The Ursulina

Chapter One

When you’re the only woman deputy in the county sheriff’s department, and it’s Christmas Eve, who do you think is the lucky one who pulls the overnight shift? Yes, it was me.

The snow fell in huge flakes, promising us a white Christmas at the end of a brown December. Around ten o’clock that Monday evening, I was alone in my cruiser on the back roads of Black Wolf County, singing along to a cassette of Mitch Miller carols that my father had sent me from a truck stop somewhere in Wyoming. My brother was away in the oil fields of Texas. I was lonely and fighting a cold and trying to take my mind off the fact that my life was falling apart.

This was 1984. I’m sure you can do the math. You were still almost a year away from being born.

You might think the holiday would make for a quiet night on patrol, but you’d be wrong. Christmas does weird things to people. My first call was to deal with Darius Stedman, who was moonwalking to Michael Jackson on the boom box, in the parking lot of the 126 Bar. Mr. Stedman was wearing a Santa hat and only a Santa hat. The temperature was seven degrees outside, and body parts freeze pretty quickly in that kind of weather. So I turned on the siren and went screaming toward the 126 to make sure that Mr. Stedman’s various appendages didn’t start snapping off.

It’s not like he was a regular in the county drunk tank. We had plenty of those. No, he was forty-three years old, a solid citizen, and my former high school science teacher. I liked him. However, he’d lost his wife to a heart condition over the summer, and the holidays have a way of bringing those things roaring back, particularly when alcohol is involved. When I got to the 126, a crowd of bar-goers was cheering as Mr. Stedman danced to “Billie Jean.” Ricky, my husband of four years, was among them, but we ignored each other like strangers. I broke up the party, wrapped Mr. Stedman in a blanket, and took him back to his house to thaw him out and sober him up. He spent the next half hour sobbing to me about his wife over coffee.

It made me think how nice it must be to love someone so deeply that it hurts that much to lose them. I’d never experienced an emotion like that, and I wouldn’t until the following year.

Until you, sweetheart.

I left when Mr. Stedman finally fell asleep on his sofa. I had to drive by the 126 on my way back to the station, so I decided to stop to talk to Ricky. I was sure he was still at the bar. He was always there, drinking up my county salary and flirting with the eighteen-year-old waitresses. The 126 was our local dirty dive. It took its name from its location on Highway 126 about ten miles outside the county seat, a town called Random. During the summers, they had strip nights and wet T-shirt contests. Dart games turned into knife fights. Cocaine was snorted in the bathroom. And yet almost everyone in the county, from parents to preachers, came in for pizza and drinks at the 126 several times a week, because there was nowhere else to go.

Sundays were typically movie night at the bar, and that always drew a crowd. Yesterday, they’d shown Trading Places, which Ricky didn’t want to miss because of Jamie Lee Curtis and her boobs. I’d used my cold as an excuse to skip it, but Ricky and I had also had a big fight before he went off to see the movie. I’d lost my cool and said things I never meant to say out loud.

Like using the D word — divorce — for the first time.

It had been almost two years since Ricky got fired from the mine for assaulting his supervisor. With no unemployment, we were barely scraping by, and we’d only made the December mortgage payment because my dad gave me two hundred dollars. January was coming and the mortgage was due again, and Ricky was no closer to finding work. However, the fight was less about him and less about money than it was about me. I was struggling with Big Things. Who I was. The mistakes I’d made. What I needed to do to reclaim my life. More and more, I was thinking about a future without Ricky, but the time to say so wasn’t in the midst of an argument while we were both drunk and angry. So that Monday night, with it being Christmas Eve and all, I decided to stop at the bar and see if we could make peace, at least for the holidays.

Despite my good intentions, though, I didn’t get a chance to see him. Another call came in before I even made it back to the 126, so I had to change my plans. This time, the call came from Sandra Thoreau.

I usually heard from Sandra a couple of times a month about vandalism at her house. She was the lead plaintiff in a sexual harassment lawsuit that two dozen women had filed against the Langford copper mine, and given that the mine was the largest employer in the county, Sandra wasn’t exactly popular. The men around here made sure she knew it. She’d had obscene graffiti scrawled on her house so many times that she didn’t even bother to remove it anymore. In fact, she’d been adding to it herself by painting anatomically correct drawings of some of the lesser-endowed mine workers, with their names attached. Her motto was to give as good as she got.

I found Sandra sitting on the open tailgate of her pickup when I got to her house. She wore a long, fraying wool coat over a blue nightgown and had a cigarette between her lips and a can of Old Style in her hand. When she exhaled, steam and smoke mixed together in the frigid air. She wore earmuffs over her greasy brown hair and worn moccasins on her feet. Behind her, I could see that the front and back windows of her truck had been shattered by what was probably a shotgun blast. Broken glass littered the fresh snow, and the bits of glass twinkled thanks to the blinking Christmas lights that decorated her house.

“Merry Christmas, Rebecca,” Sandra greeted me. She flicked a chunk of glass off the tailgate like a cat’s-eye. “Ho ho ho.”

“The elves have been busy,” I said. “Did you see who did this?”

“I could give you some guesses, but no, I didn’t see them. I was in bed and heard the shot. By the time I got outside, they were gone. I could hear tires screeching up the highway.”

