"Where's Janka?" Alison asked, not because she really wanted to know, but because Mich.e.l.le obviously wanted to talk. If it had been anyone else she would have grunted rudely until they left her to think her crabby thoughts alone, but Mich.e.l.le had rights that others did not.

"She's dancing. She said she was going to have a good time whether I was or not." Mich.e.l.le ran a hand through her hair, which she had even consented to have moussed up in front. A silver earcuff dangled a blue stone from her ear. She sighed. "I can't stand myself when I get jealous."

"Neither can anyone else. Why are you being such a b.u.t.thead? You know she's not going to run off with that woman. Even if she was going to leave you it wouldn't be to go live in someone's van or a collective house made out of cardboard. All she wants to do with Seven Yellow Moons is talk weaving."

"I know." Mich.e.l.le sighed deeply again. A single woman entering gave her such a long look that, misinterpreting, she frowned and looked down, examining her shirt for a spot. "I really know that in my heart of hearts. But sometimes I feel like...I mean, don't you?...like there is this other woman who lives inside me, and sometimes she gets out and does all these horrid things while I'm standing politely in the background saying, Ah, excuse me. Pardon me, but do you think...?' However, she never stays around to deal with any of the fights she causes."

Alison laughed. "I know her. Her sister is visiting my house tonight."

"Have you seen Lydia's booth?"

"I built the d.a.m.n thing."

"I can't believe Seven Yellow Moons displays with her."

"She's a tolerant woman. More tolerant than you or I."

"I guess. They were driving me crazy talking this afternoon."

"About what?"

"Well, that was part of it. I didn't know quite what they were talking about so I couldn't quite follow. I didn't want to ask because I knew it would be something weird. But Seven Yellow Moons would say, 'I'm really worried about him,' and then Lydia would say, "Why do you suppose you want to feel worried?' and Seven Yellow Moons would say, 'She's not going out, or seeing anyone. It's just like it was when he was a kid,' and Lydia would say, 'Well, what was her aura like?' and Seven Yellow Moons would say, 'I know he feels like I deserted him when he was in the hospital, but I wasn't going to play into him acting like that,' just like Lydia was listening or saying something that made sense. It went on like that for hours, and Lydia never asked her one single question or indicated she was paying attention in any way, and Seven Yellow Moons never acknowledged it. It was like listening to two five year olds. You know, how they have two monologues that are interspersed but think they're having a conversation?"

Alison laughed again, this time at Mich.e.l.le's interpretation of Lydia, played with big round eyes, staring up at the sky. "Who were they talking about?"

"Who the f.u.c.k knows? The only reason that I was even listening was because Janka invited you-know-who up to talk weaving on her break and Lydia followed. And then they just never f.u.c.king left. I guess that Seven Yellow Moons had spent the day visiting old friends, and of course each of them had their own little soap opera going and she was all concerned. This one was about a mother and kid, but I never did get the characters right."

"Hmm." Alison spent a long moment thinking how delightful it would be to have her house back. The first thing she was going to do was change the locks. "Well, we can stand out here all night and whine and get cold, or we can go inside and delight hundreds of women."

"Let's stand outside and whine," said Mich.e.l.le. "I want to torment myself a little longer by thinking of Janka dancing with women more beautiful and interesting than me."

Alison nodded agreeably and they stood in companionable silence for several minutes watching the fashion show parading before them.

"Could we whine inside?" Alison asked finally. "I really am getting cold."

"Sure. I'm almost done, anyway. I think after a beer I may be ready to go apologize for acting like a jerk. Of course, if she's dancing with Seven Yellow Moons I may do something that will raise the state of being a jerk to heights that have remained unreached before this."

"Let's hope she's not. I don't want to ride in a car that full of hostility again. I'd rather have you making out in the back, nauseating as I usually find it." They climbed off the rail and were swept up into a crowd of older women, all of whom were wearing tuxes with glittering red c.u.mberbunds.

"Do you want a beer? Hey, what did your boss have to say to you this morning?"

"No, but do they have anything to eat? He told me to mind my own business and hinted that there were going to be job ha.s.sles if I didn't." Again Alison felt that tinge of guilt about the check. Well, Obtachta had made it very clear that it wasn't her job anymore.

"So that's that?" The line for beer and food stretched past the merchant's booths. Lydia and Seven Yellow Moons were on the very end, closest to the concessions. "I think they're selling some kind of veggie plate."

