The Burying Place

Chapter Thirty-one

Valerie opened her front door on Wednesday morning and found her sister Denise standing on the porch. She cringed, watching the stony expression on Denise's face that covered up wounds of betrayal and humiliation. Valerie would have felt better if Denise had screamed at her, but instead, her sister marched past her into the house without a word.

'Where's Marcus?' she asked after Valerie closed the door.

'In Duluth. He had surgery this morning.'

Denise worked her jaw uncomfortably as if she had something caught in a tooth.

'Do you want some coffee?' Valerie asked.

'Yeah. Fine.'

They walked silently down the white hallway. Valerie retrieved a heavy mug and filled it with coffee and pushed it across the kitchen island to Denise. She sat on a bar stool and waited, but her sister didn't sit down immediately. Valerie could see Denise's eyes comparing the granite countertops and stainless appliances to her own shoebox kitchen. It was the same routine every time Denise set foot inside their house. Valerie knew the bitter envy Denise felt over the money she had. She felt guilty with every withering look.

'Look, Denise,' she began, but her sister held up a hand to stop her.

'Don't say you're sorry. I don't want to hear that.'

'Then what can I say?' Valerie asked.

'Right now, don't say anything.'

Denise stared down the vast, sloping backyard toward the lake. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and drank her coffee in silence. She wore no make-up. Valerie knew that Denise deliberately avoided looking feminine, and for years she'd assumed it was because of her job. Cops weren't girls. They had to be tough. Now she wondered if the real reason was to avoid comparisons with herself. To pretend that there was no competition between them.

'You've been selfish your entire life,' Denise announced in a harsh, angry voice. 'Everything came easy to you. You've never cared what I had to go through. I worked my ass off to get a tenth of what you've got, and you never worked for a damn thing, did you?'

Valerie said nothing to deny it or to protest. Denise believed it, and she deserved a chance to lay blame.

'I always wondered if you gave a thought to me and my life,' Denise continued, turning back from the window. 'I guess now I know, don't I? If there's something you want, you take it, and to hell with everyone else. Do you even have a clue what it's like to raise four kids and be on call every hour of the night and day and wonder if you're going to scrape up enough money to make this month's mortgage payment?'

'No. I don't know. You're right.'

'Well, maybe once in a while you could try to put yourself in someone else's shoes. That would be nice. Do you think I don't know that Tom and I have drifted apart? I've watched it happening for years. But guess what, sometimes life just grinds the love out of you. It sucks, but that's the way it is. I may have a crappy marriage, but it's my marriage. Not yours. Or at least it was until Tom decided that he preferred a fantasy with you to real life with me.'

'Don't blame Tom, please,' Valerie told her. 'This was my fault.'

'Do you think I need you to defend my husband? I know Tom. He wants to be the strong shoulder. And here you come all beautiful and weepy and lonely, and gosh, one thing led to another. Right? Is that what you were going to explain to me? Well, don't bother. Tom had a choice, and he made the wrong one. It doesn’t matter whether either one of you intended it to happen.'

'You won't let me tell you I'm sorry. You won't let me explain. I'm not sure what you want me to say.'

'Oh, am I making this hard on you, Valerie?' Denise snapped. 'Isn't that thoughtless of me. I should be more concerned with how you feel.'

Valerie didn't want to cry, because she didn't want her sister to believe it was another play for sympathy. But she cried anyway and wiped her eyes. 'I know you won't believe this, Denise, but I've always been jealous of you.'

'Oh, right.'

'It's true,' Valerie insisted. 'You've got these great kids. You're married to your high school sweetheart. You have this amazing job.'

'Don't patronize me.'

'I'm not. I just admire how strong you are. I'm not like that. I've been fragile my whole life, and here my sister is this cop, wife, and mother who can handle anything. Just once in my life, I'd like to have the courage to do the right thing and stand up for myself. To be strong like you.'

Denise shook her head. Her eyes were tired and hard. 'How could you, Valerie? How could you sleep with my husband?'

'It wasn't about sex,' Valerie told her. 'I don't care about sex. I never have. I just — I just needed to be close to someone. There's no explanation. There's no excuse. It may not matter to you that we never intended it to become physical, but we didn't.'

'I don't care.'

Valerie nodded and spoke softly. 'It didn't last long. A couple times, that's all. We both knew it was wrong. But you have to understand that Tom rescued me. I'm not sure I'd be alive right now without him. I was thinking of suicide again back then.'

Denise slammed her mug down, making a loud crack of stone against stone. Coffee spilled on the granite countertop. 'You are such a narcissistic little bitch. What do you want me to say? I'm so happy my husband saved my sister's life by fucking her brains out? You want to know what I really think, Val? I wish you'd gotten the balls and done it right. Tom's not your husband. If you needed to be rescued, you should have found somebody else to do it, or you should have taken a bottle of pills and gotten it over with.'

Valerie paled, and she looked away, not wanting her sister to see the body blow she had landed. She separated a few paper towels from the roll on the counter and wiped up the spilled coffee. As she did, Denise reached out and put her hands over Valerie's.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'You don't have anything to apologize for,' Valerie replied. 'You're right. I was suffering, and I wound up hurting my own sister. I'm selfish, and I'm a coward.'

'Don't start with the self-pity.'

'What else do I have? The only thing I did right in my life was have Callie, and I couldn't even protect her.'

Denise pulled away in frustration. 'This always happens. In the end, it's always about you. And I buy into it. It's been that way all our lives.'

Valerie didn't know what to say. She rubbed the counter until it was dry, making sure the coffee didn't leave a stain.

'I have to ask you something,' Denise told her. 'As a cop and as a wife. I have to know.'

'What?'

'Is Tom the father?'

Valerie's eyes widened in shock.

'Don't play games, Val,' Denise continued. 'I need to know. Is Callie Tom's baby?'

'No.'

'Are you sure?'

'Of course I am.'

'Tom's not sure,' Denise said. 'He told me so last night.'

'He's not Callie's father.'

'How do you know?'

'I just know. I can see Marcus in her.'

'Did you have her tested?'

'Of course not. I couldn't do that.'

'So you're just guessing,' Denise said. 'I asked Tom. He said the two of you had sex not long before you got pregnant.'

Valerie shook her head. 'Marcus and I had sex, too. He was the last one.'

'That doesn’t make any difference.'

'My husband is the father of my daughter,' Valerie insisted.

'Do you believe that, or are you just trying to convince yourself?'

'It's true.'

'You tried for three years, and you didn't get pregnant. Then you started sleeping with Tom. Wake up, Valerie. Believe me, I know exactly how fertile Tom's swimmers are.'

'Callie is Marcus's baby. I know it.'

'What about Marcus? Does he know it?'

Valerie's eyes narrowed. 'What do you mean?'

'I mean, did Marcus know you were having an affair?'

Valerie heard Marcus shouting at her from the landing. You're not exactly innocent, are you?

'He didn't know,' she murmured.

'Are you sure? Grand Rapids is a small town. It's hard to keep secrets. Obviously someone saw the two of you together. Blair Rowe found out, so why couldn't Marcus?'

'There's no way he could have known,' Valerie repeated.

Denise shook her head. 'You know what it means if Marcus knew about your affair, don't you? He may have suspected that Callie wasn't his child. Didn't you ever wonder why he was so cold with her? What would he have done if he realized the little girl who was screwing up his perfect life wasn't really his?'

'I don't want to hear this.' Valerie put her hands over her ears, but Denise reached across the island and yanked her arms away.

'You can't run away from this. It gives him a motive. Did he know?'

In her head, Valerie heard Regan Conrad taunting her outside the church after midnight. I don't have to tell you why, do I? She thought about the hospital envelope, hidden unopened in her dresser upstairs. The envelope that Regan had given her.

I can't believe you didn't know.

'No,' Valerie told her sister. 'Marcus didn't know about the affair. He never had any reason to think Callie wasn't his. And she is. She's his daughter. He loves her.'

Chapter Thirty-two

Maggie watched the contents of the photo disk that Stride had found in Nick Garaldo's apartment sprinkle in thumbnails across her computer monitor. She leaned closer and chewed on her lower lip. The photos were dark and difficult to distinguish. She clicked on one of the thumbnails and enlarged the image on her screen. The photo showed an industrial locale, with a concrete floor and dusty pipes suspended from a bare ceiling. When she clicked on the next image, she saw a pair of giant boilers caked over with rust in front of a windowless wall. As she scrolled through the photographs, she found more images from the same underground site.

One thumbnail — but only one — showed a picture of a person. Maggie saw a short, wiry man wearing jeans, rubber boots, a navy neoprene jacket, and a black wool cap. When she compared the picture to the driver's license photo in her file, she recognized Nick Garaldo.

'Where the hell are you, Nick?' she murmured.

Guppo poked his head around the corner of the office. He stood under a hot air vent, which fluttered his comb-over like a runaway hose. 'We're getting some network interference out here,' he told her.

Maggie twisted around in her chair. 'Oh?'

'Yeah, we think it's your hair.'

He chuckled, and Maggie growled at him. 'Don't poke the bear, Max. I'm not in the mood. Come check this out.'

'Whatcha got?'

He joined her behind the desk and squinted at the monitor. He breathed heavily, and his forehead was dewy with sweat.

'Stride found this photo card in Nick Garaldo's apartment,' Maggie told him. 'It looks like this guy was inside some kind of factory.'

'It doesn’t look operational. The place is a mess.' He worked her mouse with a beefy hand. 'That looks like some kind of coal burner. He must be in a sub-basement somewhere.'

'But why?'

Guppo straightened up with a groan. 'Maybe this guy is one of those nutjobs who break into old buildings.'

Maggie probed her memory. 'Didn't we have an intruder report at the old Armory a couple of months ago?'

Guppo nodded. 'Yeah, somebody triggered the interior alarms. We sent a car over there, but we didn't find anyone.'

'Pull the report for me, will you?'

'Sure.'

Guppo waddled out of the office. Maggie set the images into a slide show and leaned dangerously far back in her chair with her boots propped on Stride's desk. After the first few pictures, she drifted off, staring through the window at the mottled gray sky. She became aware of a hollow, guilty pit in her stomach as she thought about her and Stride together. It was one thing to wish for something for ten years of your life and something else altogether to have it happen when you least expected it.

She didn't think he'd meant what he said. In the end, he'd want to go back to the way things were. When he woke up — in a day, a week, or a month — he would curse himself for letting his relationship with Serena slip through his fingers. The only question was whether he would be alone in bed when it happened, or whether Maggie would be with him. If that was how it was going to end, she didn't want to be there.

She also knew that her friendship with Serena was doomed. Stride would tell Serena the truth. She didn't know if Serena would forgive Stride, but she would never forgive her. That was fair. Their relationship had always been a high-wire act. Behind every barb, Serena had sent Maggie a message loud and clear. Hands off — he's with me, not you. And every time Maggie talked about the past, she sent a reply. I knew him first.

Sooner or later, one of them was bound to fall.

'You OK?'

She looked up. Guppo was back.

'Yeah, I'm fine,' she replied. 'Did you get the report on the Armory?'

'I did.'

'Let me have it.'

He placed it in her hands, and she flipped through the handful of pages. He lingered, waiting for her to say something, but she waved her hand toward the door without another word. He left and closed the door behind him. She knew he was annoyed. She wasn't normally gruff with Guppo, and he didn't deserve it, but she didn't care. Let him tell the others that she was on the rag.

The officers who responded to the call at the Duluth Armory had taken interior photos near the downstairs access doors, and it was obvious to Maggie that the photos matched the images on Nick Garaldo's disk. If that wasn't sufficient confirmation, she also spotted a notation in the police report that they had found red pistachio shells scattered throughout the Armory rooms. She remembered the mason jar of pistachios in Garaldo's apartment. He had been inside the old building.

