A Faint Cold Fear

MONDAY

5

Jeffrey leaned down to pick up the newspaper off Sara’s front porch before going into the house. He had told her he would be there by six this morning so she could call him with an update on Tessa. She had sounded awful on the phone last night. More than anything, Jeffrey hated to hear Sara cry. It made him feel useless and weak, two characteristics he despised in anyone, especially himself.

Jeffrey switched on the lights in the hallway. On the other side of the house, he heard the dogs stirring, their collars jingling, their loud yawns, but they did not come out to see who had arrived. After spending two years racing around the dog track in Ebro, Sara’s two greyhounds were loath to expend any energy unless they had to.

Jeffrey whistled, tossing the paper onto the kitchen counter, glancing at the front page while he waited for the dogs. The photograph above the fold showed Chuck Gaines standing between his father and Kevin Blake. Apparently the three men had won some sort of golf tournament in Augusta on Saturday. Underneath was a story encouraging voters to support a new bond referendum that would help replace the trailers outside the school with permanent classrooms. The Grant Observer had its priorities right in giving Albert Gaines top billing. The man owned half the buildings in town and his bank carried the mortgages on the others.

Jeffrey whistled for the dogs again, wondering what was taking them so long. They finally sauntered into the kitchen, their nails tip-tapping against the black and white tiles on the floor. He let them outside into the fenced-in yard, leaving the door open for when they had finished their business.

Before he forgot, Jeffrey took two tomatoes out of his coat pocket and put them in Sara’s refrigerator beside a funny-looking green ball that might have been food at some point in its sad, short life. Marla Simms, his secretary at the office, was an amateur gardener, and she was always giving Jeffrey more food than he could possibly eat on his own. Knowing Marla and her penchant for sticking her nose into places where it did not belong, she probably did this on purpose, hoping Jeffrey would share some with Sara.

Jeffrey scooped some kibble for Bubba, Sara’s cat, even though Bubba would not come out until after Jeffrey had left. The cat would only drink from a bowl left by the utility closet, and when Jeffrey had lived here, he was constantly kicking it over by accident. The cat took this and many other things personally. Jeffrey and Sara had a love-hate relationship with the animal. Sara loved the thing, and Jeffrey hated it.

The dogs came trotting back into the kitchen just as Jeffrey was opening up a can of food. Bob leaned against Jeffrey’s leg for petting while Billy lay down on the floor, heaving a sigh as if he had just climbed Mount Everest. Jeffrey had never understood how such large animals could be house dogs, but the two greyhounds seemed perfectly content to stay indoors all day. If they were left in the yard for too long, they would get lonely and jump the fence to go looking for Sara.

Bob nuzzled him again, pushing him toward the counter.

“Hold on a minute,” Jeffrey told him, picking up their bowls. He tossed in a couple of scoops of dry food, then mixed in the canned using a soup spoon. Jeffrey knew for a fact that the dogs would eat whatever was put in the bowls—Billy saw the cat box as his own personal snack tray—but Sara liked to mix their food for them, so that’s what he did.

“Here you go,” Jeffrey said, putting down the food.

They walked to the bowls, showing him their slim behinds as they ate. Jeffrey watched them for a moment before deciding to make himself useful and clean the kitchen. Sara was not the neatest person even on a good day, and the stack of dishes from their dinner Friday night was still piled in the sink. He draped his jacket over the back of a kitchen chair and rolled up his sleeves.

A large window over the sink offered a tranquil view of the lake, and Jeffrey stared absently at the water as he scrubbed the dishes. Jeffrey liked being here in Sara’s house, liked the homey feeling of her kitchen and the deep, comfortable chairs she had in the den. He liked making love to her with the windows open, hearing the birds on the lake, smelling the shampoo in her hair, watching her eyes close as she held on to him. He liked all of this so much that Sara must have sensed it; they spent the majority of their time together at his house.

The phone rang as he was washing the last plate, and Jeffrey was so absorbed in his own thoughts that he almost dropped it.

He picked up the phone on the third ring.

“Hey,” Sara said, her voice soft and tired.

He grabbed a towel to dry his hands. “How is she?”

“Better.”

“Has she remembered anything?”

“No.” She was silent, and he couldn’t tell if she was crying or too tired to talk.

Jeffrey’s vision blurred, and in his mind he was in the forest again, his hand pressed into Tessa’s belly, his shirt soaked through with her blood. Billy looked over his shoulder at Jeffrey as if he sensed something wrong, then turned back to his breakfast, the metal tag on his collar clinking against the bowl.

Jeffrey asked, “Are you holding up okay?”

She made a noncommittal noise. “I talked to Brock and told him what needs to be done. We should be able to get the lab results back tomorrow. Carlos knows to put a rush on it.”

Jeffrey did not let her sidetrack him. “Did you get any sleep last night?”

“Not really.”

Neither had Jeffrey. Around three that morning, he had gotten out of bed and gone for a six-mile run, thinking it would tire him out enough to sleep. He’d been wrong.

Sara told him, “Mama and Daddy are in with her now.”

“How are they doing?”

“They’re so mad.”

“At me?”

She did not answer.

“At you?”

He could hear her blowing her nose. Then, “I shouldn’t have taken her with me.”

“Sara, you had no way of knowing.” He was angry that he couldn’t think of anything more comforting than that. “We’ve been to a hundred scenes before and nothing bad has ever happened. Ever.”

“It was still a crime scene.”

“Right, a place where a crime already happened. There’s no way we could’ve anticipated—”

“I’ll drive Mama’s car back later tonight,” she said. “They’re going to move Tessa sometime after lunch. I want to make sure she’s settled in.” She paused. “I’ll do the autopsy as soon as I get in.”

“Let me come get you.”

“No,” she told him. “That’s too long a drive, and—”

“I don’t care,” he interrupted. He’d made the mistake before of not being there when Sara needed him, and he was not going to do it again. “I’ll meet you in the lobby at four.”

“That’s too close to rush hour. It’ll take you forever.”

“I’ll be going the opposite way,” Jeffrey said, though that hardly mattered in Atlanta, where everyone over the age of fifteen owned a car. “I don’t want you driving back by yourself. You’re too tired.”

She was silent.

“I’m not asking you, Sara. I’m telling you,” he said, keeping his voice firm. “I’ll be there around four, all right?”

She finally gave in. “All right.”

“Four o’clock in the front lobby.”

“Okay.”

Jeffrey told her good-bye and hung up before she could change her mind. He started to roll down his sleeves but reconsidered when he saw his watch. He was supposed to pick up Dan Brock and drive him to the morgue in an hour so Brock could take blood samples from Andy Rosen. After that, Jeffrey was scheduled to talk to the Rosens about their son and see if they had thought of anything useful during the night.