“Is Henry okay?”

“Yeah, he slept through it. That kid could sleep through a tornado.”

Henry was Sandra’s eight-year-old son. Yes, no kidding, Henry Thoreau. I was pretty sure Sandra had never read Walden and that she’d picked the name Henry because of Henry Winkler and the Fonz. But it was still funny.

Sandra was a single mother and absolutely devoted to that boy. Nobody around here knew who Henry’s father was, and to tell you the truth, I’m not even sure if Sandra did, either. She’d slept her way through most of the men in Black Wolf County, married or not, so there were plenty of suspects. But raising a kid on her own was no picnic, and that was why Sandra had taken a job at the mine seven years earlier. It paid well, and she needed the money. After she blazed the trail there, other women followed. Unfortunately, in the eyes of a lot of people around here, women working at the mine were taking badly needed jobs away from the men.

You can probably guess that they felt the same way about a woman working as a sheriff’s deputy. So while Sandra was no angel, the two of us had some things in common. As different as we were, she was one of my favorite people. It took guts to stick it out at the mine and even more guts to complain about how the men treated her. In those days, sexual harassment wasn’t something women took to court. The dirty jokes, the daily come-ons, the innuendos about sex lives and periods, the leering looks, the wolf whistles, the little touches and massages, the comments about legs and boobs and asses — that was just the ordinary price of being a woman at work.

“Have you had any threats recently?” I asked her.

Sandra shrugged. “What day is it?”

I walked around her truck but found no useful evidence to tell me who’d done this. I stood near Sandra’s modest rambler and put my hands on my hips to survey the long driveway and the highway between the trees. Snow had begun to turn the pines into white soldiers. There were tire tracks where a car had pulled up behind the pickup, but they weren’t clear enough to help me. Like Sandra, I could probably name twenty boys around here who might have pulled a stunt like this, but I’d never be able to prove it.

“If you didn’t see anybody, I can’t really do much except write it up,” I admitted.

“I know. I wouldn’t have bothered to call you, except Norm says I should report everything. He wants a record of it for the trial.”

“Yeah, okay.”

Norm Foltz was the local lawyer handling the litigation for Sandra and the other women working at the mine. They were trying to turn their harassment claims into a class action lawsuit, and although the mine had been trying to shut down the case for more than three years, Norm had finally beaten the skeptics by getting the class certified. The betting at that point was whether the mining company would offer a settlement or take its chances at trial. I had my money on a trial. The mine owners hated these women, Sandra in particular, and they were out to win.

I heard the static of the radio in my car. More Yuletide cheer was waiting for me somewhere in the county. “I’ll write up a report and send you a copy. You can pass it along to Norm.”

“Thanks.” Sandra lit another cigarette; she was in a mood to talk. “I heard you and Ricky got into it. Money problems, huh?”

“Good news travels fast.”

“Well, everybody was talking about it during the movie last night.”

“I don’t care about gossip,” I replied.

“Well, you can say that now, but I know what it feels like to be on the receiving end. Believe me, honey, the games can get pretty mean.”

“I know.”

I headed for my car, but Sandra called after me. “Hey, Rebecca? Aren’t you going to ask me where I was?”

“What do you mean?”

“I heard Gordon Brink’s little blond ice queen got the full Carrie treatment. Somebody nailed her with a gallon of pig’s blood. I sort of figured I’d be the prime suspect, what with Brink representing the mine. But you never came to see me.”

“Did you do it?”

“No. I was in the pit all day.”

“Yeah, I checked,” I told her. “That’s why I didn’t bother coming to see you. I don’t suppose you know who did do it?”

“Absolutely no idea,” Sandra replied, snickering through her cigarette smoke. “But I’m just sick about it.”

“I can see that.”

I started for my cruiser again, my boots crunching in the snow, but Sandra wasn’t done.

“Rebecca?” she said, with sharpness in her voice. “Don’t feel sorry for Brink or his wife or any of those bastards. They killed my dog. I didn’t report it, but that’s what they did.”

“Are you sure?”

“I let Pogo out two weeks ago when I got home from work. He never came back. We never saw him again. You try explaining that to a sobbing eight-year-old boy. The mine people and their lawyers are sons of bitches. I hope every one of them rots in hell.”

Sandra wiped a tear from her face. She liked to pretend that she was hard as nails, because as soon as the men at the mine smelled weakness, they’d be all over her. But I knew that, deep down, much of her toughness was an act. I knew, because I often had to wear the same disguise in the sheriff’s department.

“I’m sorry about Pogo,” I told her gently, “but you know, we lose a lot of animals around here. This is wild country. It doesn’t necessarily mean it was Gordon Brink or the people at the mine.”

“The next day at work, I found a bag of doggy treats in my locker,” Sandra went on.

I shut my mouth.

She was right. Of course, she was right. The games were mean.

“I’m telling you, Rebecca, these people are evil. They care about money, they care about winning, and they don’t care about anything else. I don’t give a shit what happens to them. I really don’t. They deserve whatever they get.”

Christmas Eve continued on its strange path from there.