She had no idea why Garaldo would invade the abandoned Armory — which contained nothing worth stealing, only detritus from years of disuse — but she knew that urban explorers were like Scuba divers or mountain climbers. They did it because it was there. She also thought it was a safe guess that Garaldo had been engaged in another break-in when he disappeared on Saturday. But where? Urban ruins were unstable and dangerous, and if something had happened to Garaldo, it might be years before they found him. If ever.

Maggie studied the photos that looped across her monitor and spotted a single image of a different structure, outside, under the sunshine. She broke out of the slide show and scrolled down to the corresponding thumbnail, which was the last picture on the card. When she enlarged it, she saw an old-fashioned school building set in the middle of an overgrown grassy field. The windows sported gaping, jagged holes that resembled bats. The walls were eroded and crumbling. A sinkhole sat where part of the school had collapsed and been hauled away, leaving only the foundation.

Seeing it, Maggie recognized the locale. It was the old Buckthorn School. The ruins had been a headache for the police and the township for years. Teenagers were always getting inside and getting hurt, and just a few weeks ago, the city had scraped together the budget money to have the place boarded up and secured. Since then, she didn't think there had been any calls to the site.

Looking at the photo, she realized that the school ruins would be an irresistible lure for someone like Nick Garaldo.

Maggie pulled out her city directory and found the number for the administrator for the township of Buckthorn. She dialed, and Matt Clayton answered on the first ring. He had a big, exuberant voice.

'Matt, it's Maggie Bei in the Duluth Police,' she said. 'Remember me?'

'Hey, sure, Sergeant. Good to talk to you. What's up?'

'It's that damned school again,' Maggie told him.

Clayton groaned. 'Oh, shit, what now? We had that place locked up like Fort Knox.'

'I don't know what's going on. Maybe nothing. We haven't had any reports at our office, but I was wondering if you'd heard anything from neighbors on the farms up there. Complaints, nuisances, stuff that might not get to us.'

'Nothing,' Clayton replied. 'I thought we were finally done with that place. We had a contractor seal off the building, and we hired a local security guy to come by every couple of days and keep an eye on it. You know, walk around, tug on the locks, that kind of thing. He hasn't reported anything unusual.'

'What's his name?'

'Uh, hang on, let me check. Here we go. It's Nieman. Jim Nieman. You want his number?'

Maggie grabbed a pen. 'Yeah, and could you get hold of him and give him my number, too? I'd like him to go over and do a look-see on the place inside and out. Tell him to give me a call and let me know what he finds.'

'No problem. What's going on?'

'There's a guy missing,' Maggie told him. 'A twenty-something kid named Nick Garaldo. Nobody's seen him since Saturday. I think he may be one of these urban explorers who like to break into abandoned properties just so they can say they've been there.'

'You think he was at the school?' Clayton asked.

'Could be. I found a picture of the school on a photo card in his apartment. It was taken before you guys secured the property. He might have been scouting it for a raid.'

'Damn, can't these guys just go bungee jumping or something?'

'Tell me about it. Anyway, it may be a wild goose chase. For all I know, Garaldo was there and gone weeks ago, but it's worth checking out.'

'I'll call Nieman and ask him to get out there today. I hope that kid's not inside. There's a lot of dangerous debris in that place. Not to mention rats.'

'I'm not a big fan of rats,' Maggie said.

'You and me both.'

Maggie took another look at the police report from the Armory break-in. 'Hey, tell Nieman to keep his eyes open for something else, too.'

'What?'

'Red pistachio shells.'

Chapter Thirty-three

Stride and Serena spent the morning in silence.

They sat on opposite sides of the desk in the war room in Grand Rapids, with a pretense of paperwork between them. Her perfume drifted across the short space and smelled sweet and familiar. The heat in the building had been cranked until it was uncomfortably warm in the tiny office. When her head was down, with her dark hair tumbling across her face, Stride found himself staring at her. She was one of the most beautiful women he had ever met. Complex, wounded, attractive. Three years ago, she had seemed like the perfect fit for him, as if two broken souls could come together and make a whole.

Serena looked up and met his eyes. They didn't need to speak to send a message between them. She felt angry and rejected. It had been bad enough before, but it was worse now, and he realized that they were spiraling out of control. She knew it, too. She waited for him to talk to her, and when he didn't, she got out of her chair and closed the office door. She leaned against it and folded her arms.

'You told her,' Serena said, her voice fierce.

Stride didn't understand. 'What do you mean?'

'Not me. You told her.''

'Maggie,' he said.

'Yeah. Maggie. She told me what's been going on.' Serena cupped her long fingers in front of her chin. 'I want you to understand something, Jonny. I'm hurting for you. I knew you were pushing me away, but I didn't know why. Now I do. I get it. And I'm sorry.'

'So am I.'

'But I'm having a lot of trouble with this,' she continued. 'You were going through hell, and rather than talk to me about it, you let it sabotage our whole relationship. And when you finally opened up about what was going on, it wasn't to me. Do you have any idea what it felt like to hear about this from her?'

'You're right. I should have told you myself.'

'But you didn't. You couldn't open up to me. I was hoping you and I were past that, but obviously we aren't.'

'I guess not.'

'But you were able to talk to Maggie.'

'Sometimes it's easier to talk to someone who's not in the middle of it,' he said.

'Yes, but she is in the middle of it, isn't she? She always has been.'

Stride ran his hand back through his messy hair. He normally had a good poker face, but not now. He shook his head in frustration. 'It's always been complicated between me and Maggie. You know that.'

'It's not so complicated. She loves you.'

'That was years ago,' he protested.

'It's not like a disease, and you wake up and you're cured. The only one in denial here is you. And I think it's because you have feelings for her, too.'

'We're friends. We've been friends forever. Sometimes it's hard to know where the line is.'

Serena sat down across from him again. 'I was getting a strange vibe at dinner last night,' she said.

He didn't reply.

'I thought about it all last night, trying to figure out what it was,' she continued.

'Serena,' he murmured.

She knew without asking, but she asked it anyway. 'Something happened between the two of you, didn't it?'

He didn't even think about denying it. He met her eyes and nodded.

Serena slashed her arm across the desk, tumbling stacks of paper to the floor. 'So with me you have nothing to give, but with her?' she asked bitterly.

'I'm really sorry.'

She stood up. 'I think we're done here.'

'Let's talk about this,' he said.

'Now you want to talk? Isn't it a little late for that? You've had weeks to talk to me, and you didn't. But in one day with Maggie, you managed to jump into bed and tell her everything that was going on in your head.'

'It's not that simple.'

'Maybe it is, Jonny. Maybe it is.' She grabbed her coat from the hook. As she twisted the doorknob, she stopped and closed her eyes. 'Look, I know I'm not being fair with you. I haven't opened up to you, either.'

'I'm not looking for excuses,' Stride told her. 'This is my fault. Not yours. Not Maggie's.'

Serena shook her head. 'Let's not talk about Maggie. She knew exactly what she was doing. Don't tell me she didn't.'

'It wasn't like that.'

'Not to you, maybe. She saw her opportunity, and she took it. End of story.' She added in a quiet voice, 'Are you in love with her?'

'I have no idea. I know I love you.'

'But that's not enough for us, is it? Can you tell me right now that you're choosing me? That you can reject whatever feelings you have for Maggie? That's what I need to hear. If you can do that, then maybe we can try again.'

'I want to say yes,' he told her.

'But you can't.'

'It's too soon. I don't want to tell you what you want to hear and wind up lying to you. For weeks, until yesterday, I didn't feel a thing. Not for you. Not for Maggie. Not for myself. Nothing. Now everything is flooding back, and I haven't had a chance to work through any of it. You can't ask me to sort this out in a few hours.'

Serena nodded. 'You're right. That's not fair. We both need to think about what we're going to do.'

She walked over to him and kissed him with her soft lips. He didn't need a reminder of how good it felt. Then she turned and left the office and closed the door behind her.

Serena drove to Duluth on Wednesday afternoon and found a bar and grill north of the airport. She pulled into the parking lot and stared at the entrance door. Inside was vodka. Glass after glass of it. She could taste it and imagine it dulling her into unconsciousness. She hadn't fallen off the wagon in fifteen years, but now seemed like a good time. It was as if no time had passed at all since her last drink. She could still remember it on her lips.

She hadn't anticipated this crossroads. She had been slowly getting her mind around the idea of staying in Duluth forever. Of staying with Jonny forever. Those weren't decisions she made lightly, not given her past, but she had begun to believe it. She should have listened to the warning signs and realized that nothing lasts forever. She loved Jonny. He loved her. That didn't mean they could make it work. They both had too many walls and sharp edges.

She had no idea what she would do next. Stay. Go. Try again. Give up. It wasn't the first time in her life she had considered starting over, and it probably wouldn't be the last. Her instinct was to forgive Jonny, but she couldn't do it alone, and she couldn't do it without his whole heart in it. It killed her to think of walking away, but she wasn't going to sit in the background while Stride and Maggie worked side by side every day. The threesome was over.

She stared at the door of the bar. The lure of vodka was so vivid and clear that she could hear it calling to her. She could see the liquid in the bottle. Watch it splash into her glass and swirl around the ice. One drink after another after another. Until she was in the same state of mind that Jonny had been, feeling nothing.

Serena opened the car door.

As she did, her phone rang again. It was Denise Sheridan. She answered the phone and felt as if she had been given a temporary rescue, dragging her back from a cliff's edge.

'What's up, Denise?'

'I heard from the team we had following Marcus,' she reported. 'He was in Duluth this morning in surgery.'

'So?'

'So he left the hospital to go back to Grand Rapids, and they lost him.'

'How?'

'He knew they were back there. He deliberately ran a light and got them off his trail. It may not mean anything, but I wanted you to know.'

'Where was he when he skipped?' Serena asked.

'Rice Lake Road near Martin. They thought he was heading back home, but we staked out Highway 2 and he never showed.'

'What's he driving?'

'A burgundy Lexus.'

Serena thought about Marcus Glenn speeding into the north farmlands. She was in the same area herself, and she was pretty sure she could read the surgeon's mind. 'I know where he's going,' she said.

Chapter Thirty-four

Kasey, Kasey, Kasey. You're running, aren't you?

Her face came into focus through the binoculars. She stopped in the front door of her farmhouse, as if she knew she was being watched. Her nervous eyes flicked to the woods behind their garage, then to the open fields and down the dirt driveway to the highway, where a police car was parked on the shoulder. A bored policeman eyed the traffic in both directions.

Kasey balanced two boxes in her arms. She carried them to a rental truck parked next to the garage and disappeared up the ramp into the rear of the truck. A minute later, she returned to the house with empty arms for another load. He had been watching the back-and- forth from his vantage in the trees for nearly an hour. Kasey's husband had arrived with the truck around noon, and since then, the two of them had led a steady parade as they packed the truck with their belongings.

You can't run, Kasey. It doesn’t work that way. We're not done.

Bruce Kennedy opened the front door with his boot and trudged down the steps. He watched him. Kasey's husband was a big man, with fair blond hair and a bushy beard. He wore jeans and an untucked flannel shirt. He had the look of a plodder, a follower who did what he was told. No doubt Kasey could lead him around by the nose, but she deserved better. It made him angry, looking at Bruce Kennedy through the binoculars and imagining this clumsy man with no idea what a special prize he had. When he lost her, he wouldn't even have a clue what he'd possessed. The fool.

His phone vibrated in his pocket. He was secluded in the woods, invisible and out of earshot, but he looked around cautiously before answering.

'Yes?'

'Nieman, it's Matt Clayton in Buckthorn.'

'What can I do for you?'

'Have you been out to the school lately?' Clayton asked.

Nieman hesitated. 'Yeah, I make the rounds out there every few days to make sure the site is secure.'

'Do you think anyone could have gotten inside?'

'Not likely. It's locked up tight. Why, is there a problem?'

'I don't know. I got a call from Maggie Bei in the Duluth Police. She's trying to track down a missing person who may have had his eyes on the school.'

