The Deep, Deep Snow

Chapter One

On the day that Jeremiah Sloan disappeared, I was teasing Monica Constant about her dead dog.

That sounds cruel, but you have to understand that Monica’s Alaskan malamute had died nine years earlier after a long and very pampered life. She cremated Moody, which isn’t unusual, but she kept his ashes in a flowered urn that she took with her to work in a special purse every single day. Vacations, too. If you asked her why, she would explain that if she left Moody at home and her house burned down, then she would have no way of differentiating between the ashes of her house and the ashes of her dog.

Monica wasn’t about to take any chances.

And yes, I would tease her about this whenever I could.

On that particular July afternoon, my partner, Adam Twilley, was leaning against the open door that led to the parking lot, with a cigar between his lips. My father couldn’t see him, which was the only reason Adam felt bold enough to smoke in the office. The warm wind blew in and sprayed a plume of ash from the end of his cigar onto the yellowed linoleum floor.

“Monica?” I called, pointing to the little gray sprinkle of ash. “I think Moody needs to go out.”

To her credit, Monica always giggled at my lame jokes.

“Shelby, what am I going to do with you?” she said with a little shake of her head, using the same grandmotherly tone she’d used with me since I was a girl.

Monica and I went way back. It’s a little weird when you work with people who used to change your diapers. She joined the sheriff’s department as a secretary right out of high school and had never worked anywhere else over the past three decades. That’s the thing about a small-town place like Mittel County. Loyalty runs deep in these parts. When you find your place in the world, you stay there.

She went back to reading us the latest police reports out loud. Adam and I were both in our chocolate-brown uniforms. Normally, we would be out on the roads together, but it had been a slow Friday so far. I was only half paying attention to what Monica was saying, because my father was in his office behind closed doors, and the muffled conversation inside was getting loud.

“Oh, this is sad,” Monica announced in her high-pitched twitter of a voice as she squinted at the computer screen. “Poor old Paul Nadler wandered away again in Stanton. They want us to be on the lookout for him.”

Adam snorted from behind his cigar. “On the lookout? Stanton is an hour away. Nadler is what, ninety-four? Do they think he’s running a marathon or something?”

“Come on, Adam,” I chided him. “The man has Alzheimer’s.”

“Yeah, I know, but this is like the sixth time he’s walked out of that care center without anybody noticing. Somebody either needs to bell that cat or figure out how to lock the damn door.”

Adam was right about that. Stanton was in the next county over, so it really wasn’t our problem, but I felt sorry for Mr. Nadler and angry that the senior facility couldn’t keep him safe. They typically found him within a couple of hours, but a lot can happen to an old man in that amount of time. Once he walked into a stranger’s house two blocks away and fell asleep in a closet. Another time he actually climbed the hundred-foot Stanton fire tower. Sooner or later, he was going to get hurt.

“Let’s move on, Monica. What else is on the list?”

I was a little too brusque with her, but Monica gave me a sympathetic smile from the other side of the room. She could read my mind. I wasn’t upset about Mr. Nadler’s memory problems. I was worried that someday I would find myself in the same situation with my father.

“We’ve got a report of a stolen pickup truck in Martin’s Point,” she went on. “A white Ford F-150. That is such a nice vehicle. I’ve always wanted one of those.”

I grinned at the idea of tiny Monica Constant driving one of the world’s largest trucks. She rattled off the license plate, and Adam and I scribbled it down in our notebooks. This was the fourth stolen vehicle report this month. It was summer. Cars around Mittel County had a way of going on joyrides when kids were off school. Martin’s Point was a lakeside town fifty miles south of us, which meant it attracted tourist families with bored teenagers who quickly discovered that the locals don’t always lock their vehicles.

“Anything else?” I asked.

“Oh, yes. Mrs. Norris says she saw a man skulking outside her bedroom window last night. According to her, he was, quote, ‘ogling her lasciviously while in a state of undress.’”

“A state of undress?” I asked. “Was he undressed or was she?”

“I think she was.”

“So we’re looking for a blind man,” Adam joked from the doorway. “That should make it easy.”

I couldn’t help laughing. Adam was right about that, too. Nobody with good eyes would be ogling Mrs. Norris. “Did she give a description of the man?”

“No, she didn’t see him. Her bedroom window was open, and she says he was making some kind of snuffling sound, like heavy breathing. She thinks he came from the motel across the highway.”

“All right, we’ll wander over there later. I’m sure Rose won’t be surprised at another complaint from Mrs. N about one of her guests. Is that all?”

It didn’t matter if that was all.

Before Monica could say anything more, the door to my father’s office flew open with a bang, interrupting us. I saw a slim, tall, annoyingly attractive woman in the doorway, and she saw me sitting at my desk.

“Violet,” I said coolly.

“Shelby,” she said with equal frost in her voice.

Violet Roka and I had been frenemies since high school. My one claim to fame in Mittel County — well, other than being the baby in the Easter basket — was being part of the girls volleyball team that won the state championship in my senior year. Believe me, that’s a big deal in a small town. There’s still a billboard about us on the highway. Violet’s family moved to the area when she was a junior, and she promptly went out for the team and squeezed out my best friend, which didn’t help us get along. She and I became the two biggest rivals with the two most stubborn personalities, but Coach Trina had managed to get it through our heads that we could accomplish more together than apart. The truce lasted until we brought the trophy home. Since then, we hadn’t exactly been close.

At twenty-six years old, she was a newly minted lawyer who’d already gotten herself appointed to the county board after one of the members resigned in the middle of his term. One thing Violet never lacked was ambition. She’d been using her newfound clout to hassle my father about everything he was doing wrong as the county sheriff. I didn’t like it one bit, but Dad let it roll off his back the way he did everything in life.

Violet didn’t linger in the office. She shrugged a purse over her shoulder, clicked across the floor in her sky-high heels, and pushed through Adam’s cloud of cigar smoke into the parking lot. Adam gave her one of his crooked James Dean smiles, but Violet didn’t swoon.

When she was gone, my father strolled into the common area to join us. Adam quickly flipped his cigar to the asphalt outside and hummed an innocent tune.

“What did Violet want?” I asked.

“Oh, she always has something to complain about,” my father replied with a wrinkle of his bushy mustache. “Apparently, now I’m not doing enough to combat climate change.”

“What exactly can you do about that?”

“As you’d expect, Violet had a list prepared.”

“Was there anything else? It sounded like the two of you were arguing.”

“It was nothing, Shelby. Don’t worry about it.”

My father was the most honest man I knew, but that also meant he was a bad liar. I didn’t know what he and Violet had been arguing about, but it was more than climate change. Whatever it was, he chose not to share it with me.

Dad wandered over and perched on the side of Monica’s desk, where he perused the summary of police calls. “Mr. Nadler again? I can’t believe they keep losing that man.” Then without looking up, he continued: “Oh, and Adam? Was that a cigar I saw in your hand?”

“Definitely not, Tom,” Adam replied, although he wasn’t fooling anyone, because the smell had already permeated the basement.

My father sighed and shot me a sideways glance. “How about we solve a little crossword puzzle for Adam, Shelby? Let’s try this one. ‘An unwanted visitor in a tableware emporium.’ Four letters.”

Dad loved crossword puzzles. He and I had spent twenty years doing them together over breakfast in the local café. His clue took me just a moment to figure out, and then I said, “Bull.”

Because a bull in a china shop would definitely be an unwanted visitor.

“You got that, Adam?” my father told him with a wink. “Bull.”

Adam stared at his feet and coughed. “Sorry, Tom.”

“No more cigars in here, got it? Let’s try not to burn down another building.”

“Yes, sir.”

Monica and I both covered our smiles.

That was my father. He never needed to yell or shout or throw his weight around to get what he wanted. He had a way of charming you even as he made you feel like dirt for disappointing him. His voice was soft, like piano music, which sounded strange coming from such a big man. He stood six-foot-two, with a shaggy head of snow-white hair and a mustache that kept growing out of control like a weed. Even during the winter, his skin had a deep, leathery tan. His build was bulky and broad-shouldered in a way that sent a quiet message of strength.

Anyway, now you’ve got the picture.

That was July 17. A slow day. The four of us were in the Mittel County Sheriff’s Office, located in the basement underneath the town’s Carnegie Library. It was an old space, cold in the winters, humid in the summers. We could hear the thunder of children’s running footsteps overhead. The linoleum peeled at the corners. The ceiling tiles were water-stained.

For me, that particular moment will always be stuck in time. Me at my desk. Dad and Monica with the police reports in hand. Adam in the open doorway. That’s how it was when the world changed.

“Wow, will you look at that?” Adam suddenly said.

He squinted into the sunshine in the library parking lot and shook his head with a kind of awe. I asked him what was up, but Adam looked transfixed by whatever he saw and didn’t say a word. We all converged on the doorway, and I got there first. The sight took my breath away.

Outside, not even twenty feet away, Adam’s motorcycle was parked in the lot. Perched atop the bike’s side mirror was a snowy owl. Motionless. Serious. Regal.

Staring at it, I felt the strangest, coldest sensation down my entire body.

“It’s just an owl,” I found myself murmuring out loud, because we lived near the national forest among predators and prey. There wasn’t anything especially unusual about a snowy owl taking a rest before flying back to the trees.

Except at that very moment, the phone rang on Monica’s desk. We all jumped at the noise, and the owl took flight with a cry. Right then and there, I knew.

Something had happened.

Monica skittered across the floor with her short little steps and grabbed the phone. She wasn’t much bigger than a bird herself. She listened to the voice on the line and was barely able to get in a word, because I could hear a panicked woman shouting at her through the receiver.

When Monica hung up, I looked at her, waiting. So did Dad and Adam.

“That was Ellen Sloan,” she told us. “Jeremiah is missing. She thinks someone took him.”

Chapter Two

Dad led our parade of vehicles down miles of dirt road into the heart of the national forest. Adam and I followed, with me at the wheel. Dennis and Ellen Sloan brought up the rear, and they had Adrian, Jeremiah’s sixteen-year-old brother, in the car with them.

This was a lonely place for a ten-year-old boy to vanish.

The town where we live is named Avery Weir, but long ago, people simply started calling it Everywhere. This being Mittel County, we say we live in the Middle of Everywhere, but the truth is that we’re closer to the middle of nowhere. The deer outnumber the people around here by a significant multiple. We’re still ahead of the wolves, but they’re gaining on us. We’re surrounded by hundreds of square miles of woods, creeks, and lakes. The nearest interstate highway is two hours south. Towns are spread out by dozens of miles, and they have great names. Witch Tree. Eagle Ridge. Martin’s Point. Blue Diamond Lake.

We were thirty miles north of Everywhere when I saw the cloud of dust settling as Dad’s squad car slowed and stopped. I saw a child’s bicycle tipped forlornly on the shoulder of the road in a nest of thistles. The blue frame was caked with dirt. In the forest on either side of us, dense stands of paper birches and white pines fought for the sunlight. The July air was sticky and warm. Insects whined from inside the tangled brush, and songbirds danced back and forth across the road in flashes of color.

My father got out of the cruiser and assessed the bike with his hands on his hips and his mouth crushed into a dour frown. His brown, flat-brimmed sheriff’s hat was securely placed on his head. The midafternoon summer sun was high and bright, but the denseness of the woods meant you couldn’t see far through the shadows. It had been dry that week, so the ruts in the dirt road showed no tire tracks or footprints. The bicycle was the only evidence that a boy had been here.

Adam and I joined Dad on the road. So did the Sloans and their oldest son.

I knew the Sloans well in those days. Everyone did. Despite how spread out we are, there are zero degrees of separation in an area like ours. We know each other’s stories and secrets, probably more than we should. When you all grow up together, it’s also hard to get past who you were in high school. No matter what you go on to do in life, you’re still the baseball star, the homecoming queen, the party girl, the volleyball champ. The Sloans had that problem. People talked about Dennis and Ellen like they were still Jack and Diane from John Mellencamp’s little ditty, but that wasn’t fair. Dennis had a master’s degree in forestry management. Ellen had bought the failing market on Everywhere’s main street and turned it into a moneymaker.

Ellen was thirty-six that year, two years younger than her husband. She was smart, cool, blond, blue-eyed, tough enough to make a shoplifter confess with nothing but one of those icy stares of hers. She was the strong one in that household. That was what made it so hard to see her struggling to keep it together. I saw the tremble in her fingers. I heard her breathing, which was quick and loud through her nose. She kept touching her hair and pushing it back in place, as if that were the only thing she could control at that moment.

Her life was her two boys, and one of them was gone.

My father put a hand on the shoulder of Jeremiah’s older brother and gave the teenager a reassuring smile. Adrian was a meaty kid on the high school football team, but at that moment, he looked as if the slightest breeze would knock him down.

“So is this where you found your brother’s bike?”

“Yeah.”

“Did you move it at all?”

“No, I didn’t touch it.”

“Did you search the woods around here?”

“Yeah, sure I did. Jer wasn’t anywhere.”

Dennis Sloan muttered an expletive under his breath and marched to the side of the road, his boots crunching on rock. He didn’t have the patience to stand around answering questions. He cupped his hands around his mouth and bellowed into the woods with big pipes that would fill a room. “Jeremiah! Jeremiah!”

His booming voice scared a few birds, but that was all. There was no answer. That didn’t stop him from hollering again. He was a handsome park ranger with the strong physique of a lumberjack, and strong men always labored under the illusion that they could solve any problem if they swung a little harder, talked a little louder, or ran a little faster. Life didn’t work that way.

My father let Dennis shout himself hoarse. Then he went on in the same level voice he always used. Panic was boiling over on that road, but my father was an oasis of calm, like the eye of a storm.

“Adrian, why don’t you tell us what happened?”

The teenager kicked at the dirt with his sneaker. “Jer and I went to work with Dad at the ranger station. We hung out there most of the morning, and then I figured I’d ride my bike for a while. I was going to go by myself, but Jer threw a fit about coming with me. So I let him go along just to shut him up.”

“Why didn’t you want him to come with you?”

“I like to ride fast. He slows me down.”

“What did the two of you do?”

“Nothing. We rode, that’s all. I thought we could make it to Talking Lake, but we didn’t get that far before we got hungry. There’s a campground about a mile north of here, so we stopped to have lunch. Mom made sandwiches for our backpacks. Jer wolfed his down, and then he started bugging me.”

“How so?”

“Oh, he was batting a shuttlecock around with his badminton racket. He’d whack it and chase it, and he nearly hit me with it a couple of times. It pissed me off. He was collecting rocks, too, and he had to show me every one he found. He wouldn’t leave me alone.”

“So how did the two of you get separated?”

“Jer wanted to go back, but I wasn’t ready to leave. I mean, he made such a stink about coming with me, and then he wanted to head out before we did anything. I said fine, go, I don’t care. And he got on his bike and went back the way we came.”

“You let him go,” Ellen murmured to her son.

Her tone was gentle, but the lack of anger in his mother’s voice actually made the accusation cut deeper. I could see the kid folding up like a flower.

“You let your brother go. Alone. Out here.”

Adrian bit his lower lip and looked miserable. “All I did was give him a head start, Mom. I was going to catch up to him.”

“Are you sure he headed south?” my father asked, before Adrian disintegrated completely. “Is it possible he went the other way toward the lake?”

“No, I saw him go. He was heading toward the ranger station.”

“Was there anyone else in the campground while you were there?”

The boy squatted to pry a few prickly burs from the cuff of his jeans and flick them into the brush. “No.”

“What did you do next?”

“I hung out for a while.”

“Doing what?”

“Shooting at the crows. Just to scare them. I didn’t hit them or anything.”

“You carry a gun?”

“Sometimes.” Adrian flipped back his windbreaker to reveal the butt of a revolver jutting out of the pocket of his jeans.

“Boys need to know about guns, Tom,” Dennis interrupted, as if my father had been casting aspersions on his parenting. “The safest thing is to teach them when they’re young. You know that.”

“I do know that, Dennis. I’m just trying to figure out what happened. Did you ever let Jeremiah handle your gun, Adrian?”

“A couple of times, but only if Dad was around.”

My father was silent for a while. That was one of the things he’d taught me about police work. Silence is your friend. People can’t stand silence, and they feel like they have to fill it up with something. Usually, they end up telling you things they never meant to say.

But Adrian kept his mouth shut.

“Okay, Jeremiah took his bike and left,” my father went on eventually. “You were alone in the campground. Did you see or hear any cars on the road?”

“No.”

“What about voices?”

“No. I said I was alone.”

“How long did you stay there after Jeremiah left?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Five minutes? Fifteen? An hour?”

“I told you, I don’t know. I wasn’t looking at what time it was.”

“But eventually, you got on your bike and headed back the same way?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay, tell me the rest.”

The teenager heaved a sigh. “I found Jer’s bike. He was gone. I don’t know anything else.”

“Did you move the bike at all? Is this exactly where you found it?”

My head snapped up, as if someone had jabbed me with a live wire. I’d been on edge for months, watching for little things like that. I wondered if anyone else had noticed that Dad was repeating himself.

Adrian did. He looked puzzled and annoyed. “You already asked me about that.”

Dad’s composure broke for a moment, but he recovered with an easy smile. “Just making sure.”

“Well, I didn’t move it,” Adrian said again.

“What did you do next?”

“I looked for Jer, what else? I looked everywhere. I shouted and shouted. I rode back to the campground to see if I’d missed him somehow. Then I started back toward the ranger station. I figured maybe he was walking, like the bike crapped out or something, and I’d pass him on the way. But I didn’t. I rode all the way back and told my dad.”

“You have a phone, right? Why not call?”

“Signal sucks out here. Anyway, I was too freaked. I just wanted to get back and tell my dad.”

“Did Jeremiah have a phone with him?”

“Yeah, but it was dead.”

“He’s always forgetting to charge it,” Dennis interjected. “I called it over and over. It keeps going to voicemail.”

“Well, we’ll check with the phone company and see if they can tell us anything,” Dad said. “Adrian, what was Jeremiah wearing?”

“His Sunday suit.”

My father’s brow furrowed in surprise. “Really? Why?”

Ellen was crouched by her son’s bicycle on the shoulder of the road. Her fingers reached out and touched the front tire and spun it slowly. She spoke without looking up. “We lost my father a couple of weeks ago. Jeremiah was very close to his grandfather, and he took it hard. He wore the suit to the service at the cemetery, and he’s been putting it on ever since. I tried to make him stop, but after a while, I just let him do it.”

“He wore Nikes, too,” Adrian added. “Purple ones.”

“Okay. Adrian, is there anything else you can tell us?”

“No, nothing. Really. I don’t know what happened to him.” He shot a pained look at his mother. “I’m so sorry, Mom.”

Ellen didn’t look back at her older son. She stood up again, brushed the dust from her clothes, and fixed her stare on my father. Her voice was barely a whisper, but she hammered out every word. “Someone abducted my boy, Tom. You need to do something right now. I want roadblocks. Helicopters. Alerts in every police department throughout the state. I want my son’s picture on TV. I want him on highway signs. I want the whole world looking for Jeremiah.”

She was barely holding back the hysteria that I knew was inside her. It was like lake water thumping against the surface ice, trying to get out.

“Ellen, none of us will sleep until we find your boy,” Dad assured her. He drew himself up to his full height, and when he was like that, you just had to believe everything he said. “I know you’re scared, but there hasn’t been a stranger abduction in this county ever. Ever. It’s easy to think the worst, but let’s focus on the likelier explanations first. We need to search the woods around here. If Jeremiah left the road for any reason, he can’t have gone far. We’ll put out the word and have fifty townspeople here in a few minutes and we’ll blanket the whole area. We’ve got hours of daylight left to find him. It’s also possible — likely even — that Jeremiah simply hitched a ride back to town with somebody he knew. He could be at a friend’s house right now. Kids don’t think about the panic they cause when they forget to tell their parents where they’ve gone. Shelby and Adam will check the whole town while we’re out here searching the woods. Okay? Trust me. We’ll find him.”

I knew my father believed that.

If I’d been in his shoes at that moment, I probably would have said the same thing. You try not to make promises you can’t keep, but Dad still believed that most stories had happy endings. Someone in town would find Jeremiah. Some hero would take him home, and Ellen would cry, and Dennis would hug his boy, and the rest of us would exhale with quiet relief.

That was how we all thought it would go. The boy would be back in his mother’s arms by nightfall.

But we were all wrong.

Chapter Three

Ten years old. That was Jeremiah’s age.

I still remember what it was like to be a kid in the summertime in Mittel County. When I was that age, I used to do exactly what Jeremiah did — take my bike down the dirt roads with my hair blowing in the wind, ride to one of the dozens of lakes around here, and swim in the cool water with fish brushing up against my bare legs. Those days felt like they lasted forever. The sun came up early and went down late. When I finally got back home, I’d be wet, dirty, tired, and ready to do it all over again.

Rose Carter was my best friend back then. Rose was the girl who got booted off the Everywhere Strikers when Violet went out for the high school volleyball team. It wasn’t my fault, but Rose and I were never as close after that. I think she held it against me that I stayed on the team.

But when we were ten? We did everything together.

I would make up puzzles and mysteries for us. She and I would hike into the woods to hunt for signs of the mythical Ursulina. We’d find what looked like footprints in the mud, and we’d measure them and take pictures and bring them all back to my father to show him what we’d found. He would swear that our evidence was very, very persuasive, and we believed him when he said he would consult with people in the government about what we’d discovered.

Rose and I explored the whole county in those days. We went everywhere, just the two of us, and the Ursulina was the only monster that ever crossed our minds. We didn’t worry about being alone miles from home.

We never imagined a bicycle lying on the side of the road.

Ten years old.

Dad used to keep a picture of me on the mantle from when I was that age. Hands on my hips, hair in my face, annoyed and impatient that I had to take a break for even a moment from the whirlwind of being a child. I suppose every parent has a picture like that.

If I look in a mirror even now, I can still see hints of the girl in that old photograph. I haven’t lost that faraway look in my brown eyes or the stubborn crinkle in my forehead. I was a medium girl then, and I still am, not short, not tall, not heavy, not thin. My hair looks dark enough to be black, but you’d have to see me in the sunlight to know it’s more like chocolate. It’s straight as an arrow even on the most humid July day. I keep it parted in the middle and just long enough to frame my face. I have a few freckles, too, sprinkled like pepper across the bridge of my nose.

When I look at that picture now, I think: that girl wasn’t afraid of anything. It’s hard to find things you like about yourself, but I’ll go with that one. I don’t scare easily.

Ten years old.

It can be a dangerous age, too. You’re not just a little kid anymore. You’re starting to become a person, but you haven’t lost the wonder of being a child. You have no sense of your own limitations. That’s a good thing and a bad thing.

I thought about Jeremiah at that age, trying to figure out the world.

I knew him better than most kids in the area, because his best friend and next-door neighbor was Anna Helvik. Anna was the daughter of my friend and former volleyball coach, Trina, and I was over at Trina’s house all the time. Anna and Jeremiah were often with us. He was a shy kid, not saying much when you talked to him. Anna was the brave one, like me, the girl who would go anywhere and do everything. Jeremiah looked happy to trail behind her and play Spock to her Kirk. He was sweet, always with a big smile, the polite kid who called me “Miss Lake.” I liked him.

Where was he?

I kept going over Adrian’s story in my head. I thought about Jeremiah heading out of the campground on his bike. I tried to picture this short, skinny boy flying down the road through the national forest. His little legs pumped up and down on the pedals, and his backside probably lifted off the bicycle seat. His badminton racket jutted out of his backpack. His hair whipped like strands of fine straw, long enough to fall over his eyes, with a cowlick sprouting from the back.

But you know what really struck me?

That Sunday suit he was wearing.

They’d put Jeremiah’s grandfather in the ground two weeks earlier, and this little boy still couldn’t take off his Sunday clothes.

I didn’t know if it would help us find him, but it told me one thing. Jeremiah was lonely. That’s what worried me, because if I could see it, then so could others.

The ones who saw a boy like that as prey.

Chapter Four

“So what do you think?” Adam asked me as we drove back toward Everywhere. “Where’s the kid?”

I didn’t answer immediately. I was watching a caravan of cars pass us in the opposite direction, filled with searchers ready to fan out shoulder to shoulder to hunt for Jeremiah in the woods. They were our friends and neighbors. Around here, when someone’s in trouble, the word goes out, and people drop everything to help.

“I hope he’s in town with a friend,” I said finally, “and we just haven’t found him yet.”

Adam took off his sunglasses and waited until I turned my head and stared back at him. “Shelby, you know he’s not in town.”

“He might be.”

“Without his bike? How did he get there? Somebody had to drive him, and by now, the whole town knows he’s missing. If anybody knew where he was, they’d have called. The fact is, he’s either still in the forest, or else—”

I waited. “Or else?”

Adam shrugged and replaced his shades on his face. “Hey, you’re thinking what I’m thinking. You just don’t want to say it.”

He was right. I didn’t want to say it, so I said nothing.

We drove on in silence. It was ten more miles before we reached the southern border of the national forest. Dennis Sloan worked at the ranger station and welcome center at the park entrance. There was a stop sign ahead of us marking the main highway cutting through Mittel County. Going left would take us east toward Stanton an hour away. Going right led toward block-long towns like Witch Tree and Sugarfall that were situated deep in the kind of woods where Goldilocks got lost.

The checkerboard streets of Everywhere were directly ahead of us. Century-old brick buildings lined the main street, which was dominated by the county courthouse and its acre of green lawn and historical statues. Next to the courthouse was the boxy library that housed the sheriff’s office downstairs. The rest of the street was made up of shops that had been around for years. The small market owned by Ellen Sloan. The bakery with green-frosted sugar cookies that have always been a weakness of mine. The hardware store. The Post Office. The Nowhere Café, where Dad and I ate nearly every day of our lives.

You can imagine the jokes. Where do you eat in Everywhere? Nowhere.

Some of the shops had closed over time, leaving empty buildings with rusted signs and broken windows covered over with plywood. It’s like a funeral for a friend when a main-street shop closes, because you know it’s never coming back. This isn’t a place where new customers come to live and shop. Every census report whittles down Mittel County by another few hundred people. Either they die or they leave for better jobs and bigger towns. People aren’t having enough babies to compensate.

Adam and I parked outside the Nowhere and then went door to door at all of the shops in less than an hour. No one had seen Jeremiah that day. Searching the outskirts of town was going to take longer, because most neighbors lived half a mile or more from each other, in houses carved out of a few acres of forest, with long dirt driveways winding through the trees. I drove toward Jeremiah’s house, but Adam stopped me when we were barely out of the town center. He grabbed my arm and pointed at the parking lot for our one-story K–12 school, home to the Everywhere Strikers. I’d gone there. Adam had gone there. We’d all gone there. It was summer, when kids wanted to forget about school, but there was a beat-up red SUV parked in the far corner of the lot.

“I recognize that Bronco,” Adam said. “The Gruders are back.”

I groaned. Will and Vince Gruder were our local bad boys. The ones who kept the county flush with drugs. “Think they know something?”

“I think we should ask.”

I pulled into the lot and parked our cruiser next to the Ford Bronco. Adam and I both got out. The SUV’s rear windows had been covered with duct tape, so we couldn’t see into the back. Hundreds of bugs were splattered across the windshield, and the front seats were a mess of fast-food wrappers and Walmart bags. A plastic jalapeño, wearing a sombrero, dangled from the rear-view mirror, with “Welcome to El Paso” printed across the green skin of the pepper.

I knew what the jalapeño meant. Will and Vince traveled to Mexico every summer, and they cooked what they brought back into meth in a lab hidden somewhere in the woods. We’d chased them for years, but they were sly like foxes about covering up their business and had never spent so much as a day inside the Mittel County jail.

There was no sign of the Gruders outside the school, but I heard the springy thump of a basketball behind the building. Adam heard it, too, and he headed off across the green grass without a word to me. I jogged to keep up with him.

I was used to Adam taking the lead. Technically, he and I were both deputies, but he was three years older. You can guess where that left me in the pecking order, at least in Adam’s mind. It didn’t help that I was the daughter of the sheriff. It also didn’t help that Adam had asked me out in high school when he was a senior and I was a freshman, and I’d shot him down. Adam didn’t hear the word “no” very often. He was used to girls falling for the jeans, the shades, the smirk, and the tight little curls in his short brown hair. He wasn’t tall, but he had the cool factor going for him back then. Cool kids weren’t my type. Not that I knew what my type was.