There was nothing Jeffrey could do at the office until the crime techs finished processing Andy’s one-room apartment over his parents’ garage. Any fingerprints would be checked through the computer, but that was always hit-and-miss, because the computer could make comparisons only against known prints on file. Frank would call Jeffrey on his cell phone when the reports were in, but for now there wasn’t really anything Jeffrey could do. Unless they came up with some earth-shattering revelation, Jeffrey would drop by Ellen Schaffer’s dorm room and see if she recognized the picture of Andy Rosen’s face. The young woman had seen the body only from the back, but, considering how gossip traveled around the campus, Schaffer probably already knew more about Andy Rosen than anyone on the police force did.

Again Jeffrey decided to make himself useful. He headed for the bedroom, picking up Sara’s socks and shoes, then a skirt and underwear, as he walked down the hallway. Obviously she had discarded her clothes as she walked through the house. Jeffrey smiled, thinking about how this used to irritate him when they were living together.

Billy and Bob were settled back on the bed when he tossed Sara’s clothes over the chair by the window. Jeffrey sat beside them, petting them both in equal turns. There were a couple of framed pictures by Sara’s bed, and he paused to look at them. Tessa and Sara were in the first photo, both of them standing in front of the lake with fishing poles in their hands. Tessa wore a ratty fishing hat that Jeffrey recognized as Eddie’s. The second picture was from Tessa’s graduation. Eddie, Cathy, Tessa, and Sara stood with their arms around one another, big smiles on their faces.

Sara, with her dark red hair and pale skin, standing a few inches taller than her father, always looked like a neighbor child who had wandered into the family photos, but there was no mistaking that the smile on her face was the same as her father’s. Tessa had her mother’s blond hair, blue eyes, and petite build, but all three women shared the same almond shape to their eyes. There was something more womanly about Sara, though, and Jeffrey had always been attracted to the fact that she curved just enough in all the right places.

He put down the photo and noticed a streak of dust on the table where another frame had been. Jeffrey looked on the floor, then opened the drawer and pushed around a couple of magazines before he found the silver-edged frame buried at the bottom. He knew this picture well; a passing stranger on the beach had taken it for them on Sara and Jeffrey’s honeymoon.

He used the corner of the bedsheet to dust off the frame before putting it back in the drawer.

Brock’s Funeral Home operated out of a large Victorian house that was the kind of place Jeffrey had dreamed about living in when he was a kid. Back in Sylacauga, Alabama, Jeffrey and his mother—and less often his father—lived in a two-bedroom, one-bath house that even on a good day could not be called a home. His mother had never been a happy person, and for as long as Jeffrey could remember, there were no pictures on the walls or carpets on the floors or anything that might add a personal touch to the house. It was as if May Tolliver did everything she could to avoid setting down roots. Not that she had a lot to work with even if she wanted to.

Poorly insulated windows rattled when you closed the front door, and the kitchen floor sloped so severely toward the back that dropped food collected under the baseboards. On particularly cold winter nights, Jeffrey had slept in his sleeping bag on the floor of the hall closet, the warmest room in the house.

Jeffrey had been a cop for too long to think that a crappy childhood was a good excuse for anything, but he understood why some people used it as a justification. Jimmy Tolliver was a nasty drunk, and he had knocked Jeffrey around plenty of times when Jeffrey had made the mistake of getting in his father’s way. Most of the time, Jeffrey got hit when he inserted himself between his mother and Jimmy’s fists. That was in the past, though, and Jeffrey had moved on long ago. Everybody had something horrible happen to them at one time or another in their life; it was part of the human condition. How they struggled through adversity proved what kind of people they were. Maybe that was why Jeffrey was having such a hard time with Lena. He wanted her to be a different person than who she really was.

Dan Brock came tumbling out of the front door, then stopped as his mother called to him. She handed him two Styrofoam cups, and Jeffrey hoped to God one of them was meant for him. Penny Brock made a mean cup of coffee.

Jeffrey tried not to smile as he watched mother and son say good-bye. Brock leaned down for his mama to kiss his cheek, and she took the opportunity to brush something off the shoulder of his black suit. There was a reason Dan Brock was nearly forty and had never married.

Brock gave a toothy smile as he walked toward the car. He was a lanky man who had the great misfortune of looking like what he was: a third-generation mortician. He had long, bony fingers and a blank face that lent itself to comforting the bereaved. Brock didn’t get to talk much to people who weren’t crying their hearts out, so he tended to be incredibly chatty around anyone who was not in mourning. He had a very dry wit and a sometimes alarming sense of humor. When he laughed, he put his whole face into it, his mouth cracking open like a Muppet’s.

Jeffrey leaned over to open the door, but Brock had already managed, switching the two cups to one large hand.

“Hey, Chief,” he said, climbing into the car. He handed Jeffrey a cup. “From my mama.”

“Tell her I said thanks,” Jeffrey said, taking the cup. He peeled off the top and inhaled the steam, thinking it would wake him up. Straightening up Sara’s house was not exactly a debilitating task, but he was in a funk after seeing she had put that picture of them in the drawer, like she did not want to be reminded of the fact that they had been married. He couldn’t help but laugh at himself; he was acting like a lovesick girl.

“What’s that?” Brock asked, having a mortician’s sense for someone who was letting his emotions get the better of him.

Jeffrey put the car in gear. “Nothing.”

Brock settled in happily, his long legs stretched out in front of him like two bent toothpicks. “Thanks for picking me up. I don’t know when the hearse is gonna be ready, and Mama has her Jazzercise on Mondays.”

“That’s not a problem,” Jeffrey told him, trying not to snort at the thought of Penny Brock in leotards. The image of a lumpy sack of potatoes came to mind.

Brock asked, “Any word on Tessa?”

“I talked to Sara this morning,” Jeffrey told him. “She’s doing a little better, it sounds like.”

“Well, praise the Lord,” Brock said, putting his hand up in the air. “I’ve been praying for her.” He dropped his hand, slapping it against his thigh. “And that sweet little baby. Jesus has a special place for children.”

Jeffrey did not respond, but he hoped Jesus had an even better place for whoever stabbed them to death.

Brock asked, “How’s the family holding up?”

“They seem okay,” Jeffrey told him before changing the subject. “You haven’t worked for the county in a while, have you?”

“Oh, no,” Brock balked, even though he had been the county coroner for years. “I have to say I was really glad when Sara took over. Not that the money wasn’t nice, but Grant was just getting a little too big for me back then. Lots of people coming in from the city, bringing their city ways. I didn’t want to miss something. It’s an awesome responsibility. My hat’s off to her.”

