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I hadn’t meant to just blurt it out like that I’m pretty sure Cooper would have been uess About hi so flippant about it Roberta’s and Elizabeth’s deaths, I uess a real investigator keeps a level head

I guess I’m not destined for that partnership in Cooper’s business after all

Chris seems to have frozen, his feet rooted onto one black and one white tile

But his grip on htens until suddenly, we’re standing hip to hip

"What?" he asks, and his eyes are so wide that the blue-gray irises look like ain Even his lips have drained of color

My face is only inches beneath his I see the incredulity in his eyes, coupled with--and, shoddy investigator that Ihorror

That’s when it hits ht up until I’d told hiirls in Fischer Hall were the ones hom he’d, um, dallied just days before

Is he really such a man-slut that he’d known only the first names--the nicknames--of the women he’d seduced?

It certainly looks that way

The effect my announce convulsively into ins to shake his head back and forth, like Lucy after a good shampoo

"No," he says "That’s not true It can’t be"

And suddenly I know that I’ve made a horrible mistake

Don’t ask me how I mean, it’s not like I have any experience in this kind of thing

But I knoay Know it the way I know the fat content in a Milky Way bar

Christopher Allington didn’t kill those girls

Oh, he’d slept with theht But he hadn’t killed theerous…

"Okay," says a deep voice behind me A heavy hand falls on my bare shoulder

"Sorry, Heather," Cooper says "But we have to go now"

Where’d he coo Not now

"Um," I say "Yeah, just a sec, okay?"

But Cooper doesn’t look too ready to wait In fact, he looks like a o," he says, again "Now"