Adam was a good cop but a little reckless, because he always felt like he had something to prove. He’d grown up in the shadow of his mother, who was a local hero in Mittel County. She’d competed in the Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and taken home a silver medal in cross-country skiing. She was pretty and TV-friendly, and she’d parlayed her success into a lot of money in sponsorships. Sooner or later, Adam was going to inherit some big bucks. Maybe that’s why he never looked happy living an ordinary life. I think he always felt that his mother wanted him to do something more with her DNA than hand out traffic tickets on the county roads.

The two of us went around to the rear of the school building, where the athletic fields were arranged in a giant rectangle. The basketball courts were closest to us, and we saw the Gruders playing a fierce game of one-on-one with a white-and-purple basketball. As I watched, one of the brothers sunk a hook shot through the rusted hoop, but I didn’t know which brother it was. They were identical twins, twenty-two years old.

“That’s Vince,” Adam said, reading my mind.

“How do you know?”

“Because Vince can shoot, and Will sucks.”

We strolled over to the court. The Gruders saw us coming, and they dribbled the ball to the fence to meet us. Both wore jeans and high-tops, and both were bare-chested, with sweat dripping in streaks down their suntanned skin. They had the same long, greasy blond hair and the same green eyes and even the same nose rings in their right nostrils. They were tall and skinny, and I could smell pot on their breath.

“Deputy Twilley,” Vince announced, as if we were all old friends, “and Deputy Lake. Look at that, our two favorite law enforcement professionals are here to welcome us home. You want to shoot some hoops with us?”

“When did you get back into town, Vince?” Adam asked, ignoring the small talk.

“A couple of days ago. We rolled into Witch Tree late on Wednesday.”

“Where did you go on your trip?”

“Oh, here and there. We hit us some beaches, drank us some beer. What’s summer without a road trip, right? Still, there’s no place like home. Nothing beats the scenery around here.” As he said this, Vince gave me an up-and-down look that belonged in a brown paper wrapper.

“We’re looking for Jeremiah Sloan,” Adam said impatiently. “Have you seen him?”

Vince bounced the basketball in his hand. “Who?”

“He’s Adrian Sloan’s little brother,” I told him. I noticed that Will Gruder kept scratching his leg with his foot, and I shot a quick glance at the ragged cuffs of his jeans, which were loaded with sharp little prickly burs. When I saw that, I quickly added, “I mean, you guys know Adrian, don’t you?”

The two brothers exchanged looks, and the look from Vince said Shut up.

“Sure, we know Adrian,” Vince said. “Football player, right? What’s up with his brother?”

“Jeremiah is missing,” Adam replied. “We found his bike on the dirt road that leads to Talking Lake. There’s no sign of the boy. His parents are pretty worried.”

Will shot a concerned glance at his brother. “He’s missing? Really? I mean, we just—”

“Hey, that’s too bad about the kid,” Vince interrupted before Will could say anything more. “Wish we could help you out, but we haven’t seen him. If we spot him hanging around, we’ll give you a call.”

“When did the two of you last see Adrian?” I asked.

Vince didn’t blink. He just stared right through me. “Adrian? Heck if I know.”

“Are you sure you didn’t see him today?”

“Today? No, we haven’t seen Adrian since we got back. Not sure why we would. You guys need anything else? Or can I get back to kicking Will’s ass on the court?”

“Go ahead.”

Vince grabbed his brother’s shoulder and dragged him back to the basketball court. I waited to see what Will would do, and sure enough, he glanced back at me with a shifty, nervous expression that told me the two of them were lying. I turned my back on the brothers and walked away toward the front of the school. This time, Adam had to jog to catch up with me.

“What the hell was that about?” he asked. “Why were you asking about Adrian?”

“Burs.”

“Huh?”

“Will had prickly burs stuck to his jeans and shoelaces. A lot of them.”

“So?”

“Adrian Sloan did, too. He was picking them off while Dad was talking to him.”

Adam looked back at the brothers, who were hanging around on the court and watching us go. “You think the Gruder boys were with Adrian? Because of a few prickly burs? That’s pretty thin, Shelby.”

“Yeah, I know. Maybe I’m wrong about this, and it’s nothing. But if I’m right, then Will and Vince saw Adrian in the national forest today. And that means Adrian’s lying to us.”

Chapter Five

When you’re in the midst of an investigation that involves a child, you always feel as if your heart is in your mouth and you have to remind yourself to breathe. So it was a relief when Monica called us to say she had a report of an unidentified, unaccompanied minor in our old town cemetery. I told her we’d check it out immediately. My first thought was that Jeremiah had gone to visit his grandfather’s grave, and I allowed myself to hope that our fears had been misplaced and we’d have the boy back with his parents soon.

The dead of the Mittel County Cemetery have always been like friends to me, because the graveyard backs up to our house. When I was a girl, I used to wander the cemetery trails at night with a flashlight, hunting for ghosts. Rose thought it was creepy and wouldn’t go along, but the place never bothered me. Remember, I’m the girl who doesn’t scare easily. I still walk in the cemetery whenever I can. Sometimes I’ll take my guitar and sing songs for the dead, because they’re good listeners and don’t heckle me when I’m off-key.

Adam and I parked in the driveway of my father’s house, and we hiked through the backyard toward the cemetery. The burial plots are clustered in small groves, with spruces watching over the dead like silent giants. Moss and mold adorn the older stones, some of which date back two hundred years. Even on the hottest, brightest summer day, it’s cool and dark there, and you can’t see far because of the tree trunks packed closely together.

I called, “Jeremiah! Jeremiah, are you here?”

Adam shouted, too. “Jeremiah! Hey, Jeremiah, can you hear us?”

We didn’t get any reply except the trill of cardinals.

“Let’s split up,” I suggested.

Adam took a path to my right, and the woods quickly swallowed him up. I went in the opposite direction. Every now and then, I called Jeremiah’s name again. Distantly, I could hear Adam doing the same, but after a while, his voice faded away. The cemetery meanders over acres of hilly land, and as I explored the individual groves, I saw winged angels, crypts guarded by carved lions, fallen crosses, and massive trees toppled by storms, with mushrooms growing out of the stumps. The whole area had a peaty smell.

I’d walked these trails countless times and knew many of the names on the graves by heart, but this time, I felt an odd sense of unease being here. That’s because I knew I wasn’t alone. Someone was in the trees, spying on me. Every now and then, I heard a twig snap, betraying a footstep. It could have been an animal digging in the leafy brush, but I didn’t think so. I kept looking over my shoulder, but the trails were empty, and I didn’t see anyone near the graves.

“Hello?” I called. “Who’s there?”

There was no answer, so I tried again. “Jeremiah? Is that you? Come on out, I know you’re there.”

I kept walking, but when I glanced back, I spotted a tiny flash of yellow disappearing behind the trunk of a black oak. It was someone wearing a hoodie. Small, definitely a child. I couldn’t see a face, but whoever it was knew they’d been spotted. I heard my stalker sprinting away, and I took off in pursuit, but I was chasing someone with the grace and speed of a deer. Little stabs of yellow whipped in and out of view through the trees and left me behind.

“Hey! Hey, stop!”

I broke into a field of headstones scattered along a shallow hillside. Shadows stretched across the lawn, and the forest itself was gray. My spy in the hoodie had vanished. If it was Jeremiah, he wasn’t wearing his Sunday suit anymore.

“Shelby?”

Deputies aren’t supposed to scream, but I screamed in surprise. Someone was right behind me. I whirled around, and the man who was there backed away, raising his hands as if to assure me that he came in peace.

I knew him.

Oh, yes, I knew him. He was just about the last person I wanted to see.

“Keith.”

He stood there, looking as awkward as me. His lips moved, but he didn’t say anything, as if his mouth didn’t know what to do. Talk. Smile. Frown. Kiss me.

“Long time,” Keith said finally. You’d be amazed how much meaning you can pack into two little words. We could both tell you the exact date when we’d last spoken. November 14. Last fall.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

He nodded his head toward a flat stone on the ground, newer and brighter than the weathered graves around it. “Colleen.”

“Oh. Sure.”

“I suppose that surprises you.”

“Why should it? She was your wife.”

Keith tossed his head, flipping back his messy brown hair. It was a nervous gesture he used a lot. He was lanky and tall, wearing khakis, old brown shoes, and a rust-colored pullover. He limped when he moved, because he had an artificial limb below his right knee. He wasn’t classically handsome, but handsome faces have never been that interesting to me. His face had character, like a book that offers you something new every time you read it. His eyebrows were thick and dark, his nose long and slightly crooked, his chin narrow and protruding. He and I had the same kind of eyes, colored like raw brown sugar and a little sad. Whenever I looked in his eyes, I knew there was a lot going on inside.

Keith Whalen. He was eight years older than me. When I was a senior in high school, he taught my English class. I know, what a cliché, the girl with a crush on her English teacher. He read Thoreau, and I swooned. Yeah, that was me, but it’s not that simple. We’d all heard stories about his injury in the war, his mood swings, his opioid habit, his troubled marriage. I didn’t see any of that in the classroom. I just saw a broken man sitting on the desk, taking us all to Walden Pond with that “Tupelo Honey” voice of his. To me, if he had personal struggles, that only made him more attractive, and I was the teenage girl who could fix it all.

Don’t worry, it was nothing more than a Harlequin Romance fantasy in my head. Nothing happened when I was a student. But dead fires have a way of coming back to life.

“So how are you?”

Keith shook his head the way he had when one of my answers disappointed him in class. “Do you really care how I am, Shelby? If you’re just making small talk, we don’t need to do that.”

“I care.”

“Okay. Sorry, I suppose that sounded harsh. It’s just that the last time we talked, I thought that you—”

“Don’t misunderstand me,” I interrupted with coolness in my voice. “I’m still a police officer. Nothing’s changed. But you asked me if I care, and I do.”

He got a little tic in his cheek. I knew I’d hurt him. I was trying to hurt him.

“You’re honest. I guess I prefer that. Well, since you asked, the fact is, I’m not doing well at all.”

“That’s too bad, Keith.”

“You may not think I loved Colleen, but I did. I miss her. And yes, I know she was a better wife to me than I deserved.” Keith eyed the grave, as if Colleen were still listening to him. “You know, I’ve picked up the phone a hundred times to call you, Shelby.”

“It’s better that you didn’t.”

“Yeah, that’s what I figured. I never told anyone. Your secret is safe. I mean, I assume you wanted it to be a secret.”

“I don’t want to have this conversation, Keith.”

“Okay. That’s fine.” But I could sense his disappointment. “What about you? What are you doing here?”

“Jeremiah Sloan is missing. Didn’t you hear about it?”

“No. Town news doesn’t come my way like it used to.”

“Well, we had a report of a kid here in the cemetery. We were hoping it was Jeremiah. Have you seen him?”

Keith hesitated. “No, I haven’t. At least I don’t think so.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“Well, someone was around here. I don’t know who, but somebody was watching me from the trees when I was talking to Colleen.”

“Yellow hoodie?”

“That’s right. I didn’t see a face.” Keith flipped his hair again. I made him uncomfortable. “What happened to Jeremiah?”

I explained, and his face grew cloudy.

“You think he was abducted? Around here?”

“I’m trying not to think about it. I’m just trying to find him.”

“Well, I know Jeremiah likes to go off by himself and explore. I’ve seen him on my property a few times this year. Mostly in the woods, but he would come up to the house and barn, too.”

“Oh? Why?”

“I don’t know. He didn’t say anything when I tried to talk to him. Ellen and Dennis only live a mile away. I just figured he was out hunting for the Ursulina.”

I stared back at him with a frown on my face. I didn’t like the joke. Not from him. Not after what had happened.

“I suppose I should check in with Dennis and see how he’s doing,” Keith went on, “but he and I don’t really talk much now.”

“Why is that?”

“Colleen worked for Ellen at the mini-mart, remember? Ellen’s not exactly a fan of mine anymore.”

“It doesn’t matter. Right now, they need all the support they can get. If you want to call Dennis, you should.”

“I will.”

“I need to go, Keith.”

“Sure. Good luck. I hope you find Jeremiah soon. I mean, I’m sure he’s okay and all, but it’s rough when a kid is missing.”

I didn’t say anything more. There was a lot I could have said, but I didn’t. When I looked at Keith, I remembered coming out to the cemetery last winter with my guitar and singing that Sheryl Crow song, “My Favorite Mistake.” I turned away and hoped we were done, but I knew he couldn’t let it go. I hadn’t gone ten feet when he called after me.

“Hey, how come you never asked me the question, Shelby? Tom asked me. Adam asked me. You never did.”

I stopped and let him stare at my back.

“Is it because you were afraid of what I’d say?”

My shoulders heaved with a sigh. I turned around and faced him again. “I didn’t ask because I knew what you’d tell me, and I figured I’d know if you were lying. I didn’t want to have to live with that.”

Keith closed the distance between us with a little sway in his hips from his artificial leg. He didn’t look surprised by my doubts. “Well, I’m sorry to put such a burden on you, Shelby, but I want you to hear it from my mouth. I’m telling the truth. I didn’t kill my wife.”

Chapter Six

I had to put the confrontation with Keith out of my mind, because I found the grave of Jeremiah’s grandfather in the same grove where Colleen Whalen was buried. There were footsteps in the newly turned dirt, but they looked crusty and dry, dating back to the interment two weeks earlier. No one had been here recently. I was disappointed, because I realized that Jeremiah probably hadn’t been the child lurking in the cemetery grounds.

My little fairy in the forest hadn’t gone away, however. I was still being watched. When I started up the sloping trail that led back toward our house, I saw a dot of yellow come and go behind a fat old beech tree that the locals called Bartholomew. I walked quickly to get ahead of whoever it was. Where the trail crested the hill, I was invisible, so I darted off the path and took cover. Soon, quick footsteps rustled through the brush in pursuit.

“Gotcha!” I exclaimed as I jumped back on the trail.

A ten-year-old girl froze in front of me. She was dressed in a yellow hoodie, jean shorts, and sneakers. She was tall for her age and skinny as a pencil. When she pushed the hood from her face, her sunny blond hair came free, and she stared up at me with huge blue eyes.

“Hi, Shelby.”

“Anna Helvik! What are you doing here? It’s not safe to be skulking around the woods. You shouldn’t be in the cemetery by yourself.”

Wow, did I sound like a mother, or what?

I suppose I was as close to a surrogate mother to Anna as she was likely to have. I’d been there for her first steps. I’d babysat for her whenever her parents were away. When her mother, Trina, had gone to Chicago for cancer treatment five years earlier, I’d been the one to move into their house for a month to take care of Anna. It was the least I could do for Trina, because she’d always been much more than a coach to me.

I saw Trina every day throughout high school. Like most teenagers, I’d gone through my share of angst and despair back then. I was finally old enough to understand what it meant to be abandoned as a baby, and I took out my anger about it on everyone around me. I was angry on the volleyball court. I was angry with my father. I was angry at my boyfriend for wanting sex and even angrier when I gave it to him. For two years, I was a really unhappy kid, and the only person who kept me from going off the rails was Trina. She never gave up on me.

She was still my closest friend, despite the fifteen-year age difference. I told her everything. She was literally the only other person in the world who knew the truth about me and Keith Whalen. Even my father didn’t know, because he probably would have had to fire me if he did.

Trina was tall, blond, and gorgeous, and Anna was already growing up the same way. Trina’s husband, Karl, was a handsome man, but the girl standing in front of me was a miniature replica of her mother. She was also stubborn and fearless, and I like to think she got some of that from hanging out with me.

“Talk to me, Anna. Does your mom know where you are?”

“I have my phone. She can call me if she wants to know where I am.”

“What about your dad?”

“He’s on the road.”

That was no surprise. Karl Helvik had a technology job and traveled a lot. Trina was still a coach and math teacher at the high school. The two of them didn’t always have as much time for Anna as they wanted, so I filled in whenever I could.

“How did you get here?”

“Bike.”

“Well, what are you doing here anyway? Why were you hiding?”

“I was just hanging out. First I was spying on Mr. Whalen. Then you came and I figured I’d spy on you, too.”

“People don’t like it when you spy on them.”

“It’s just a game. It’s no big deal.”

There was a sullenness about her that was unusual for Anna. She’d always been a smart, sweet, mischievous kid, but she’d been standoffish with me for months. I was trying not to take it personally. Trina called it an early case of teenageritis, and maybe she was right. Anna had always been a few years ahead of other kids in most things.

“Well, let’s call your mother and get you home.”

“She’s not there.”

“Where is she?”

“She’s over at Jeremiah’s house.”

I closed my eyes in sadness, because suddenly it made sense to me. Of course, Anna had heard what happened. Of course, she was upset and scared. Jeremiah was her best friend.

“You know he’s missing?”

“Yeah. Mom said.”

“Well, we have people all over town looking for him, Anna. We’ll find him.”

“Uh-huh.”

Anna was only ten, but she seemed to know I was spouting empty promises. My father had done the same thing with the Sloans. I guess we can’t help ourselves from telling people what they want to hear.

The two of us walked together in silence, and I put my arm around her shoulder. She was so scrawny at that age, nothing but bones. I saw an ornate stone bench near the fringe of a cemetery grove, and I guided her there and we both sat down with the peaceful headstones arrayed in front of us. The trees hummed with birds and bugs. Sunshine streamed across the grass, but the bench where we sat was in the shadows, and I could feel the cold, damp stone through my pants. I hunted in my pocket, where I kept a few sour balls for when I wanted a quick candy fix. I handed one to Anna, and she unwrapped it and put it in her mouth. I kept my arm around her, and I was pleased that she didn’t pull away. At least for a little while, things felt normal between us.

“Is that why you’re here? Were you looking for Jeremiah?”

Anna shivered a little. The sour ball made a little bump in her cheek. “Yeah, he and I would hang out here sometimes.”

“Did you find him?”

“No.”

“Can you think of other places that he might have gone? Do you and he have any secret hideouts?”

“No.”

“Are you sure? I remember Rose and I used to bike over to the drive-in before they tore it down, and we’d hang out behind the big screen. You guys don’t have a favorite spot like that?”

The girl balanced her chin on her fist. “Nope.”

“How are things at home? Does Jeremiah have any problems with his brother? Or his parents?”

“I don’t think so.”

“What about problems with other people? Does he have any trouble with bullies? Are there kids who give him a hard time?”

“No. Everybody knows Adrian is on the football team, so they don’t mess with Jeremiah.”

I tried to sound casual with my next question. “What about adults?”

Anna’s brow crinkled. “What do you mean?”

“Well, has anyone been bothering him? Or making him uncomfortable? I know you and he are really close, Anna. Jeremiah probably tells you things he wouldn’t tell anybody else. Even his parents. Know what I mean? And if there’s something like that, I need to know about it, even if he told you to keep it a secret.”

Anna sat silently for a long time, and I could see on her pretty face that she was struggling with what to say. Finally, she spoke softly while staring at her feet. “We’re not.”

“Not what?”

“We’re not close. We’re not friends anymore.”

“You and Jeremiah? Since when?”

“I don’t know. A while.”

“Do your parents know?”

“I didn’t tell them about it.”

“Why not?”

“Mom’s got her own problems. She and Dad have been crying a lot. They don’t think I know, but I know. I figured they didn’t need me bothering them with my stuff.”

When I heard this, I had two more things worrying me.

Something was wrong in Trina’s life, and she hadn’t told me about it. And Anna had ended her friendship with Jeremiah without telling her mother. The apple didn’t fall far from the tree in that family. I loved Trina, but people sometimes saw her as cold, because she shared so little of herself.

“So what happened between you and Jeremiah? Why aren’t you friends anymore?”

“Nothing happened.”

“Come on, Anna. You two have been best buddies since kindergarten. Something must have happened.”

“I just don’t want to be friends with him. Does he have to be my friend?”

“No. He doesn’t. But he’s missing, and here you are looking for him. That makes me think you still like him.”

“Well, I don’t.” I watched tears begin to slip down her cheeks. Her lips pushed together, and her eyes were red. “I just want to go home now. Can you take me home, Shelby?”

“Sure. Of course. I’ll take you home.” I got up from the bench, but then I knelt in the grass in front of her and brushed the tears away from her cheeks. “Hey, Anna, you know you can tell me anything, right?”

“Yeah. I know.”

“Well, this is really important. Do you have any idea at all what might have happened to Jeremiah?”

I saw a look of terror spread across this little girl’s face. Honestly, I’d never seen anyone look so scared. She cried harder and threw her arms around my neck and hugged me as if I were the only one who could save her from whatever evil thing was out there.

Then she whispered in my ear, barely getting the words out.

“I think the Ursulina got him.”

Chapter Seven

The Ursulina.

It’s a story as old as the town. I’m sure you know about Bigfoot and the Yeti and Sasquatch, those shaggy eight-foot monsters that walk upright through the forest. Our creature is like that, but with a twist. The legend of the Ursulina says that it can also take human form. A pioneer family in the old, old days found that out when they rescued a starving fur trader and let him spend the night in their cabin. They awoke to the horror of a giant brown beast with nine-inch claws and curved fangs who proceeded to feast on every one of them.

So you can understand why we’re still a little nervous about strangers around here.

Dad told me about the Ursulina when I was only five years old. I loved stories like that, the scarier the better. Tourists love it, too. In the fall, we hold an annual festival called Ursulina Days. The town sells Ursulina T-shirts and mugs and magnets. People dress up in Ursulina costumes, and true believers come from around the world to search our woods for the monster. We even offer a cash prize of one hundred thousand dollars to the first person who brings in an Ursulina, alive or dead. So far, no one has collected the money.

Nine months before Jeremiah disappeared, Ursulina Days fell over my twenty-fifth birthday weekend on Halloween. Monica recruited me to be part of the events. In addition to her job as the sheriff’s department secretary, Monica was volunteer board chair for the Friends of the Library. She was planning a Halloween event for kids on that Saturday, and Monica always gets what she wants. She may be quirky and grandmotherly, but if you get in her way, she’ll give you a little giggle and then mow you down.

I’ve mentioned that I sing, right? I play guitar, and I write songs, too. I don’t claim to be very good, but I’ve done it since I was a little girl. Every now and then I’ll let my arm get twisted to perform at story time for the local kids. So Monica asked me to write an Ursulina song for the Halloween event. She already had an artist doing scary decorations and a writer who’d written a children’s story about the Ursulina that he was going to read aloud to the kids. She wanted me to do the music, and of course, I couldn’t say no to her. I didn’t find out until after I’d agreed that the writer who would be working with me was Keith Whalen.

It didn’t bother me at the time. Yes, I’d had a major crush on Keith when he was a teacher and I was a student, but that was years ago. Of course, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t still find him attractive.

Keith owned a rambler on fifty-or-so acres of hunting land at the end of a dead-end road off the main highway. Most of the land was undeveloped, but there were a few trails that had been there for decades and a creepy little jewel of a lake hidden away in a wooded valley. Trees grew right out of the water, and their branches drooped like Spanish moss. With not much sunlight breaking through the treetops, it looked like a pond out of a Grimm fairy tale where scary things might lurk below the surface. We called it Black Lake. The Striker girls used to swim there now and then during the summers, because it wasn’t far from Trina’s house.

I went to Keith’s place around Labor Day to talk about the Halloween show. His wife, Colleen, was there when I arrived. I knew her pretty well, because she worked at Ellen’s mini-mart. She was always meek and quiet, with a cute face and mousy brown hair cut into bangs, the kind of woman who looked as if she would melt in a spring shower. I could tell immediately that things weren’t good between her and Keith. It was nothing they said, but I recognized the faces of two people who were going through the motions of marriage and life. I’m sorry to say that my instinct was to blame her for making him unhappy. I still saw Keith as this complicated, interesting, romantic figure from my school days. He was my Heathcliff, and being with him gave me the same goosebumps I’d felt as a teenager.

He took me to a writer’s cottage on their property that he’d converted from the family barn. It was on the other side of a hill a quarter mile from the main house and painted apple red. You could see Keith’s personality in the place, with its hardwood floors, 1920s-era posters of Paris and London, jazz playing from hidden speakers, and a loft where (I could tell) he often slept, rather than in bed with his wife. He had bookshelves filled with dozens of classic novels, everything from Cannery Row to The Moonstone. He kept a little shrine, too, of his military days, just mementos hung on a bulletin board near his desk. Photographs of friends he’d lost. His dog tags. A silver-and-blue St. Benedict medal on a chain. His Purple Heart. I wanted to ask him about those days, but I could tell that some subjects were off-limits.

While I sat in an old leather recliner in the barn, he acted out his story of the Ursulina. It was full of horrible deaths and blood dripping from people’s faces, and I knew it would scare the snot out of the kids, which is the whole point of Halloween. I told him he should get it published, and he flipped his brown hair and looked at me as if I were crazy. But I knew he was secretly pleased.

After we met, I wrote a song I could play between sections of the story, with a chorus that would have kids singing with me after they heard it for the first time. It went like this:

Okay, I was never going to give Sara Bareilles any competition when it came to songwriting, but I figured the kids would love it. I wrote it in a week, and then Keith and I met in the writer’s cottage again so I could play it for him. He loved the song, too. We rehearsed the whole performance many times, him doing the story, me doing the song, over the course of the next several weeks. We rehearsed way more than we needed to for a half-hour children’s program. And we talked. We had long talks about things that mattered. He talked about teaching, and reading, and living without a leg, and being married to a high school sweetheart who sent one man off to war and got a very different man back.

I talked, too. I talked about my father, about Trina, about Anna. I talked about my belief in signs and omens and about the challenges of growing up as a mystery girl with no past. I talked about my crush on him in high school. We laughed about that, but I was no fool. Telling him the truth about my feelings carried us across a dangerous line.

The Halloween show was a big hit. Monica was thrilled. We had nearly two hundred kids and parents gathered in the town park outside the courthouse, and they oohed and aahed and screamed at all the right scary parts. Afterward, everybody was singing my Ursulina song. It was as close as I was ever likely to get to being a celebrity, and I was flying high. So was Keith. We hung around together as afternoon became evening and the festival wound down. We were tired but exhilarated. Everyone was coming up to us and telling us what a great show it was. We drank it all in.

As night fell, we went back to his place to continue the celebration. Colleen had already gone home and was asleep in the house. Keith said she slept a lot, because that’s what depressed people do. He and I went to the old barn, and we put on music, and we uncorked a bottle of Macallan that he saved for special occasions. The more we drank, the more he opened up. He grabbed novels from his bookshelves and read some of his favorite passages to me. He caressed his St. Benedict medal and talked in a hushed voice about losing his leg. He told me about his troubles with his wife.

You know where this is going.

I knew where it was going, too, but that didn’t stop me. I’m sorry. You may not be able to forgive me for what I did, and that’s okay, because all these years later, I haven’t forgiven myself. I was drunk, it was my birthday, and I let myself indulge a high school fantasy with a married man. God, I was stupid.

A mistake like that was bound to have consequences.

But never in my life did I imagine the consequences would include Colleen Whalen dead outside their house with a bullet in her brain.

Chapter Eight

After we left the cemetery, Adam and I dropped Anna back at her house, and then we headed to the Nowhere Café. We found my father drinking weak coffee and reassuring the worried neighbors crowded around him that we were doing everything we could to find Jeremiah.

The Nowhere is where people in Everywhere gather. It’s more than a local diner dishing up pancakes and venison stew. It’s our meeting hall, our water cooler, our ground zero for news and gossip. Black-and-white photos of earlier generations of Everywhere residents watch us from the walls, and someday, photos of us will take their places. We meet in the red-cushioned booths and along the lunch counter to talk about weather, sports, politics, religion, cooking, vacations, holidays, and the latest rumors about who was zooming who.

Half the town was there that evening. I knew all of the faces, but I could see something in them that I hadn’t seen very often before. Fear. They were afraid, because Jeremiah was still missing. The innocent explanations for what might have happened to him were fading away, and if it could happen to the Sloan boy, then it could happen to any of their children, too.

I hung in the back of the diner near the glass door. Adam went off to flirt with the counter waitress, Belinda Brees, as he usually did. Belinda was another Striker girl from my high school volleyball team. Her nickname in school was Easy Breezy, and I don’t suppose I need to explain why.

While Adam put the moves on Breezy, I watched my father take questions from the crowd. I didn’t like what I saw.