I spent the next several hours following up on other holiday problems around the county. Emily and Kevin Pipewell called in a panic to report that their twin girls were missing. When I got there, I spotted the girls eating graham crackers up on the roof near the chimney, where they were waiting for Santa. We got them down and back in bed.

Four-year-old Denny Bublitz called because his parents were sleeping. He’d flushed his goldfish to see what would happen, but after it disappeared, he wanted me to look for it. I told him that Mr. Jenkins at the pet store was in charge of rescuing flushed fishies, and that Denny’s parents would be able to get his goldfish back from Mr. Jenkins after Christmas.

Louisa Shepherd, who was eighty-one and still spry enough to chop her own firewood with an ax, called to let me know that she’d baked Christmas spritz cookies and did I want some? Yes, I did.

And finally, Al Poplar called to say he had a gun and was going to kill himself. He’d made the same call half a dozen times since Thanksgiving, and every time I’d gone over there, I’d discovered that the gun was empty. I stopped by again just after midnight and spent almost an hour talking him out of his holiday depression before he handed me the Smith & Wesson.

This time, the gun was cocked and fully loaded.

It reminded me of what my partner, Darrell, always said was the most important lesson of police work: you never know.

By two in the morning, most of the people in Black Wolf County were finally asleep, which meant I had my overnight lull. I drove back to the town of Random and parked on the empty street. All the Christmas lights were on, making the town look like a Hollywood movie set in the 1930s. Beyond the two blocks of old brick buildings that made up the town center, the national forest loomed at the outskirts, as dark as it must have been for Jonah inside the whale. I got out of my cruiser and crossed Main Street, and mine were the only tracks in the fresh bed of snow.

Random. This was my hometown. I’d lived here my whole life.

Do you wonder why it’s called that? A lot of people do. I think they expect there must have been a Jedediah Random who built the first church here. Or maybe there was some Indian, French, German, or Swedish word that got mangled into Random over the years. The real answer is, we don’t know. No one can explain why we’re here or why we’re called what we are. Historians say the word Random started showing up on maps a couple of centuries ago, but they don’t know who first made a settlement here. We have no river and no pioneer crossroads to explain our reason for being. The copper mine keeps the town going, but Random was here long before the mine.

I like to think the name explains itself. Random. I’m convinced there was a settler with a sense of humor who is still laughing at us as we try to puzzle it out. He knew life was simply random. It’s random where you’re born. It’s random who you meet along the way.

It’s random what you encounter when you’re walking in the woods.

I let myself inside the sheriff’s office, which was combined with our city hall and the county courthouse in one somber old building with a clock tower, a cupola, and a huge marble statue of Lady Justice. I actually enjoyed the Christmas shift, because I had the building mostly to myself. Our tiny office smelled like cigarettes and the menthol rub that our department secretary, Mrs. Mannheim, slathered on her knees. I turned on the office lights, which flickered on the water-stained ceiling, and I made my way past the desks of the other deputies.

My desk was the smallest. It was located immediately next to the men’s bathroom, with an unobstructed view of the urinals whenever the door opened. The sheriff hadn’t put me there by accident. He was sending me a message: See what we have that you don’t? You’re missing a vital piece of equipment to work here, and it ain’t your gun.

I dug in the bottom drawer of my desk for my hidden stash of fudge, which was my weakness. Chocolate, with walnuts and dried cherries. I popped a cassette of Synchronicity into my tape recorder and listened to Sting, who was watching me with every breath I took. I lit up a Marlboro and relaxed. I eased back in my chair and thought about calling my father, but I didn’t even know where he was staying that night. It was silly, but I wanted him to tell me the poem he’d made up for me, to make me feel better after my mom died. I could still remember it word for word.

Things like that stick with you through the years. The good things and the bad things — I know that, sweetheart.

Because Dad wasn’t around, I recited the beginning of the poem out loud to myself:

Of course, I wasn’t Rebecca Colder anymore. I was Rebecca Todd, married to Ricky Todd. The rhymes of the poem didn’t really work for me in my married life. Even so, I recited it a couple more times in the quiet of the office, and I thought for a long, long time about the woman I’d become.

I had finished my third cigarette when the phone rang. When that happens in the middle of the night, it’s never good news.

“Deputy Todd,” I said when I picked it up.

“Deputy, this is Erica Brink.”

I was distracted and didn’t say anything immediately. In fact, I was silent for so long that she said it again.

“Deputy? Are you there? It’s Erica Brink.”

“What can I do for you, Mrs. Brink?” I replied finally.

“I just got back to the house. I’ve been away ever since — well, since the incident with the pig’s blood. I went to visit my parents.”

“All right.”

“The thing is, I can’t find Gordon,” she went on. “I couldn’t reach him on the phone last night, and he’s not in the house. His son, Jay, hasn’t seen him either. His car is here, all of his things are here, but he’s missing. I’m worried that something has happened to him.”

Chapter Two

Erica Brink met me at the highway, where a dirt road led to the house they’d been renting for the last four months. She had a flashlight in her hand to signal me, because it was easy to miss the break in the trees on a snowy, pitch-black night. I pulled onto the shoulder, and Erica climbed into the passenger seat beside me.

“Thank you for coming so quickly,” she said.

“Of course.”

