The Burying Place

Chapter One

Jonathan Stride watched the knife fall to the floor.

It was a simple thing, the knife falling. His hand laid it on the counter wrong; it slipped off, blade pointed down. But in the past month, nothing had been simple for Stride. His eyes followed the downward path of the knife and just like that, he was falling, too.

He was no longer in the cabin where he had gone to recover from his injuries. He was over Superior Bay, hurtling through one hundred and twenty feet of air to the hard water below. He felt the speeding rush of his body as it became a missile; he endured the helplessness and fear of those three long seconds; he suffered the excruciating pain of impact, his bones breaking, the water choking off his oxygen, the lights around him extinguishing to blackness and cold. Everything he had tried to forget, he remembered.

Stride's eyes sprang open. He stood in the cabin's small kitchen with his palms flat on the granite counter. He felt on his neck for his pulse; his heart was racing. He wondered how long he had been gone this time. The knife stood straight up, its point jabbed into the wooden floor, but it wasn't vibrating like a tuning fork. He had been standing there frozen, caught up in the flashback, for a minute or more.

He grabbed the back of a chair to keep his knees from buckling. He sat down and propped his chin on his clenched fists. Gradually, the longer he sat, the more the memory retreated. His breathing slowed down. He studied the cabin and let his eyes linger on the furnishings id remind himself that he was far away from the bridge. The brown tweed sofa. The deer head trophy with its antlers and staring eyes on the wall. The 1920s photo of grimy workers in the iron mines. The oak door to the master bedroom, where Serena slept, unaware that he was awake for the tenth night in a row.

Stride pushed his hand back through his messy shock of black-and-gray hair. He got up, retrieved the knife from the floor, and opened the refrigerator to grab a half-full bottle of water. He shook a few Advil tablets into his hand and washed them down with a long swallow from the bottle. When he closed the refrigerator door, he caught sight of his face reflected in the black oven and didn't like what he saw. The skin on his craggy face was pale. His dark eyes were tired.

He favored his left leg as he walked into the great room. The fall from the bridge had broken his leg and left him in a cast for six weeks, and although he was walking on his own again, the lingering pain was a daily reminder that he wasn't fully healed. He drove into the nearby town of Grand Rapids for physical therapy four times a week. He used breathing exercises to restore full capacity to his lungs, which had collapsed as he hit the water. He was getting better, but slowly. What he hadn't admitted to Serena was that, as his physical injuries healed, his mental health had been deteriorating.

Two months ago, as he climbed into his Ford Expedition, he had dropped his keys. Out of nowhere, the sight and sound of the keys hitting the ground had triggered a storm of memories from his fall. The panic attack was debilitating, like a fire sucking the oxygen out of a room. He'd told himself that it was a one-time occurrence, but then it had happened again several days later. And then again.

Stride decided to get out of town in the last month before he returned to his job as Lieutenant in the Duluth Police. He and Serena had escaped to a getaway cabin outside the city to fish, hike, and make love. But they had done almost none of those things. Instead, he had tunneled deeper inside himself, pulling away from his job, his life, and even from Serena. Now he was supposed to go back to the Detective Bureau in another week, and he wasn't sure he was in any shape to do so.

Stride saw the red light flashing on his BlackBerry. A new email had arrived. He slid the phone out of its holster and saw a message from his Duluth partner, Maggie Bei. The subject line read: Number Four.

Stride stiffened with unease, because he knew what Maggie meant. When he opened the message, he saw a brief note: Get your ass back here soon, boss. We've got a body near the Lester River.

In the past month, three women had disappeared from their homes in the rural farmlands north of Duluth. Despite a massive search, no trace of them had been found, but the evidence suggested they had cach suffered a violent assault. Now the assailant had struck a fourth time and left behind a body.

Stride was frustrated that one of the most disturbing strings of crimes in the city in recent years had been laid at Maggie's feet while he struggled with his injuries in the woods more than an hour away. He trusted her instincts as an investigator, but they both preferred working as a team. Without him, she felt adrift. He felt the same way without her.

Maybe he should go back early. Tomorrow.

Or maybe not at all.

He didn't text her back. He never got the chance. Before he could key in a message, he saw headlights cut through the room. He looked Out the front window and saw an Itasca County Sheriff's vehicle parking in the damp ground near his Expedition. As he watched, the lights disappeared, and a woman in uniform climbed out and walked up to their front door.

He knew her. In her uniform, she could have passed for a beat cop, but Denise Sheridan was the Deputy Sheriff for Itasca County. She was as close as Stride had to a counterpart in the sprawling, sparsely populated countryside northwest of Duluth. He opened the door. It was a freezing night, and the wind scattered oak leaves on the hardwood floor as he waited.

'Hello, Stride,' Denise said, marching past him into the great space of the cabin without an invitation.

'Hello, Denise.'

She smelled of sweat and smoke. The knees of her trousers were wet, and her boots tracked mud across the floor. Denise did a quick survey of the cabin as he shut the door.

'What are you doing out here?' she asked, chewing on the stump of a fingernail. 'It took me twenty minutes to find you on these back roads.'

'Recovering,' he said.

'Yeah, I heard about your fall. Nice to see you're not dead.'

Denise didn't waste time on sympathy. For as long as he'd known her, she had been a no-nonsense cop, full of rough edges and discipline. She had recently turned forty, and her face had the spider's web of wrinkles at her eyes and lips to prove it. She was tall, only a couple of inches shorter than Stride, who reached six feet one in his bare feet. She wasn't heavy, but her muscular arms and legs stretched out the fabric of her uniform. Her brunette hair fell to the middle of her neck, and she kept it parted in the middle and shoved back behind her ears. She wasn't wearing make-up. Dark crescents sagged under both eyes.

'It's three in the morning,' Stride said.

Denise shrugged, as if the time didn't need any explanation or apology. 'Maggie told me where you were hiding.'

'Did she send you here to hijack me back to Duluth?' he replied. 'The guy struck on another farm tonight. He left a body this time.'

'I heard. No, it's not about that.'

'Then what?'

'It's a different case. I need your help.'

'I'm on leave, remember?' Stride said.

'I remember. I also remember we were partners once upon a time. I wouldn't ask if it wasn't important.'

That was true. Denise had started her police career in Duluth fifteen years earlier. She and Stride had spent four years working together after Stride was chosen to lead the Detective Bureau. Then Denise married her high school boyfriend and moved back home to Grand Rapids. The next cop Stride had hired to work at his side was Maggie Bei.

'Don't keep me in suspense,' Stride said. 'What's the case?'

'Look, get dressed, will you? There's no time.'

'If you want my help, you can tell me what the hell is going on,' Stride retorted.

Denise folded her arms in impatience. She cocked her head and frowned. 'A child is missing. A baby. Snatched right out of her room tonight, according to the father. I need you to take over the investigation.'

When Stride slipped inside his bedroom, he saw that Serena Dial was already half-dressed. She buttoned a burgundy flannel shirt over her bra and pushed a brush several times through her long black hair. She sat on the end of the bed and began to squeeze her long legs into a pair of jeans.

'What's up?' she asked.

'Denise Sheridan wants to pull me into one of her cases. Missing kid.'

'Why can't the locals handle it?'

'I don't know. We haven't gotten that far.'

Serena stood up, zipped up her jeans, and left the flannel shirt untucked. 'Couldn't sleep again?' she asked him.

'No.'

She stepped into leather boots and hooked dangling ruby earrings in both ears. Even though it was the middle of the night, in the middle of the northern Minnesota woods, Serena wasn't casual about her looks. She had spent most of her life in Las Vegas, and two years in Duluth hadn't softened her touch of glamour.

He shrugged a charcoal turtleneck over his chest and tucked it into his jeans. He rubbed his chin and decided to push an electric razor quickly around his face. When he was done, he retrieved a wool sport coat from the closet and squeezed into it.

Serena came up to Stride and kissed him on the cheek. In her heels, she was as tall as he was. 'This is a mistake,' she murmured.

'What?'

'You. Working. You need more time.'

'I didn't tell her I was in. I just said I'd listen.'

'Sure,' Serena said. Her voice was cool.

He opened the door and waited for Serena to go ahead of him into the living room, where Serena and Denise shook hands. He could see Denise sizing Serena up with suspicion. Most cops in the northland knew Serena because of her relationship with Stride, but that didn't give her a free pass with the local police. To them, she was a big city detective treading on small town turf.

'Maggie tells me you used to be a Vegas cop,' Denise said.

'I spent ten years in the Metro Police,' Serena replied with a cynical smile. She could read the hostility in Denise's face. 'Homicides, mostly,' she added.

Denise shoved her hands in her pockets, and her gun bulged from the holster in her belt. 'Good for you.'

'If I'm in, Serena's in,' Stride told her. 'I want her on the case with me.'

'My boys won't like it,' Denise replied sourly.

'I don't care. Do what you have to do. Serena's worked more abductions than either of us. She's in.'

Denise scowled but didn't protest. 'Fine. Whatever. Look, let's be quick about this. The clock is ticking. There's a surgeon named Marcus Glenn who lives out on Pokegama Lake. Rich doctor, big house. He called nine one one about two hours ago to report that his eleven-month-old daughter was gone. A couple uniforms reported to the scene, did a search of the house and found no trace of the girl, and called me.'

'The cops searched the scene?' Stride said unhappily.

'Yeah, I know, they probably screwed up the forensics. We don't get many cases like this, and these guys are twenty-three year olds working the graveyard shift.'

'Did they find anything?'

Denise shook her head. 'No. There was nothing disturbed in the house, nothing taken, no sign of forced entry at the doors or windows. Everything was locked and intact. The girl just vanished.'

'Does Marcus Glenn live alone?' Stride asked.

'No, he's married,' Denise snapped with surprising venom. 'His wife was in the Cities last night. They only have the one child.'

'So what happened?'

'Marcus says the baby was sleeping in her bedroom by seven o'clock. He checked on her and went to bed around ten. He got up about one, and she was gone. The baby was there, and then she wasn't. Or so he says.'

'Did the cops look for a ransom note?'

'They did, and they didn't find one. Marcus checked his email, too. Nothing. He's well-known around Grand Rapids, though. People know he has money.'

'What's the girl's name?' Serena interjected.

Denise softened and smiled for the first time. 'Callie.'

'Have you gathered all of her physical information? Photograph, weight, hair color, identifying features?' 'Yes, I've already got the BCA doing a statewide notice to the crime alert network. They're sending a team up here to run the scene in the morning.'

'Do you have her picture?' Serena asked.

Denise reached into the shirt pocket of her uniform. 'This is Callie.'

Serena held the picture in her hand, and Stride looked at it over her shoulder. Callie Glenn sat on a quilted blanket and looked at them with happy blue eyes from under a fluffy mop of blonde hair. Two white teeth peeked out from her smile. She was dressed in a white T-shirt and a pair of pink sweatpants, and she clutched one of her bare feet awkwardly in a pudgy hand.

'Sweet little girl,' Serena said. 'Is she walking?'

'She can walk a few steps if she's holding on to something.'

'What about climbing?'

'She hasn't climbed out of her crib yet, but even if she could, the window was closed and so was the bedroom door. She didn't wander off.'

'No offense, Denise,' Stride told her, 'but what does this have to do with us?'

'I'd like you to run the investigation.'

'Yes, but why give up the case?' Stride asked.

Denise snorted. 'Marcus raised a stink. He wanted me to call the Attorney General, the FBI, hell, he probably expected me to call the Governor. He wants me to give the case to the feds.'

'That's what parents always want,' Serena said.

'Yeah, but most parents don't have the clout in the northland that Marcus Glenn does. If I'm going to put someone else in charge, I'd rather it be someone I know and trust, and that's you, Stride. Anyway, not that I would ever say so to the bastard's face, but the fact is, I don't really have the resources or experience on my team to handle something like this. This is about the kid, not about my ego.'

'What are you leaving out?' Serena asked Denise.

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, you obviously know Marcus Glenn. There's something personal going on here.'

Denise took back the photograph of Callie Glenn from Serena and held it tenderly between her fingers. 'OK, there's a conflict, too. I can't take the lead on this one. It hits too close to home.' 'What's the conflict?' Serena asked.

'Callie is my niece,' Denise replied. 'Marcus Glenn is married to my sister.'

Chapter Two

Stride and Serena followed Denise through the dirt roads to Highway 2, which was the main artery connecting the lakeside city of Duluth with its closest inland neighbor to the northwest, Grand Rapids. The two towns were less than ninety minutes apart in good weather. At three in the morning, the highway was deserted, and the dense fog that had dogged the area for most of the night had dissipated as a dry front pushed southward from Canada. At high speed, it took them ten minutes to reach the heart of downtown Grand Rapids.

They passed the giant superstructure of the UPM mill, which served as the economic engine of the region, chewing up trees and pulping them into paper products. The other backbone of the town was tourism. In a state pockmarked with lakes, Grand Rapids played host to thousands of tourists who came to fish in the warmer weather or ski and snowmobile during the harsh winters. November was an in-between month, however, when the summer lake dwellers had gone home and the winter sports season was still a few weeks away.

Stride sailed through the green lights. Serena sat beside him, and he felt the tension simmering between them.

'So you want to tell me what's going on, Jonny?' she asked.

'With what?'

'With you.'

Stride kept his eyes on the road, but his hands tightened on the wheel. 'Nothing.'

'Nothing? You're not sleeping, we're not having sex, and you're constantly on edge.'

'I'm impatient,' Stride said. 'I'm going stir-crazy doing nothing. This case is exactly what I need.'

'Is that all it is?'

'That's all,' he insisted. 'I'm fine.'

Stride wasn't fooling her, but she let it go. He regretted his stubborn denials, because that wasn't what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her about the panic attacks. He wanted to admit that he was scared of feeling dead, without any ambition or desire. But he hid behind the lie that nothing was wrong.

Ahead of them, Denise turned her Jeep left off the highway and crossed the bridge on Sugar Lake Road. Stride followed. Almost immediately, they found themselves away from the developed land. They drove for another mile and then turned left again on to County Road 76, which tracked the northeastern border of Pokegama Lake. Stride passed dirt roads carved into the forest which led to expensive homes bordering the water. It was a desolate area.

'This isn't good,' he said. 'It would be easy for someone to come and go here without being seen.'

They turned left on Chisholm Trail and headed toward the lake. The road stretched for half a mile and curved sharply in front of a sprawling white fence. Through a gap in the fence, he saw a circular driveway where five police vehicles were parked with their light bars flashing. Cones of white light waved like lasers as uniformed men hunted in the woods and grass.

'Oh, son of a bitch,' he muttered.

He parked, and they joined Denise Sheridan at the entrance to the driveway. Stride jerked a thumb at the cops on the property.

'What the hell are these guys doing?' Stride barked. 'You've got them trampling the crime scene.'

Denise folded her arms over her chest in annoyance. 'We're trying to find a missing baby. Look, Stride, the BCA techs will be here in the morning, but I made the call to run my people around the grounds now. It's a long shot to think that someone dumped her in the woods, but I'm not about to miss that chance, OK? The county attorney may have my ass when we try to prosecute whoever did this, but right now, I'm more concerned with anything that might help us find Callie.'

Serena interjected. 'Have you interviewed the neighbors along the road?'

'We woke them all up, and we're working our way up and down the lake. So far, nobody saw any vehicles here after ten o'clock or spotted any boats on the water. It was a perfect night to make a snatch and not be seen. Assuming that's what happened.'

'What does that mean?' Stride asked.

'Nothing. This is your show now, not mine. Just tell me where my guys can help.'

'We need to set up a command center over at your office,' Stride told her. 'We'll need to coordinate media queries, answer the tip line, feed leads for follow-up, coordinate with the FBI, NCMEC, the Wetterling Foundation, etc. This is going to take a lot of manpower.'

'I can get people from the neighboring counties. We'll get plenty of support.'

Stride studied the nearby homes, which were ablaze with light. 'You realize this is going to be a media circus, right?'

'Hey, I was here when the damn ruby slippers got stolen from the Judy Garland Museum,' Denise said. 'That was a circus.'

'We need to talk to Marcus Glenn,' Serena added.

'Fine. Talk to him.'

'You should be there too.'

'No way,' Denise snapped. 'He won't want me there, and I don't want to be there. We can talk after you're done.'

'You don't like Marcus, do you?' Serena asked.

Denise shrugged. 'He's my brother-in-law. What does that tell you?'

Marcus Glenn was a surgeon and, in Stride's mind, that said it all.

He wasn't yet forty years old, which meant he had the arrogance of his own accomplishments but hadn't aged enough to confront his imperfections. He wore a frown of impatience and irritation as he paced the sunroom of his estate. He was extremely tall, and his long legs were lean and muscled. He had jet-black hair, cut extremely short, and thick eyebrows. His face was angular, hard-edged and taut, without the sag of a double chin. He wore a burgundy golf shirt with a logo from the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas, pleated gray slacks, and black dress shoes. He had large hands, in which he gracefully moved two cat's eye marbles above and below his knuckles like a magician. Behind him, a glass wall of windows framed him against the black night and the back lawn that led to the lake.

'Dr Glenn,' Stride said, extending his hand. 'My name is Jonathan Stride. This is Serena Dial.'