His brown sheriff’s uniform was crisply starched and neat as a pin. He’d changed clothes after searching through the dirt and brambles of the national forest. His mustache was trimmed, and he’d tamed his thicket of snow-white hair with a brush. One thing Dad never did was to allow the people of the county to see him at anything less than his best. He stood ramrod straight, emphasizing his height, and as the townspeople grilled him, he remained almost supernaturally calm.

And yet he wasn’t. I knew him. I could see the way his fingers were clutched around his thermos so tightly that his knuckles turned pink with exertion. He didn’t look at people as he talked to them. His soft blue eyes were unfocused, a sign that his mind was spinning to the point of overheating. The muscles in his tanned face were tight. Like everyone else, my father was beginning to realize that he’d misjudged this situation. This was not just about a boy who wandered away. In the time we’d spent digging through the woods and searching the town, precious hours had been lost.

Nobody paid attention to me. This was the kind of situation that reminded me that I was still just a young deputy. And a woman, too. The people who wanted answers talked to Dad or Adam, as if my opinion didn’t count for anything. Even my father was guilty of that sometimes. I’d called to let him know that I thought Jeremiah’s brother might be hiding things from us, but Dad wasn’t ready to bother the family with more questions, not simply based on my hunch. I felt as if he were patting his little girl on the head.

“Coffee, Shel?”

Belinda Brees appeared at my side with a Nowhere Café mug and a white plastic pitcher of coffee. The coffee was terrible, but I drank it anyway, the way I always did. Dad and I came to the Nowhere for breakfast six days a week at six in the morning, and we had dinner there on most days, too. Without the Nowhere and the occasional kindness of strangers, I’m pretty sure my father and I would have starved, because neither one of us could fry an egg without setting off the smoke alarms.

I sipped the coffee, which was scalding hot. The voices around us were loud, and Breezy and I spoke to each other under our breath.

“Terrible thing, huh,” she murmured.

That was the word we all used. Terrible. It was a numb word, the kind of thing you say when reality is too hard to stare in the face.

“Yeah.”

“Hard to believe someone took him. Not around here. But it’s looking like that, isn’t it? Wow.”

I didn’t say anything or make any guesses. I just listened to Tom handing out hope to the people in the diner. I wanted to be an optimist like him, but we were running out of optimists in Everywhere.

“Hey, have you talked to Trina lately?” I asked Breezy.

“Yeah, she was in for the fish fry on Friday with Karl and Anna.”

“Did she look okay to you?”

“As far as I could tell. Why?”

“Oh, it’s something Anna said. It made me wonder if anything was wrong.”

“Well, you’d know better than me.”

That was true. The others on the team hadn’t stayed close to Trina after high school the way I had. We’d all drifted apart. Three of the girls left town to go to college and never came back. Rose still resented being booted from the squad in favor of Violet Roka, and Violet had never been close to any of us. And then there was me and Breezy.

She was the wildest of the Striker girls. We were good friends, but we were as different as a head-banger and a country star. She was much taller than me, which helped in our school days because she could unleash a vicious spike from the attack zone. (My own specialty was a booming overhand serve.) She was skinny and always wore long-sleeved shirts, even on the hottest summer days. Breezy had dabbled with drugs since I’d known her, and I suspected she had track marks on her arms that she didn’t want anyone to see. Her hair was long, straight, and black, with shiny purple streaks, and when she was working she usually had it pulled back into a ponytail. She had a plain face, and her teenage acne had trailed her into adulthood.

She was the only one of our group who’d gotten married after high school, but she’d divorced a couple of years later when her husband skipped town for the North Dakota fracking fields after cleaning out their bank accounts. I knew he was bad news, because he’d been my boyfriend before he was hers. And yes, I warned her, but girls don’t always listen to other girls about that sort of thing. Since the divorce, she’d lived alone in a mobile home in Witch Tree, but the word among the local men was that Easy Breezy didn’t often sleep alone.

“The Gruders live over in your area, don’t they?” I asked her. “Near Witch Tree?”

Breezy rolled her eyes at the mention of their name. “Oh, yeah. They sure do.”

“They’re back in town. Did you know that?”

“I didn’t. It must be a recent thing, because they’ve been gone for a few weeks. They can get pretty loud over there, and the noise blows my way.”

“Do you see them a lot when they’re in town?”

Breezy gave me a strange look. “What’s that supposed to mean, Shel?”

“It’s just a question.”

“Well, they’re at the Witch’s Brew a lot, and so am I. No law against that, right?”

I knew this was one of those times when people saw the uniform and not me. Even close friends never forget that you’re a cop. Breezy had a history with drugs, and there I was asking about two of the region’s suspected drug dealers. That was bound to make her nervous.

I leaned close to her ear and whispered. “Off the record, Breezy. I just want to know who the Gruders hang out with.”

“Why?”

“Because Jeremiah disappeared right after they came back to town. Maybe that’s a coincidence, maybe not.”

She rejected the idea with a firm shake of her head. “You’re way off base, Shel. Vince and Will wouldn’t touch a kid. They may be dirt bags, but I don’t see them doing that.”

“They sell drugs. It’s a violent business.”

“Yeah, but you mess with a kid, and the whole town gets involved. You think they want that kind of attention? No way.”

“Have you ever seen them with Adrian Sloan?”

“Jeremiah’s brother? No. He’s too young to be in the bar. What is he, sixteen?”

“Yeah, but the Gruders sell their crap at the high school, right? Could Adrian be involved?”

Breezy glanced at the Nowhere’s long lunch counter, as if she needed an escape from our conversation. “I don’t know, Shel. You’re talking to the wrong person.”

“Would you tell me if you did?”

“Probably not. But in this case, I really don’t know. I haven’t heard Adrian’s name from Will or Vince, but that doesn’t mean anything. Okay? Now I have to go.”

Breezy refilled my mug of coffee and waded back into the crowd. Her tease-me smile returned to her face. She put a hand on the shoulder of every man she passed and gave it a squeeze. They looked back at her like she was strawberry shortcake swimming in whipped cream.

I was alone again. Adam wolfed down a burger at the counter. I hadn’t eaten anything myself, but I wasn’t hungry. I pushed through the diner door and brought my coffee out to the main street and climbed into the cruiser. I opened the window. The evening had cooled down fast, and the smoke of someone’s firepit was in the air. It was dusk and would be dark soon, and wherever Jeremiah was, I didn’t like to think of him spending the night away from his family.

Not long after, the door of the café opened, letting out a burble of noise. My father had broken free from the inquisition. He stood in the doorway, straight as an arrow, not letting on that anything was bothering him. He saw me in the cruiser and crooked a finger at me, and I scrambled out of the car to join him. The two of us headed across the street to the library. Dad used his key to let us inside, and we took the stairway down to the basement.

The lights were on. Monica Constant was still on the phones, calling seemingly everyone in town one by one. Her eyes looked up at us hopefully, but it only took a glance for her to realize there was no news. Dad beckoned me into his office, and I followed him. He sat behind his desk, laying both hands flat on the impeccably neat surface. Always keep a clean desk, he’d say. Your desk should be as perfectly organized as your mind. I think that staying organized was his way of keeping the wolf in his brain at bay. And we both knew the wolf was in there, stalking him. Dementia had claimed both of his parents.

I stayed standing. We were silent for at least two minutes, and finally I had to say something.

“Dad, there was a ninety-nine percent chance that Jeremiah would be home safely by now. You made the right call.”

My father nodded. I wasn’t telling him something he didn’t already know. “Unfortunately, Shelby, it’s looking more and more like we’re dealing with the one percent this time.”

“So what do we do next?”

He inhaled long and slow. “I’m heading back to the forest. We’re still searching the area where the bicycle was found. These people will search all night if they have to. I’m proud of them. A terrible thing like this brings out the best in everyone.”

I thought that was a generous sentiment, but also a little naive. People who are scared and upset usually take it out on someone, and that someone was likely to be my father. If we didn’t find Jeremiah, he’d be the one they blamed.

“What do you want me and Adam to do?” I asked.

Dad reached into his in-box and drew out a single sheet of paper. He put on reading glasses and examined it as he tapped a finger on his desk. “Mrs. Norris called earlier to complain that she had a Peeping Tom outside her window last night. She thought it was someone staying at Rose’s motel. Normally I’d be laughing about another complaint from Mrs. N, but I’m not laughing anymore. The motel is just down the highway from where the Sloans live. You better go check it out, Shelby.”

Chapter Nine

I stood on the county highway at the base of the steep driveway leading to the Rest in Peace Motel. From where I was, I could see the timber frame of Ellen and Dennis Sloan’s house not far down the road. The sky was almost dark, and lights burned in every window. Cars and trucks were parked up and down the shoulder, and I knew friends were providing support to the family. I was happy that the Sloans weren’t dealing with this alone.

Adam returned to our cruiser from a modest yellow cottage on the opposite side of the highway, where Mrs. Norris had lived since FDR was elected. We’d flipped a coin to decide who got to talk to her this time.

“Mrs. N can’t give us many details about her mystery stalker,” he reported. “She calls him Snuffle Man. Said his heavy breathing sounded like some kind of obscene phone call.”

“And this was last night?”

“Early this morning. Around five o’clock or so, before daylight. She was sleeping, but Snuffle Man woke her up he was so loud. He was right outside the open window.”

“And is she sure it was a person? Sounds like it could be a deer snorting to me.”

“Yeah, Mrs. N says she screamed and grabbed her shotgun and went running to the window. You don’t mess with a double-barreled ninety-five-year-old who sleeps in the raw. She made sure to tell me that, by the way, like I’ll ever get that image out of my head. Anyway, she spooked whoever it was, and he took off. She thinks he headed across the highway to the motel.”

“But she couldn’t give a description of him?”

“No. Too dark to see.”

I peered up the asphalt driveway at the Rest in Peace Motel, or the Peaceful Rest, if you want to be fussy about its real name. Rose had inherited the place two years earlier when her parents died in a car accident. This was where she’d grown up, but I knew Rose had never wanted to be in the motel business like her parents. She liked to be on the go, and running the Rest in Peace kept her inside the office nearly every single day, which she hated. She was fixing it up and already had plans to sell it as soon as she could find a willing buyer.

Rose wasn’t married, and she was an only child. It’s funny, when we were kids, I was a little jealous of her because she knew who her parents were. And then, just like that, her mom and dad were gone. You’d think that kind of tragedy might have brought two old friends closer together again, but it really didn’t. I offered to stay with her for a while after the accident, but she was pretty firm in saying no. I knew that Rose and I were never going to hunt for the Ursulina together the way we did as kids, but I still missed the closeness we had in those days.

The motel was an L-shaped one-story building with twelve rooms. The doors were all freshly painted red, and blooming flower boxes decorated the windows. A dense stand of pines towered behind the motel walls. It was the high season, and every door had a car parked in front of it. The highway advertisement featured two painted signs dangling from hooks below the motel’s name. One said No Pets and the other said No Vacancy.

“Full house,” Adam commented.

“Yeah, let’s go see if Rose remembers any snuffly breathers.”

We climbed the driveway to the bungalow in the woods that doubled as the motel office and Rose’s residence. We opened the swinging screen door and went inside. The television behind the motel counter was blaring a home fix-up show, but no one was in the office. I saw real estate books on the desk — Rose was going after her realtor’s license — and another laminated sign reminding guests about the no-pet policy. Around here, pets were prone to wandering into the woods and getting eaten.

I rang the counter bell.

“Hey, Rose, you around? It’s Shelby.”

The back door of the small house was cracked open, letting in a few flies that buzzed around us. I heard a muffled reply, and not long after, Rose appeared in the doorway, carrying half a dozen clay flower pots planted with daisies and African violets. She wore a camouflage tank top and jean shorts underneath. Rose had always carried a couple more pounds than she liked, and her exposed stomach had the tiniest roll. Her skin was moist with sweat and dirty with paint and potting soil. Her reddish-brown hair was tucked under a beret.

“Hey, Shelby,” she said. “Hey, Adam. Have you been here long?”

“Just got here.”

“Oh, good. Sorry I’m such a mess. I was out in the garden, and I’ve been touching up paint on the doors half the day.” She dropped into the office chair and swatted away a fly with one of her motel brochures. “What’s up? You guys find Jeremiah yet?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Damn, that’s so awful. He’s such a great kid. I can’t believe this. I just saw him yesterday.”

“Where was this?”

“Right here at the motel. Jeremiah and Adrian both help me out sometimes during the summer.”

“Doing what?”

“Oh, Adrian moves furniture and other heavy stuff. Jeremiah helps me unload boxes. Soap, shampoo bottles, new towels, that kind of thing. Ellen likes to make sure the kids have plenty of summer chores, and there’s never a shortage of things to do around here. Plus, Jeremiah’s a little chatterbox, and I like that. He hangs out around the office with me.”

Adam and I exchanged a glance.

“Does he meet a lot of your guests?” I asked.

“Some, sure.”

“And you said he was over here yesterday?”

“For a couple of hours in the morning.”

“Did he seem okay?”

“Oh, yeah, he was fine.”

“Did anything unusual happen?”

“Unusual? No, just the same old, same old. Guests check in, guests check out, guests always need something. It’s go-go-go all day long.”

“Do you remember Jeremiah talking with any of your guests yesterday?”

“I suppose he did, but I don’t remember anyone specifically. People assume he’s my kid, so they talk to him.”

“What was he doing while he was here?”

“Not much. I was too busy to put him to work, so he was batting around a shuttlecock outside for a while, until he lost it in the trees. Then he was working on a jigsaw puzzle in the corner.”

“Did he mention having problems with anybody?”

“Problems? You mean, like with one of my guests? No, he didn’t say anything like that.”

“Mrs. N says she had a Peeping Tom outside her window last night. She thinks it was someone from the motel. Did she talk to you about that?”

Rose rolled her eyes. “Oh, yeah, of course, she did. Every week it’s something different with her. Complaining is what keeps Mrs. N alive.”

“Do you have any idea who this man was?”

“Not a clue.”

“She said he breathed really loud. Does that remind you of anybody staying here? Like a guest with allergies or something like that?”

“A loud breather? Seriously? You think I pay attention to that? The only problem I have is with people who are too loud at other things. Moms don’t like it when the walls start shaking right next to their kids’ heads.”

“What about men staying here on their own?” Adam asked. “Do you have anybody in a room by themselves? No wife or girlfriend tagging along?”

“I don’t get it, why are you guys so on about this? Jeremiah’s missing, and you’re worried about somebody peeping Mrs. N?” Rose cocked her head, trying to figure us out. Then a flush of horror spread across her face. “Oh, man, you don’t think—? One of my people?”

“My father asked us to cover all the bases,” I explained. “The thing is, if Jeremiah was hanging out here yesterday, maybe he met somebody...”

Rose swore. She took off her beret, wiped her forehead, and put it back on. “This sucks. I can’t believe it.”

“Single men, Rose,” Adam repeated. “Anybody around here fit the bill?”

“Yeah, one guy.”

“Who is he?”

“I don’t know. Nondescript. Thirties, I think, tall and skinny, buzz cut. He said his name was Bob. Bob Evans, like the restaurant. He paid cash for three nights upfront, and he said he didn’t want maid service.”

“That didn’t raise red flags with you?” I asked.

“This is the Rest in Peace, Shelby. Around here, anything less than an active smell of decaying flesh doesn’t worry me much.”

Adam peered through the office window at the motel parking lot. “Is his car here? What does he drive?”

“A big gray Cadillac, I think.” Rose stood up and eyed the lineup of vehicles. “Yeah, the car’s here. He’s in room 106.”

Adam didn’t wait for me or discuss what we should do next. He banged through the screen door and took long, determined cop steps down the row of motel rooms. If there was a chance to be a hero, Adam was always right there. By the time I caught up with him, he was thumping his fist on the door of room 106. I went over to the gray Cadillac and squinted through the windows to see if I could spot anything inside.

I did.

The floors were thick with dirt and pine needles. Bob Evans had been in the woods. I also saw a large water canteen and a plastic bag tipped over on the back seat, spilling out a head of romaine lettuce and a small container of dried fruit chips. I recognized the logo on the bag. It came from Ellen Sloan’s mini-mart.

I spun back to the motel room door. No one had answered.

“He’s in there,” Adam told me. “He’s trying to ignore us, but I hear somebody moving around.”

“This could be our guy, Adam. Be careful. The boy could be inside.”

“Mr. Evans,” Adam shouted, banging louder on the door. “Police.”

The motel room door opened two inches. A chain lock dangled across the space. I saw one nervous brown eye and a round face that dripped sweat. I also noticed a noxious smell busting out of the shut-up space.

“What do you want?”

“I want you to open the door, Mr. Evans,” Adam told him.

“Why? What for? I haven’t done anything.”

“Then you won’t mind if we take a look inside.”

“Well, I do mind. I paid for the room, it’s mine, you have no right to come in here.”

He was right. We didn’t. But in the midst of the standoff between them, I heard the thump of something inside the motel room, like the sound that someone would make who was trapped behind a locked door.

“Adam, he’s got somebody in there!”

Adam heard the noise, too. As Mr. Evans shouted in protest, Adam slammed a shoulder against the motel room door and ripped the chain lock away from the frame. He piled through the doorway and tackled Mr. Evans to the ground. I leaped over the two of them like a steeplechase runner and landed in the middle of the worn, stained gray carpet. The only other door in the room was the bathroom door, which was closed. I heard the same heavy thud from the other side that I’d heard before.

“Jeremiah! Jeremiah, is that you? It’s Shelby Lake, everything’s okay.”

I ran to the bathroom door and yanked it open. The instant I did, something erupted from inside, collided with my legs, and knocked me flat on my back. A snuffling, grunting noise filled my ears, and something huge and black began licking my face with a slobbering tongue. I shoved the thing away in horror and scrambled to my feet.

Adam had a knee shoved into the back of Bob Evans and already had cuffs around the man’s wrists.

“Let him go!” I screamed.

Adam hadn’t caught up to what was going on. “What? Why?”

“Let him go! It’s a pig! It’s a pig!”

I said it several times, and I may have added an adjective in front of “pig” that began with the letter f.

The victim who’d been trapped inside the motel bathroom was a miniature pig, all black, probably at least a hundred pounds, looking like a beer-bellied drinker at the local bar. The animal snorted its way over to Bob Evans, who was still trapped under Adam, and shoved its flat nose into the man’s face.

“Snuffle Man!” Adam exploded. “This is what Mrs. N heard? The guy was chasing after his pig?”

“Looks that way.”

Adam flipped the man over and grabbed his collar. “I don’t believe this. Why were you hiding it, buddy? You could have gotten yourself killed.”

“The motel doesn’t allow pets,” Bob Evans gasped from the floor. “The penalty’s like a hundred bucks if you bring one in the room.”

Adam shook his head in disgust and freed the man. The two of us were breathing heavily as the shot of adrenaline drained from our systems. When I glanced at Adam’s belt, I saw that he’d gone so far as to unsnap the holster clip on his gun. We were all lucky. This could have gone south very fast.

A pig. A pet pig.

Not a child.

I got out my phone to call my father and give him an update. The Rest in Peace was a dead end. We were no closer to finding Jeremiah.

Chapter Ten

After we left the motel, Adam and I drove the short distance down the highway to the Sloan house. Trina Helvik answered the door, and I could see a crowd of people behind her. It looked to me as if half the town was waiting for news with Ellen and Dennis. Adam and I needed to search Jeremiah’s bedroom for clues, but I asked him to start without me. I wanted to talk to Trina first.

She grabbed a sweater and followed me down the steps. We made our way along the fringe of an elaborate garden, where the flowers had shut themselves up against the cool night. The house lights threw our shadows across the grass.

“How is Ellen doing?” I asked Trina.

“Oh, she’s in rough shape as you’d expect. Ellen isn’t the kind of person who can just sit there and do nothing. She likes to be in control of the world, and this is something she can’t control.”

Trina always had good insights into what made people tick. That was what made her a successful coach. Control was how Ellen Sloan lived her life, with everything in its proper place. The garden at her house was like that, manicured in neat, colorful rows and free of weeds, with decorative fencing to keep out the rabbits. Her mini-mart was the same way, with every box of cereal or can of soup in perfect alignment with the one next to it.

“Have you discovered anything at all about where Jeremiah might be?” Trina asked.

“No. Nothing yet.”

“That’s so sad. That poor boy. I hope he’s okay.”

“I know. Me, too.”

Trina’s face was stoic like a good Scandinavian, but she was also a parent with a daughter the same age as Jeremiah. I knew what Trina was thinking, that it could just as easily have been her child who disappeared.

“Did you get my message? I found Anna hanging out in the cemetery this afternoon.”

“I did. Thank you for bringing her home, Shelby. Sometimes that girl is so headstrong.” She added with a smile, “She reminds me of a certain high school volleyball player I used to coach.”

“A little bit,” I agreed.

“Did Anna say what she was doing there?”

“She was looking for Jeremiah. She’s very upset about him.”

“Aren’t we all.”

The two of us kept walking through the Sloans’ large, sloping backyard. The forest loomed at the end of the grass. If you hiked into those woods, eventually you would find yourself on Keith Whalen’s land a mile away. The trails led past Black Lake, where the Striker girls used to swim on Saturday afternoons. Trina would join us there sometimes, bonding with her players. It was during those lazy days, laughing together and telling stories, that I began to see her as a friend even more than a coach.

Trina was six inches taller than me, statuesque and athletic, like a blond model out of a Dale of Norway ad. She had a natural beauty that could make you self-conscious about your own flaws. Pale blue eyes, sharp little nose, a face so symmetrical that each side looked like a mirror of the other. At forty years old, she’d given almost nothing back to time, except for the faint lines that bent around her lips when she smiled.

However, to me, she’d been at her most beautiful five years earlier, when she was completely bald and hugging her daughter as Anna cried into her shoulder in a hospital bed. I was crying, too. So was her husband, Karl. The one who should have been crying was Trina, but instead, she held all of us together with an inner strength that I envied. She had every reason in the world to be bitter, but I never saw one ounce of anger or self-pity from her throughout the entire experience.

“Anna told me that she and Jeremiah aren’t friends anymore,” I said. “Did you know about that?”

“Yes, it was pretty obvious. They haven’t spent time together in months.”

“Did you ask her why?”

“I did, a couple of times, but she wouldn’t open up to me about it. I didn’t want to push her. I figured she would talk about it when she was ready.”

“Well, if you can get her to tell you anything more, that would be helpful.”

Trina cocked her head in surprise. “Why?”

“Just in case it’s related to something going on in Jeremiah’s life that led to his disappearance. At this point we have to consider everything.”

“I suppose so. That’s an unpleasant thought.”

We stood in silence for a while. Where the trees began, I saw a young doe feeding on the leaves, its body barely kept upright by spindly legs. Looking at my best friend, I debated whether to ask her what was wrong. If she was keeping a secret from me, she had her reasons, and like Anna, she would talk about it when she was ready. Except Trina rarely opened up to me. She was happy to let me lean on her, but she resisted being vulnerable herself. For a while, I’d assumed it was because she still saw me as a teenage girl and that she was more open with her other friends. Then I realized that I was wrong. Trina had acquaintances, coworkers, and neighbors, but in many ways, I was her only real friend.

“Anna thinks something is going on with you,” I murmured.

Trina was staring at the doe. “She said that?”

“Yes. She said the two of you have been crying.”

“Karl. Not me. I don’t cry.”

It always puzzled me that she was so proud of that. “So what’s going on?”

“Now isn’t the time, Shelby. You have other things to think about.”

That was classic Trina. She was always pretending that she was protecting me when she was really protecting herself. It was a defense mechanism, a way to keep emotions at arm’s length. I could have let the subject drop, but I’d learned long ago that I needed to keep knocking on the door until she answered.

“Is it you and Karl? Are the two of you having problems?”

“Oh, no. Karl is wonderful.”

“Then what?”

Trina swayed slightly on her feet. She would do that beside the volleyball court, too, when she’d seen us making a mistake and was gathering her words for how to tell us. She never spoke off the cuff. She thought about everything so that she wouldn’t have to regret it later. I was still struggling to learn that lesson myself.

“It’s back,” she said.

That was all she told me, but she didn’t need to say anything more. There were not two words that could have frozen my soul more than those. It gets cold around here in the winters, but never as cold as that moment on July 17.

“Trina, I—”

That was all I managed before my throat closed up. I had so many things to say, but I didn’t say any of them. I took two steps to close the distance between us and wrapped my arms around her. I held on for a long time. She reacted stiffly, as if embarrassed by our closeness. Physical displays of affection made Trina uncomfortable, but I didn’t care.

When I found my voice, I said, “What do you need? How can I help?”

“There’s nothing you can do right now, Shelby. But thank you.”

“I’m here. Day or night.”

“I know that.”

“Any time you want to talk, we can talk. Or not talk. If you want to sit there and say nothing, that’s fine, too.”

Trina put a hand on my shoulder, as if she wanted to comfort me. Then she pointed at the back porch of the Sloan house. “You’re sweet, but we’ll have to do this later.”

“What? Why?”

“Ellen’s here.”

I turned around and was jolted back to my other reality.

Ellen stood on the house’s redwood deck with a cigarette in her hand. I hadn’t even realized that she smoked. In the porch light, her face was all bone and shadow, like a skeleton’s. She stared at the sky, as if she needed God to give her answers. Eighteen months ago, she’d lost her mother, and then two weeks ago, her father. And now her youngest son was missing. It would test anyone’s faith.

She saw the two of us on her lawn. She saw me on her lawn. I knew this wouldn’t be good, and it wasn’t. She crushed her cigarette into a flower pot. She stormed down the steps and stalked toward me. With every step, she fell to pieces. By the time she was in my face, tears flooded down her cheeks, and her skin was beet red with fury, and her whole body quivered. She screamed at me in the darkness from six inches away.

“How dare you even show your face here? Where’s my son? Where’s my son? Your father promised me he would find him. Why isn’t Jeremiah back here with his family? I told you! I told you, and none of you listened! I told you I wanted roadblocks and helicopters, and all Tom Ginn could do was stand there and tell me everything was going to be all right. It’s not all right! Jeremiah is gone! He could be anywhere!”

Ellen’s arm reared back like the cocking of a gun. She was going to slap me, and I tensed, waiting for it. Then she stopped herself at the last moment. Her open hand sank back to her waist, and her eyes squeezed shut. Her knees buckled beneath her. She slid down to the wet grass and buried her face in her palms.

Trina knelt and put an arm around her shoulders. Ellen leaned against her. They were two mothers, both staring into their own versions of hell.

“Ellen, I swear to you, we are doing everything we can to find Jeremiah.”

Ellen’s cries died out slowly, and her eyes opened. With Trina’s help, she stood up, and I could see that her pant legs were soaked with dew from the grass. Her fever had broken; she’d cried herself out. She wiped her nose and cheeks with her hands, and she took a loud breath. She was calm again, in control, in charge. I had to admire her for that.

“I talked to Violet,” she told me. “I conveyed my concerns to her.”

“What concerns?”

“Simply put, Tom’s not competent to handle this investigation. I know he’s your father, Shelby, but we’re talking about my son’s life. I’m not going to sugarcoat this. I want him off the case. I want this handled by professionals. I should have insisted on that from the beginning. As it is, we’ve lost the most important time we had to find Jeremiah.”

I tried to take my emotions out of it and not be defensive. I was a deputy, not a daughter. “Ellen, bringing in strangers isn’t the way to go. Nobody knows Mittel County and the people around here better than my father.”

“Maybe so, but he doesn’t have the experience or resources for a case like this. This is bigger than Mittel County. Plus, let’s not kid ourselves, Shelby.”

“Kid ourselves about what?”

Ellen stopped, as if she’d gone too far. “Nothing.”

“No, go ahead, what are you saying?”

She looked right at me. So did Trina. The fact is, I knew what Ellen was going to say before she said it.

“Tom’s no longer up to the job. Mentally, I mean. I know you may not be ready to face it, but that’s the truth. He’s going the way of his parents.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Take off the blinders, Shelby. I’m sorry, it’s sad, but that’s what it is. You think I didn’t hear him ask Adrian the same question twice?”

“One question. Come on.”

“It’s not just that. It’s been getting worse for months. Everybody in town has seen it.”

I looked at Trina. “Everybody?”

