Immoral

1

Jonathan Stride felt like a ghost, bathed in the white spot-lights that illuminated the bridge.

Below him, muddy brown swells flooded into the canal, spewing waves over the concrete piers and swallowing the spray in eight-foot troughs. The water tumbled over itself, squeezing from the violent lake to the placid inner harbor. At the end of the piers, where ships navigated the canal as delicately as thread through a needle, twin lighthouses flashed revolving beams of green and red.

The bridge felt like a living thing. As cars sped onto the platform, a whine filled the air, like the buzz of hornets. The honeycomb sidewalk vibrated, quivering under his feet. Stride glanced upward, as he imagined Rachel would have done, at the crisscross scissors of steel towering above his head. The barely perceptible sway unsettled him and made him dizzy.

He was doing what he always did-putting himself inside the mind of the victim, seeing the world through her eyes. Rachel had been here on Friday night, alone on the bridge. After that, no one knew.

Stride turned his attention to the two teenagers who stood with him, impatiently stamping their feet against the cold. "Where was she when you first saw her?" he asked.

The boy, Kevin Lowry, extracted a beefy hand from his pocket. His third finger sported an oversized onyx high school ring. He tapped the three inches of wet steel railing. "Right here, Lieutenant. She was balanced on top of the railing. Arms stretched out. Sort of like Christ." He closed his eyes, tilted his chin toward heaven, and extended his arms with his palms upward. "Like this."

Stride frowned. It had been a bleak October, with angry swoops of wind and sleet raining like bullets from the night sky. He couldn't imagine anyone climbing on top of the railing that night without falling.

Kevin seemed to read his mind. "She was really graceful. Like a dancer."

Stride peered over the railing. The narrow canal was deep enough to grant passage to giant freighters weighted down with bellies of iron ore. It could suck a body down in its wicked undertow and not let go.

"What the hell was she doing up there?" Stride asked.

The other teenager, Sally Lindner, spoke for the first time. Her voice was crabbed. "It was a stunt, like everything else she did. She wanted attention."

Kevin opened his mouth to complain but closed it again. Stride got the feeling this was an old argument between them. He noticed that Sally had her arm slung through Kevin's, and she tugged the boy a little closer when she talked.

"So what did you do?" Stride asked.

"I ran up here on the bridge," Kevin said. "I helped her down."

Stride watched Sally's mouth pucker unhappily as Kevin described the rescue.

"Tell me about Rachel," Stride said to Kevin.

"We grew up together. Next-door neighbors. Then her mom married Mr. Stoner and they moved uptown."

"What does she look like?"

"Well, uh, pretty," Kevin said nervously, shooting a quick glance at Sally.

Sally rolled her eyes. "She was beautiful, okay? Long black hair. Slim, tall. The whole package. And a bigger slut you're not likely to find."

"Sally!" Kevin protested.

"It's true, and you know it. After Friday? You know it."

Sally turned her face away from Kevin, although she didn't let go of his arm. Stride watched the girl's jaw set in an angry line, her lips pinched together. Sally had a rounded face, with a messy pile of chestnut curls tumbling to her shoulders and blowing across her flushed cheeks. In her tight blue jeans and red parka, she was a pretty young girl. But no one would describe her as beautiful. Not a stunner. Not like Rachel.

"What happened on Friday?" Stride asked. He knew what Deputy Chief Kinnick had told him on the phone two hours ago: Rachel hadn't been home since Friday. She was missing. Gone. Just like Kerry.

"Well, she sort of came on to me," Kevin said grudgingly.

"Right in front of me!" Sally snapped. "Fucking bitch."

Kevin's eyebrows furled together like a yellow caterpillar. "Stop it. Don't talk about her like that."

Stride held up one hand, silencing the argument. He reached inside his faded leather jacket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes that he had wedged into the pocket of his flannel shirt. He studied the pack with weary disgust, then lit a cigarette and took a long drag. Smoke curled out of his mouth and formed a cloud in front of his face. He felt his lungs contract. Stride tossed the rest of the pack into the canal, where the red package swirled like a dot of blood and then was swept under the bridge.

"Back up," he said. "Kevin, give me the whole story, short and sweet, okay?"

Kevin rubbed his hand across his scalp until his blond hair stood up like naked winter trees. He squared his shoulders, which were broad and muscular. A football player.

"Rachel called me on my cell phone on Friday night and said we should come hang out with her in Canal Park," Kevin said. "It was about eight-thirty, I guess. A shitty night. The park was almost empty. When we spotted Rachel, she was on the railing, playing around. So we ran up on the bridge to get her off there."

"Then what?" Stride asked.

Kevin pointed to the opposite side of the bridge, to the peninsula that stretched like a narrow finger with Lake Superior on one side and Duluth harbor on the other. Stride had lived there most of his life, watching the ore ships shoulder out to sea.

"The three of us wandered down to the beach. We talked about school stuff."

"She's a suck-up," Sally interjected. "She takes psychology and starts spouting all the teacher's theories on screwed-up families. She takes English, and the teacher's poetry is so wonderful. She takes math and grades papers after school."

Stride silenced the girl with a stony stare. Sally pouted and tossed her hair defiantly. Stride nodded at Kevin to continue.

"Then we heard a ship's horn," he said. "Rachel said she wanted to ride the bridge while it went up."

"They don't let you do that," Stride said.

"Yeah, but Rachel knows the bridge keeper. She and her dad used to hang out with him."

"Her dad? You mean Graeme Stoner?"

Kevin shook his head. "No, her real dad. Tommy."

Stride nodded. "Go on."

"Well, we went back on the bridge, but Sally didn't want to do it. She kept going to the city side. But I didn't want Rachel up there by herself, so I stayed. And that's where-well, that's where she started making out with me."

"She was playing games with you," Sally said sharply.

Kevin shrugged. Stride watched Kevin tug at the collar around his thick neck and then caught a glimpse of the boy's eyes. Kevin wasn't going to say exactly what happened on the bridge, but he clearly was embarrassed and aroused thinking about it.

"We weren't up there very long," Kevin said. "Maybe ten minutes. When we got down, Sally-she wasn't…"

"I left," Sally said. "I went home."

Kevin stuttered on his words. "I'm really sorry, Sal." He reached out a hand to brush her hair, but Sally twisted away.

Before Stride could cut short the latest spat, he heard his cell phone burping out a polyphonic rendition of Alan Jackson's "Chattahoochee." He dug the phone out of his pocket and recognized the number for Maggie Bei. He flipped it open.

"Yeah, Mags?"

"Bad news, boss. The media's got the story. They're crawling all over us."

Stride scowled. "Shit." He took a few steps away from the two teenagers, noting that Sally began hissing at Kevin as soon as Stride was out of earshot. "Is Bird out there with the other jackals?" he asked.

"Oh, yeah. Leading the inquisition."

"Well, for God's sake, don't talk to him. Don't let any reporters near the Stoners."

"No problem, we're taped off."

"Any other good news?" Stride asked.

"They're playing it like this is number two," Maggie told him. "First Kerry, now Rachel."

"That figures. Well, I don't like deja vu either. Look, I'll be there in twenty minutes, okay?"

Stride slapped the phone shut. He was impatient now. Things were already moving in a direction he didn't like. Having Rachel's disappearance splashed over the media changed the nature of the investigation. He needed the TV and newspapers to get the girl's face in front of the public, but Stride wanted to control the story, not have the story control him. That was impossible with Bird Finch asking questions.

"Keep going," Stride urged Kevin.

"There's not much else," Kevin said. "Rachel said she was tired and wanted to go home. So I walked her to the Blood Bug."

"The what?" Stride asked.

"Sorry. Rachel's car. A VW Beetle, okay? She called it the Blood Bug."

"Why?"

Kevin's face was blank. "Because it was red, I guess."

"Okay. You actually saw her drive off?"

"Yes."

"Alone?"

"Sure."

"And she specifically told you she was going home?"

"That's what she said."

"Could she have been lying? Could she have had another date?"

Sally laughed cruelly. "Sure she could. Probably did."

Stride turned his dark eyes on Sally again. She hooded her eyes and looked down at her shoes, her curls falling over her forehead. "Do you know something, Sally?" Stride asked. "Did you maybe go see Rachel and tell her to lay off Kevin here?"

"No!"

"Then who do you think Rachel would have gone to see?"

"It could have been anyone," Sally said. "She was a whore."

"Stop it!" Kevin insisted.

"Both of you stop it," Stride snapped. "What was Rachel wearing that night?"

"Tight black jeans, the kind you need a knife to cut yourself out of," Sally replied. "And a white turtleneck."

"Kevin, did you see anything in her car? Luggage? A backpack?"

"No, nothing like that."

"You told Mr. Stoner that she made a date with you."

Kevin bit his lip. "She asked if I wanted to see her on Saturday night. She said I could pick her up at seven, and we could go out. But she wasn't there."

"It was a game to her," Sally repeated. "Did she tell you to call me on Saturday and lie to me? Because that's what you did."

Stride knew he wasn't going to get any more out of these two tonight. "Listen up, both of you. This isn't about who kissed who. A girl's missing. A friend of yours. I've got to go talk to her parents, who are wondering if they're ever going to see their daughter again, okay? So think. Is there anything else you remember from Friday night? Anything Rachel did or said? Anything that might tell us where she went when she left here or who she might have seen."

Kevin closed his eyes, as if he were really trying to remember. "No, Lieutenant. There's nothing."

Sally was sullen, and Stride wondered if she was hiding something. But she wasn't going to talk. "I have no idea what happened to her," Sally mumbled.

Stride nodded. "All right, we'll be in touch."

He took another glance out at the looming blackness of the lake, beyond the narrow canal. There was nothing to see. It was as empty and hollow as his world felt now. As he pushed past the two teenagers and headed to the parking lot, he felt it again. Deja vu. It was an ugly memory.