Glenn declined to shake hands and instead slid his hands and the two marbles into the pockets of his slacks. 'Yes, I know who you are. Denise called me. I'm sure you're both qualified and capable, but I have to tell you I would be more comfortable if this investigation were being led by the FBI.'

'I understand how you feel,' Stride replied. 'Obviously, we'll be coordinating our efforts with the resources of federal law enforcement wherever it can help us.'

Glenn cut him off. 'Yes, yes, coordination, consultation, I'm sure you all send wonderful memos to each other. I'm talking about expertise. My patients don't come to me because I'm capable. They come to me because I'm the best. I want the best.''

'I know exactly what you're saying, Dr Glenn,' Stride told him. 'The truth is that we're the best people to handle this situation, not the federal authorities. You want investigators who know the terrain and have relationships throughout the state law enforcement community. The FBI would have to fly in special agents who are unfamiliar with the area, the people, the police, the media, the nonprofit resources, everything we need to find Callie and bring her home safely. These first few hours are very important. We're here, we're good, and we want to help.'

Glenn rubbed the toe of his dress shoe on one of the marble tiles on the sunroom floor. 'Yes, all right. I apologize for my attitude, detectives. I do appreciate your help. It's been a long night.'

'Of course,' Stride said.

He and Serena took seats next to each other on a leather sofa on the wall facing the house. Glenn sat and crossed his legs in an armchair by the windows. He drummed his fingers on his knee.

Serena picked up a framed photograph from an end table beside the sofa. The picture showed an attractive woman in her early thirties, with flowing blonde hair and an athletic build. Her blue eyes stared beyond the camera, caught in a reflective moment. When Stride studied her features, he could see a resemblance to Denise Sheridan, but God had played favorites between the sisters. Denise had a face you could look at and then put out of your mind. Her younger sister was memorably gorgeous.

'Is this your wife?' Serena asked.

Glenn nodded absently. 'Yes, that's Valerie.'

'She's beautiful.'

'Thank you,' he replied.

Stride thought that was what you said if someone complimented your choice of wine, or your choice of decor. He looked around at the sunroom and realized that Glenn collected beautiful things. Eastern European crystal. French wines. Brandenburg photographs. A trophy wife. Those were the perks of his profession.

'Where is your wife?' Serena asked. 'Does she know that Callie has disappeared?'

'Yes, of course, I called her immediately. She was staying overnight in the Cities because of the fog, but I'm having a driver bring her home. She'll be here shortly.'

'I'd like to clarify some personal information, Dr Glenn,' Stride said.

'Such as?'

'Can you tell us about your job?'

'I'm an orthopedic surgeon specializing in knee repair and replacement,' Glenn replied. 'I do surgeries three days a week at St Mary's in Duluth. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Naturally I'm cancelling today's appointments.'

'Were you home all day Thursday?'

'I was.'

Serena smiled at Glenn. 'You have a lovely home.'

'Translation: am I rich? Yes. Between my income and my investments, I make well over two million dollars a year and have done so for nearly a decade. I've lived in Grand Rapids most of my life, so this would be no surprise to anyone in town who's aware of who I am, which is pretty much everyone. Please don't feel the need to sugar-coat your questions, detectives. If you want to know something, ask.' 'Why don't you tell us what happened this evening?' Stride said. 'I wish there was more to tell. I put Callie down for the night after dinner. I was in my study for the rest of the evening reading medical journals. At ten o'clock, I checked on her and then went to bed myself. When I got up at one in the morning and went to her bedroom, she was gone.'

'Were you sleeping between ten and one?' Serena asked.

'I was asleep by ten thirty, so whoever took her must have done so after that. I didn't hear anything.'

'Do you have a security system?' Stride asked.

'Of course, but I don't activate it when I'm home.'

'Who has keys to the house?'

'Valerie and I do.' Glenn's stoic calm fractured for a moment. 'Oh, and Migdalia has a key, too.'

'Migdalia?'

'Migdalia Vega. She's our babysitter.'

'Where can we find her?' Stride asked.

'She lives behind the old cemetery in Sago. She's a reliable girl. I can vouch for her character.'

'We'll still need to talk to her.' Stride added, 'The police officers who searched the house didn't find any signs of forced entry. Do you have any idea how someone was able to get inside?'

'I don't, I'm sorry.'

'Has anyone contacted you to say that they have Callie?' Serena asked. 'No.'

'Sometimes parents don't like to admit it when they hear from a kidnapper,' Serena told him. 'A ransom note may tell you not to inform the police, or a caller may threaten a hostage's life if you involve the authorities. Even in those situations, it's far safer if you do tell us.'

'I understand, but there has been no contact of any kind.'

'With your permission, we'll put a tap on your phone in case you do receive calls,' Stride said.

Glenn hesitated. 'Is that necessary?'

'Given your financial situation, we have to consider kidnapping a real possibility,' Stride told him. 'Perhaps even a probability. In those cases, you'll generally receive some kind of demand for ransom. A phone trace is essential.' 'Yes, I suppose so. I'm thinking of privacy considerations for my patients. There are confidentiality issues. I'll have to find a way to deal with it, but that's my problem.'

'We'll have the trace installed in a matter of hours,' Stride said. 'Speaking of your patients, have there been any issues that could have left a patient or a family member holding a grudge?'

Glenn's mouth turned upward in an ironic smile. 'You mean, did I kill someone on the operating table? No.'

'Accidents and misunderstandings do happen.'

'True enough, but I'm very good at what I do. I've never been sued, which is something of a miracle in my profession.'

Stride nodded. 'Have you received any threats? Or has your wife?'

'No.'

'Have you ever felt you were being followed? Or have you noticed strangers watching you at home or at work?'

'No, nothing like that. However, there's a mobile home park on the lake, and we do get some unsavory types staying there. I have a large boat, and no doubt many of them have seen me, Valerie, and Callie on the water.'

Stride nodded but didn't reply. He had seen it before — rich victims pointing a finger down the class ladder. Grand Rapids, like Duluth and other northern Minnesota towns, suffered from an uncomfortable gap between rich and poor. There were wealthy professionals and transplants from Minneapolis who could afford seven-figure lake homes. On the other end of the spectrum was a much larger community of mill workers, waitresses, road crews, and farmers who struggled with the spiking prices for food, gas, and healthcare.

'How old is Callie?' Serena asked.

'Ten and a half months. She was a New Year's baby, born shortly after midnight.'

'Here in Grand Rapids?'

'No, at St Mary's in Duluth. I wanted Valerie to give birth at my own hospital.'

'What kind of baby is Callie?' Serena asked. 'How does she act with strangers?'

'Callie has always been a mellow girl,' Glenn replied. 'She'll behave for just about anyone who smiles at her. In this circumstance, I guess that's unfortunate.'

'Callie is your only child, is that right?'

'Yes.'

'How long have you and Valerie been married?'

'Eight years,' Glenn replied.

'Having a baby can turn your life upside down,' Serena said. 'Has it caused any problems for the two of you?'

Glenn stared at her in stony silence. 'No.'

'How about your wife? Some women struggle with depression after having a child.'

'Not Valerie. She was overjoyed. She'd been trying to conceive for years.'

'I'll want to talk to your wife as soon as she's home,' Serena told him.

'I understand.' Glenn stood up from the chair and again shoved his hands in his pockets. 'Please keep me posted on the investigation, detectives.'

Serena nodded. 'Either Lieutenant Stride or I will be in touch every few hours to give you a status report on the investigation, and you can reach us on our cell phones whenever you need us.'

'Thank you. How long will you need to have police officers tramping around my house?'

'I'm afraid it will be several more hours,' Stride said. 'We'll have a forensics team here from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St Paul at daylight. They'll do an exhaustive search of the property inside and out.'

'Hasn't that already been done?'

'These are experts in handling crime scenes,' Stride explained. 'They'll be looking for trace evidence from any strangers who might have been in Callie's room. Or other evidence to suggest how an intruder came and went.'

Stride didn't mention what else they would be looking for. In the crib. On the walls. In the sinks. Under the carpet.

Blood.

Chapter Three

Stride found Denise Sheridan alone by the shore of Pokegama Lake on the southern edge of the Glenn property. The white two-story estate shone brightly on the slope behind them, thanks to the lights that glowed in every room of the house. The vast backyard was scattered with birch trees and a deep layer of dead leaves.

Denise smoked a cigarette. When she saw Stride approaching her down the hill, she took a last drag and flicked it into the water.

'Sorry,' she said. 'I don't need a lecture right now, OK? About crime scenes or death sticks.'

Stride wanted a cigarette himself, but he didn't say so. He stood silently next to Denise with his hands in his pockets. Out on the lake, he saw the shore of a small island lined with cedars. The water was choppy and white-capped, agitated by the cold breeze. He noted that the dock for the Glenn boats had already been pulled from the water for the season. Any intruder who approached the house from the lake would have found it difficult to land in the shallows.

'So how are you, Denise?' Stride asked.

She shrugged. 'Me? Life goes on.'

'I meant to send you a card last year when you had the baby. That makes four, doesn’t it?'

'Yeah, I pop them out like a big furry rabbit,' Denise cracked.

'How old are they?' Stride asked.

'Ten, seven, five, and eighteen months. I thought I was done after number three, but Tom had other ideas. It's not like we ever have sex anymore, but he managed to hit the bullseye the one time I got drunk.'

She extracted the cigarette pack from her shirt pocket and lit another. Tilting her head up, she blew smoke into the air. 'Not that I want to send any of them back. Although, God, there are days.'

'Managing two jobs and four kids?' Stride told her. 'I'm not sure how the two of you do it.'

'Neither am I.' Denise glanced behind her at the spread of the Glenn home. 'Sometimes it pisses me off. I go fishing on Pokeg, and I see all these fucking mansions on the shore. Lawyers, doctors, CEOs, rich wives who winter in Scottsdale. And I'm sitting there worried about the gas mileage on my truck.'

'Sorry,' Stride said.

'Yeah, look at me, the green-eyed monster.' Denise threw away her second cigarette rather than smoking it. 'I suppose this is the wrong time to say so, but you look like shit, Stride.'

'Thanks.'

'It's none of my business, except I just handed you a big case. Was I wrong to get you involved?'

'I'm fine,' he said. It was the same lie he'd told to Serena.

'Did you have an audience with King Marcus?' Denise asked. 'I'll bet he wouldn't shake hands with you.'

'You're right. What's that about?'

'It's a surgeon thing. He doesn’t want to risk injuring his hands. I think he's germophobic, too.'

'Tell me what you know about him,' Stride said.

'Marcus? There are guys who are studs in high school, quarterback of the football team, and then twenty years later they're fat slobs working in a gas station. Well, Marcus is still the stud.'

'Have you known him a long time?'

'Sure, he grew up in this area. He was a couple years behind me and Tom in school. He's rich now, but he didn't come from money. His parents owned a farm near Sago. I knew his dad. He was a son of a bitch; nothing Marcus did was ever good enough. Pretty ironic. Marcus was this tall, athletic kid, took the Grand Rapids hockey team to the state championship twice. I mean, you do that around here, and you are a star. But not at home.'

'I'm surprised he stayed around the area,' Stride said.

'Yeah, well, Marcus is a Minnesota boy. Went to the U of M and did several years at Mayo before coming home. I think he likes being the big fish in a small pond up here. Being this hotshot surgeon. All the girls coming after him.'

Stride wondered how much Denise's opinion had to do with Marcus and how much it had to do with her sister, marrying him and living in their estate on the lake. 'Valerie's stunning,' he said. 'I saw a photograph.'

Denise kicked at the dirt. 'Oh, yeah. Valerie got the good genes.'

'That's not what I meant.'

'It doesn’t matter. You're not telling me anything I haven't dealt with my whole life. I won't say it doesn’t get old hearing how gorgeous my baby sister is all the time. And yes, you don't have to say it, I'm envious. Who wouldn't be?'

'How did she hook up with Marcus Glenn?'

Denise laughed sourly. 'Valerie never wanted anything but Marcus Glenn. She had a crush on him back when she was ten years old and he was a teenager on the hockey team. She had guys drooling after her throughout high school and college, but she'd made up her mind that Marcus was the only one she wanted. When he came back to Grand Rapids, she was the hostess at the country club, and that's when he noticed her. It took her another couple years to land him, but my sister is nothing if not determined.'

'You make it sound mercenary.'

'Hey, if you're beautiful, money is your birthright. That's life. I don't think Valerie went after Marcus because he had money. That was just an expectation. She was always going to have the lakeside mansion. Me, I've got the shack by the river, the mortgage, all the crap called real life.'

Stride let the silence stretch out between them. Then he said softly, 'Denise, her child is missing. Maybe you should cut her some slack.'

'I know. You're right. Look, I try not to let it eat me up, but some-limes it does, OK? You wanted the whole truth. I'd like to tell you I'm a bigger person, but Valerie's always been the golden child, and I've been jealous of her my whole life. Hell, I'm sitting at home with four kids, and now all I'm going to hear is, poor Valerie. Does that make me petty? OK, I'm petty.'

'What's this really about, Denise?' Stride asked. 'I don't think it's lust sibling rivalry.'

'I'm sorry,' she said, wiping her eyes. 'I'm scared for Callie. And yeah, I'm angry, too. I warned Valerie that something like this might happen, and she didn't listen to me.'

'Something like what?' he asked.

'I told her not to leave Callie alone with Marcus,' Denise said. 'Ah.'

Stride wasn't surprised. Denise's body language had been eloquent since she showed up at the cabin. He had simply been waiting for her to say it out loud: this wasn't a kidnapping.

'I can't prove it,' she went on. 'I know that instincts are crap compared to evidence, but this is what my gut tells me.'

'Instincts count for a lot with me,' Stride said. 'Fill me in.'

Denise crouched down and dipped her hand in the lake and rubbed her wet fingers together. She got up and wiped her hand on her sleeve. 'He's arrogant, and I know being arrogant isn't a crime. But it's not just that.'

'Then what?'

'I know him,' Denise said. 'Valerie and Marcus have been married for eight years. She figured out pretty quickly that winning the prize isn't as exciting as going after it.'

'Meaning what?'

'Meaning Marcus is exactly what you see. A cold prick. He doesn’t love anything or anyone except himself.'

'He's a bad husband,' Stride said. 'That's still not a crime.'

'Maybe so, but Marcus never wanted kids. He was clear about that with Valerie before they got married. No kids. He wanted money, work, travel, all the perks, and nothing to tie him down.'

'Why did Valerie agree to marry him if that's not what she wanted?'

'Oh, please. Valerie wanted Marcus Glenn, and that's all she was thinking about. She convinced herself she didn't want kids. She figured having Marcus was enough. She sobered up real fast about that.'

'So what changed?'

Denise's face darkened. 'About five years ago, Valerie swallowed down half a bottle of aspirin. It was a close call. We nearly lost her.'

'What prompted it?' Stride asked.

'If you ask me, she was so lonely she couldn't handle it anymore. That's when she told Marcus she wanted a baby.'

'What did he say?'

'Your wife's in the hospital promising to kill herself if she doesn’t get a child? He said yes.'

'So maybe Marcus changed his mind about kids,' Stride said.

'No, nothing changed. Valerie didn't get pregnant for almost three years. I was worried she was going to go over the edge again. But Marcus? He didn't care. He could barely contain his annoyance when Valerie finally got pregnant. After Callie was born, he hardly touched that girl. It was like she was an unwanted house guest who was messing up his perfect life.'

'He could have divorced Valerie.'

'Yeah, and how much of his fortune would that cost him?'

Stride shook his head. 'You're not giving me anything, Denise. This is all smoke and no fire.'

'I know. All I'm saying is that you need to take a cold, hard look at Marcus Glenn. I'm a cop and a mother, and I'm telling you, there was something not right about his relationship with his daughter. It chilled me whenever I saw them together, because there was nothing. No love. No interest. No passion. Valerie closed her eyes to it. Now here we are.'

'Do you honestly think Glenn could have harmed his own child?' Stride asked. 'Is that what you're saying?'

'I think he's capable of anything. I think this whole thing doesn’t add up. Someone breaks into the house without leaving a trace, takes the baby, and then vanishes? Come on. It makes no sense.'

'Children get abducted all the time,' he told her.

'Of course they do. But they get grabbed off the street, not whisked out of their lakeside mansions in the middle of the night. Look, I can't prove it, and it's not my case anyway. I'm just telling you what I think in my heart of hearts. OK?'

'I understand.'

'There's one other thing,' Denise added. 'Marcus said he was alone tonight, right? Just him and Callie?'

'That's right.'

'Well, if that's true, it would be the first time ever. Valerie took care of her. The babysitter took care of her. Not Marcus. No way. Don't you find it a little odd that Marcus is alone with the baby for one night, and she disappears?'

Chapter Four

Maggie Bei parked her yellow Avalanche on the outskirts of the crime scene near the Lester River. She could see the abandoned cinder block dairy illuminated under the light poles erected by her team, and she watched her evidence technicians pawing through the grass surrounding the building and in the woods on the other side of the rapids. The crew from the medical examiner's office had a more gruesome task. Two of them, in white scrubs, attended to the dead body in the field.

The fourth victim.