Trina turned her eyes down to her feet and said nothing.

“Violet already talked to the county board,” Ellen went on like a steamroller. “They’ve been in touch with the governor. He contacted the FBI and made a formal request for their child abduction team to take over the investigation. They’ll be here in a few hours. It’s done, Shelby. Tom is out.”

Hours later, at two in the morning, I broke from the tangles of the national forest land onto the dirt road. I’d gone back there to join the search, but my flashlight battery was dead. I was exhausted, and the sweat on my body had turned cold. My skin was bleeding where the branches had scratched me. I bent and put my hands on my knees as I got my strength back. Gnats swarmed around my warm breath. The noise of the crickets in the brush was deafening.

When I stood up again, I stared out into the nighttime woods. Dozens of other dancing lights dotted the forest like fireflies. Every few seconds, someone called Jeremiah’s name in the distance. Shoulder to shoulder, the people of Mittel County hunted for the boy through the dark hours.

My father stood alone by his cruiser. His car was parked near Jeremiah’s bicycle, which lay where it had been abandoned and was now cordoned off by police tape. Dad still had his thermos of coffee in his hand, which he’d refilled at least three times over the course of the night. He’d had that dented thermos as long as I could remember. It was the same one he’d been using on his boat the night he was visited by the owl. The night he’d found me.

I walked over to him. He didn’t even notice me at first, because he was so caught up in his thoughts, as if thinking hard would bring Jeremiah back. He held himself with the stiff, proud bearing of a tin soldier. As a kid, I remember thinking that bullets would just bounce off him.

“Jeremiah’s not out there, Dad.”

He drank his coffee. He was still focused on the forest. “I know.”

“If he’d wandered off by himself, we would have found him by now. He couldn’t have gone that far.”

“You’re right.”

“We should call off the search until daylight. Someone’s going to get hurt out there.”

My father noticed the blood on my face. “What about you? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. But we’re not going to find him like this.”

“No. We’re not.”

The lights of the searchers reflected in his eyes and made his face look pale. A mosquito landed on his forehead and began feasting on his blood, but Dad didn’t even bother brushing it away.

“What do you want me to do?” I asked.

“Go home, Shelby. Get a couple hours of sleep.”

“You should, too.”

“No, I’ll bring the people in. Then I’ll go back to the office.”

“I’ll go with you.”

He shook his head. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day. You need to be ready for it.”

I was too tired to argue with him. “Okay. Good night, Dad.”

I began walking past the lineup of vehicles parked together like train cars on both sides of the dirt road. My own cruiser was near the far end.

“Shelby,” he called after me.

I stopped and turned around. “Yes?”

“I’ll find that boy.”

I tried to summon a smile, because as of the next morning, I knew he wasn’t going to be the one in charge of finding him. “I know you will, Dad.”

Then he went on as if a brand-new thought had sprung into his head. “Listen, it may be nothing, but Mrs. Norris was complaining about a Peeping Tom outside her bedroom window last night. She thought it was someone staying at the motel. You should probably check it out.”

I stared at him. He was dead serious.

“Sure,” I replied, my voice cracking. “Sure I will.”

I made it all the way down the road to my cruiser before I began to cry.

Chapter Eleven

I squinted through the windshield into the darkness as I drove home.

Around here, you have to be alert for night creatures. I had to brake hard near the ranger station to avoid a raccoon that rose up and gave my headlights a cold, disinterested stare with its masked eyes. The animal hunched its craggy shoulders at me and then slouched into the woods. He was lucky. Over the years, like most of the people here, I’d left behind my share of roadkill. Your first deer is a rite of passage for the young drivers of Mittel County.

The glow of stained glass windows welcomed me home. From the outside, our house still looked like a church. The steeple still pointed at the sky, although Dad had long ago replaced the cross with a weather vane. He kept the wooden siding painted church white, and he always left the downstairs lights on overnight to illuminate the windows for passersby. The multicolored panels told the story of Jonah and the whale. When I was four years old, I used to hide under my blankets with a flashlight and pretend that I was inside the belly of the beast. It felt surprisingly safe there.

I climbed the stairs to the second floor. My room was at the back, with a sharply slanted ceiling and hardwood floor. A row of windows overlooked the cemetery. My walls were filled with pictures of me and my father. My first day on the job, with him next to me, beaming with pride. Me in a dress for an eighth grade school dance. Dad’s twentieth anniversary party as sheriff. Things like that. I had volleyball trophies on my dresser and yellowed copies of the newspaper from our state championship and one of the balls we’d used in the winning game. Ten stuffed owls of different sizes were lined up on my window ledges. In one corner of the room, beside the bed, was a rocking chair, along with my guitar.

I took a shower and washed off the day. I opened one of the windows, which made me shiver because I was still damp. I spent a long time staring at the woods. I was naked, but I didn’t worry much about modesty, because no one was around to see me, and the animals didn’t care what I looked like. Eventually, I crawled under the blankets, and I wasn’t even aware of falling asleep. I blinked, and the darkness was gone, and early morning light streamed into the bedroom.

It was five thirty.

Someone was ringing the bell at our front door.

I put on a robe and ran downstairs. When I threw open the door, I found Keith Whalen standing there. He was still dressed as he had been in the cemetery the previous day. His beard line was heavy on his face. He didn’t look as if he’d slept.

“Keith.”

“Sorry to bother you so early.”

“What are you doing here?”

“Well, actually, I never went home last night. Somehow I couldn’t bring myself to leave the cemetery, so I slept in my car. I was heading out this morning, but I saw your cruiser and figured you were here.”

“Not for long. I have to get ready to go.”

I hoped he would get the message. I didn’t want him here. But he lingered on the doorstep anyway. He flipped his hair back, his usual nervous gesture. “Hey, would you mind if I used your bathroom?”

“Okay. Go ahead.”

I opened the door wider and let him inside. It was pretty impressive coming into our house, because Dad had left the great space of the church wide open when he converted the place. Voices echo, and you still feel as if you should talk in a hushed tone. Keith had never been here before, and he drank in the arched windows and the high ceiling with its crossbeams.

“Wow. Beautiful.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty nice.”

“You fit here, Shelby.”

I had nothing to say to that. “The bathroom’s over there.”

“Thanks.”

He went to do what he had to do, and I waited next to the front door. That was rude, but I wasn’t offering an invitation to stay. He came back a couple of minutes later, admiring some of the church paintings that Dad had saved. When he looked at me, I saw him take note of the outline of my body, and I was uncomfortably aware of the fact that I wasn’t wearing anything under the robe. He looked away quickly, but I knew we were both having the same memories, no matter how much I tried to crowd them out of my mind.

“Thanks,” he said again.

“Sure.”

“Did you find whoever was lurking in the cemetery yesterday?”

I knew he was stalling, because he didn’t want to go.

“It was Anna.”

“Anna Helvik? Trina’s daughter?”

“Yes.”

“You and Trina are pretty close, aren’t you?”

“Yes, we are.”

He didn’t say anything more, but he still didn’t leave. I was impatient, partly because I needed to get back into town, partly because spending time with Keith was like watching a movie highlights reel showing off all of my questionable decisions in life. I didn’t know what he was expecting. I was hoping it wasn’t sex, because I wasn’t entirely sure I would say no. Whatever else had happened between us, I still felt the same old attraction to him.

“What do you want, Keith?” I asked finally. “What are you doing here?”

He didn’t answer immediately. Then he shrugged and said, “I hate being home these days. I feel like Colleen is haunting me.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But as they say in the bars, you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.”

“I know. This is awkward for you. It is for me, too. When I saw you yesterday, I was reminded of all the rough edges we left behind. I suppose there’s nothing we can do about that.”

“No. There isn’t.”

“Okay. I’ll go.”

As Keith went by me onto the threshold, he was close enough to brush past my body, which gave me a little shock of electricity. Then he turned around before I closed the door.

“One more thing, Shelby.”

“What is it?”

“I also wanted to tell you — just so we’re very clear about it — I had nothing to do with Jeremiah’s disappearance.”

His words came out of nowhere, and I couldn’t hide my surprise.

“Why would I think you did? Is there something you haven’t told me?”

“No.”

“Do you know anything about what happened to him?”

“Nothing at all.”

“Then why say something like that?”

“Because sooner or later, I’ll be a suspect. And I want you to know right now that I’m innocent.”

“What makes you think you’ll be a suspect?”

Keith shook his head sadly. He flipped his hair back again. “Because of Colleen. Because the whole town thinks I murdered her. I guarantee you, people are already making up stories about me and Jeremiah. They need someone they can blame for this, right or wrong, and I’m the easy choice. Everybody is looking for an Ursulina, Shelby. They won’t stop until they find one.”

After Keith left, I wondered if he was right. Were people really talking about him as a suspect?

And if so, what were they saying about me?

I didn’t think anyone knew about my affair with Keith, but I might have been naive about that. Everyone saw us hanging out together after the Halloween fair. It doesn’t take much more than that to get whispers flying through the town. Rumors are like motor oil here, lubing up every conversation, and sex is a favorite topic. I wouldn’t have been surprised to find out that tongues had been wagging about me and Keith.

My relationship with him was a one-time thing. Literally one time. But the damage was already done.

Little wonder I had decided at that point in my life that I was better off without dating, romance, hookups, or sex. Between my job and my friends, I didn’t have time for men. Some of the local guys would have liked to change my mind, but the rule of numbers in a small town meant that pickings were slim.

Sure, I’d dated. Most people around here figured my high school boyfriend and I would get married, but that was never going to happen. He was cute, and you have to learn about sex somewhere, but I knew it was a short-term thing. After that, I went out a few times and endured a few fix-ups. None of them turned into anything serious.

And then there was Keith.

By the morning after Halloween, I was already regretting what had happened with him. Actually, I was regretting it as I drove back home overnight at three in the morning. Keith called the next day, but I ducked his call. He called four more times over the next week, and I let all of them go to voicemail. I was determined never to talk to him again and never see him again.

That lasted until the evening of November 14, when Adam and I responded to the 911 call at his house.

We found Colleen Whalen dead in the tall grass. Shot in the head. Keith said he’d come home from a hiking trip and found her. He blamed a burglar for the crime. He said much of his wife’s jewelry was missing, including her wedding ring and an expensive watch she’d given him for their anniversary.

And a gun.

A gun he owned had disappeared, too.

There was no way to prove he was lying and no way to prove he was telling the truth. Did my father believe him? No. Did Adam? No. But not believing someone didn’t mean you could put them in jail.

Did the people of Everywhere believe him? No. The rumors and gossip in town all declared Keith guilty.

What about me? Did I believe him?

I’d thought about that question for months, but I still had no answer.

All I knew is that while I was standing over Colleen’s body, Adam asked Keith how things were in their marriage, and Keith replied, “Fine.”

That was a lie. I knew it was a lie. But I didn’t say a word.

Chapter Twelve

I met my father at the Nowhere Café an hour later. He hadn’t slept at all, but sometime during the night he’d ironed his uniform, and his hat wasn’t even a single degree off-kilter. He was eating a plate of scrambled eggs and bacon at the counter, and he had the newspaper folded in front of him to the daily crossword puzzle. Breezy was late getting to work, and the coffee pot in the diner was already getting dangerously low.

Everything looked normal around here, but in fact, nothing was normal at all. This was Saturday. Day two. Jeremiah had been gone for an entire night.

“Morning, Dad,” I said as I took the seat next to him at the counter.

“Hello, Shelby. Did you sleep?”

“A little. I wish you had, too.”

“Something tells me I’ll have plenty of free time when the FBI arrives.”

“So they’re really coming?”

“The governor called me personally to ask for my cooperation. Also, the statewide media has picked up the story. It’s all over TV. I imagine we’re going to be inundated very soon.”

I looked around at our sleepy café. It wouldn’t be sleepy here much longer. We were about to be swarmed by strangers asking questions, giving us suspicious looks, digging into our private lives, and studying our behavior as if we were exotic animals at the zoo. Cops. Reporters. Volunteers. Gawkers. You could almost feel the town holding its breath, waiting for the invasion like the return of the mayflies. Most of us who live here don’t really trust outsiders, for the simple reason that outsiders who come here don’t really trust us.

“Maybe it’s a good thing,” I said, trying to put the best spin on what was ahead. “We need more manpower. We need technology. This is bigger than us, Dad. It’s all about Jeremiah.”

“Of course it is.”

“Plus, it’s not like they don’t need us. We know the area. We know the people. They don’t.”

“You’re right.”

But being right didn’t change the fact that this was our town, our people, our boy, and our mystery, and the whole investigation was about to be taken out of our hands. We didn’t have to like it.

I heard the jingle of the diner’s front door. Breezy flew in, ninety minutes late, looking stressed and breathless. In unison, everyone in the booths silently pointed their fingers at the empty coffee pot behind the counter. She stopped at the door long enough to hang up her windbreaker and tie up her ponytail, triggering disgruntled rumbling from those of us who needed more caffeine.

“Yeah, yeah, keep your pants on,” she announced loudly. “Dudley wouldn’t start again.”

Dudley was her 1998 Ford Escort, which she’d nursed through twenty years of Mittel County winters. The patient had been on life support for a while. When it ran, its engine sounded like a bicycle with a baseball card taped in the spokes. Breezy had been working extra shifts morning and night to save money, but as fast as she earned it, she spent it on other things.

She went behind the counter, and the aroma of the brewer soon took the edge off everyone’s nerves. While we waited, Breezy leaned her elbows on the counter in front of me and Dad.

“Any news?”

I shook my head.

“Hell’s bells,” Breezy said. “I hear the FBI’s coming. Is that right?”

“They are,” my father replied.

“Soon?”

“Any minute.”

Breezy looked around the café with a hungry expression that was different from what the rest of us felt. I could read her mind. For her, the arrival of strangers meant tables crowded with out-of-towners who left large tips. That may sound heartless, but I couldn’t really blame her. Newcomers meant money in the cash registers of the local economy. It didn’t matter why they were here.

“How’s Dudley?” I asked.

Breezy swore. “The starter just grinds. We may be near the end of the road.”

“How’d you get here?”

“I called Monica, and she gave me a lift on her way in. Hell if I know how I’m getting home tonight.”

I knew Breezy, and I wasn’t worried. With men pouring into town, she’d have plenty of offers for a ride.

“Hey, you’re right, by the way,” she told me.

“About what?”

“The Gruders are back. I couldn’t sleep. They were playing their radio in the woods half the night. You know what that means.”

Yes, I knew what that meant. More meth around the county. More emergency calls to the hospital in Stanton. More lives ruined. On any other morning, that would have been our first priority.

Breezy went off to pour coffee for the rest of the diner. Dad studied the clues of the crossword, but I noticed that he hadn’t filled in a single word. His pencil sat unused on the counter, and the point of the pencil was perfectly sharp. Dad liked to say that chaos began with the littlest of things, like a dull pencil. He picked up the paper and squinted at the puzzle.

This wasn’t just entertainment for him. He did crossword puzzles because he’d read that doing them was like calisthenics for the brain. He knew he was struggling. I knew it, too. Apparently, everyone in town knew.

“Sixteen across,” I said, peering at the paper. “That’s an easy one. Ten letters. ‘The beacon in the storm.’”

Dad blinked as he reflected on the clue, but the answer didn’t come. He stroked his snow-white mustache and grimaced. I think that moment was the first time I ever saw him as old.

“I guess I’m more tired than I thought, Shelby.”

“Lighthouse,” I prompted him.

He stared at the empty little squares on the page. “Yes, of course. What was I thinking?”

He picked up the pencil, wrote “L” in the first box, and then put it down again without finishing. He turned over the newspaper and instead focused on the mug of coffee that Breezy had placed in front of him.

“I really didn’t think it was possible,” he said to me in a quiet voice. “I didn’t want to believe it. A child abduction. Here.”

“We’re not cut off from the world, Dad.”

“No, I suppose not.” My father took a sip of coffee and glanced over his shoulder at the others in the diner. “Everyone’s saying it must have been a stranger who took him. They don’t want to consider the other possibility.”

“What do you mean?”

“It might not be a stranger at all. It might be one of us.”

I didn’t say anything, but I realized that Keith Whalen had been right. Soon we would all be turning on each other. We’d be looking for someone to blame. We’d be hunting for an Ursulina hiding among us.

The bell on the diner front door jingled again.

Monica Constant pushed into the café like a little tornado. She had an enormous satchel purse draped over one shoulder that looked as if it weighed as much as she did. Her brown eyes were huge behind round glasses. She wore a flouncy pink dress that was decades out of style. She patted her kinky strawberry hair to make sure it was just so, and then she took a seat on the counter chair next to me, where her feet dangled well above the floor. The first thing she did was remove a velvet case from inside the purse and put the urn for Moody, her dead dog, on the paper place mat. The urn was six inches high, made of turquoise ceramic, and hand painted with lilies of the valley.

“Hello, you two,” Monica squeaked.

Dad turned his head and gave her his usual charming smile and then picked up his newspaper again.

I said, “Good morning, Monica.”

She tapped a fingernail on the place mat and gave me a pointed look.

“And good morning to you, too, Moody,” I added.

“Thank you, dear,” she said with a playful dance of her eyebrows. Then she dug a sheaf of papers out of the deep bowels of her purse. “I checked at the office before coming over here. I have the summary of overnight calls.”

“Did the Stanton police track down old Mr. Nadler?” I asked, hoping for a little good news.

“Well, if they did, they didn’t send out a follow-up report. Not that this would be the first time things fell through the cracks over there. I’ll call later and find out.”

“Thanks.”

Breezy showed up in front of us again with a cup of hot Twinings tea and a blackberry scone. “Here you go, Monica, my treat. Thanks for the lift this morning. You saved me.”

“Oh, please, Witch Tree is right on my way, dear. I was happy to do it.”

Monica lived an hour’s drive from Everywhere in a small town called Sugarfall on the western edge of the county. On some winter mornings, her commute took two hours or more. Even so, she was typically at the office ahead of all of us, and I couldn’t remember a day she’d missed for weather or sickness. She was a rock.

I watched her dip the tea bag in her cup and nibble at the scone by picking off pieces with her red-nailed fingers. To me, she’d always been ageless, the kind of woman who looked the same year after year. She was precise and organized, with a great memory for details, which made her a perfect partner for Dad at work. I was pretty sure she’d thought about being a partner for Dad in other ways, too, but he’d always been too busy as a sheriff and father to think about getting married.

Dad gave up on the crossword puzzle. He slapped down the paper with obvious frustration and stood up from the counter. “I’m heading to the office.”

“Okay, I’ll be there in a minute,” I told him.

He left, tipping his hat to the others in the diner. They smiled back at him uncomfortably. Monica’s eyes followed him discreetly as he headed out the door and across the street toward the Carnegie Library.

“He’s not very good today, is he?”

“Not very good,” I agreed.

“Stress makes it worse. He’ll bounce back.”

“I hope so.”

“He’s going to need you, dear. Are you ready for that?”

“Of course, I am.”

She patted my back. “Well, count on me to help you, Shelby. Believe me, this situation will grow you up fast.”

She meant nothing by her comment, but I felt a little annoyed. It made me realize that the people around here still saw me as young. Twenty-five years old, but not grown-up, not ready for life. Monica, Dad, Adam, Trina, Ellen. To them, I was just a kid, and maybe they were right. I was still the girl who didn’t know who she was or why she was alive.

I still didn’t know why God had bothered to save me, and I didn’t feel any closer to figuring it out.

But I had no time to think about myself. Somewhere outside, distantly, I heard the guttural throb of an engine getting closer. Monica and I both looked at each other in confusion. The others in the café heard it, too, and people gravitated from their booths to the diner window and then outside to the street, where a crowd was gathering.

I hurried outside with Monica next to me.

The throb got louder, almost deafening, making all of us cover our ears. I looked up in the sky and saw a black helicopter slowly descending toward the open grass yard in front of the courthouse. Down it came, like some giant insect, and when it was nearly on the ground, I could see white letters painted on the side.

FBI.

Monica leaned toward me as the helicopter engine cut out and the rotor blades slowed. “An unwanted visitor in a tableware emporium,” she murmured in my ear.

I shook my head, not sure what she meant.

“Remember Tom’s crossword clue yesterday? We were talking about a bull in a china shop. Well, dear, now we’ve got one.”

Chapter Thirteen

Special Agent Bentley Reed of the FBI didn’t look impressed with the basement office of the Mittel County Sheriff’s Department. He was a city man, and this was the country. He was as tall as my father, with mocha-colored black skin, thinning hair that gave him a very high forehead, and a trimmed goatee flecked with gray. He was dressed in a pinstriped blue suit with leather shoes shined to such a bright finish that I was scared to look at them directly for fear of blindness. He was smart. I could see that in his eyes, which moved fast and didn’t miss a thing. I guessed that he was in his forties, and he had the bearing of an ex-military man. He didn’t walk, he strutted. He didn’t talk, he commanded.

Violet introduced him to us, and we all got the message loud and clear. Bentley Reed was in charge.

Our entire county team was gathered in the basement, about a dozen of us. Dad had called in all the shifts for the early morning meeting. I stood next to Adam, who was quietly seething at the prospect of taking a back seat to the Feds. Adam never took orders well, even from my father.

Agent Reed took off his suit coat and folded it carefully over the back of a chair. He stood in the center of the room with eight other federal agents behind him, eyeing the surroundings with the same disdain their boss did. I could feel their impatience, the pros staring at the small-town cops who’d wasted so much time before calling them in.

Reed had a throaty voice like a drumbeat that filled the room.

“Sheriff Ginn, I want to thank you for making your whole team available to us and for your partnership in this investigation. My colleagues and I are members of the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team, and we have one goal. That’s to find Jeremiah Sloan and bring him home safely to his family. Unfortunately, he’s already been missing approximately nineteen hours. That’s not good. In a potential abduction situation, every second counts, so we’re already playing catch-up, and we need to move swiftly.”

I glanced at Dad, whose face was as blank as marble before it was carved. He knew he was being chastised.

“Jeremiah could still be lost in the woods,” he pointed out.

Reed nodded. “Yes, we’re aware of that possibility. We have heat-sensing technology in the helicopter, and we’ll be launching a grid search over the forest in less than an hour. Of course, again, time has hurt us here. If Jeremiah spent a night outside, the boy’s body temperature has likely dropped. That will make him harder to detect. As far as a ground search goes, one of my team is a veteran of wilderness search-and-rescue operations, and he’ll be leading the search process and coordinating volunteers from the general public. As news gets out about this case, we’re going to have a lot of people showing up to help, which is both good and bad. I know you’ve had locals out searching already, but we’ll be going over the entire area again from the beginning.”

Translation: Who knows what you people missed?

“Next, let’s talk about the sex offender registry,” Agent Reed went on. “Where do we stand on interviews with people on the list?”

“We haven’t talked to anyone yet,” Dad began, but Reed cut him off.

“So we’re nowhere on that. Got it. Okay, we’ve identified nearly a hundred level-two and level-three sex offenders in Mittel and Stanton counties. I want in-person interviews and alibis from every single one of them. Talk to their neighbors, too, and show them Jeremiah’s photo. I also want the state patrol showing that photo at every gas station at every exit on the interstate. Ditto for every gas station within a two-hundred-mile radius of the national forest. If Jeremiah was taken out of the area, this guy had to fill up somewhere. And let’s get copies of the guest registers from every motel and resort in both counties, so we can run them against criminal records.”

Behind Agent Reed, his team keyed notes furiously into their phones. Several of them were already coordinating their next moves with each other in whispered tones. These people had worked together before, and I couldn’t help but be impressed. Reed may have been arrogant and condescending when you met him, but he was a pro. As painful as it was to admit, Violet had been smart to bring him in.

“We need a command post,” Reed went on. “Large, somewhere we can process physical evidence as we gather it and set up our computers. Ms. Roka, what do you suggest? What’s available in town?”

“There’s a gym at the school,” Violet proposed. “Will that work? It’s wide open, and no one’s using it during the summer. We’ve got power in the space, and we can bring in dozens of tables as needed.”

“Perfect,” Reed went on. He jabbed a finger at a special agent on his right who didn’t look much older than me. “Next, media. Tiffany Ball is our media relations specialist. We’re already getting plenty of queries, but we want to control the message, so Tiffany will be working with all of you and the boy’s parents to craft a press release, profile, and media kit regarding the disappearance. Same for social media. I expect to hold a press conference early this afternoon, once our infrastructure is in place. Questions on any of that?”

My father and the rest of us stood in shell-shocked silence. Life moved at a slow pace in Mittel County. Not so at the FBI.

“Excuse me, Special Agent Reed?”

It was Adam. He stepped ahead of the other members of our team and squared his shoulders.

“Yes?” Reed said. “You have a question?”

“Yes, sir, I’m Adam Twilley. I’m Sheriff Ginn’s senior deputy.”

There was no such thing as a senior deputy, but that didn’t stop Adam from staking his claim to the job. Agent Reed looked Adam up and down from his boots to his curly brown hair and analyzed him like a computer. I could tell what the print-out in his head said, and I’m pretty sure Adam could, too.

Lightweight.

It wasn’t fair, but Adam didn’t always give the best first impression. He looked like what he was, a kid with a motorcycle.

“Okay, Senior Deputy Twilley, what’s your question?”

“I want to know what our role is going to be.”

Reed’s face bent into the tiniest smile. “Well, right now, I sure as hell could use a cup of coffee if you wouldn’t mind.”

The agents broke into laughter that went on longer than was comfortable for any of us. Adam’s face turned several shades of crimson.

“I’m kidding, Deputy,” Reed went on. “All of you have an extremely important role to play. You know this area backwards and forwards. You know the people. You know the roads, businesses, all the things that we don’t. So we’re counting on you to give us your expertise on everything local. Make sense? Sheriff, you on board with that?”

My father nodded his agreement. “We’ll give you anything you need. We know every inch of this county, that’s for sure. I’m sure you can count on our colleagues in Stanton to help on their end.”

“Excellent.”

“I have a suggestion,” Adam broke in, pushing his luck with Agent Reed. “You should probably designate a liaison between you and your team and the police here and in Stanton. Someone who can coordinate the flow of information between us. Make sure nothing gets missed.”

“A liaison. Are you volunteering, Senior Deputy Twilley?”

“If you want me to, sure. I’d be happy to do that.”

Reed stroked his chin with his thumb and gave Adam another careful look. “Well, the idea of a local liaison working directly with me is a good one. I like your suggestion, Twilley. However, the last thing I want to do is come in here and deprive Sheriff Ginn of his senior deputy. That doesn’t seem right.”

Adam’s face fell as he realized he was being passed over for the assignment that he’d suggested. Instead, Reed’s gaze floated around the room from person to person among the sheriff’s team.

It landed on me.

“You,” he said, jabbing a finger in my direction. “What’s your name?”

“Deputy Shelby Lake.”

“Not a senior deputy?” Reed said with a flash of his white teeth.

I couldn’t help smiling, too. “No, sir, just a deputy.”

“How long have you been with the department?”

“Seven years.”

Reed turned to my father. “Sheriff, do you have any problem with assigning Deputy Lake to me during this investigation?”

I watched Violet open her mouth to object, but then she closed it again without saying anything.

“None at all,” Dad replied. He gave me the fastest little wink.

“All right. Deputy Lake, if you’re okay with that, consider yourself conscripted.”

“Of course. Thank you, sir.”

“That’ll be all for now, everyone,” Reed continued. “You’ll have assignments in fifteen minutes, and senior staff will meet again before the press conference in three hours. Remember, everybody, we’ve got a ten-year-old boy out there. Let’s go find him.”

That was all.

I was afraid that Adam was going to have a stroke. He shot me a look that was black with jealousy and rage. Adam and I liked each other, and none of this was my fault, but I knew this was going to be a problem between us. As the meeting broke up, he stormed out of the basement without a word to anyone else. Agent Reed watched him go. He knew what he’d done, and he didn’t care.

Of course, I wasn’t dumb. I knew why Reed had picked me. He assumed I was young, I was pliable, and I would do what I was told.

“Deputy Lake?” Agent Reed towered in front of me. “The first thing I want to do is talk to the Sloans. I’d like you with me.”

“Absolutely.”

“Just so we’re clear, the parents are suspects until we prove otherwise. That’s not for public consumption, but when things like this happen, it’s usually somebody close to the child. Our first job is to rule the parents out, so we can move on to others. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Ditto the brother. What’s his name? Adrian? I want to reinterview him about exactly what happened out there.”