"That's that." Alison rummaged in her purse, trying to get her wallet out without advertising to everyone around them that she was toting a piece.

"I didn't think you'd give up so easy."

"G.o.ddammit, don't say that! Why is it my job to find this out, any more than it's yours or Janka's? You've got the same information I have. Don't make me responsible for these deaths!"

Mich.e.l.le did not reply, but tightened her lips and looked out in the crowd. Alison knew that Mich.e.l.le was still thinking that she had given up, and she could not blame her, because secretly, no matter how much she tried to justify it, she was thinking the same thing. But she had been ordered to keep out. It had nothing at all to do with not liking which way the information was pointing.

To distract herself she stared into the booth directly across from them which displayed vibrant silk screened T-shirts. A number of women who were holding them against tuxes or slipping them on over strapless gowns.

"Have you seen this show?" Mich.e.l.le nudged her and pointed with her chin at a booth across the way.

"Not this year's. I love it." Alix Dobkin sang If It Wasn't For The Women as slides flashed onto the screen at the back of the booth. She did love the medley of local d.y.k.e photos and music. It was put together by a woman from Boulder and aired often. It combined an air of professionalism and home movies, showing marches, soccer games, concerts, the local bookstore. She saw events that she had attended herself and even thought she spotted her foot in a photo of a Memorial Day Picnic.

"Hey, look." Mich.e.l.le jostled her arm. "There you are."

There she was, standing with her back to the camera, leaning against the bar at the Rubyfruit. Only there was something wrong.

"That's not me." She knew it couldn't be, though the photo certainly looked like her. But she didn't have a shirt like that and before this week, she hadn't been to the Rubyfruit for years.

"Oh, come on, you can tell me. I'll respect you even if you are a barfly."

"That's mighty big of you, but I still don't think it's me."

"Well, it looks just like...."

The carousel turned and the bar was replaced by a picture of three women sitting on the lawn with three huge dogs. They could not argue about the picture now that they could not see it. Both began to turn, then once again the projector clicked and they found themselves back at the bar. This photo was almost exactly the same as the first, except that the woman in the foreground, the one whom Mich.e.l.le had mistaken for Alison, had turned so that she was facing the camera.

"Oh," said Alison. She felt as if she were rooted to the spot.

"Hey, are you guys in line or are you just standing there?"

As if in a daze she moved up and paid for a plate of vegetables and dip. Mich.e.l.le was paying for a beer in the same distracted way, and she knew it was because they had shared the same flash of illumination.

There was nowhere to sit but Mich.e.l.le took her hand and ducked beneath the rope that sectioned off Lydia and Seven Yellow Moon's booth. Lydia gave them a dirty look as they settled down on a box in the back, which jolted Alison out of her daze just long enough so that she was able to appreciate the moment of being an unwanted guest rather than a reluctant hostess. "That woman in the picture," said Mich.e.l.le. She took a long pull on her beer bottle.

"Yes."

"It wasn't you."

"No." Alison stuffed a piece of broccoli in her mouth. She was eating automatically now, a growing horror eclipsing her hunger and crabbiness. Neither said a word as she chewed the vegetable and swallowed it as if it were a piece of pasteboard.

"That was Carla in that picture."

"Yes."

Mich.e.l.le was talking as if to a first grader, and Alison was not impatient, for though her mind had already made the leap, it was as if it had arrived there alone, and all the steps on the way had been forgotten. Mich.e.l.le was filling in those steps. "Carla looks just like you from behind."

"Yes." From behind, or in the dark, or particularly if they had changed clothes and she was wearing Alison's one-of-a-kind red sweater as she came up the stairs with a big box held in front of her. That could only mean that the killer had been quite aware of her going into the Rubyfruit, had already identified her.

And why had no one noticed the resemblance before? Because the very first night when she had brought Carla home and introduced her, Carla's head had been shaved like a demented punker.

"It wasn't Carla that killer wanted at all, was it?" Mich.e.l.le had to spell it out as though a part of her brain also refused to believe.

"No."

"It was you."

Alison winced and did not reply, because if she said yes, she would have to go further. She would have to acknowledge that this was why Carla had never quite fit into the pattern, that now the pattern was complete and, like rays shooting out from a sun, every woman who had been attacked was now linked back to Stacy. Three. Too many to be coincidental.

"It was you. G.o.d, and you were with her last night. She could have killed you while.. .I knew that stuff was wrong! I knew it led to violence...."

