And Melanie was in this group?" Janka asked. Carla nodded.

"So you're how old now?"

"Just turned twenty-one," Carla said proudly. Alison's insides twisted in embarra.s.sment.

"Which makes this about four years ago. But didn't you say," she pointed at Mich.e.l.le, "that Melanie had met this Krista and gotten together with her some time ago? Longer than that?"

"At least six years ago," Mich.e.l.le confirmed. "Maybe more like eight."

"Well, then what was she doing there? Did she break up with Krista and try to go straight and then give it up and go back to her?" Janka looked confused.

"No, no!" Alison was excited again. "Listen to this."

"Her girlfriend was with her," said Carla. "If I remember right the story went like this. I mean, I might not have all the details, because I've suppressed a lot of this, but I think it was like this. Melanie and Krista had been together for a couple of years. Krista had always been uptight about being a d.y.k.e. Melanie was her first lover. I don't know if she was raised in some kind of church that was against it, or she was born again, or what the deal was, but she had been kind of pacifying herself for a long time saying that she wasn't really a lesbian, and their love was pure...."

"Which meant she put out as little as possible," said Alison. Carla, who had been saving that for a climax, gave her a dirty look. "Sorry."

"Anyway, they bought a house and they started a business together, and Krista had a baby. Now, I don't remember this part really well, but the little girl got sick or was in an accident or something like that and Krista got all freaked out and promised G.o.d that if he just saved her she would never flick another woman again." Actually, Alison had been somewhat amazed and a little suspicious of how Carla had gone from total blankness to such a complete memory. However, when she had questioned her in the car the young woman had told her it was something that had happened to her before, and had to do with the abusive way her parents had reacted to her lesbianism. She had deliberately blanked out large parts of her adolescence, but could recall incidents in great detail when reminded of them.

"So the baby lived, and Krista kept her promise. Now, apparently Melanie wasn't really jacked about this.

"I guess not," Mich.e.l.le said.

"...but Krista got her to come to the group with her a couple of times to hear about pure love and all that."

"And she bought it?" Mich.e.l.le asked incredulously. "Boy, not the Melanie I knew."

"She didn't," Carla told her eagerly. "See, right about then I graduated from high school and moved out of my folks' house, and of course the first thing I did was stop going to that awful place. Really, what I wanted to do was go back one more time to tell them I was too a d.y.k.e and I loved it. But I was afraid to. I didn't even let my mom know where I was for a whole year. But I ran into Melanie in the women's bookstore one day. At first I was totally freaked out-I thought somehow that they were on my tail, right? But we talked a little and she told me that she wasn't involved with the Crusaders anymore; she just hadn't been able to stomach it. But she was still with Krista. See, she really loved her, and she had decided it was worth it to stay with her even though they couldn't commit any 'h.o.m.os.e.xual acts' anymore. Isn't that gross? Like the only time you're queer is when you're f.u.c.king, and paint-mg the house or going to the store isn't a h.o.m.os.e.xual act, too. But she had decided to go along with it, because she loved Krista and they had this business and the house and the whole bit. Also, she just adored the little girl and I guess Krista had basically said, 'Play it my way or you don't see her anymore.'"

There was a long silence.

"That's sad," said Janka finally. "That is the most pitiful story I have heard in a long time."

"No kidding." Mich.e.l.le sat as if she had been sh.e.l.l-shocked.

Alison had been so excited about the connection she had hardly thought of the story as involving human characters. Now, like her two friends, she felt sad, and also a great rush of anger at the society that forced girls like Carla to black out whole years of their young lives in order to forget the suffering they had undergone because they were lesbians.

The feeling, however, was quickly overridden by her excitement. At last she felt as if the case were going somewhere, and not just in awkward fits and starts the way her theory had against Dominique. Thinking of Dominique reminded her of the hysterical message on her answering machine. She had deliberately gone to see Carla first, shelving Beth until morning. Perhaps it was heartless, but she simply was not up to anything trying-not Dominique's rudeness or Beth's anguish. She was, after all, not these people's therapist. She would call them in the morning. She would have to about the blood in the sink, although it was probably something totally innocent. This new theory about the Crusaders' being involved seemed to render Dominique incapable of murder.