'I haven't seen anything wrong out there,' he said.

'When were you last inside?'

'Sunday.'

'Well, this kid supposedly disappeared on Saturday, so if you've been in there since then, there's probably nothing to worry about. Even so, I'd appreciate it if you could go over there today and do a walk-through, OK?'

'Sure.'

'The last thing we need is another insurance claim at that place.'

'I understand.'

'When you're done, call Sergeant Bei and give her a report.' Clayton rattled off a phone number. 'Oh, and keep an eye out for pistachio shells, too, all right? I guess this kid drops them wherever he goes.'

'Yeah, no problem,' he said. He added, 'Why do the cops think this guy was at the school? Did somebody see him out there?'

'No, nothing like that. He was taking pictures of the place. Like I said, it's probably nothing.'

'I'll check it out.'

'Thanks, Nieman. You're a good man.'

He hung up and shoved his phone back in his pocket. He was annoyed at his bad luck. There was no way the cops should have been able to ₍tie Nick Garaldo to the school so quickly. He had found the kid's digital camera in his backpack, and he had gone to his apartment and taken out his computer and anything else that might have tipped them off that Garaldo was an urban explorer. But obviously he had missed something, which was the kind of mistake he didn't usually make.

He knew he could report back to Clayton and the cops that he had found nothing amiss at the school. The stall would buy him a few days, but the clock was ticking. Sooner or later, they would circle back to the school and check it out themselves. It was only a matter of time before they broke inside and found his collection. He needed to disappear long before they made their discovery. Move on to a new city, somewhere in the south this time, where the winter was warm. Shed his skin, as he had done many times before. Start over.

When he lifted his binoculars, he saw Kasey again. The wind blew her red hair across her face. Her jaw was clenched. She looked desperate and fierce, like a wounded animal that fights even harder when it knows it's about to die. He admired her courage. That was why he had something special planned for her.

As he thought about it, he realized that the timing was perfect. Tonight was the night to wrap up his stay in Duluth. The hunt for Nick Garaldo might even work to his advantage. If he didn't act, Kasey would be gone in the morning, and he didn't want to risk losing her. He could chase her across the country if necessary, but it was much better to do it now. They had a date at the school, like a spotlight dance at the prom, while the others watched them.

He smiled as he stood in the shadows of the spruce trees. He would wait until dark, and then he would bring the game to an end.

Serena turned off the highway into the driveway at Regan Conrad's house. She saw the nurse's black Hummer near the garage and, beside it, a wine-colored Lexus with a custom license plate that read KNEEDOC.

It was Marcus Glenn's car.

She parked behind both vehicles, blocking them in. She didn't want a repeat of her night-time visit to Regan's house, when the old Escort had slipped away while she was inside. She climbed out of her Mustang and kept an eye on the living-room window as she walked up the front steps. No one watched her.

Before she rang the bell, she realized that the door was ajar. She put her ear to the inch-wide gap and listened for voices. When she heard nothing, she pushed the door open with her shoulder and crept into the foyer. The house was dark and frigid. She waited in the cold and listened again. A cop's instinct whispered to her that something was wrong. The house was too cold. Too dark. Too quiet.

Serena looked down and spied a smear on the light oak near the door. The stain was dried and red. She knelt and caught a mineral smell that was unmistakable.

Blood.

She reached inside her jacket and withdrew her gun. Overhead, she heard the noise of footsteps. She kicked off her shoes rather than let her heels click on the wooden floor. As she made her way to the stairs, she watched the balcony above her. The lights were off, and the doors to the second-floor rooms were closed. She tested her weight on the first step, but the stairs didn't give off a sound. Slowly, she climbed to the upper floor.

She studied the doors stretching down the hallway. One door, at the very end of the hall, was half-open. She heard the slamming of a drawer, followed by the rustle of paper. With her gun leading the way ahead of her, she moved toward the room. Through the crack in the doorway, she saw a metal file cabinet with its middle drawer open. File folders were littered across the floor. She heard frantic, agitated breathing.

Serena held her gun high as she peered around the door frame. She saw Marcus Glenn with his back to her, on hands and knees in the middle of the office floor. He pawed through a foot-high stack of files, tossing each one aside as he reviewed it.

'Don't move,' Serena called.

Glenn spun round in shock, his eyes wide. He clutched one of the files as papers spilled to the floor.

'Put your hands in the air,' she told him.

He saw her gun pointed at his chest, and he spread his fingers wide and jerked his hands over his head. The folder fell to the ground beside him.

'What the hell's going on?' she asked.

Glenn stammered. The normally unflappable surgeon was terrified. His skin was drained of color. 'I was looking for something.'

'What?'

'I wanted — I thought she might have—' he began, then stopped himself. 'I don't think I should say anything.'

'Where's Regan?'

'She's not here.'

'How did you get in?' Serena asked.

'The door was open.'

She pushed apart the file folders with her foot and realized that Glenn was reviewing medical records. Baby records. 'You want to try again, Dr Glenn? Exactly what were you looking for?'

He hesitated, and she thought he needed time to come up with a convincing lie. 'I began to think you were right. I wondered if Regan could have found someone to steal Callie or to — to harm her. I thought maybe I would find something in her files. Something to tell me who.'

'Did you find anything?'

'No.'

'Did you search any of the other rooms?' Serena asked.

'No. I knew she kept her files here.'

She looked at him. 'There's blood near the door.'

'Blood? I didn't notice.'

There was a false lilt in the way he said it. The panic in his face wasn't just about being caught in the middle of a break-in. Something else was going on.

'Where's Regan?' she repeated.

'I told you, I don't know. The house was empty when I arrived.'

'Exactly what did you do?'

He stammered again. 'The door was open, and I came inside. I called for Regan, but she didn't answer. When I realized she wasn't here, I came upstairs to see what I could find in her files.'

'Whatever you're hiding, I'm going to find out. You might as well tell me.'

'I'm not hiding anything.'

Serena frowned. 'Lace your fingers together on top of your head.'

'What?'

'You heard me.'

Glenn complied.

'Now stay on your knees,' she told him. 'Crawl toward me. Slowly.'

Serena backed a few steps into the hallway. The tall surgeon came forward on his knees, watching her gun.

'Could you please put that thing down?' he asked.

'Shut up.' When Glenn was in the doorway of the office, she told him, 'Stop right there. Now get down on all fours.'

He went to his hands and knees on the carpet.

'This is crazy,' he said. 'I haven't done anything.'

'Put your hands on the carpet and lie with your face down and your hands and legs far apart. Keep your fingers spread.'

'Look, I already told you—'

'Do it.'

Glenn heard the ice in her voice. He slid on to the ground until his body made an extended X on the carpet.

'Stay that way,' Serena snapped. 'Don't move. Don't look up.'

She backed up to the first closed door on her right. She turned the knob with two fingers and pushed the door open, revealing an empty spare bedroom. Nothing was amiss. Keeping her gun trained on Glenn, she backed up to the next door and found an elegant bathroom with rose decor and a double shower.

'Where's Regan's bedroom?' she asked Glenn.

'At the other end of the hallway.'

'Stay where you are.'

She walked past the stairs to the closed door leading to the master suite. On the carpet, she spotted another wet stain extending from inside the bedroom under the crack of the door. She inhaled and didn't like what she smelled. When she glanced at Glenn, she saw him with his head up, watching her.

'What am I going to find in there?' she asked.

'I have no idea.'

He was lying.

'If you went in there, we'll find your prints,' she told him.

Glenn's face twisted in dismay. 'I didn't do it,' he said.

'Do what?' Serena asked, but she could guess what was waiting for her.

'It's not good,' he told her.

Serena dug in her pocket for gloves. She snapped one on to her right hand and twisted the knob with a light touch, then eased the door open with her foot. The bedroom was shadowy, its curtains closed. Light from the skylight in the hallway cascaded through the open door in a stream and illuminated the wall.

Her breath caught in her chest.

She took two steps into the room, far enough to see the king-sized bed, with its turquoise blue sheets in disarray; the shotgun lying on the carpet, emanating a smell of burnt powder; and the blood. Halfway between the bed and the door was a massive pool of blood spread out like the spidery fingers of a lake, and behind it, on the wall, she saw gruesome splatters of brain, tissue, and bone.

There was no body. But whoever had lain in that pool wasn't alive.

'Son of a bitch,' Serena murmured.

She stared at the wall and realized that someone had dipped into the blood like red paint and written a message. Each letter was six inches tall, printed awkwardly, the way a child would write. Streaks dripped from the words and made parallel lines down the wall. The message read: HI, KASEY.

Chapter Thirty-six

Maggie carried a chair into Regan Conrad's living room under one arm and set it down with the back facing the sofa and the bay window. She straddled the seat and leaned her forearms on top of the chair. Her heels sank into the plush carpet. She eyed the glass artwork in the room with casual curiosity and then focused on Marcus Glenn, who sat on the sofa with his hands in his lap.

'When can I go home?' Glenn asked.

Maggie shrugged. 'What's the rush, Doc?'

'I have surgeries scheduled in the morning. I can't just walk into the hospital and cut someone open. I have to prepare.'

'Yeah, those knee jobs, ka-ching, right?' she said. 'I saw your Lexus outside. KNEEDOC, that's pretty cute. But right now I'm not too worried about some CEO who needs help with his golf game, OK? We found you at a crime scene, Dr Glenn, so whether you make it home today really depends on the conversation we're having right now.'

The surgeon settled back into the sofa with an exaggerated sigh. 'I told Ms Dial, and I'm telling you, I had nothing to do with whatever happened here.'

'So you were just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Again. This is becoming sort of a habit for you, isn't it? You were in the house when your daughter disappeared, but you had nothing to do with it. You were in the house where a murder appears to have taken place, but you had nothing to do with it.'

'That's right.'

Maggie had dealt with doctors before, and she knew they were tough to rattle, but Glenn's eyes were nervous underneath his annoyed facade. He had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and he knew it. When Maggie didn't say anything more, Glenn added, 'Look, if someone killed Regan, it happened hours before I arrived.'

'Really? How do you know that?'

'I'm a doctor. I see a lot of blood.'

'But you're not a pathologist, are you?'

'I'm also not a magician. I can't make a dead body disappear. The one good thing about being under surveillance is that the police always know where I am. Ms Dial knows perfectly well that I was here for less than an hour before she arrived.'

'Yeah, let's talk about that,' Maggie said. 'Why exactly were you here?'

Glenn shrugged. 'I thought that Regan may have had something to do with Callie's disappearance.'

'Why is that?'

'We were having an affair. The break-up was extremely bitter.'

'So what were you planning to do? Ask her if she was involved in stealing your daughter? Did you think she'd break down and confess?'

'You didn't know Regan. If she did something, she was the kind of person who would throw it in my face.'

'But she wasn't home when you arrived?' Maggie asked.

'Obviously.'

'Did you break in or was the door open?'

'The door was open.'

Maggie nodded. 'Do you have a key?'

'I didn't need a key. I told you, the door was open.'

'Let's try answering the questions I ask. Do you have a key to Regan's house?'

'Yes, I do,' Glenn admitted. 'Regan gave me a key while we were involved.'

'Do you have it with you?'

'I imagine it's still on my key chain. I haven't thought about it in months.'

Maggie smiled. 'Sure. You came here with Regan's house key, but you didn't even think about breaking in. So why did you go inside?'

'I was concerned when I saw the door was open,' Glenn said.

'I shouted, but there was no answer. I began to look around the house, and that was when I saw that something terrible had happened.'

'Why didn't you call the police?'

'I was about to call them.'

'Really? Ms Dial said you were too busy ransacking Regan's medical files.'

'I thought Regan might have kept something that would tell me if she was involved in what happened to Callie.'

'Did you think you were likely to find something that the police would miss? Or were you planning to make sure we didn't find whatever you were looking for?'

Glenn didn't reply.

'When was the last time you spoke to Regan?' Maggie asked.

'It was months ago.'