I wasn’t sure I should say anything, but I barreled ahead anyway. “In fact, sir, I’m a little concerned that Adrian hasn’t told us everything he knows.”

Reed studied me with a glint in his eyes. “Oh? How so?”

I explained about the Gruders and about the burs on their pants. I was ready for Reed to dismiss my suspicions the way my father and Adam had, but instead, he called one of his agents over immediately and asked for background research on Will and Vince. Then he turned back to me and gave me a thumbs-up.

“That’s an excellent observation, Deputy,” he told me. “Has anyone talked to Adrian about this yet?”

I glanced at Dad, who was close enough to overhear, and I felt like a traitor. “No.”

“Well, let’s talk to him right now and get to the bottom of this. If he’s hiding something, we need to know what it is. The fact is, I never met a sixteen-year-old boy yet who didn’t lie the first time you asked him a question.”

Chapter Fourteen

“Any affairs?” Agent Reed asked me.

I eyed him across the front seat of my cruiser as we drove down the highway toward the Sloan house. My guilt about Keith Whalen was the first thing that popped into my head, and I hoped it didn’t show on my face. “I’m sorry, what?”

“Dennis and Ellen Sloan. Is there any talk around town about either of them cheating?”

“Why does that matter?”

“When people try to cover up affairs, bad things tend to happen. We always have to be conscious of possible motives.”

“Well, there’s been gossip about Dennis for a long time. I don’t know whether any of it’s true. He also drinks more than he should. He’s had a couple of DUIs over the years.”

“And Ellen?”

“Not that I’ve heard about. She’s a straight arrow.”

“What about money problems?”

“I don’t think so. Ellen’s store does well, and Dennis must make a pretty good living with the forestry department. I imagine they’ll be inheriting money and land from her father now, too. He passed away a couple of weeks ago.”

“What about abuse? Violence? Any calls for domestic disturbance at their place?”

“No, nothing like that. We get our share of domestic issues, but I’ve never heard about a problem with the Sloans.” I added after a moment, “It must be ugly for you and your team, always looking for the worst in people.”

Reed watched the trees going by on the highway. His long legs were squeezed under the dashboard. “I find kids. We’ve got a ninety percent success rate doing that. Nothing else matters.”

“I wasn’t saying—”

“I know what you were saying, Deputy. And yes, you’re right. It’s ugly sometimes. The reason I ask these questions is that people who have secrets typically don’t like to share them. They lie to their spouses, they lie to their friends, they lie to their doctors, they lie to cops. Even when their kid’s life is at stake, they lie. Honestly, I don’t care where Dennis Sloan sticks his dick. I care whether he’s being blackmailed about it, or whether some girl he dumped has a grudge against him, or whether his kid saw Daddy doing something he shouldn’t and told somebody else about it. All those things make kids disappear.”

Like I said, Reed was smart. And tough. But he wasn’t going to let anyone’s feelings get in the way of what he had to do. When I listened to him talk, I could hear an unwanted visitor stampeding through the china shop, with dishes crashing to the floor in his wake.

We arrived at the Sloan house. Before we got out of the cruiser, Reed opened the glove compartment and grabbed a listing of the vehicle’s mechanical specs in a plastic slip cover. He shoved the plastic case inside his suit coat pocket.

“What are you doing?” I asked. “What’s that for?”

“Visual aid,” he replied without further explanation.

Ellen and Dennis met us at the door. Their faces were drawn, and their eyes were red with tears and exhaustion. There were others inside the house with them, just as there had been the previous day. Relatives. Friends. Kids from Adrian’s school. Trina must have finally gone home, because I didn’t see her. Everyone looked fragile, as if tensing for the moment when the phone would ring and they would find out whether the news was good or bad. The teenagers clustered around Adrian. The men clustered around Dennis. The women fussed and looked busy and left Ellen alone. She was independent and needed her space.

Agent Reed introduced himself with firm handshakes for both parents. He was an entirely different man in front of the Sloans. His hostile impatience vanished. He radiated compassion. And yet I watched his eyes and knew he was registering everything in the room and taking the measure of all the people who were gathered there.

“Is there a place we can talk?” he asked. “Somewhere private?”

Dennis nodded and led us downstairs. The walk-out basement was a man cave, built with log beams and stuffed with toys. Large-screen television. Pool table. An old-style slot machine from a Vegas casino. It was just the five of us. Ellen, Dennis, Adrian, Agent Reed, and me. The adults sat on a leather sofa near the television, and Adrian staked out a high-top chair at the wet bar. I kept an eye on him. The boy squirmed like a caterpillar on a hot sidewalk.

Reed took them through a long checklist of everything that was being done. The sheer length of the list made it sound like the whole world was looking for Jeremiah. I could see visible relief on Ellen’s face, and she shot me a quick I-told-you-so look. That was fine. Anything that gave her a moment’s comfort was fine with me.

Then Reed shifted gears.

“One thing I need from you right away, Mr. and Mrs. Sloan, is a list of all the adults in Jeremiah’s life.”

Ellen took a moment to focus. “What?”

“Teachers, doctors, friends, coworkers, neighbors, any adults that Jeremiah would see on a regular basis.”

“Why do you need that?”

“We want to talk to all of them.”

“Oh. Well, of course, we can do that. Dennis and I will sit down and come up with names.”

“Thank you.”

The real meaning of Reed’s question only dawned on Ellen slowly, and I watched a horrified realization grow on her face. What he was saying was: Someone close to you could have done this. You can’t trust anyone. Your friends are all suspects.

“Mr. Sloan, how did you find out that Jeremiah was missing?” Reed asked.

“I was at the ranger’s office when Adrian came running in.”

“Who else was there?”

“Two other rangers were with me. There were a few tourists, too. A married couple from Iowa, I think. And two twentysomethings with backpacks.”

“Were these other rangers in the office with you all day?”

“Yeah, they were.”

“And do you have a registry of people who were camping on the national forest grounds on Friday?”

“Sure. We have that.”

“I’ll need a copy.”

“Yeah, of course. You bet.”

“Mrs. Sloan, what about you? How did you find out about Jeremiah?”

Ellen had been watching the back-and-forth with her husband carefully. “Dennis called me. I was at the mini-mart. And yes, Agent Reed, I can give you the names of any number of customers who can verify that I was there all day.”

Reed offered her a sympathetic smile. He knew she’d figured it out. First, make sure the parents weren’t involved. “I appreciate that. Please understand that this kind of information is necessary as part of our routine background in a case like this.”

Then he swung around to face the teenager in the high-top chair. “It’s Adrian, right? Come on over here and join us.”

His tone made it clear that this wasn’t just a suggestion. Adrian slid off the chair and took a seat on the sofa far from his mother and father. He stared at his feet and ran both hands through his hair, leaving it messy. He had the same thick black hair as his father.

“You a football player?” Reed asked with a friendly smile. “You’ve got the build for it.”

“Yeah, I am.”

“So was I. High school, and college, too. What do you play? Tackle?”

“Yeah.”

“I figured. Okay, Adrian, I know you’re worried about your brother. We all are. I know you want to help us find him. So I need you to answer some questions. It’s very important that you be honest with me.”

The boy shrugged. “Sure.”

“First of all, do you know two brothers named Will and Vince Gruder?”

Adrian looked up sharply and realized that Reed’s pleasant smile had vanished. The whites in the boy’s eyes grew three times larger. His reaction told me I’d been right about Adrian not being alone in the national forest. I knew it told Agent Reed the same thing.

“The Gruders?” Dennis interrupted with a puzzled expression. “What do they have to do with this?”

“Adrian?” Reed asked quietly.

“Yeah, sure, I know them. Everybody does.”

“Are they friends of yours?”

“No. I just know them. That’s all.”

“I hear they sell drugs.”

“Maybe. I guess. I don’t know.”

“When did you last see them?”

The boy shifted nervously on the sofa. “I don’t remember.”

“Were they in the campground with you yesterday?”

Adrian didn’t answer, and Reed leaned forward. His stare made the boy wilt.

“I’m asking you a question, son. Were you with Will and Vince Gruder yesterday before your brother disappeared?”

The Sloans looked back and forth between Adrian and Agent Reed, and they began to realize that their son had been lying to all of us.

“Adrian,” Dennis interjected like the snap of a whip. “Answer the man’s question. Were you with those two assholes?”

“No! No way. I was alone. I told the sheriff that.”

Reed slid the plastic case with my cruiser’s mechanical specs partly out of his coat pocket. “Adrian, do you know what this is? It’s a search warrant that gives me the right to search your bedroom. See, I think you did some business with the Gruders yesterday, and I think we’re going to find evidence of whatever you bought in your room. Now we can all wait until I finish my search, or you can save us the time and tell us what I’m going to find in there.”

The silence ticked away for a few seconds, but to Adrian, it must have felt like hours.

Finally, he murmured, as if speaking in a whisper would hide the truth from his parents. “Meth.”

“Meth?” Ellen screamed and shot to her feet. “Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? What are you doing with something like that? Why would you have anything like that in your room? Adrian, say something!”

Agent Reed stood up, too, and he put up his hands for calm. “Mrs. Sloan, I know this is upsetting, but right now, let’s keep the focus on Jeremiah. For the moment, this isn’t about drugs, it’s about finding your son. Adrian, I’m going to ask you again. Did you meet Will and Vince Gruder yesterday while you were out with your brother?”

The teenager began to cry. Tears streamed down his cheeks, and his chest heaved. He could barely choke out the word. “Yeah.”

We didn’t have time to ask more questions.

Dennis flew off the sofa. He was over his son in a split-second. “You lying sack of... You made this happen! You did this to your brother!”

Agent Reed and I both leaped across the space, but we were too late. Before we could get there in time to stop it, Dennis Sloan sent a fist flying with an awful crack of bone into Adrian’s mouth.

Chapter Fifteen

When we arrived at the school that was being transformed into the FBI command post, I found Violet standing among the red lockers that we used to haunt as teenagers. There was a display case on the wall highlighting photos and mementos from our championship volleyball season. I stood next to her, shoulder to shoulder, and we didn’t speak right away. In one of the photos behind the glass, I could see the two of us, both diving for the same ball and nearly cracking heads. Trina had had to work long and hard to keep us from getting in each other’s faces.

“You were good,” I told her, like a peace offering.

“So were you. Wow, you had a serve.”

“But you were better on the court.”

Violet nodded, as if that wasn’t even a matter for debate. “It seems like a long time ago.”

“Yes, it sure does.”

The same seven years had passed for both of us, but I couldn’t help thinking that Violet had grown up faster. She was only a few months older than me, but she was already a lawyer and serving on the county board. People listened to her and respected her. Soon enough, she’d be running the whole area.

“We were stars back then,” Violet went on. “That was cool.”

“Well, you’re still a star.”

She glanced at me to see if I was kidding, which I wasn’t. “Didn’t you like it?”

“The attention? No, not really. To me, it was about winning the game. I didn’t care about anything else.”

“Interesting.” Violet turned away from the display case and was done with nostalgia. “How are things going with Special Agent Reed?”

“He’s good. You were right to bring him in.”

“I know.”

“I’m sure you think he should have taken Adam with him, not me.”

“Adam has more experience, but Agent Reed knows what he wants.”

I wasn’t sure if she intended a double entendre with that comment.

“I heard there was some excitement,” she went on.

“Yes, there was. Dennis hit Adrian.”

“Dennis,” Violet said, with a sneer in her voice that made it clear she was no fan. “I wish I could say I was surprised. How is Adrian?”

“Swollen jaw, a couple of loose teeth.”

“Did you arrest Dennis?”

“Adrian begged us not to. So did Ellen. Given everything that’s going on, we didn’t think it would help the situation to have Dennis cooling his heels behind bars. He feels bad about what he did. But Adrian lied about what happened in the forest, so I understand why Dennis is upset. If we’d known about the Gruders upfront, that might have changed the whole search.”

“What does Ellen say? Was this the first time?”

“You mean, that Dennis struck Adrian?”

“That he struck either of the boys.”

“So she says.”

“Well, if Ellen says that, you can take it to the bank. And I’m sure she would have told me if there had been problems before.”

I knew that Violet and Ellen had a close history together. When Violet’s family had first moved to the area, she was an outsider who didn’t fit in. She was a smart, pretty girl from the city joining a school with kids who’d been together in the same cliques their whole lives. It was a tough transition, and I didn’t make it easier for her. She was just as good as me on the volleyball team, which I resented because I was used to being the best. So it’s not like I gave her a warm welcome. No one in town did.

Except Ellen Sloan. Ellen hired Violet as a part-time worker at the mini-mart. They worked together nearly every day during the school years and throughout the summer months while Violet was in high school and college. It was Ellen who really saw something special in her and encouraged her not just to go to law school, but to come back to this area after she did. I thought Violet would be gone from Mittel County just as fast as she could, but she proved me wrong.

“What about Adrian?” Violet asked. “Is he in trouble?”

“He says what he bought was for his own use. An experiment. There wasn’t enough to sell, and he’s underage, first time offense. Plus, we want him to talk so we can finally get the Gruders for distribution. He’ll need a lawyer, but chances are, he can get off without jail time, and eventually he can get his record expunged.”

“I’m going over there later. Ellen asked me to spend the evening with her. I’ll make sure they get a good lawyer who can work everything out.”

“I’m glad.”

“Where are the Gruders? Have you found them?”

“Yes, they were over in Stanton. The police picked them up and are bringing them back here.”

“I hope they know something useful about Jeremiah.”

“I hope so, too.”

“Well, I’ll let you get back to Agent Reed.” Violet walked away, but then she hesitated and retraced her steps. She was taller and thinner than me, and she was dressed in style. “It’s not personal, you know.”

“What’s that?”

“My disagreement with Sheriff Ginn.”

“He’s my father. That makes it personal to me.”

“I understand, but you have to face reality. Tom has done great work for this county for decades, but he’s not fit for the demands of the job anymore.”

“I disagree. And that’s up to the voters, not you.”

“It’s up to the county board if we think there’s a problem.”

“He’s fine,” I said sharply.

Violet put a hand on my shoulder, which I shrugged off impatiently. “No, Shelby,” she told me with more caring and concern than I would have expected. “He’s not fine. He’s getting worse. Sooner or later, you’ll see that for yourself.”

Chapter Sixteen

Will and Vince Gruder sat like greasy bookends on either end of the bleachers in the gym. Their hands were cuffed behind their backs. As usual, I didn’t know which was which. Both of them wore tie-dye tank tops from an El Paso bar with a logo of a drunk parrot on the front. I was sure they knew why they’d been brought in, but they made a point of looking unimpressed with the FBI men in their suits.

“So which one are you?” Agent Reed asked the first of the brothers.

“Vince.”

“Okay, Vince. Let’s not waste time. You’re in trouble. So’s your brother. Judges are tired of meth wreaking havoc in their towns. Making and selling it will get you ten years, maybe more.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vince replied.

“Adrian Sloan says you do. He says you sold him drugs.”

“Adrian Sloan can say whatever he wants, but he’s lying. The Stanton police didn’t find anything on us. Go ahead and search our place in Witch Tree, man. It’s clean. You can play tough guy all you want, but you’ve got nothing.”

I was standing next to Reed, and I reacted hotly and jumped into the middle of the interrogation. “We know you’ve got a lab in the woods, Vince. You were blasting music out there half the night.”

“Wasn’t us. We were sleeping like babies.”

Reed bent forward and leaned his foot on the bleacher. “Look, Vince, you’re not stupid. You know what this is all about. We’re more interested in finding Jeremiah Sloan than we are in you. If you tell us what happened with Jeremiah and Adrian yesterday afternoon, we’ll talk to a judge about going easy on the drug charges. This is a one-time-only daily deal. Grab it before it’s gone.”

“Oh yeah? Well, I’m not buying what you’re selling.”

Reed straightened up and casually jerked a thumb at one of his colleagues. “Okay, forget it. Get this one out of here. I’ll talk to his brother. Nobody says the deal has to be for both of them. One’s all I need.”

“My brother’s got nothing to say!” Vince retorted loudly. As he was yanked to his feet, he repeated in a voice that Will could hear on the other end of the bleachers. “You got that? Will’s not saying nothing to any of you!”

Reed waited until Vince was dragged out of the gym. Then he shoved his hands in his suit pockets and wandered down to the far side of the bleachers, where Will Gruder danced uncomfortably on his butt cheeks as he waited for us. Reed took his time before talking. He sat down next to Will, too close for comfort, and casually stretched out his arms on the bench behind him. Will tried to mimic his brother’s tough-guy pose, but it didn’t work.

“You must be Will,” Reed said after a while.

“Yeah, so what?”

“Your brother tells me he’s not interested in a deal. Are you smarter than he is?”

“We don’t need a deal. We haven’t done anything.”

“Sure. I believe you. Trouble is, I’m not the one you need to convince. Who’s a judge going to like better, Will? A dropout like you who’s been in trouble since he was fourteen or some nice small-town football player like Adrian Sloan? A kid whose little brother is missing. That wins a lot of sympathy points with people. In fact, what’s a jury going to think when they hear that you and Vince were out there in the national forest with Adrian when Jeremiah disappeared? They’re going to assume you two had something to do with that.”

“We didn’t!” Will burst out. He nodded his head at me. “She saw us! Her and that other cop, Twilley. We were here at the school playing basketball yesterday. Then we went to the bar in Witch Tree, and we were there until after midnight. No way we had anything to do with that kid going missing.”

“But you were out there, right? The two of you met Adrian in the campground, and you sold him meth. He already told us you did.” Reed squeezed in until he was practically breathing in Will’s ear. “Come on, kid. We’re talking about a missing ten-year-old boy. Help us out. If you give us a clue and we find him, hell, you’ll be a hero. A judge is going to like that.”

Will glanced at the far end of the bleachers to make sure that Vince wasn’t in the gym anymore. His nose was running, and with his hands cuffed, he couldn’t do anything about it, so he bent over to wipe his face on his knee. “I’m not talking about drugs. You can’t ask me about that. Got it? I’m not saying anything about what went down with Adrian.”

Reed cocked his head at me. He shot me a look that said: This is your town. What do you want to do?

“All right, no drugs,” I interjected. “But we better like what you have to say, Will.”

“We didn’t have anything to do with that kid going missing. No way. We didn’t even know about it until you and Twilley told us.”

“But you were there.”

Will’s knee bounced nervously. “Yeah. Yeah, okay, we were there.”

“What happened?”

“Nothing! Nothing happened, that’s what I’m saying! Vince and me, we set up a meeting with Adrian in the campground. We were supposed to meet him like one o’clock or so.”

“To do what?”

“To do whatever. I told you, no questions about that. Got it?”

“Okay, no questions. Go on. When did you and Vince get there?”

“Like one fifteen or so. Adrian was there, but so was his little brother. Vince wasn’t happy about that. And the kid was being annoying, getting in our faces and asking all sorts of questions. What were we doing, what were we talking about. Vince figured the kid was going to blab to his parents about seeing us. So he told Adrian, either the kid goes or the meeting’s off.”

“What happened?”

“Adrian told his brother to beat it. Said he should take his bike and start heading back to the ranger’s office. He said he’d catch up with him in a little bit.”

“What time was that?”

“I don’t know. One thirty maybe.”

“Did Jeremiah go?”

“He argued for a while, but Adrian gave him ten bucks. That did it. The boy got on his bike and took off.”

“Which way?”

“South.”

“You’re sure? Away from the lake?”

“Yeah. Back toward the ranger station.”

“What did you and Vince do?”

“We wrapped up our business with Adrian. Then the three of us smoked for a while and hung out. Around two o’clock or so, Vince figured we better blow, so we got in the Bronco and left. Adrian said he was going to have another cigarette, so he stayed behind.”

I was practically holding my breath. “Did you see Jeremiah?”

“We saw his bike.”

“Where?”

“Tipped over on the side of the road like a mile south of the campground.”

“Did you see the boy?”

“No.”

“Did you stop?”

“No. We figured the kid was in the woods taking a leak or something. No big deal. We didn’t think anything was wrong.”

“So Jeremiah left at one thirty, and you left half an hour later. Is that right?”

“About that, yeah.”

“When you were in the campground, did any vehicles pass by on the road? Or did you see any people?”

“Nah, it was quiet.”

I shook my head in frustration. I couldn’t believe we could get this far and come away with nothing. We knew approximately when the boy had disappeared, but beyond that, we were no closer to finding him.

Agent Reed was unhappy, too. “Okay, Deputy, let’s get this piece of crap out of here.”

“You’re letting me go?” Will asked.

“Hell, no, nobody’s letting you go. You’re dealing meth. The county cops are going to lock you up, and then twelve nice people of Mittel County are going to send you away for a long time. You and your brother.”

I took Will by the shoulder and began to push him toward the other end of the gym, but he broke away from me and spun around, nearly falling down. “Wait, wait, wait, I’ve got more. We can talk. We can do a deal. Vince and me, we saw something.”

Agent Reed stood up from the bleachers. His dark eyes shot through Will like lasers. “What did you see?”

“First a deal. No charges. You forget about what Adrian Sloan told you.”

“We’re not making any promises until we hear what you have to say.”

Will looked back and forth between my face and Agent Reed’s. His nose was running again, and he was in full panic mode, watching the next ten years of his life tick by behind the bars of a cell.

“A truck,” he sputtered.

Reed’s eyes narrowed. “What?”

“As we were driving north toward the campground, we passed a truck. It was maybe two, three miles before we got there. Thing was on the side of the road. Parked, engine running. Local plates, but I don’t remember the license. There was somebody inside, but we couldn’t see who it was.”

“One person or more than one?” I asked.

“I only saw one.”

“Man or woman?”

“I’m telling you, I don’t know.”

“What kind of truck?”

“White,” Will replied. “A big pickup, an F-150. Look, I don’t know who was in it, but they were just hanging out there on the road. When we headed back south later, the truck was gone. So was the kid.”

Chapter Seventeen

A white F-150.

You couldn’t pick a more popular truck around these parts, but on the day Jeremiah disappeared, a white F-150 had been reported stolen in the lakeside town of Martin’s Point, which was fifty miles south of us. That didn’t sound like a coincidence. When I checked with Monica, she told me that the truck hadn’t been found yet, which was unusual for stolen vehicles around here. Most joyriders abandoned them within a couple of hours.

Agent Reed and I made the drive to Martin’s Point. Fifty miles probably sounds like a long way, but to us, it’s a trip to the dentist. Shopping for a new coat. Lunch with a friend. When you live out here, you get used to driving an hour to do just about anything.

“There’s a whole lot of nothing in this place,” Reed commented after we’d driven ten miles on the highway without seeing another soul. “Living here would drive me crazy.”

“Time moves a little slower in the country,” I agreed.

“It does that when you’re dead, too.”

“Let me guess. You’re a city man, Agent Reed.”

“I am.”

“Where did you grow up?”

“Minneapolis.”

“Well, you weren’t all that far from the north woods living there, right? A couple of hours?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t get much farther than Uptown when I was a kid. I like having people around. Trees, not so much. I know small-town people probably hate cities, but give me a downtown neighborhood any day. This might as well be the dark side of the moon.”

I’d heard that sentiment from visitors many times before. “I don’t have anything against cities. I love going to the city. Most of us around here do. But then we’re happy to head home and leave you with the traffic and the noise and the pollution.”

“Well, you’re right about the traffic,” Reed said. Then he changed to an entirely new subject and took me by surprise. “Tell me about the murder here last fall.”

I knew what he was talking about, but I froze and said stupidly, “Murder?”

“Was there more than one?” he asked slyly.

“No.”

“Okay then. Violet tells me that a woman was shot and killed here last November. Her husband was a suspect, but the sheriff didn’t have enough evidence to make a case against him.”

“That’s right. The victim’s name was Colleen Whalen. Her husband is Keith.”

“So give me the details.”

“Do you think the murder has something to do with Jeremiah’s disappearance?”

“Probably not, but murder isn’t a common occurrence around here. Neither is child abduction. When two unusual events happen in the same area, my first instinct is to wonder whether they might be connected. Plus, Violet says that the victim’s house isn’t far from the Sloan house. They were neighbors, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, you tell me. Could there be a connection?”

“I don’t see how. Colleen’s murder was months ago. November fourteenth.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“All right.”

I blinked as I drove, thinking about that day. I was shocked at how quickly Keith had been proven right. The FBI had only been in town for a few hours, and already he was on their radar screen. I was also focused on the sky ahead of us. Over the trees, I could see dark clouds pushing our way, blotting out the sun. A summer storm was getting closer.

“Deputy?” Reed asked.

“Sorry. Looks like severe weather coming in. I was thinking about Jeremiah. A kid in a storm, you know? I don’t like it.”

“Neither do I.”

“Anyway, November fourteenth was a Saturday,” I went on, rattling off the details we’d unearthed in the investigation. “Colleen Whalen spent most of the day shopping in Stanton. She had dinner by herself at an Applebee’s restaurant and paid the check at seven forty-five p.m. There was nothing on her credit card after that and no calls on her cell phone. If she went straight home, it would have taken her about an hour to make the drive. That puts her back in town around nine p.m.”

“And her husband?”

“Keith Whalen says he was out hiking all day at Shelby Lake.”

Reed looked at me curiously.

“Yes, that’s how I got my name. Long story. Keith said he had a sandwich in his car in a parking area near the lake. He fell asleep. When he woke up, it was late in the evening. He headed home but says he didn’t get back until almost midnight. He found his wife dead in the grass outside their house, with the front door open. She’d been shot in the head. He called 911, and I responded to the call along with Deputy Twilley. There was no gun found at the crime scene. When we searched the house, we saw that a jewelry box in the master bedroom had been rifled. Keith said that an expensive watch had been taken from his nightstand, too. And Colleen’s wedding ring wasn’t on her finger.”

“So the idea is that his wife came home and interrupted a burglar, who killed her and escaped.”

“Yes.”

“Is that a common thing around here, armed robbery?”

“No.”

“Were there any witnesses who could confirm that Whalen was at Shelby Lake like he said? Or what time he got home?”

“No.”

“Did Whalen own a gun?”

“Yes, he told us that he owned a Taurus Centerfire revolver but that it was missing. The caliber of the bullet we recovered from Colleen Whalen was consistent with a gun like that, but of course, without the gun itself, we couldn’t test it.”

“And what did Mr. Whalen say about the state of his marriage?” Reed asked.

I gripped the wheel tightly. “He said it was fine.”

“Did his neighbors agree? I hear it’s tough to keep a secret in a small town.”

“Keith has a troubled past,” I said carefully. “He lost a leg in Afghanistan. He suffers from depression and probably PTSD. It’s safe to say his marriage showed the strains of that. Colleen worked with Ellen Sloan at the mini-mart, and Ellen told us that Colleen wasn’t happy.”

“So the murder victim knew Jeremiah’s mother?”

“Yes, but I wouldn’t read too much into that. Everyone knows everyone else around here.”

Reed pursed his lips. “Keith Whalen was never charged in the murder?”

“No. Honestly, the sheriff didn’t believe Keith’s story, but there was no way to prove that a burglar didn’t do it. He talked it over with the county attorney, and they concluded there was too much reasonable doubt to get it past a jury.”

“Probably true,” Reed agreed. Then he added, “Do you know what kind of vehicle Keith Whalen drives?”

“A Toyota Highlander, I think.”

“So not a white Ford F-150?”

I turned my head and stared at him. “No.”

“Good to know.”

After that, we were silent until we reached Martin’s Point.

Martin’s Point is built on the shore of the region’s largest lake, much bigger than any of the other lakes in Mittel County. It was a quiet little town for a long time, but the city people had discovered it about twenty-five years earlier. They built summer homes all around the lakeshore, and upscale resorts and B&Bs had sprung up to accommodate vacationers. Antique shops and gourmet restaurants followed. The success of Martin’s Point took its toll on the other towns in the county. Some of the rustic cabin resorts that had prospered for decades went under as tourists found more upscale amenities by the lake. You can still find the ruins of several old resorts deep in the woods, slowly being overrun by Mother Nature.