Jeffrey knew that by “city” Brock meant Atlanta. Like most small towns in the early nineties, Grant had seen an influx of urbanites seeking a slower way of life. They moved out of the larger cities, thinking they would find a peaceful Mayberry at the end of the interstate. For the most part, they would have—if they’d left their children at home. Part of the reason Jeffrey had been hired as chief of police was his experience with working on a gang task force in Birmingham, Alabama. By the time Jeffrey had signed his contract, the powers-that-be in Grant would have taken up goat sacrifices if they thought it would solve their youth-gang problem.

Brock said, “This one’s pretty straightforward, Sara said. You just need blood and urine, right?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey told him.

“I hear Hare’s helping out with her practice,” Brock said.

“Yeah.” Jeffrey said around a sip of coffee. Sara’s cousin Hareton Earnshaw was also a doctor, though not a pediatrician. He was filling in at the clinic while Sara was in Atlanta.

“My daddy, rest his soul, used to play cards with Eddie and them,” Brock said. “I remember sometimes he’d take me over to play with Sara and Tessie.” He guffawed loud enough for it to echo in the car. “They were the only two girls in school who would talk to me!” He had real regret in his voice when he explained, “The rest of them thought I had cootie hands.”

Jeffrey looked at him.

Brock held out a hand to illustrate. “From touching dead people. Not that I did that when I was young. That didn’t come until later.”

“Uh-huh,” Jeffrey said, wondering how they’d gotten onto this subject.

“Now, my brother Roger, he was the one who touched them. Roger was a real scamp.”

Jeffrey braced himself, hoping this was leading to a sick joke.

“He’d charge a quarter a person to take some of the kids down to the embalming room at night after Daddy’d gone to bed. He’d get ’em all in there with the lights off and nothing but a flashlight to show the way, then he’d press right here on the departed’s chest, like this.” Despite his better judgment, Jeffrey looked to see where. “And the body’d let out this low moan.”

Brock opened his mouth and gave out a low, soulless moan. The sound was horrific—terrifying—something Jeffrey hoped to God he would forget when he tried to go to bed that night.

“Jesus, that’s creepy,” Jeffrey said, feeling a shudder well up, like someone had walked over his grave. “Don’t do that again, Brock. Jesus.”

Brock seemed contrite, but he handled it well, drinking his coffee and remaining silent the rest of the way to the morgue.

When Jeffrey pulled up to the Rosen house, the first thing he noticed was a shiny red Ford Mustang parked in the driveway. Instead of going to the front door, Jeffrey went over to the car, admiring its sleek lines. When he was Andy Rosen’s age, Jeffrey had dreamed about driving a red Mustang, and seeing one here gave him an unreasonable pang of jealousy. He ran his fingers along the hood, tracing the black racing stripes, thinking that Andy had a hell of a lot more to live for than he had at that age.

Someone else loved this car, too. Despite the early hour, there was no dew on the paint. A bucket was upended near the back fender, a sponge on top. The garden hose was still reeled out to the car. Jeffrey looked at his watch, thinking it was an odd time to be out washing a car, especially considering that the owner had died the day before.

As he approached the front porch, Jeffrey could hear the Rosens having what sounded like a nasty argument. He had been a cop long enough to know that people were more likely to tell the truth when they were angry. He waited by the door, eavesdropping but trying not to look obvious in case any early-morning joggers wondered what he was up to.

“Why the hell do you care about this now, Brian?” Jill Rosen demanded. “You never cared about him before.”

“That’s fucking bullshit, and you know it.”

“Don’t use that language with me.”

“Fuck you! I’ll talk to you however I fucking please.”

A moment passed. Jill Rosen’s voice was softer, and Jeffrey could not make out what the woman was saying. When the man responded, his voice was equally low.

Jeffrey gave them a full minute to rile up again before knocking on the door. He could hear them moving around inside and guessed that one or both of them were crying.

Jill Rosen answered the door, and he could tell from the well-used Kleenex grasped in her hand that she’d spent the morning in tears. Jeffrey had a flash of Cathy Linton on the deck at her house yesterday, and he felt a sympathy that he’d never imagined himself capable of.

“Chief Tolliver,” Rosen said. “This is Dr. Brian Keller, my husband.”

“We talked on the phone,” Jeffrey reminded him.

Keller had an air of devastation about him. Judging by his thinning gray hair and soft jaw, he was probably in his late fifties, but grief made him look twenty years older. His trousers were pin-striped, and though they obviously belonged with a suit, Keller was wearing a yellowing undershirt with a deep V-neck that revealed a smattering of gray hair on his chest. He had a Star of David chain like his son, or maybe it was the one they had found in the woods. Incongruously, his feet were bare, and Jeffrey guessed that Keller had been the one to wash the car.

“I’m sorry about that,” Keller said. “Yesterday on the phone. I was upset.”

Jeffrey said, “I’m sorry for your loss, Dr. Keller,” taking the man’s hand, wondering how to ask tactfully if Andy was his natural son or adopted. A lot of women kept their maiden names when they married, but usually the children took their father’s name.

Jeffrey asked Keller, “You’re Andy’s biological father?”

Rosen said, “We let Andy choose which name he wanted to take when he was old enough to make an informed decision.”

Jeffrey nodded his understanding, though he was of the opinion that kids’ being given too many choices was one of the reasons he saw so many of them at the station, shocked that their bad decisions had actually landed them in trouble.

“Come in,” Rosen offered, indicating Jeffrey should follow the short hallway to the living room.

Like most professors, they lived on Willow Drive, which was just off Main Street and a short distance from the university. The school had worked out something with the bank to guarantee low-interest home loans for new professors, and they all ended up taking the nicest houses in town. Jeffrey wondered if all of the professors let their houses fall into disrepair as Keller had. There were stains on the ceiling from a recent rainfall, and the walls were in serious need of a fresh coat of paint.

“I’m sorry about the mess,” Jill Rosen said in a practiced tone.

“It’s fine,” Jeffrey said, though he wondered how anyone could live in such clutter. “Dr. Rosen—”

“Jill.”

“Jill,” he said. “Can you tell me, do you know Lena Adams?”

“The woman from yesterday?” she asked, her voice going up at the end.

“I was wondering if you knew her from before.”

“She came to my office earlier. She’s the one who told me about Andy.”

He held her gaze for a moment, not knowing the woman well enough to tell if there was something more to her words, which could be taken any number of ways. Jeffrey’s gut told him that something was going on between Lena and Jill Rosen, but he was not sure how it pertained to the case.