I drove slowly toward the house. Erica and I didn’t speak, but I could feel tension radiating from her. Not that anyone could tell by how she looked. When I shot a quick glance across the seat, I saw that her wheat-field curls looked as fluffy as if she’d just come from the salon. She was nestled inside a fur coat that probably cost what I made in a month. We were the same age, twenty-six years old, but she made me feel much younger and out of her league. Her face had a perfect symmetry, and her cool-blue eyes didn’t hide the superiority she felt when she looked at someone like me. I was the girl at the Tanya Tucker concert, and Erica was Symphony Ball all the way.

But don’t mistake her for a squeaky-voiced blond toy. Erica was also savvy and tough, which you probably have to be to steal a corporate attorney away from his wife of fifteen years. It’s one thing to be the mistress. That’s easy work. But to get the ring? That takes a ruthless cunning you can’t help but respect.

I’d met Erica once before, a week earlier, when she was dripping with pig’s blood swiped from a local butcher. Somebody had jerry-rigged a bucket and rope over the front door and waited in the woods to douse whoever came outside. I assumed that Gordon had been the intended target, but Erica wound up in the wrong place at the wrong time. The fact that she didn’t go to pieces told me a lot about her. I’d interviewed both of them together, and Erica didn’t freak out or shed a single tear. She sat on the front steps, covered in animal blood that had begun to freeze, and told me the story with a kind of frigid, furious calm.

Gordon was the one who looked ready to throw up the whole time I was there.

“Do you know who assaulted me?” Erica asked, as if she’d guessed that I was thinking about our previous encounter.

“I’m sorry, I don’t.”

She turned her head, piercing me in the gloom of the car with her blue eyes. “Do you not know, or do you not care?”

“I do care, but the fact is, nobody’s talking.”

“We both know Sandra Thoreau was behind it,” Erica replied.

“Well, if she was, it’s not likely that I’ll ever be able to prove it. Plenty of people hate this lawsuit, but Sandra has people who are on her side, too. Even the ones who want to see her lose don’t want to see the mine win.”

Erica offered a thin smile. “Gordon said the same thing. He didn’t want to call the police after I was attacked. He said it would just make Sandra’s people feel like they’d won some sort of victory. They’ve been harassing us for months, you know. I was willing to let it slide for other things, but not this time. I called the sheriff myself to report it. No offense, but I wasn’t surprised when he sent a junior deputy. And a woman, too. Believe me, I got the message. I should just take a shower and shut up.”

I wanted to tell her she was wrong, but in fact, the sheriff had used almost those exact words when he’d sent me out here.

We reached the end of the dirt road, where a large clearing had been carved out of the wilderness. The house that Gordon Brink was renting was four stories high, a log-and-flagstone home that looked like an old national park resort hotel. There were several outbuildings on the property, including a barn and machine shed, a hunting lodge in which to clean the guns and hang the dead animals, and a guest cottage that was larger than my own house. The property was a summer home for the retired president of the mine. While he wintered in Florida, Gordon had taken it over to get ready for the upcoming trial.

Erica and I got out of my cruiser. The door of the nearby garage was open, and I saw matching Mercedes sedans parked inside. His and hers. One was spotless, and the other was covered in snow and road spray.

“So tell me what’s going on,” I said.

Erica nodded at her car, which was the dirty one. “Like I told you on the phone, I got back here about two hours ago. I spent several days with my parents in Minnesota, but I drove all day to spend Christmas with Gordon and Jay. But Gordon’s not here. As you can see, his car is still in the garage, but I’ve searched the entire house, and I can’t find him anywhere.”

“It’s a little early to push the panic button,” I told her. “Isn’t it possible he spent Christmas Eve with one of the other lawyers?”

“You mean, is he shacking up with a woman on the team because I was away?” she asked in a chilly voice. “If that’s what you’re thinking, then no. Most of the other members of the legal team went home for Christmas. I called the ones who stayed in the area. He’s not with them. And he has no friends among the locals. Plus, Gordon knew I was coming back tonight. He said he would stay up and work until I got home.”

“When did you last talk to him?”

“Sunday afternoon. He didn’t have any plans to leave the house over the Christmas weekend. I tried calling again last night, but I didn’t reach him. Then I tried again before I left this morning and I stopped to call from the road, too. There was no answer. Trust me, Deputy, this is not like Gordon.”

“Did you talk to his son?” I asked.

“Of course. Jay hasn’t seen Gordon since breakfast on Sunday.”

“Did he say whether his father was home the whole time?”

“That’s what he told me. He never saw the car leave.”

“He and Gordon have been home together for two days, and Jay didn’t see him or talk to him?”

Erica rolled her eyes. “Their relationship is... difficult.”

“Did you search the entire house? It’s a big place.”

“I did. I checked in all the usual spaces where we spend time. I also called to him on the intercom, which is wired to every room. When he didn’t answer, I got worried, so I checked each room methodically. Every room, closet, bathroom. He’s not in the house.”

When Erica Brink said she’d done something methodically, I believed her.