My most vivid memory of Martin’s Point was taking Anna Helvik there on a Sunday afternoon five years earlier. That was when Karl and Trina were away in Chicago for her cancer surgery. Anna was five years old then but already smart for her age. She knew something was wrong with her mother. I took this beautiful blond child to the lake, where we cruised on my father’s boat under the bright sunshine. We fished, and Anna caught a crappie. She struggled to hold the slippery, squirming fish in her small hands and giggled the whole time, until it stopped struggling as it died. I watched Anna shake the fish, as if to wake it up. When it didn’t, she bawled, and it took me most of an hour to get her to stop. When she was finally calm again, she wiped her face and asked me, “Is that what’s going to happen to my mom?”

That was when I started crying, too.

That night, when we were back at her house, I stood outside her bedroom and listened to her pray before she went to sleep. Over and over, she said, “God, I’m sorry for killing the fishy, I’m sorry for killing the fishy, I’m sorry for killing the fishy.”

I remember thinking: I would take a bullet for that little girl.

Anyway, Agent Reed and I arrived in Martin’s Point, and I parked the cruiser near an ice cream parlor on the far end of the main street. The shop owner was also the owner of the F-150 that had been stolen the previous day. Unfortunately, we were one block from the town’s sandy beach, where dozens of tourists tanned on any given summer day. The bus stop from the town of Stanton was immediately across the street. The large town parking lot was behind us, and anyone walking from their car toward the water would have passed where the truck had been stolen. So this location had hundreds of suspects and not a security camera anywhere in sight.

The store owner’s name was Bonnie Butterfield, which I thought was a great name for someone with an ice cream shop. She gave us free ice cream when we introduced ourselves. I’m not too proud to turn down things like that. I picked a flavor called Ursulina Poop, which was chocolate-hazelnut ice cream swirled with fudge and studded with nuts and malted milk balls. It was terrific. Agent Reed got vanilla, and I rolled my eyes at him.

Bonnie took us outside and showed us where her truck had been parked half a block from the store itself. It was out of view from inside the parlor. She’d discovered it was missing when her husband arrived at one o’clock and mentioned that the truck wasn’t in its usual spot. She’d seen it there about eleven o’clock when she went outside to meet the mailman, so the theft had occurred sometime in the two hours or so in between.

She also told us with some embarrassment that she’d left her truck unlocked with the keys in the cup holder. She’d been doing that for years without any problems. I wasn’t surprised, because half the families in this area couldn’t even find their house keys if you asked, but this time, it was Agent Reed who did the eye rolling.

After our conversation with Bonnie, we stopped in at every store along the main street to see if anyone had witnessed the theft, but no one had seen a thing. We located the mailman, too, who was no help. There wasn’t anything else for us to do. Half an hour later, we were in my cruiser on the way back to Everywhere.

“What did you take away from all that?” Reed asked me, as if I were a trainee at Quantico.

I thought about it as I drove. Then I said, “The time.”

“That’s right. What about it?”

“The truck was stolen sometime between eleven and one. The Gruders passed the truck on the national forest road around one fifteen or so. And we’re at least a ninety-minute drive from where we found Jeremiah’s bicycle. So if this was our guy, he didn’t waste any time. He must have driven straight there.”

“Exactly,” Reed said. “Whoever took the truck knew where he was going. He had plans.”

Chapter Eighteen

That night in Everywhere, the rain came.

After I took Agent Reed back to the command post, he set me free until morning. I drove to the Nowhere Café and parked on the main street, where rivers ran through the gutters and the downpour drenched me immediately. It was ten o’clock. All the shops were closed, and the only light I could see was from the window of the diner. Even so, the street was still crowded with cars bearing out-of-state plates. The café was open late to accommodate a full house of strangers. Print and TV reporters. Volunteers and curiosity-seekers, all sharing posts on Instagram and Facebook. Our little town was suddenly the epicenter of the daily news.

Inside, I squeezed to the end of the lunch counter and found an open stool next to Adam. He’d switched out of his uniform into casual clothes. He wore a tight-fitting white T-shirt, ratty blue jeans, and a baseball cap backward on his head. His brown curls poked out from under the rim. He had a bottle of Bud in front of him and two other empty bottles on the counter. He glanced at me with a resentful stare as I sat down.

“Busy day, Shelby?”

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Well, it must be nice to be in the middle of all the action.”

“Come on, Adam. I didn’t ask for this.”

“Yeah, but you got it, didn’t you? Maybe if I had perky little tits, Agent Reed would have picked me.”

He was trying to get a rise out of me, but I kept my mouth shut rather than fire back at him. I knew he was drunk and didn’t know what he was saying.

“So did you find Jeremiah?” Adam asked.

“You know we didn’t.”

“Did you find anything?”

“We’re still looking for the missing truck.”

“You mean all those Feds crawling over town and they still don’t have a damn clue what happened? What a shock. It’s almost like they don’t know this area from the holes in their asses.”

“Adam,” I murmured sharply. “Keep your voice down. You want these reporters to know you’re a cop and you’re drunk? If Agent Reed hears about it, you’re going to be in big trouble.”

“Oh, what’s he going to do? Give me a crap assignment? You know what I spent my day doing, Shelby, while you were hanging out with the feebs? I was visiting camp sites on my motorcycle. Talking to Bubba and Dixie in their RV about whether they’d seen anything strange. Sticking my head inside every outhouse to make sure nobody was hiding there. Reed was very insistent about that. Check every toilet, he said. Supposedly they found a kid gagged and bound inside a porta-potty on one case, but if you ask me, he was making that up. You got a body, you bury it.”

“Adam,” I hissed at him again. “Don’t talk like that.”

He went back to his beer. “Whatever.”

Breezy arrived to rescue me with a glazed donut, which she knew was my favorite. She’d already put in a fifteen-hour day but looked none the worse for wear. She was whistling, and I suspected that the pockets of her apron were stuffed with tips. She’d borrowed new clothes, too. Somewhere during the day, she’d traded her red mock turtleneck for a button-down white blouse sheer enough to give the world a look at the skimpy purple bra she was wearing underneath. Enough buttons were undone that the girls practically spilled out when she leaned over.

“Is he still being Mr. Grumples?” Breezy asked, eyeing Adam next to me.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Poor baby,” she said, sticking out her tongue at him. “The FBI won’t let you play with them?”

“Shut up, Breezy,” Adam retorted.

She reached out and patted his hand, and she tugged on her blouse to make sure he had a good view. “Sorry, sweets. I don’t mean to poke the bear. Drink up, the next one’s on the house. When I’m in a good mood, I figure the world should be, too.”

I checked my watch. “It’s late, Breezy. You guys ever going to close?”

“Maybe at eleven. Look at this place. I’ve made more money today than I’d make in two weeks normally. I mean, I feel a little bad about it, but still. No offense to our local boys, but I wouldn’t get a twenty-five percent tip around here if I served them stark naked. Today? That’s my average.”

“Lots of reporters on expense accounts, huh?”

“No kidding. I hope this keeps up for a few days. I’ll have enough to retire Dudley and get a new car.” Then she closed her eyes in disgust with herself. “Oh my God, did I just say that?”

“Yeah. You did.”

“Sorry. I got carried away.”

“Hey, I get it. Just keep it to yourself.”

Breezy pasted the flirty smile back on her face and went off to serve the strangers in the diner. I looked toward the front window, where rain continued to pour down from the night sky like a deluge. A drumroll of thunder made the building shake.

“Jeremiah’s out there in this,” I said quietly, underneath the noise of the café.

Adam heard me. “Yeah, I know. It sucks.”

“Do you think he’s alive?” I leaned close enough that Adam’s beer breath was in my face.

“If he is, it might be better if he weren’t,” Adam replied. Being drunk has a way of making you speak the truth even when you’re better off with a lie.

I swore, because I didn’t want Adam to be right, but he probably was. I’d held onto the hope all day that this was a mistake. An accident. But suddenly, there was a truck. The truck changed everything. Someone had gotten into a stolen truck, and two hours later, Jeremiah vanished without a trace, leaving his bicycle on the road. I couldn’t find an innocent explanation for that.

“Have you seen my father?” I asked.

“Yeah. He went home.”

“What about Monica?”

“She left an hour ago.”

“Okay. Thanks.”

“Hey, Shelby?”

“What?”

“Sorry for being a dick.”

I winked at him. “What else is new?”

I finished my donut and waited for the sugar to kick in, but it never did. I watched the rain, which was hypnotic. Every now and then, lightning flashed over the Carnegie Library across the street like a broken branch. I thought the storm might pass if I waited long enough, but the downpour kept on. Eventually, I climbed off the stool and left money on the counter. I gave Breezy a 30 percent tip, which didn’t amount to more than a dollar. I figured she’d laugh about it anyway.

“I’m heading home,” I told Adam.

“Yeah, see you in the morning.”

I listened to the thunder. “You still got your bike outside?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, drive carefully.”

“Always.”

The rain did finally quit. The roads were a mess, slick with mud and leaves and fallen branches, but at least I could see where I was going as I drove home. When I got there, the lights were on, giving the house a saintly glow through the stained glass windows. Dad’s truck was in the driveway, but when I called for him inside, I got no answer. I checked his bedroom, which was empty. The bed didn’t have a wrinkle and was made with hospital corners, as always.

When I looked through the windows at the backyard, I saw him. He’d built a screened-in gazebo out there years ago as a playhouse for me. The light inside made it look like an oasis in the darkness. I went out the back door and trudged through the muddy grass, leaving footprints. A firefly winked at me near the trees. Inside the gazebo, I found Dad in one of the wicker chairs. He was still in his uniform, sitting straight up with perfect posture. The daily crossword puzzle was folded up in his lap, with only a handful of words filled in. He had his phone on the table in front of him, as if waiting for it to ring.

Something told me it hadn’t rung all day.

“Hi, Dad.”

He gave me the kind of smile that lets you know in a glance that you’re loved. “Hello, Shelby.”

“Mind if I join you?”

“Please.”

I sat down next to him. We didn’t talk for a while; we just listened to the buzz of insects hiding in the grass. Eventually, he asked about my day, and I gave him an update. We were silent again after that, until he looked over at me and said, “I owe you an apology, Shelby.”

“For what?”

“I should have listened to you about Adrian and the Gruders.”

“It was a hunch. I got lucky.”

“No, you were observant, and I didn’t take you seriously.”

“Don’t worry about it, Dad,” I said, but I liked hearing it.

Somewhere during the day, he’d slipped off to see the town barber and get his hair cut. When I looked at him in profile, I could still see his face looking like it did in photographs from twenty-five years earlier, when his hair and mustache were dark brown. He’d been leaner then, but just as serious. I remembered the proud expression on his face in the first picture Monica had taken when he held me as a baby. It was a long time before I understood what it meant to him to find me on his doorstep in that year of all years. He’d lost his father to Alzheimer’s four months earlier. His mother to the same damn disease five months before that. Enter Shelby Lake into his life. He used to say that I’d saved him as much as he saved me.

“I have to ask you something, Shelby.”

“Sure, Dad. What?”

“I don’t want you to panic when you hear it.”

“What is it?”

His hand trembled a little with nervousness. “What’s the name of the boy who disappeared?”

I stared at him. “Dad, I... I don’t—”

“Just his name, Shelby. Please.”

“It’s Jeremiah, Dad. Jeremiah Sloan.”

He nodded as if it were one of the answers in his crossword puzzle that had eluded him. “Of course, it is. Thank you. I was able to remember everything else about the past two days, but not that. Weird, isn’t it? It was just gone. Like a chip of paint falling off the wall. This has been a bad day. I know it’ll go up and down, but this was a bad day.”

Dad was being clinical about it to protect me. I knew he would never show me the depth of his frustration, but it was there. I looked away so he wouldn’t spot the sadness on my face, but I could never fool him.

“You don’t have to pretend, Shelby. We’ll just take it as it comes.”

“I know.”

“It can move fast, or it can move slow. And there are new drugs now. Hopefully, we’ll hardly notice it for a while.”

“I know,” I said again, choking on the words.

Funny how I could feel myself getting older at that moment. The teenage girl, the volleyball player, was slipping away from me into the distant past and leaving me alone. It was as if Jeremiah had taken what was left of that side of me with him when he disappeared.

“Trina’s sick again,” I added, not knowing why I felt the need to tell him that when he had his own troubles. “She told me about it last night.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“I don’t want her to be alone going through this again. I’m just worried she won’t open up and let me in. Or anyone else. Not Karl. Not Anna.”

“Some people can’t do that.”

“I know. That’s not who she is.”

“All you can do is be there for her. She has to decide for herself what she needs.”

“I know,” I said again.

Sitting there, I felt a wave of anger at the world. It’s that helpless frustration we feel when fate deals a blow to someone we love, and there’s no one we can blame and no one we can scream at.

“Do you want to bring out your guitar?” Dad asked, trying to pull me out of the hole I was in.

“No, thanks. I’ll take a rain check. I want to be by myself for a while.”

“I understand, Shelby. Go on. Get some sleep.”

I stood up and bent down to kiss him on the top of the head. While I was there, I put my arms around him and didn’t let go. He held on to me, too. We didn’t need to say anything. There was nothing we could do about the future.

I turned and left the gazebo and hurried upstairs to my bedroom. When I stood by one of the windows looking down on the backyard, I saw the light of the gazebo go out, and I could just barely make out my father as he returned to the house. With him gone, there was nothing but wilderness outside. I opened the window and breathed in the humid air through the screen. The night was quiet and still after the wild storm, with barely a leaf moving in the trees.

Then, out of nowhere, a barn owl swooped down in front of me, its huge auburn wings spread wide. I jumped back with a shout. For an instant, I saw its monk-like face staring at me as it crashed against the second-floor screen, and then after the impact, it spiraled away down to the ground. When I peered out again, I could see the bird on the grass below me, hopping as it tried and failed to fly on a broken wing. I sprinted for the stairs to rescue it.

You know me. I believe in signs.

That one felt like a bad omen of what was to come.

Chapter Nineteen

I do regular transports of injured birds for the Stanton Raptor Center, so I keep heavy cardboard boxes and falconry gloves in a shed near the house. With Dad’s help, I was able to get a blanket over the owl and secure him inside a box, which I put on the floor of the front seat of my cruiser. I called my friend Jeannie Samper, who runs the center, and she said she’d be there to meet me. Jeannie was used to calls at all hours during the summer season, and I’d never once seen her fail to get up in the middle of the night to receive an owl, hawk, or eagle in need of help.

Stanton is an hour’s drive east from Everywhere. The highway was dark and empty and still slippery from the heavy rain. There was a lot I could have been thinking about as I drove, but I put it all out of my mind and simply stared down the tunnel of my headlights and kept a watch for deer and moose. I could hear the occasional rustle of the owl shifting inside the box.

I made it to the raptor center just before midnight. The facility was really just Jeannie’s house and a few acres of land, located well outside the busier Walmart section of town. She and her husband and four kids were squeezed onto the upstairs floor, while the downstairs, garage, basement, and outbuildings had been converted into areas to treat and house several dozen birds of prey at any given time. Jeannie was a ruthless fund-raiser, and the equipment and care she provided rivaled anything you’d find at a veterinary hospital.

The garage was open as I drove up the muddy, twisting driveway through the woods. However, the person who met my car wasn’t Jeannie. A man I’d never seen before came up to my driver’s window with a smile, and I rolled it down.

“You must be Shelby. Jeannie said you were on your way. I’m Dr. Lucas. I understand you have a little patient for me.”

“Yes, it’s a barn owl that flew into my window. I’m worried he may have a broken wing.”

“Well, let’s get him inside and take a look.”

Dr. Lucas didn’t look more than thirty years old. He wore a white lab coat over a red-checked flannel shirt and stonewashed jeans. He had long sandy hair that hung loose to his shoulders. I’d never been much of a fan of long hair on men, but on him, it worked. He had a thin frame and narrow face, and his eyes were warm and very blue. When he smiled, the skin around his eyes crinkled and made you want to trace the lines with your finger, as if you were exploring a map of an exotic new place.

When I got out of the car, I saw that he was taller than me but not a giant, only about five-foot-ten. He shook my hand. His grip was firm, and his hands were soft. I took him around to the passenger side, and he reached inside to take the box with the same gentleness you would use with a newborn’s cradle. As the box moved, the owl inside got scared and began moving about, and Dr. Lucas murmured, “It’s okay, buddy, we’re here to help. Don’t worry.”

I liked this man.

“I’m sorry to get you out of bed in the middle of the night,” I told him.

“Oh, I wasn’t sleeping. Wide awake and staring at the ceiling. I was actually pleased to get Jeannie’s call.”

“And you’re a vet?” I asked, which sounded like a stupid question as soon as it came out of my mouth.

“Two years now,” he replied with a grin, as he carried the box inside the garage. I followed him past the lineup of glass windows at the back into the treatment room. “Don’t worry, I passed all my tests. I can take a dog’s temperature like nobody’s business.”

I laughed. In fact, I may have blushed a little.

“Sorry, what I mean is, I usually see Dr. Tim over here.” Dr. Tim was the sweetest, most capable vet on the planet and about two hundred years old. He’d volunteered his time at the raptor center ever since Jeannie started it.

“Yes, I recently joined Tim’s practice in Stanton,” Lucas told me. “He’s planning to retire in a couple of years. When he does, I’ll take over the business.”

“Dr. Tim retire? That’s hard to imagine. I was pretty sure they’d have to take him out of the clinic feetfirst.”

“Well, that may still be true. It took me a few months to convince him to let me come on board, and so far, all he’s done is cut back his hours a bit. But that’s okay. When you do something you love, why would you want to quit? Anyway, I’m in no hurry. As far as I’m concerned, he can stay on as long as he likes. I’m just happy to learn the ropes.”

There was something refreshing about meeting someone else like me who wasn’t in a huge hurry. Sometimes I feel like the world is filled with nothing but Violet Roka’s, who rush to finish one day in order to get to the next.

“Do you live in Stanton?” I asked.

“I do. I moved here about a year ago. I was actually born around here, but my family moved away when I was ten. I grew up in Kansas City, and then I went to vet school at Kansas State.”

“But you moved back here? I don’t hear that a lot.”

“Oh, it’s a complicated family drama. My grandfather needed help, and I was the only one willing to uproot myself to go back home. I guess the fact that I still thought of Stanton as home even years after we moved away made me realize it was something I needed to do.”

“I know exactly what you mean.”

I was enjoying my conversation with Dr. Lucas, but I heard a tapping behind me on the row of windows that separated the treatment room from the garage. When I looked over my shoulder, I saw Jeannie Samper waving at me.

“Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” Dr. Lucas told me. “You don’t have to stay in here. Go talk to Jeannie.”

“Are you sure? I’m happy to help. I’ve done it before. I’m practically a vet tech.”

“It’s fine. If I need another pair of hands, I’ll shout.”

I felt the tiniest twinge of disappointment at being dismissed, but I left him alone with the owl. Outside the treatment room, Jeannie greeted me with a hug. I apologized for coming so late, but she waved it off as if it were nothing. The two of us watched Dr. Lucas through the glass as he tended to the owl. You can always tell someone who loves animals. His movements were quick, firm, and tender as he prepared to sedate the bird in order to X-ray its wing.

“So Dr. Tim has a partner now,” I said. “Amazing.”

“Yeah, I never thought I’d see the day,” Jeannie agreed. “I like Lucas. He’s very capable. And very charming.”

“He sure seems to be.”

Jeannie winked at me. “Unmarried, too.”

I shrugged off her comment. Jeannie’s mission in life was to fix me up. “Yeah, well, who has the time?”

“Uh-huh. You never have time if you don’t make time, Shelby Lake. Come on, let me fix you a cup of tea, and we can chat.”

I had an hour’s drive home ahead of me, and I was anxious to get back on the road, but I never turned down tea with Jeannie. She grew her own, and her kids sold it at farmers markets during the summer. Once you’d had her tea, you really couldn’t drink store-bought anymore.

Jeannie led me up an old narrow staircase with boards that creaked and shifted under my feet. In the second-floor family room, I plopped down on her threadbare sofa as she went into the kitchen to boil water. She had a homemade, lemon-scented candle burning; that was the only light. The doors to the other upstairs rooms were closed. Everyone else was sleeping.

She returned shortly with tea for me in a china mug that looked as if it had been around for decades. The flower design on it was faded. She had her own tea in a ceramic mug with a logo for the Stanton Raptor Center. Nothing matched around here, and that was fine.

“Here you go, sweetie.”

Jeannie sank into a glider opposite me and pushed herself relentlessly back and forth with one leg on the floor. She was forty years old, with prematurely silver hair that was tied in a bun behind her head. Having four kids, she always said, was what had turned her gray. She was tall and very heavy, but her weight didn’t slow her down. I’d never seen her when she wasn’t busy doing three things at once. As she drank her tea, she turned on the television and muted it, fanned herself with a magazine, and fiddled with the baby monitor that let us listen to the noise of her six-month-old, Hildy, in the nursery.

Life for Jeannie was a constant juggling act, but she never showed any stress about it. Despite the pressures of running the raptor center, she and her husband managed to find time to homeschool all of their kids. Their oldest, Matthew, was sixteen, as deeply religious as his parents, and had already been accepted to college at Northwestern in the fall. The two middle kids were just as bright.

“What an awful thing about Jeremiah Sloan,” Jeannie said. “Are you any closer to finding him?”

“Not so far.”

“If this happened to one of my kids, I think I’d be driving up and down every street in the county shouting their name. Dennis must be a wreck.”

“He is. They all are.”

“People are saying that someone grabbed him. Is that true? It’s hard to believe around here.”

“We’re not sure what happened yet,” I said cautiously.

“Well, I have two boys. Don’t rule out the possibility that Jeremiah wandered off on his own and got into trouble. That’s what boys do.”

“We’re not ruling anything out yet.”

Jeannie opened her mouth as if to say something more, but then she closed it again. She sipped her tea, and her round face in the flickering glow of the candle looked troubled. She played with a loose strand of her gray hair and pushed back and forth in the glider.

“Jeannie? Is there something else?”

“Oh, I’m sure it’s nothing. I shouldn’t say anything. I don’t like to be a gossip.”

“Jeremiah’s missing. This is no time to hold something back.”

Jeannie put down her mug on the coffee table between us. No one could hear us, but she leaned forward in the glider and whispered anyway. “Well, you know I see Dennis a lot. Either he’s over here, or I’m in the ranger station.”

“Of course.”

Dennis’s job in the national forest meant that he was often discovering birds that needed treatment at Jeannie’s center. When healthy birds were ready to be rereleased into the wild, Jeannie worked with Dennis to do so deep in the forest land. That shared bond had made them good friends over the years.

“There was this odd little thing last fall,” she went on. “It makes me kind of uncomfortable to talk about it. I mean, I know the kind of man Dennis is, and I’ve made peace with that, but I don’t like being recruited as a coconspirator.”

My eyes narrowed with concern. “Go on.”

“I was with him at the ranger station, and he asked if my son Matthew would be willing to babysit for Jeremiah that Saturday night. All night. He was wondering if Matthew could sleep over at his house.”

“Why didn’t he have Adrian do it?”

“That’s the thing. Ellen and Adrian were both out of town. She was off at some retail conference in New Orleans, and Adrian went with her.”

“Ah.” I got the picture.

“Yes, you see why it bothered me, right? Dennis was going to be gone all night, and he wanted a babysitter from Stanton, not Everywhere. He didn’t want the news getting around. I was pretty sure he was having an affair and looking for a way to hide it.”

“Well, I doubt it’s the first time, if you believe the rumors.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s true. Like I say, I know Dennis, warts and all. I wasn’t crazy about it, but I agreed to let Matthew do it. He’s been trying to save money to buy a telescope, and Dennis was offering a hundred dollars to have him stay over. I knew Matthew could use the cash.”

“So what happened?”

“Well, it seemed to go fine. Matthew and Jeremiah hung out watching TV and playing video games during the evening, and then he got Jeremiah ready for bed around nine thirty. No problem. Except I got a call from Matthew at one in the morning. He was in a panic.”

“Why?”

“He went to check on Jeremiah before he went to bed himself. The boy wasn’t in his room.”

“He was gone?”

“Yes. Matthew was about to call 911, but I told him first to search the house and then walk around the yard to see if he could find the boy anywhere. That’s what he did. Matthew found Jeremiah hanging out on the back porch below his bedroom window. He said he’d climbed down to watch the stars.”

“So what’s the problem?”

“Well, Matthew was pretty sure that Jeremiah was lying. The boy wasn’t in his pajamas anymore. He’d changed clothes. And his shoes were all muddy, like he’d been off in the woods somewhere. Matthew asked him about it, but the boy swore he hadn’t been anywhere. He said he went out in the middle of the lawn, and that was that.”

“But?” I asked, because I could tell the story wasn’t over.

“But Matthew said something else, too. He told me the boy looked really, really scared. I mean, the poor kid was trembling. It was like Jeremiah had seen a monster.”

Chapter Twenty

I slept through my alarm on Sunday morning. Instead of waking up at five thirty, I woke up at seven. My father was already gone. His cruiser wasn’t in the driveway. I got ready quickly and then made my usual stop at the Nowhere Café for breakfast. Like last night, the tables were filled with out-of-towners.

I called out my order to Breezy and took a seat at the counter next to Adam. He was on the same stool he’d been at the previous night, looking as if he’d never left, except for the fact that he was back in his deputy’s uniform. His eyes were bloodshot and rimmed with dark circles, his hair was dirty, and he had a pot of coffee and four aspirin on the counter in front of him, the universal clues of someone nursing a hangover.

“You get the license plate?” I asked.

“What?”

“Of the truck that ran you over.”

“Ha. Funny.”

I laughed, but Adam didn’t. He popped all of the aspirin onto his tongue and washed it down with coffee.

“Has my father been in here?”

“Yeah, he already went over to the office.”

“I bet he complimented you on your appearance.”

“The subject came up,” Adam replied.

I laughed again, because I could imagine how that conversation had gone. “Well, don’t let Agent Reed see you looking like this. He won’t be impressed either. He’ll send you off to investigate more toilets.”

Adam’s face had the mournful look of a bloodhound. “Too late.”

“Why? Reed’s already been in here?”

“No, I did something stupid last night.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. “Oh, Adam, what did you do?”

“I was pissed off about getting shut out of the investigation. And I was hammered. So I called him.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“I left a message. It was an epic rant. I’m pretty sure my career is over. What the hell, it’s probably better that way. I suck. Everything I touch, I screw up.”

I put a hand on his back, because Adam looked as if he might cry. I’d never seen him so upset. “Hey, come on. It happens. Cut yourself some slack, okay? It’s been a tough couple of days for all of us, and none of us have gotten much sleep. Besides, you don’t report to the FBI. You report to my father.”

Adam shrugged off my reassurance. He was feeling sorry for himself, and I couldn’t really blame him. “If the FBI wants me gone, I’m gone. Reed talks to Violet, Violet talks to Tom, Tom kicks me to the curb. You know that’s how it goes.”

“I’ll talk to Agent Reed,” I promised him.

“It won’t do any good.”

“You don’t know that. And no matter what the FBI or Violet says, Dad’s not going to fire you for one mistake. He may read you the riot act, but that’s all. He knows you’re good at the job.”

Breezy showed up in front of me, bringing coffee and a short stack of blueberry pancakes. She looked as bright as the morning sunshine, her long hair was washed, her makeup was neatly done, and she had a spring in her step. I wasn’t sure if it was the prospect of another day of big tips or whether she’d gotten lucky last night. Or both.

“Adam telling you his tale of woe?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“He kept saying he was going to call that FBI guy, and I said, don’t do it! I tried to cheer him up, but he wanted to mope instead.” Breezy leaned over the counter until she was practically in Adam’s face. “And you know, Adam Twilley, most men like the way I cheer them up.”

“Knock it off, Breezy,” Adam fumed. “I’m not in the mood.”

I changed the subject before Adam blew up again. “So how’s Dudley? Back in the land of the living?”

“Yeah, for the moment. Kenny at the Witch Tree garage went over to my place yesterday and tinkered with the engine. I was able to get it started this morning. Of course, then I practically ran out of gas on my way in. I thought I had a spare tank in the shed, but no such luck. I was afraid Dudley was going to sputter out before I made it here.”

Breezy tended to ramble when she talked, so I tuned her out as I ate my pancakes. I had this strange habit of eating pancakes like the phases of the moon, and my breakfast was waxing gibbous when I heard Adam mutter a curse under his breath. His face looked gray as death. I followed his eyes and saw Agent Reed in the doorway of the diner. The FBI man wore a dark suit and had reflective sunglasses over his eyes. He beckoned me with his finger.