“We can sit in here,” Rosen said, indicating a cramped living room.

“Thanks,” Jeffrey said, glancing around the room.

Rosen had obviously taken great care decorating the house when she moved in, but that had been many years ago. The furniture was nice, but looked a little too lived in. The wallpaper was dated, and the carpet showed high-traffic areas as clearly as a path in the forest. Even without these cosmetic problems, the place was crowding in on itself. Stacks of books and magazines spilled over in piles. There were newspapers Jeffrey recognized from last week spread around one of the armchairs by the window. Unlike the Linton house, which arguably had the same amount of clutter and certainly more books, there was something stifling about the place, as if no one had been happy here for a very long time.

“We talked to the funeral home about the service,” Keller told him. “Jill and I were just trying to decide what we should do. My son had very definite feelings about cremation.” His bottom lip quivered. “Will they be able to do that after the autopsy?”

“Yes,” Jeffrey told them. “Of course.”

Rosen said, “We want to support his wishes, but . . .”

Keller told her, “It’s what he wanted, Jill.”

Jeffrey could sense the tension between them and did not offer his opinion.

Rosen indicated a large chair. “Please, have a seat.”

“Thank you,” Jeffrey said, tucking in his tie, sitting on the edge of the cushion so he would not sink back into the lumpy chair.

She asked, “Would you like something to drink?”

Before Jeffrey could refuse, Keller said, “Water would be nice.”

Keller stared at the floor until his wife left the room. He seemed to be waiting for something, but Jeffrey was not sure what. When the faucet in the kitchen was turned on, he opened his mouth, but no words came out.

Jeffrey said, “Nice car outside.”

“Yes,” he agreed, clasping his hands in his lap. His shoulders were stooped and Jeffrey realized Keller was a larger man than he had initially thought.

“You washed it this morning?”

“Andy took good care of that car,” he said, but Jeffrey noticed he did not answer the question.

“You’re in the biology department?”

“Research,” Keller clarified.

Jeffrey began, “If there’s something you want to tell me . . . ?”

Keller opened his mouth again, but just then Rosen came into the room, handing both Jeffrey and her husband a glass of water.

“Thank you,” Jeffrey said, taking a sip, even though the glass had a funny smell. He set it down on the coffee table, glancing at Keller to see if the man had anything to say, before getting down to business.

He said, “I know y’all have other things to worry about. I just need to ask you some routine questions, and then I’ll get out of your way.”

“Take all the time you need,” Keller offered.

Rosen said, “Your people were up in Andy’s apartment until late last night.”

“Yes,” Jeffrey answered. Contrary to what cops did on television, Jeffrey liked to stay as far away from a fresh crime scene as he could until the technicians were finished processing it. The riverbed where Andy had killed himself was too expansive and public to be of much use. Andy’s apartment was a different matter.

Keller waited for his wife to sit down, then sat beside her on the couch. He tried to take her hand, but she pulled away. Obviously the fight they’d been having was still going on.

Rosen asked, “Do you think he could have been pushed?”

Jeffrey wondered if anything had been said to Rosen or if she had come up with the scenario on her own. He asked, “Did anyone ever threaten to hurt your son?”

They looked at each other as if they had talked about this earlier. “Not that we know of.”

Jeffrey asked, “And Andy attempted to kill himself before?”

They nodded in unison.

“You saw the note?”

Rosen whispered, “Yes.”

“It’s not likely,” he told the parents. No matter what Jeffrey suspected at this point, it was just that: speculation. He did not want to give Andy’s parents something to hold on to, only to have to disappoint them later. “We’ll investigate every possibility, but I don’t want to get your hopes up.” He paused, regretting his choice of words. What parents would hope that their child was murdered?

Keller told his wife, “They’ll find anything irregular in the autopsy. They can find out all kinds of things. It’s amazing what science can do these days.” He said this with the conviction of a man who worked in the field and relied on scientific method to prove any point.

Rosen held the tissue to her nose, not acknowledging what her husband had said. Jeffrey wondered if the tension between them was from the recent argument or if there had been problems in the marriage for a while. He would need to ask some discreet questions around campus to find out.

Keller interrupted Jeffrey’s thoughts. “We’ve been trying to think of something to tell you,” he said. “Andy had some friends from before—”

“We never really knew them,” Rosen interrupted. “His drug friends.”

“No,” Keller agreed. “As far as we know, there was no one lately.”

Rosen conceded, “At least no one Andy introduced us to.”

“I should have been here more,” Keller said, regret making his voice thick.

Rosen did not dispute this, and Keller’s face turned red with the effort to keep from crying.

“You were in Washington?” Jeffrey asked the man, but it was his wife who answered.

She explained, “Brian’s working on a very complicated grant application right now.”

Keller shook his head, like it was nothing. “What does it mean now?” he asked no one in particular. “All that wasted time and for what?”

“Your work could help people one day,” she said, but Jeffrey sensed some animosity in her tone. This wouldn’t be the first time a wife resented her husband working long hours.

“That’s his car in the driveway?” Jeffrey asked the mother. He noticed Keller look away.

Rosen said, “We’d just bought it for him. Something to . . . I don’t know. Brian wanted to reward him for doing so well.”

The unsaid implication was that Rosen had not agreed with her husband’s decision. The car was an extravagant purchase, and professors were hardly millionaires. Jeffrey guessed he was probably paid more money than Keller, which was not a hell of a lot.

Jeffrey asked, “Did he usually drive it to school?”

“It was easier walking,” Rosen said. “Sometimes we all walked over together.”

“Did he tell you where he was going yesterday morning?”

“I was already at the clinic,” Rosen answered. “I assumed he would be home all day. When Lena came . . .”

Her tone of voice put a familiarity on Lena’s name that Jeffrey would have liked to pursue, but he could think of no way to introduce it into the conversation.

Jeffrey took out his notebook instead, confirming, “Andy worked for you, Dr. Keller?”

“Yes,” Keller answered. “There wasn’t much for him to do, but I didn’t want him spending a lot of time by himself at home.”

Rosen added, “He helped at the clinic as well. Our receptionist isn’t that reliable. Sometimes he would man the desk or do some filing.”

Jeffrey wondered, “Did he ever have access to patient information?”

“Oh, never,” Rosen said, as if the thought alarmed her. “That’s kept under lock and key. Andy handled expense reports, scheduling, phone calls. That sort of thing.” Her voice trembled. “It was just busywork to keep him occupied during the day.”

“The same at the lab,” Keller provided. “He wasn’t really qualified to help with research. That work belongs to the graduate students.” Keller sat up, hands on his knees. “I just wanted him close so I could keep an eye on him.”

