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The third laid out near a garden, under a statue of farmers.

Salt of the earth? Salt purified, or it flavored. And that was bullshit.

Making something grow. Using your own hands, your sweat, and muscle to bring life? To bring death.

She blew out a breath. It could play in with the crafts. It could. Self-reliance, then. Do it yourself.

Parks meant something to him. The parks themselves. Something had happened to him in a park, something he paid back every time he killed.

“We could go back,” she muttered. “Look back, see if there were any sexual assaults on a male in one of the city parks. No, a kid, that’s the key. He’s big now, nobody’s going to mess with me now. But when he was a kid, helpless, like a woman. How do you fight back when you’re a kid? So you’ve got to get strong, so it can’t happen again. You’d rather be dead than have it happen again.”

For a moment, Peabody said nothing. She wasn’t entirely sure Eve was speaking to her. “Could be he got beat up, or humiliated rather than assaulted sexually. Humiliated or hurt in some way by the female authority figure.”

“Yeah.” Eve rubbed absently at a headache at the base of her skull. “Most likely the female he’s killing symbolically now. And if it was his mother or sister, something along those lines, it probably wasn’t reported. We’ll check anyway.”

“If a woman who had charge of him, control of him, abused him—physically, sexually—it would have twisted him from a young age, and later, the trigger gets pressed and he pays her back.”

“You think getting knocked around as a kid is an excuse?”

The snap in Eve’s voice had Peabody speaking carefully. “No, sir. I think it’s a reason, and it goes to motive.”

“There is no reason for killing innocent people, for bathing yourself in their blood because someone messed you up. No matter how, no matter when, no matter who. That’s a line for the lawyers and the shrinks, but it’s not truth. Truth is you stand up, and if you can’t, you’re no better than the one who beat and broke you. You’re no better than the worst. You can take your cycle of abuse and your victim as victimizer traumatized bullshit and—”

She stopped herself, tasted the acrid flavor of her own rage in the back of her throat. So she pressed her forehead to her updrawn knees. “Fuck it. That was over the top.”

“If you think I sympathize with him, or find any excuse for what he’s done, you’re wrong.”

“I don’t think that. That rant came to you courtesy of personal neuroses.” It was hard, it would be bitter. And it was time. Eve lifted her head.

“I expect you to go through the door with me, without hesitation. And I know you will, without hesitation. I expect you to stand with me, to walk through the blood, to handle the shit, and to put your personal safety and comfort second to the job. I know you will, not only because it’s who you are but because, by God, I trained you.”

Peabody said nothing.

“It was different when you were my aide. A little bit different. But a partner’s got a right to know things.”

“You were raped.”

Eve simply stared. “Where the hell did that come from?”

“Conclusion drawn from observations, association, logical speculation. I don’t think I’m wrong, but you don’t have to talk about it.”

“You’re not wrong. I don’t know when it started. I can’t remember everything.”

“You were abused habitually?”

“Abuse is a clean word, Peabody. Really, it’s a soft word, and you—people—tend to use it so easy, to cover a lot of territory. My father beat me, with his fists or whatever was handy. He raped me, countless times. Once is plenty, so why count?”

“Your mother?”

“Gone by then. Junkie whore. I don’t really remember her, and what I do remember isn’t any better than him.”

“I want . . . I want to say I’m sorry, but people say that easy, too, to cover a lot of territory. Dallas, I don’t know what to say.”

“I’m not telling you for sympathy.”

“No. You wouldn’t.”

“One night, I was eight. They said I was eight. I was locked in this dump he’d brought us to. Alone for a while, and I was trying to squirrel some food. Some cheese. I was starving. So