'Have you called her recently?'

'No.'

'You're sure?'

Glenn backpedaled as he read Maggie's face. 'Actually, I left her a message last night. I told her I wanted to talk. But I didn't actually speak to her.'

Maggie nodded. 'People think they can delete answering machine messages, but they're among the easiest things to recover. We pulled up your message to her. You said something about Regan being in your office over the weekend.'

Glenn didn't look happy. 'Yes, my nurse told me she was there.'

'Why would Regan be in your office?'

'I don't know. That's what I wanted to find out.'

'Would you like to make a guess?'

'I have no idea,' Glenn told her.

'Were you concerned that she stole something?'

He blinked uncomfortably. 'I told you, I don't know,' he repeated.

'Regan told your wife that she thought you were responsible for your daughter's disappearance,' she said.

'That's completely untrue.'

'It makes me wonder if your story is a little backwards, Dr Glenn.'

'What do you mean?'

Maggie leaned forward. 'I mean, are you sure you weren't going through Regan's files to find out if she had any evidence that you were involved in Callie's disappearance? Evidence she may have taken from your office?'

'Of course not.'

'It's quite a coincidence, you showing up at Regan's house after someone else killed her.'

'I had nothing to do with it.'

'Did you know she was dead? Did you come here to erase evidence before the crime was discovered?'

Glenn shook his head. 'I didn't know anything had happened to Regan until I got here.'

'Who do you think killed her?' Maggie asked.

He shrugged. 'She lives in the north farmlands. There have been some terrible crimes here recently.'

'So you think the same person who killed the other women also killed Regan?'

'I have no idea, but doesn’t that seem likely? The women in the hospital are all afraid of this man, whoever he is. Regan bragged about sleeping with a shotgun by her bed.'

Maggie raised her eyebrows. 'You knew she had a shotgun?'

'A lot of people did,' Glenn replied defensively. 'Regan didn't make it a secret. She was scared of this maniac like everyone else.'

'Not everyone is scared when a serial killer comes to town,' she told him.

'What the hell does that mean?'

Maggie pushed her red hair out of her eyes and frowned. 'Every now and then, Doctor, someone sees it as an opportunity.'

Serena sat in her Mustang in Regan's driveway, staring through the open window at the snow-covered fields. It was almost dusk, but she wore sunglasses, and Maggie suspected she had been crying. She didn't say a word as Maggie opened the passenger door and sat beside her. They didn't look at each other. Maggie left the door open and kicked at the dirt outside with her boot. When she took a sideways glance at Serena, she could see that her face was rigid with fury.

She didn't blame her for being angry, and she had no idea what to say. There was no way to make it better.

'Glenn didn't do it,' Maggie announced after an uncomfortable stretch of silence. 'Or at least, he didn't pull the trigger. That doesn’t mean he's not involved.'

Serena didn't say anything. Maggie glanced at the highway and saw media vans parked on the shoulder. 'The press already has the story,' she continued. 'Blair Rowe was on CNN half an hour ago speculating about a link between the murder here and Callie's disappearance.'

Serena shrugged. 'Blair Rowe knows everyone in the Grand Rapids Police. Someone leaked.'

'What do you think? Is there a link between the two cases?'

'I think Marcus is lying about why he was here,' Serena said. 'I'd like to know what he was really looking for in those files.'

'Yeah.'

'What does Guppo say about the crime scene?' Serena asked. 'Is it the farmlands killer?'

'The MO is similar,' Maggie said. 'The right locale, the missing body. I'm not sure about the shotgun, though. This guy likes to use his hands.'

'Maybe Regan surprised him, and he grabbed the gun.'

'Maybe, but that's not how it looks. Guppo thinks he had the gun the whole time. There was no struggle. That's not how this guy operates.'

'Except there's the message on the wall,' Serena said.

Maggie nodded. 'Yeah. The message feels authentic. This guy is playing with Kasey. But I still don't buy the coincidence that he went after Regan Conrad just for the hell of it. There's a connection to Callie in all of this.'

'Have you told Kasey about the message on the wall?'

'Not yet. I asked her to come over here. She's not far away.'

'I talked to Stride,' Serena said. 'He's going to talk to Micki Vega. She's the one link we know about between Marcus and Regan.'

'Yeah, I talked to him too.'

Serena shook her head and laughed bitterly. 'Of course you did. What was I thinking?'

'Look, Serena,' Maggie said.

Serena held up a hand, stopping her. 'I don't think we should do this now. Do you? We're professionals. That's all.'

Maggie heard the message loud and clear. We're professionals. Not friends. Not anymore.

'I know it doesn’t mean shit, but I'm sorry,' she said.

Serena stripped off her sunglasses in a fierce gesture. Her eyes were red and angry. 'You want to talk about this now? Fine. Don't bullshit me or give me fake stories about being sorry. This was no accident. You knew that Jonny and I were having problems, because I was stupid enough to tell you. You sabotaged our relationship to get what you've always wanted. Well, bravo. I never thought you were that ruthless. I was naive enough to think you were my friend. So now I pay the price for trusting you.'

Her words hit Maggie like a frigid breeze stinging her face. In the aftermath, she heard Serena breathing loudly.

'You can believe it or not, but it was not like that,' Maggie told her softly. 'Stride had an attack. I found him like that. Serena, he needed someone. It just happened.'

Serena rolled her eyes. 'It just happened? Is that the best you can do? Sure, you didn't plan anything. Oh, and by the way, nice hair, Maggie.'

She knew her excuse was lame. 'I just wanted something different.'

'Well, you got it. Now get the fuck out of my car.'

Maggie climbed out and closed the passenger door behind her. She leaned back in the window. 'I never meant to come between the two of you,' she said. 'I still don't. I'm out. It was one time. It was an accident. He loves you, and I'm not going to mess that up.'

Serena put on her sunglasses again. 'Too late.'

Maggie opened her mouth to say something more, but she had nothing to say. She took a step backward and then walked away in quick, angry steps toward Regan's house. She could see strands of her red hair dangling in front of her eyes, and suddenly she hated herself and her damn strawberry hair and what she had done to Stride. Serena was right. She could tell herself that she had never meant for anything to happen, that she had never meant to stumble into the middle of their relationship, but on some level, she knew she was lying. Consciously or not, she had known all along what she was doing. She had gone into Stride's house with her eyes wide open.

Chapter Thirty-seven

It was already night by the time Stride arrived at the base of the sloping hillside of the Sago Cemetery. He got out of his truck and felt the craving for a cigarette. There was something about cold, sweet air that made him want to smoke. He leaned against his truck and studied the tall pine trees standing guard around the perimeter of the graveyard, protecting the dead. As the wind blew, they shrugged their tufted black shoulders at him.

He hiked up the slope through the thin coating of snow, navigating around the dark outlines of the marble stones. The metal flagpole banged incessantly, like a child demanding attention. At the top of the hill, he crept along the ragged edge of the woods, looking for the path that led to the trailer where Micki Vega lived. When he found it, he plunged into darkness between the columns of tree trunks. He took careful steps, avoiding noise, as if he were intruding on something sacred. He remembered what Micki had told him: this was a place where people buried things they didn't want found.

Ahead of him, fifty yards away, he saw the squares of light from a mobile home in the clearing. It was an isolated place to live, hidden from view. As he got closer, he heard the canned noise of a television, sounding odd and artificial in the forest. When he knocked, he heard a female voice speaking loud, rapid Spanish, and then the television went silent.

Micki Vega opened the door. She scowled when she saw him. 'You again. What do you want?'

'Can I come in?'

'What if I say no? You going to bust down my door?'

'No.'

Micki shrugged. 'Yeah, what do I care, come in. See how I'm taking bread out of the mouths of American workers.'

He climbed three steps into the trailer, which sagged under his weight. It felt claustrophobic with its low metal ceiling and narrow walls. The furniture smelled musty, like a wet dog, and the tiny space was messy, with magazines on the floor and dead plants on the window ledges and empty beer cans stacked on card tables. The room was uncomfortably warm, and Stride began to sweat.

Micki wasn't alone. On the far side of the trailer, near the half-open curtain that led to the bedroom, a heavyset woman with long black hair lay in a recliner in front of a small television. She was in her early fifties and wore a plastic mask across her nose and mouth that was connected to an oxygen tank on the floor. He could hear her lungs wheeze with each breath. On the television, with muted sound, he saw a word puzzle on the Wheel of Fortune game show.

'That's my mama,' Micki said. 'I told you she was sick.'

Stride nodded politely at the woman, but she didn't react, other than to watch him with open suspicion in her dark eyes.

'You can see we're rich,' Micki said. 'What were you expecting to find anyway? Did you think I had Callie Glenn hidden in here? You think I'd take a baby out of that beautiful mansion and bring her to this place?'

'That's not why I'm here,' Stride said.

'Yeah, well, what is it now? It's time for dinner.' Micki stirred yellow rice and ground beef in a frying pan on the small stove near the door. She took a swig from an open can of beer. She wore a roomy white T-shirt from the Minnesota State Fair and a pair of jeans that hugged her fleshy thighs. Her feet were bare.

'We think Regan Conrad is dead,' Stride told her.

Micki wiped foam from her lips. 'Really? How?'

'It looks like someone murdered her.'

Micki crossed herself and murmured under her breath. 'Sweet Mary. That's a terrible thing. Murdered?'

'Yes.'

'How?' 'Someone shot her in the head.'

'My God.'

'We found Marcus Glenn in her house,' Stride added. 'He was searching her medical files.'

Micki's mouth fell open. 'Dr Glenn? You think Dr Glenn killed her?'

'We want to know what he was doing there,' Stride said.

'You won't be happy until you bring him down, will you? Dr Glenn would never do something like that. He couldn't.'

'He's acting like he has something to hide. I think you know what it is.'

'Me? How would I know?'

'You know Dr Glenn. You knew Regan Conrad. You were in the house when Callie disappeared.'

'So what? I hadn't talked to Nurse Regan in months. I've told you all that before. Why can't you leave me alone?' Micki went back to stirring the rice with angry swirls of a wooden spoon.

'If you know anything about Dr Glenn and Regan Conrad, you really need to tell me,' Stride said. 'I understand you feel gratitude for what he did to help you, but if he was involved in these crimes—'

'He wasn't,' she snapped.

'Regan Conrad thought he was.'

Micki looked up from the stove. The steam from the pan raised a moist glow on her forehead, and she wiped herself with a towel. 'Why do you think that?'

'Regan contacted Valerie Glenn. She told her that Dr Glenn was involved in Callie's disappearance.'

'How would she know?' Micki asked.

'I don't know, but now Regan is dead, so she'll never have a chance to tell us.'

'She was wrong.'

'How can you be sure?'

'I know Dr Glenn,' she insisted. 'He would never have deliberately harmed his child. Never. Whatever happened, it was something else.'

'Deliberately?' Stride asked. 'Do you think it was an accident?'

'You're twisting my words. I'm telling you, he's innocent.'

'Migdalia,' a raspy voice called from the other side of the trailer.

Stride saw Micki's mother pointing an index finger at her daughter. The oxygen mask that had been draped across her face was clenched tightly in her fist. She inhaled and coughed raggedly and then, dragging in another breath, she spat out words in Spanish. 'Migdalia, digale:

Micki slapped the spoon down and shoved the frying pan off the heat. 'Mama, callate. No te metas:

'Si no le dices, le estas dando tu espalda a Jesus.'

Her mother blinked and put the mask back over her face. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air.

'No lo voy a traicionar,' Micki retorted, stamping her foot on the metal floor.

Her mother waved a hand at Micki insistently, and her face paled with the effort. She spoke again behind the mask with strained, muffled words. 'Digale.'

Micki folded her hands over her chest. She kicked a beer can on the floor of the trailer and muttered under her breath.

'What did she say?' Stride asked.

'She said I should stay out of this,' Micki retorted loudly, eyeing her mother. 'She said nothing good ever comes from talking to the police.'