Maggie steeled herself to join them. For years, she had built up an immunity to the grisly discoveries of her job, but the assaults in the previous month, one after another, had tested her objectivity. She knew she could have been any one of these women. It was too easy to imagine herself on the ground, lifeless and humiliated.

Fingernails tapped on the passenger window of her truck, interrupting her thoughts. Maggie saw the round, cherubic face of Max Guppo, who waved at her and pulled open the door. She held up her hand, stopping him in his tracks.

'Freeze! What did you have for dinner?'

Guppo thought back. 'Chili con carne.'

'Shit, what are you trying to do to me? Don't you dare get in this truck.'

'I take Beano now,' Guppo protested. 'The commercials all say, "Take Beano before, there'll be no gas."'

'Beano never met your digestive tract,' Maggie told him. 'Stay where you are, I'm getting out.'

Maggie hopped down from her truck. She cursed as her square-heeled boots landed in the wet dirt and splashed mud on to her jeans. She slammed the door and bent over with her hands on her knees and sneezed. She sniffled, yanked a tissue from her pocket, and blew her nose loudly.

'You got a cold?' Guppo asked, coming around the front of the Avalanche.

'Yeah. Just what I need. I'm hopped up on vitamin C.'

Guppo pointed at the tiny diamond stud in Maggie's nose. 'Doesn't that hurt when you sneeze?'

'I shot it halfway across the room once.'

'So why not take it out?'

'Because I like how it looks.' Maggie whiffed the air as Guppo came closer. 'Did you think I wouldn't smell that?'

'Sorry.'

'Chili con came,' Maggie told him. 'Unbelievable.'

The two of them headed across the Strand Avenue bridge over the river. They were an odd couple. Max Guppo was in his mid-fifties and had led crime scene investigations for the Detective Bureau for as long as Maggie could remember. He was only four inches taller than Maggie, who barely made it to five feet tall in her boots, and he waddled through life with cannon-sized thighs and an oversized snow tire permanently anchored around his waist. He had worn the same three suits — brown, brown, and blue — on any given day for the past decade. Maggie, by contrast, was a diminutive Chinese cop who snagged Hollister fashions off the racks for teenage girls. The closer she got to forty years old, the more she dressed as if she were twenty-five.

As they neared the dirt road that led to the white dairy building, Maggie pointed her thumb and forefinger like a pistol at Kasey Kennedy, who sat in the rear of a patrol car twenty yards away. 'How's the kid?' she asked Guppo.

'She's shaken up.'

Maggie nodded. Kasey had the door of the squad car open and sat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. She wore a baggy blue sweatshirt and ripped jeans. She stared into space with eyes that were nervous and shell-shocked.

'Wow, check out that red hair,' Maggie said. 'Is that natural?'

'Beats me,' Guppo replied, smoothing down the strands of his comb-over.

'No way that's natural,' she continued. 'Did Kasey give you a statement?'

'Yeah. She thinks you're going to fire her.'

'I'll calm her down,' Maggie said. 'Have you pieced together how this all happened?'

Guppo nodded. He led Maggie along the shore by the river. The water tumbled frantically over the rocks in the narrows and then calmed as the valley widened below the highway bridge. Maggie tested the ground with her boot. It was soft.

'The three of them came across the river here,' Guppo said, pointing to the spot where the current was fastest. Twenty feet separated them from the opposite bank that led sharply uphill to the dead woman's farmhouse. 'The victim, the perp, and then our girl Kasey.'

'They came down that hill?' Maggie asked.

'Yeah. Kasey took a header.' He dug in his pocket. 'Here's her badge. We found it in the weeds on the other side.'

'Then what?'

Guppo led Maggie up a shallow slope under the evergreen trees, around the rear wall of the cinder block dairy, and into the small grassy field behind it. Twenty feet away, the medical examiner's team was zipping the woman's body into a black vinyl bag.

'Hold on a minute, guys,' Maggie called. She turned back to Guppo. 'Kasey confronted them here?'

'Right. The perp held the vic with a garrote around her neck. Kasey took a shot. Pretty ballsy move, if you ask me. It was foggy, and she didn't have a good angle on the killer.'

'She missed?' Maggie asked.

'Yeah, but the perp got the message, dropped the vic, and ran. Kasey says she took one more shot and missed again. He sprinted toward the highway and disappeared. We're still trying to figure out where he parked his car, in case he left anything behind. Kasey tried to revive the victim, but she was already gone. Two minutes earlier, and she would have been the big hero.'

Maggie shoved her hands in her pockets and marched over to the dead woman in the wet grass. 'What's her name?'

'Susan Krauss.'

'Married?'

'Divorced. She's got a teenage son in Florida with his dad.'

'What did she do for a living?'

'She was a personal trainer at the Y.'

'Have we found anything that ties her to the other victims?'

'Not yet.'

Maggie pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and stared at the body of Susan Krauss. She looked violated, the way murder victims do, probed by the technicians in white, stripped of dignity by the men who hunted through the grass around her as if she weren't even there. Her skin leached of color. Her hair wet and messy. Her clothes ripped, exposing most of her private parts. Her neck, slashed open and practically severed by the wire that had killed her.

'OK,' Maggie said quietly, nodding to the medical techs. 'You can take her.'

''Susan Krauss. Number four.

The first was Elisa Reed in mid-October. Single, never married, twenty-three years old, a first-year teacher. She'd lived with her parents on a farm three miles north of here. Elisa vanished on a Tuesday night while her parents were vacationing in San Francisco. They'd called her that night, but she didn't answer, and when they hadn't reached her by Thursday, they decided to call the police. There was no evidence of Elisa in her bedroom, other than traces of blood on the sheets and a smashed alarm clock on the floor.

Two weeks later, on Halloween night, Trisha Grange disappeared, becoming the second victim. Thirty-five years old, married seven years, mother of two. Her husband Troy had taken their oldest daughter to a Halloween party, leaving Trisha at home with the baby. When he returned at ten o'clock, the baby was sleeping, but Trisha was gone. They'd found no blood this time, but they found Trisha's shoe in the field behind their farmhouse and strands of her blonde hair caught in the screen door that led outside. She'd lived seven miles northeast of Susan Krauss.

The third victim had disappeared only six days ago. Another farm, barely a mile away. Barbara Berquist was a widow in her early fifties who didn't show up to her job at the Duluth Library. That was enough to trigger suspicion, given the two earlier disappearances, and Maggie and her team had checked out the farm without waiting forty-eight hours to see if Barbara showed up somewhere else, alive and well. They'd found blood again. Lots of it. But no body.

'What did you find inside the house?' Maggie asked.

'We think the perp came in through a basement window with a broken lock. It looks like Susan Krauss was awake and in her bathroom when this guy made his move. That's probably what bought her a few more minutes. There's blood and evidence of a struggle near the doorway. Looks like she got away from him and bolted outside.'

'OK, keep at it. Inside and out. This guy's plan got screwed up this time, so maybe he made a mistake during the chase.' She added, 'I better go talk to the redhead.'

'Hang on,' Guppo replied.

He peered over her shoulder at the whitewashed stone wall of the dairy. He crouched down with a heavy breath, studying the ground where Susan Krauss now lay in her body bag, and then his eyes traveled up to a high section of the dairy wall.

'Anyone got a step stool?' he called.

One of the evidence technicians produced a stool from the trunk of his car, and Guppo opened it next to the wall. He climbed up the two steps, and Maggie winced, hearing the metal joints groan under Guppo's weight.

'Shine a light up here, OK?'

Maggie obliged, illuminating a peeling section of white paint in front of his face. Guppo slid a magnifying glass out from his pants pocket and squinted through it. When he climbed down, his face was flushed, and he was smiling.

'Spatter,' he said.

'From the victim?' Maggie asked.

'Based on the angle and location? I don't think so. I think Kasey winged a piece of our killer after all.'

Kasey Kennedy looked young, which was a reminder to Maggie that she wasn't so young herself anymore. Kasey was twenty-six and had served on the force for three years. Maggie recalled seeing her in City Hall, but that was only because Kasey and her neon-red hair were hard to miss. They had never met. Kasey's features were plain, but she had fresh, freckled skin and a body that was skinny and toned, and the overall result was attractive. She was an odd combination of girlish and intense. Her blue eyes looked lost. Her left knee bounced up and down nervously, and her fingernails were cotton-candy pink. She looked like a naive kid in need of rescue, and yet this kid had nearly chased down a killer on her own in the middle of the fog. Maggie couldn't accuse her of lacking courage.

'Here,' she said, handing Kasey the badge that Guppo's team had found near the river.

'Oh, you found it. Thanks.'

'How are you doing, Kasey?' Maggie asked.

The young cop hung her head and squeezed her thumbs into the pockets of her jeans. 'I'm sorry, Sergeant. I screwed everything up.'

'Call me Maggie. And you didn't screw up.'

Maggie told her about the blood trace that Guppo had found on the dairy wall. 'The best case is, we get a hit in the DNA database and we ID this guy. Even if he's not in the database, we can tie him directly to the murder scene when we do nail him. Thanks to you.'

'Except the real best case would have been for me to kill the bastard, right?' Kasey said. 'I let him get away.' Her voice had a lilting pitch that could have come from the mouth of a teenager. It sounded strange to hear her talking about killing someone. She should have been gossiping about boys and sharing make-up advice.

'Don't second-guess yourself,' Maggie told her. 'It took guts to do what you did. You could have been the one to wind up dead here. You know that, right? You took a hell of a risk.'

'I know.'

'Why didn't you call for backup?'

Kasey rolled her eyes. 'No cell phone.'

'Now that was stupid.'

'Yeah, I was charging the battery in my bathroom, and I forgot to grab it before I left. I had to drive home to call nine one one, and then I came right back here.'

'Do you live nearby?'

Kasey nodded. 'I'm just a couple miles away, but I could have been on the moon tonight. I had no idea where I was.'

Maggie leaned on the open door of the squad car. 'So how'd you wind up in the middle of this mess?'

'I got lost,' Kasey told her. 'I drove up to Hibbing after work to hang out with a girlfriend, and I got a late start coming home. I ran smack into the fog and made a wrong turn.'

'What can you tell me about the killer? You're the only one who's seen him.'

'I wish I could tell you more. I never saw his face. He was tall.'

'Tall as in how tall?'

'Over six feet, definitely. Not heavy. He was in good shape. He had dark eyes, too. Deep brown, almost black.'

'Caucasian?'

'Yes.'

'What about the mask?' Maggie pointed two fingers at her eyes. 'One eyehole across both eyes or two separate holes?'

'Just one hole for both eyes. There was no hole for the mouth.'

'So you could see the bridge of his nose, too?'

'I guess so.'

'Did you notice any other distinguishing features? Moles, freckles, scars, that sort of thing? Did you see any hair coming down from his forehead?'

'I'm sorry, it happened too fast. I didn't notice anything.'

'Would you recognize him without the mask if you saw him again?'

Kasey shook her head. 'I don't think so.'

'What else?' Maggie asked.

'That's all I saw.'

'What was he like?'

'I don't understand.'

'How did he behave? Was he scared? We need to get inside this guy's head.'

Kasey scrunched her pale lips together. Her chest swelled as she took a deep breath. 'He wasn't scared,' she said.

'No?'

'No, he was aggressive. Confident. When I looked at him through the car window, it was like he was smiling at me. Then later, by the dairy, he laughed. He didn't think I would shoot. He was sure of himself.'

'He spoke to you?' Maggie asked.

'Yeah, he did.'

'What did he say?'

'He said he would let the woman go if I dropped the gun. And he taunted me, you know, that I wouldn't shoot because I might hit her.'

'Describe his voice,' Maggie said.

'Uh, it was cocky. Arrogant.'

'Did he have any kind of accent? Was there anything distinguishing about his speech pattern?'

'No. Nothing like that.'

'Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?'

'I might,' Kasey told her. 'Yeah, I think I probably would.'

'That's excellent.' Maggie squeezed the young cop's shoulder. She could see Kasey's eyes blinking shut. 'Listen, why don't you go home now? Get some sleep.'

Maggie turned away, but Kasey grabbed her forearm. 'Sergeant? There's something else. I want to get in on this case.'

'What do you mean?'

'I want to help on the investigation.'

'I appreciate the offer, but this isn't your beat,' Maggie replied.

'I know that, but this guy murdered that woman right in front of my eyes.'

Maggie crouched down. Kasey stared back at her with fierce blue eyes. The cop's wet red hair was a curly mess on her head. She was definitely young. Way too young. Maggie had worked with cops like Kasey for years; they were full of enthusiasm, but they made immature mistakes. You had to take the bad with the good.

'Are you married, Kasey?' she asked.

'Yes.'

'What's your husband like?'

Kasey smiled. 'Oh, Bruce is a big bear of a guy. Looks like a blond lumberjack.'

'What does he do?'

'Right now? He's not working. We moved here when Bruce got a job in Two Harbors, but he got laid off. So mostly he does conspiracy research. That's his hobby.'

'What, like aliens shot down the space shuttle?'

'It's mostly who shot JFK,' Kasey said. 'Bruce is like a cousin of a cousin of a cousin of a cousin. He takes it personally.'

'Do you have kids?' Maggie asked.

Kasey nodded and held up one finger. 'Jack.'

'Jack Kennedy?'

'It was Bruce's idea.'

'Well, good for you. You've got a family. Don't let what happened here tonight get in the way.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean, let it go. You stumbled into the middle of something horrible, and you did your best to stop it. Go back to your life, and let us take it the rest of the way.'

'I really want to help,' Kasey insisted. 'Whatever it is, even if it's gopher shit, I want to be part of the investigation.'

Maggie stood up and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. A cough rattled in her throat. 'Look, I've got to meet with Troy Grange tomorrow. He's the husband of the second victim, and he's a friend of mine. I need to talk to him about what happened here. Why don't you come with me?'

'Really? Yes, absolutely. Thank you.'

'It won't be easy, Kasey. Before tonight, we didn't know what this son of a bitch was up to, but now we have a body. No matter what we tell him, Troy Grange is going to realize that his wife is probably dead. There's nothing harder than that.'

'I understand. I really appreciate it.'

Maggie patted Kasey's knee. 'Go home, go to sleep.'

'I will.'

'One last question.'

'What is it?' Kasey asked.

'How do you get your hair that color? What do you use?'

'It's natural.'

'I'll be damned,' Maggie said.

Chapter Five

Serena Dial walked down Chisholm Trail from the highway toward the Glenn estate on Friday afternoon. The street was unnaturally dark. Light didn't easily penetrate the wooded lots of the lake homes, and the fall sky was a bed of charcoal. She smelled snow in the cold air and heard the honking of geese overhead flying southward. The dead street around her spoke to the waning season. Carved jack-o-lanterns grew moldy and soft on porch railings. The trees were mostly bare.

She imagined the same street at midnight the previous day. In the fog. In the dark. Stride was right; someone could have come and gone easily without being noticed and without leaving a trail.

Assuming someone had been there at all.

So far, there was no conclusive evidence to prove or disprove that an intruder had entered the Glenn house. The forensics team from the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension in St Paul had arrived at five in the morning and spent seven hours at the scene, without much to show for their efforts. It would be weeks before they sifted through the fingerprints on the doors and windows. They had bagged traces of wet soil on the upstairs carpet, but those could be ascribed to the boots of the policemen who had responded to the 911 call. The front and backyards were similarly a mess of footprints from the first wave of searchers at the scene.

Callie's disappearance had broken on the morning news shows, competing with reports of the latest murder in the farmlands north of Duluth. Serena and Stride had spoken live to a gaggle of reporters. By now, most people in Minnesota had seen the photograph of the missing baby girl with blonde curls and a toothy smile. Stride had spent most of the morning mobilizing the statewide alert system, and Serena had overseen the network of interviews with neighbors on the roads surrounding Marcus Glenn's home and along the fifty miles of populated shoreline on Pokegama Lake. The result of all that effort was little or nothing to help their investigation. No witnesses. No credible sightings. No reports of vehicles coming or going that could focus their search.

Callie Glenn was there, and then she wasn't. The magician had waved his black sheet and made her vanish. As the clock ticked, each hour increased the risk that they would never find her.

Serena knew what Denise Sheridan believed. Marcus Glenn had killed his own child, either accidentally or deliberately, and then hidden the body to cover up his actions. There was no evidence to suggest that he had done so, but there was also no evidence to suggest he hadn't, and in these cases that omission was damning. The finger of suspicion always pointed first at the parents when a child vanished. Serena knew the rumor of guilt had begun to spread around town like a virus. She could hear it in the questions of the reporters, asking about Marcus Glenn, quizzing her about his background and personality, hinting about his capacity for murder. The cold, aloof surgeon was a perfect target.

Serena didn't discount the possibility that Glenn was guilty, but she found herself doubting Denise's instincts about him. For one thing, she had already pegged Denise Sheridan as hopelessly biased by her own relationship with her sister and her husband. She might be a good cop, but she despised Marcus Glenn so much that she would believe anything bad about him. For Serena, Glenn's frigid demeanor actually made him seem innocent. She had dealt with parents guilty of heinous crimes during her time in Las Vegas, and they were always the best actors, the ones who pleaded on television for the return of their children and wept in the arms of their spouses. Glenn wasn't exaggerating his grief or putting on a show for them. If anything, he had invited their scrutiny by showing his true colors.