2

Fourteen months had passed since the wet August evening when Kerry McGrath disappeared. Stride had reconstructed her last night so many times that he could almost see it playing in his head like a movie. If he closed his eyes, he could see her, right down to the freckle on the corner of her lips and the three slim gold earrings hugging her left earlobe. He could hear her giggle, like she had in the birthday videotape he had watched a hundred times. All along, he had kept an image of her that was so vivid, it was like she was alive.

But he knew she was dead. The bubbly girl who was so real to him was a hideous, flesh-eaten thing in the ground somewhere, in one of the deserted acres of wilderness they had never searched. He only wanted to know why and who had done it to her.

And now another teenager. Another disappearance.

As he waited at a stoplight, Stride glanced into his truck window and found himself staring into the reflection of his own shadowy brown eyes. Pirate eyes, Cindy used to say, teasing him. Dark, alert, on fire. But that was then. He had lost Kerry to a monster, and a different kind of monster had claimed Cindy at the same time. The tragedy deadened the flame behind his eyes and made him older. He could see it in his face, weathered and imperfect. A web of telltale lines furrowed across his forehead. His black hair, streaked with strands of gray, was short but unkempt, with a messy cowlick. He was forty-one and felt fifty.

Stride swung his mud-stained Bronco through potholes to the old-money neighborhood near the university where Graeme and Emily Stoner lived. Stride knew what to expect. It was eleven o'clock, normally a time when the streets would be deathly quiet on Sunday night. But not tonight. The blinking lights of squad cars and the white klieg lights of television crews lit up the street. Neighbors lingered on their lawns in small crowds of spies and gossips. Stride heard the overlapping cacophony of police radios buzzing like white noise.

Uniformed cops had cordoned off the Stoner house, keeping the reporters and the gawkers at bay. Stride pulled his Bronco beside a squad car and double-parked. The reporters all swarmed around him, barely giving him room to swing his door open. Stride shook his head and held up his hand, shielding his eyes as he squinted into the camera lights.

"Come on, guys, give me a break."

He pushed his way through the crowd of journalists, but one man squared his body in front of Stride and flashed a signal to his cameraman.

"Do we have a serial killer on the loose here, Stride?" Bird Finch rumbled in a voice as smooth and deep as a foghorn. His real name was Jay Finch, but everyone in Minnesota knew him as Bird, a Gopher basketball star who was now the host of a shock-TV talk show in Minneapolis.

Stride, who was slightly more than six feet tall himself, craned his neck to stare up at Bird's scowling face. The man was a giant, at least six-foot-seven, dressed impeccably in a navy double-breasted suit, with cufflinks glinting on the half inch of white shirt cuffs that jutted below his sleeve. Stride saw a university ring on the forefinger of the huge paw in which he clutched his microphone.

"Nice suit, Bird," Stride said. "You come here straight from the opera?"

He heard several of the reporters snicker. Bird stared at Stride with coal eyes. The floodlights glinted off his bald black head.

"We've got some sick pervert snatching our girls off the streets of this city, Lieutenant. You promised the people of this city justice last year. We're still waiting for it. The families of this city are waiting for it."

"If you're running for office, do it on someone else's time." Stride unhooked his shield from his jeans and held it in front of Bird's face, jamming his other hand in front of the camera. "Now get the hell out of my way."

Bird grudgingly inched away. Stride bumped his shoulder heavily against the reporter as he passed. The shouting continued behind him. The crowd of reporters dogged his heels, up onto the sidewalk and to the edge of the makeshift fence of yellow police tape. Stride bent down, squeezed under the tape, and straightened up. He gestured to the nearest cop, a slight twenty-two-year-old with buzzed red hair. The officer hurried eagerly up to Stride.

"Yes, Lieutenant?"

Stride leaned down and whispered in his ear. "Keep these assholes as far away as you can."

The cop grinned. "You got it, sir."

Stride wandered into the middle of Graeme Stoner's manicured lawn. He waved at Maggie Bei, the senior sergeant in the Detective Bureau he supervised, who was doling out orders in clipped tones to a crowd of uniformed officers. Maggie was barely five feet tall even in black leather boots with two-inch heels. The other cops dwarfed her, but they snapped to it when she jabbed a finger in their direction.

The Stoner house was at the end of a narrow lane, shadowed by oak trees that had recently spilled most of their leaves into messy piles. The house itself was a three-story relic of the 1920s, solidly constructed for the Minnesota winters with bricks and pine. A curving walkway led from the street to a mammoth front door. On the east side of the house, overlooking a wooded gully, was a two-car detached garage, with a driveway leading to a rear alley. Stride noted a bright red Volkswagen Bug parked in the driveway, not quite blocking one of the garage stalls.

Rachel's car. The Blood Bug.

"Welcome to the party, boss."

Stride glanced at Maggie Bei, who had joined him on the lawn.

Maggie's jet black hair was cut like a bowl, with bangs hanging straight down to her eyebrows. She was tiny, like a Chinese doll. Her face was pretty and expressive, with twinkling almond-shaped eyes and a mellow golden cast to her skin. She wore a burgundy leather jacket over a white Gap shirt and black jeans plucked from the teen racks. That was Maggie-stylish, hip. Stride didn't spend much money on clothes himself. He kept resoling the cowboy boots he had worn since he traded in his uniform to join the Detective Bureau, and that was a long time ago. He still wore the same frayed jeans that he had worn through nine winters, even though coins now sprinkled the ground through a tear in his pocket. His leather jacket was similarly weather-worn. It still bore a bullet hole in the sleeve, which aligned with the scar on Stride's muscular upper arm.

Stride shifted his gaze to the windows fronting the Stoner house and saw a man inside carrying a drink into a back room. The crystal glass caught light from the chandelier and glinted like a mirror sending a message.

"So what do we have here, Mags?" Stride asked.

"Nothing you don't already know," she said. "Rachel Deese, seventeen years old, senior at Duluth High School. The jock, Kevin, says he saw her Friday night around ten o'clock driving away from Canal Park. Since then, nothing. Her car is parked in the driveway, but so far no one saw her arrive home on Friday or leave here on foot or with anyone else. That was two days ago."

Stride nodded. He took a moment to study Rachel's Volkswagen, which was surrounded by officers doing an exhaustive search of the vehicle. It was flashy red, cute, and clean, not the kind of car a teenage girl would willingly leave behind.

"Check for bank ATMs on the route from Canal Park to the house," Stride suggested. "Maybe we'll get lucky with a security tape from Friday night. Let's see if she really was heading home, like Kevin says."

"Already being done," Maggie informed him. She arched her eyebrow as if to say, Am I stupid?

Stride smiled. Maggie was the smartest cop he had ever worked with. "Graeme's her stepfather, right? What about her natural father? I think his name was Tommy."

"Nice try. I thought about that, too. But he's deceased."

"Anyone else missing? Like a boyfriend?"

"No reports. If she ran off, she either did it alone or with someone from out of town."

"People who run off need transportation," Stride said.

"We're checking the airport and bus station here and in Superior."

"Neighbors see anything?"

Maggie shook her head. "So far, nothing of interest. We're still doing interviews."

"Any complaints involving this girl?" Stride asked. "Stalking, rape, anything like that?"

"Guppo ran the database," Maggie said. "Nothing involving Rachel. Go back a few years, and you'll find Emily and her first husband-Rachel's father-in a few scrapes."

"Like what?"

"Father was often drunk and disorderly. One domestic abuse report, never formally charged. He hit his wife, not his daughter."

Stride frowned. "Do we know if Rachel and Kerry knew each other?"

"Rachel's name never came up last year," Maggie said. "But we'll ask around."

Stride nodded blankly. He put himself in Rachel's shoes again, re-creating her last night, tracing what may or may not have happened along the way. He assumed she made it home on Friday. She was in her car, and now her car was at home. Then what? Did she go inside the house? Was someone waiting for her? Did she go out again? It was sleeting and cold-she would have taken the car. Unless someone picked her up.

"Time to talk to the Stoners," Stride said. Then he paused. He was used to relying on Maggie's instinct. "What's your gut tell you, Mags? Runaway or something worse?"

Maggie didn't hesitate. "With her car still parked outside the house? Sounds like something worse. Sounds like Kerry."

Stride sighed. "Yeah."

3

Stride rang the doorbell. He saw a shadow through the frosted glass and heard the click of footsteps. The carved oak door swung inward. A man about Stride's height, smartly attired in a V-neck cashmere sweater, a white dress shirt with button-down collar, and crisply pleated tan slacks, extended his hand. In his other hand, he swirled the ice in his drink.

"You're Lieutenant Stride, is that right?" the man greeted him. His handshake was solid, and he had the easy smile of someone accustomed to country club cocktail parties. "Kyle told us you would be arriving shortly. I'm Graeme Stoner."

Stride nodded in acknowledgment. He got the message. Kyle was Kyle Kinnick, Duluth's deputy chief of police and Stride's boss. Graeme wanted to make sure Stride understood the juice he had at city hall.

He noted the discreet wrinkles creeping along Graeme's forehead and around the corners of his mouth and calculated that the man was about his own age. His chocolate brown hair was trimmed short, an executive's haircut. He wore silver glasses with tiny circular rims. His face was broad and soft, without noticeable cheekbones or a protruding chin. Even late at night, Graeme's beard line was almost invisible, which caused Stride involuntarily to rub his palm against his own scratchy stubble.

Graeme put a hand on Stride's shoulder. "Let me show you to the den," he said. "I'm afraid the living room felt rather exposed with the crowd outside."

Stride followed Graeme into the living room, furnished with delicate sofas and antiques, all in brilliantly varnished walnut. Graeme pointed at a mirror-backed china cabinet, stocked with crystal. "May I offer you a drink? It needn't be alcoholic."

"No, I'm fine, thanks."

Graeme paused in the middle of the room and appeared momentarily uncomfortable. "I must apologize for not raising concerns with you earlier, Lieutenant. When Kevin stopped by on Saturday night, I really wasn't troubled at all that Rachel hadn't come home. Kevin gets very excitable about Rachel, you see, and I thought he was overreacting."

"But you don't think so now," Stride said.