'Maybe I should ask her myself,' Stride said.

'Leave my mama alone! You see how she is. She has no strength. I don't want you putting her in the middle of this.'

'Is she involved?'

'Of course not,' Micki snapped. She pushed past Stride and sat down in a metal folding chair. She laced her hands tightly together and stared at her feet. Her left leg twitched. 'Why don't you just go?' she told him.

Stride squatted beside her. 'Think about Callie. You felt something for that little girl, didn't you? You took care of her.'

'She was an angel,' Micki said with a little smile.

Stride nodded. 'Imagine if your own baby had disappeared and you never knew what happened to her. Imagine how desperate you would feel. If you know something, Micki, you simply can't remain silent. Callie deserves better than that.'

'Dr Glenn didn't harm her,' Micki repeated.

'Then what is he hiding? Why was he in Regan Conrad's house?'

Micki shrugged. She got out of the chair and turned her back on Stride. She walked to the recliner in front of the television and used the remote control to shut it off. She stroked her mother's hair. The two women didn't speak to each other, but as Stride watched, Micki's mother reached out and clutched her daughter's wrist in her thick fingers. Micki's lower lip bulged as if she was about to cry. She separated herself gently from her mother's grip and bent down behind the recliner. Her mother watched her. When Micki stood up, she held a cardboard shoe box in her hands.

Stride waited, saying nothing.

Micki sat down again with the box in her lap. She covered the lid with her forearms and stared at the trailer door.

'I was late coming home that night,' she said. 'Mama was worried.'

'The night Callie disappeared?'

Micki nodded. 'She kept looking out the window for me.'

'What did she see?' Stride asked.

'A light,' Micki said. 'She saw a light in the woods near the cemetery. Someone was out there.'

'When was this?'

'Somewhere around midnight. She told me about it on Saturday, and all I could think about was how people bury things out there. And I thought, you know, that Dr Glenn's family is buried here. He comes to see his mama a lot. So I went to look.'

'What did you find?' Stride asked.

Micki hugged the box in her lap and didn't say anything.

'Please,' Stride urged her. 'What did you find?'

She peeled the lid off the box. Inside, Stride saw an odd mix of memorabilia crammed together. Dirty plastic flowers. Dog collars with rhinestones. Wrinkled, faded photographs.

'This is my collection,' Micki said. 'People leave things behind at the graves. And in the woods, too. I keep them. I like to think I can feel a little of the love, you know? It's silly, but I can spend hours this way.'

'Did you find something in the woods?' Stride asked. 'Near where your mother saw the light that night?'

Micki reached into the box and pulled out a small toy, a rolled-up paper horn with a plastic mouthpiece. Stride recognized it. It was the kind of blow horn that revelers used on New Year's Eve. 'I found this in a little clearing,' she said.

'Do you realize what this means?' Stride asked. 'Callie was a New Year's baby.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'Did you find anything else?'

Micki nodded. 'Someone tried to cover it up, but I could tell from the ground when I kicked the leaves away. Something was buried there.'

Chapter Thirty-eight

Maggie saw Kasey's eyes dart with fear as the young cop got out of her car. Her body was caught in the cross-section of headlights from the squad cars parked in the fields around Regan's house. Kasey squinted and held up her hand with her fingers spread as she passed through the gauntlet of lights.

'What's going on?' she asked. 'What do you want?'

'He struck again,' Maggie told her.

Kasey shivered and pulled her coat tighter around her body. 'Who is it?'

'The house belongs to a nurse named Regan Conrad.'

'A nurse? Isn't she the one Serena was talking about at dinner yesterday? The one connected to the baby case in Grand Rapids?'

Maggie nodded.

'So why'd you want me here?'

Maggie frowned. 'I have to show you something. It ain't pretty, Kasey.'

Kasey put her hands in her pockets. 'I know I'm a cop, but I'm not awfully good with dead bodies, you know? It doesn’t come up a lot on my beat.'

'There's no body.'

Kasey cocked her head. 'What?'

'No body, just a lot of blood. He took the body with him the way he did with the other women.'

'No body?' she repeated. 'How do you know it's Regan? How do you know she's dead?'

'We won't know for certain until we run tests, but no one has seen her today. As for being dead, you don't lose that much blood and tissue and stay alive. Looks like she took a shotgun shell to the head.'

Kasey looked flustered. 'What do you need to show me?'

Maggie jerked her head toward the front of the house. 'Come on.'

As they walked, Kasey said, 'I don't know if it makes a difference right now, but I handed in my resignation today. Bruce and I talked about it, and we both think this is the way to go. I know I was supposed to call you, but it's been busy with us packing up the truck and all. We're going to leave first thing in the morning.'

'I understand.'

'I feel like I'm bailing on you.'

'You're not bailing on me. If it were me, I might be doing the same thing.'

'Do you think I'm being paranoid?'

Maggie shook her head. 'No, I don't.' At the front door, she added, 'Take your shoes off, and put on some plastic booties. Don't touch anything, OK?'

'Sure.'

The interior of the house smelled like glue from the fume boxes used by the evidence technicians to raise fingerprints. The carpet had been freshly vacuumed to gather trace materials. Maggie led Kasey up the stairs. At the open door of Regan's bedroom, she turned and stopped her with a hand on her chest. 'I'm not trying to be cruel, Kasey. If you don't want to go inside, just tell me, but I think this is something you need to see for yourself. It'll probably make you feel better about getting into your truck tomorrow morning.'

'What's in there?' Kasey asked.

'He left you a message.'

Maggie let Kasey go first. The young cop crossed the threshold, and her eyes flitted around the room. The massive bloodstain attracted her attention, and she inched closer and squatted down, where the smell was strongest. Maggie thought Kasey was about to touch the stain itself, and she prepared to call out a warning, but Kasey pulled her hand back. Then her head twisted, and she saw the writing on the wall.

Two words. A ghastly greeting.

Kasey's hands flew to her mouth.

'I'm sorry,' Maggie said. 'It's not the same to hear about it on the phone. I thought you should know exactly how dangerous this situation has become for you.'

Kasey stumbled to her feet and collided against the wall of the bedroom. Maggie heard the lurching noise of Kasey's stomach turning upside down. Kasey ran for the toilet, but she only made it to the bathroom doorway before sinking to her knees. Vomit spewed through her clenched fingers and splattered on the tile. She fell forward on to all fours, head down, red hair tumbling over her face. Her body shook with dry heaves.

Maggie stood over her and put a hand softly on her back. 'Are you all right?'

Kasey took deep, ragged breaths without speaking. She eased upward on to her heels, and her head fell back. She blinked as she stared at the ceiling.

'Shit, I'm sorry,' she murmured.

'Don't worry about it.'

'How did it come to this?' Kasey asked. 'How did this become my life?'

'It's not your fault.'

'I need to go,' Kasey said. She staggered to her feet and swayed. Maggie put an arm around her waist to steady her. She helped Kasey toward the bedroom door, steering her around the pool of black dried blood.

'I don't want to scare you,' Maggie said, 'but running away may not be enough. For some reason, this guy has become fixated on you. You're special to him. He may not give up just because you leave the area. Wherever you go, watch your back.'

In the door frame, Kasey stopped and stood on her own. She took a few steps closer to the wall, where the message taunted her.

'You're right.'

Maggie saw something unexpected in Kasey's eyes. The fear was gone, as if she had hit bottom and realized there was nowhere else to fall. She looked older, not like an immature kid any more. Her face held a fury so deep that Maggie found it unsettling.

'It's him or me,' Kasey added. 'That's the way it is. Only one of us is coming out of this thing alive.'

Stride recognized the Ford Taurus parked at the end of the road leading to the Glenn house. When he got out of his truck, he found Blair Rowe sitting on top of the white picket fence that bordered the driveway. She kicked her heels back and forth against the wooden beams like a tap dancer. A cigarette hung from her lips. She jumped down when she saw him and bounded across the grass.

'Lieutenant!' Blair sang out.

He shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather coat. The tiny reporter stopped uncomfortably close to him.

'Hey,' she said breathlessly. 'I figured you'd be coming here.'

'Why is that?' Stride asked.

'Oh, I've got an ear to the ground.' She took the cigarette out of her mouth and played with it between her fingers. Ash sprinkled to the street. 'So how's it going?'

'I didn't figure you for a smoker, Blair,' Stride told her.

'It's not just adrenaline that keeps me skinny,' she said, grinning. 'Besides, I'm a reporter. We have to smoke. It's required. That's the first thing they teach you in journalism school.' She tapped the square outline of a cigarette pack in the shoulder pocket of her jacket. 'You want one?'

He did, but he shook his head.

'What about a toasted pecan?' she asked, digging in her side pocket and popping a nut into her mouth. 'My mom makes them. They've got a cinnamon glaze. Really good.'

'Your mom's quite the cook.'

'Well, she's home with my kid a lot, so she has to keep busy when lie's sleeping. She's a stick like me, but we both love to eat.'

'What do you want, Blair?' Stride asked.

She dropped her cigarette on the ground and shoved her glasses up her face with her finger. 'I heard about Regan Conrad. Is it true that Marcus Glenn is under arrest for the murder?' 'No.'

'Really? Word is you caught him red-handed. Someone told me he m i up the crime scene to make it look like that serial killer popped Regan.'

'I'm not in charge of the murder investigation, Blair,' Stride said.

'Yeah, sure, except I can connect the dots. Regan's dead, and you found Marcus pawing through her files. Sounds like she had dirt on him and Callie.'

'We're done here, Blair.'

He walked past her down the circular driveway that led to the Glenns' house. Blair spun and struggled to keep pace with him, her short legs moving quickly. Puffs of steam came out of her mouth and blew away in the wind.

'You're here to see Valerie, huh?' Blair asked, panting. 'You should be thanking me, you know. I'm the one who broke the news about Valerie's affair. You guys didn't know about that, did you?'

'It's not relevant,' Stride snapped.

Blair's glasses slipped again, resting on the tip of her nose so she had to tilt her head back to see him. 'Are you kidding? Come on, it gives Marcus a motive. We both know that. His pretty little wife is banging her brother-in-law? That's not going to sit well with King Marcus. And you know what I think? I think Marcus had Regan run a paternity test that proved he wasn't Callie's father. That's what he was looking for in her medical records. He wouldn't want it coming out that he knew the truth about Callie.'

Stride stopped and looked at her. 'Do you have any evidence of that?'

'Not yet, but I'm looking.'

'Then you have nothing but speculation.'

He continued walking, but Blair tugged on his arm. 'So what's the deal, Lieutenant? When do you start the search out at the cemetery?'

'What did you say?'

Stride was shocked. He had left Micki's trailer less than an hour earlier, and the only person he had called was Denise Sheridan.

Blair smirked, as if she could read his mind. 'Are you going to run the search at night or are you waiting until morning? Snow's coming soon, so that's going to make it harder. My bet is you'll bring in the Klieg lights and go at it tonight.'

'No comment.'

'Hey, the news is coming out, like it or not. You may as well make sure I've got the story right. You're searching in the cemetery where half the Glenn family is buried and Micki Vega is the caretaker. So what did Micki tell you? I said from the beginning that she and Marcus were probably in on this together.'

'I'm not confirming a search at the cemetery,' Stride told her.

'Right, you have to talk to Valerie first and give her the bad news. I get it. But I'm going on the air about the search.'

'I told you, I'm not confirming that any search is planned.'

'You say no, but Craig Hickey says yes, and my money's on Craig.'

'Who the hell is he?' Stride asked.

Blair shrugged. 'You'll find out soon enough, so what the hell. Craig has a spread near Cohasset, and I dated his son Terry for a couple years in high school. I still bum around with Terry sometimes. Remember, Lieutenant, this is my town. I know everybody.'

'So?'

