"It's a very normal reaction," Mira assured her. "It often helps to talk about the event that caused the shock, to go over the details of it so they can be dealt with. Set aside."

"Yes, I suppose you're right." Shifting her gaze in the mirror, she watched Eve. "You have to ask me questions, and it has to be on the record. All right. I want to get it done."

"Record on, Peabody. Dallas, Lieutenant Eve, in interview with Mansfield, Areena, in subject's dressing room at the New Globe Theater. Also present are Peabody, Officer Delia, and Dr. Charlotte Mira."

While Areena creamed off her stage makeup, Eve recited the revised Miranda. "Do you understand your rights and responsibilities, Miss Mansfield?"

"Yes. It's another part of the nightmare." She closed her eyes, tried to envision a pure white field, tranquil, serene. And could see only blood. "Is he really dead? Is Richard really dead?"

"Yes."

"I killed him. I stabbed him." The shudder ran from her shoulders down. "A dozen times," she said, opening her eyes again to meet Eve's in the center of the triple mirror. "At least a dozen times, we rehearsed that scene. We choreographed it so carefully, for the biggest impact. What went wrong? Why didn't the knife retract?" The first hint of anger showed in her eyes. "How could this have happened?"

"Take me through it. The scene. You're Christine. You've protected him, lied for him. You've ruined yourself for him. Then, after all that, he blows you off, flaunts another woman, a younger woman, in your face."

"I loved him. He was my obsession – my lover, my husband, my child, all in one." She lifted her shoulders. "Above all else, Christine loved Leonard Vole. She knew what he was, what he did. But it didn't matter. She would have died for him, so deep and obsessive was her love."

Calmer now, Areena tossed the used tissues into her recycle chute, turned on the stool. Her face was marble pale, her eyes red and swollen. And still, she radiated beauty.