"It's been two days. And my wife rightly reminded me about that other girl who disappeared."

Graeme led the way through the main dining room and then through French doors into a sprawling den, warmed by a gray marble fireplace on the east wall. The white carpet was lush and spotless. The north wall was framed entirely in full-length windows, except for two stained glass doors that led to the darkness of a back garden. A series of brass lanterns, mounted at intervals on each of the other walls, lit the room with a pale glow.

To the right of the garden wall, one on either side of the fireplace, sat two huge matching recliners. Lost in one was a woman holding a bell-shaped glass of brandy.

The woman nodded at Stride from the chair without getting up. "I'm Emily Stoner, Rachel's mother," she said softly.

Emily was a few years younger than Graeme, but not a trophy bride. Stride could see she had once been very pretty, although she hadn't aged gracefully. Her blue eyes were tired, overly made up, with shadows underneath. Her dark hair was short and straight and hadn't been washed. She wore a plain navy sweater and blue jeans.

Seated near Emily on the hearth, holding the woman's left hand, was a man in his late forties, with graying hair combed to protect a thinning hairline. The man got up and shook Stride's hand, leaving behind a clammy residue that Stride tried unobtrusively to rub away. "Hello, Lieutenant. My name is Dayton Tenby. I'm the minister at Emily's church. Emily asked me to be with them this evening."

Graeme Stoner took a chair near the garden windows. "I'm sure you have many questions for us. We'll tell you everything we know, which I'm afraid isn't much. Incidentally, let's get the unpleasantness out of the way up front. My wife and I had absolutely no involvement in Rachel's disappearance, but we understand that you have to clear the family in these kinds of situations. Naturally, we'll cooperate in every way we can, including taking polygraphs, if necessary."

Stride was surprised. Usually this was the ugly part-letting the family know that they were suspects. "To be candid, yes, we do like to run polygraph tests on the family."

Emily looked at Graeme nervously. "I don't know."

"It's routine, dear," Graeme said. "Lieutenant, just send your questions to Archibald Gale. He'll be representing our interests in this matter. We can do it tomorrow if you'd like."

Stride grimaced. So much for cooperation. Archie Gale was the most feared criminal defense lawyer in northern Minnesota, and Stride had tangled with the suave old goat many times from the witness stand.

"Do you feel it's necessary to have a lawyer involved?" Stride asked, his voice chillier.

"Don't misunderstand," Graeme replied, as calmly and cordially as before. "We have nothing to hide. Even so, in this day and age, it would be reckless of us not to retain counsel."

"Are you willing to talk to me now, without Gale present?"

Graeme smiled. "Archie is flying back from Chicago. He reluctantly agreed we could review the facts without him."

Reluctantly. Stride knew Gale, and that was probably an understatement. But he wasn't about to lose his chance-it might be the last opportunity to talk to the family without an attorney screening every word.

Stride slid a notebook from his back pocket and uncapped a pen. Immediately on his left was a rolltop desk. He pulled a swivel chair out from behind the desk and sat down.

"When did you see Rachel last?" Stride asked.

"Friday morning before she went to school," Graeme said.

"Did she take her car then?"

"Yes. It was gone when I arrived home Friday night."

"But you didn't hear her return overnight?"

"No. I was in bed by ten. I'm a sound sleeper. I never heard a thing."

"What did you do on Saturday?"

"I was in the office most of the day. That's typical."

"Mrs. Stoner, were you at home during this time?"

Emily, who had been staring into the fire, looked back, startled. She took a long swallow of brandy, and Stride wondered how much she had already had to drink. "No. I only got back early this afternoon."

"And where were you?"

She took a moment to focus. "I was driving back from St. Louis. My sister moved down there several years ago. I started home Saturday morning, but I was too tired by evening to go the rest of the way. I stayed overnight in Minneapolis and got into town around noon."

"Did you talk to Rachel while you were gone?"

Emily shook her head.

"Did you call home at all?"

She hesitated. "No."

"When did you start getting worried?"

"After Emily got home," Graeme answered. "We still hadn't heard from Rachel, so we started calling her friends. No one had seen her."

"Who did you call?"

Graeme rattled off several names, and Stride jotted them down in his notebook. "We also called people from the school," Graeme added. "And several of the clubs and restaurants her friends mentioned. No one had seen her."

"Does she have a boyfriend?" Stride asked.

Emily looked up. She pushed a lock of hair from her face. Her voice was weary. "Rachel goes through lots of boyfriends. They don't last."

"Is she sexually active?"

"At least since she was thirteen," Emily said. "I walked in on her once with a boy."

"But no one special?"

Emily shook her head.

"Have you checked with relatives? People she might go to?"

"We don't have any relatives here. Both my parents are dead, and Graeme is from out of town. There's no one but us."

Stride wrote: How did these two hook up?

"Mrs. Stoner, what kind of relationship do you have with your daughter?"

Emily paused. "We've never been very close. When she was little, she was her daddy's girl. I was the wicked witch."

Dayton Tenby frowned. "That's not fair, Emily."

"Well, that's what it felt like," Emily snapped. She spilled a little of the brandy and dabbed at her sweater with her fingers. "When her father died, Rachel drifted even further away. I hoped when I married Graeme, we might start becoming a family again. But as she's gotten older, it's only gotten worse."

"What about you, Mr. Stoner?" Stride asked. "How is your relationship with Rachel?"

Graeme shrugged. "We were relatively close right after Emily and I got married five years ago, but as Emily said, she's grown more distant as she's gotten older. Today it's the same. Cold."

"We tried to reach her," Emily said. "Graeme bought her that car last year. I guess it seemed to her like we were trying to buy her love, and I suppose we were. But it didn't help."

"Has she ever talked about running away?"

"Not in a long time," Emily said. "I suppose it sounds crazy, but I always thought she felt she could cause more trouble for us by staying around and making us miserable. It gave her a cruel sense of satisfaction."

"Was she suicidal?" Stride asked.

"Never. Rachel would never have killed herself."

"Why are you so sure?" Stride asked.

"Rachel liked herself too much. She was always cocky and confident. It was us she despised. Or me." Emily shook her head.

"Mr. Stoner, did anything happen while your wife was gone? An argument, a fight, anything like that?"

"No, nothing. She ignored me. That was routine."

"Did she mention meeting anyone new?"

"No, but I don't suppose she would have told me even if she had."

"Did you notice unusual cars in the driveway or on the street? Or see her with anyone you didn't recognize?"

Graeme shook his head.

"What about your personal situation, Mr. Stoner? You work for the Range Bank, is that correct?"

Graeme nodded. "I'm the executive vice president for the bank's operations in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, and the Dakotas."

"Have you received any threats at home or at work? Strange phone calls?"

"Not that I recall."

"You've never felt in danger?"

"No, not at all."

"Is your income at the bank widely known?"

Graeme frowned. "Well, I suppose it's not a secret. I have to file as an officer with the SEC, so it's a matter of public record. But it's not the kind of thing that makes the papers."

"And you've received no contact of any kind that would lead you to believe Rachel has been kidnapped."

"No, nothing," Graeme told him.

Stride flipped his notebook shut. "I think that's everything for the moment. I'll need to talk with you further, of course, as the investigation continues. And I'll be in touch with Mr. Gale."

Emily opened her mouth, then closed it. She obviously wanted to interrupt.

"What is it?" Stride asked.

"It's just that-well, it's one reason we were so concerned. The reason I insisted Graeme call Kyle."

"Kerry McGrath," Tenby murmured.

"She lived so close," Emily exclaimed. "She went to the same school."

Stride waited until Emily looked back at him, and he held her stare, putting as much compassion as he could in his eyes. "I won't lie to you. We'll be looking for connections to Kerry's disappearance. We would be remiss if we didn't. But just because there are surface similarities doesn't mean that Rachel being missing has anything to do with Kerry."

Emily sniffled loudly. She nodded her head, but her eyes shone with tears.

"If I can answer any questions for you, please call me," Stride said, extracting a card from his coat and placing it on the rolltop desk.

Dayton Tenby rose from his place near the fire and smiled at Stride. "Let me show you out."

The minister guided Stride back through the house. Tenby was a nervous, effeminate man, who seemed intimidated by the upscale trappings of the Stoner house. He walked gingerly, as if his aging brown wingtips were leaving dirty footprints. He was small, around five-foot-eight, with a narrow chin, tiny brown eyes set closely together, and a pinched nose. Stride sized him up as a holdover from Emily's past life. BG-Before Graeme.

Stroking his chin, Tenby glanced curiously outside at the lights and crowds gathered there. "They're like vultures, aren't they?" he observed.

"Sometimes. But they can be useful."

"Yes, I suppose. I appreciate your coming here, Lieutenant. Rachel is a difficult young girl, and I would hate to see any harm come to her."

"How long have you known her?" Stride asked.

"Since she was a child."

Stride nodded. BG, he thought. "When did she begin to have troubles?"

Tenby sighed. "As Emily mentioned, it was after her father's death. Rachel was utterly devoted to Tommy. She couldn't bear the loss, and I think she turned all her anger and grief against her mother."

"How long ago was that?"

Dayton pursed his lips and stared at the vaulted ceiling as he thought back. "Rachel was eight when he died, I believe, so it was about nine years ago."

"Tell me, Reverend, what do you think happened here? Could Rachel have left on her own? A runaway?"

Dayton Tenby seemed divinely sure of himself. "Maybe it's wishful thinking, but that's what I believe. I really think you'll find, when all is said and done, that she's out there somewhere, laughing at us."

4

Emily downed the last swallow of brandy and pushed herself off the recliner. As Dayton Tenby returned to the room, she held out her empty glass. "I need another."

Tenby took the glass and returned to the living room to refill her drink. Emily watched him go, then spoke to Graeme without shifting her gaze. "I'm sorry I didn't call."

"That's all right. How's Janie?"

"She's fine," Emily said. "I meant to call."

"I told you it doesn't matter."

Emily nodded, feeling hollow. "I thought you'd be angry."