And yet. And yet. The intruder theory didn't make sense either. There were too many holes in this case.

Serena made her way down the curving driveway that led to the

Glenn front door. Several members of the Grand Rapids Police were on hand to guard the scene and keep reporters and spectators away from the house. They nodded politely at her, but she could sense their uneasiness. She understood. As of this morning, she was a detective on the payroll, but she was still a stranger, an outsider. They all knew Stride because of his years in northern Minnesota, and the police here didn't have any problem accepting his authority. But not Serena. It didn't matter that she had dealt with street crime and violence for a decade in Las Vegas on a level that no one here would see in their lifetimes. She was different, and that made her suspect.

It was easier for her in Duluth. Duluth was a larger city, and there was something about its icy remoteness that made people welcome strangers who had the courage to live there. Out here in Grand Rapids, she was in a small town. If you lived here, you were a known quantity, regardless of whether you were a saint or a sinner. If you didn't, you had to prove yourself.

Serena studied the country-style house. It was low and wide, with three gables over the second-story rooms and white, freshly painted wood siding. A triple garage was on her left, and she saw the windows of an upstairs apartment above the garage doors. The chambered windows of the first-floor dining room faced the yard, but most of the house was built to take advantage of the lake view in the rear. Marcus Glenn, in the master bedroom, wouldn't have seen what was happening in front of his house at night.

If the kidnapping was the work of an intruder, Serena was convinced that he came from the street, by car. Arriving by boat was too risky, with too many variables: launching a boat at night, navigating the waters without lights, keeping a baby quiet in an area where sound would travel easily across the lake, and landing without a dock. There were too many ways a plan could go wrong. No, the straightforward strategy was to park in the driveway under the cover of trees and go into the house from there.

But how to get into the house without a key? The locks on all of the doors looked unmolested. The windows were solid and tight.

Serena let herself in the front door and stood under the glamorous crystal of the chandelier in the glossy oak foyer. After the chill outside, the house was warm. The ivory carpet on the stairs directly in front of her led to the second floor of the house. She followed the stairs to the second story and looked up and down the long hallway at the series of closed white doors. There were at least eight of them, leading to different rooms. Four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a walk-in closet, and an upstairs laundry. None of the doors gave any clue to its contents. How would an outsider have found the nursery? And how would a kidnapper know whether Callie Glenn still slept in the master bedroom with her parents? That was a big risk.

Serena turned left down the hallway. Callie's nursery was the third door on the right. She opened the door, expecting the bedroom to be empty, but instead she saw Valerie Glenn in her daughter's room. A bay window on the far wall looked out on the lake, and Valerie sat on its polished ledge, her knees pulled up to her chest. She leaned forward with her head buried in her arms; her blonde hair tumbled over her legs. For a long minute, she didn't realize that she was no longer alone. Serena noticed the empty crib in the middle of the carpet. The childish wallpaper showed fairytale cartoons of princesses and frogs. Toys were scattered on the floor.

'Mrs Glenn?' Serena said softly.

When Valerie didn't react, Serena said her name again. This time, Callie's mother jerked up in surprise. 'Oh. Serena. I'm sorry.'

'I didn't mean to disturb you,' she said.

'Is there news?'

Serena shook her head, and the brief glimmer of hope in Valerie's eyes faded. Valerie rested her back against the window frame and turned her head to watch the gray waters of the lake at the end of the lawn. Her face was in profile. Even in grief, with strands of blonde hair mussed across her cheek and tear stains on her face, Valerie Glenn looked perfect and attractive. Her skin had a tan glow, despite the gloom of November. Everything about her was in proportion. Her legs were taut but not muscular, her frame trim but not skinny. She wore tan slacks and a long-sleeved black fleece top. It was a look that said: I'm not trying to be beautiful, really I'm not, but I can't help it.

Serena sat down opposite her on the window ledge. Valerie brushed her hair from her face and offered a weak smile.

'What can you tell me?' she asked.

'I can tell you that a massive search is going on for Callie across the entire state,' Serena assured her. 'Her photo is everywhere. The police, FBI, media, business owners, everyone will help us. Tips are already coming in.'

'What do you think they want?' Valerie asked. 'Is it money? If we pay, will they give her back to me?'

'I don't know enough about what happened to give you any answers,' Serena said. 'But I promise you that our first priority will always be Callie's safety.'

'I heard someone on the news say that rich foreigners sometimes pay to have babies stolen for them. God, I hope it's not something like that. You don't think you could be a target in a place like Grand Rapids.'

'It doesn’t do any good to speculate. You'll drive yourself crazy.'

Valerie nodded. 'I know. I need to let you do your job. Honestly, Serena, I'm pleased to have a woman on the case. All these men clomping around the house — to them, it's just another crime.'

'We all want to get Callie back,' Serena said.

'Yes, but you know what I'm going through. A man can't really understand. Do you have children yourself?' 'No.'

Valerie looked momentarily disappointed. 'Oh. I'm sorry. Please forgive me, I shouldn't be asking you questions like that. It just helps me to know who you are.'

'That's all right.'

'For the longest time, I thought I didn't want kids. But then my mom died, and thirty started looking big down the road. Suddenly, it was all I could think about.' She stared at the empty crib and rubbed away a tear that escaped from her eye. 'It took me three years to get pregnant. I had given up hope.'

Serena chose her words carefully. 'How did Marcus feel about having kids?'

'He had doubts. I had to convince him.' Her face darkened, and she looked away. 'I know what people are saying. About Marcus.'

'You shouldn't listen to anything they say on the news.'

'It's ridiculous. Mean. Marcus would never, never, never hurt Callie.' Her fists clenched. 'He loves her.'

'Of course.' 'Do people know how hurtful they are?' she asked.

'All I can tell you is to close your ears to the gossip. Focus on getting Callie back.'

'I suppose next they'll be saying I was involved,' Valerie said.

'No one thinks that. You were out of town.'

'But you checked, didn't you, Serena? You called the hotel. You made sure I was there.'

'Yes, we did,' Serena admitted. She added, 'Why were you in the city?'

'I had a nonprofit board meeting in Minneapolis. It went late. I wanted to drive back, but Marcus said the fog was getting bad. So I got a room.'

'He encouraged you not to come home?'

'Yes, he said he didn't want me out on the roads.' Valerie read Serena's face and said, 'See, you think that's suspicious when it's nothing. No one trusts anyone anymore. I guess we all hate to face the horror of finding out that people aren't who they pretend to be.'

'I do need to ask you some personal questions,' Serena said.

Valerie winced, almost as if expecting a physical blow. 'Yes, go ahead.'

'If a stranger did this, they knew things about you and Marcus and Callie and your lives. The crime was carefully planned. Whoever did this was able to get into your house, find Callie, and leave quickly and quietly, as if they knew where she slept.'

'So you want to know how this person knew all these things.'

'Exactly.'

'You don't think it was a stranger, do you?'

'I don't know. It's possible that someone has been watching you and gathering information about your life. But that's not easy to do in a small town without being noticed. It's also possible that someone who knows you gave up information to the wrong person without being aware of it.'

'Well, I think if someone had been watching our house, I'd know it. You're right about small towns. Nothing gets past anyone around here. I also think that if a stranger had been asking questions about us, we'd have heard about it.'

'And there's been nothing like that?' 'No.'

'Forgive me, Valerie, but I need to know. What's your marriage like? Are there any problems?'

Valerie stared at the ceiling. 'Is this really necessary?'

'It is. I wish it weren't.'

Valerie twisted the square-cut diamond ring on her finger. She studied Serena with the eye of a woman admiring another woman. 'You're beautiful, Serena. You know what it's like.'

'What do you mean?'

'A beautiful woman can't have any substance. People look at me, and they think, trophy wife. Come on, that was your first reaction, wasn't it? Marcus didn't marry me, he hired me to dress up the place.'

'I don't think that,' Serena told her.

'Well, that was the general consensus in town,' Valerie said. 'I was twenty-five when we got married. I'm not a fool. I know I'm attractive, and when you're a man like Marcus, you don't settle for anything less. Are there days when I feel more like a portrait on the wall than a living, breathing human being? Yes. Sure. But the truth is much more complicated than people think. I love him. He loves me.'

Serena thought she was trying to convince herself that it was true. 'You've been married for eight years?'

'Yes.'

'Have there been any affairs?'

'I don't see what that has to do with Callie,' Valerie said.

'Probably nothing, but I don't know what's relevant and what's not until I know everything.'

'You have an ugly job, Serena. I guess I see why Denise didn't want to do this.' She added, 'I feel pretty worthless compared to my sister, l our kids and the kind of job she has. Talk about strong. I'm fragile compared to her. Of course, she has Tom to help her, and he's a gem.'

'You didn't answer my question.'

'No, I didn't, did I? All right, yes, there have been other women. Flings. Men look at these things differently. When you're a wife, you have to decide if it matters or not, and I just decided that it didn't. At least until Callie came along.'

'Were there any relationships that were more than a fling?' Serena asked. 'Someone who wasn't just a one-night stand?'

Valerie's lower lip trembled. 'Yes. Last year.'

'Who was it?'

'I don't know. Someone at the hospital. I made a point of not knowing who.'

'How did you find out about it?'

Valerie sighed. 'How hard do you think it is? How many times do you have to smell the same perfume on his clothes and in your bed? How many hang-ups do there have to be on your phone?'

'I'm sorry.'

'When Callie was born, I made him end it,' Valerie said. 'I didn't want any details. I just wanted it over.'

'And he stopped seeing her?'

'Yes, he did.'

'Are you sure?'

'No, but if he's being deceitful, he's much better at it now than he used to be. And honestly, I don't think Marcus would bother hiding it.'

'Do you think this woman was in your house?' Serena asked.

'I'm pretty sure she was, yes.'

'Could she have a key?'

Valerie shrugged, as if the weight on her shoulders had grown impossible to bear. 'I have no idea. As far as I know, Marcus, Migdalia, and I are the only ones who have keys.'

'Migdalia is your babysitter?' Serena asked.

'Yes.'

'Tell me about her.'

Valerie rolled her eyes. 'Let's just say she wouldn't have been my first choice. I don't mean to sound like a snob, because that's not me, but Migdalia is coarse. She swears. She doesn’t dress well. Oh, she's lovely with Callie, don't get me wrong. But she's not exactly Mary Poppins.'

'Why hire her?'

'Micki lives in Sago, where Marcus grew up. Her mother is sick, her father is out of the picture. Marcus wanted to help her.'

'Is that all?' Serena asked quietly.

'You mean, is he sleeping with her? He says no. Believe me, I asked.'

Serena heard the resignation in Valerie's voice and tried to imagine an eight-year marriage of loneliness and suspicion. Nothing surprised her any more. Lives that looked pretty and perfect on the outside were often as fragile as glass.

She got up from the window box. 'I'll let you know as soon as we have any new information.'

Valerie took Serena's hands. Her fingers were slim and warm. Serena could feel the woman reaching out to her, as if for a lifeline. 'You have to find her, Serena. I need my baby home with me. If you don't have children, I'm not sure you can understand how desperate I feel.'

Serena squeezed Valerie's hands in reassurance. She knew that Valerie, like Stride, had gone off a bridge, with nothing and no one to keep her from falling. She'd seen too many parents like her grasping for a fragment of hope, and she wished she could give Valerie a promise: I'll bring Callie back to you.

But she couldn't. She could only make that promise in her own head.

'I do understand,' she said.

Chapter Six

Stride found the Sago Cemetery on a dirt road off Highway 2, twenty miles southeast of Grand Rapids. There was no town, just an occasional dented mailbox marking the trail to an old farm tucked away among the trees and fields. He parked on the shoulder and got out of his truck. A hundred or so gravestones climbed a gentle slope from the road, some in the open grass, some shadowed by towering pines. The thick trunks of sixty-foot evergreens groaned as the wind blew. A white flagpole sat beside the cemetery sign, and the metal brackets on the flag rope banged rhythmically against the pole, creating a lonely clatter.

Stride didn't see another living soul in any direction. Not that he felt particularly alive himself right now. He couldn't remember a time when he had felt so disconnected from who he was. He wanted to care about something, but he didn't seem to care about anything at all. Each panic attack left him more and more remote, until he felt as if he were standing at the rim of a desert canyon and his life was a mile away, on the opposite edge.

With his hands shoved in his pockets, Stride strolled among the graves. He read the names on the headstones and brass markers built into the turf: Tolan, Niemi, Sorenson, Davis. Halfway up the slope, he found twin gray monuments for Edward and Lavinia Glenn, parents of Marcus Glenn, who had died two years apart more than a decade earlier. He had a difficult time imagining Marcus Glenn, who was so particular about the finer things in life, growing up in these remote, lower-class farmlands.

'You're the cop, aren't you?'

Stride looked up and saw a girl about nineteen years old standing near the edge of the cemetery land, where the dormant grass ended at the trees. She held a rake in her hand and stood next to a hillock of dried leaves.

'Are you Migdalia Vega?' he asked.

'Call me Micki,' she said, scraping the ground and gathering leaves into the pile. 'You find Callie yet?'

'No.'

'I hope you find her soon. She's a beautiful girl.'

Stride approached her. Micki Vega looked like a girl who hadn't outgrown her baby fat. Her wide hips were packed solidly into beige corduroys. She had a round face, with a tiny mole above her upper lip, and golden skin. Her black hair was tied into a ponytail. She wore a red sweatshirt, which didn't hide the pooch that bulged over the belt of her pants.

'Are you the caretaker for the cemetery?' he asked.

Micki shrugged. 'I cut the lawn, rake the leaves, throw out the flowers when they die. That sort of thing.'

'Do you live around here?'

She gestured over her right shoulder, where he saw a cluster of mobile homes and a few dated pickup trucks hidden behind the trees. 'Me and my mama, we live there.'

'You work for the Glenns too, is that right?'

'Yeah, they call me when they need someone to look after Callie for a few hours. They're busy people. I work a lot of jobs, because Mama has lung disease, and she has to stay home.'

'I'm sorry.'

'Yeah, well, that's how it is. My dad skipped out a couple years ago. Mama has her lung thing from smoking. Somebody's got to make the dough.'

'How did you meet Marcus Glenn?' Stride asked.

Micki pointed down the slope. 'You saw the stones. Dr Glenn visits his family every month. I met him here a couple years ago, and he knew I did babysitting and stuff. I really needed the money, so when Callie was born, he said I could help. That was real nice. If it was up to his wife, she wouldn't have let me in the house.' 'Oh?'

'Oh yeah, I heard her talking. She didn't want me around her baby.'

'Why not?'

'I'm Hispanic, and I live in a trailer. You think a woman like her is going to trust a girl like me? But she saw how good I was with Callie. We didn't have any problems after that. She still looks down her pretty little nose at me, but she knows Callie likes me. That's all that matters to Mrs Glenn. That baby is everything to her.'

'What about Dr Glenn? Does he feel the same way?'

Micki's eyes narrowed with suspicion. 'I know what you want me to say. You want me to say that Dr Glenn did something to Callie. Well, that's bullshit. The TV people, they have it all wrong. Dr Glenn does more to help people around here than just about anybody else in the world. If you knew him like I did, you'd know he would never do anything to hurt another person, let alone his baby girl.'

Stride realized that Migdalia Vega was the first person he had met who had bothered to defend Marcus Glenn. 'You like him, don't you?'

'Damn right I do. This thing with his daughter, it's terrible, but he had nothing to do with it.'

'So do you have any idea what happened to Callie?'

Micki shook her head. 'Somebody took her. Probably somebody trying to shake down Dr Glenn. When you have money, everybody wants a piece of you.'

'But you have no idea who it could be?'

'If I did, don't you think I'd tell you? It could be anybody.'

'We're trying to figure out how somebody got into the house,' Stride told her. He added, 'You have a key, don't you?'

'Sure I do.' She folded her arms over her chest in anger. 'What, you think I had something to do with this? Is that what Mrs Glenn said? Because I would never do anything to hurt Callie. Never.'

'I didn't say you would. I was just wondering if anyone could have stolen your key.'

'No way.' Micki dug in the tight pocket of her pants and pulled out a bulging set of keys. 'The houses where I babysit, the keys are all right here. I always have them with me. I never set them down anywhere except when I go to sleep at night.'

'I have to look at all the possibilities, Micki. I'm not saying you would intentionally do something wrong, but it's easy to make a mistake. Maybe you told somebody what a nice house the Glenns have or how much money Marcus Glenn makes. Maybe a girlfriend said something to a boyfriend. Things happen.'

'I already said no,' Micki insisted. 'You think I have time to hang out in bars and drink margaritas and tell stories? You think I can park my pussy in somebody's bed when I'm working every day of the week? I already learned my lesson about boyfriends. They're happy to stick it between your legs, but they don't want to be there to watch you brush your teeth in the morning. So I'm doing this for me and my mama, and that's it.'

'OK,' Stride told her. 'I understand. If you remember talking to someone, even if it was totally innocent, I want you to call me. It's very important. This is about getting Callie back home safely.'

'I know that, but I can't tell you what happened. I didn't hear anything, OK?'

Micki's eyes darted to her feet. She knew what she'd said. So did Stride. The truth hung between them like laundry on a clothes line.