“The most likely explanation is still that he’s with someone else in town,” I said. “If you haven’t heard from him by morning—”

She cut me off midsentence. “I am concerned, Deputy. I don’t want to wait until morning. Gordon is not with anyone. Last week, I was the target of a humiliating assault, and now I get back home to find my husband missing. He’s the lead defense attorney in a lawsuit that has generated countless threats from people in this area. I want to find him right now.”

I knew she wasn’t going to let me go.

I also knew that if I woke up my partner, Darrell, at three o’clock on Christmas morning, I’d better have more to show him than an angry trophy wife.

“Did you notice anything out of order in the house when you came home?” I asked. “Any sign of intruders or a break-in?”

“No.”

“Any footprints in the snow? Tire tracks?”

“No. Other than my own.”

“Did you check the outbuildings?”

“Yes, I walked around the entire property. I went inside all the other buildings except the guest cottage. Gordon uses that as his office.”

“Why didn’t you check the office? I thought you said he was going to work until you got back.”

“The office is where he keeps confidential legal files on the litigation. The door is always locked when he’s not there. No one else gets inside. I walked down there and checked. The lights were off.”

“Still, if that’s the one place you didn’t go inside, I think we should check it out, don’t you?”

Erica frowned with obvious reluctance. “Yes, all right.”

We hiked through the snow beside the trees and needed flashlights to guide us. Erica stayed close to me. I could tell that the wilderness made her nervous, but to me, the sounds in the darkness were like old friends. And of course, I did what I always did when I was near the woods. I listened for him. I’d been searching the forests of Black Wolf County for years to try to find the beast again. I knew he was out there somewhere, and I had the strange sense that he was looking for me, too.

The one-story A-frame cottage that Gordon had been using as his office was on the far side of a shallow hill. In the snow, I could make out Erica’s footprints where she’d come here earlier to look for her husband. The front door was locked, just as Erica had said. I knocked, but there was no answer. I circled the entire cottage and peered through each window, but the curtains were closed, and there were no lights on inside.

“I think we should go in,” I said.

“I don’t have a key.”

“I can break a window, but I need your permission to do that. The alternative is to wait until morning to see if Gordon comes back.”

Erica’s face tensed with indecision. I could see that the idea of breaching her husband’s private work space made her uncomfortable. That was probably one of the cardinal rules of their marriage.

Regardless, her worry won out. “Yes, okay, do it.”

I told her to move away, and then I took my baton from my belt and shattered one of the front windows with a quick tap. Punching out the remaining shards, I reached in, unlocked the window, and pushed it up. I squeezed through the frame into the cottage, which was cold and had the ashy smell of a log fire. My boots crunched on broken glass. There was no sound inside, and when I did a quick survey with my flashlight, I saw nothing amiss. I unlocked the front door, and then I turned on the overhead light.

Erica looked nervous about setting foot inside. “Gordon?” she called. “Are you here?”

Her husband didn’t answer.

The living space was filled with dark leather furniture and a massive fireplace that took up most of one wall. The kitchen was small, but I found half a pot of cold coffee on the counter. There were two doors on the back wall, one closed, one open. I checked the open door, with Erica following, and it led me into a sprawling room that served as Gordon Brink’s main office. File cabinets lined the rear wall, and curtains covered up a long spread of windows looking out on the forest. On the walnut desk, I found a half-smoked cigarette crushed in the ashtray and an open bottle of whiskey with an empty lowball glass beside it.

The floor was covered in a thick cream-colored carpet. Not far from the desk, I spotted reddish-brown drops dotting the shag. I bent down, rubbed one of the stains between my fingertips, and smelled a coppery odor. I looked up at Erica.

“I need to check the bedroom.”

The color had drained from her face. “Okay.”

“Maybe you should stay in the outer room.”

“No, I want to come with you.”

We returned to the living room, and I approached the closed door that led into the cottage’s master suite. Weirdly, I knocked, rather than just opening it. In the silence that followed, I pushed the door inward. Barely any light flowed from the other room, but the smell hanging in the cold air told the story.

“Erica,” I murmured, my own nerves raw. “Back up. Don’t look.”

“No, turn on the light.”

I did.

Next to me, Gordon Brink’s wife screamed. She stared at the abattoir inside and then covered her face to block it out.

I had to look. I had no choice.

Blood spattered every surface in the bedroom. The floors. The walls. The furniture. The curtains. The ceiling. In the middle of it all, tied to the king-size bed, was Gordon Brink, naked, dead, his eyes open in horror, his mouth gagged to keep him from crying out in agony. His entire body from skull to feet hung in ribbons, all his skin flayed with deep cuts made in crimson parallel lines.

Like the sweep of an animal’s claws.

Across the pale stretch of white paint above the bed, a message had been scrawled using Gordon’s blood.

Four words.

Chapter Three

“Looks like the beast is back,” Ajax said, whistling with perverse admiration as he studied the kaleidoscope of blood in the bedroom. “This is some messed-up scene, huh? Man, you really don’t want to piss off the Ursulina.”

Ajax was the nickname for Arthur Jackson, a deputy like me, but four years older. He was tall and extremely good-looking, which he would be the first to tell you. He had full black hair sprayed neatly in place, a long sharp nose and chiseled jaw, and bedroom-brown eyes that always felt like X-rays seeing you without your clothes. He also had an impressive ability to do two things at once. While he was analyzing the murder scene, he was also cupping my ass. When I went to shoo his hand away, he gave one of my butt cheeks a hard squeeze that made me stifle a yelp of pain.