“Stay put,” I murmured to Adam. “Don’t say anything.”

I figured we didn’t need a confrontation between Adam and Agent Reed in front of a dozen reporters. As it was, questions about the investigation flew as soon as they spotted Reed, but he stood near the door without responding, as if he were stone deaf. I left my pancakes behind, threw some money on the counter, and hurried over to join him. He held the door open for me, and we stood on the sidewalk together outside.

“Good morning, Deputy Lake.”

“Hi. Listen, I hear that Adam left an unfortunate message for you last night, and I just want you to know—”

He cut me off. “If Deputy Twilley has anything to say, he can say it to me himself. Don’t fight his battles for him.”

“Sure. Of course.”

“We don’t have any time for distractions. There’s been a break in the case.”

I felt my heart rise into my mouth, giving me a bitter taste. I was afraid of what he would say next. “Did you find Jeremiah?”

Agent Reed shook his head. “No, but we found the missing F-150.”

The white truck was in a parking lot near the beach at Shelby Lake.

Obviously, this was an area I knew well. I’d spent many hours here throughout my life, looking out at the cove where my father had moored his boat between the trees and thinking about the strange circumstances that had brought him home to rescue me. This was my sacred place, the small lake that had been touched by God.

To everyone else in Mittel County, of course, it was just a quiet destination for avid fishermen like Dad or Adam and teenagers looking for a make-out spot where the cops wouldn’t find you. Its location wasn’t really all that far from Martin’s Point, where the truck had been stolen, but it felt remote compared to that busy tourist town. If you’d swiped a truck and wanted to party in a place where no one would find you, this was a good spot.

The same was true if you’d kidnapped a child.

In the early morning hours, the F-150 was the only vehicle in the parking lot. It was wet with leaves and pine needles that had been swept from the trees. The area was paved, so there were no tire tracks. An FBI forensics team surrounded the truck, examining it inside and out. Another team patrolled the beach, hunting for evidence of anyone who had been here, and still another team hunted through the park’s garbage cans.

At least twenty cops and volunteers were spread out through the surrounding forest, on a search for Jeremiah.

“Who found the truck?” I asked Agent Reed.

“A fisherman got here at dawn. He remembered the media reports about the F-150 and called it in.”

“Is there any way to tell how long it’s been here?”

Reed surveyed the parking lot with a frown. “No, our search grid hadn’t covered this area yet, so we don’t know when the truck was abandoned. Hopefully, someone will come forward and let us know whether they saw it in the parking lot in the last couple of days.”

One of the FBI forensic analysts, who was robed completely in white, called Agent Reed over for a conversation.

I stared at the F-150 and tried to connect the dots in my head.

On Friday morning, this truck had been parked half a block from Bonnie Butterfield’s ice cream parlor in Martin’s Point. It had been stolen sometime after eleven o’clock, and barely two hours later, the Gruders had spotted someone in a white F-150 near the spot where Jeremiah disappeared. Maybe it was this truck. Maybe not. Now it was Sunday morning, and the truck from Martin’s Point had been found abandoned in an area that was nowhere near the national forest.

Reed returned and peeled off his sunglasses. “There’s nothing in the truck.”

“No evidence that Jeremiah was inside?”

“No evidence that anyone was inside. The truck has been wiped down. No fingerprints anywhere, not even inside the flat bed. In your experience, are teenage joyriders that good at covering their tracks?”

“No.”

“Yeah, that’s what’s I think, too. Kids didn’t do this. It was a thorough job. Someone didn’t want us finding anything.”

“You think this is the truck, don’t you?”

“Without more evidence, we can’t be one hundred percent sure. But if you want to know what my gut tells me, then yes, this is the truck, and yes, it’s connected to Jeremiah’s disappearance.”

“What does that mean?”

Reed studied the searchers in the forest, pushing shoulder to shoulder through the underbrush. “If Jeremiah was inside that truck, then either someone brought him here to the lake after kidnapping him, or someone abandoned the truck here to throw us off the scent and make us search in the wrong place. Either way, I don’t like the fact that he’s done with it.”

I understood the implications.

If the kidnapper was done with the truck, then it was possible he was done with Jeremiah, too. Neither of us wanted to say it out loud, but I began to fear that we would never find the boy alive.

Sunday was already off to a bad start, and as Agent Reed and I stood near the waters of Shelby Lake, it only got worse. I heard the ping of a text arriving on my phone. It was Monica Constant sending me a message. I checked it and then gave Reed the news.

“The police in Stanton have found a body.”

Chapter Twenty-One

No, it wasn’t Jeremiah.

The body was Paul Nadler, the ninety-four-year-old Alzheimer’s patient who had wandered away from his nursing home on Friday morning. We’d feared for months that something bad would happen to Mr. Nadler when he made one of his escapes, and something finally did.

A river runs through the heart of Stanton. It’s not a big river like the Mississippi; it’s more of a creek that ebbs and flows with the rainfall. On Friday, when Mr. Nadler disappeared, it would have been a trickle under the Oak Street bridge, but on Saturday night, the heavy storm would have swelled it into a torrent racing through the land south of town.

The Oak Street bridge was only four blocks from Mr. Nadler’s nursing home. Anyone sitting under the bridge deck would have been invisible from the street, so it wasn’t a surprise that no one had found him. The Stanton police suspected that he’d died down there, and the next day, when the rains came, his body had been picked up by the swollen currents and tumbled downstream. An organic farmer driving into town for the Sunday open-air market had spotted Mr. Nadler’s body two miles south of town on the grassy riverbank beside the highway.

Nadler was dressed the way he’d been when he wandered away on Friday, in a blue button-down dress shirt, a plaid blazer with patches on the elbows, pleated tan slacks, and natty wing tips he’d probably owned for thirty years. His leather wallet was found still buttoned into his back pocket, and it contained twenty-six soggy dollars, a frequent-buyer punch card from a long-closed Stanton restaurant, and a laminated photograph of his late wife. His face in death was utterly peaceful.

The discovery of a dead body so soon after Jeremiah’s disappearance triggered Agent Reed’s rule that when two unusual things happen in close proximity, it was important to look for connections. As a result, the FBI forensics team took control of the death investigation and was planning to oversee the autopsy. However, there was no sign of foul play and no violence to the body other than the postmortem injuries of the river currents. To me, it looked as if Mr. Nadler had gone to sleep under the bridge and never awakened. All in all, in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t seem like a bad way to leave this world.

Even so, it made me sad. I was sad for Mr. Nadler dying alone. I wondered what he remembered of his life when he left and whether he had any thoughts about his family or friends. Most of all, I was sad because when I looked at the body on the riverbank, I didn’t see Mr. Nadler’s face. I saw my father’s face. I saw my proud, strong father stripped of who he was, unable to pick up a fork and tell you what it was used for. I had a vision of the future, and it filled me with dread.

“Do you need me here?” I asked Agent Reed.

“No, not for a while. Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“I thought I would walk the route from the nursing home to the river bridge and see if Mr. Nadler left anything behind.”

“Okay. That’s a good idea. Come back here when you’re done.”

But I could tell he knew that this man’s death meant more to me on a personal level than I was sharing. I was sure Violet had told him about my father, and it wasn’t a big leap from there.

I drove alone into the heart of Stanton, past the chain restaurants, past the Walmart. I found the three-story senior apartment building where Mr. Nadler had lived. It didn’t look much different from the outside than a building where twenty- and thirtysomethings would live. Two cars from the Stanton Sheriff’s office were in the parking lot, and no doubt they were breaking the bad news to the residents and staff.

I parked in front of the building and crossed the street. There was a mailbox, a bus stop, and a McDonald’s on the opposite side. One of the times Mr. Nadler had disappeared, he’d been found in the children’s playland inside McDonald’s, jumping with the kids in the bouncy castle.

Oak Street ran next to the McDonald’s through a leafy suburban neighborhood. As I walked on the sidewalk, the sun came and went through the trees. Death shouldn’t have been stalking such a perfect Sunday morning. Ahead of me, I could see the river bridge. It took me only a few minutes to get there on foot. I walked halfway out onto the bridge, then looked down over the railing at the swift waters below me. In the hours since the rain, the level had already dropped, but it was still a miniature version of whitewater rapids rushing around gentle curves toward the southern end of town. When I looked behind me, I could still see Mr. Nadler’s apartment building a few blocks away.

I retraced my steps to the riverbank and made my way down the grassy slope, which was wet and slick. A concrete walkway bordered the river, but the water level had risen above it. I peered under the bridge itself, trying to see between the support posts. Staying above the waterline, I side-stepped along the sharp slope of a retaining wall under the bridge deck. I was surprised to find someone sitting there, only inches away from the rushing water.

It was Dr. Lucas from the raptor center. He hadn’t noticed me yet. He was staring at the current as if he were hypnotized.

“Well, hello,” I said.

He looked at me when he heard my voice. I’d startled him, and he had to place me in his memory. “Oh. Hello. It’s Shelby, isn’t it? This is a surprise.”

“Yes, I didn’t expect to see you again so soon. How’s my owl?”

“I expect it to make a full recovery. The injury to the wing wasn’t serious.”

“That’s good. I’m glad to hear it.”

He took note of my uniform. “I’m sorry, Jeannie didn’t mention that you were with the police.”

“Mittel County, not Stanton. There was a body found downriver this morning. I’m here with the FBI to make sure there’s no connection to the missing boy from Everywhere.”

“Yes, I know about the body,” Lucas replied.

“Oh?”

“He was my grandfather. Paul Nadler. That’s my name, too. Lucas Nadler.”

I carefully slid down onto the concrete slope next to him. The river slapped loudly against the stone. It was darker and cooler here in the shadows of the bridge. “I’m so sorry. You mentioned your grandfather last night, but I didn’t make the connection. I don’t think Jeannie ever mentioned your last name.”

“Yes, that’s the vet world. I’m always Dr. Lucas, never Dr. Nadler. I prefer it that way, to be honest. It’s more personal.”

“Well, I apologize for pulling you away in the middle of a family crisis. I mean, to take care of the owl.”

“No, I was glad to do it. I needed to think about my work for a while and not about Grampa Paul. I’ve been a wreck since Friday, not knowing where he was. At least something like this reminds you how people pitch in to help. The police and the people at the facility have been great. Jeannie, too. The two of us drove all over town looking for him.”

“I know this didn’t end the way you were hoping. All I can say is, I saw his body. There were no signs of distress or pain.”

“Yes, I was there earlier when the Stanton police called me, and I thought the same thing. He looked as if he’d just slipped away. Still, I wish I’d been with him. The police think he probably came down here to the river from the nursing home, so I figured I’d come here, too. I figured maybe his spirit would be hanging around for a while. I suppose that sounds foolish.”

“No. It doesn’t.”

Lucas smiled at me. I thought the same thing I’d thought last night. He had a nice smile that went from his mouth all the way up into his blue eyes. His long blond hair was messy across his shoulders.

“I came back to Stanton because Grampa Paul needed help. I was hoping to take care of him myself, but by the time I moved here, it was obvious he needed more care than I could give. That’s why I moved him to the facility. It’s not a bad place, even though it can be awfully depressing.”

“We got the reports over in Everywhere every time Mr. Nadler wandered away. It seemed like they couldn’t keep track of him.”

Lucas laughed sadly. “Well, don’t blame them too much. Grampa Paul was like Houdini. An escape artist. We tried GPS trackers; he found a way to take them off. The elevators were locked out, but somehow he always managed to slip away from the dining room. The police would call when they found him, and I’d go talk to him wherever he was and take him back there. He hated it. He’d cry when I left. It broke my heart.”

It broke my heart, too.

“If you don’t mind a personal question, did he know who you were?”

Lucas’s face got a faraway look. “Occasionally. Just for a moment or two. Most of the time, no. I was in there somewhere, though. He’d talk about things we did together when I was a kid, but he didn’t realize that it was me sitting there with him. Still, I liked hearing the old stories. It was a comfort knowing there were bits and pieces of him that the disease hadn’t taken, even if he couldn’t connect them to reality anymore. He’d talk about this resort we used to visit during the summers, and for him it was like we’d just been there the previous weekend. Or he’d laugh about the ant farm he built for me and how all the ants got loose and sent my grandmother screaming out of the house. I remember when that happened. I was probably seven at the time. But he thought the two of them still lived in the old house. He’d ask me over and over where my grandmother was. To him, she was still alive. Still the most beautiful woman he’d ever met.”

“That’s sad, but it’s sweet, too.”

“Well, as I say, it was nice knowing the disease hadn’t wiped out everything.”

The two of us were quiet for a while. I was comfortable sitting with him. It occurred to me that he was one of the few people I’d met who had been through what was ahead for me. I didn’t like talking about it, but Lucas made me feel safe.

“My father,” I murmured.

He looked at me. “What about him?”

“It’s starting.”

Lucas understood immediately. “I’m so sorry, Shelby.”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

“How old is he?”

“Only fifty-five. It’s early onset. His parents went the same way.”

“There are things that can be done now to slow it down.”

“I know. We’ll explore everything.”

“Well, if I can help at all—”

“I appreciate it.” I checked my watch and saw that a lot of time had passed while I was sitting there. “I really need to go.”

“Of course.”

I pushed myself to my feet and brushed dirt off the slacks of my uniform. “What’s next for you? You came home because of your grandfather. Will you leave now that he’s gone?”

“No, I don’t think so. I like it here. I always have.”

“Well, good. And thank you again for taking care of the owl last night.”

“It was my pleasure.”

“Goodbye, Dr. Lucas.”

“Please, let’s drop the ‘doctor,’ okay?”

I smiled. “Okay. Lucas.”

“I really am sorry to hear about your father, Shelby. Believe me, I understand what you’re going through. If you’d like to talk more, I’m always happy to do that. Maybe we could meet for dinner sometime.”

It was a kind, generous offer that also sounded suspiciously like a date.

“Maybe we could,” I replied. “I’d like that.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Agent Reed and I had an hour alone as we drove back to Everywhere from Stanton, and I used the time to try to save Adam’s job. Yes, I knew he wouldn’t lift a finger to help me if the tables were turned, but I didn’t want to see him get fired for one stupid mistake. So I talked up Adam as much as I could, and Reed heard me out. Then, without a word, he took his phone from his pocket and played me the voicemail message. It was even worse than Adam had described it. He was obviously so drunk he could hardly talk, and I could hear the beat of the rain and rock music in the background as he tried to form his words. Most of what came out were four-letter obscenities. At some point, the reality of what he was doing must have dawned on him because he cut it off in midsentence. But the damage was already done.

“Well, that was bad,” I admitted, because there wasn’t anything else I could say.

Agent Reed didn’t react, other than a grim little smile. He simply put his phone back in his pocket. I was silent for the rest of the drive.

When we reached Everywhere, we went directly to the Sloan house. There was still a crowd of neighbors inside, helping the family. Trina was back, and she answered the door. She led us into the living room where Ellen and Dennis were waiting. Reed wanted to give them an update about the F-150 before news broke in the media. I knew the discovery didn’t bode well for finding Jeremiah, so when Reed asked to be alone with the Sloans, I was happy to bow out of the conversation. The three of them went downstairs. Trina and I left the other neighbors in the living room and went upstairs to see Anna, who was hanging out in Jeremiah’s bedroom.

The door to the boy’s room was at the end of the hallway. I headed that way, but Trina stopped me with a hand on my shoulder. We hadn’t turned on the light, so her face was in shadow. I didn’t see any emotion there, which wasn’t unusual. Even so, I knew she had something to say to me.

“Shelby, we haven’t told Anna about the cancer. Not yet.”

“I understand.”

“I just didn’t want you to say anything to her.”

“Of course. I won’t say a word. But she’s a smart kid, Trina. She already knows something’s wrong.”

“I know. I’d planned to tell her this weekend, but then, with Jeremiah—”

“Yeah. There’s never a good time.”

“No, there’s not.” Trina took both of my hands. “Listen, I have to ask you something. A favor.”

“Anything.”

“Hear me out before you say that. Look, I’m going to do whatever I need to do to beat this again. You know me, I’ll fight with every breath I have. But I’m a practical woman. I’m a coach, and being a coach means being prepared for every eventuality, including losing the game.”

“Trina—”

“No, wait. Listen to me. You know I don’t get sad about things. Life is what it is. I had to deal with all of this the last time it happened. I’m not afraid for myself, but I am afraid for Anna. You know how hard it is not having a mom. I worry about her going down the wrong path because I’m not there. So if the worst does happen, I’d like you to be there for her. I need to know she has someone. Not just her father; she needs another woman in her life.”

“You know I will. You don’t even have to ask.”

She squeezed my hands tightly. “Think hard about this, Shelby. I’m not saying be her friend. You’re already her friend. This is a very different kind of responsibility. And I know you’re likely to have your hands full with Tom.”

“Don’t worry about that. Don’t worry about anything except your fight. Focus on what you need to focus on. I’ll always be there for Anna. There’s never a question about that.”

If I didn’t know Trina as well as I did, I would have sworn that I saw tears in her eyes. She didn’t say anything more. With a cracked smile of gratitude, she waved me toward Jeremiah’s small bedroom. I walked down there, but Trina stayed in the hallway behind me. I understood that she couldn’t go inside. I tapped the door gently with my knuckles to alert Anna that I was coming in.

It was a boy’s room, painted midnight blue with posters of dinosaurs taped on the walls. The floor was messy with metal race cars and rainbow-colored Legos scattered around like land mines for bare feet. Jeremiah had dirty underwear and socks piled in the corner, and they had the slightly rancid smell of a boy who didn’t shower as often as he should. I saw an open can of yellow Wilson shuttlecocks tipped over on his dresser. It was easy to imagine Jeremiah in the campground, whacking one of those shuttlecocks with his badminton racket and chasing after it.

His bed was unmade. He had Jurassic Park sheets twisted into knots. Anna sat on the bed with her legs crossed. She had a pile of rocks in a plastic ice cream bucket in front of her that she was building into a column on top of a hardcover copy of a Rick Riordan book. The rocks were a shiny mixture of flat beach stones, all smooth as if they’d been polished and rounded by water.

I pulled a plastic chair over toward the bed and sat down in it. Anna didn’t look at me. She kept stacking rocks with a quiet intensity, choosing them carefully so they went one on top of the other. The tower in front of her was almost a foot tall. She had a look about her that said nothing in the world was more important than what she was doing at that moment.

“Hey, Anna,” I said softly.

“Hey, Shelby.”

“What are you doing?”

“This is a Karen.”

“A what?”

“A Karen. Last fall we went on a field trip. The teacher showed us how the Indians made Karens in honor of their ancestors by stacking stones together. Jeremiah and I thought it was cool.”

I smiled. “Oh, a cairn. Okay. So why are you making a cairn?”

The girl picked up each stone as if it were sacred. “They’re for dead people.”

“Are you talking about Jeremiah?”

“Yes.”

“Anna, we don’t know that Jeremiah is dead. You shouldn’t think that. We all hope he’s fine and will be back home really soon.”

Anna placed another rock, and she was careful and precise about it. When she was done, she shook her head. “No, he’s dead.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He told me.”

I glanced at the open door to the bedroom. I wanted to make sure no one else in the house had come upstairs to hear any of this. “Jeremiah told you he was dead? How did he do that?”

“He came to visit me when I was sleeping last night. He was all wet, like he’d been in the rain. He told me that he was dead but that it was okay and I shouldn’t feel bad. But I do. So I told him I would make a Karen for him.”

“Anna, that was just a dream.”

“No, Shelby. I saw him. He’s dead.”

She lifted one more stone out of the ice cream bucket and put it on top of the others, but her hand began to shake. This time, the tower of stones fell down over the book and onto the sheets. Anna frowned, and her lower lip trembled, but she didn’t cry. She picked up all of the rocks and put them back in the bucket, and then she chose two stones and started over.

“In your dream, did Jeremiah tell you what happened to him?”

“No. He didn’t talk about that.”

“Do you have any idea where he was?”

“In the woods.”

“Did you recognize the woods? Was it the national forest?”

Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. It was just somewhere in the woods.”

“Did you see anyone else? Was anyone with him?”

“No. He was alone, because he was dead. But there was a cross.”

“What?”

“A cross. He was standing next to a birch tree, and somebody had carved a big cross in the trunk of the tree, like with a knife or something.”

You may think I was crazy to ask her about these things, but there were worse places to look for answers than inside a child’s dream. Sometimes that’s how they share secrets when the real world is too scary for them. And I’ve always believed that dreams can carry clues, too. No matter what had happened between them, Anna and Jeremiah had been best friends. If he was going to find a way to send a message through anyone, it was her.

“Thank you for telling me about this, Anna, but how about we keep your dream between us. Okay? Can you do that? I think it would upset people to hear you talking about Jeremiah being dead.”

“I understand.”

“But it’s good that you told me. That’s the right thing to do. Remember what I said in the cemetery on Friday? You can tell me anything. It doesn’t matter what it is. I’ll always protect you no matter what.”

Anna put down the stone she was holding. She stared into the bucket of rocks, and then she finally looked up. Our eyes met. “No, Shelby. You can’t protect me. He’s going to get me.”

“What are you talking about? Who’s going to get you?”

“The Ursulina.”

I reached out and stroked her hair. “Oh, honey. Oh, is that what you think? Anna, the Ursulina isn’t real. It’s just a story. You shouldn’t believe it, and you shouldn’t be scared of it.”

“No, you’re wrong. It’s real. It came after Jeremiah, and it got him. And now it’s going to come after me next.”

“Why do you think that?”

The girl rubbed one of the stones from the cairn between her fingers, but she didn’t answer me.

“Anna?”

“I can’t say anything about that. It’s a secret.”

“A secret? What kind of secret? Anna, I really need you to tell me.”

“No, I can’t. We swore we wouldn’t say anything.”

My heart started beating a little faster. “Was this a secret between you and Jeremiah?”

“Yes.”

“Does this secret have anything to do with why you and Jeremiah aren’t friends anymore?”

She bowed her head and nodded.

“Anna, what happened? Please tell me.”

But the girl shook her head vigorously and pressed her lips shut.

“Well, can you tell me when this happened?”

“It was months ago. I don’t know when. The leaves were all over the ground.”

The leaves were falling.

Autumn.

I remembered Jeannie Samper telling me that her son Matthew babysat Jeremiah one night the previous fall. And that Matthew had found Jeremiah sitting out on the deck below his bedroom, terrified by something he’d seen.

“Anna, I heard that Jeremiah sneaked out of his room one night last fall. Do you know anything about that?”

Her eyes got wide with surprise, and I knew I was right. We were talking about the same night.

“Where did he go?”

“The woods,” she said after a long pause. “He went into the woods behind his house.”

“Did you go with him?”

“No! No! I didn’t do anything, I swear, I didn’t do anything!”

“It’s okay. You’re not in any trouble. What was Jeremiah doing? Why did he sneak out?”

Her eyes went to the window and then the open closet door, as if to reassure herself there were no monsters to be found.

“To hunt for the Ursulina,” she told me, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. “Remember last Halloween? You sang about it. And the man with no leg told that story.”

I closed my eyes and felt terrible, because I couldn’t help thinking that this was partly my fault. “Yes, I remember.”

“Jeremiah said if we found the Ursulina, we’d be famous. But I told him it was too dangerous. He said he didn’t care, he was going to find it all by himself.”

“And that’s what he did?”

“Yes.”

“And he didn’t tell anyone about it?”

“Just me.”

“Okay. Anna, what happened that night? Why was Jeremiah so scared when he got home?”

Anna grabbed a pillow and clutched it to her chest like a stuffed animal. “He was out there, and he saw — he saw—”

I spoke softly. “What did he see, Anna?”

“He saw it. He saw the Ursulina.”

A little sigh came out with my breath. “Anna, whatever Jeremiah saw, it wasn’t the Ursulina. Believe me. The Ursulina is a myth. It’s not real. The stories we told on Halloween, those were just funny things we made up.”

“No, Shelby. Jeremiah saw the Ursulina.”

“How do you know?”

Anna didn’t answer. Now she was crying.

“Anna? It’s okay. Tell me. Why are you so sure Jeremiah saw the Ursulina?”

The girl reached out and grabbed my hand. She whispered to me. “Because he saw it kill somebody.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

I went downstairs and found Ellen and Dennis Sloan, who were still with Agent Reed. Jeremiah’s parents were shooting silent, hostile stares across the room at each other, as if they were prize fighters on opposite sides of the ring. Since Friday, the stress of losing their son had already begun to split them apart.

I knew I was about to make it worse.

“I’m sorry to interrupt, but Anna Helvik told me something about Jeremiah that may be important.”

Ellen studied me with cool surprise. “Anna did?”

“Yes.”

“Anna and Jeremiah haven’t talked in months.”

“I know.”

Ellen looked at Agent Reed, as if inquiring whether he was going to allow me to get in the middle of this. As far as Ellen was concerned, I was just a young deputy who’d gotten a job because my father was the sheriff. But Agent Reed gave me the slightest nod, which was the signal to continue.

“Did the two of you know that Jeremiah sneaked out of his bedroom one night last fall?” I asked.

Ellen shook her head to dismiss the idea immediately. “Jeremiah? That’s ridiculous. He wouldn’t do that.”

But Dennis’s reaction on the other side of the room was different. He swallowed hard and looked away from his wife. Ellen noticed the uncomfortable expression on his face.

“Dennis?” she said sharply.

“I did know that,” he admitted.

“You did? Why didn’t you tell me about it?”

“I talked to Jer. He said he wouldn’t do it again. I figured we didn’t need to make a big thing of it.”

“Well, why did he sneak out? What was he doing?”

“It was stupid. It’s the kind of thing boys do. He told me he was hunting for the Ursulina. He and Anna were obsessed with it back then, remember?”

“You should have told me,” Ellen snapped. “I can’t believe you kept this from me.”

“I didn’t want to worry you.”

But I knew that wasn’t the real reason, and the real reason had to come out, regardless of the consequences for Dennis and Ellen.

“Mr. Sloan, how did you find out about this?” I asked.

Dennis’s flushed face got redder. I could see him thinking: Does she know?

“I caught Jer climbing back inside,” he replied. He quickly added with exasperation in his voice, “I don’t understand why you’re asking about this. It was last year. As far as I know, Jeremiah didn’t do it again. Believe me, I checked his room every night to be sure. How is any of this going to help you find my son?”

I realized that Agent Reed was right. People lie. They lie about everything. They lie to protect themselves. They lie even when their child’s life hangs in the balance.

“Mr. Sloan, I talked to Jeannie Samper. She told me what happened.”

Ellen looked at me with angry frustration, but I think she already suspected that I was opening a door that would be better left closed. “Jeannie Samper? From the raptor center? What does she have to do with any of this? Agent Reed, I think we’ve had just about enough of this nonsense.”

But Reed could see the stricken look in Dennis Sloan’s eyes. “Mr. Sloan? I think it would be better for all of us if you simply answered Deputy Lake’s questions.”

Dennis’s face was a mixture of shame and rage. “Fine. What do you want to know?”

“Did you ask Jeannie Samper if her son Matthew could babysit for you that night?”

“Yes.” His voice was like the crack of a bullet.

“Matthew Samper?” Ellen interrupted. “When was this? Where was I?”

I held up my hands. “Mrs. Sloan, let’s just try to get through this, okay? Mr. Sloan, you asked Matthew if he could stay here all night, isn’t that right?”

Dennis spat the word at me again. “Yes.”

“So you weren’t actually home when Jeremiah sneaked out?”

“No.”

The realization dawned on Ellen’s face, which turned gray as charcoal and just as hot. It’s one thing to hear rumors about infidelity. It’s another to have the truth thrown at you while your child is missing. I could see the wheels turning in her mind, and then she finally spoke.

“New Orleans, right?” she asked calmly with a cold glance at her husband. “I took Adrian with me on that trip. Is that when it was?”

Dennis hung his head. “Yes.”

“Who was it? Breezy? It’s always her. You’re always running back to her. How long has it been going on, Dennis? How many years?”

“Ellen, do we have to do this now?” Dennis pleaded. “What does it matter who it was? Yes, I was out all night. Yes, I wasn’t alone. It has nothing to do with Jeremiah.”