"Not at all."

"Did you miss me?"

Graeme waved his hand, dismissing the question as if it were nothing. "What a stupid thing to say. You know I'm lost without you. Yesterday, I wanted to go hiking, and I couldn't even find my tennis shoes."

"Shoes," Emily murmured, shaking her head.

Tenby reappeared. The portion of brandy in the glass he carried looked smaller than the last one. Emily took the glass and finished it in a single swallow, ignoring the burn that the liquor caused in her throat. She handed Tenby the glass and turned away. She wiped her eyes, but it was too late. She knew he had seen the tears.

"She's doing it just to punish me," Emily said. "It's a game with her."

"It may be more about Tommy than it is about you. Even after all these years," Tenby said.

"Tommy," she said bitterly.

"Emily, he was her father," Tenby reminded her. "She was eight years old, and her daddy could do no wrong."

"Yes, everybody loved Tommy," Emily said. "And I was always the bitch. No one ever understood what he did to us."

"I did," Tenby said.

Emily took his hand. "Yes, I know. Thank you. And thank you for coming over here tonight. I think I would have gone to pieces without you around."

Graeme stood up. "I'll walk you out, Dayton," he said, a veneer of politeness in his voice. "I'll make sure the press doesn't hassle you along the way."

Tenby was dwarfed by the larger man as the two of them retreated from the porch. Emily watched them go, listening to their footsteps, hearing the noises of the crowd outside as the front door opened, then the tomblike silence of the house as the door closed.

She was alone.

Even when she was with Graeme these days, she felt alone.

He said all the right things, and treated her well, and gave her the freedom to lead her own life, but he didn't pretend that there was any passion between them anymore. She wondered if he felt anything at all for her. She had deliberately not called from St. Louis, wanting to make him angry, wanting him to yearn for her enough to call her himself. If he called, if he missed her, if he screamed at her, at least she would see some of his emotions.

But he didn't need her. Except when he couldn't find his shoes.

And then to come home and find Rachel was gone. For years she had expected it, wondering when her daughter would leave her a note and run away. Sometimes she had even wished for it, as a way to end the hostility and restore some peace to her life. She had never realized how empty she would feel when it really happened, when all she could do was think about the missed opportunities that had kept them divided. She had long since accepted that Rachel would never know how deeply Emily loved her, in spite of the venom the girl had directed at her for so many years. Even when she tried to stop loving her, she couldn't.

Gone.

What if she hadn't run away? What if she ended up like that other girl, snatched off the street?

"Where are you, baby?" she said.

Emily heard noises in the front hall as the door opened and Graeme returned. She didn't want to see him. She couldn't balance all of it, her estrangement from Graeme, her grief over Rachel. Emily got up quickly and fled through the kitchen to the back stairs. She listened as Graeme returned to the porch. She imagined him glancing at the empty room, realizing she was gone. Emily didn't expect him to follow her, and he didn't. She could barely make out the tapping of keys as he sat down at his desk and worked on his computer. She hurried up the stairs to the second floor.

She wouldn't sleep in their bedroom tonight. He wouldn't miss that, either.

Emily went to Rachel's room. She smelled strangers there, the sweaty aroma of the police who had pawed through Rachel's desk and dresser that night. In truth, the room itself was a stranger to her, because she had hardly stepped foot inside while Rachel was home. It was her daughter's private fortress, and Emily of all people wasn't allowed.

The room was largely barren. There were no posters up on the walls, only a pale coating of yellow paint. Her dirty clothes were piled in the corner, in and out of a white basket. She had a stack of schoolbooks, some open, some closed, spread randomly across the desk, with wrinkled notepapers, half-filled with Rachel's scrawl, sticking out of the pages. Only her bed was carefully made-the one part of the room Rachel allowed the maid to touch.

Emily lay down on the bed, pulled her legs up, and curled her arms around them. She saw the photo, placed lovingly on her daughter's nightstand, of Rachel bundled up in her father's arms. Emily reached out with one hand and tipped the frame over, so she didn't have to stare at it.

As she looked at the nightstand, however, she realized she couldn't escape the past so easily. Next to the clock radio, perched on its hind legs, was a stuffed pink pig, adorned with black plastic sunglasses. A souvenir from the Minnesota State Fair.

Nine years later, and Rachel still kept it by her bed.

"Tommy," Emily sighed.

Tommy hoisted Rachel onto his shoulders. Now taller than everyone around her, Rachel opened her mouth in wonder at the sight of all the people, crammed together shoulder to shoulder, from one side of the street to the other. There were tens of thousands of them, a sweaty, squirming mass, baking in the heat and humidity of a late August evening.

"It's amazing, Daddy!" Rachel cried.

"Didn't I promise you?" Tommy said. "Isn't this great?" He lifted Rachel high in the air, swirled her around, and swooped her to the ground.

"Can we do the midway now?" Rachel sang out.

Emily had to laugh. She suspected that was the last thing Tommy wanted. All day long, she had watched Tommy and Rachel bury themselves in the fair. Tommy ate everything, swallowing deep-fried cheese curds like popcorn and washing them down with giant plastic cups of ice-cold beer. He ate corn dogs, pork chops, onion blossoms, roasted corn slathered in butter, fried ravioli, and bag after bag of minidoughnuts. And now the rides would churn his stomach like a blender. But Tommy never said no to Rachel.

By the time they reached the midway, it was a tornado of light. Darkness had turned the carnival into a fairyland, where a sea of people screamed and their faces reflected a rainbow of colors from the rides streaking overhead. Rachel wanted to do everything. It didn't matter how fast the ride went, or how high, or how many times she spun upside down with her hair tumbling below her. She took Tommy on the Ring of Fire, going up and over in circles, then the Giant Swing, then the Octopus, then the Avalanche, then the Tornado. Emily was secretly pleased to see that Tommy was looking green.

It took them nearly two hours to work their way down one row of carnival rides, then back up the next. They wandered by the baseball game, run by a seedy barker in a devil's costume, with a button pinned on his red suit that said WELCOME TO HELL. He smiled, revealing two chocolate brown front teeth, and invited Tommy to try his hand.

"Break three plates, win the grand prize," he said.

"What's the grand prize?" Rachel asked.

The devil pointed at a giant stuffed bear, fat and soft and nearly as tall as Rachel. The girl's eyes widened, and she looked longingly at Tommy, hanging on his arm. "Can you win it for me, Daddy?"

"You bet I can."

The devil handed Tommy three baseballs. Tommy juggled two in his right hand and wound up with his left.

"You're drunk, Tommy," Emily warned him. "And you don't look good."

Tommy fired the first ball into the dead center of one of the ceramic plates. The plate smashed into shards, falling amid the litter of the booth, and the ball slammed into the aluminum wall with a bang.

"You did it, Daddy! You did it!"

Tommy grinned. He let the second ball fly, and crash, bang, another plate shattered.

"One more, Daddy, and you win!" Rachel cried.

"Make a place for that bear on your bed, honey," Tommy told her.

He readied himself for the next pitch, cocking his meaty arm. The crowd gathering behind them tensed, expecting another bang, waiting for the plate to explode.

Instead, the ball dribbled off Tommy's hand, bounced on the counter, and landed on the ground with a thud. The devil laughed. The people around the booth groaned with disappointment. Tommy's knees buckled, and he grabbed his arm, screaming. His face was contorted and red.

Emily said the first thing that popped into her head and instantly regretted it. "Damn it, Tommy, you haven't thrown a baseball in years. What the hell were you trying to prove?"

Rachel shot her mother an angry stare. Tommy bit his lip so hard that a pearl of blood formed and slipped onto his chin. Rachel rubbed it away with her hand.

"I'm sorry, honey," Tommy said to Rachel.

The old man at the counter, still chuckling, waved at Tommy. "Don't forget your prize." He held up a small stuffed pink pig, with black sunglasses, and tossed it to Tommy.

Tommy looked embarrassed as he handed it to Rachel, but Rachel held the pig as if it were even better than the grand prize. "I love it, Daddy," she said, and as he leaned down, she kissed him lightly on the lips.

It was as if Emily had been stabbed in the heart. She was jealous, and she hated herself for it. "I guess it's time to go home," she said.

Rachel had other ideas. As they wandered away from the booth, the ride known as the Ejection Seat suddenly sprang to life in front of them, a circular chair of steel tossed like a rock from a slingshot, carrying two screaming passengers. A microphone embedded in the chair carried their hysterical cries out over the fair.

"Wow," Rachel said in a hushed voice. "Do you think I could do that?"

Emily interrupted. "I don't think that's a good idea, Rachel. Your father's not feeling well, and you're too young for a ride like that."

"You don't look too young to me," Tommy said. "And I feel great."

"Come on, Tommy, don't be foolish," Emily said.

Tommy winked at his daughter. "What do we say, Rachel?"

Rachel looked at her mother and sang out in her most girlish voice, "Bitch, bitch, bitch!"

Emily was stunned. She tugged on Tommy's arm and whispered in his ear. "You taught her to say that to me? Are you crazy?"

"Shit, Emily, it's only a joke."

"Fine, take the fucking ride," she hissed, hating herself for letting Tommy get a rise out of her.

He pretended to be shocked. "Mommy used a bad word."

Rachel held Tommy's hand triumphantly. They headed together toward the ride, and then Rachel looked back. She called out, as if it were a wonderful joke, "Fuck you, Mommy."

Emily took two steps closer, swinging her hand back, ready to strike her. She wanted so badly to slap her daughter's face. But she froze, holding back. She began sobbing. She watched them wander away, paying no attention to her as she cried, drawing stares from the people passing by. She wiped her cheeks, then pushed through the crowd toward the spectator area near the Ejection Seat. She would do what she had done all along. Cheer for them. For the husband who made her feel like an insect, and for the daughter he had taught to hate her.

As they strapped Tommy and Rachel into the Ejection Seat, a spotlight hit them, and Emily could see their faces clearly.

Rachel was beaming, fearless as ever.