'When was the last time you babysat for Callie?' he asked.

'Last weekend, I think.'

'You think?'

'Yeah, Saturday, I guess. Dr Glenn and his wife were in Duluth for some kind of charity thing.'

'That was the last time?' Stride repeated. His voice was hard.

'I guess.'

Micki attacked the wet leaves on the grass again. Some of the leaves stuck to her tennis shoes.

'Does Dr Glenn call you to look after Callie when his wife isn't around?'

'Sometimes.'

'Mrs Glenn was in Minneapolis yesterday, right?' he asked her.

'Yeah, I heard that.'

'So did he call you yesterday?'

Micki shook her head. 'No.'

'You weren't there?' 'No.'

'So where were you last night?'

'Here,' she said. 'I was home.'

'Alone?'

'Just me and my mama. You can ask her.'

Stride waited. Micki still didn't look at him.

'What kind of car do you drive, Micki?' he asked.

'A white Ford pickup.'

'One of the neighbors saw your truck at the Glenns' yesterday,' he lied.

'They must have had the wrong day. I wasn't there.'

I didn't hear anything, OK?

'I think you were,' Stride told her. 'You were in the house last night when Callie disappeared. I think you better tell me what the hell happened.'

Chapter Seven

'All right,' Micki admitted. 'I was there. Big fucking deal. I don't know what happened.'

'Marcus Glenn lied to us,' Stride snapped. 'He said he was alone in the house.'

'It's not what you think. This isn't about Callie, and it wasn't Dr Glenn's idea. I begged him not to get me involved. The last thing I needed was cops all over me, OK?'

'Why?'

Micki's round face flushed with anger. 'Why the hell do you think? I'm illegal. So's my mama. I knew what would happen if I stuck around. Cops asking me questions. Reporters taking my picture. You don't think someone would hook on to the fact that I don't belong here? You don't think that would make the papers? Next thing you know we'd be on a plane to Mexico.'

'I don't care about your immigration status,' Stride told her.

'Yeah, until you don't need me any more.' Micki threw down the rake.

'Why did Marcus Glenn lie for you?'

'Because he's a good man! He's not like the papers say. He's helped me ever since I met him.'

'Are you sleeping with him?' Stride asked. 'Were you with him in his bedroom last night?'

Micki stormed toward the pile of leaves and kicked her way through it, scattering them across the grass. Her chest swelled with fast, angry breaths. She jabbed a finger at Stride. 'That's what you think, huh?

He helps me because I fuck him? Well, fuck you, cop, you can go to hell.'

'Micki, we can do this right here, or we can do this in a cell in Grand Rapids,' Stride told her. 'Got it? Now answer my question.'

'The answer is no! You think a man like Marcus Glenn needs a girl like me? If he said the word, you can bet I'd straddle him and give him the ride of his life, because I owe him. But he'd never do that.'

'I don't believe you. You were there in his bedroom, weren't you? You're trying to protect him.'

'I was not with him! I was in the apartment over the garage watching television. I fell asleep. That's it. I didn't see him until he came into my room and told me about Callie.' Micki's eyes widened, and she stomped toward Stride. 'You son of a bitch, that's what you wanted, isn't it? You wanted to know if Dr Glenn was alone. I'm telling you, he didn't do anything!'

'Start at the beginning. Tell me everything.'

'You see? Never trust a cop. I'm not saying a fucking thing.'

'You're not helping yourself, Micki,' Stride said. 'When did you go over to the Glenn house?'

Micki shrugged. 'Yesterday afternoon.'

'Did Dr Glenn call you?'

'Yeah, he said his wife had to go to the Cities and could I come over and watch Callie. So I said yes.'

'When was this?'

'About two o'clock. I stayed with Callie all afternoon, gave her dinner, and I put her to bed around seven. Dr Glenn had work to do, so he asked if I'd stick around through the evening and check on Callie again before I left.'

'Where did you spend the evening?'

'They have a pool table in the basement. I played pool and listened to music on the stereo.'

'Did you see or hear anything during the evening? Did anyone come or go in the house? Were there any phone calls?'

'No, there was nobody but me and Dr Glenn as far as I know. The phone rang a couple times, but he must have picked up the calls in his office.'

'Then what?'

'Around ten o'clock, Dr Glenn came downstairs and said his wife was stuck in the Cities because of the fog. He asked me if I'd spend the night in the garage apartment in case Callie needed anything. I do that every now and then. It's no big deal. I wasn't too crazy about being on the roads, so I stayed.'

'How did Dr Glenn seem?'

Micki shook her head. 'He was fine. Nothing was wrong. Callie was sleeping.'

'What time did you go into the garage apartment?'

'I don't know, about ten fifteen, I guess.'

'That apartment overlooks the front of the house, right?' Stride asked.

'Yeah, there are a couple windows toward the street. I didn't see anything. Not headlights, nothing. I didn't hear anything, either.'

'Did you leave the room at all?'

'No. The apartment has its own bathroom. I got in there, took a shower, climbed into bed, watched TV. I fell asleep with the TV on.'

'What time did you fall asleep?'

'I started watching The Simpsons at ten thirty. I didn't see the end of it. Next thing I knew, it was one in the morning, and Dr Glenn was knocking on the bedroom door.'

'What did he want?'

'He wanted to see if Callie was with me, but she wasn't.'

'Exactly what did he tell you?' Stride asked.

'He said Callie was gone, and he was going to call the police. That's when I started freaking out.'

'How did Dr Glenn look?'

'I don't know. He was upset. I mean, he wasn't crying or shouting, but that's not how he is. He's calm, he's in control. It doesn’t mean he wasn't scared. He was trying to figure out what could have happened, and me, I was going crazy. That's when he told me to leave. I told him I didn't know anything, so it's not like I could help anybody.'

'Did you hear or see anything at all between ten thirty and one in the morning?'

'Nothing,' Micki insisted. 'I was out cold.'

Stride shook his head in frustration. He knew that somewhere in that two-and-a-half hour span, one of two things had happened. Either someone came into the house and took Callie, or Marcus Glenn made his daughter disappear. But even with another witness in the house as the crime was taking place, they were right back where they had started. Without answers.

He left Micki and returned down the slope of the cemetery, past the collection of headstones. He stopped at the graves of Marcus Glenn's mother and father and thought about the surgeon making a pilgrimage here to the cemetery, returning to his roots. There were several other stones nearby carved with the name Glenn. The heart of the family was buried here through multiple generations — cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. He wondered if Marcus planned to be buried here too, or whether he would choose higher ground.

Stride thought he knew the answer. You don't go backward, even to join the dead. Marcus Glenn already lived a world away on the shore of Pokegama Lake. Beautiful wife. Beautiful house. Beautiful daughter.

The perfect family. Minus one.

'Where are you, Callie?' Stride asked aloud.

He listened for an answer, but all he heard was the ringing music of the flagpole rope.

Chapter Eight

He wondered again: did they do the right thing?

Now that it was over, he'd hoped that his doubts would leave him. He stared at the child's bed and told himself: the only way to right a wrong is to take matters into your own hands. They'd done what needed to be done. It was the only thing that could be done. They were on the side of the angels.

All he wanted to do was forget. Put away the memory. Forgive the mistake. It seemed like a small thing to ask after the horrors of the past year. But no. He couldn't escape. When he tried to sleep, he cried in the darkness instead. When he finally closed his eyes, he was back in the woods.

He chose the burying place among the sheltering arms of the evergreens.

Cold wind roared in his ears. He tramped through low, woody brush, his footsteps crackling on the litter of fallen limbs and dried pine cones, until he reached a gap in the forest where he could dig. From where he stood, he stared through a web of spiny trunks and across the dirt road to the silhouettes of gravestones on the far slope. The trees quivered and whispered, as if they were afraid of him.

He stopped and waited to make sure he was alone. Night enveloped the cemetery like a blanket pulled over a child's head. There were no stars, no view of heaven above the crowns of trees and the angry clouds. Nothing dwelt in this place except animals and the dead souls.

He didn't even believe that God was here with him tonight. God had spent the past year traveling elsewhere.

The animals stayed hidden in the darkness, but he felt their eyes watching him. His flashlight lit up their black droppings on the forest floor. He was afraid of marauders that could smell decaying flesh buried in the ground and scavenge on it. The thought appalled him. That was why he needed to dig deep.

His spade cut through the soft bed of pine needles into the spongy earth. He levered the handle down with a heavy breath and turned over a shovelful of coffee-black soil. Then another and another, making a tinny noise of metal scraping against loose rock with each thrust. He worked quickly, wanting to be done with this gruesome task. The mouth he opened up in the ground grew deeper and wider. Loose grains of dirt spilled down the pyramid of ripped turf and back into the hole, which was almost ready to swallow up the linen-wrapped bundle at his feet. Swallow it down and consume it.

He continued to carve out the grave. When he was done, he dropped the shovel and sat down with his back against a thick tree trunk. His sweat made him cold. His nose ran, partly because of the night air and partly because of the grief breaking inside him. He was at the point of no return, and he wondered if he could really do it. Lay the child in the ground, cover it up, and leave it behind.

At least he had brought the child here, where the family ghosts could commune. Surely the dead souls would welcome a baby into their midst. Maybe, finally, God would come back and do what He had failed to do for so long. Watch over. Protect.

He couldn't put it off any longer. Even at this late hour, on a lonely road, someone might drive by and wonder about his car parked on the shoulder. Take down a license plate. Call the police. A teenager from one of the nearby farms might see his light and decide to explore. There was no reason for anyone to search here after he was gone, as long as he came and went undetected.

He picked up the child wrapped in clean cloth. It was practically weightless. He got down on his knees, balanced his elbows on the wet edge of the hole, and leaned down to lay the bundle carefully on the floor of the grave. Then he pushed himself up and wiped his face. He retrieved the shovel, took a wad of earth, and tipped it back into the pit. When the dirt hit the fresh white linen, his mouth twitched with dismay. He shoveled faster, covering up the body until only a postage stamp of white sheet remained, barely visible in the darkness. With the next scattering of soil, that was gone, too. His breathing came easier. He scraped all of the uncovered turf back into place, and then he began gathering handfuls of yellowed pine needles and scattering them over the circle of disturbed ground.

When he shone his light down, the forest floor again looked pristine, as if no one had been there. There was no evidence of a grave. It was as if the child had never existed at all. He should have left it like that, but he knew there had to be some marking. Some memorial. He dug into his pocket and found a crumpled paper toy and decided he would leave it behind. With the solemnity of a father placing flowers at a headstone, he laid it down among the twigs and dirt.

It was done.

He picked up his shovel and retreated through the woods to his car. He saw fog gathering in the valleys and hanging over the road like a cloud. With his lights off, he disappeared into the mist.

Chapter Nine

Stride returned from the cemetery late on Friday afternoon and parked outside the Itasca County Courthouse in Grand Rapids, where the Sheriff's Department was housed. The three-story building took up an entire city block and included space for most of the county offices. He and Serena were lucky to have a top-floor office not much bigger than a closet that served as the war room for the investigation.

He passed the granite veterans' memorial and under the snapping US flag on his way to the building entrance, but before he went inside, his stomach growled. He realized he hadn't eaten anything but a chocolate donut since dinner the previous night, and he was running low on caffeine to keep himself awake. On the other side of 4th Street, he spotted a Burger King restaurant, and he crossed the street to grab a late, greasy lunch.

In the parking lot, he passed a rusting Ford Taurus. A wafer-thin woman sat in the driver's seat and wolfed down a double Whopper and an oversized pop. Their eyes met, and she spat a bite of her sandwich into a paper bag and hurriedly rolled down her window to wave at him.

'Hey!'

Stride stopped. The woman spilled out of her car, trailing the smell of fried food, and jutted out her hand. He shook it and wiped ketchup from his fingers.

'It's Lieutenant Stride, right? I'm Blair Rowe with the Grand Rapids Herald:

He groaned. 'No interviews, Blair. If I had something new, I'd tell you. I've got ten minutes to eat and then I need to get back inside.'

'Ten minutes is great. Perfect. Off the record, just background. Please?'

The last thing Stride wanted was to eat lunch with a reporter, but this was one case where more media exposure was a good thing. He needed Callie to stay on the front page until someone came through with a solid lead. 'Ten minutes,' he said.

'Great, fabulous. Go get lunch, and I'll meet you at a table inside. I really appreciate it, Lieutenant.'

Stride ordered a chicken sandwich, skipped the fries, and added a Diet Coke. By the time he got his tray of food, he saw Blair Rowe at a window table, waving both arms to get his attention. She'd already consumed most of her hamburger and was shoving three fries into her mouth at a time.

'How do you stay so thin?' he asked.

'Adrenaline,' she replied.

Blair never stopped moving. Even as she stuffed food in her mouth, she tapped her fingers on the table and crossed and recrossed her legs as she shifted in her chair. He felt a little motion sick, watching her.

'You're reporting on the Callie case for CNN, right?' he asked her.

'Yes! This is big, big, big. I'm going to be on Nancy Grace tonight. They want someone who knows the area. For once in my life, it pays to be in nowhere-ville, Minnesota.'

'Congratulations.'

She ran right over the irony in his voice. 'Thanks! This is a hell of a break for me. I mean, you know, it's a terrible thing, but I can't tell you how cool it is to be part of a national news story. My mom is TIVOing every broadcast. Normally, Grand Rapids in the off season is slow. If a clown throws up at some kid's birthday party, that's news here in November.'

Blair's thick black glasses slipped down the bridge of her nose. She pushed them up with her index finger.

'Have you been at the newspaper for long?' he asked.

'Two years,' she replied, sucking pop through her straw. 'I'd love to get to the Cities, but the dailies are shedding jobs left and right. It sucks to be a journalist right now. Who knows, maybe I can make the jump to TV. I never really thought about being on-air talent, but it's fun when the red light goes on.'

Stride didn't reply. Blair's intense personality felt like machine-gun fire, and he doubted how well it translated to the intimate medium of television. He also didn't think she had the coiffed, blown-dry, perfectly sculpted look of an on-air reporter. Her brown hair was stringy, and he could tell from the thickness of her glasses that she was almost blind without them. The glasses magnified her dark eyes and made them look larger than life. Her face was narrow, with a nose like a bumpy ski slope and a pointed chin. He saw a couple of pimples she was hiding with make-up, and her white teeth needed straightening. She wasn't really ready for her close-up.

Blair finished her hamburger and licked her fingertips. She glanced furtively around the half-empty restaurant and leaned forward. 'So you know the question everybody's asking,' she whispered. 'Did Marcus Glenn do it?'

'No comment,' he said.

'Oh, come on, Lieutenant. We can help each other out. I know Grand Rapids inside and out. My dad's worked on the floor of the UPM mill his whole life, and my mom teaches seventh grade English. This is my town.' 'So?'

'So there aren't many secrets around here. Heck, why do we need turn signals? Everybody knows where everybody else is going. You think I haven't heard rumors about Marcus Glenn for years?'

'What rumors?' Stride asked.

Blair grinned. She pushed her glasses up her nose again. 'You first.'

'This isn't a game, Blair. We're trying to find a little girl.'

'I know, but we both have our jobs to do. Mine is to stick my nose into everyone else's business.'

Stride took two bites of his chicken sandwich and decided he wasn't hungry anymore. He pushed his tray away. 'I have to go.'

'OK, OK,' Blair interrupted, grabbing his arm. 'I'll show you mine, and you show me yours. The word on the social circuit is that Marcus and Valerie Glenn's marriage is shaky. Really shaky. Did you know she sees a shrink?'

'How do you know that?'

'I keep telling you, it's a small town. Doctor-patient confidentiality isn't worth much when people have two eyes in their head. They see who goes in which doors in town, you know?'

Stride was silent.

'She's already had at least one nervous breakdown,' Blair continued. 'Everybody knows why. Marcus has a parade of other women. He flies off for weekends in Vegas, and you can guess what he does down there. It's a screwed-up family living in that house.'

Stride shrugged. 'Show me a family that isn't.'

'Yeah. Point taken. Everybody's got secrets. But I have a nose for what smells bad. Have you been to the hospital in Duluth where Marcus practices?'

'My partner is going there tomorrow.'

'I was there this morning,' Blair said with a smug smile. 'Hardly anyone will talk about him. They're scared.'

'Why?'

Blair tilted her bag of fries to drain the last crumbs and salt into her mouth. 'I love fries. Does anyone not love fries?'

'What are the hospital people afraid of?' Stride repeated.

'If Marcus doesn’t like you, you're fired,' Blair told him. 'No one would go on the record about him. But you know how somebody does something bad, and his neighbors and friends all say, no way, not him, couldn't be. Well, no one at the hospital was rushing to tell me that Marcus was innocent. What they did say was that they were surprised he and Valerie ever had a baby at all.'

'That doesn’t mean anything.'

'I hear you, Lieutenant. You have to play it close to the vest. Just answer me this. Can you rule out the possibility that Marcus Glenn murdered his daughter?'

'As far as I'm concerned, Callie is alive, and I'm going to find her,' Stride said. 'The best thing you can do is keep her face on the news, so someone sees her.'

