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“I told you,” she says, “it’s a documentary. A docuseries. Four parts. Or six, depending on who we can get for interviews.”

The producer leans over to me. He’s in his late thirties, over twice my age. I don’t like how close he is.

“You think he’ll work with us?” he asks me.

I suck on my teeth. Mom told me to play nice.

I say, “Yeah. He’s probably bored in here.”

The producer nods like I’ve given him some great insight into the complex, twisted mind of a monster. He probably thinks there’s some genius machination in Dad’s head; that people like Dad are a species apart from us, a kind of devil brought from Hell to walk the earth. But there isn’t and they aren’t. Serial killers aren’t smart, or clever, or superhuman. They’re just evil, and cops are bad at their jobs.

Mom turns in her seat and holds the phone out to me. Her lip twitches.

“He wants to talk to you first,” she says.

From the ages of nineteen to forty, my father, Graham Nathaniel Slaughter, kidnapped, tortured, and killed fifty-one women and girls across Virginia and the greater Washington, DC, area. In the early days, it was nothing fancy. Run-of-the-mill brutalizations in his college apartment. But by the time I was born, he’d fashioned a prison out of a waterfront penthouse, where he would trap girls and keep them for weeks at a time. He’d take them apart, piece by piece, until they were rotting with sepsis and he put them out of their misery.

When I was ten, I watched his fifty-first victim die, and I brought the police right to her body.

Even with a still-warm corpse on the floor, the trial—Did he murder this woman or not?—was a nightmare. This is what happens when the accused is a well-respected Capitol Hill lawyer. Between filing errors, thrown-out evidence, and general bullshit delays, it stalled for months; three judges in a row backed out due to “previous professional involvements” with the accused. Dad’s defense litigator, a buddy of his from law school, claimed it was manslaughter, that Dad was simply a man with unusual tastes and it was all a consensual game that got out of hand. A mistake. And we don’t punish men like Dad for mistakes, do we?

He would’ve gotten away with it, too. Because it’s true. We don’t punish men like Dad. For mistakes, or for anything at all.

The only problem was me. The little girl on the witness stand saying, I don’t think she was the only one.

I had no proof of this, of course. My childhood autism diagnosis, combined with the worrying results of my psychiatric evaluation, forced the jury to consider whether the only real witness was misinterpreting a string of sadomasochistic extramarital affairs or making it up for attention. Besides, who would believe a cold, dead-eyed child over a handsome Capitol Hill attorney? And why did details change every time I told the story? Did I see other women or not? Were they hurt or not? Dad’s side of the courtroom pulled my psych eval and called me a manipulative liar. Mom joined in. I’d spent my whole life lying, so why would this be any different.

Then they found the hard drive of photos and, well. I almost preferred it when people thought I was a liar. Being a victim is worse.

On the other side of the Box, Dad gestures for me to sit and put the phone to my ear. My reflection in the glass vaguely overlaps his and, sure, I don’t look like him, but we have the same empty eyes. When we smile, neither of us does it correctly. Behind me, Mom is whispering to the producer again.

I do as Dad asks.

“I don’t know anything about the documentary,” I start.

Dad wrinkles his nose playfully. “Isn’t a father allowed to say hello to his daughter?”

I don’t reply to that. I made the mistake of coming out to Mom as trans last month—I thought she might support me for the Instagram clout, like she does with the whole “autism mom” thing—and got a screaming fit for my trouble. Figures she wouldn’t tell him, but it’s weird to have it confirmed.

Faced with my silence, Dad changes course. “It’s been a while, Bug. Your mother told me you’d gotten yourself on the warden’s shit list. Got yourself banned for a few months. What’d you do?”

I shrug. “Dress code.”

“And?”

I wore a too-short skirt and, when called out on it, took a page from Mom’s book. Threw a fit. Really caused a scene. “I told the CO to go fuck himself.”

“That’s my girl,” he says, even though I got myself banned on purpose.

I was doing better, too. I think. Away from him.

“What do you want?” I ask.

He looks at me like I’m being incredibly rude, rushing through the conversation like this. “Are you on board with the documentary?”

“If I want the money, I have to be.”

“Oh, come on. It won’t be that bad.”