Janka and Mich.e.l.le were sipping their raspberry tea and did not seem to catch the implication.

"Don't you see?" Alison asked impatiently. "This is the connection that we've been looking for. The murders couldn't have been just random. The killer went to too much trouble for that. Melanie was a big, tough looking woman-only a fool would have chosen her if any d.y.k.e would do. Tamara and Carla were both attacked in a crowded parking lot-again, why put yourself in a vulnerable position like that if it doesn't matter which d.y.k.e you get?"

"Why put yourself to that kind of trouble at all if you can just hang around their homes?" asked Mich.e.l.le. Alison felt crabby for a moment, as if Mich.e.l.le were poking holes in her theory out of perversity. But she had to look at every angle. It had to be airtight before she dared present it to Jones and Jorgensen.

"I don't know why," she said slowly.

"Maybe some kind of s.e.xual thrill?" suggested Janka. "You know, being in danger and all that? Or maybe the feeling that G.o.d is on your side and will let you walk right into the den of the wicked to do his work?"

"Hmm. Carla," Mich.e.l.le said suddenly, "you said that you were afraid to go back to the group, that you kept your whereabouts hidden. Do you think that anyone involved with them could be a killer?"

"They scare me," Carla said simply. "It was so..." she shuddered, "...awful being there. So...just horrible. The praying and the shouting. They told us over and over that we were evil, that we were possessed by the devil. They'd get in like these crazy frenzies and I'd just think 'Okay, okay, I'll say whatever you want. Just shut up and leave me alone!'"

"But did they ever do anything physical, Carla? Try to remember," Alison urged.

Carla was silent for a moment, and suddenly Alison wanted to apologize for making her look back into the dark time that she had hidden from herself, wanted to tell her that no more recollection was necessary, but she couldn't. Another woman's life might depend on her memory.

"They made people come in," she said finally, slowly. "I know that. Like I told you my mom and dad did, like blackmail. But sometimes somebody would fight. And their parents or whoever would just drag them in while they were kicking and screaming. Ugh, it was so gross. We were supposed to stand around and pray for them, but inside I was wishing that I had enough nerve to fight. And I think they did some of that reprogramming stuff. Because a couple of times these people came in to testify, like these guys that used to be drag queens and they were married now and living in Littleton. They talked about being restrained, like it was something that was done for their own good, you know, so they could finally see the light of G.o.d and cast out the demons. This one time I had this big fight with my mom and I told her that I was going to leave home and go live with this friend. And she told me that no matter where I went the Crusaders would find me and bring me back. I was so scared I couldn't even sleep at night. I read this story in a magazine about this woman whose parents had hired her kidnappers because she was a d.y.k.e. So these people that were supposed to reprogram her-one of the things they did was rape her. Like that was going to change her mind. There were these guys in the group...I could imagine them doing that and thinking it was for G.o.d. I didn't even think about leaving again. Not until I had saved up to buy a plane ticket for someplace far away."

The story was too pitiful for comment. The kindest thing to do seemed to be to treat it just as information being given, rather than anything personal.

"Anything else?"

"Well, sometimes some of the supporters were violent. That's what they called your folks or whoever was making you come in-supporters. Like, Brother Malcolm never said that you should kill queers or anything," she gave a shudder, and Alison could see that she was remembering only because she was forcing herself to remember, "but sometimes someone would come in all beat up. Like there was this guy who did that to his son all the time. And n.o.body thought that was wrong or told him to stop. They thought it was the kid who was being an a.s.shole to make his dad act that way. And my mom said that his dad must love him a lot if he was willing to do that instead of letting him burn in h.e.l.l."

The three of them said nothing. Mich.e.l.le gave Alison a quick look, no more than a glance, but it was enough to tell her that, for at least a moment, she resented her bringing this girl to their apartment, that she resented her interrupting the cozy life they had built in the gay ghetto with reminders that somewhere, and not even in other countries or continents, lesbians were being beaten and raped for daring to name what they were.

"Do you know Sharon Aldrich?" asked Mich.e.l.le suddenly.

Carla nodded. "Real big singer, shouter. 'I used to be a d.y.k.e but now I'm saved and if the Lord can do that for me he can do that for you.'"