Blair chewed on the end of her straw. Underneath the table, her knee bounced, rocking the table so hard that Stride's pop sloshed over the side. 'Oh, I will, but if there are skeletons in Glenn's closet, I'm going to find them.'

'Just don't withhold evidence from us,' Stride snapped.

'Withhold it? Are you kidding? You'll see it on CNN.'

Stride reached out under the table, took hold of Blair's knee in an iron grip, and held her leg steady. 'Blair, you're new to the game. I know that the TV news shows don't set a good example because they turn every crime into a whodunit. But you're dealing with real people's lives here.'

'I'm not stupid,' she said.

'I don't think you are.'

'But I'm impatient, and I don't like to wait for the police to throw me crumbs.'

Stride stood up from the table. 'Do you have kids, Blair?'

'Yeah, I've got a little boy. My mom looks after him when I'm at work. So what?'

'Then try to put yourself in Valerie Glenn's shoes for a minute.'

'Hey, I'm with you. I am. I hope you find her daughter. I'm just not convinced you ever will.'

Stride turned to leave.

'Lieutenant?' Blair called.

'What is it?'

'I know about the babysitter.'

'Good for you,' Stride said.

'You want to hear my theory?'

He scowled at her. 'What is it?'

Blair scouted the restaurant again and then stood on tiptoes and put her lips next to Stride's ear. 'I think Marcus Glenn and Micki Vega committed this crime together.'

Chapter Ten

Serena drove from Grand Rapids to Duluth on Saturday morning. The sky was slate gray with wavy clouds like smoke trails, and ice crystals of snow whipped across her windshield. She passed boggy fields where skeletons of trees jutted out of the standing water. The northern woods were no longer brick red or flaming orange as they had been in September, but dirty shades of rust and brown. Every few miles, she drove across black rivers and sped through block-long towns, with nothing but an old brick liquor store or a shabby five-room motel to attract a few tourist dollars. Most of the time, she was alone on the road.

As she drove, she thought about Stride. She'd stood at the foot of the bed this morning and watched him while he slept. Wherever he was, it was a million miles away from her. He'd been walking away, retreating, escaping, for weeks, until they were strangers again. They'd drifted apart as easily as they had come together. What made her angry was that she had let it happen without fighting back. She'd watched him go rather than confront the hurt she felt. If that was what he wanted, if that was how it was going to be, then she would protect herself and pretend she had known it would happen this way all along.

Maybe she had. Maybe they'd both been kidding themselves. There had always been fault lines, little hairline cracks that seemed like nothing until the weight of pressure and time burst them open. She knew it happened that way, and there was no one to blame. Things are fine until suddenly, unexpectedly, they are not fine at all anymore, and both of you know it, and neither one of you wants to admit it.

Her phone rang. It was him. The man she loved.

'You didn't wake me up this morning,' he told her.

Serena wiped her eyes and squelched the anguish she felt when she heard his voice. 'I'm sorry. You haven't slept much lately, and I thought you could use the rest.'

'You're right. Thanks.' He added, 'You sound strange. Is everything OK?'

'Sure,' she said.

It was easier to lie. It was safer to pretend. Things are fine, Jonny, but we both know they're not. She heard him hesitate, as if he might push her for the truth, but she knew he wouldn't do that.

'What's the latest on the search?' he asked.

He was a colleague talking to a colleague. Serena heard a noise in her head, and she thought it was a fault line, a crack, a fracture, splintering apart and growing wide.

'We've gone through the guest lists from motels around Grand Rapids,' she reported to him in a flat voice. 'We're still doing follow-up, but there aren't any red flags. The Highway Patrol has been hitting gas stations with Callie's photo. We've got leads, but nothing hot.'

'What about cameras on the roads in and out of town?'

'We found a couple ATM cameras that face toward 169 and Highway 2. Between the fog and the video quality, there's not much to see. I sent them to the BCA to see if they could do a digital enhancement.'

'I think we need to drag Pokegama Lake,' Stride said.

Serena pulled her Mustang on to the shoulder of the highway. She switched off the motor and listened to the silence. 'That'll kill Valerie Glenn.'

'I'm hoping we don't find anything, but if we wait too much longer, we'll lose the lake to ice.'

'Give it a few more days.'

'Yeah, OK, but I'm not feeling good about this.' He added, 'If it was an abduction for money, we'd have heard from the kidnappers by now.'

'I know.'

'I keep coming back to Marcus Glenn,' Stride told her. 'I don't want the reporters getting wind of it, but I think we should ask him to take a polygraph. He's already lied to us about Micki Vega. Who knows what else he's hiding?'

'He'll lawyer up and stop talking,' Serena said.

'That tells us something.'

'I don't know. I don't like Glenn either, but I'm not sure I see him as violent or depraved.'

'See what you can find out at the hospital,' Stride said.

'I will.'

When there was nothing left to say, the dead air between them stretched out and grew awkward. Serena stared across the highway at a wasted barn, its roof open to the elements in jagged holes where the beams had collapsed. Blackbirds flew from inside. The grass grew long and wavy around the bowing walls.

'Hey, Jonny?' she murmured.

'Yes?'

'We're not so good, are we?'

She couldn't believe she had said it aloud. That was all it took to quit pretending. Now they were on dangerous ground.

Stride waited a long time, and then he said, 'It's me.'

'No, it's not just you,' she told him.

Two hours later, Serena walked along Superior Street in downtown Duluth with a nurse from St Mary's Hospital named Ellen Warner. At Lake Avenue, the two of them crossed the street and found a bench protected from the wind. It was too cold to be outside comfortably, but Ellen had insisted that they talk where there was no risk of being overheard. Few people at St Mary's were anxious to talk about Marcus Glenn.

Ellen opened a white takeaway bag and pulled out a hot dog from the Coney Island restaurant up the street. She unwrapped the foil and took a large bite. A drop of mustard stuck to her lips.

'I appreciate your meeting me,' Serena told her.

'Well, keep it under wraps, OK?' Ellen said, wiping her mouth. 'Dr Glenn is prickly. If a nurse gets on his bad side, she's gone.'

Ellen was dressed in purple scrubs with a jean jacket over the top. Her sneakers were neon white. She was in her early fifties with short silver hair and a squat, heavy physique.

'How long have you worked with him?' Serena asked.

'Must be almost ten years,' she replied. 'I have to tell you, he's good. Make that great. The man's ego wouldn't fit in a football stadium, but he's a wizard in the OR. Good with patients, too. You wouldn't think it, because he's a titanic pain in the ass to everyone else. But he can switch it on with patients, and they love him. I've never understood people who can compartmentalize their lives like that, but with Dr Glenn, you have to overlook his personality and respect his talent.'

'Do you know his wife, Valerie?'

'Enough to say hello. She comes in every now and then.'

Ellen finished her hot dog, crumpled the wrapper, and put it back in the bag. She reached into the hip pocket of her scrubs and removed a pack of cigarettes. She lit one and noticed the surprise on Serena's face. 'It's the stress. I know it's stupid, but that doesn’t stop me.'

'What's the relationship like between Dr Glenn and his wife?' Serena asked.

'Strained,' Ellen said.

'How so? Do they fight?'

'No fights, at least not at the hospital. They're distant. She tries to get inside his head, but he doesn’t want anyone else in there.'

'Do you know their daughter Callie?'

'Sure, Mrs Glenn brings her in sometimes. Cute girl.'

'What's Dr Glenn like as a father?'

Ellen blew out a cloud of smoke and regarded Serena coolly. 'You mean, would he do something to Callie? No, I don't believe that. If Marcus Glenn is one thing in this world, he's a doctor. He'd never harm another human being.'

'That's not what I asked.'

'Well, that's what everyone's saying. Would I call him a loving, doting father? No. He's not going to get down on the floor and play games or make baby talk with a stupid grin on his face. That's not who he is. But a monster? I don't think so. Although you'd probably find people in the hospital who disagree with me.'

'Is there anyone who hates him enough to want to harm him? Or his family?'

Ellen's brow furrowed. 'That's a difficult question. A lot of people dislike him because he's a perfectionist. He has no patience for mistakes. But would someone hurt him by taking his daughter? That's hard to imagine.'

'You said nurses have been fired because of him.'

'Yes, that's true.' is there anyone who would hold a grudge?'

Ellen shrugged. 'Most were reassigned elsewhere. A couple wanted to get out of nursing anyway. It chews people up.'

'What about the personal side?' Serena asked. 'I've heard rumors about Glenn having affairs with women on the hospital staff.'

Ellen cocked her head and stubbed out her cigarette on the concrete of the bench. She brushed ash on to the pavement. 'Yes, Marcus has a weakness for pretty young things. In his defense, nurses join the staff, and they see a tall, rich, handsome surgeon, and they make a play for him. It's not like he's going to leave Valerie for any of them.'

'Maybe someone thought he would.'

'Hey, you fool around with a married man, you take your chances. Don't look to me for sympathy if you get hurt.'

'I heard there was one affair that was more serious,' Serena said.

Ellen glanced at her watch. 'I should be getting back. I've already said too much.'

'Come on, Ellen. Who was it? Do you know the woman?'

'Oh, yeah. Everyone knows Regan.'

'Regan?'

'Regan Conrad. She's a nurse. I never saw them together, but I heard people talking about the affair. It was hot and heavy for a while, although you wouldn't believe it to look at her.'

'Why?'

'Well, Regan is no Valerie. Hell, she's almost anorexic, lots of tattoos, hoy breasts, lip ring. All I can figure is she must be dynamite in bed.'

'Are they still seeing each other?'

'No, I heard that Marcus wised up and dumped her earlier this year. I think he figured out she's crazy.'

'Crazy?' Serena asked.

'Volatile,' Ellen said. 'She's a good nurse, but man, she can go off on you. And she plays dirty, too. A few years ago, she had a run-in with a young lab tech. Not long after, they found hundreds of hardcore porn images on the guy's computer, so they fired him. And hello, who was Regan sleeping with at the time? Some geek in IT.'

'She sounds like someone who carries a grudge.'

'Oh, yeah, but if you're thinking she had something to do with Callie's disappearance, you can forget that. She didn't do it.'

'How do you know?'

'She worked the graveyard shift on Thursday night. So did I. I remember seeing her in the cafeteria, because she got into a shouting match with the cook over a hair she said she found in her pasta.'

Serena didn't care if Regan had an alibi. 'How do I find her?' she asked. 'Does she work in the orthopedics area with you and Marcus Glenn?'

Ellen shook her head. 'Regan is an obstetrics nurse in the maternity ward. She works with mothers and babies.'

Chapter Eleven

Maggie Bei ripped open the latest letter from the lawyer at the adoption agency in Minneapolis. She unfolded it and read it carefully, then tore the letter into pieces. The paper scraps fluttered to the floor around her. She pushed her black bangs out of her eyes and slapped the dinette table with her palm.

'Fuck it,' she announced.

She stomped into the kitchen and swung open the doors of the liquor cabinet. She extracted a half-empty bottle of Brazilian cachaça, then grabbed a lime from a basket near the refrigerator. After slicing the lime and squeezing it into a lowball glass, she added sugar and ice and filled the rest of the glass with Brazilian rum. Out of deference to the remnants of her head cold, she also dropped in a couple tablets of vitamin C and watched them fizz. She swirled the concoction around, drank it down in two swallows, and made another.

'That's better,' she said.

Maggie carried her drink into the living room of her condominium. She lived on the upper floor of condo units built over the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Duluth, with a view toward Lake Superior. There were still unpacked boxes scattered around the apartment. She had moved in a month earlier, and since then, most of her time had been taken up with the murder investigation in the north farmlands. She'd barely had time to do anything in her new place except sleep.

Maggie sipped her caipirinha and stared at the lake. She knew she shouldn't be drinking, but she didn't care. It was Saturday afternoon, and she needed to pick up Kasey Kennedy in a few hours. The two of them were going to visit Troy Grange, whose wife Trisha had disappeared on Halloween night more than two weeks earlier. She could sugar-coat it however she wanted, but after the discovery of the fourth victim, Troy knew the truth. He was now a single father to two young girls.

The intercom near her front door buzzed. Maggie put down her glass and walked over and pushed the button. 'Yes?'

'You've got a visitor downstairs,' the lobby guard told her. 'Her name's Serena Dial.'

'Tell her you need to do a strip-search.'

Maggie heard an expletive in the background.

'She's coming up,' the guard said, laughing.

'Thanks.'

Maggie retrieved her drink and waited. Two minutes later, she heard a knock on the door.

'Hey, stranger,' she told Serena.

'Hey, yourself.'

Serena nodded her head in approval as she cast an eye around the apartment. 'Very nice. I love the place.'

'One day I'll actually move in,' Maggie said, nodding at the boxes. She swirled the ice in her drink. 'You want something? I can do nonalcoholic beverages under duress.'

'No thanks.'

Maggie slumped sideways into an oversized chair and dangled her feet over the cushion. 'Have a seat. Talk to me. The diet's working; you look great.'

'The last five pounds are the hardest,' Serena said. She took a seat on the sofa opposite Maggie and leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. 'You look good, too.'

'Yeah? How do you think I'd look with red hair?' Maggie asked.

'Red? You?'

'There's this cop named Kasey Kennedy with this amazing red hair. Makes me want to try it. I'm bored with black.' She added, 'I hear you're back on the job.'

Serena nodded. 'I'm official.'

'Good for you. Are you in town because of Callie Glenn?'

'Yeah, I was asking questions over at St Mary's,' Serena told her.

'Tonight I'm seeing a nurse who lives on the north side of Duluth. She was having an affair with Marcus Glenn.'

'The media has been hitting the doc pretty hard,' Maggie said. 'Do you think he was involved?'

'We haven't crossed him off the list.'

'How's Stride?' Maggie asked. 'Is he still coming back next week?'

'I guess.'

Maggie raised an eyebrow. 'You guess?'

'Something's wrong, but he won't talk about it,' Serena said.

'I'm sorry.'

Serena took a long time to reply. 'Yeah, it's the old story with us. Two stubborn people with baggage.'

'He loves you,' Maggie said.

'I know, but if he won't let me in, what the hell am I there for? I'm getting tired of being alone even when we're together.'

Maggie didn't say anything. This wasn't a conversation she particularly wanted to have with Serena. They both knew the score. Maggie had made her one and only play for Stride in the months after his wife died, but to him, she was still the young kid he had hired as his partner. Not a lover. Then Serena — who wasn't much older than Maggie — had arrived in town, and Stride fell for her hard. Maggie liked Serena as a friend and a cop, but they still tiptoed around their mutual feelings for Stride, trying not to let the competition come between them. She couldn't help the occasional stabs of jealousy that Stride had turned to Serena, not her.

'What do you think I should do?' Serena asked.

'I wish I could tell you.'

'I know I'm not a saint in this. I should push him, but I'm too busy wrapping barbed wire around myself.' She got up impatiently. 'I want a drink.'

'No, you don't.'

'I'm not going to, but I want one. I hate that.' She shook her head and changed the subject. 'What about you? How are you?'

'If I'm thinking about dyeing my hair red, what does that tell you?' Maggie asked.

'I heard you got DNA on the bastard who's been snatching these women.'

'We do, but we don't have results back. Either way, we still have to catch him, and I don't think he's done yet.'

'What about the adoption agencies?' Serena asked. 'Are you any closer to finding a kid?'

Maggie clucked her tongue in frustration. 'I always thought this was the good old USA, where money can buy you anything. Apparently not a baby, however.'

'Give it time.'

'Yeah, time. I don't have time for a kid, so I don't know why I'm trying.' Maggie raised her glass in a toast. 'We're really having a Thelma and Louise kind of day, aren't we?'

'Totally.'

Maggie finished her drink and climbed out of the chair. Outside the window, the sky grew blacker as dusk approached. Serena came and stood next to her, and they watched the lights come on around the harbor below them. An ore boat muscled through the canal underneath the city's steel lift bridge. Beyond the bridge was the strip of land called the Point, where Stride and Serena lived.

'This nurse you're seeing, where exactly on the north side does she live?' Maggie asked, is it in the city or in the farmlands?'

'Up in the farmlands. Lismore Road near McQuade.' Serena added, 'And no, you don't have to remind me.'

Maggie nodded, but she reminded her anyway. 'That's not a very safe place to be these days.'

Chapter Twelve

'You're telling me that Trisha is dead,' Troy Grange said.

Maggie winced. Troy didn't waste time with pretty ways to share bad news. 'We don't know that for sure,' she told him. 'I don't think we can automatically assume the worst. One woman is dead. That's all we know for certain.'

'Liar,' Troy snapped.

He wasn't being hostile, just honest. Maggie knew he was right, but she couldn't say so. She couldn't say that to any victim's spouse and certainly not to a friend.

Troy Grange was the senior Health and Safety Manager at the Duluth Port. They had worked together for five years on immigrant smuggling, outbreaks of communicable disease, and crimes in the harbor ranging from arson to rape. Through it all, she had never known Troy to hide behind his lawyers or his budget. Anything that went wrong in the port was on his watch. He was solid.

Troy ran his hands over his bald head. He was forty years old, not tall, but built like a circus strongman. His face was big: lumpy nose, broad chin, and puffy cheekbones like a squirrel with a mouthful of acorns. He wore a form-fitting red undershirt and baggy black sweatpants.