But Tommy was pale, his face bone white, sweat pouring down his forehead.

A horrifying awareness began to dawn on Emily, as she realized that Tommy's condition had nothing to do with the fair and nothing to do with a pulled muscle. Instead, it had everything to do with his father, who had dropped dead at thirty-seven, and his grandfather, who had only made it to age thirty before ending up in the ground.

"Don't ask me to grow up, Emily," he had said to her once in a sober moment.

"Wait!" Emily shouted, but no one heard her.

The sensations of the night became a blur. The din of music and voices thumped in her head. Lights blinked and whirled around her. She smelled burnt grease, powerful enough to suffocate her.

"He's having a heart attack!" she screamed, as loudly as she could.

The people around her laughed. It was a joke. It was funny.

Ping. The cable released. The Ejection Seat shot upward like an arrow. The towers rattled and swayed. The microphone in the chair caught Rachel's squeals of delight. Her excitement at being shot weightless into the air was almost sexual. The giggling laughter poured out of her and washed over the crowd.

Tommy never said a word.

Up and down the chair went, bouncing and wobbling like a jack-in-the-box for thirty seconds that lasted a lifetime. Then Emily heard murmurs among the people around her. She saw people start to point. Rachel's squeals subsided.

"Daddy?"

Emily could see her husband clearly now, his head lolling to one side, his eyes rolled up into his skull like two hard-boiled eggs, his tongue hanging limply out of his mouth. Rachel saw it, too, and screamed.

"Daddy. Wake up, Daddy."

Emily clambered over the fence that kept the spectators back. The ride workers managed to snag the chair and pull it back to the ground. As Emily ran toward them, they undid the straps from Rachel, who clung to her father and cried hysterically. They undid the straps from Tommy, too, but he simply slid from the chair and crumpled in a pile on the ground, with Rachel still hanging on him and calling his name.

Emily knew at that moment she had passed a crossroads in her life. Part of her secret soul believed it would be a road to something better. In many ways, living with Tommy dead was easier than living with Tommy alive. She had always been the one holding a steady job and paying the bills. During the next few years, she began to pull them slowly out of debt.

But in the most important way, in her daughter's mind, Tommy never died. He became frozen in Rachel's memory.

It began the day after the fair, as they drove in cold silence back to Duluth. The tears on Rachel's face had dried, and her grief had turned with amazing swiftness to malevolence. At one point on the highway, the little girl turned to Emily, her eyes on fire, and said with a terrifying passion, "You did this."

Emily tried to explain. She tried to tell Rachel about Tommy's weak heart, but Rachel didn't want to hear anything.

"Daddy always said that if he died, it was you who killed him," she said.

So began the war.

Emily, lying in Rachel's bed, picked up the silly stuffed pig.

"Oh, sweetheart," she said. "What did I ever do to make you hate me so much? How can I make it up to you?"

5

Stride lived in an area known as Park Point, a crooked finger of land jutting out between the southern tip of the lake and the calm inner harbors of Duluth and Superior, Wisconsin. The peninsula was just wide enough to drop a strip of houses on either side of the road. There was only one way to get to the Point-across the lift bridge over the canal-which forced the people who lived there to structure their lives around the comings and goings of the ore ships.

He gave no thought to the bridge as he glided on autopilot, his eyes barely open, toward the Point at four in the morning. At first, when he heard the raucous warning bell, he thought his tired brain was playing tricks on him. He turned down the Sara Evans song on his stereo and listened. When he realized the bridge was really going up, he accelerated, but he knew he was too late. Disgusted, wondering how long he would be marooned, he pulled to a stop at the guardrail and shut off the engine.

He got out of the car, leaning on the door, letting the cold air wash over him. He reached back inside to the cup holder, found a new pack of cigarettes, and lit one. So much for willpower. He didn't care. Smoking, exhausted, listening to the groan of steel as the bridge climbed above him-this was his life. And it had been that way for the past year, ever since the cancer took Cindy away. The city that had always been his home, and that he assumed he would never leave, had begun to feel different to him, darker and more menacing. The familiar things, like the hulking lift bridge and the smell of the lake, now seemed consumed with memories.

Back in his youth, Duluth was a one-industry town, capital of the northern region of the state known, for good reason, as the Iron Range. It was a city where trillions of pellets of taconite belched into the hulls of giant ships, which sank low in the water and then shouldered their way through the cavernous troughs of Lake Superior toward the northeast. It was a hardscrabble, hard-luck city, filled with brawny miners and seamen like his dad.

He didn't recall that life was particularly good back then, but the city had a small-town feel, and people weathered the ups and downs of the ore industry together, living fat, living poor, working, striking. For nine months every year, until the lake froze, the rhythm of the ore industry governed the city. Trains came and went. Ships came and went. The bridge rose, and the bridge fell. The raw elements of steel that built skyscrapers, cars, and guns around the world began their journey under the clay soil in northern Minnesota and eventually traveled through the seaway in the holds of the great ships.

But the taconite industry waned, eaten up by overseas competition, and so did Duluth's fortunes. Ore couldn't pay the bills anymore. So the wise men who ran the city took a look at its location on the lake and said: Let the tourists come. The ore industry became a kind of tourist attraction itself, drawing gawkers to the bridge whenever a ship slid through the canal.

Not now, though. Not in the middle of the night. Stride stood alone, taking long drags on his cigarette, watching the rust-red hull creep under the bridge. He saw a man standing on the deck of the ship, also alone, also smoking. He was indistinguishable, little more than a silhouette. The man raised his hand to Stride in a casual greeting, and Stride returned it with a wave. That man could have been him, if his life had gone as he expected when he was younger.

He climbed back into his Bronco as the bridge settled back into place. As he drove across to the Point, hearing the bridge deck whine under his tires, he glanced at the ship, which was aglow and heading into the lake. A part of him went with it. That was true every time one of the ships left. It was partly why he lived where he did.

The residents of the Point were a hearty tribe who endured tourists, gales, storms, blizzards, and ice for the privilege of that handful of idyllic summer days on which no one on earth had a better place to live than they did. They shared a strip of beach that eroded an inch or two each year, with tufts of madras grass and mature trees separating the sand from the tiny backyards of the houses. Stride would often haul a lounge chair out past the madras on a Sunday in July, set it up on the beach, and sit for hours to watch the traffic of sailboats and cargo ships.

Most of the houses on the Point, except those few that had been torn down and rebuilt by wealthy transplants from the Cities, were old and ramshackle, constantly pummeled and worn down by the elements. Stride slapped on paint each spring, using whatever was on sale, but it never lasted beyond the winter season.

His house, a quarter mile from the bridge, was barely thirty feet wide, built in a square, with the door and two steps situated exactly in the middle. To the right of the door was the living room, with a window looking out the front. There was a detached one-car garage to the left of the house, at the end of a small stretch of sand that counted as a driveway.

Stride jiggled the key in the lock, then used his shoulder to push the door inward. He shut the door behind him and stood in the hallway, sinking back against the door, his eyes closed. He smelled the musty odor of aged wood and the lingering fishy aroma of opilio crab legs he had steamed two nights ago. But there was more. Even a year after she was gone, he could still smell Cindy in the house. Maybe it was just that he had caught that same hint of perfume and floral soap for fifteen years, and his imagination remembered it so clearly that he could still picture it as real. In the early days, he had wanted to banish the smell from the house, and he had thrown open all the windows to let the lake air wash through. Then, when the aroma began to fade, he got scared, and he shut up the house for days for fear he might lose it altogether.

He stumbled sleepily down the hall to his bedroom and emptied his pockets on his nightstand. He yanked off his jacket and let it fall on the floor, then rolled into his unmade bed. His feet throbbed, and he didn't know if he had remembered to kick off his shoes. It didn't matter.

He closed his eyes, and she was there again, as he knew she would be. The dreams had faded in recent weeks, but tonight he expected to be tormented.

He stood on a highway somewhere in the wilderness, with miles of birch trees lining the deserted road in both directions. Across the narrow strip of pavement, divided by a yellow line, stood Kerry McGrath. She beamed at him with a happy, carefree smile. Perspiration glinted on her face. She had been running, and her chest heaved as she sucked in deep breaths.

She waved at him, gesturing him to cross the road.

"Cindy," he shouted.

The smile on Kerry's face died. She turned and vanished, running between the trees. He tried to follow, hurrying down the slope behind the shoulder of the road and into the forest. His legs felt heavy. So did his left hand. When he looked down, he realized he was carrying a gun.

Somewhere, he heard a scream.

He stumbled along the trail, wiping sweat from his eyes. Or was it rain? Water seemed to filter down through the leaves, turning the trail into mud and matting his hair. Ahead of him, he saw a shadow pass across the trail, something large and menacing.

He tried to call Kerry's name again.

"Cindy."

Through the maze of trees, he realized someone was stopped, waiting for him.

It wasn't Kerry.

Rachel stood there, naked. She confronted him on the trail, her arms in the air, balanced against two birch trees, her legs spread casually apart. The rain fell in spatters on her body, dripping off her breasts and running in silver streams down her stomach and into the crevice between her legs.

"You'll never find me," she called to him.

Rachel turned and ran, and her body was enveloped by the forest. He could see her gliding away. Her body was beautiful, and he watched as it got smaller and farther away. Then, as before, a menacing shadow crossed the trail and disappeared.

He raised his gun. He called after Rachel.

"Cindy."

He made his way into a small clearing, where the dirt under his feet was mossy and wet. A stream gurgled toward the lake, but the water tumbling over the rocks was bright red. The crackling and rustling in the forest got louder, almost deafening, a thumping in his ears. The rain sheeted down, soaking him.

He saw Rachel on the opposite side of the clearing. "You'll never find me," she called again.

When he stared at the blurry image on the far side of the stream, he realized it was no longer Rachel who stood there.

It was Cindy. She stretched out her hands toward him.

He saw the shadow again, moving behind her. A monster.

"You never do," she told him.