“You were worried he would do something like this?” Jeffrey asked.

“No,” Rosen said. “Or, I don’t know. Perhaps subconsciously I thought he might be considering it. He was acting very strange lately, like he was concealing something.”

“Did you have any idea what he was hiding?”

“No telling,” she said with true regret. “Boys that age are difficult. Girls, too, for that matter. They’re trying to make the transition between being a teenager and being an adult. Parents go back and forth between being a liability and a crutch, depending on the day of the week.”

“Or whether or not he needs cash,” Keller added. The parents smiled at this, like it was a shared joke between them.

Keller asked, “Do you have a son, Chief Tolliver?”

“No.” Jeffrey sat back, not liking the question. When he was younger, Jeffrey never thought he would want a kid of his own. Knowing Sara’s circumstances, he had put it out of his mind. Something about the last case he had worked on with Lena had made Jeffrey wonder what it would be like to be a father.

Keller said, “They’ll tear your heart out,” in a hoarse whisper, dropping his head into his hands. Rosen seemed to go through some silent debate with herself before reaching over and rubbing his back. Keller looked up, surprised, as if she had just given him some kind of gift.

Jeffrey waited a few moments before asking, “Did Andy tell you that he was having problems coping?” They both shook their heads. “Was there someone or something that might have been upsetting him?”

Keller shrugged. “He was trying very hard to forge his own identity.” He waved his hand toward the back of the house. “That was why we let him live over the garage.”

“He was taking an interest in art,” Rosen said. She pointed to the wall behind Jeffrey.

“Nice.” Jeffrey glanced at the canvas, trying not to do a double take. The drawing was a rather one-dimensional rendering of a nude woman reclining on a rock. Her legs were wide open, her genitals the only color in the picture, so that it looked as if she had a plate of lasagna between her thighs.

“He had a real gift,” Rosen said.

Jeffrey nodded, thinking that only a deluded mother or the editor of Screw magazine would think whoever drew the picture had a gift. He turned around, his eyes finding Keller. The man looked squeamishly uncomfortable, mirroring Jeffrey’s own reaction.

“Did Andy date much?” Jeffrey asked, because as detailed as the drawing was, the boy seemed to have missed some important parts.

“Not that we know of,” Rosen answered. “We never saw anyone going to his room, but the garage is in the back of the house.”

Keller glanced at his wife before saying, “Jill thinks he could have been doing drugs again.”

Jeffrey told them, “We found some paraphernalia in his room.” He did not wait for the question Rosen was obviously about to ask. “Squares of tinfoil and a pipe. There’s no telling when they were last used.”

Rosen slumped, and her husband wrapped his arm around her, holding her close to his chest. Still, she seemed apart from him, and Jeffrey wondered again about the condition of their marriage.

Jeffrey continued, “There was nothing else in his room that pointed to a drug problem.”

“He had mood swings,” Keller said. “Sometimes he would be very melancholy. Sullen. It was hard to tell if it was from drugs or just his natural disposition.”

Jeffrey thought now was as good a time as any to bring up Andy’s piercings. “I noticed he had a pierced eyebrow.”

Keller rolled his eyes. “It nearly killed his mother.”

“His nose, too,” Rosen added with a disapproving frown. “I think he had something done to his tongue recently. He wouldn’t show me, but he kept chewing it.”

Jeffrey pressed, “Anything else unusual?”

Keller and Rosen both looked at him in wide-eyed innocence. Keller spoke for both of them. “I don’t think there was anything else left to pierce!” he said, not exactly laughing.

Jeffrey moved along. “What about the suicide attempt in January?”

“In retrospect, I’m not sure he meant anything by it,” Keller said. “He knew that Jill would find the note when she woke that morning. He timed it so she would find him before anything got desperate.” The father paused. “We thought he was just trying to get our attention.”

Jeffrey waited for Rosen to say something, but her eyes were closed, her body folded into her husband’s.

Keller said, “He acted out sometimes. He didn’t think of the ramifications.”

Rosen did not protest.

Keller shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t say something like that.”

“No,” Rosen whispered. “It’s true.”

“We should have noticed,” Keller insisted. “There must have been something.”

Death was bad enough, but suicides were always particularly horrible for the people who were left behind. Either the survivors blamed themselves for not seeing the signs or they felt betrayed by their selfish loved ones who’d left them to clean up the mess. Jeffrey imagined that Andy Rosen’s parents would spend the rest of their lives swinging back and forth between the two emotions.

Rosen sat up, wiping her nose. She took another tissue out of the box and dried her eyes. “It’s a wonder you found anything in that apartment at all,” she said. “He was so messy.” She had been trying to collect herself, but something about her words brought it all back to her.

Rosen broke down slowly, her mouth twitching as she tried to hold back her sobs, until she finally covered her face with her hands.

Keller put his arm around his wife again, pulling her close. “I’m so sorry,” he said, burying his face in her hair. “I should have been here,” he said. “I should have been here.”

They stayed like this for several minutes, as if Jeffrey were no longer there.

He cleared his throat. “I thought I’d go out back and look at the apartment, if you don’t mind.”

Keller was the only one to look up. He nodded his head, then went back to comforting his wife. Rosen slumped into him. She could have been a rag doll in his hands.

Jeffrey turned to leave, coming face-to-face with Andy’s reclining nude. There was something oddly familiar about the woman that he could not place.

Aware that he might be gawking, Jeffrey let himself out of the house. He wanted to follow up with Keller and find out exactly what it was the man could not speak about in front of his wife. He also needed to talk to Ellen Schaffer again. Maybe getting some distance from the crime scene had helped jog her memory.

Jeffrey stopped in front of the Mustang, admiring its lines again. Washing the car this early in the morning so soon after Andy Rosen’s death was odd, but certainly not a crime. Maybe Keller had done it to honor his son. Maybe he’d been trying to hide evidence, though Jeffrey was hard-pressed to think of anything that could connect the car to this crime. Other than the attack on Tessa Linton, Jeffrey was not even sure a crime had been committed.

He leaned down, running his hand over the tire treads. The road leading to the parking pad by the bridge was paved, and the pad itself was gravel. Even if they were able to match treads, Andy might have driven the car to the site himself a hundred times before. Jeffrey knew from patrol reports that the area was a prime make-out spot.

Jeffrey flipped open his phone to call Frank but stopped when he noticed Richard Carter coming up the walk carrying a large casserole dish in his hands.

Richard’s face broke into a wide grin when he saw Jeffrey, but then he seemed to catch himself and put on a more serious expression.