'You know what I keep thinking about?' he said. 'I used to work on the ore boats, but Trisha made me give it up. She said it was too dangerous, and she didn't want to be left alone with the kids. And now I lose her from inside our own house.'

'I'm so sorry, Mr Grange,' Kasey Kennedy murmured.

Kasey sat on the opposite end of the sofa from Maggie, her knees pressed together. She looked uncomfortable, her eyes darting between Maggie and Troy. Maggie felt bad about bringing Kasey into the middle of this scene, but she wanted Kasey to understand that investigative work wasn't glamorous. Too often, it was filled with suffering.

'You saw him, didn't you?' Troy asked Kasey. 'You saw this bastard?'

'Not his face, but yes.'

Troy got up from his chair and folded his arms over his barrel chest. The floor timbers shivered as he paced in front of the fireplace.

'Tell me what you think,' he said. 'You saw what he did to this other woman. Is he just a fucking murderer? Is there any way my wife could be alive?'

'I don't know what to tell you, Mr Grange,' Kasey stuttered. 'I sure hope she's alive.'

Maggie wanted to say: If Trisha's alive, she's better off dead. But she didn't.

'How are the girls, Troy?' Maggie asked.

He sat down again and wiped his nose on his bare, thick forearm. 'I took them to visit Trisha's parents in Chicago on Friday, and I left Emma there. I've got to go back to work on Monday, and I can't take care of a baby right now. Plus, it will be good for her parents to have something else to focus on.'

'What about Debbie?'

'Debbie doesn’t understand what's going on.' He twisted his silver wedding ring around his finger and added, 'I shouldn't have gone to that goddamn Halloween party. Not with that other woman disappearing in October.'

'You had no way of knowing,' Maggie told him. 'We didn't know we were dealing with a pattern crime.'

'Yeah, but security's what I do. I knew there was a risk. Hell, I upgraded our security system three days after I heard about that woman going missing. A lot of good that did us.'

'Don't blame yourself.'

Troy shrugged. 'I do.'

'We're going to be blanketing the north highways with cops every night,' Maggie said. 'If this guy tries again, we'll get him.'

'That's a lot of ground to cover,' he said, shaking his head. 'I don't want to sound skeptical, but you're going to be spread pretty thin across a few hundred square miles.'

'We've got extra manpower. Volunteers. Nobody's sleeping, Troy.'

'I know. I appreciate it.' He looked at Kasey. 'Will you be out there too?'

'Um, yeah, I'm sure I will,' Kasey murmured.

'You be careful.'

Kasey nodded and stared at her hands.

'Daddy?'

All three of them looked up. Debbie Grange, six years old, stood in the doorway of the living room. She wore polka-dot pajamas and carried a stuffed Pooh bear under her arm. Troy Grange sprang up immediately.

'What is it, sweetheart?'

'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' Debbie murmured.

Maggie felt her heart breaking. She saw Kasey look away and bite her lip. Troy wrapped his bear arms around his little girl.

'I'll tuck you in, baby,' he said.

'I want Mommy to tuck me in,' the girl repeated.

'Oh, honey, I know, but Mommy's not here. Remember? She had to go away.'

Fat tears dripped down the girl's face. 'Where is she?'

'I told you, sweetheart, she had to take a trip, OK? I'll tuck you in. I'll stay right there with you.'

'No. I want Mommy.'

Troy cradled his daughter as the girl cried into his shoulder. He sang to her under his breath, and Maggie found she could barely watch. She gestured to Kasey, and they both stood up. Maggie met Troy's eyes and pointed at the front door. He nodded.

'Thanks for everything,' he called to her softly. 'You too, Kasey. Please keep me posted.'

They left without saying anything more. Outside, on the front porch, Kasey leaned heavily against the railing and looked sick. 'God,' she said.

'Yeah, this is the worst part of the job,' Maggie told her.

'Do you ever get used to it?'

'Nope. I hope I never do.'

Both women climbed inside Maggie's yellow Avalanche. Maggie normally drove fast, even at night, and she punched the truck to seventy-five miles an hour on the highway. Beside her, Kasey clutched the handhold on the door. The headlights lit up the dark stretch of road through the lonely farmlands.

'Do you still want to work on the investigation?' Maggie asked.

Kasey leaned her cheek against the cold glass and stared at the fields whipping by outside the window. 'I don't know. I don't even know if I want to be a cop anymore.'

Maggie glanced sideways at Kasey's face. 'You had a rough experience that night,' she told her. 'Some people never get over it. Even tough cops.'

As she said it, Maggie thought about Stride. He was a tough cop, but she knew that he took all of his stress and grief and sucked it inside himself, where very little of it ever escaped. She remembered how lonely he had been in the months after his wife died, when his wound was greatest. She had tried to fight her way inside to rescue him, but he had pushed her away, just as he was doing to Serena now. She wondered if he knew how to ask for help.

'I keep thinking about that woman's eyes,' Kasey said.

'You can't change what happened. It's over.'

'Yeah, but I feel so guilty.'

'You have to put it behind you.'

'That's the thing. I just want to get out. I want to forget all about it.' She turned and stared at Maggie. 'Do you think I'm wrong if I quit? Would you feel like I was running away?'

'That's not my call, Kasey,' Maggie said.

'I don't know what to do,' Kasey told her. 'I can't get that guy out of my head, you know? I feel like he's haunting me. Like he's still out there.'

Under the night sky, he was barely visible, just a silhouette marching quickly through the field in the north farmlands.

He kept his hands in the pockets of his fleece jacket. His breath became a warm cloud in front of his face. He splashed through ice-glazed puddles in the indentations where tractors ploughed the spring soil, and the noise made by his boots was like glass breaking. Needles of frost made the brown grass brittle. His nose picked up the animal smell of cattle from the barn across the highway.

The field ended in a nest of trees. He slipped between the shaggy branches and tracked wet footprints across the driveway as he approached the house. It was a modest two-story farm home that showed signs of neglect. The wood siding needed fresh paint. On the sidewalk that led to the front door, two squares of concrete had buckled and cracked. Dead flowers wilted over the sides of clay pots on either side of the detached garage.

He studied the house carefully, but he knew she was gone now. Every window was black.

He made his way to the rear of the house. On the back wall, he saw three steel half-moons buried in the earth at intervals along the foundation. They were open and shallow, about two feet in depth, protecting windows that led to the basement. He stepped down inside one of the window wells and drove the toe of his boot into the glass. It shattered in shards that spilled inside to the floor below. He kicked several more times, knocking away the remaining fragments, then squatted down and squeezed his legs and torso through the tight hole. Letting go, he dropped to the concrete floor.

He slid a Maglite from his pocket and cast a narrow beam around the space. The air was cold and musty. He ducked to avoid pipes overhead and picked his way through the glass to the stairs that led to the main level of the house. The old steps squealed like mice. He took them slowly. At the door, he waited and listened, then pushed the door open and found himself in the unlit kitchen. Dirty plates were stacked in the sink. Half a pot of coffee grew cold on the counter. The butcher block table hadn't been wiped down, and he saw remnants of mashed carrots and banana strewn in front of a rickety high chair. He whiffed the air and smelled fried fish.

He moved from the dinette to the family room, which was crowded with garage sale furniture scattered over the small square of worn beige carpet. A brown tweed sofa faced the television. The coffee table in front of the sofa overflowed with magazines and dog-eared paperback books. He spotted three photo frames on top of the television, and he illuminated each of them with the beam of his flashlight. One photo showed an older couple on a desert highway; the other two showed a young man and woman. The man in the photos was burly, with blond hair and a mustache that overflowed his upper lip.

The woman had dazzling red hair.

Hello, Kasey.

He remembered her vividly as she'd looked in the field behind the dairy. Her body like a wet cat. Her eyes big and desperate. Her arms trembling and her hands looking small clapped around the big gun. He'd never dreamed she would fire. The wound in his shoulder still burned where her bullet had grazed him.

'You're a bad girl,' he said aloud. And bad girls need to be punished.

He scouted the ground level and then took the steps to the second floor. The first room in the hallway was an office with a computer desk and filing cabinets. A pale light glowed inside from a video loop repeated endlessly on the computer monitor. It was a screen saver of the Zapruder film showing the Kennedy assassination. As he watched, Kennedy took a fatal bullet in the head over and over.

Well, isn't that sick. Then he smiled at his own joke. Takes one to know one.

He rifled through the cabinets and desk drawers, pulling out months-old bank and credit card statements and cell phone bills. People never threw anything away. He flipped through a copy of the Duluth newspaper from the previous January and a February issue of Sports Illustrated. The swimsuit edition. He dug deeper, extracting file folders with tax information, which he paged through one by one. Toward the bottom of the desk drawer, he found a photograph of Kasey in a bathrobe holding her newborn son, his naked skin red and wrinkled. You look tired, darling.

But her eyes were the same. Blue. Fierce. He slipped the photograph in his pocket.

The next room was the bathroom. Kasey used bar soap that smelled like lavender. He spied threads of her red hair in the bathtub, which he picked up and twirled around his gloved finger. He imagined her stepping out of the porcelain tub, toweling her body dry, and studying her reflection. The tiny room would be humid and fragrant with her scent. When he opened her medicine cabinet, he found vitamin bottles containing fish oil and St John's Wort and prescriptions in her name for Xanax and Ambien.

Don't you sleep, Kasey? Poor baby.

He closed the cabinet and stared at his own face in Kasey's mirror. He kept his hair in a severe black crew cut. A gold earring hugged the lobe of his left ear. His right cheek was scarred and cratered from the acne he had suffered as a teenager. Looking at himself, he watched his dark, dead eyes come to life, like a doll turned on by a switch. He grinned and picked up an open tube of lipstick and scrawled a message for her on the glass. Two words to tell her who she was.

I want you to know I was here. I want you to know it's not over.

He found her bedroom at the end of the hall. The linens on the queen-sized bed were rumpled and unmade. Her closet door was ajar. He opened it and explored the contents, touching her blouses, running his fingers along the satin sleeves. On a hanger, he found a lace nightgown, which he removed and held at arm's length. It would fall barely past her thighs. The cups of the bra were sheer. He took the nightgown and draped it over the bed, as if she were lying there.

Looking down, he felt the familiar rage bubbling up like lava. For him, desire was rage. But it was different this time, because Kasey was different. She wasn't like all the others. He thought about waiting for her in the darkness and taking her now, but he willed himself to be patient. He wanted her to know. To feel him coming. To realize there was nothing she could do to keep him away.

As he turned for the doorway, he heard three muffled electronic beeps. He reached into his shirt pocket and extracted the small electronic receiver. The red light on the front of the black box was flashing.

He cursed silently.

Someone was at the school. Someone had tripped the sensors he had installed on the perimeter of the ruins. He couldn't have anyone discovering the burying place. Not now. Not yet.

Not before he was done with Kasey.

He ran into the hallway. By his mental calculations, he needed two minutes to sprint across the dark field to his van and another ten minutes to speed through the empty highways to Buckthorn.

He wondered: who's there? Who's going inside?

Was it the police?

He didn't have time to think. He hurried to the top of the stairs, and then he froze.

Headlights swept across the downstairs rooms. A key scraped in the front door lock. Someone was coming inside the house. He was trapped.

Chapter Thirteen

Kasey let herself inside and closed the door behind her. The house was dark and unusually cold. Through the front window, she watched the tail lights of Maggie's truck disappear toward the highway. She kicked off her boots and padded in her black athletic socks through the landmine of toys in the family room. She poured herself a cup of cold coffee in the kitchen, but when she tasted it, she poured it out in the sink.

'Bruce?' she called.

There was no answer. She was alone. She dug in her back pocket for her cell phone and dialed his number. The call went straight into voicemail.

'It's me,' she said in her nervous, child-like voice. 'I figured you'd be back by now. Is everything OK? Call me as soon as you can.'

Kasey hung up. She untucked and unbuttoned the shirt of her uniform, letting it hang open. A draft snickered from under the basement door, making her shiver. It was the kind of house where all the windows and doors leaked cold air. She couldn't really complain, because the rent was dirt cheap. A farm widow had died here five years earlier, and the woman's family rented out the property now to cover their expenses. They didn't put much money into the place, but they didn't ask for a lot of money in return. She and Bruce had lived here since they moved to Duluth.

Her eyes kept blinking shut. She wanted to wait for Bruce to get back, but she couldn't think about anything but sleep. She had slept badly all year, and even a couple hours felt like bliss when she could get it. She frowned, seeing the dirty dishes in the sink, but decided they could wait until morning.

Kasey dragged herself upstairs. Her foot landed on a wet spot in the carpet, and she cursed as the water soaked through the fabric of her sock. She reached down and peeled it off, leaving one foot bare. She squeezed the damp sock like a stress ball as she wandered down the hallway into her bedroom. She tossed the sock into their dirty clothes basket and stripped off her shirt and undershirt, leaving herself in a sports bra and her uniform slacks. She began to unbuckle her gun belt, then stopped in surprise when she noticed her sexy nightgown stretched across their bed.

'Bruce?' she called again.

She waited and listened. There was no sound, but even in the silence, something felt wrong. She fingered the lace fringe of the nightgown and frowned. With a quick glance, she noticed that her closet door was wide open, which wasn't how she'd left it. Little hairs stood up on the back of her neck.

She poked her face into the hallway and studied the succession of doors. The office. The bathroom. The nursery. Something shiny attracted her eyes. In the crack of the bathroom doorway, she spotted a silver cylinder on the linoleum by the toilet. It was her Walgreens lipstick.

That was wrong, too. She'd left it on the sink.

Her skin rippled with a wave of fear. She nestled the butt of her gun in her palm and yanked it out of the holster. She crept toward the bathroom and nudged open the door with her t—. The tiny room was empty, but when she reached around and turned on the light, her eyes fixed on the blood-red message scrawled on the mirror.

BAD GIRL.

Kasey stumbled backward, and her bare foot landed in another damp spot on the carpet. She understood now. He had been up here, him and his wet shoes, leaving tracks.

'Where are you?' she screamed, like an animal that puffs its fur to appear larger than it is. 'I know you're here! This time I won't miss. This time I'll blow your goddamned head off!'

She pushed her toe in an arc across the carpet and found another wet footprint. And another. The trail led her toward the nursery.

Kasey pointed her gun at the door. Inside, she heard a noise now, like a deck of cards being shuffled. It was the sound of the wind slapping the vertical blinds together through an open window. She squatted down to peer under the door. Cold air roared through the crack and made her face cold. She put her eye to the carpet but didn't see anyone standing in the room.

Not waiting, she cocked her knee and kicked her heel into the door, connecting near the flimsy metal knob. The door flew round and banged into the wall, and Kasey stepped into the doorway and blocked the door with her shoulder as it bounced back. She surveyed the room. The crib, undisturbed. The pirate wallpaper. The baby monitor on top of the white dresser. The closet door, closed.

She eyed the window, which was open. The blinds danced and flapped crazily against each other as the night air swirled through the room. She made her way to the window frame, but with each step, she watched the closet door, in case the knob began to turn. At the window, she pushed the blinds aside and squinted at the darkness outside. She gauged the distance below her. It was a long way down, and the ground was hard.

The height was too far to jump, she realized, but by then it was too late.

She caught the movement out of the corner of her eye. The closet door flew open. He was inside, tall, masked, dressed in black, the same way he had been two nights earlier. She turned to aim her gun, but he leaped across the narrow bedroom before she could bring her arm around. His momentum drove her into the window frame. His hand locked around her wrist and jammed her knuckles into the glass, which shattered and made stinging cuts across her skin. Instinctively, her fist uncurled, and her gun dropped away, tumbling past the window ledge to the ground below.

He backhanded her chin with his forearm. Her head snapped back, colliding hard with the wall. The impact rattled her teeth. Before she could clear her head, she was airborne; he lifted her bodily off the carpet and hurled her toward the opposite wall. Her feet hit the ground first, and she pitched forward into the closet. Her cheekbone struck the wooden floor.

Dazed and bleeding, she twisted on to her back. She expected him to throw himself on her, but instead, he watched her, frozen. His eyes were bright behind the mask. The intimacy of his expression made her sick. She suddenly felt exposed, as if he could see all her secrets, see past her clothes, see what she cared about and fantasized about. He knew exactly who she was, and it terrified her.

Then the moment passed, and he ran.

Kasey got dizzily to her feet. Distantly, she heard the thumping of his footfalls on the stairs, getting further away. She felt the pressure in the house change as the front door was ripped open.

He was gone. Everything fell silent again, except for the twisting of the blinds.

Kasey realized that she couldn't run away from him. He wouldn't let her. That was her last thought before she passed out.

Chapter Fourteen

As Serena hunted for Regan Conrad's home on Lismore Road, a black van approached from behind at extreme speed. One headlight was broken, but its single remaining beam grew blinding in her mirror like a searchlight. As the van careened past her Mustang in the adjacent lane, a rush of air pushed her toward the shoulder. The van continued east into the no-man's-land of farm towns like Stewart and Buckthorn, leaving her alone on the two-lane highway.