"Did you know that she used to have a mohawk?"

Carla brightened a little. "I'd have loved to see that."

"You know," said Mich.e.l.le, "I think maybe I have a photo of her." She stood up, happy for a chance to break the depression that was creeping over all four of them.

Just then they all heard the cat door slam downstairs in Alison's apartment; immediately afterwards the doorbell rang. Alison looked at Janka and shrugged. Who could it be at this time of night? She stood up, and as she did she automatically reached back and touched the gun in the holster beneath her vest.

At the bottom of the stairs she called out, "Who is it?" and a woman's m.u.f.fled voice answered. She cranked back the bolt and cracked the door cautiously. Just in case the killer was neither Dominique nor one of the Crusaders, in case the pattern really was random and she was the next d.y.k.e to come up in the lottery. She had not put up her poster, but Mich.e.l.le and Janka's was in their front window and for the first time she wondered if that was really wise, if besides identifying d.y.k.es to one another it was also identifying them as d.y.k.es to someone who wanted to know for an entirely different reason.

Stacy was standing on the porch, holding the big woven hemp bag she used for a duffel. "Hi."

"Hi," Alison said back politely. She opened the door wider, but she did not invite the other woman in. Stacy had put her lavender sweats on over her soccer uniform, and Alison was reminded of the two times that she had seen her play, and of the excitement she had felt when the game had gotten hard, centered around the goal, and Stacy had emerged with the ball time and time again. She did not feel excited now. She felt angry.

"I got my b.u.t.t chewed after you left." Stacy said.

"Oh?"

"Yeah. Kind of a free-for-all lecture, you know-you've met a nice woman, she might even be kinky, don't be an a.s.shole. You know, lecture 141. Lead by Liz and Jackie, but everybody got to put in their two cents. You know d.y.k.es." She put her bag down. Alison noticed that in her right hand she held her keys with the points laced through her fingers and that the bra.s.s whistle attached to the ring was clutched between her palm and her thumb.

"Oh."

"So I decided that being tired and cranky and jealous of jailbait was a pretty poor excuse, and I came over to apologize." She smiled uncertainly, perhaps realizing that the apology was not going as smoothly as she could have hoped. "Can I come in?"

"Why?"

"Well...." Stacy was beginning to look as if she was sorry that she had come. Alison realized that no matter how p.i.s.sed off she was, it was foolish for both of them to be standing on the porch with the door wide open. Grudgingly she stepped back. KP twined himself through Stacy's legs lovingly, almost tripping her.

"Alison?" Mich.e.l.le yelled down the stairs. "You okay?"

"Fine," she yelled back, but she could hear that Mich.e.l.le, not a.s.sured by her answer, was coming down to take her own look. Paranoia was starting to run rampant. She could almost hear what Mich.e.l.le was thinking. What if it had been the killer at the door? What if he had disarmed her and was forcing her to answer with the gun to her head? Without turning, she listened to Mich.e.l.le cautiously cross the kitchen and then retreat without a word.

"Does your friend always carry a softball bat?" asked Stacy. "Boy, you must have told her that you were really p.i.s.sed at me!"

Alison had to laugh at this, thinking of Mich.e.l.le, fiercely loyal, chasing off any suitor she thought was bad for her. Well, she had never quite done that, but she had made herself very unpleasant to women of whom she did not approve. Alison had wanted to strangle her more than once, at the time, but her judgment had almost always proved sound in the end. About Stacy, however, she did not know. It was the first time Mich.e.l.le had disapproved for political reasons.

"Look, Stacy," she said. It was the new, tough voice she had been practicing ever since she had split with Lydia, the one she had not yet had a chance to use on anyone but KP. "I don't know why you're here, or what that was all about. I told you why I didn't call you, and I think that I have the right to expect you to understand that I've been under a little extra pressure lately. But I don't need someone in my life who's going to treat me s.h.i.tty. I used to, I used to positively look for it. But I don't anymore, and if that means that I'm alone for a while-h.e.l.l, for the rest of my life-then that's just the way it's going to be." There, she thought, I guess I showed her that I'm the kind of woman who goes to therapy and reads Women Who Love Too Much. Part of her, though, was cowering, wanting to apologize quickly. A part that knew she wasn't ready to be alone at forty or fifty or sixty, that knew she was willing to put up with any amount of s.h.i.t, willing even to support someone, as she had Lydia, to avoid that fate worse than death. She quelled it sternly.