“Knock it off with talk about the Ursulina,” my partner, Darrell, snapped from beside the bed, where he was studying Brink’s body. “We don’t need another three-ring TV circus in town. Last time we had hundreds of monster hunters combing the woods. I don’t want to go through that again.”

Ajax joined Darrell at the bed. I stayed where I was, on the far side of the room, with my arms tightly folded across my chest. I felt queasy, but I didn’t dare show it. Gordon Brink lay exactly as Erica and I had found him. His arms were over his head, his wrists tied together with rope. So were his ankles. He had a friar’s ring of reddish hair around a prominent bald spot, and he had the plump look of a well-fed lawyer. He’d been wearing a suit and tie before he was stripped and killed. We’d found his clothes in a pile on the other side of the bed.

“I don’t know,” Ajax commented with a chuckle. “Those sure look like claw marks to me.”

Darrell had no patience for jokes when we had a dead body in the room. “An animal didn’t do this. A human being did. Focus on the crime scene. This wasn’t done with a knife. We’re looking for a weapon that makes sharp, deep, even cuts.”

I cleared my throat and spoke up. “It could be meat shredders.”

“What?”

“Meat shredders. You know, like for pulled pork? My dad used to have a set like that. They were long and sharp, so you could dig them into the flesh. Half a dozen parallel spikes, just like we’ve got here. The wounds look like somebody dug into the body over and over with a ripping motion.”

Ajax shook his head. “Carved up like a Thanksgiving turkey. That does not sound like a fun way to die. This had to be personal, right? Somebody must have really hated this guy to do that to him.”

“Or it was set up to make us think that,” Darrell replied. “Personal or not, this was a premeditated execution. If the murder weapon was something odd, then the killer came prepared. Plus, this was messy. Whoever did this must have been covered in blood, but other than the spatter Rebecca found in the office, they didn’t track any of it outside the bedroom. So they must have brought along a bag to carry away their clothes, and probably a change of clothes, too.”

I was impressed that Darrell had figured that all out so quickly. Then again, for a small-town cop, Darrell kept up to speed on criminal investigations the way they were done in the bigger cities. We didn’t get many murders in Black Wolf County, but I already told you Darrell’s philosophy.

You never know.

“We’ll search the grounds when it’s light for the murder weapon and anything else the killer may have left behind,” Darrell went on, mostly to himself, as if he were making a shopping list in his head. “The snow won’t make it easy. I also want a couple of deputies checking dumpsters behind Main Street.”

“Why?” I asked.

“In case the killer dumped the bloody clothes and the weapon and hoped it would all get hauled away. The ground’s frozen, so they couldn’t bury them. It’s a long shot, but worth a try.”

“Yes, okay.”

“Next thing is time of death,” Darrell said. “When did you say Brink’s wife last talked to him?”

“Sunday afternoon. Erica says she tried to reach her husband later that same night, but he didn’t answer the phone. She called first thing Monday morning before she left Minnesota. Still no answer.”

“All right, we’ll see what the coroner says, but we may be looking at the murder taking place sometime Sunday evening.”

“Half the town was at the 126 that night for Trading Places,” Ajax pointed out. “We’re only about ten minutes from the bar. Somebody could have slipped out without being noticed and snuck back in before the flick was over.”

“We’ll need to talk to everyone who was at the movie,” Darrell said. “Rebecca, I also want you to get contact information for Erica Brink’s family in Minnesota. See if she was where she says she was, okay? I want to make sure that she didn’t come home early. Let’s see if she has receipts from gas stations on the road, too.”

“Absolutely.”

“We need to talk to the son. Jay. According to Brink’s wife, Jay said he was home this whole time?”

“That’s what she told me.”

“Okay. Rebecca, you come with me. We’ll interview the boy together. Ajax, get started on fingerprints. I want the whole house dusted, but start with the bedroom and the office and the knobs on both sides of the front door.”

I watched Ajax’s face screw up with annoyance at the assignment. He wasn’t used to getting the grunt work.

“Why should I do the prints?” Ajax protested. “Let me interview the kid with you.”

Darrell shook his head. “I’ve seen you do interviews. You scare the crap out of witnesses, and they clam up. Rebecca has a better touch for these things. She knows how to get people to talk. Plus, maybe doing some real work will convince you to keep your hands off her ass. Got it?”

“Got it,” Ajax replied coldly.

Darrell stalked from the bedroom, leaving me alone with Ajax, whose face was beet red.

I already told you that Ajax was the county stud. His looks usually got him whatever he wanted, and that included women. He was married to a pretty redhead named Ruby, but he’d been coming on to me since I joined the sheriff’s office, even though he and my husband had been friends since grammar school. I kept telling Ricky that there was nothing between us, but when it came to Ajax, Ricky was toting around a big inferiority complex.