She slowed to a crawl at McQuade Road and scouted the numbers posted on the mailboxes on the opposite side of the rural road. Half a mile later, she spotted the address for Regan Conrad and turned into the nurse's long driveway. The houses in the countryside were built far back from the road, with several hundred yards of fields and trees separating neighbors. When she reached the house, she was surprised to find the kind of luxury country home that local professionals like doctors or lawyers afforded. Not nurses. A swimming pool, now closed for the season, sat amid a sprawling expanse of brown lawn. A multi-level redwood deck was built off the side of the house, with access from dual sets of French doors.

The living-room window was brightly lit with a broad bay window, but she didn't see anyone inside. She parked beyond the house, where the driveway ended, and got out. As she walked to the front door, she spotted two cars parked in front of the garage. One was a black Hummer. The other was a 1980s-era Ford Escort.

Serena rang the bell and waited nearly a minute before Regan Conrad opened the door a few inches and studied her suspiciously.

From inside, Serena heard the bluesy strains of a soul singer on the stereo.

'May I help you?'

'Ms Conrad? My name is Serena Dial. I'm an investigator working for the Itasca County Sheriff's office on the disappearance of Marcus Glenn's daughter.'

Regan's mouth twisted into a frown. Her lipstick was so dark that her lips looked purple. 'What does that have to do with me?'

'I'd like to ask you some questions.'

'Why? Do you think I swooped in and stole the baby and I'm hiding her here in my house?'

'I don't know,' Serena said. 'Did you?'

Regan didn't answer, but a ghost of a smile flitted across her ivory face. She invited Serena inside with a flick of her hand. She led the way to the living room on her right, where the bay window overlooked the yard.

'I'll be back in a minute,' Regan told her.

Serena ran her hand along a sofa that had a plush, almost velvet finish. 'This is quite the place,' she said. 'Did you win the lottery?'

Regan stopped in the doorway and folded her arms over her chest, it was my break-up box, courtesy of a corporate lawyer from Minneapolis.'

She disappeared.

Serena examined the living room. Regan liked blown glass; there were several multi-colored bowls shaped like flowers. An original oil painting, abstract with thick squiggles of color, hung over the fireplace. From somewhere inside the house, the volume of the music increased. Serena realized there were hidden speakers in the living room. She recognized the singer now; it was Duffy belting out 'Mercy'. Just as the volume went up, she thought she heard something else, like a faint echo from another room. The noise didn't recur, but she wondered if the music was meant to drown it out.

She thought she had heard a baby crying.

Serena was on the verge of investigating when Regan reappeared in the doorway with a glass of red wine. 'Do you want something to drink?' she asked.

'No.' She added, 'Did I hear a baby?'

'Only if you brought one with you,' Regan replied. 'Come on, we can talk in the library.'

Regan led her out of the living room into the foyer. Walking beside Regan, Serena finally had a chance to study the nurse up close. She wasn't as tall as Serena, and she had a gaunt but attractive face. Her skin was paper white and appeared even paler against the dark make-up on her eyes and mouth. She had a pierced lower lip, four earrings in her left ear, and three in her right. She wore a black tank top that hung straight down, barely swelled by her small breasts, and Serena saw an elaborate serpent tattoo stretching down her forearm to her bony wrist. The head of the snake poked out of Regan's shirt near her neck. Her black hair was short and spiky with strands of blue highlights. Serena guessed that she was about thirty years old.

'Do I look like a biker chick?' Regan asked, catching Serena's eye. 'Or just white trash?'

'More like a goth Kate Moss,' Serena said.

Regan smiled.

'You live out here alone?' Serena asked.

'That's right.'

'I hope you're careful.'

'I sleep with a shotgun by my bed,' Regan told her. 'I know how to use it.'

She led Serena into a small den and used a remote control to replay 'Mercy' on her iPod dock. She mouthed, 'Yeah, yeah, yeah' along with the background vocals on the song, and she did a slithery dance across the carpet and then settled into a leather recliner.

'You like Duffy?' she called over the music.

Serena nodded, but she winced at the volume. Regan pushed a button that muted the sound. The silence was startling.

'Better?'

'Thanks,' Serena said. She eyed the books on the shelves and saw a collection of homeopathic medical reference guides and cookbooks devoted to vegetarian and organic foods. The furnishings in the library, like the rest of the house, were upscale.

'I left most of the rooms the way my dickstick lawyer decorated them,' Regan explained. 'I like the idea that he and his fat wife spent years getting the house just the way she wanted it, and then he had to hand me the keys.'

'That's a pretty nice consolation prize for a busted affair,' Serena said.

'Well, if you're going to play fast and loose with your client's money, be careful who you tell. He liked to whisper secrets in my ear when he was fucking me.' She added, if you're a museum piece like Valerie Glenn, men want to make love to you. Me they like to fuck.'

'I heard you and Marcus Glenn were having an affair,' Serena said.

'That's not a secret.'

'I also heard he dumped you.'

'So what if he did?'

'Were you angry?' Serena asked.

'What do you think? I was furious. But I'm not exactly the girl you show off at the country club on Saturday nights.'

'People at the hospital call you unstable,' Serena said.

'Unstable? That's rich. His wife is the one who's unstable. Clinical depression. Meds.'

'Where did you hear that?'

'I told you, men like to tell me secrets. Marcus included.'

'You didn't look surprised to find the police on your doorstep,' Serena said.

'I'm not stupid. Exactly what is it you want to know, Ms Dial?'

'I want to know if Dr Glenn gave you a key to his house.'

Regan shrugged. 'Oh, I understand. No forced entry. No broken windows. Very suspicious. It must have been the crazy, jealous nurse.'

'The key,' Serena repeated.

'Why does it matter? I was nowhere near the Glenn mansion on Thursday night. I was working. Lots of people saw me.'

'So I hear.'

'Then why are you bothering me?' Regan asked.

'You blame Marcus for your break-up. You work with babies. A baby is missing.'

'I spend my life with moms and babies,' Regan retorted, jabbing a finger at Serena. 'I'm a nurse. A midwife. A counselor. I help women, Ms Dial.'

'Do you have children yourself?'

'I have hundreds. Every baby I've delivered or cared for is in some way mine.'

Serena leaned forward. 'That's an interesting thing to say.'

'Every nurse feels that way.'

'Were you in the ward when Valerie Glenn gave birth?' Serena asked.

'I was in the hospital that night, but I didn't assist.'

'But you were there?'

'I was there. So what?'

'Was that before or after Marcus dumped you?'

Regan's mouth made an angry slash. 'Before.'

'So was it hard for you to watch him and Valerie with their new child?' Serena asked. 'Did you know right then that he was going to give you up?'

'You don't know anything, Ms Dial. The baby didn't make any difference to Marcus.'

'Then why did he dump you?'

'Because a divorce would be too ugly. And expensive.'

'You hate Valerie Glenn, don't you?'

'She's exactly the kind of blonde rich bitch I despise. So what?'

'She convinced Marcus to drop you by the side of the highway like a bag of trash. That must have stung.'

Regan pointed a finger at the doorway. 'We're done talking.'

'You didn't tell me if you had a key to the Glenn house,' Serena said.

Regan stood up. 'OK. I did. But not anymore.'

'Where is it?'

'In a landfill. I didn't need it after Marcus and I split up. Now I'd like you to leave.'

Regan turned her back and stalked out of the library, and Serena followed. In the foyer, she yanked open the front door, and as Serena went past her, Regan grabbed her shoulder. 'Instead of interrogating me, you ought to be looking at the people who were inside the house that night, Ms Dial.'

'Meaning what?'

'Meaning you never asked me how I met Marcus. Aren't you curious?'

Serena nodded. 'How?'

'He came to me last year about that girl. The teenager in the trailer near Sago. Migdalia Vega.'

'What about her?'

'Marcus wanted me to help her. Off the books. He didn't want anyone to know.'

'Know what?' Serena asked.

'She was pregnant,' Regan told her. Then she pushed Serena out and slammed the door.

Serena sat in her Mustang in Regan Conrad's driveway. She pressed her cell phone to her ear to hear Jonny's voice through the static. The signal came and went unevenly this far north of the city. He sounded distant.

'Pregnant?' Stride said.

'That's what Regan says.'

'So what happened to Micki's baby?' he asked.

'I don't know. I think we should find out.'

'I'll talk to her,' Stride said. He added, 'Are you coming back here tonight?'

Serena hesitated. 'I thought I'd stay at our place.' 'Oh.' it's a two-hour drive at night,' she told him. 'And the deer are running.'

'I know. You're right, that's a good idea.' if you really want me to come back there, I will.'

'No, stay at home,' he said. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

The silence told her that he had hung up.

She thought about calling him back, but she wasn't going to do that. It was easier to be alone. She turned on the Mustang. The radio station played a ballad by Trisha Yearwood. It was something sad, something about loss, with Trisha's voice so smooth that you didn't realize you wanted to cry. She turned it off, because she couldn't deal with the song, and she didn't want it going over and over in her head all night.

As Serena turned around and headed out of the long driveway, she noticed Regan Conrad staring at her from the bay window, with her hands planted fiercely on her hips. She also noticed that one of the two cars that had been parked in front of Regan's garage was gone. The Hummer was still there, but the old Escort had vanished.

Someone had been in the house. While Duffy begged for mercy, someone had used the music as cover to get away.

Chapter Fifteen

Nick Garaldo studied the silhouette of the ruined school across the open stretch of dirt and grass. He reached into the side pocket of his backpack and fitted a hands-free voice recorder over his ear. He tapped the switch and spoke softly.

'I'm outside the Buckthorn School. I'm preparing to make my assault.'

Nick emerged from the protection of the tall weeds lining the creek basin and picked his way through a minefield of dirty glass. He dug into his pocket for a handful of red pistachios. One by one, he pried apart the shells and popped the nuts into his mouth. As he chewed them, he sprinkled the shells on the ground. Pistachios were his weakness — he ate three bags a week — and his calling card, too. On every assault in the urban caves, he left a trail of salty red shells behind him. The Duluth Armory. The steam tunnels underneath the University of Minnesota. The abandoned mental hospital in Cambridge. The silos of a shuttered flour mill in the western prairies. He had invaded them all and signed his name with pistachios. It was his little joke for the police and the security firms that tried to catch him.

When he had scouted the old Buckthorn School over the summer, Nick wasn't concerned about access. The ruins were wide open for anyone who was brave or foolish enough to explore inside. But not now. He assumed that someone had been killed or raped at the site, and the liability had finally forced the township to shut up the building against marauders and post No Trespassing signs. The popular teen sport of tossing bricks through the glass of the old school was over.

The windows were now boarded up, nailed shut with sturdy plywood. Chains and locks looped through the door handles. It wasn't going to be easy to get inside, but for Nick, that was part of the challenge.

He switched on his flashlight. The beam of light speared the bright eyes of a raccoon, which lumbered away into the field. He crunched through brick and rubble into the open lower level that had served as the plant for the school's utilities. Most of the foam ceiling tiles had fallen and decayed, and those that remained were water-stained and furry with mold. Electrical conduits dangled from the ceiling.

'They can lock it up, but they can't keep the kids out entirely,' he recited into his voice recorder. 'You've got cans of Budweiser, Big Mac boxes, and used condoms. God, who would be crazy enough to have sex in this cesspool?' Nick wrinkled his nose. 'There's a nasty smell, too. I think it's coming from upstairs.'

He did a reconnaissance of the stairwell leading up to the main level of the school but, like the windows, the concrete stairwell had now been sealed. He made a complete circle, navigating around fallen stonework and pipes. He never noticed the black box cemented to the stairwell or the red light that flashed once as he crossed through an electronic beam.

Nick retreated to the field behind the school and made his way up the grassy slope at the northwest corner so that he was on the same level as the main floor of the school. He ate more red pistachios and tossed the shells. He followed the wall of the school, stepping over a rusted radiator that lay on its side like a lazy pig. A row of sixteen windows cut through the brick wall. He could reach up and touch them with his hand but, like all the others, the windows were sealed. He turned the next corner, stirring a nest of blackbirds that startled him as they screeched and flew away in a huff of wings and feathers.

From where he was, he was now visible to traffic on Township Road but, so far, he hadn't seen a single car. He pointed a flashlight beam toward the high end of the wall, where five sets of windows stretched in a row to the front of the school. The plywood on two of the windows was loose, thanks to rain dripping from the roof and rotting the wood. The windows were frosted and square, large enough to allow him to squeeze through, but they were set at least twenty feet above the ground.

Nick continued to the front of the school, where a large sinkhole marked a section of the building that had burned down. He hauled himself up on the jagged edge of a low concrete wall. Minding his balance, he grabbed the edge of the roof and pulled himself up far enough to swing his leg on to the tar surface. He completed the climb and found himself on the roof of one of the lower wings of the building, abutting the brick wall where the plywood hung loose from the window.

He ripped off the plywood so easily that he almost fell. Half of the frosted panels on the window had long since been broken in. He leaned through the open space and examined the interior with his flashlight. The beam illuminated steel braces and the backdrop of what had once been a basketball frame. He was breaking into the school auditorium.

'Here we go,' Nick said.

He removed a coil of rope from his backpack and secured it to a steel pipe on the exterior wall of the auditorium, then threw the rest of the rope through the window where it dropped to the floor below. Hanging on to the rope with gloved hands, he pushed himself through the gap, bracing his legs against the inside wall. Inch by inch, he worked his way down the wall until his feet splashed into a puddle of cold water at the floor. He let go.

'I'm inside the ruins,' he said.

With the windows covered over, the interior of the school was darker than the night outside. He listened to the dripping of water and felt it spatter on his face. Somewhere in the great space, he heard a familiar squeal. Rats. He couldn't see them, but he knew they were there, scrabbling through the stagnant water.

Then there was the smell.

Now that he was inside, it was ferocious, like rotting meat in the hot sun, so strong and nauseating that he had to pinch his nose shut with his fingers. He wanted to gag, and even when he breathed open-mouthed, the stench rose up anyway through his nasal passages.

'Something's dead in here,' Nick said.

He waved the beam of his flashlight ahead of him. The floor was a mess of ventilation pipes, wire netting, and steel I-frames. The interior walls had gaping, jagged holes where bricks had caved in like missing teeth. He took fragile steps toward a doorway on the far side of the auditorium. Dark shapes scurried in and out of the puddles and hid inside the pipes as he came closer. He saw red eyes in the tunnel of light.

The doorway led to a narrow hall, where the line of dark, boarded-up windows stretched along the wall. Glass littered the floor. He shivered from the cold and dampness. The smell, as he moved down the hallway, got even worse. So did the gathering of rats.

Nick stopped.

It was impossible to move silently through the debris, and for a moment he was certain he had heard the clatter of someone else's footsteps on the far side of the school. He waited to see if the noise would recur, but a minute passed, and it didn't. He told himself he was letting the place get the best of his imagination. He was alone. No one else would dare to be inside.

When two more minutes of silence passed, he kept going.

He reached a doorway leading to a smaller room, where a broken wall of cinder blocks rose to the ceiling like a honeycomb. His flashlight shone on a row of concrete beams. Green algae bloomed on the floor. In this room, the smell soared, feeding rancid decay into the air. He covered the whole lower half of his face with his gloved hand, but he couldn't extinguish the stink. The rats were bolder here, running back and forth in front of him. Urgent. Excited. Hungry.

Four feet away, where the light made an arc on the floor, he saw them.

Six bare feet.

Nick lifted the flashlight and then dropped it and shouted. The flashlight fell and broke, bathing the room in darkness, but it couldn't erase the awful image from his brain. Three women, naked, were tied to old-fashioned school chairs. Their skin was bloodless and white, where they still had skin. Most of it had been eaten away, exposing muscle, organs, and bone. Rats scampered on the desks and in their laps and across their shoulders and breasts. 'FUCK FUCK FUCK!'

Nick backed up and staggered like a blind man, hands outstretched, colliding with the concrete pillars as he hunted for an escape. His feet tripped on debris, and he fell, cutting his hands and arms on sharp metal. His skin grew slippery with his own blood. He pushed himself up and felt along the wall until it ended, and he spilled into another hallway, tunneling through a house of horrors.

'Help!'

He reached out with his spread fingers, and his hand found the bat-shaped remnants of broken glass in one of the windows. He hammered his bloody palm on the plywood nailed to the outer wall, but the stiff wood refused to yield to his panicked blows. He wailed for someone to hear him in the lonely land outside.

'Help! Oh my God, help me!'

Behind him, out of the darkness, a human hand clapped on his shoulder. Nick screamed and spun. A flashlight dazzled his eyes. He saw the shadow of someone tall and large looming over him like a bear, and he thought for an instant he'd been rescued.

'Oh, thank God,' Nick cried.

His relief was short-lived. A fist as hard and strong as a brick hit his face and snapped his head against the peaks of glass. The light in his eyes went black. Nick tasted pistachios again and realized his mouth was filled with bile. His knees buckled, but as he fell, a powerful forearm locked around his neck, choking him and jerking him off the ground.

His chest roared, bellowing for air.

His legs kicked and flailed.

As he struggled, the cold and the stench slowly disappeared and left him in a vacuum of perfect silence. He floated away from the pain and, eventually, he floated so far that he felt nothing at all. He was somewhere else entirely, listening to water drip like the ticking of seconds on a clock. He was in a cave that he had all to himself. He was exploring.