'So Denise Sheridan called Craig, and Craig called Terry, and Terry called me. That's just the way things work around here. You see, Craig is the go-to guy on the Range when the police need dogs. Rescue dogs. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Drug-sniffing dogs.' She got on tiptoes and whispered, 'Or cadaver dogs.'

Chapter Thirty-nine

Stride hadn't spent much time with Valerie Glenn, but he knew that she was the kind of woman that men wanted to rescue. He talked to Valerie in her kitchen, where she used a gleaming chef's knife to dice a yellow onion on a cutting board. Her eyes were hooded as she looked down, following her work, but every so often she froze and glanced through the window at the pitch-black night. Then, with nothing more than a flick of her blue eyes, she would let her gaze fall on Stride as if to say: it's dark out. There are monsters. Protect me.

The onion brought tears to his eyes, but Valerie seemed unaffected. She cut it with precision, as if one cube larger than another would destroy the orderliness of what she was doing. He thought he understood her. She was a woman of walls, like Serena, but unlike Serena, she was desperate for someone to break them down.

'You're not saying much, Lieutenant,' Valerie told him. 'When people avoid telling me things, I'm afraid it's because they have bad news to share.' She stopped what she was doing, and her broken eyes pierced him again. 'Is it bad news?'

'It's too early to tell,' he said, stalling.

He gave bad news all the time, but he was reluctant to destroy this woman, and that was what he had to do. The toy horn was in his pocket. He had to show it to her, and he knew what it would mean when he did. Her hope would be shredded. Her prayers would have been met with silence. For all her calm, she was balanced on a precipice.

'I already know about what happened to Regan Conrad,' she said. 'I won't pretend I'm upset.'

'I understand.'

'Where is Marcus?' she asked.

'We're still questioning him.'

She performed another even stroke with the blade. 'He was in her house?'

'Yes, he was going through her medical files,' Stride said.

'But Denise says you don't believe he killed her.'

'Whatever happened in Regan's bedroom took place overnight. Was Marcus here?'

'Yes.'

'Then he didn't kill her.' Stride added, 'I was wondering if you had any idea what your husband was looking for in Regan's files.'

He watched her hand stutter, and the point of the knife stabbed her finger and drew a drop of blood. She winced and put the tip of the finger in her mouth and sucked on it. When she took it out, a red trail of blood reappeared.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

'I'm fine. I'm not normally careless.' She ran cold water over her finger in the sink and then unwrapped a small bandage from the cabinet.

'You didn't answer my question,' he said.

'I'm sorry. No. I can't imagine what Marcus would have been looking for.'

She was a bad liar. She knew what Marcus was looking for, but she wasn't going to admit what it was. Stride looked at her in a way that said they both knew she was lying, but she simply picked up the knife and resumed her work. This time, a single tear dripped from her eye, and he didn't know if it was the onion or her sense of impending grief.

'I have to show you something,' he told her.

'Oh?' Her demeanor had cracks, as if she were about to split apart.

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew a plastic bag, where he had preserved the powder-blue toy that Micki had found in the forest. He dangled the bag in his hand, close enough for Valerie to see. 'Do you recognize this?'

She leaned forward, confused. 'What's that?'

Then she saw. She understood. The warm blush on her face turned white. She reached out to take the bag, but Stride pulled it away. 'I'm sorry.'

'Where did you get that?' she asked.

'Do you recognize it?'

One tear became many. 'They had those toys at the hospital that night.'

'When Callie was born?'

Valerie didn't reply. She walked away in a daze and ran the water again, letting it flow over the knife blade to clean it. She used a new sponge to rub the shiny surface and then wiped it dry with a towel. She laid the knife next to the wooden block, leaving the single slot empty. The onion sat on the cutting board in a mountain of perfect, tiny cubes. She walked away from the kitchen island and sat down in a chair beside the elegant glass dinette table.

'Mrs Glenn?' he persisted in a quiet voice.

'I told Serena that I was tired and in pain for much of the night,' she said. 'I didn't have any sense of time. I was alone a lot, waiting. I remember the noise of the horns waking me up. It was midnight. People were in the hall, and everyone was laughing, and they were kissing each other. A nurse came in to wish me happy New Year, and she put one of the toy horns on the tray near my bed.'

'The horn she gave you, was it blue like this one?'

'I don't remember. I think so. Where did you find it?'

'Micki Vega says she found it in the woods near the Sago Cemetery. On the night Callie disappeared, her mother saw someone in the forest.'

Valerie wrapped her hands around herself and rocked in the chair. 'Oh my God.'

'I'm afraid we have to search the cemetery.'

'Search?' she asked, dazed.

'We have to see if someone buried something in the woods where the toy horn was found.'

'Callie,' Valerie moaned.

'Please don't assume the worst. It may mean nothing at all.'

She covered her mouth with her hands and didn't say anything. The pull of her despair made him want to go to her and wrap her up in his arms. Stiffly, like a soldier, he stayed where he was, letting her suffer alone.

'I have to ask you a few more questions,' he said.

Valerie's empty stare didn't change. She didn't react.

'Did you bring a toy like this home with you from the hospital?'

She spoke through her hands. 'I wanted to.' She wiped her eyes and slowly put her hands in her lap. 'I thought we should keep it. Save it. It was like a symbol of what that night meant to me. A new year. A new baby. A new lease on life. But it wasn't with the things we brought home from the hospital.'

'What happened to it?'

'I gave it to Marcus. I asked him to make sure we didn't lose it.'

'Did you ask him about it?'

'Yes. It was weeks later. There was so much to do with Callie being home, and she needed so much, and I was always so tired. I didn't have a chance to catch my breath for the first month. Then I started gathering up the keepsakes from her birth, and that was when I realized the little toy was missing.'

'What did Marcus say?'

Valerie shook her head. 'He told me he threw it away.'

Chapter Forty

'I threw it away,' Marcus Glenn told Serena.

They sat in the front seat of his Lexus on the dirt road near the Sago Cemetery. The night was ablaze with light — rotating red lights on the tops of the squad cars, flashlight beams intersecting the woods, and Klieg lights on tall tripods reflecting off the snow. Behind them, the road was blocked, keeping the media at bay. The windows of the luxury car were closed, leaving the interior oddly silent, despite the frenzied activity around them.

'When was that?' Serena asked.

'I don't remember.'

'Did you bring it home with you from the hospital? Did you leave it in your office? Or did you never take it with you at all?'

Glenn shrugged. 'I have no idea. It was a stupid ten-cent toy.'

'What color was it?' Serena asked.

'Do you think I paid any attention? It could have been purple, pink, red, blue, who knows.'

Glenn's patience was wearing thin after hours with the police. They had spent the afternoon and early evening at Regan Conrad's house in the north farmlands. Just as Serena had been about to cut Glenn loose, she'd received the call from Stride about Micki Vega's discovery and the impending search in Sago. So they had driven here, accompanied by a Duluth Police car on the lonely stretch of Highway 2. Glenn didn't like it.

'I don't know why you've brought me here,' he added. 'There's nothing I can tell you.'

'I'm trying to figure out how this toy made its way from your wife's hospital room to the woods outside your family cemetery,' Serena said.

'Oh, please. How many millions of those toys pour out of Chinese factories every year? You can't possibly believe that there's any connection at all between something that Micki allegedly found in the woods and a keepsake my wife had when she gave birth to Callie.'

'Did your wife blow into the horn?' Serena asked.

'What?'

'Did she use it at the hospital that night?'

'I don't remember. Everyone was using the annoying things.'

'Then she may have left DNA inside the plastic mouthpiece. We'll test it.'

'Wonderful. You do that. If you find any DNA, I'm sure it will belong to someone else.'

'Why are you so sure about that?' Serena asked.

Glenn thumped the dashboard in exasperation. 'Because I threw it away! Do you think someone went burrowing through my trash in order to plant that ridiculous thing in the woods eleven months later?'

Serena watched the surgeon fidget. His long legs were uncomfortable in the sedan, even with the seat pushed back. 'Coincidences keep piling up around you, Dr Glenn,' she told him.

'What do you mean?'

'Well, say you're right. This isn't the toy that Valerie had in the hospital. Doesn't it seem strange that Micki Vega would find a toy just like that next to the cemetery you visit every month? That she'd find it two days after your daughter disappeared? That she'd find it in the exact place where her mother saw someone in the woods on the very night your daughter disappeared? That the toy left there would be exactly like the one Valerie asked you to keep as a memory of your daughter's birth?'

Glenn stared through the windshield at the police officers gathered in clusters around the grassy field. His long, graceful fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel as if he were steering a race car.

'I agree with you,' he said. His voice was calm and scientific.

'You do?'

'Yes, you're right. It doesn’t sound like a coincidence.' 'Then how do you explain it?' Serena asked.

Glenn twisted to face her. 'I can think of three explanations. First, it really is a coincidence, and that's just my bad luck. Strange things like that do happen.'

'And the others?'

'The second possibility is that Micki is lying. She may not have found the toy in the woods, or she may not have found it when she said she did. But personally, I think Micki is telling the truth.'

'You do?'

Glenn nodded. 'I don't believe she would deliberately try to do me harm.'

'Except if you were sleeping with her, if you fathered her baby and her baby died, it can play with a girl's head.'

'I never slept with Micki,' Glenn insisted. 'I wasn't the father of her child. If you want to dig up her baby to prove it, you can get a court order and do so. But you'll just look like heartless fools. Ms Dial, I freely confess to being a hard case in every aspect of my life except my medical profession. I helped Micki because I'm a physician and she needed someone. That's all.'

'You said you could think of three explanations,' Serena said. 'What's the third?'

'The third is that someone is deliberately trying to make it appear as if I was involved in Callie's disappearance. Which I wasn't.'

'You mean someone planted the toy?'

'Yes.'

Serena knew the next obvious question, but she wasn't ready to go there yet. It hung unasked between them. She wondered if Glenn wanted to hear her say it. What are we going to find in the woods? Instead, she went another way.

'How did you feel about your wife cheating on you?' she asked.

'I haven't been a model of fidelity myself, so I can't really complain.'

'Maybe so, but most men have a double standard. It's OK for me to cheat, because it's just about sex. But my wife? She better not look at another man.'

Glenn shrugged. 'I'm not saying I feel good about it.'

'When did you find out that she was sleeping with Tom?' Serena asked.

He took a long time to answer. 'I found out the same time that you did,' he told her finally. 'When Blair Rowe blabbed the news to the world.'

'And not before?' 'No.'

'You took your time deciding what to say. Were you trying to figure out if there's any way we could prove that you knew about Valerie's affair?'

Glenn didn't reply.

'I hope you didn't tell anyone,' Serena continued, 'or hire an investigator to follow her. It'll come out if you did.'

'I trusted my wife,' he replied.

'Did you have any reason to doubt that Callie was your baby?'

'Of course not.'

'What about now?'

'Now I can't help but wonder,' he admitted.

'Didn't you wonder before? It was three years. You must have thought it was odd that Valerie couldn't get pregnant for so long, and then she suddenly did.'

'It's not odd at all. I'm a doctor. People think conception is predictable, but it's not. It can happen with one sexual encounter, or it can take six months or six years, or it can never happen at all, even when both partners are perfectly healthy. Don't try to outguess God, Ms Dial.'

'I thought most surgeons believed they were God.'

'Confidence and ego make you a better doctor, but you also have to be smart enough to know when you don't have all the answers.'

'You certainly seem like you have all the answers,' Serena told him.

'I wish I did.'

'Tell me something. Why did you cheat on Valerie? She's beautiful. She's smart. She loves you. Wasn't that enough?'

'It has nothing to do with Valerie,' he said. 'It doesn’t mean I don't love her.'

'She nearly killed herself because of your neglect.'

She regretted saying it, but he didn't react with anger. Instead, there was resignation in his voice. 'Do you really believe that her suicide attempt was my fault? Valerie has suffered from depression for most of her life. It's a medical condition.'

'Are you saying you bear no responsibility for her state of mind?'