Ajax was as tall as anyone I’d ever met, at least six foot six, with a strong, wiry build. He had hands that were larger than my whole face, and he liked to brag that he was big all over. When CCR sang about the fortunate son, Ajax could have been their model. He’d led a charmed life. The draft ended right before he turned eighteen, so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam. He went to state college just as the new Division III opened up, so he became a basketball star. When he got back to Black Wolf County, he had a job waiting despite the tough times, because his uncle, Jerry, was the sheriff. Everyone assumed that whenever Jerry retired, Ajax would be elected to take his place, and that was probably true. It wasn’t that Ajax was such a great cop, but he had a way of being in the right place at the right time to make the most of opportunities.

“Must be nice to have your partner fight your battles,” Ajax commented sourly.

I didn’t take the bait by saying anything. In fact, I was a little annoyed that Darrell had felt it necessary to intervene on my behalf. Whenever he tried to get the other deputies to lay off me, the harassment only got worse as soon as his back was turned. But Darrell had three daughters, and I was the honorary fourth girl in the Curtis family. He felt a need to protect me.

“Darrell’s retiring next year,” Ajax reminded me. “Then you and me will be partners. I can’t wait for that.”

I still didn’t give him the satisfaction of showing any reaction, but he wasn’t telling me anything that I didn’t already know. Once Darrell was gone, the sheriff would pair me with Ajax in a heartbeat. I wasn’t sure what I would do when that happened. The thought of being trapped in a car all day with Ajax was horrifying, and I knew the only way to make him back off was to give him what he wanted. I had no intention of doing that.

“I have to go,” I said.

“Yeah, I’ll stay here and look for paw prints.”

“Funny.”

“So what do you think? Did the Ursulina really do this?”

All I could say was something I knew to be a lie. “The Ursulina is a myth.”

“Yeah? Well, the myth says the Ursulina is a man who turns into a monster at night. It’s pretty hard to look at this crime scene and not think there’s something to it. Remember six years ago? Kip and Racer?”

“I remember.”

“Two men cut to ribbons, same message on the wall. I mean, there has to be a connection, right?”

“We don’t know that. Not yet.”

Ajax wiggled his fingernails at me like claws. “Well, you better be careful, Rebecca. If the Ursulina is back, you never know who he might be. And there’s a full moon outside.”

Six years ago. Yes, I remembered.

That summer changed everything, sweetheart. Nothing was ever the same for Black Wolf County after that. And not for me, either.

Until that July, most people thought of the Ursulina as one of those scary stories we whispered around the campfire to make kids scream. The legend told of a pioneer family who invited a starving fur trader into their cabin, only to have their mercy repaid with bloodshed. During the night, under the glow of the monster’s moon, the fur trader transformed into a giant beast who’d cut the entire family to pieces with its claws. Ever since then, the story of the Ursulina had been passed down from generation to generation.

Did we actually believe it?

Well, I think a lot of people wanted to believe it, but there had never been evidence to convince the skeptics. I couldn’t help but wonder if there were others, like me, who knew the truth, but a part of me also hoped I was unique. The girl who’d seen it up close. The girl who’d survived the beast. I didn’t really want to share the Ursulina with anyone else.

Then came July six years earlier.

Two local men, Kip Wells and Racer Moritz, had been squatting in a trailer in the woods an hour outside Random. The trailer was owned by our local lawyer Norm Foltz, who was away at a trial in Stanton County on the far side of the state. Kip and Racer probably knew he was gone, which was why they’d felt comfortable trespassing. Based on the evidence found inside Norm’s trailer, the two men had spent several days emptying out vodka and whiskey bottles, roasting rabbits over a fire pit, and poaching endangered bald eagles.

And then something happened to them. Nobody knew exactly what it was.

When Norm got back to Random, he discovered the bodies of Kip and Racer in his Airstream. The two men had been hideously slashed to death, and just like the murder of Gordon Brink, the killer had left behind a message painted on the trailer wall in their blood:

I am the Ursulina

Darrell had been the investigating officer on the case. He’d told everyone that the wounds on the bodies had been made by repeated stabs from a common kitchen knife and that there was no mythical beast involved, just two particularly gruesome homicides — but it didn’t matter what he said. The fire had been lit. Everyone in town wanted to find the Ursulina.

Maybe the story would have stayed a local novelty, but a B-list sci-fi actor named Ben Malloy, who’d been born in Random, came home to exploit the crime. He turned the Ursulina killings into a lurid television special, complete with a search by hundreds of volunteers canvassing miles of the national forest for any sign of the beast. I was out there hunting, along with half the county. We didn’t find any clues, but Ben got what he wanted. Huge ratings. A profile in Time. And, soon after that, a weekly series about mysteries and myths called Ben Malloy Discovers.

After that, our area became known as Ursulina Country. People came from around the world to launch quests to find the monster. Hours away in Mittel County, the city fathers scooped us by launching a popular festival called Ursulina Days. It didn’t matter that the murders had taken place nowhere near there. They laid claim to the Ursulina by arguing that the pioneer family whose deaths started the legend had lived in Mittel County. Of course, they’d made that up, but there was nothing those of us in Black Wolf County could do about it.