“Dr. Carter,” Jeffrey said, trying to sound pleasant. Jeffrey had more important things to do than field prying questions so Richard could look like a big man on campus.

Richard said, “I made a casserole for Brian and Jill. Are they in?”

Jeffrey glanced back at the house, thinking of the oppressive atmosphere, the raw grief the parents were experiencing now. “Maybe now wouldn’t be the right time.”

Richard’s face fell. “I just wanted to help.”

“They’re pretty upset,” Jeffrey told him, wondering how he could ask Richard some questions about Brian Keller without looking obvious about it. Knowing how Richard operated, he decided to approach the subject from a different angle. “Were you friends with Andy?” he asked, thinking that Richard could not have been more than eight or nine years older than the boy.

“God, no.” Richard guffawed. “He was a student. Barring that, he was an obnoxious brat.”

Jeffrey had gathered as much about Andy Rosen on his own, but he was surprised by the vehemence behind Richard’s words. He asked, “But you’re pretty close to Brian and Jill?”

“Oh, they’re great,” Richard said. “Everybody likes everybody on campus. The whole faculty is like a little family.”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey agreed. “Brian seems like a solid family man.”

“Oh, he is,” Richard agreed. “The best father in the world to Andy. I wish I’d had a father like that.” There was an edge of curiosity to his voice, and Jeffrey could tell that Richard had realized he was being questioned. With this realization came a sense of power, and Richard had a smirk on his face as he waited for Jeffrey to ask him for dirt.

Jeffrey jumped in with both feet. “They seem to have a good marriage.”

Richard twisted his lips to the side. “You think?”

Jeffrey did not answer, and Richard seemed to take this as a good thing.

“Well,” Richard began, “I don’t like to spread rumors . . .”

Jeffrey suppressed the bullshit that wanted to come.

“And it was just that—a rumor. I never saw anything to give it credence, but I can tell you that Jill was acting mighty strange around Brian at the last department Christmas party.”

“Y’all are in the same department?”

“Like I said,” Richard reminded him. “small campus.”

Jeffrey stared silently, which was all the encouragement Richard needed.

“There was rumor of a problem a while back.”

He seemed to need Jeffrey to say something, so Jeffrey provided, “Yes?”

“Mind you, just a rumor.” He paused like a true showman. “About a student.” Again he paused. “A female student.”

“An affair?” Jeffrey guessed, though it was hardly a difficult leap. This would certainly be something that Keller would not want to talk about in front of his wife, especially if Rosen already knew about it. Jeffrey knew from his own experience that Sara’s even alluding to the circumstances that had ended their marriage made him feel like he was dangling his feet over the Grand Canyon.

“Do you know the girl’s name?”

“No idea, but if you believe the gossip, she transferred after Jill found out.”

Jeffrey was dubious, and he was sick of people holding things back. “Do you remember what she looked like? What her major was?”

“I’m not sure if I believe she even existed. As I said, it was just a rumor.” Richard frowned. “And now I feel bad for talking out of school.” He laughed at the double meaning.

“Richard, if there’s something you’re not telling me . . .”

“I’ve told you everything I know. Or at least heard. Like I said—”

“It was just a rumor,” Jeffrey completed.

“Was there anything else?” Richard asked, a pronounced pout to his lips.

Jeffrey decided to parry. “That’s nice of you to bring them food.”

The corners of Richard’s mouth turned down. “I know when my mother passed away a few years ago, having people bring things was like a ray of sunshine in what was arguably the darkest period of my life.”

Jeffrey played back Richard’s words in his head, alarms going off like crazy.

“Chief?” Richard asked.

“Sunshine,” Jeffrey said. Now he knew what was so familiar about Andy Rosen’s lewd drawing. The girl in the picture had a sunburst tattooed around her belly button.

A patrol car and Frank Wallace’s unmarked Taurus were parked outside Ellen Schaffer’s sorority house when Jeffrey pulled up, though Jeffrey had asked for neither.

“Shit,” Jeffrey said, pulling into the space by Frank’s car. He knew that something was horribly wrong even before he saw two girls coming out of the dorm with their arms around each other, sobbing.

Jeffrey jogged to the house, taking the front steps two at a time. Keyes House had burned down years ago, but the college had replaced it with a close duplicate of the old antebellum mansion, with formal front parlors and a grand dining room that seated thirty. Frank was standing in one of the front parlors waiting for him.

“Chief,” Frank said, motioning Jeffrey into the room, “we’ve been trying to call you.”

Jeffrey slipped his phone out of his pocket. The battery level was fine, but there were areas around town where signals would not reach.

Jeffrey asked, “What happened?”

Frank closed the pocket doors to give them some privacy before answering. “Blew her head off.”

“Fuck,” Jeffrey cursed. He knew the answer, but had to ask, “Schaffer?”

Frank nodded.

“Deliberately?”

Frank lowered his voice. “After yesterday who knows?”

Jeffrey sat on the edge of the couch, feeling dread creep up again. Two suicides in as many days were not unheard of, but Tessa Linton’s stabbing was casting a shadow over everything that happened on campus.

Jeffrey said, “I just talked to Brian Keller, Andy Rosen’s father.”

“That his stepson?”

“No, he took his mother’s name.” When Jeffrey saw Frank’s confusion, he said, “Don’t ask. Keller’s his biological father.”

“All right,” Frank agreed, a baffled expression still on his face. For a split second, Jeffrey wished he had Lena here instead of Frank. Not that Frank was a bad cop, but Lena was more intuitive, and she and Jeffrey knew how to work off of each other. Frank was what Jeffrey thought of as a gumshoe, meaning he was better at wearing down the soles of his shoes tracking down leads than he was at making the mental leaps that solved cases.

Jeffrey walked to the swinging door that led to the kitchen, making sure they weren’t being overheard. “Richard Carter said—”

Frank snorted out a breath. Jeffrey was not sure if this was because of Richard’s sexual orientation or his abhorrent personality. Only the latter was acceptable to Jeffrey, but he had learned a long time ago that Frank was set in his ways.

Jeffrey said, “Carter knows campus gossip.”

“What’d he say?” Frank relented.

“That Keller was having an affair with a student.”

“Okay,” Frank said, his tone contrary to the word.

“I want you to do some digging around about Keller. Find out his background. Let’s see if this rumor is true.”

“You think his son found out about an affair and the dad shut him up to keep it from the wife?”

“No,” Jeffrey said. “Richard said the wife knew.”

Frank said, “As far as you can trust that fruit.”

“Cut it out, Frank,” Jeffrey ordered. “If Keller was having an affair, it could play out real nice for a suicide. Maybe the son couldn’t forgive his father, so he jumped off the bridge to punish him. The parents were fighting this morning. Rosen told Keller he never cared about him when he was alive.”