'I'm saying I didn't make her who she is. I may not wear my heart on my sleeve, but Valerie knew that from the beginning. I keep her clothed and fed and give her all the money she could ever use. A lot of women would welcome a marriage like that.'

She didn't want to debate him. His warped view of love and marriage didn't matter. It was time to get back to what she really needed to say.

'What are we going to find in the woods?' she asked.

He didn't answer.

'Did you hear me? They're starting the search. What are we going to find?'

'I have no idea.'

Serena pointed through the window. Across the dirt road, away from the cemetery, a short, balding man held tight to a beagle that strained at its leash. Its ears flapped, and its nose was buried in the long grass. The dog was hungry to run. Smell. Hunt.

'See that dog?' she said. 'It's trained to recognize the gases of decomposing human flesh.'

Glenn stared at the beagle. 'It's an awful skill to give an animal, isn't it?'

'What is she going to find?'

'I can only speculate. I don't know.'

'So take a guess.'

Glenn's face was oddly passive, as if he were detached from everything that was happening around them. 'I guess you're going to find Callie.'

Serena felt her heart race. 'You think Callie is buried there?'

'Don't you? Isn't that why we're here?'

'Did you put her there?' she asked.

'No,' Glenn told her with a raspy sigh. 'But if someone is framing me, if someone left the toy there for you to find, well, I can't escape the obvious conclusion.'

'You think your daughter is dead.'

'I'm afraid so. We'll find out soon enough.' 'That's all you can say?' Serena asked.

'What else is there?'

What else but grief, Serena thought. What else but tears and desperation. What else but a horrible, irreparable sense of loss.

'Who could have done this?' She didn't add: if not you.

'It must have been Regan.'

'She had an alibi,' Serena reminded him.

'So maybe she was working with someone.'

Serena tried to read the surgeon's face, but there was nothing in his expression. 'You probably won't believe this, Dr Glenn, but I've been the one defending you. I'm the only one who hasn't been convinced from the beginning that you were guilty of murdering your daughter.'

'And what do you think now?' he asked.

'I think you may be the coldest man I've ever met,' Serena said. 'Cold men have no conscience. No empathy. They can do terrible things.'

'Or they can save lives on an operating table,' Glenn replied with a shrug.

Outside the car, the beagle unleashed a fury of impatient barking. Serena saw Stride approach the man with the dog and point to a spot on the north side of the trees. When he turned toward the Lexus, Stride caught Serena's eye and looked away.

Micki Vega was by his side. She saw the Lexus too, and Serena watched her eyes widen in dismay as she stared at Marcus Glenn. Her mouth fell open, and she took a step toward the car as if she would run to him. Serena thought she might cry. Micki said out loud, in a voice that barely carried through the glass, 'I'm sorry.'

Beside her, Serena watched Marcus Glenn offer Micki a small smile. He mouthed two words to her: 'It's OK.'

Micki turned away, bowing her head.

'Am I under arrest?' Glenn asked Serena. 'No.'

'Then I'm going home.'

Chapter Forty-one

Valerie sat on the floor. Her fingers kneaded the white carpet. Ten feet away, a fire burned in the middle of the stone fireplace that dominated the wall. It was a gas fireplace, with fake logs that burned forever and didn't crackle or pop like real wood. The circle of heat from the artificial flames barely reached across the drafty room to warm her shoulder. She was cold.

She thought about the fire pit behind Denise and Tom's house by the river. Every year, on Christmas Eve, Tom stoked a bonfire that roared for hours, and the kids squealed and played games, and the adults drank beer and wine. Before she had married Marcus, she had joined them for their holiday tradition. She would sit silently in the shelter of the fire and envy her sister for everything she had. Husband. Kids. Responsibilities. Joy. Every year, she had felt like an outsider at someone else's feast, but even so, she missed being part of it. She missed simplicity. Christmas with Marcus was lavish but sterile. One year, they had gone to Italy. The next year, they had cruised in the Caribbean. Another time, they had catered a party for hospital staff with roast turkey, elaborate canapes, and expensive California wines. Even in her own home, she had felt as if she were on the outside, looking in.

This year, she had thought that it would all be different, because this year, she would have Callie in her arms. They could build traditions of their own. But it wasn't going to happen now. It wasn't going to be like that at all. She would be as alone as an island in the middle of the lake.

Valerie knew they were searching. They were in the woods, with lights and dogs and cameras. They weren't going to bring Callie back to her, pink and happy, giggling as her mother laughed and cried. They were going to call her with other news. The phone would ring in the middle of the night, shattering the silence. It would be Denise or Serena or Stride. Their voices would have the low, ominous bass of tragedy, and they would tell her how sorry they were. Marcus would put an arm around her, and his comfort would be as false as the logs in the fire that refused to burn.

Marcus.

I was wondering if you bad any idea what your husband may have been looking for in Regan's files.

Valerie stared at the hospital envelope. She had unearthed it from the drawer of lingerie in her dresser and brought it with her, unopened, to the living room. A gleaming pair of oversized silver scissors sat next to her. She could snip off the end of the envelope and extract what was inside, or she could cut it into miniature pieces and add them to the fire, where they would dissolve into the only real ash ever to burn there. She could know the truth, or she could cover it up.

She thought: this is what you were looking for at Regan's house, isn't it? Tell me, Marcus. This is what you so desperately wanted to find. What could be worth so much? What do you not want me to know? Regan laughed at the idea that I didn't know already. She thought I was a fool. And maybe I am.

Did you kill Regan, Marcus? Is the secret so terrible that you had to silence her? But you're too late.

All she had to do was pick up the envelope, but she couldn't bring herself to touch it. Instead, she picked up the scissors. They were hefty and sharp. She nestled them in her hand and spread the blades wide. They formed her initial, V, in a mirror finish. The blades reminded her of other things, too. They were the mouth of a fish, gasping for air on the floor of a boat. They were legs opening wide, inviting a man to make love to her.

She took the edges of the envelope with her other hand and lifted it in the air. Held it. Felt its weight. She couldn't imagine how a single sheet of paper could change a life, or be worth the price of a life.

Some sins, some secrets, are not worth knowing. She wanted to cut it up, put it in the fire, pretend, forget, grieve, move on.

But no. She had to know.

Valerie wielded the scissors and in a single motion slit the side of the envelope open. She made an oval of the envelope and let the paper inside fall out into her hand. It was folded. The truth was inside. She separated the folds, turned it over, and tried to make sense of what she was holding.

It was a dirty Xerox copy, hard to read. A medical form, heavy with codes and scribbled over in a doctor's unintelligible writing. The first thing she saw that she understood was a date stamped in the corner from nearly five years earlier. The paper was old. How could something so old have any relevance to her today? Five years was a lifetime ago. Five years was the time when she had sat in this very room at two in the morning, with the fake fire glowing and her husband asleep upstairs, and she had poured the tablets of aspirin into her palm.

It was that same month, she realized. The month of her despair and rebirth.

The form was dated two weeks after she had tried to kill herself.

She studied the codes, the handwriting, the notes in the margin, and tried to interpret it, as if it were a foreign language. And then one word jumped out at her. It was a medical term she didn't really understand, but it didn't matter, because she knew. Other words began to make sense. The timing, the implications, everything was clear.

She knew how a single sheet of paper could rewrite history.

It hit her like a rogue wave. Her mouth fell open in a silent scream, so deep and anguished that no real sound could emerge. The form dropped from her hand. She toppled slowly, sideways, sinking like a fallen statue into the carpet. Her knees drew up to her chest, and she wrapped her arms around them. The outside world escaped. The wailing pierced her ears, but only inside her head. Her tears flowed, but they stayed inside her eyes. Like a child, she rocked back and forth, willing away the knowledge and drowning in her grief.

The snow began to fall.

The flakes navigated the web of branches like silver balls in a Pachinko game, ultimately landing and melting on Stride's skin. The white bed on the forest ground was thin now, and bare in patches, but as the night stretched on, the blanket would deepen. After decades in Minnesota, he was still amazed that snow could be so insubstantial and yet gather into drifts that brought the entire world to a halt. The calendar said autumn, but November here meant winter.

The three of them stopped in the woods. They were only thirty yards from the slope of the cemetery, and he could see the lights of the police cars revolving on the dirt road beyond the graves. Stride shone his flashlight beam ahead of him and watched Migdalia Vega, who looked uneasy as her eyes studied the trees. The beam illuminated streams of snow. He directed the cone of light at the ground and swept it back and forth.

'Are we close?' he asked Micki.

'Everything looks alike,' she said.

'Five minutes ago, you said we were almost there.'

'I'm not sure now.'

Stride frowned. He thought she was stalling.

Beside them, Craig Hickey restrained his beagle, whose tongue lolled out of its mouth as it bit at the snowflakes. The squat handler wore heavy gloves and a red wool cap yanked down over his ears. The frigid wind raised a rosy glow on his face.

'Bitch of a night,' Hickey said, stamping his feet in the pine needles littering the ground. 'Don't know why we can't wait until daylight to do this.'

'It won't be any warmer in the morning,' Stride replied, 'and there'll be a foot of snow covering up everything.'

Hickey shivered. He chewed gum and worked his jaw like a teeter-totter. 'My Cujo don't care about snow. She'll sniff through it.'

Stride didn't ask why anyone would name a cadaver dog Cujo. He wanted to move the search forward quickly. Part of it was practical; he didn't want to be shoveling into a crime scene through deep snow. Part of it was human; he knew this was going to be the longest night of Valerie Glenn's life.

'Maybe he's right,' Micki said. 'It looks different in the dark. Maybe we should try again tomorrow.'

'The snow will erase all the landmarks by then.'

'Well, I don't know if I can find it again.'

Stride noticed the stubborn bulge of her lower lip as she pouted. He nodded his head at Craig Hickey. 'Give us a minute, OK?'

'Yeah, whatever.'

Hickey dragged Cujo back through the tangle of brush growing between the birch trees, leaving Stride and Micki alone.

'What's going on?' Stride asked her.

Micki kicked at the ground. 'Nothing. You try finding anything in these woods at night. I'm lost. I got turned around.'

'You saw Marcus Glenn back there,' Stride said. 'I think you're having second thoughts about helping us.'

She rubbed her runny nose with the back of her glove. 'I know how it works. You find something, you're going to arrest him.'

'Not necessarily.'

'Yeah, like I can trust anything you say. I'm fucking cold. Let's get out of here and try again in the morning. I don't know where I am.'

Stride shook his head. Snow sprayed off his damp hair. 'I saw your face a couple minutes ago, Micki. You know exactly where you are. You know every inch of these woods by heart. Are we close? Is that it?'

'I thought so, but now I'm not sure.'

He switched off his flashlight, and they stood in darkness. Over his shoulder, he could make out the lights of Micki's trailer not far away. 'You knew the significance of that toy horn as soon as you found it, didn't you? You knew what it meant. I think you studied the landmarks in the forest. Maybe you even left yourself a clue to find the place again. You knew we'd be here sooner or later.'

She said nothing.

'Tell me something,' Stride continued. 'Do you visit your own child?'

'Yes. Sure I do. All the time.'

'It's nice that you know where to find him,' he said, turning on his flashlight again and directing it ahead of them. 'Imagine not knowing.'

Micki cursed under her breath. 'If I tell you, then I go, OK?' 'OK.'

Micki's eyes followed the light, and she pointed into the trees. 'There's a cluster of four birches there. Twenty feet north, there's an old pine by itself with a thick trunk. I carved a cross in the trunk. I thought she deserved that, you know.'

'Where did you find the toy?'

'The pine's on the edge of a clearing. Not big. I found it right in the middle. Like someone put it there special, not by accident.'

Stride whistled for Craig Hickey, who returned with Cujo on the leash. 'Follow me,' he said.