Stacy lifted her hands as if she were going to gesture, but instead she ran them through her hair. The curls were stiff with dried sweat.

"What can I say? My feelings were hurt, I was a s.h.i.t, I'm sorry. You know, I've been under a little pressure myself lately."

"What?"

"Come on, get real! Do you think that just because you haven't hauled me into the station house that I haven't known that I'm a suspect in this case? Did she do it or not? Is that why she likes to play kinky games, did she get carried away? Come on, admit it, you've been thinking those things, haven't you? And who knows how long before the guys on the case connect it and start thinking the same thing, maybe decide to pay me a visit? 'Where were you on the night of the murders, Ms. Pervert?' 'Well, twice I was right there on the scene of the crime, and once I was home all evening by myself reading Newsweek. No, no alibi, no neighbors popped in or anything like that.' Or, maybe if I didn't do it myself, maybe it was the s.e.x that inspired it, huh? Maybe old Stacy didn't go bonkers, but maybe there was somebody watching, somebody that knew what kind of scenes she did and just thought they'd take it all the way, huh? Thought that a woman who liked to be tied down and have a crop used on her probably wouldn't mind going further, would probably think that death was like the ultimate o.r.g.a.s.m. Come on, don't tell me you haven't been thinking those things!" She was close to tears now, close to hysteria that was probably as much from being exhausted as anything else. Alison could not think of anything to say to comfort her, because she had thought of those things. Had thought of every one of them, and more.

"I didn't think of you being stressed," Alison said finally, because that much at least was true. Somehow she had thought that Stacy must be oblivious to all the signs that were pointing at her. Right, Alison, the woman was not a fool. "Hey, why don't I run a hot bath for you?" She pulled her along to the bathroom without waiting for an answer. Her cure-all, Lydia had called it, saying that she was much more willing to stick someone, anyone, in the tub, day or night, than to talk about what the problem was. As she turned on the hot water it occurred to her that if she told Stacy about the information Carla had given them it might comfort her. But there was a part of her, the good cop part, which would not allow her to take the pressure off a possible suspect just as she was about to crack.

"Incidentally, Carla is here-upstairs," she said, and started to explain that it was business only. Then she stopped herself. She wasn't engaged to marry Stacy, for crying out loud.

"Umm." Stacy did not reply until she had lowered herself into the tub. She turned the water on much hotter than Alison had dared. "I don't know her, you know," she said as she sunk down to her chin. The water lifted her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Not at all?" Alison knelt by the tub and picked up the soap.

"Well, to talk to at the bar. But I didn't connect the name with the face until you came in tonight. We've chatted, she's tried to persuade me to come down and have a quick f.u.c.k in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

Alison dropped the orange-scented soap onto the floor with a loud clunk. She could feel the flush climbing up her chest, onto her neck and face.

"Oh?" She tried to say in a cosmopolitan tone, but it came out a squeak, a sound effect for an old cartoon.

Stacy glanced up at her and started to laugh.

"Well, uh, I didn't want her to go out by herself...." Her voice still seemed to be stuck at the level of a cartoon cat's.

"Yeah, and I'll bet she didn't want to go down by herself, either." Still laughing Stacy reached up to pull Alison's head down. "That's what I get for throwing you out when you're all hot, isn't it?"

"I guess so." She was barely able to gulp the words out before Stacy covered her mouth in a sweet soft kiss. The kind of kiss where tongues are not involved, where it is easy to imagine that you could just eat your lover up, that you could nibble on her as if she were a bon bon or a delicate pastry. She felt Stacy's lips brush across her chin and the bridge of her nose, then over each closed eye. Alison lifted one hand to stroke her curls, the same kind of tentative touch she had used when she was a teenager, when desire could barely overcome her fear of rejection. Softly, as she kissed the corner of her mouth, Stacy touched her throat with her wet fingers. Alison could feel the warm trails of water that she left behind. She reached down for the bar of soap that she had dropped and then dipped it in the water. Gently she ran it over Stacy's b.r.e.a.s.t.s, working up a lather. She let the bar slide beneath the water, down to the bottom of the tub and used her hand to continue soaping. Rubbing it over both mounds as she gently nibbled Stacy's lower lip, as Stacy moved her head so that she could delicately trace the shape of her ear with her tongue. Soaping her shoulders and her neck and the top of her arms she then returned to those sweet, small b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Circling the nipples as they kissed again, Alison's mouth slightly open so that she could enfold the soft lips. Circling, gliding, back and forth and the nipples were getting hard now beneath the tips of her fingers....