“Could be just her being mean. You know women can get that way sometimes.”

Jeffrey was not going to debate the point. “Rosen seemed pretty clearheaded to me.”

“You think she did it?”

“What would she have to gain?”

Frank’s answer was the same one Jeffrey had: “I don’t know.”

Jeffrey stared at the fireplace, wishing again he had Lena or even Sara to talk this through with. He told Frank, “I’m gonna be looking at a lawsuit if I stir up shit around his parents and the kid really killed himself.”

“That’s true.”

“Go ahead and check if Keller was really in D.C. when this happened,” Jeffrey said. “Ask some discreet questions around campus and see if we can substantiate this rumor.”

“The flights are easy enough to check,” Frank said, taking out his notebook. “I can ask around about the affair, but the kid would probably be better for that than me.”

“Lena’s not a cop, Frank.”

“She could help. She’s already on campus. She probably knows some students.”

“She’s not a cop.”

“Yeah, but—”

“But nothing,” Jeffrey said, shutting him up. Lena had proved in the library yesterday that she was not interested in helping out. Jeffrey had given her plenty of opportunities to talk to Jill Rosen, but she had kept her mouth shut, not even offering to comfort the other woman.

Frank said, “What about Schaffer? How’s she fit into this?”

“There was a painting,” Jeffrey told him, giving Frank the details of the drawing in the Keller-Rosen living room.

“The mom had that hanging up?”

“She was proud of him,” Jeffrey guessed, though his own mother would have slapped the crap out of him and ignited the painting with one of her cigarettes. “Both of them said the son wasn’t seeing anybody.”

“Maybe he didn’t tell them,” Frank said.

“He might not have,” Jeffrey agreed. “But if Schaffer was having sex with Andy, why didn’t she recognize him yesterday?”

“He was ass up,” Frank said. “If it was Carter not recognizing him, then I’d be suspicious.”

Jeffrey gave Frank a look of warning.

“All right.” Frank held up his hands. “Lookit, though, she was upset. He was about fifty feet below her. What’s she supposed to recognize?”

“True,” Jeffrey conceded.

“Do you think this could have been some kind of suicide pact?”

“They’d do it together, not a day apart,” Jeffrey pointed out. “Did we lift anything off the suicide note?”

“Everybody and his mother touched it,” Frank said, and Jeffrey wondered if he was making a joke.

“If it was a pact, they’d say so in the note.”

“Maybe Andy broke up with her,” Frank suggested. “So she gets him back by throwing him over the bridge.”

“You think she’s strong enough to do that?” Jeffrey asked, and Frank shrugged. “I don’t buy it,” Jeffrey said. “Girls don’t act out like that.”

“It’s not like she could divorce him.”

“Watch it,” Jeffrey warned, taking the remark personally. He continued before Frank could embarrass them both trying to apologize. “Young girls don’t do that,” he amended. “They shame the guy, or they lie about him to his friends, or they get pregnant, or they take a load of pills—”

“Or they blow their brains out?” Frank interrupted.

“All of this is assuming that Andy Rosen was murdered. He still could have killed himself.”

“You got anything on that?”

“Brock took some blood this morning. We’ll have the lab report back tomorrow. There’s no evidence of foul play right now. Tessa’s the only reason we’re looking at this funny, and who the hell knows if there’s a connection?”

Frank said, “Hell of a coincidence if it’s not.”

“I’m going to give Keller a day to stew, then go at him hard to see what he knows. There was something he wanted to tell me this morning that he didn’t want to discuss in front of his wife. Maybe after Sara does the autopsy tonight, I’ll have more to go on.”

“She’s coming back tonight?”

“Yeah,” Jeffrey said. “I’m picking her up this afternoon.”

“She doin’ okay?”

“It’s a hard time,” Jeffrey said, then cut off the conversation. “Where’s Schaffer?”

“This way,” Frank told him, opening up the pocket doors. “You wanna talk to the roommate first?”

Jeffrey was going to tell him no but changed his mind when he saw the crying woman sitting in the window seat at the end of the hall. Two girls flanked her, offering their support. They could have all been carbon copies of each other, with their blond hair and blue eyes. Any one of them could have passed for Ellen Schaffer’s sister.

“Ma’am,” Jeffrey said, trying to sound consoling, “I’m Chief Tolli—”

The woman cut him off by bursting into tears. “It’s so horrible!” the girl cried. “She was fine just this morning!”

Jeffrey glanced at Frank. “That’s the last time you saw her?”

She nodded, her head bobbing like a fishing line.

“What time was that?” Jeffrey asked.

“Eight,” she said, and Jeffrey knew that he had been with the Rosen-Kellers during that time.

She said, “I had to go to class. . . . Ellen said she was going to sleep in. She was so upset about Andy. . . .”

Jeffrey asked, “She knew Andy Rosen?”

At this the girl burst into tears again, putting her whole body into it. “No!” she wailed. “That’s what was so tragic. He was in her art class, and she didn’t even know him!”

Jeffrey exchanged a look with Frank. Oftentimes in police work, they ran across people who felt a lot closer to victims of crime than they ever had when the victim was living. In Andy’s case, an alleged suicide, the melodrama would be heightened.

“So,” Jeffrey began, “you saw Ellen at eight? Did anyone else see her?”

One of the girls beside the roommate spoke up. “We all have early classes.”

“Did Ellen?”

The three nodded in unison. One of them said, “Everyone in the house does.”

“What’s her major?” Jeffrey asked, wondering if the girl was linked to Keller in some way.

“Cell biology,” the third girl provided. “She was supposed to hand in her labs tomorrow.”

Jeffrey asked, “Did she have Dr. Keller for any classes?”

They all shook their heads. One of them said, “Is that Andy’s father?” but Jeffrey didn’t answer her.

He told Frank, “Let’s get copies of her schedule and see what classes she’s had since she’s been here.” To the girls he said, “Was Ellen dating anyone in particular?”

“Um,” the first girl began, looking nervously at her friends. Before Jeffrey could coax her along, she said, “Ellen was seeing lots of different guys.” The emphasis implied thousands.

“No one had a grudge against her?” Jeffrey asked.

“Of course not,” the first girl defended. “Everyone loved her.”

“Did y’all see anyone suspicious hanging around the house this morning?”

The three shook their heads.

Jeffrey turned to Frank. “Did you do a canvass?”

“Most of them were gone,” Frank said. “We’re rounding them up. No one heard the gunshot.”

Jeffrey raised his eyebrows in surprise but didn’t comment in front of the girls.