"Shut up, Mich.e.l.le," Alison said almost pleasantly. "Just shut the f.u.c.k up." She stuck a carrot into her mouth. The last thing she needed was Mich.e.l.le saying I told you so when already her mind was pumping in questions far too fast for her to answer. Was it only Stacy's word that she didn't play really rough? and did she really like to hurt women? and had she liked it so much that she had decided to go for just a little bit more, for the ultimate thrill of a snuff scene? She tried to squeeze in another, to ask why, if this was true, Stacy hadn't just done away with her while she was tied down the night before, but the answer was so obvious that it did not rea.s.sure. n.o.body s.h.i.ts in their own backyard. Just because Alison had not become a body in Stacy's apartment, where disposal would have been difficult, did not mean that it had not been attempted in the parking lot and would not be attempted again.

"What are you going to do?" Mich.e.l.le asked.

"I'm going to eat," she replied, because she really could not think of doing anything more than stuffing the vegetables into her mouth as fast as she could chew and swallow them.

"Well, I have to go pee. It's an emergency. But I'll be right back and we'll talk about it." Alison watched her squirm through the crowd and disappear.

"...and then his Mom died, and it was really weird, you know, the police never came out and hauled him in or anything, but everybody knew that they wondered if putting the ashes in the can had really been a mistake. So how do you get back to being close to someone like that, when you're always wondering...."

"I think this would be really nice for dip." Lydia picked up a particularly angular c.u.n.t dish and fondly held it close. Christ, Lydia and Seven Yellow Moons were talking just as Mich.e.l.le had described them, and apparently still on the same topics.

"I mean, it's true his mom was not what I'd call a good person. She didn't love him, dumped him and then took him back just to jerk us around, and kind of as an offering to G.o.d, to show him what a good person she was."

"A white, frothy dip," mused Lydia. "c.u.m dip. Maybe I should include some little books of recipes with them."

"So I don't know what kind of weirdness is going on now, but the kid has a history of violence, and it doesn't matter how much she loves him or how much she wishes it wasn't true, because it is true...."

No wonder Mich.e.l.le had wanted to slap them both. Where was Mich.e.l.le?

Sixteen.

"Sue!" It was a familiar voice, someone with whom Alison had spoken not long ago. She lifted her head to see Pam approaching the booth, her hand outstretched to Seven Yellow Moons, who seemed almost reluctant to take it. "Oh, don't be that way. I'm really sorry I was so crabby with you. You know how I am about it, just a mother hen."

"You're doing the wrong thing, Pam." Seven Yellow Moons spoke in the tone of one who knows her advice will not be taken but must try nonetheless. "You're the only one with any influence on him at all. He thinks I'm one of the bad guys now. He needs some help...."

"Sue." Pam put her fingers against the other woman's mouth in a shushing motion. "Truce. Okay? At least for tonight."

Sue. Pam had used the name when she'd spoken to Alison in her apartment. Alison wracked her brain, knowing somehow that this was important. To whom had she referred as 'Sue'?

Suddenly it came to her, and as she remembered she saw the photograph on the refrigerator, the one of the little boy and the four women, the fourth turned to the side. Pam had pointed to the fourth woman and called her Sue. And the fourth woman, her hair now pulled back from her face in a long braid, was Seven Yellow Moons.

Alison peered at them both, trying to see what she already knew. As she did so, Pam leaned across the table a little further and her earrings swung forward, catching the light. They were long lines of tubular beads with stars and moons on the ends, just like the ones she had seen at the bookstore.

Except for one thing. One star on the right earring was missing. 'One star was coming off,' Carla had said, 'You don't see a butch who can get away with dangly earrings very often.' Dangling earrings, but the corpse, of course, had worn none, and they had not been listed in the possessions. That was what had been bothering her about that report.

"Where did you get your earrings, Pam?" She had moved to the front of the booth without being aware of it. She knew by their stares that she had interrupted, but she did not apologize.

"Mark gave them to me. Aren't they pretty?" Pam spoke as if she were trying to sound gay, but somehow there was a ring of falseness to it, and suddenly Alison realized that on some level she knew that there was something not quite right happening with Mark, but that she was blocking it from her mother's heart.

"There's a star missing."

"I didn't notice...I...." Pam stammered, confused.