“Mr. Sloan, I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “but we really do need to verify your whereabouts that night.”

“Why on earth does that matter?”

I didn’t tell him anything more. I waited without explaining. I could see Agent Reed getting impatient with Dennis, too.

“Mr. Sloan, tell us where you were,” he barked. “Answer the question.”

“Fine. Whatever. I don’t know what difference any of this makes. Yes, I was with Belinda Brees.”

“In Witch Tree?” I asked.

“No. We went to a hotel in Martin’s Point. We spent the night.”

Ellen shot to her feet. I knew she wanted to storm away, but she didn’t. She needed to hear the rest. She needed to know why this was coming up now.

“When did you get home?” I asked Dennis.

“About ten the next morning. It was Sunday.”

“What did Matthew Samper tell you?”

“He said he checked Jeremiah’s room about one in the morning, and Jeremiah was gone. He searched the house and found him on our back porch. My son told him he was just out looking at the stars, but Matthew said he didn’t think that was true. So I talked to Jeremiah about it. Eventually, he admitted he’d gone out on this crazy expedition to find the Ursulina. I told him he could have gotten hurt and that he was never to do anything like that again. He swore to me he was done. As far as I know, that was that.”

“Was Jeremiah frightened when you talked to him?”

“Of course he was. Scared to death.”

“Did he say why?”

“He’s a little boy. He felt guilty that I’d found him out.”

“Is that all?”

“Yes, that’s all.”

“When was this?”

“Last fall. November.”

“What date?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Mrs. Sloan?” I asked quietly. “Do you remember?”

I could tell that Ellen had already guessed the truth, because she put her hand over her lips with a kind of frozen horror. “My conference was the weekend of the fourteenth.” Then she went on, as if we could read each other’s minds. “Is that possible, Shelby? Do you really think—?”

“Yes, I do,” I replied. “It was November fourteenth. That was the night Colleen Whalen was shot and killed. I think Jeremiah was there. I think he saw it happen.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

I finally did what I should have done months ago.

I confessed.

We were all gathered in the dark, dank sheriff’s office. Me. Dad. Monica. Adam. Violet. Agent Reed. Before we could start talking about what to do next, I told them that I had something to say. And that was when I laid it all out. I told them exactly what had happened on Halloween night during Ursulina Days. How Keith and I went back to his place together. How we talked. How we drank. How we had sex in the old barn with his wife asleep in the main house a quarter-mile away.

The face I didn’t want to see as I confessed was my father’s, but I had to look at him anyway. He had this sad, sad expression that was like a knife in my heart. I knew he was disappointed in me for what I’d done. The affair with a married man. And worse, concealing it when I knew things that might have changed the direction of a murder investigation. Keith Whalen’s marriage hadn’t been fine, no matter what he’d told us back then. He’d cheated with me only two weeks before her death. If Colleen knew, if she’d found out, if he’d told her, then he had a motive to kill her.

The next step in the investigation was to question Keith. Not just about Colleen, but about Jeremiah, too. If I was right that Jeremiah had seen Colleen Whalen being killed — if that was what had terrified him the night of November 14 — then Jeremiah was a witness to murder, and witnesses were always at risk. The question was what the boy had actually seen. Anna didn’t know. Jeremiah hadn’t told her who the Ursulina was. But Keith was the obvious suspect.

I wasn’t going to play a role in the interrogation. I knew that. My father was the natural person to question Keith, but Violet suggested in her usual pointed way that Dad’s relationship with me had poisoned his involvement in the case. He didn’t argue with her. I assumed Agent Reed would take over, but Reed thought a local cop should take the lead.

So that meant Adam would question Keith.

Adam jumped at the chance. He was hungry for an opportunity to prove himself after his drunken voicemail the previous night. Strangely, when I looked at him, I realized that he didn’t look like a kid anymore. He wasn’t James Dean on his motorcycle. The last couple of days had sobered and matured him. I felt the same way about myself. Maybe that’s what happens when you have to confront your mistakes.

We drove to Keith’s land, which was located down a dead-end road from the main highway. As the crow flies, we weren’t even a mile from where the Sloans lived. It was an easy hike through the forest for a ten-year-old boy. Keith wasn’t in the main house, but his car was outside the garage, so I guessed where he was. I led the parade over a shallow hill to Keith’s renovated barn.

It was midafternoon under bright sun, a beautiful day and humid enough to make me sweat and make my uniform stick to my skin. I stayed outside alone and listened to the raucous blackbirds while Adam and Agent Reed went inside. I didn’t think they would be there long. Once Keith realized that he was a suspect, I assumed he would ask for a lawyer and shut up. That was the smart thing to do.

But Keith was impulsive and had other ideas. I had only been waiting there for a couple of minutes when Reed returned and waved me toward the barn.

“I thought we agreed I shouldn’t be part of this,” I said.

“We did, but Whalen doesn’t want a lawyer. He wants you. He says he’ll talk to us but only if you’re there.”

I didn’t want to do it, but I went inside.

The barn assaulted me with memories, mostly bad ones. I remembered the jazz music playing, although it was silent now and every footstep echoed from the wood floor to the high ceiling. I could hear my guitar and feel the strings under my fingertips as I sang the Ursulina song. I could smell the mustiness of the barn and the peat of the whiskey we drank. I remembered the crackle and ash of the roaring fireplace and the smoke that burned my eyes. There, in front of the fire, was the white sheepskin rug where I’d made my foolish mistake.

Keith sat in a leather recliner, watching me. His eyes said that he knew what I was remembering, and he was remembering the same things. The rest of us took up chairs around him, and Adam sat in the middle like judge and jury. Adam removed his deputy’s hat with both hands and carefully placed it next to his chair. He smoothed the sleeves of his uniform and kept his black boots flat on the floor.

“Okay, Shelby’s here. Are you willing to talk to us?”

“Why not?” Keith replied. “I don’t have anything to hide. I didn’t kill my wife. I didn’t have anything to do with Jeremiah’s disappearance. I’ll save you the trouble and repeat what I told you eight months ago. I was at the lake all day. I came home late. It was nearly midnight. I found Colleen dead outside our house. She’d been shot. I called the police. That’s all I know.”

“Except you told us back then that there were no problems between you and Colleen. And now Shelby tells us that you and she slept together only two weeks before your wife was killed. That’s a pretty important detail to omit.”

Keith didn’t look surprised that I’d exposed our relationship. I wanted to sink down through the floor of the barn as I watched his face. I’d done the right thing, but I’d also betrayed him.

“Yes, Shelby and I slept together. That was a mistake. My mistake. It was a huge error of judgment on my part, and I take full responsibility for it. It happened one time and never again, but I shouldn’t have concealed it from you.”

“Was that the only time during your marriage that you were unfaithful?”

“Yes, it was.”

“Did you feel guilty about it?”

“Of course, I did.”

“Did you tell Colleen what you did?”

I watched Keith hesitate. “No.”

“You kept the affair from your wife?”

“Yes.”

“Did she suspect?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Do you think other people in town suspected something between you and Shelby?”

“I don’t know. I don’t see how they could.”

“Was there chemistry between the two of you? Were you attracted to her?”

Keith’s mouth was tight. “Yes. Obviously.”

“Was your wife there for the Halloween show?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think she could see the attraction?”

“I have no idea.”

“Were you acting strangely after the affair?”

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Don’t you think your wife knew that something was wrong?”

“I don’t know!” Keith retorted again.

He lost control for only a moment, but his outburst was like the ding in a windshield that begins to grow into a crack. Adam knew it, too. He was wearing Keith down with his questions.

“Let’s talk about Jeremiah. You told Shelby on Friday that you saw Jeremiah Sloan on your property several times this year. He would come up to the house and the barn.”

“That’s true.”

“Why did he do that?”

“I have no idea.”

“But you knew the boy.”

“Of course.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“Sometimes.”

“What did you talk about?”

“Nothing of consequence. He said he was out exploring. I didn’t think anything of it.”

“Did he mention anything about the Ursulina?”

“The Ursulina?” Keith shot me a puzzled look. “No.”

“Did he say anything about being near your house on the night your wife was killed?”

Keith’s eyes widened with concern. “No.”

“And yet Shelby says you were afraid you would become a suspect in Jeremiah’s disappearance.”

“Yes, I did say that.”

“Why would you be afraid of that if you did nothing wrong?”

“Well, here we are, Adam. Does that answer your question?”

“We’re getting a warrant to search your property. What are we going to find when we do that?”

“Nothing.”

“Are we going to find Jeremiah?”

“No, that’s crazy.”

“If the boy’s here, it would be better to tell us now.”

“I don’t know what happened to Jeremiah. I had nothing to do with his disappearance. You can look all you want.”

Adam stared down at a folder in his lap. “I reviewed the notes from when we talked after Colleen’s murder last fall. Do you still take psychotropic medications in conjunction with PTSD from your military service?”

“Yes.”

“Did you take any of those medications on the day your wife was killed?”

“I’m sure I did. I take them every day. I told you that.”

“Do you still suffer from night terrors?”

“Yes.”

“The leg you lost. Does it hurt? Your back, your neck?”

“Yes.”

“In fact, you’re in almost constant pain, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Does that take an emotional toll on you, too?”

“Yes.”

I felt as if I were watching the drip-drip-drip of a water torture. Keith was calm, but each question chipped away at his psyche, which wasn’t all that strong to begin with. He needed this interview to end. I could see him glance at me in frustration as if I could rescue him from this, but I couldn’t.

This would only end with him telling us what he’d done. When I looked into his eyes, I knew he was hiding things. That was the problem I’d had from the beginning. I knew him too well.

Adam shook his head in sympathy. He was Keith’s friend now. He scooted his chair closer and leaned forward.

“Look, Keith, I know the burden you’re carrying. You went through hell overseas, physically and emotionally. I get it. I respect it. Like you say, you’re in pain every day. All kinds of pain, the kind that the rest of us can’t appreciate. Colleen couldn’t appreciate it, could she? She didn’t understand. She wanted to, but she didn’t. And you wanted to be the husband she needed, but you couldn’t do that either, could you?”

Keith didn’t take his eyes off me. Adam was talking, but Keith was looking at me. Like he needed me to offer him some kind of absolution. I found it hard to stare back at him, but I did. I knew I was the one who could break him, and I had no choice.

I mouthed: Tell them.

Then again: Tell them.

And he did.

“Okay,” Keith murmured, opening up the floodgate. The water came crashing through. “You’re right. I couldn’t be the husband that Colleen needed. I never could. She was never happy.”

“Because of you.”

“Yes.”

“You had a bad marriage, and it was your fault.”

“Yes, it was.”

“You blamed yourself for putting your wife through hell, and then you went and cheated on her.”

Keith blinked over and over. “Yes, I did.”

“That made you feel guilty.”

“Of course.”

“Did you lose sleep over it? Did you lay awake thinking about it?”

“Yes.”

“It was like a constant weight in your gut making you sick.”

“Yes, it was.”

“So what did you do?”

Keith said nothing. His breathing came faster and faster.

“Did you tell her?” Adam asked.

I saw sweat on Keith’s face. He still said nothing, but his emotions began to come apart.

“I think you told her,” Adam went on. “Come on, Keith. November fourteenth. You told Colleen what you did. You told her about the affair. You couldn’t stand the burden anymore. You couldn’t keep the secret. So you told her. Right?”

Keith inhaled and held his breath. The seconds ticked by, and he didn’t breathe.

Then he finally spoke.

“Yes, I told her.”

I looked away in disgust. With him. With myself. Of course he’d told her. Of course he’d lied about it to me. He’d lied about everything.

“You admit you told her about the affair,” Adam went on coldly.

“Yes.”

“Was it that day? November fourteenth?”

“Yes.”

“The two of you argued.”

“Yes.”

“She was hurt. Devastated.”

“Yes, she was.”

“She went to Stanton. You were apart all day.”

“That’s right.”

“And when she came home, you kept arguing, and you lost control, and you shot your wife.”

“No, I didn’t do that.”

“You took the gun — your gun — and you killed her.”

“No.”

“Did you see Jeremiah? Did you know he was watching?”

“I didn’t see him, because I wasn’t there.”

“When did you find out that he knew what you’d done?”

“I never found out anything like that. That’s not the way it happened.”

“Keith, you’ve told us the truth about everything else. Why lie to us now?”

“I didn’t kill Colleen!” Keith’s voice rose as he denied it again. I couldn’t resist staring at him. I had to see his face. “Look, I know you don’t believe me. Yes, I had a bad marriage, it was my fault, I cheated on my wife. She was going to leave me and divorce me. All of that’s true. But I didn’t kill her. It wasn’t me. I came home from the lake and found her dead.”

Adam shook his head, as if Keith were a child making up a lie. “A burglar shot her? Really? You’re sticking with that?”

“It’s the truth,” he told us, and his eyes begged me to believe him.

But I didn’t.

I didn’t believe him.

All those months later, I finally accepted what had been in front of me from the beginning.

I’d slept with a man who killed his wife.

Chapter Twenty-Five

The next day, we searched under a sky blanketed with clouds. We searched for Jeremiah.

The FBI canvassed Keith’s house, barn, and land. Dozens of agents hunted for DNA, blood, hair, fiber, and fingerprints that would tell us whether Jeremiah had been there. They looked for freshly turned earth and the ash of fires that could be sifted for bones. Dogs traveled the land with their noses to the ground, sniffing for the smell of a body buried underground.

Keith limped back and forth throughout the search, wearing a path in the damp grass. Every now and then, he looked at me, and I looked back at him. Whatever feelings we’d had for each other were gone.

We’d cordoned off the road to Keith’s house. Beyond the police tape, dozens of people spied on the search. There had been no official announcement, but news of what was going on spread faster than a virus here. The whole town had gotten the word that Keith Whalen was a person of interest in the murder of Colleen Whalen and in the disappearance of Jeremiah Sloan. Ellen and Dennis were among the crowd outside, holding a vigil for their son.

I was still an outcast. I wondered if I’d still have my job soon. My father could only protect me so far. At first, I stayed near the barricade on the dirt road to keep the search area secure, but it was obvious that rumors had spread about me, too, and I heard an undercurrent of nasty gossip with my name on it. Ellen Sloan’s stare was icy, as if the loss of her son was my fault. I was upset to think she might not be entirely wrong. If I’d said something earlier, if I’d admitted the affair when we first began investigating Colleen’s murder, then maybe things would have turned out differently.

Eventually, I asked one of the other deputies to take my place, and I simply waited on the high fringe of Keith’s property to watch the evidence being gathered. The morning passed slowly, and so did half the afternoon. A spitting drizzle made the day miserable. My hair, my face, my uniform were all wet.

Still the FBI swept the land and carried out bags of material to be analyzed in their lab. I wasn’t sure if I was more concerned that they would find something or that they would find nothing at all.

Late in the day, my father came and found me on the hill. We hadn’t talked since my revelations the day before. I felt sick to my stomach about what he would say. He stood next to me as we observed the search going on below us, and I waited out his silence with desperate impatience.

“Am I fired?” I asked when I couldn’t take the tension anymore.

Dad tugged at his mustache. “What do you think? Should I fire you?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want to be fired?”

“No.”

“Well, take it easy. You’re not fired. I’ll have to reprimand you. A formal letter will go in your file. And I think a suspension of some kind is in order. You made a very serious mistake, Shelby. You concealed important information about a suspect in a murder investigation.”

“I know.”

“I expect better from you.”

“Yes, sir.”

“More to the point, you should expect better from yourself.”

I didn’t reply. I didn’t have to. He knew I felt the sting of his words. And he wasn’t done with me.

“I’m not going to be sheriff forever, Shelby. We both know that. The next election is in November, and Violet has already suggested that I should step down gracefully. That’s what I’m inclined to do. You know I was hoping to be here long enough that you could run to succeed me, but obviously you’re not ready for that.”

The truth hurt.

“Obviously.”

“I love you, Shelby. I’m sorry.”

“I love you, too, Dad. Don’t be sorry. This was my screwup.”

My father walked away down the sloping grass. I watched him go, and I knew I would always remember how he looked at that moment, still in control of his world for a little while.

After he left, I couldn’t stay there. I had to go. I turned around and hiked through the long grass until I couldn’t see Keith’s house or barn anymore. His land went on for many more acres, but the woods took over. I saw a rough trail matted down in the underbrush, and I followed it. I knew where I was. I could keep going for less than a mile and arrive where the Sloans lived. This was the route Jeremiah would have taken, flashlight in hand, on November 14. I’d always thought of him as a shy follower, not a brave kid, but there he was, alone at night, out looking for the Ursulina. Just like I’d done at the same age.

I’d been on this trail many times myself over the years. Sometimes I’d come here alone, sometimes with Rose, sometimes with Trina and the rest of the Striker girls. I recognized old-growth trees that had been here my whole life. I saw glacial rocks where I used to sit and listen to the birds. If you dug down under the moss, you’d find places where I’d scratched my initials.

Another quarter mile took me to the place we called Black Lake. It was the haunted lake in the valley with the trees sprouting from the water, where we would dare each other to swim after we told scary stories about what was lurking below. The wind scraped low branches across the lake’s surface and caused ripples. By the shore, I saw a high boulder we used to climb to jump into the water. I could still hear the echo of our squeals and screams. I climbed the boulder again, like I used to do when I was a kid. It was high enough for you to think you were queen of the world up there. You could see the whole lake edge to edge, and it was really just a large pond, barely a hundred yards across. Part of me thought about taking off my clothes and jumping in the way I had years ago. But I didn’t.

Below me, I saw a clearing where we would lay after swimming. You couldn’t really call it a beach, because there was no sand, just a few feet of low weeds where we would spread out our towels.

When I looked closely, I saw something in the clearing.

What I saw made me jump down the sheer side of the boulder near the water, almost twisting my ankle in the process. I fought through an overgrown patch of snakeroot and broke into the open, and there they were.

Stones.

Towers of stones.

At least two dozen of them, made of the kind of flat gray rocks I’d seen in a plastic bucket in Jeremiah’s bedroom. Some of the towers were only a few inches high; others had tumbled over and lay in piles; others had somehow survived the wind and rain to stay standing a foot or more above the weeds. I knew what these were. These were cairns.

Built for the dead.

I had no doubt that Jeremiah had built them. He’d seen a woman killed on this land, and this was his way of making peace with it. But it wasn’t just the stones themselves that caught my eye. Something sparkled in the brush near one of the cairns, as if it had been placed atop the tower and fallen down. It was shiny even under the dark sky and the thick cover of trees. I knelt and stared at it. It was a ring, made of yellow gold, with a single large square-cut diamond mounted in the center.

A wedding ring.

I put on a plastic glove from my pocket and picked up the ring to examine it. There was no inscription. Nothing to identify its former owner. Even so, I knew whose finger it had been taken from. Hurriedly. In the dark. While her dead body was still warm.

When I looked at the still surface of the lake, I also knew what we would find when we searched under the water. The stories of Black Lake hiding something horrible were true.

Colleen Whalen’s jewelry had never been stolen by a burglar.

It had been here the whole time.

You see, Keith made a mistake.

Panicked people covering up crimes often do.

He’d put all of his wife’s jewelry in a plastic bag that night. His expensive dress watch, too. Maybe if he’d disposed of the pieces separately, we wouldn’t have found them, but when the FBI dragged the silty, muddy lake bed, they located the plastic bag, filled with water under its loose knot. Everything Keith had removed from their bedroom was still inside.

I imagined him frantically gathering up things that night to make us believe that a thief had killed Colleen. But would a thief leave her diamond ring behind? No. So he ripped it off her finger as he was heading for the woods and must have shoved it carelessly in his pocket. Somewhere on his way to the lake in the darkness, he’d lost the ring. And sometime after that, Jeremiah had found it.

But Colleen’s jewelry wasn’t the only thing that Keith had hidden to get away with murder and hide his guilt.

He’d put the gun in the bag, too.

The gun that killed her.

With that discovery, we finally had everything we needed to solve Colleen’s murder. Dad arrested Keith Whalen and took him away. Soon enough he would be headed to trial and then headed to prison. I was pretty sure that he would never be coming home.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Looking back, I think of the search for Jeremiah in two phases. The beginning and the end.

I say that with the perspective of time, because like I told you, all of this happened more than ten years ago. I’m no longer the young twenty-five-year old I was then. I didn’t know it at the time, but with the arrest of Keith Whalen, the beginning was about to be over. There was never really a middle in this case, just years of nothingness. And the end — well, the end was still a long way into the future.

Six weeks after Jeremiah disappeared, school began again without him. Summer was over. Life was moving on for everyone in town. The FBI had left town three weeks earlier with the case still formally unsolved. There were no more volunteers filling up the motels. The media had long since let the mystery fall out of the headlines. News feeds the beast, and when there’s no news to report, the beast moves on to new territory.

It’s not like we were going to forget Jeremiah, but there comes a point in every investigation where there are simply no more clues, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t create them. You can keep the file open. You can pull it out every few months and read it again and try to think of things you’ve missed. And then you realize that all you can do is put the file back and wait. Wait for something to happen. Wait for a break in the case that might never come.

I could see all that ahead of us as I sat in the Nowhere Café that September night with Dad, Monica, and Adam. We were finally getting back to our old routines. I was texting Jeannie Samper about my next volunteer shift at the raptor center. Monica was reading spicy excerpts of a romance novel to Moody in his urn. Adam was flipping through the pages of a motorcycle magazine. Dad had his newspaper open to the crossword puzzle.

“A destination for the well-meaning traveler,” he announced to the three of us as he twirled a sharpened pencil in his hand. “Four letters. Anyone? Any ideas?”

I was the only one paying attention. “Do you have any of the letters, Dad?”

“I don’t.”

I thought hard about the clue, but that’s the worst way to solve a puzzle. You can’t force it, you have to let it come to you. Sooner or later, at the strangest times, the answers would pop into my head, long after they didn’t matter anymore.

A destination for the well-meaning traveler. I had nothing.

Dad waited until it was obvious that I couldn’t help him, and then he buried himself in the other clues of the crossword again. He looked oddly free. Ever since he’d decided not to run for reelection, a burden had been lifted from him. He no longer had anything to prove. It had been good for his mind, too, without the stress. He was a little sharper. He’d had fewer incidents. All that was good. But I was under no illusions about where this was going, and neither was he.

I saw Breezy behind the counter wielding a knife on a cherry pie. She wandered over to our booth with a slice of pie à la mode for Adam. He hadn’t ordered it, but she knew what he liked. She wore a big red button on her jean shirt that read Sheriff Twilley. Adam had been passing them out for weeks.

“On the house,” she told him with a wink. “Or is that too much like a bribe now that you’re going to be a big shot and all?”

A satisfied grin crept across Adam’s face as he cut into the pie with his spoon. “We’ll just call it a campaign contribution.”

Yes, Adam was going to be my new boss. I’d made my peace with that. Only days after my father announced he was stepping down, Adam had let me know that he was running to replace him. His mother was happy to see him doing something important with his life. Most of us thought he was still too young, but he had the advantage of being the only candidate interested in the position. He’d also courted Violet Roka, and Violet had persuaded the county board to endorse him. So we all knew the job was his. Being young wasn’t necessarily a problem. Dad had been young when he got the job, too.

I had a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of Sheriff Twilley, but I hoped he’d grow into it. I had to admit he’d changed over the course of the summer. I hadn’t seen him with a drink since he launched his campaign. He’d dialed back the sexual innuendo and flirting with every girl he met, including me. He’d even asked my opinion on a case a couple of times. All in all, this was a new Adam. I guess sometimes the position makes the man.

Was I disappointed that Adam’s decision meant I wouldn’t be sheriff of Mittel County myself? Not really. I’d never been ambitious in that way. Dad had been hoping to hand the keys to me, but I didn’t care. Anyway, I had his health to think about. I had Trina and Anna to think about, too, because Trina wasn’t doing well. My life was going to be busy enough.

So you see, we were all moving on.

I listened to the murmur of talk in the diner that night, and I realized I hadn’t heard Jeremiah’s name once. Not once. That was a first. The talk was about the new school year, the end of the state fair, the end of summer, the grouse hunting season, the announcement that Rose was putting the Rest in Peace up for sale, and the lineup of country concerts at the Indian casino near Stanton.

But not Jeremiah.

Most locals thought they already knew what had happened to Jeremiah. To the police and FBI, the case was still open, but not to the people here. They blamed Keith Whalen. He was guilty. If you murdered your wife, it wasn’t a big leap to imagine killing a child to cover it up. You could have surveyed anyone in the diner that night, and they would have told you that Keith had discovered that Jeremiah saw him shoot Colleen. Maybe the boy had confessed it one of the times he’d wandered up to Keith’s house. Or maybe Keith had seen the boy and his cairns near Black Lake and asked him why he was building those little towers of stone on his land.

However it happened, Keith found out. So he kidnapped Jeremiah and killed him and hid his body in one of those remote places in the north woods that no one would ever find. Maybe Anna’s dream was right and he’d carved a cross on a birch tree near the grave, too.

Jeremiah wasn’t coming back. The man who’d killed him was already in jail. The people of Everywhere were ready to put this tragedy behind them and start living their lives again.

But first, Jeremiah had to be avenged.

First, the past had to be erased.

As the four of us sat in the booth at the Nowhere, Monica’s phone rang. Her emergency phone. She answered it, her face fell, and she looked at us with an expression that said we should all have been expecting this.

“Fire,” she said.

The flames had already consumed most of Keith’s house by the time we got there. Even from a hundred yards away, I felt the ferocious heat on my face. Gray smoke billowed against the black sky, and we had to cover our mouths and noses to keep the poison out of our lungs. Ash fell around us and floated like snow in the air. Night turned to day. The crackle of burning wood sounded like the growl of the Ursulina.

As I watched, the roof of the house caved inward and the walls bent and collapsed in mountainous showers of sparks. On the other side of the shallow hill, I saw a second plume of smoke, where the barn burned, devouring my memories. There was nothing to be done. None of it could be saved. The firefighters used their water on the surrounding grass and trees to keep the flames from spreading to the forest. Fortunately, the wind barely moved that night, and after a while, a light drizzle began to fall, sizzling into steam as it tamped down the flames.

Six teenagers sat in handcuffs in the back of two of our cruisers. They were all boys from the high school. Adrian Sloan was among them. We’d caught the kids as they were scrambling to escape the scene. They’d stayed too long to watch their handiwork. I knew they’d be punished, but I didn’t think a judge would be too harsh with minors, not when one of them had lost a brother. They’d probably get community service. After a while, their records would be cleared, and we’d all get on with the business of forgetting that Keith Whalen had ever lived in Everywhere.

I stood there for hours that night, hypnotized by the fire. Even after it was out, I stayed. We had to make sure it didn’t catch again, and I was one of the volunteers who spent the entire night watching over the hot, soggy funeral pyre. When it was safe enough to get close, I walked the perimeter with my flashlight to see if anything had escaped. Any little piece of Keith and Colleen. I did the same at the barn. But the fire had been thorough and consumed everything except a few scorched beams and shards of melted glass.

Was this justice?

All I can tell you is what I believed that night. I believed that Keith lied to me. I believed he murdered his wife and covered it up, and I believed that twelve good men and women would pronounce him guilty. Was it an accident? Was it a crime of passion that got out of control? Was it a burst of rage that bubbled up out of the horrors of his past? Possibly. That was up to the judge and jury, and they could decide how long he would spend behind bars. Either way, he would pay for his crime.

But Jeremiah?

Call me naive if you want, but I wasn’t convinced that Keith Whalen had really taken that boy. If he had, we would have found Jeremiah’s body hidden under the water of Black Lake, like the evidence of Colleen’s murder. But we didn’t find him there.

No.

We hadn’t solved the mystery yet. We didn’t know the truth about Jeremiah. Back then, I wasn’t sure we would ever know what really happened.

I remember wandering alone beside the remnants of the fire that night. You could say it’s burned into my memory. As I picked my way beside the ruins, I said one word aloud to myself. Just one word. Otherwise, I was quiet, feeling awed by the devastation.

“Hell,” I murmured, staring at the scene.

There was plenty in that twisted panorama of destruction to remind me of hell, but actually, I was thinking about Dad’s crossword puzzle. Like I told you, the answers usually come at the strangest moments, long after you’ve given up.

Hell.

The destination for a well-meaning traveler was hell. That was the where the road of good intentions usually led us.