He told them, “Thank you for your time,” and gave them each one of his cards in case they thought of anything else that might be useful.

It was not until Frank was taking him up the hallways to Schaffer’s ground-floor room that Jeffrey asked, “What’d she use?”

“Remington 870.”

“The Wingmaster?” Jeffrey asked, wondering what a girl like Ellen Schaffer was doing with such a weapon. The pump-action rifle was one of the most popular weapons used by law enforcement.

“She shoots skeet,” Frank said. “She’s on the team.”

Jeffrey vaguely recalled that Grant Tech had a shooting team, but he still could not reconcile the perky blonde he had met the day before with a skeet shooter.

Frank indicated a closed door. “She’s in there.”

Jeffrey did not know what he was expecting when he walked into Ellen Schaffer’s room, but his jaw dropped at what he saw. The young woman was on the couch, her legs wrapped around the barrel of the pump-action rifle. The muzzle was pointed at her head—or what was left of her head.

His eyes watered as a strong odor hit him. “What’s that smell?”

Frank pointed to the bare lightbulb over the desk. A piece of scalp clung to the frosted white glass, smoke wafting up to the ceiling as it cooked from the heat.

Jeffrey covered his mouth and nose with his hand, trying to block out the odor. He walked over to the window, which was opened about twelve inches. Glancing out behind the house, he could see a lawn with a gazebo and a sitting area. Beyond this was the national forest. A trail that half the kids on campus probably used led into the woods.

“Where’s Matt?”

“Canvassing,” Frank told him.

“Get him outside this window to look for footprints.”

Frank flipped open his phone and made the call as Jeffrey studied every inch of the window. After a full minute of staring, he found nothing. It was not until he started to turn away that the light caught a streak of grease near the latch. “Did you see this?” he asked.

Frank walked over, bending his knees for a better look. “Oil?” he asked, then indicated the desk beside the couch. A wire breech brush, a patch, and a small bottle of Elton gun-cleaning oil were laid out on the top. On the floor a cloth that had obviously been used to clean the barrel of the rifle was crumpled into a ball.

“She cleaned the gun before she shot herself?” Jeffrey asked, thinking that was the last thing he would do.

Frank shrugged. “Maybe she wanted to make sure it was working right.”

“You think?” Jeffrey asked, standing in front of the couch. Schaffer was wearing a pair of tight jeans and a cropped T-shirt. Her feet were bare, her toe caught in the trigger mechanism. The sun tattoo around her belly button was visible beneath a backspray of blood. Her hands were resting on the muzzle of the rifle, probably to keep it pointed toward her head.

Using a pen from his pocket, Jeffrey pushed the right hand away. The palm was clean of blood where it had rested against the rifle, which meant that Schaffer had had her hand on the gun at the time she’d shot herself. Or been shot. An examination of the other hand revealed the same.

Stuck between the cushions on the couch was a spent shot shell that had been ejected from the chamber when the trigger was pulled. Jeffrey pushed it with his pen, wondering why it didn’t look right. He checked the fine print on the muzzle to make sure, then said to Frank, “She’s got a twelve-gauge rifle and she used a twenty-gauge shell.”

Frank stared at him for a moment. “Why’d she use a twenty?”

Jeffrey stood up, shaking his head. The circumference of the rifle’s muzzle was larger than the circumference of the bullet. Probably one of the most dangerous things you can do with a rifle is load the wrong ammunition. Manufacturers had standardized the jacket colors of shells to prevent just this from happening.

“How long was she on the skeet team?” Jeffrey asked.

Frank took out his notebook and turned to the right page. “Just this year. Her roommate said she wanted to get into decathlons.”

“She color-blind?” Jeffrey asked. The bright yellow shell was hard to mistake for the green twenty-gauge.

“I can check,” Frank said, making a note.

Jeffrey examined the tip of the muzzle, holding his breath as he tried to get a closer look. “She had a skeet choke on it,” he noticed. The choke would constrict the barrel, making it much more likely that the smaller shell would lodge.

Jeffrey stood. “This isn’t adding up.”

Frank said, “Look at the wall.”

Jeffrey did as he was told, walking around a pool of blood by the head of the couch to examine the wall behind the body. The shot blast had displaced most of the skull, fragmenting pieces of the head against the wall at a high velocity.

Jeffrey strained his eyes, trying to make sense of the blood and tissue that riddled the white wall. The lead shot pellets had left several large holes, some of them going through to the next room.

“Something next door?” Jeffrey asked, saying a small prayer of thanks that no one had been in the other room when the trigger was pulled.

“That’s not what I meant,” Frank said. “Do you see what’s in the wall?”

“Hold on,” Jeffrey told him. He stared as hard as he could until he realized that something was staring back.

Ellen Schaffer’s eyeball was embedded in the Sheetrock.

“Christ,” Jeffrey said, turning away. He went back to the window, wanting to open it up and let out the smell. Being in this room was like being trapped in a shithouse on the last day of the state fair.

Jeffrey looked back at the girl, trying to get some distance. He should have talked to her earlier. Maybe if he’d been here first thing, Ellen Schaffer would still be alive. He wondered what else he had missed. The caliber discrepancy on the rifle was suspicious, but anybody could make a mistake, especially if the person thought he—or she—wasn’t going to have to hang around to clean up the mess. Then again, the whole thing could have been staged. Did someone else have a bull’s-eye painted on their head?

Jeffrey asked, “When did they find her?”

“About thirty minutes ago,” Frank told him, taking out his handkerchief and patting his forehead. “They didn’t touch anything. Just closed the door and called us.”

“Christ,” Jeffrey repeated, taking out his own handkerchief. He glanced back at the desk.

“There’s Matt,” Frank said, and Jeffrey saw Matt walk into the backyard, hands in his pockets as he stared at the ground, looking for anything that seemed out of place. He stopped at one particular spot and knelt down for a better look.

“What?” Jeffrey called, just as Frank’s cell phone started to ring.

Matt raised his voice to be heard. “It looks like an arrow.”

“A what?” Jeffrey yelled, thinking he did not have time for this.

“An arrow,” Matt said. “Like somebody drew it into the ground.”

“Chief,” Frank said, holding the phone to his chest.

Jeffrey called to Matt, “Are you sure?”

“Come see for yourself,” Matt answered. “It sure looks like it.”

Frank repeated, “Chief.”

“What, Frank?” Jeffrey snapped.

“One of the fingerprints from Rosen’s apartment came back with a positive match on the computer.”

“Yeah?” Jeffrey demanded.

Frank shook his head. He looked down at the floor, then seemed to think better of it. “You don’t want to know.”