Stride lay sprawled in bed with his head engulfed in his pillow. He was half asleep now, slowly growing aware of his surroundings. He heard the rustle of paper somewhere close by and smelled burnt coffee.

He opened one eye. Maggie Bei sat a few feet away in his leather recliner, her short legs propped up, a half-eaten cruller in one hand and one of Stride's chipped ceramic mugs in the other. She had opened the curtains halfway, enough to reveal the early morning view of the lake behind her.

"That coffeepot of yours stinks," she said. "What is it, ten years old?"

"Fifteen," Stride said. He blinked several times and didn't move. "What time is it?"

"Six in the morning."

"Still Monday?" Stride asked.

"Afraid so."

Stride groaned. He had been asleep for ninety minutes. It was obvious that Maggie, who was still wearing the same jeans and burgundy leather jacket she had worn last night, hadn't slept at all.

"Am I naked?" he asked.

Maggie grinned. "Yeah. Nice ass."

Stride pushed his head off the pillow and glanced behind him. He, too, was wearing the same clothes from last night. "I hope you made enough coffee for me."

Maggie pointed at his nightstand, where a chocolate old-fashioned doughnut lay neatly placed on a napkin. A steaming mug of coffee was beside it. Stride grabbed a bite of the doughnut and took a sip of coffee. He ran his hand back through mussed hair. He finished off the doughnut in two more bites, then began unbuttoning his shirt. He yanked the belt from his jeans.

"It gets ugly from here," he said.

"Don't I know it," Maggie replied. She continued calmly eating her breakfast.

"Yeah, you wish."

He joked, but Stride knew he was on sensitive ground. He and Maggie had worked together as a team for seven years. She was a Chinese immigrant whose vocal participation in political rallies during her student days at the University of Minnesota had left her without a home to which to return. When Stride hired her right out of school, she proved to be a quick study. In less than a year, she knew the law better than he did, and she had demonstrated her instincts by seeing details in crime scenes-and suspects-that most officers missed. Stride had kept her at his side ever since.

The longer they worked together, the more Maggie blossomed. She became funnier, bolder, willing to laugh at herself. Her face became expressive, not a somber mask. She learned to speak English with no hint of an accent and with a healthy sampling of sarcasm and profanity.

Along the way, she fell in love with Stride.

It was Cindy who broke the news to him. She had spotted Maggie's feelings immediately and warned him he was going to break Maggie's heart into little pieces of Chinese porcelain if he wasn't careful.

When Cindy was gone, Maggie made her one and only play for his affections. Six months ago, when Stride was at his loneliest, Maggie had let herself into his house on a frigid spring morning and slid into bed beside him. He had awakened and never seen so much love in another person's eyes. It was tempting, because he needed someone badly, and she was warm and willing.

But he remembered Cindy's warning, and he thought of those little pieces of Chinese porcelain, and he said no. Last month, she thanked him. He was right, she said; it would have destroyed their friendship and never worked as a romance. He wondered if she really believed that.

"How did you enjoy your visit with the Stoners?" Maggie asked.

Stride opened the bathroom door and continued undressing, then stepped into the shower, shivering as the cold water slowly warmed. He called back to Maggie.

"The mother says there's no chance of a suicide. What do you think?"

"Mothers never think there's any chance of suicide," Maggie said. "But I think if this girl wanted to blow herself away, she would have done it in front of them and made sure there was a lot of blood on their nice carpet."

Stride smiled. Maggie had pegged Rachel already. This wasn't a girl who would slip away to die.

"How about Mommy and Stepdaddy?" Maggie called out. "You know the rule. Family first."

"They volunteered to take polygraphs," Stride replied. "But we have to run the questions through His Holiness Archie Gale."

He heard the sound of Maggie gagging. "Damn, I hate rich parents. Call the lawyer first, then the cops."

Stride grabbed a towel and used it to dry his damp hair, then rubbed it over his body. He wrapped it loosely around his waist and returned to his bedroom.

"We have to be careful," he said. "Check them both out, but be discreet. Graeme made it clear he knows K-2."

"Yeah, he told me that, too. Handball every week. I can't imagine K-2 playing handball. Not on a regulation court, anyway."

Stride laughed. K-2-Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick-was no taller than Maggie. Even the mayor sometimes called him "the leprechaun."

"We got a hit on one of the ATM cameras," Maggie added. "We got a glimpse of her car zooming by shortly after ten o'clock."

"Score one for Kevin. Was she alone?"

"No one else is visible in the car."

Stride donned a pair of tan Dockers, buttoned up a white shirt, and shrugged into a navy sport coat.

"Come on, I need more coffee," he said.

Maggie followed him into the kitchen. Stride opened a window. The morning air smelled like frost, and he felt cold needles pricking his damp neck.

"Do you always need to open a window when it's freezing outside?" Maggie complained, shivering.

Stride poured coffee and sat down at the butcher-block kitchen table. He saw Maggie glance in the sink, which was half filled with dirty dishes. She pushed aside a stack of newspapers and three days of junk mail and cleared a small spot for her mug.

"You live like this?" she asked.

Stride shrugged. "What?"

"Nothing," Maggie said.

"Let's keep going," Stride said. "We think she made it home, because we've got her on tape heading there, and the car is parked right where it should be."

"Nothing strange in the car. We're running prints, but I wouldn't expect much."

"Next question is, did she go inside? How about her bedroom?"

Maggie shook her head. "We know what she was wearing that night. No clothes matching that description were found in her room. We talked with Emily about whether anything was missing. She wasn't much help. Even so, the drawers were full of clothes, and Rachel had lots of personal stuff in her desk. If she left by herself, she traveled light. She wasn't dressed for running, either-not like Kerry."

"How about a diary?" Stride asked. "I know, I'm dreaming."

"You're dreaming," Maggie said. "I checked her computer. Very few personal files. I loaded her Web browser to see if she might have been talking with some psycho on the Internet, but there was just some school-related stuff in her e-mail, and she hadn't bookmarked any weird Web sites. We'll run it through forensics, in case there's stuff we can recover."

"How about the neighbors?" Stride asked.

"A handful of people remember seeing folks out on the street that evening, but it was dark. Not many faces. A couple people saw teenage girls walking outside, but no one resembling Rachel. We had one report of an unknown car parked that night about four blocks away. The witness couldn't remember many details-dark, maybe blue or black, four-door sedan, might have been out-of-state plates. We checked with neighbors near where the car was seen. No one claimed it, and no one had visitors from out of state."

"Interesting," Stride said. "Except for a few thousand tourists in town."

"Right."

"How about the other ways of getting out of town? Any luck there?"

Maggie shook her head. "Nothing. There were no flights out of Duluth after ten o'clock on Friday until early Saturday morning. We'll be doing interviews with personnel at the airport this morning just in case. Ditto at the Greyhound station both here and in Wisconsin."

"She could have hiked down to the highway and hitched," Stride speculated.

"I thought of that. We've faxed her photo and info to police and highway patrols throughout the state and in the border states as well. Guppo has set up a page on our Web site. We're asking the state police to check in on fast food joints and gas stations along the interstate. The media is all over it, thanks to Bird Finch, which at least will get her photo in front of the whole region quickly."

Stride could imagine the phone ringing off the hook on the hotline. They had received nearly two thousand leads during the search for Kerry McGrath, placing the teenager everywhere from New Orleans to Fresno. With help from around the country, they had methodically sifted the leads by priority and tracked down each one. They all led back to the same place-nowhere.

"How about the pervs?"

Maggie sighed. "Five level-three sex offenders in the city. A few dozen ones and twos. We'll be paying a visit to each one."

"Okay." Stride felt a headache squeezing his temples. It wasn't just the lack of sleep, it was the bitter sameness. The disappearance. The search. The clues. He didn't know if he had the strength to do it all over again, or to face the possibility of another failure. This time, too, he would go through the hell alone. Without Cindy.

"Boss?" Maggie said, as he drifted away.

Stride smiled thinly. "I'm here. Look, if this girl ran away voluntarily, she had to have help. She must have talked to someone. You direct the search today and keep me posted on the cell phone. I'll go to the school and check out her teachers and friends. Let's see if we can find out what made this girl tick."

6

Stride had been at the school for two hours, and he needed a cigarette.

It was an expensive habit the way he indulged it. He would buy a pack, smoke one or two cigarettes, then get angry at himself and throw away the rest. A day later, he would feel the craving again and buy another pack.

The high school was prominently labeled a tobacco-free zone. He saw an exit at the rear of the main foyer, tucked between rows of fire-engine red lockers, leading to the back of the school. Stride went through a set of doors and headed for an empty soccer field across the road. He passed a teachers' parking lot and wound along the side of a separate building labeled as a technical center.

Stride reached the corner of the building and stared down at the deserted field, which was filled incongruously with dozens of seagulls. He extracted a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, then slapped the pack until one cigarette jutted out from the others. He cupped his hands and tried to light it in the wind. It took several tries. Finally, the end of the cigarette smoldered, and he took a long drag. The smoke, filling his lungs, comforted him like an old friend. He relaxed, feeling some of the tightness escape. Then he coughed long and hard.

"Those things will kill you," a voice said behind him.

Stride felt guilty-a high school student again, caught smoking behind the school. He turned and saw an attractive blonde woman on a short set of gray steel steps leading up to the back door of the technical center. She, too, was holding a cigarette. Stride smiled at her, acknowledging their common vice.

"At least we'll die happy," he said. He took a few steps closer, leaning against the railing by the stairs.

"I keep wondering whether it's better to smoke or be an alcoholic," the woman told him.

"Why not both?" Stride asked.

"I've thought about that. But I haven't committed to either one."

She was in her midthirties, with a red fleece jacket zipped to her neck and new, starched black slacks. She looked like an ex-cheerleader, with a trim body, athletic build, and short, layered blonde hair. Her eyes were pale blue. She had a pert face, upturned nose, and cheeks that had flushed red in the cold air.

She looked familiar. Stride told her so.

"We met last year," she told him. "My name is Andrea. Andrea Jantzik. I'm a teacher here at the school. Kerry McGrath was one of my students. You interviewed me when you were investigating her disappearance."

