When Nikki entered the room next to the interrogation room, Nick and Micaela Barboza were already present.

Micaela approached her and gave her girlfriend's sister a sincere nod. "I'm sorry about Jennifer Mcmillan."

Nikki pressed her lips together and nodded slowly. "Yes," she said hoarsely, "me too."

Nick nodded slowly but didn't say anything.

Nikki could see her husband through the one-way mirror. He sat opposite Patrick Dunin and his defense attorney, a reasonably young man in a gray suit.

Nikki's pulse quickened at the sight of the photographer, but she had sworn not to do anything that might get her disbarred.

While Mike was still sorting through the files, Nick looked at his niece. "And you got the name of Dunin from the watch?"

"Yes. He had it in the bathroom. It was Jennifer McMillan's watch. I recognized it from a picture."

Micaela shifted her weight from one foot to the other. "Did you not consider the possibility that there could be multiple of this watch, that it could just be the same model?"

Nikki looked at the lawyer for a long time and smiled unamused. "No, because the watch's glass in his bathroom cracked. Just like the watch Jennifer was wearing in the picture."

"Still, it's a pretty risky conclusion." Micaela turned away and looked at the one-way mirror.

"We've got him, haven't we? And alive too," commented Nikki, then concentrated on the events in the interrogation room.

Nick cleared his throat. "Mike stated that Dunin put up such a fight during his arrest that they had no choice but to subdue him with several blows to the head."

Nikki licked her lips and silently thanked her husband. "Yes, that's exactly how it was."

"Patrick Dunin, do you admit to kidnapping Jennifer Mcmillan and torturing her for days?" Mike's voice came out of the speakers, distorted. 'And to have inflicted a cut on her arm intending to kill her through the high blood loss?'

"It would have worked on her," Dunin replied as though he were talking about his favorite food. "If you hadn't come, it would have worked." He seemed calm and completely relaxed.

"Please answer my question."

"He won't," his lawyer replied. "Mr. Dunin has decided not to provide any information or take a position on this or any other accusation. So you can spare yourself any further questions."

Mike sighed loudly and dramatically closed the file before him, then looked at the young lawyer. "Don't tell me how to do my job, and certainly not what I can spare myself. I will interrogate your client for as long as I see fit. The evidence is so clear that he'll go to jail or the nuthouse for the rest of his life anyway." He smiled a little and then turned to Dunin. "My colleagues in the IT department have been working on your computer for a while and have discovered encrypted files on an external hard drive. Hundreds of pictures with which you have documented every step of your perverse activities. Jennifer Mcmillan, Diana Martiny, Leila Decker, and especially Miriam Labo. There are thousands of pictures of Miriam. So your silence is of no use to you." He paused, glancing over at the one-way mirror separating the interrogation room from the next one. "What I would like to know is where Miriam Labo was for the past two and a half years when she disappeared from the face of the earth?"

Dunin nodded and pushed out his lower lip. "Did I already say that it would have worked this time? Perfect, concentrated ecstasy. But unfortunately --"

Nikki snorted contemptuously and left the adjoining room without a word.

xxx

You don't have to be afraid.

They want to know where you've been, but they'll never find out. And neither will they find out what really happened between us, no matter how hard they probe. It will remain our sweet, wicked secret. Because I'll keep quiet, and you won't tell them either. Sorry for the little joke.

Oh, Miriam, do you remember how it all began between us? How did I find you? Yes?

I often think about it with pleasure.

I followed you when you met with Harry again. I was almost always near you when you were at that secret place. I watched over you, even when your movements deeply hurt me.

Do you have any idea what it was like for me to watch him defile the love of my life, to see him soil your beautiful, delicate body? To see him mount you like a mangy cur? To see him fuck you, that miserable pig.

Every time, I wanted to rip open the car door, cut off his damn cock, and stuff it in his mouth. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to talk to you like that. I just got carried away. It just makes me so angry when I think of Harry. Of you.

