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By Root 1461 0

joke.” She shuddered, and rubbed the right side of her neck with two fingers. “He told me that it made such a small hole, there was no problem. Then, after he got it in, he said he'd lied. The prick stuck it in there, and starts telling me that, if I moved, I'd bleed to death. That the hole was bigger than he'd said. Then he'd, like, make sudden moves, you know? Clap his hands. Yell. Just to startle me, scare me. Shit.” She seemed to get more of a grip on herself. “But I made it, didn't I? He didn't use too big a needle, after all. He said he was sorry. Afterward. I didn't know whether to hate him for scaring me or for lying to me. But he didn't really injure me,” she added quickly.

I was dumbfounded, truly, that he could get them to do that. But this wasn't the time to go there.

“See?” said Kevin. “That's probably what happened to Edie. Like I said, an accident.”

“But you don't know?” Hester was starting to press him.

“Well … ”

“So you don't, then.” She said it with finality.

“Don't jump to conclusions, lady.” Kevin was getting insulting with the “lady” business.

“I'm not the one jumping,” said Hester. “So Toby only told you that's what happened? Right?”

Right, but with a twist. It seems that Toby had told Kevin that he, Edie, and Dan Peale were involved in a threesome, and that both he and Edie had been surprised when the blood thing had been brought up. They weren't expecting more than just some heavy sex, apparently.

“So,” I asked, “he didn't always get into the blood?”

“No,” said Huck.

“Not all that much,” said Melissa. “Just sometimes. Sometimes you could tell when it was going to be, sometimes you couldn't.”

“Edie got a little reluctant,” said Kevin. “So Dan had Toby hold her.”

“Wait a second,” I said. “If Toby was in love with Edie, why would he do that?”

There was a long enough pause that I began to think I had really missed something obvious. Huck finally spoke.

“He'd help Dan,” she said, “because the only time Edie would let him get into heavy duty snogging with her was when Dan was there, too. Edie did it for Dan, and without Dan, Toby would never have had a chance with her.”

It took me a second to digest that.

“Right.”

“See,” said Kevin, “Toby wouldn't have helped kill her, though. Like I keep trying to tell you, it was an accident.”

It was left to Huck to play the last card.

“No, it wasn't. It was not an accident.” Huck put her chin in her hands, and regarded me for a beat. “I know for a fact that the times with Hanna and Melissa were 'test flights,' like he called them.” She stopped my question by saying, “Dan. Dan called them that. He told me what he really wanted, and he told me that I'd have to die if I told anybody else.”

She folded her arms across her chest, defiantly. She took a deep breath, and then said very rapidly, “He told me that he wanted to experience death secondhand. But that to do it right, the donor would have to know they were going to die, and he'd probably have to kill them.”

TWENTY-EIGHT

Tuesday, October 10, 2000

17:40

“Brilliant,” said Kevin. “Just brilliant, Huck. Do you really have a death wish?”

That got me involved, from a slightly different angle.

“You got someplace safe to go?” I asked Huck.

She shrugged. “Oh, I think. But I'll probably just stay here. I don't think Dan's coming back.

” I raised both eyebrows, as meaningfully as I could.“You sure?”

“I'll let you know. But thanks, anyway. For asking.”

“Your call.”

She just nodded.

Here we were, about to begin mining a mother lode of information, and we were looking at the clock, wondering when we could head for Lake Geneva to interview Jessica Hunley. Hester and I talked quickly, and then I went to the phone in the hall, and called the office and had Borman head up. I told them to send Sally, too, since she was a reserve. Both of them knew the witnesses we were interviewing, and both could do a credible job of follow-up.

When I got off the phone, Hester used her cell phone to call her boss, and get another agent assigned and started up to meet with us. It was going to aggravate him no