"Alison?" There was a rap on the bathroom door. "Sorry to be a drag, but we want to go to bed pretty soon." Janka sounded apologetic but firm. "What should we do with your little friend?"

Alison lifted her lips to suggest, "Run her home?" because after all, Mich.e.l.le was her oldest and dearest friend, and Janka had become the second. From whom else could you ask a slightly sleazy, slightly outrageous favor? Stacy was unb.u.t.toning Alison's blouse even as she spoke, and all she wanted to do was crawl into the tub herself, overflowing water onto the floor as she slid her wet body along the length of Stacy's.

"There's a problem with that." Janka's voice said it was something that she'd better come and see about herself.

"Umm." She could not answer for a moment, for Stacy had pulled her face to hers again. Their mouths were under the warm water and it was as if Stacy's lips had expanded, were engulfing the whole lower part of Alison's face. She had to break away.

"Okay," she said to the closed door, "I'll be right there. Do you want to spend the night?" she asked Stacy in a whisper. Stacy nodded. "I'm going to have to run this kid home, but I'll be back soon." She stood for a moment at the door, just looking at her, and at that moment there was no fantasy that could possibly be more exciting than remembering that first gentle kiss.

Upstairs there was laughter.

"Hey, you've got to check these out," Mich.e.l.le said when she saw her, holding up a handful of photos. Her eyes skimmed quickly over Alison's unb.u.t.toned shirt, covered with water marks, but made no comment.

"The archivist," observed Janka. "She saves it all and she knows right where it is." She pointed to the cardboard box at Mich.e.l.le's feet. It was filled with plastic ziplock sandwich bags containing photographs. Each was marked with a piece of masking tape that told the year, and sometimes the t.i.tle of an event.

"Look," said Mich.e.l.le, sorting rapidly through the stack on her lap. "There you are." Alison took the picture. There she was, indeed, with her hair long, and back in a braid, wearing a skirt made out of an Indian bedspread, a string of sh.e.l.ls and nothing else. She was squatting by a firepit.

"My back-to-the-earth phase," she said. "Weren't we both ready to quit the city and raise goats and bees? Where is this?"

"Oh, I hit the jackpot." Mich.e.l.le lifted the bag to show her the date, almost ten years before. The label said, 'Summer Solstice'. "Remember this? It was like the event of the year. Every d.y.k.e in the area went. I did so many drugs that I was high for days." She pa.s.sed a picture to ill.u.s.trate the point, herself sitting on a log holding a joint, a s.h.i.t-eating grin on her face. She was wearing black gym shorts and had a bandanna tied around her head. Her b.r.e.a.s.t.s were sunburnt.

"Who's this?" Alison pointed to the woman, looking equally stoned, who was sitting beside her.

"Don't you remember her? She was a brief infatuation. She was my first 'older woman'. She was like, wow, twenty four." She doubled up laughing and Alison joined her, remembering the feel of that summer. It was one of the first after they had come out, and certainly the first time that they ever got to go around half naked in front of a hundred d.y.k.es. She mourned it for a moment, for it was like your first kiss-it could never happen again.

"But we hit the jackpot," Mich.e.l.le repeated proudly. "My mom had given me a camera for my birthday, and I was so into d.y.k.es and how beautiful they were that I took a s.h.i.tload of pictures." She pa.s.sed another one across. "Sharon Aldrich," she said, tapping it.

Alison took a long, hard look. It was before the days of mohawk haircuts, but still she could not reconcile the woman she had seen outside the office of the Crusaders with the woman in this photo. A young woman, topless, like everyone else, with a short, short, ultrad.y.k.e haircut and twin tattoos twined up her arms.