"Was Rachel one of your students, too?"

Andrea shook her head. "I think she took biology, not chemistry. Peggy, the bio teacher, was telling me about her this morning. I didn't know who Rachel was."

Stride dug in his pocket for the crumpled piece of paper the registrar had given him, with the listing of Rachel's classes and grades. "You didn't have her in an English class a year ago?"

"That would be Robin Jantzik. He teaches-taught-English here. But if you really want to talk to him, I'm afraid you'll have to look him up with his new wife in San Francisco."

"Husband?" Stride asked.

"Once upon a time."

"I'm sorry," Stride said. "Would it help if I told you that men are pigs?"

Andrea laughed. "Nothing I don't already know."

She had a cynical smile, which was like looking in a mirror. He recognized the walls she had built around herself, because he had done the same thing. He could see it in her face, too, as he looked closely: the frown lines creasing her lips, the deadness in her eyes, the heavy cake of makeup trying to freshen her skin. Loss had taken a toll on her, as it had on him.

"Is that when the cigarettes came back?" he asked, making a guess.

She looked surprised. "Is it that obvious?"

"I've been through something similar," he told her. "A year ago. That's when I started smoking again."

"I thought I had kicked it a year ago," Andrea said. "No such luck."

"Did your husband ever mention Rachel?"

Andrea shook her head. "No. English classes are huge."

"What about other teachers or students? Did you know anyone who might have been close to her?"

"You might want to talk to Nancy Carver. She's a part-time counselor here. She had a lot to say about Rachel this morning in the cafeteria."

"Like what?"

"She thought the search was a waste of time."

"Did she say why?" Stride asked.

Andrea shook her head.

"So this woman counseled Rachel?" Stride continued.

"I don't know. Nancy's not a permanent employee of the school. She's a professor up at the university and volunteers her time here working with troubled students. Girls, mostly."

"Does she have an office in the building?"

"More like a closet, really. It's on the second floor. But be forewarned. You carry a piece of equipment that Nancy doesn't exactly approve of."

Stride was puzzled. "A gun?"

"A penis."

Stride laughed, and Andrea giggled, and soon they were both laughing loud and hard. They stared at each other, enjoying the joke and feeling the subtle attraction that came with it. It almost felt strange to laugh. He couldn't recall how long it had been since he had relaxed enough to find humor in something. Or how long since he had shared it with a woman.

"At least you know what you're in for," Andrea said.

"Thanks. You've been very helpful, Ms. Jantzik."

"Call me Andrea," she said. "Or are you not allowed to do that?"

"I'm allowed. And call me Jonathan."

"You look more like a Jon to me."

"That works, too."

Stride hesitated and wasn't sure why. Then he realized that he felt an urge to say something else, to ask her to dinner, or to ask what her favorite color was, or to take the one strand of blonde hair that had fallen across her face and gently put it right. The power of the feeling suddenly overwhelmed him. Maybe it was because he had not felt even a glimmering like that in almost a year. He had been dead inside for so long that he wasn't sure what it felt like to wake up.

"Are you okay?" Andrea asked. Her face was concerned. It was a very pretty face, he realized.

"I'm fine. Thanks again."

He left her on the steps. The moment passed. But it never really passed.

Stride found Nancy Carver's office tucked into a cubbyhole, almost invisible from the corridor. When he poked his head around the wall, Stride saw a narrow door, with Nancy Carver's name etched onto a wooden block hung from a nail. The photos and brochures plastered all over the door were guaranteed to send school board members into hysterics.

There were magazine articles about the dangers of homophobia. Other articles, with graphic illustrations neatly scissored out, decried the prevalence of pornography. She had a brochure from last year's annual meeting of the American Society of Lesbian University Women, with her name highlighted, where she had been a speaker. There were also dozens of photographs of women in camping gear in the outdoors. Stride recognized the Black Hills and some wilderness waterfalls he guessed were in Canada. The photographs were mostly of teenage girls and young college-age women. The one exception, who appeared in most of the photographs, was a tiny, sturdily built woman around forty, with cropped berry-red hair and large, thick-rimmed black glasses. In most of the photos she wore the same outfit, a green fleece sweater and stonewashed blue jeans.

Stride studied each of the girls in the photographs closely but did not recognize Rachel-or Kerry-in any of them. He was vaguely disappointed.

Stride was about to rap his knuckles on the door when he heard faint noises from inside. Changing his mind, and wondering if the door was locked, he simply twisted the doorknob and pushed. The door fell inward, then thudded against a diagonal wall, leaving only a three-foot opening through which to squeeze into the office.

Stride's eyes painted the scene before the two people in the room could react. A teenager with a plump baby face and stringy blonde hair lay, eyes closed, in a ratty blue recliner that barely fit into the office. Nancy Carver stood behind the chair. Her spread fingertips massaged the girl's cheeks and forehead. Carver's eyes, too, were closed behind her glasses. As the door banged into the wall, their eyes flew open. Carver's hands flew away from the girl's skin as if it were on fire.

The girl in the chair didn't look at Stride but instead craned her neck and looked nervously back at Carver. Carver in turn stared at Stride with barely controlled fury.

"What the hell do you think you're doing, barging in here like that?" she demanded.

Stride adopted his most pleasant, apologetic demeanor. "I'm so sorry. I needed to talk to you, and I didn't realize you had someone with you."

The girl struggled to right the recliner and then to stand up. She didn't make eye contact with Stride. "I should get to class. Thanks a lot, Nancy."

Carver replied in a softer voice. "Sure, Sarah. I'll be back on Thursday."

Sarah grabbed a stack of books from Nancy Carver's desk. She clutched them to her chest and wedged uncomfortably past Stride. The girl wasted no time disappearing down the corridor.

Stride closed the door behind him. Carver remained frozen behind the old recliner, studying him as if he were an insect. Her glasses made her fierce brown eyes look larger than life. She was even smaller than the photographs made her look, but with a muscular physique.

"What do you want?" she asked.

"My name is Jonathan Stride," he began, but she cut him off with an impatient wave of her hand.

"Yes, yes, I know who you are. You're with the police, and you're investigating Rachel's disappearance, and you're taking up my time." She returned to her desk and sat down in a wooden Shaker chair. "Tell me something I don't know."

Stride looked around the tiny office. Carver's desk was standard school district issue, white laminate on aluminum legs. It was piled with hardcover books, most with obscure psychological titles, and manila folders overflowing with papers. The phone was stuck all over with little reminder notes. The chair, desk, and recliner were the only pieces of furniture in the office. The one item on the wall was a cork bulletin board, as crowded as her office door, with more articles and photographs.

Stride sat leisurely in the recliner and made himself comfortable. He extracted a notebook from his inside coat pocket, searched a few other pockets for a pen, then settled against the cushy backrest with a sigh. He flipped the notebook backward a few pages, glancing at the scribblings there and making an annoying clicking noise with his tongue. Finally, he looked up at Nancy Carver, who sat in her chair with all the patience of a ticking bomb.

"My partner tells me that I should get therapy," Stride said pleasantly. "Do all patients get the little face massage thing?"

Carver's face was etched in stone. "Sarah is not a patient."

"No? Too bad. I heard you were a doctor, but maybe I was wrong. Are you a massage therapist?"

"I have both a master's and a Ph.D. in psychology, Detective. I am a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota. But here, with these girls, I'm just Nancy."

"That's nice. So what was this with Sarah-a slumber party?"

"No," she said. "Not that it is any of your business, but Sarah has trouble sleeping. I was showing her relaxation techniques. That's all."

Stride nodded. "Relaxation is good. My partner tells me I should try that, too."

"Perhaps your partner should tell you to get to the point faster, Detective. Your little game is transparent and tedious, so why not just ask your questions and let me get back to my work?" For the first time, Nancy Carver smiled, without a trace of warmth.

Stride smiled back. "Game?"

"Game. See who can outshrink the other. Remember, I make a living at it. So let's be honest, shall we, Detective? In addition to whatever investigative conclusions you've jumped to, you've also already checked me out as a piece of meat. You've concluded that I'm not attractive enough to constitute a major loss to the heterosexual community. Nonetheless, you've noted that I have an athletic body, and based on my feisty attitude, you've figured that if you ever could get me into bed, I'd probably give you a pretty good ride. All of which leads you to fantasize about me making love to other women-and to wonder whether I'm having sex with any of the teenagers here. And you're hoping if you act flip and challenge my insecurities, you'll get me to spill some deep dark secret to you."

"That's amazing," Stride said. "Now tell me who's going to win the World Series."

Carver allowed herself another tight smile. "I'm right, am I not?"

"Well, since you brought it up, are you having sex with any of the teenagers here?"

"I do not have sex with underage persons, Detective," Carver said slowly, emphasizing each word.

"That's a good answer. It's not what I asked, but a good answer. I like the photographs on your door. You seem to take students on a lot of field trips."

"I call them feminist learning retreats."

"Do underage persons attend any of these retreats?"

"Of course. With parental permission."

"I was wondering whether Rachel ever accompanied you on one of these retreats."

"No, she didn't," Carver said.

"How about Kerry McGrath?"

"No, I never met Kerry. Are you suggesting I am in some way involved in their disappearances?"

Stride shook his head. "Not at all. I'm just looking for connections."

"And why not start with a lesbian activist, right?"

"It's amazing how you can read my mind. Did you ever counsel either of these girls?"

"I don't counsel people here, Detective."

"Well, since you've made it clear that you're not the school's massage therapist, what exactly is it you do if you're not a counselor?"

"I'm a mentor. Or simply a friend. There's no formal professional relationship involved."

"That's strange, isn't it?" Stride asked. "I mean, you have both a master's and a Ph.D. in psychology, and you're a tenured professor at the University of Minnesota, and I see a lot of books with 'ology' in the title on your desk."

"It's not strange at all, Detective. In fact, I could say that you're responsible for my being here."

"Me? How's that?"