He led the way forward with Hickey following in his footsteps. Micki stayed where she was, letting them go. The four birch trees ahead of them grew from a single trunk, bending in different directions, and he knew that north lay straight ahead, based on the location of the cemetery. He went slowly. With each step, he swept the ground with the flashlight. The soft pine bed didn't keep footprints. He saw a black pile of animal scat, dried pine cones, and a rusted coffee can.

The tree was exactly where Migdalia had said, standing lonely where it had grown for years. Thick, spiny bushes hugged the pine and made a wall. As he came closer, he squatted and studied the trunk and found a tiny cross, three inches by three inches, carved into the bark with a pocket knife.

'There,' he said, pointing into the brush.

Hickey let Cujo go. The dog shot into the bushes and disappeared. Stride heard the noise of its frantic paws.

'How will we know?' he asked.

'You'll know,' Hickey said.

Stride stood next to the pine, where he could see over the crown of the brush into a small, open patch of flat land. His light captured Cujo, nose to the ground, snuffling through the litter of pine needles. The dog looked busy and excited. It ran back and forth around the clearing in a blur of brown and white fur, always making its way back to the very center and pawing at the earth. Whatever smell was coming from under the soil, the dog buried its face down to get more of it.

'Wait for it,' Hickey said.

Cujo stopped all of his movements abruptly. He sat on his haunches in the middle of the clearing and sneezed. His snout pointed toward the sky. Then, as mournfully as a wolf baying for a lost pack, the dog began to howl.

Chapter Forty-two

Kasey packed a box in the basement, where the air was damp. She wore wool socks, but she could feel the chill of the concrete floor under her feet. As she pulled books off the metal shelves, she eyed a patch of black mold that had grown into the shape of a spider on the wall. She hadn't noticed it before, and she wondered in horror if spores had been floating through the ductwork all year, infesting their lungs. She stared at the giant patch as if she expected it to mutate in front of her eyes.

When her phone vibrated in her pocket, she jumped in surprise. She answered but heard only a long stretch of silence. Then, finally, a voice whispered to her.

'Hello, Kasey.'

Her hands tightened into fists. She knew the voice. It was him.

'Did you get my message?' he said.

Instinctively, her eyes darted around the basement, but she was alone. The only movement she saw was a mouse that scampered along the ledge of the foundation and vanished into a burrow-hole in the pink insulation. She shivered.

'What do you want?' she said.

He took a long time to reply. 'You're leaving.'

'That's right.'

'But our game isn't over, Kasey.'

'Yes, it is. I'm ending it. I'm not playing any more.'

The silence stretched out. She stared at the rust stains under the wash basin and prayed he had hung up.

'It's over when I say it's over, Kasey.'

'Fuck you,' she hissed, slapping the phone shut. She knew her bravery was hollow. Seconds later, the phone buzzed again in her palm, like the whine of an insect. She wanted to let it ring, but she couldn't.

'Leave me alone,' she insisted.

'We're way beyond that. You know it. I know it. This is about you now, not me.'

'What do you want?' she repeated.

'I want you to meet me.'

'You're crazy.'

'You're talking like you have a choice, Kasey. But you don't. We both know you don't.'

She squeezed her eyes shut. Tears pushed their way under her eyelids. 'We're leaving. Tonight. We're driving away. You'll never find us.'

'I will find you. I'll find your husband, too. And your child.'

'Leave them alone!' Her voice was a strangled scream, choked and heavy.

'I'd like to. This is between you and me. But if you leave, then I have no choice. I'll have to make sure you pay, and then your family pays, until there's nothing left. You don't want that.'

'Oh, my God, why are you doing this?'

'You're the one who put yourself in the middle of my game.'

'It was an accident. I never meant for it to happen like this. I never wanted anything to do with you.' Her cheeks flushed red as she cried. 'Please.'

'You're going to meet me. Now. Fifteen minutes.'

'I won't do it.'

'Yes, you will. You'll do anything to save your family. I know you.'

Kasey said nothing. Her brain raced, and she looked for a way out, and she saw nothing but the walls.

'Fifteen minutes,' he repeated. 'Meet me where it started between us. Alone.'

'No.'

'If you're not there, I'll kill them, Kasey. In awful ways. You know I'll do it. If you're late, or I smell a cop, you can expect to come back home and find them both gone. You better hurry.'

He hung up.

Kasey put her hand flat on her chest as she hyperventilated. She saw a rusted hunter's knife on the shelf and thought about killing herself, cutting open her wrists and bleeding to death on the concrete floor. But it wouldn't save them. If she was gone, he'd still come after them. She knew it. She knew his game. Instead, she grabbed the knife and shoved it in her back pocket.

Fifteen minutes. She didn't have much time. She wiped her face and steeled her nerves. If he wanted a fight, she would give him a fight. Only one of them would end up alive, and it would be her, not him. He was right about one thing. She would do anything to save her family.

Kasey climbed the stairs out of the basement. Bruce was in the kitchen, watching her strangely.

'Did I hear you talking?' he asked.

'It was Guppo. He needs me at the crime scene out at the old dairy.'

'Why?'

She shrugged. 'He can't figure something out, and he needs my help. He knows we're leaving in the morning.'

'You don't have to go. This is their problem now, not yours.'

'As long as that guy is out there, it's my problem,' Kasey blurted out, her voice growing shrill with anger and frustration. 'It's our problem.'

Bruce stared at her. 'What's wrong?'

'Nothing. Nothing's wrong. I have to go. I won't be long.'

Her coat was draped over the back of the couch. She put it on and zipped it up to her neck. Bruce watched her, and she hoped he couldn't read her mind. He always told her he didn't trust anyone in the entire world except her, but there were days when that felt like a burden she couldn't handle. He was her opposite in so many ways. That was one reason they were good together. She would never have survived this past year without him.

'It'll be better when we're in the desert,' he told her. 'You'll see.'

Kasey nodded as she put on her gloves and tried not to cry. The desert felt like a dream. She wondered if she would ever see it. She opened the front door, where the wind gusted into the foyer, bringing a cloud of snow. Before she left, she turned back and put a gloved hand on Bruce's bushy beard.

'I'm sorry,' she said.

'For what?'

'For putting us in the middle of this.'

'It's not your fault,' he told her. 'You can't blame yourself.'

'I do anyway.'

She kissed him and closed the door before her emotions betrayed her. As she tramped across the dirt toward the garage, she cringed in the cold air. The fierce wind bit at her exposed skin, and the wet snowflakes clumped on her eyelids, making her blink. Her eyes moved constantly, studying every corner and shadow. She wondered where he was. When she yanked open the garage door, she made sure the space was empty before hurrying to their car and climbing inside. She locked the doors and didn't let the engine warm up before backing through the drifts and speeding toward the highway.

Kasey was alone on the road. Snow poured across the headlights and made it difficult to see. She remembered the same lonely drive a week earlier, lost in the fog, but she knew where she was going this time. She remembered how the gun on the seat beside her had comforted her that night, but she had already surrendered her gun. She put the knife there now instead and eyed its dull blade, but no sense of security came with it.

It took her less than ten minutes to criss-cross along Highway 43 and retrace her steps to the abandoned dairy on Strand Avenue. She came from the northeast, past the house of the woman who had died in the field, across the bridge over the rapids of the Lester River. Her body felt the icy grip of the water again, the way it had knocked her off her feet. She remembered the screams and the sounds of the shots coming from her gun. She remembered standing over the woman's body after the man had escaped.

She turned into the driveway near the white dairy building. No other cars were parked there. She saw no one waiting for her. She grabbed the knife and secreted it in her pocket as she got out of the car. The wind howled. She swayed on her feet as images of that deadly encounter a week earlier hammered her brain. She had spent the days since then trying to forget, and now she was back here, the last place on earth she wanted to be.

Kasey shoved her hands in her pockets. She squinted against the snow. When she wandered toward the dairy, she saw water stains on the cinder blocks and broken frosted windows. If she looked closely, she expected to see her own footsteps, coming up from the river, winding between the pines and stealthily hugging the rear of the building. As she came around the corner of the dairy into the open stretch of grass, now white with snow, she had a vision of the woman still lying there, her body in the field. Susan Krauss. Kasey could run and run and never escape her.

But it wasn't a vision. It was real.

Kasey peered through the snow that blew sideways across the grass, and right where the woman had been, right where she had died, was another body.

'Oh, no.'

She ran, slipping, toward this new victim, who lay face down and half buried by the driving snow. The body was a woman. She was naked, her skin oddly bloodless and blue, as if she had lain there for hours. Her head was turned to the side, but where her face should have been, there was mostly a pulpy mess of bone and brain.

Kasey lurched back in revulsion. It was Regan Conrad.

She spun around, but he was already behind her, near the wall of the dairy ten feet away, smiling.

'I knew you'd come.'

His voice was husky and unafraid. He wore no mask this time, and she could see his face. His right cheek was pockmarked with acne scars. His black hair was short and wiry. His dark eyes were reptilian as they focused on her, seeing her for what she was: prey. She had no illusions about why he hadn't bothered to hide his face. This was the end.

Kasey screamed for help, but it sounded like a whisper above the hiss of the storm.

'No one will hear you,' he said. 'It's the just the two of us out here.'

'You sick son of a bitch,' she blustered, covering her terror.

'This doesn’t have to end badly, Kasey. You belong with a man like me, not that beer-bellied husband of yours. Come with me.'

'Go to hell.'

'Think about it. Running won't get you where you want to go. But I can protect you.'

She felt humiliated and furious. She wanted to cry and, just as badly, she wanted to destroy him. This was the man who stood between her and the rest of her life. Between her and all her plans.

'I love watching your mind work, Kasey,' he told her. 'I told you. I know exactly who you are.'

'What if I kill you right now?' she demanded.

He smiled, taking a step, and his long gait brought him inches closer to her than he had been before. 'Then you'd be free, wouldn't you?'

'Come any closer, and I'll blow your head off,' she warned him.

'If you had a gun, I'd already be dead.'

She took a step backward, and he took another step toward her, and again the distance between them shrank. But he was still beyond her reach. She was conscious of his size and strength. His eyes never left her. His gloved hands dangled at his sides. She kept the knife hidden in her pocket, but her fist was curled round the hilt.

'What do you want with me? Do you want to kill me like the others?'

'The others meant nothing to me,' he told her. 'This is something else, Kasey. I have special plans for you.'

'What plans?'

'You'll find out soon enough.'

She stared into his black eyes, and her heart filled with bloodlust. There was only one thing to do. Fight. Attack. Murder.

'Why are you doing this?' she asked. 'Who are you?'

'My life story doesn’t matter. It only matters that I am who I am, and you are who you are.'

She took another slow step backward, but this time she let her weight settle on to her right leg. She readied herself to charge.

'I don't deserve to die. Not now. Not like this.'

'Neither did Susan Krauss. Neither did any of the others. But our paths crossed. Life is random like that.' He added, 'Or maybe God sent you to me. Did you think about that?'

'There's no God,' Kasey told him.

She pushed off with a scream, springing across the short space. She whisked the knife through the air in front of her and imagined it slicing across his skin. Felt it burying deep through skin and bone and organs. She was so close.

But it was futile. He was waiting for her, as if he was inside her mind and could see her thoughts. As she reached him, his hand twisted, revealing a black device barely larger than a cell phone. She was barely conscious of it, barely knew what it was, before she heard the sizzle of electricity. The knife spilled from her limp fingers. In the next millisecond, pain exploded throughout her body, savaging her nerve ends and cascading her off her feet. Her blood became fire. She twitched in the snow, in agony, her brain scrambled into floating fragments.

He loomed above her, out of focus, doing cartwheels in her eyes. She wanted to resist, but she felt like a helpless rag doll, with useless arms and legs stuffed with sawdust. She was his toy. He owned her now. He had owned her since that night in the fog.

She was aware of being turned over. Felt snow and dirt pushing into her mouth. Felt her hands being taped. Felt him stroke her hair and whisper in her ear: 'Bad girl.'

He stood up, lifted her limp body into his arms, and carried her across the snowy ground.