And then he hit you and left you lying in the dirt like a rabbit that's been hit by a car. You would have bled to death if I hadn't been there. I took you with me and took care of your wounds. When I think of that moment when I had you at my place for the first time, when you were all mine for the first time, all alone... I just couldn't let you go again. But you had a good time with me.

I worked for two weeks to fix up the old darkroom for you. I got you a bed, bricked up the window from the inside, and covered the walls with sound-insulating material so you would not be disturbed by outside noises. I even installed a toilet for you.

How ungrateful you were at first. You cursed me and shouted at me, even hit me.

But then, at some point, there was this wonderful moment that opened my eyes, in which you helped me realize what true ecstasy means. Do you remember? I remember it as if it were yesterday.

I just wanted to caress you a little, but you scratched me. You dragged your fingernails across my face, leaving bloody welts. That made me so angry that I had to punish you for it.

And then there was that moment when the tip of the knife went through the skin of your chest, the gentle resistance of the flesh, the sight of that beautiful, moist, shiny wound... That was the first time I experienced what sexual arousal really means. You had been with me for almost a year.

How exciting it was to live out this fantastic desire with you from that moment on, to increase it repeatedly, and to discover new ways of playing.

Yet the last bit was still missing for absolute fulfillment, and you made me wait a long time for it. What haven't I tried with you?

It took me over two years to understand that the ecstasy of absolute fulfillment can only be experienced with a woman once. The moment must be irreversible to make it perfect and very special.

I racked my brains trying to figure out how to delay this unique lovemaking moment for as long as possible. Then, suddenly, at some point, the realization hit me. And it was so simple. A canister, a tube, thick enough so that the vein wouldn't close again, thin enough so that it wouldn't go too fast. For almost an hour, you gave me pleasure with this foreplay until the release came, precisely at the moment when your heart made the last beat. It was an explosion of lust, fireworks of passion, the likes of which I could not have imagined even in my wildest dreams. I lay next to you for a long time, my body twitching, entirely beside myself from what I had just experienced. And it was under this impression that I then had the ingenious idea of teaching that pig Harry a lesson he won't forget.

Who else would have thought of using your blood so sensibly? And taking your hands with you to leave your fingerprints in the apartment? They were so puzzled. I have to laugh when I think about how Upton must have fared when the effect of the drops wore off the following day, and he was lying in your blood. That asshole.

I hope you will forgive me for having to manipulate your body a little when I buried it in the forest so that they wouldn't immediately realize the thing about your fingerprints in the apartment. I know you do.

Oh, Miriam... you were so unique, in the truest sense of the word. And yet, I couldn't bear the thought that I would never experience this happiness again.

Okay, trying it with a complete stranger was stupid of me and couldn't work. It was already significantly better when I took your friend and adapted the practices to what we had both experienced with each other. But even with her, achieving absolute fulfillment in that special, last moment was impossible.

Nothing like I had with you.

Then I saw Jennifer in one of my photos, and only then did I realize her striking resemblance to you. It's as if she were your younger sister. That cop, of all the people with her, drew my attention to her. What a delicious twist of fate.

I just imagined you sitting before me when I started with her, and I immediately sensed that it would work this time. It would have worked if that bitch hadn't disturbed us just before the moment of release...

Now, they want to put me in jail. But my lawyer told me they won't get away with it; the experts will handle it.

Yes, they will lock me up in a psychiatric hospital, but I will get therapy. My lawyer says the chances are not bad that I will be released in a few years if I don't act stupid. And I'm certainly not stupid, you know that.

I'll even find a woman who resembles you even more than Jennifer.

xxx

Elizabeth came onto her daughter Nikki's terrace with two whisky glasses. Nikki was sitting there gazing into the distance with an empty look, and Elizabeth put one of the glasses down beside the younger woman. She knew that kind of look only too well; she had had it herself after her wife Sarah had taken her own life. "How are you?" she asked her daughter and sat at the table.

Nikki blinked a few times, looked at the glass, and then at Elizabeth. 'Not good,' she said and sipped from the glass.

Elizabeth nodded slowly and did the same as the detective.

"And thank you."