"They're not new." Alison said flatly. She wondered if she should ask for the earrings and hope that the lab could lift just one print of Tamara Garrity's from beneath Mark and Pam's. No, no chance. But Carla could testify about the star, and she herself had the photo that showed Tamara wearing them earlier in the evening. For a moment she wondered why he had taken them. Some kind of token, prize? Did he have a similar one from Melanie? She remembered Krista choking off sobs, saying that all they had taken was her necklace, her G.o.dd.a.m.n necklace. Was it at home on the top of Mark's dresser?

"What happened to Mark's mother?" Alison asked. "His real mother?"

"Um, Alison, we're trying to wind up a private conversation here." Seven Yellow Moons attempted to interrupt, but Alison ignored her, turning directly to face Pam.

"He killed her, didn't her?"

"No! It was an accident! She started the fire herself, she put hot ashes from the stove into a trash can on the back porch. It had a wooden floor. What did she expect to happen? She was always s.p.a.cy.... He burned his own hands trying to get her out." Pam's face was red, her voice outraged. Or rather, was it the voice of someone forcing outrage, indignation?

"But why? That's all I need to understand, the motive, and you can tell me. Why did he do it?"

"I don't have to listen to this c.r.a.p," said Pam. "I knew there was something funny about you the other day." She turned to leave, but Seven Yellow Moons shot a hand across the table and grasped her by the arm, so hard that the skin around the fingers immediately began to turn red. For the second time Alison noticed how large and strong her hands were.

Alison turned to her, the woman who had once been called Sue and had been another of the boy's mothers. She said, "Do you remember my friend who you met the other morning? The one who reminded you of the woman you used to know?"

"Sure." Seven Yellow Moons was noticeably uneasy, not wanting to hear what was coming, not willing to turn away. "The woman who looked like Candy, Mark's mom."

"Mark is a friend of hers. Mark is very, very fond of her. She says that he looks on her as kind of a subst.i.tute mother." Though the noise of two hundred women still flowed around them it was as if they were surrounded by their own little bubble of silence.

"All of the women who were killed were her lovers." Alison did not bother to distinguish customers from lovers because she no longer thought what Stacy did for a living was relevant.

A gagging sound came out of Seven Yellow Moons' mouth. Alison lifted her hand as if to pat her on the back and then lowered it again. She was choking on the past and no amount of pounding could make it go away.

"You knew!" she growled at Pam, thrusting her other hand across to grasp her other arm. "You f.u.c.king knew, and you didn't tell me a thing!"

"There was nothing to tell! There's nothing to know! So what if they're friends?" Pam struggled to release herself but it was useless. She would go free when Seven Yellow Moons decided to let her and not a moment before. "The police said it was an accident!"

"Because they couldn't prove it! Because you and Teresa always had an excuse for him, because you wouldn't tell them that d.a.m.n lazy woman never carried her own ashes out once in her whole life. That was his job, wasn't it? Such a good boy!"

"So what if it was? It was still an accident. Why should he have to suffer more than he already had? He burned his hands trying to pull her out of that fire. He suffered smoke inhalation himself. You know that!"

"I know that maybe he changed his mind at the last minute. Maybe he realized that it was for real this time, that it wasn't just some kind of weird fantasy in his head, something to make his mother love him the way he wanted her to. She was a s.h.i.tty mother, Pam, but she didn't deserve to die because of it."

"She died because she was a s.h.i.tty housekeeper! She died because she was too f.u.c.king dumb to even know how to clean her stove out! That's who we let that kid go live with, a woman who thought that fossils were just G.o.d's way of testing the faithful, a woman who told him that we were perverts even though we gave him the best life he'd ever had, a woman who was so stupid that she put hot ashes in a can on a wooden floor!" She was trying mightily to convince herself, and despite it all, Alison could see that she was not succeeding, that a hole had been made in the dam and doubt was pouring in.

"Explain it away, Pam. Then explain away the things he tried to do to her lovers. Only the women, Pam. Only the women. You can't. The police have it down, the hospital has it down. He cut that woman, Pam, he cut her face."

The police have it down. It was something that Alison could have gotten from the computer if only she had known the right name to feed in. He had tried to keep his mother's lovers away, tried to keep them from stealing the love she should have given to him, and when that hadn't worked he had made sure that she wouldn't love anyone at all.

"Is there a problem here?" One of the ticket sellers had pushed her way through the silent crowd that had formed in front of the booth to watch the drama. She was half the size of Seven Yellow Moons, but determined. There was going to be no trouble at her dance.