Carver leaned forward on her desk, her hands neatly folded together, her huge brown eyes boring into him again. "Well, since you never did find Kerry McGrath, you left a lot of female students traumatized around this school."

Stride winced. "I'm not following you."

"Let me spell it out. After that girl disappeared last August, the school began to have a lot of trouble with the women here. Several of them were skipping classes, bursting into tears, engaging in self-destructive behavior. I offered my services as a volunteer counselor-not in a professional sense but as someone who could relate to them and talk to them about their fears. It's a measure of how worried the administration was that they didn't quibble about my politics or sexual preference but welcomed me with open arms. And I found I enjoyed working with the girls. So I made it into a permanent stint, two afternoons a week, and I've taken small groups on several retreats, too. I'm not their therapist, although my professional experience is certainly helpful. Mostly, I'm someone these women can talk to."

"Did you have a chance to become friends with Rachel?"

He watched her face, expecting a reaction. There was nothing, not a flinch, no attempt to hide anything, only the same level stare.

"I knew her," she said, still betraying nothing.

"How well?"

"We met occasionally. She was not one of my regular visitors. And as I mentioned, she never joined us on any of the retreats."

"Why did she come to see you?"

Carver paused. She stared calmly at Stride. "I'm not at liberty to say," she said finally.

"Why not?" Stride asked, annoyed. "You were quite adamant that these were not professional relationships, so privilege doesn't apply, does it?"

"Privilege would depend on how Rachel perceived the relationship and whether she considered me a therapist. But regardless, she told me certain things only with the condition that they remain strictly confidential between the two of us. I was to tell no one at all. And if I get a reputation as someone who betrays confidences, Detective, I can't be successful at anything I do in this field."

"But surely the situation is different now. The girl has disappeared. If something she said can help us find her, then you owe it to Rachel to tell us."

Carver shook her head. "I'm afraid that's not true at all."

"Dr. Carver, this girl could be in serious danger," Stride insisted.

"Detective, I know nothing whatsoever that could help you find her. Believe me."

"You were telling people at school today that you thought we would never find Rachel. Why? What makes you think that?"

"You didn't find Kerry," Carver replied.

"Do you have reason to think the two cases are related?"

"No, I didn't mean to imply that at all. I have no reason to think so."

"And yet you seem certain we won't find Rachel," Stride repeated.

"I'm not certain that she would want to be found," Carver said.

Stride's eyes narrowed. He pushed himself out of the recliner and leaned over the desk, with both hands gripping the edge. He towered over Carver, and he wanted her to feel every inch of his presence. "If you have information, Dr. Carver, I want to know what it is. Don't make me get a warrant for your arrest."

Carver didn't quaver. She met his eyes and glared at him. "Go ahead, Detective. You can't arrest me for speculations, and you can't make me tell you what I don't know. I told you before, and I'll tell you again. I don't know where Rachel is. I don't know what happened to her. I have no information that would help you find her."

"But you think she's alive," Stride said. "You think she left voluntarily."

"Here's what I think, Detective. In six months, Rachel Deese will be eighteen years old. At that point, even if you find her, you won't be able to bring her back."

Stride shook his head. "You're not helping her by staying silent. If she ran away-if she had reason to run away-I need to know it. Look, I've met her mother. I know what a battle royal it was between them all the time. But if she's on her own, alone, she could get into serious trouble. Do I have to tell you what it's like for most teenage runaways? How many end up homeless? How many get into prostitution?"

For a moment, he thought he might win. He saw an instant of weakness in Carver's eyes. She knew he was telling the truth. Then, like a mask, the steel came back down over her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Detective. I don't know anything that can help you. Whatever I told people, it's just my personal opinion."

"And that is?" Stride asked.

Carver shrugged. "Just like I said. You'll never find her."

7

Heather Hubble turned right off Highway 53 and onto a nondescript dirt road about ten miles northwest of Duluth. Her car rocked and bounced on the rutted surface. On the seat beside her, Lissa, her six-year-old daughter, rocked along with the car.

It was late Thursday afternoon. She wanted to take advantage of the waning light and the lengthening shadows for her photographs of the ruined barn. She had been waiting until the fall colors surrounding her were well past prime. The bright red leaves had turned to rust. The yellows were pale and greenish. Many of the leaves had already fallen and would be littering the field around the barn. That was perfect. The barn, too, was in the advanced stages of decay. The images in her photographs would reinforce each other.

"I like this road, Mommy," Lissa said, jumping up and down in her seat. "It's bouncy and it's pretty."

Lissa pushed her nose against the window, staring into the trees. There was a steady rain of dried leaves floating in the air.

"How much farther?" Lissa asked impatiently.

"It's not far now," Heather said.

They rounded a bend, and the barn loomed out of the field on the left side. It was beautiful and romantic in Heather's eyes; in reality it was a wreck, long since abandoned. Heather didn't imagine it would last another season, although she had thought that for several years. She assumed the weight of this year's snow would cave in the rest of the roof, which had already fallen through in several places, leaving jagged holes. The barn's red paint had faded, chipped, and peeled away. The windows had been broken in by teenagers throwing rocks. The entire frame seemed to list inward, the walls bowed and unsteady. She could probably come back in February and the barn would be no more than a snow-covered pile of splintered beams.

She pulled into the grassy, overgrown driveway, which wasn't a real driveway at all but had been worn down by the many visitors to the barn over the years. She parked and got out, and Lissa scrambled out, too.

"I don't think I've been to this place before, have I, Mommy?" Lissa asked.

"No, I don't think so. I think you've always been in school when I've come here."

"It's not in very good shape, is it?"

Heather laughed. "No, it's not."

"Can I look around?"

"Sure. But don't go inside the barn. It's not safe."

"It looks like the kind of place that could be haunted," Lissa said. "What do you think?"

"It might be," Heather told her.

"How do you know about this place?" Lissa asked.

Heather smiled. "I used to come out here when I was a teenager. A lot of us kids did."

"What did you do here?" Lissa asked.

"We just explored a lot. Like you."

There was no need to explain the real reason. Back then, she and dozens of other Duluth teenagers came out here to have sex. It was the hottest make-out spot in the county. It got so bad that there was even a secret sign-up sheet passed around school, to make sure there weren't too many people parked out behind the barn at any one time. Heather's first sexual experience had been out at the barn, in the back of a pickup truck, under the stars.

She wondered if today's students used the barn. There were still plenty of overlapping tire tracks leading around back. She also saw empty beer bottles littering the field. If she looked hard enough, she would probably find used condoms.

Heather looked down at Lissa again. "Don't you pick anything up, either."

Lissa frowned. "Well, that's no fun."

Heather softened. "You can pick up rocks and sticks, but no people things, okay? If you don't know what it is, don't touch it."

Lissa shrugged. "Okay."

Mother and daughter separated. Heather kept an eye on Lissa as she wandered into the brush. Satisfied that the girl was okay, Heather began scoping out her shot, tramping in the field to find an angle that satisfied her. When she settled on a location and began her setup, she saw Lissa dart behind the barn.

"Be careful back there," Heather shouted. Lissa called something in reply, which Heather couldn't hear.

She knelt down, looking through the camera's viewfinder, seeing the image in the frame take shape. The sun, behind her, was approaching the level of the tallest trees. Heather felt a jittery jumping in her stomach and a quiver in her fingers, the way she always did when she knew she was going to get exactly what she wanted. She took a few seconds to measure the light again and adjust the exposure. Then, ready at last, she squeezed the shutter, then again, and again, hearing the motorized whir as the film advanced each time.

"Mommy!" Lissa shouted from behind the barn. "Come look at this!"

"In a minute, sweetheart," Heather called back.

"Look, look, look," Lissa cried. She came running from behind the barn.

"Lissa, Mommy's busy now. What is it?"

"Look what I found. Isn't it pretty?"

Heather looked away from the camera long enough to notice Lissa holding a gold bracelet. "Where did you find that, sweetheart?"

"Behind the barn."

Heather frowned. "Didn't I tell you not to pick things up? People things?"

"Well, yes, but this is different," Lissa argued.

"How is it different?"

"It's not dangerous or anything. It's just a bracelet."

"Yes, and it's a bracelet that belongs to somebody else, who's probably going to come looking for it," Heather said. "Now put it back where you found it."

"You mean I can't keep it?"

Heather sighed. It was always this way with Lissa and jewelry. "No, you can't keep it. It belongs to someone else. Put it back right now."

"I don't think they'd want it anymore," Lissa complained. "It's all dirty."

"Well, then, why do you want it?"

Lissa didn't have an immediate answer. She thought about it. "I could clean it up," she said.

"And so could the person who owns it. Now no more arguing. Put it back."

Lissa gave up fighting and walked away unhappily, back toward the rear of the barn. Relieved, Heather turned her attention back to her camera. She looked through the viewfinder again.

Perfect.

Behind the barn, Lissa reluctantly put the bracelet back where she found it, which was in a muddy patch near the edge of the field. It didn't really seem fair, though. She didn't believe that anyone would be coming back for it.

"But Mommy said so," Lissa murmured to herself.

After putting it back, Lissa continued exploring. She already had a successful collection, including several interesting rocks and pretty blue flowers, all of which were stuffed in her coat pockets. She wasn't aware of time passing. It seemed only an instant later that she looked up and realized the sun had dipped below the trees.

Just then, she heard her mother calling. "Lissa, come on, it's time to go!"

For once, Lissa didn't need to be told twice. She started running out of the field toward the barn again. As she did, she had to pass right by the puddle, where the bracelet was.

"Lissa!" her mother called again.

Lissa thought about it. She really wanted that bracelet, and it was pretty careless of whoever owned it to leave it here. Besides, she could keep it and clean it up, and if the owner ever wanted it, she would be keeping it safe and sound. And she still thought maybe the person had simply thrown it away.

Mommy just didn't understand. She didn't like jewelry anyway.

Quickly, Lissa bent down, grabbed the bracelet, and crammed it deep into her pocket. "I'm coming," she called, and ran for the front of the barn.