"For what?"

"For straightening me out after you came here from Nick's office."

The former captain smiled weakly. "Didn't really do much good. Otherwise, you would have stayed on the couch watching Netflix until your eyes bled."

Nikki smiled weakly. "But without your scolding, I really would have gotten into much more trouble than I already was."

Elizabeth took a deep breath and looked at Nikki intently. "I know, that's why I came here, because I knew that otherwise you would have done even more mischief." She paused and licked her lips. "I'm your mother, it's my job to keep you from doing anything stupid, no matter how old you are."

Nikki nodded slowly and turned the glass thoughtfully between her hands. "Thanks."

Elizabeth nodded and wanted to tell her daughter there was no need to thank her, but she let it go. She looked at Nikki again and frowned a little. "Jennifer wasn't just any 'friend,' was she?" She could tell from her daughter's look that she shouldn't ask anymore, but that wasn't in her nature. Otherwise, she certainly wouldn't have become such a good cop. "You can tell me, Nikki, I won't say a word about it to anyone."

Nikki took a deep breath and sucked in her lower lip, shaking her head. "No, she wasn't." She paused and pressed her lips together, unsure if she could answer the question in detail. "I'm not quite sure how it happened, but Jennifer and I spent a night together."

Elizabeth licked her lips and nodded slowly, having already suspected something. "A moment of weakness."

Nikki closed her eyes and ran her fingers over her forehead, laughing humorlessly. "Yeah, you could look at it that way," she said, running her tongue over her lower lip. "I mean, I'm not --" She paused and looked at her mother, about to say that she hadn't sexually reoriented herself in adulthood like her sister Ashlyn had. She rolled her eyes when she saw Elizabeth's meaningful smile, which told her that her mother understood. "I love Mike, I'm really happy with him, and I hope we will still be happy together in many years." She took a deep breath and shook her head. "But that night, the boundaries somehow shifted for some reason. I let myself be carried away --"

"Trying out new boundaries," Elizabeth stated when the detective didn't continue. "With Jennifer because you felt attracted to her."

Nikki eyed the golden liquid in the glass and gritted her teeth. "After that night, I realized that I had misinterpreted that feeling, that it was nothing more than a deep, friendly connection that I hadn't felt since high school. No more, no less. The next morning, I explained to Jennifer that I..."

"That you care about her, but not in the way that you care about Mike. That it's not the kind of sexual relationship that you can imagine."

Nikki looked at her mother with wide eyes and smiled a little. "The funny thing is, I really enjoyed it." She paused and pulled down the corners of her mouth. "But it wasn't like with Mike." She rolled her eyes as Elizabeth opened her mouth to object. "It wasn't that deep connection like the one I have with him when I'm with him..."

Elizabeth raised her eyebrows, closed her eyes, and nodded vigorously. "Okay, I see. You and Mike are in spiritual and sexual harmony. Thank you for those vivid images I now see in my mind's eye."

Nikki had to start laughing; she had already wondered how long it would take for her mother to drop this topic. Even though she was very open-minded, she still didn't want to hear her children talk about sexuality. She became serious again and licked her lips once more. "At first, I thought it would be weird between Jennifer and me after that, but we just picked up where we left off before that night like it never happened. Sure, we were closer than before, but... in a friendly way, unlike it probably would have been if I had a fling with a male friend."

Elizabeth nodded and began to understand. She took a drag on her cigarette, which had lit up in the meantime, and sipped from her glass. "Jennifer has accepted that you are a close friend, but nothing more."

"She didn't make it complicated," the detective replied. 'And over time, as we got to know each other better, I told her things about myself that I hardly ever tell anyone.' She paused, looked at her mother's smoking cigarette, took a surprise drag, and raised her eyebrows. "Well, now we know why I don't have the largest circle of friends." She took another drag and emptied her whiskey glass. "Because usually my friends die, or they get so traumatized that they don't want to have anything to do with me anymore."

Elizabeth wanted to say something but didn't get the chance because her daughter got up from her chair and left her sitting alone on the terrace.