As for Kip and Racer, their murders went unsolved. Darrell was fighting an uphill battle to find evidence and witnesses, because no one really wanted the murderer to be caught. A human killer would spoil the myth, and local businesses saw dollar signs in the story of the Ursulina. Plus, nobody missed Kip and Racer. The consensus around town was that the monster had done us a favor by wiping them off the earth. Darrell was pretty much the only person who actually wanted to see the crimes solved. To him, it was a matter of principle. Murder was murder.

That was how the Ursulina legend took off.

That was also how I got a job in the sheriff’s office. I’d been on my own that summer. My father was away on the road, and my brother was hauling nets on an Alaskan fishing boat out of Seward. I had a freshly minted associate’s degree, but no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I was young and restless. As the media besieged the sheriff’s department with Ursulina calls, Darrell needed someone to answer the phones, so I volunteered. Darrell was a neighbor, which meant I’d known him since I was a girl.

Eventually, my part-time role on the phone turned into a paid gig as the office secretary. I probably would have stayed in that job until I retired, but Darrell’s partner drowned in a boating accident right around the time that Ricky got fired from the mine. Darrell knew we needed more money, and he told me I had the makings of a great cop. He also had a niece on the county board who’d been riding the sheriff hard about hiring a woman for the force.

So I became Darrell’s partner. We’d been partners for almost two years.

I was about as welcome in that role as Sandra Thoreau was when she got her job at the mine. The other deputies made sure I knew it. They began filling my desk drawer with porno magazines and used condoms. When I didn’t lose my cool, they switched to dead rats instead.

Sooner or later, they figured I’d quit.

But I didn’t. I wasn’t going anywhere. I kept my head down, and I took it, and I never said a word. In my heart, I was still Rebecca Colder. A little bit stronger, a little bit bolder.

Chapter Four

I caught up with Darrell outside Gordon Brink’s house.

He was bent over at the waist, his hands on his thighs. Around others, he kept a poker face at the sight of blood, but I knew him better. We dealt with a lot of blood. Together, we’d witnessed severed limbs from mine accidents, shotgun suicides, and shredded faces that had gone through car windshields. None of that compared with the horrors Darrell had seen as a marine in Korea, too. He remained stoic through all of it, but I knew how deeply he felt things, and blood in particular seemed to give him flashbacks of his days in the service.

Given how much my own dad was away, I’d grown up thinking of Darrell as almost a second father to me. He was the most solid, serious man I knew. Religious. Faithful. Humble. He’d told me once that life was a relay race, where you take the baton from your parents and pass it along to your children, and in between, you try to run around the track with as much strength and grace as you can. I liked that philosophy.

You wouldn’t really have been impressed to look at him. He wasn’t tall, and he’d never been a pretty boy like Ajax. Even in his sixties, he kept his hair military short, jet black, not a gray strand to be found anywhere. His nose had a drooping hook, and his ears looked big and wide under his buzz cut. His cheek had a long scar where a North Korean bullet had sliced him. It would have killed him if it had been another inch to the left. That kind of good fortune made him conscious of the choices he made in living his life, and he was determined to make the right ones.

If there was one quality about Darrell that sometimes made me bite my tongue, it was that he had a black-and-white outlook on the world. Things were good, or things were bad. Things were right, or things were wrong. His own moral compass always pointed due north, so he was quick to pass judgment on people. Even at my young age, I’d figured out that the world was a lot more complicated than that.

“I’m sorry, Rebecca,” Darrell said when I joined him. He was still bent over, breathing hard.

“For what?”

“For telling Ajax to keep his hands off you. I know you hate that.”

“Don’t worry about it.” I noticed the pale cast of his face. “Are you okay? That was an ugly scene back there.”

“I’ll be fine. I’ve seen worse.”

I shoved my hands in my pockets and glanced across the white field of snow. “I know that, but you don’t have to pretend with me.”

Darrell straightened up, wiping away a little sweat that had gathered on his brow even on a cold night. “Thanks.”

“So what do you think?” I asked, because I was very curious to know if Darrell had come to any conclusions yet. “This must be a copycat, right?”

He put on his stolid deputy’s face again. “I don’t know. Maybe. If it’s the same killer, where has he been for six years? And why come back now? The only thing I do know is that none of these crimes were committed by a mythical beast.”

I could have given him a different take on that, but I didn’t tell him what I was thinking.

Inside the house, we found Gordon Brink’s son, Jay, in a bedroom on the top floor. This was three stories above the main floor master suite that Gordon and Erica shared. The huge house felt oddly empty and quiet — so much space for only three people — and I thought it had to be strange for a boy from the city to be stuck here in the middle of nowhere. The bedroom was large, but clean and uncluttered, which surprised me from a teenager. I assumed that Jay shared his father’s organized legal mind. On the other hand, the posters on the log walls — all neatly hung and absolutely level — revealed a rebellious spirit and a bookish intelligence. I saw punk bands like the Flesh Eaters and Dead Kennedys, alongside portraits of Oscar Wilde and D. H. Lawrence. He had half a dozen bookshelves crammed with classics like Moby Dick and Leaves of Grass that would have put other seventeen-year-old boys to sleep.

Jay lay on top of the carefully made king-size bed when we arrived. He had his hands behind his head and was staring at the ceiling, and he was dressed in a flannel shirt and corduroys, with bare feet. He didn’t acknowledge us, although he obviously knew who we were and why we were there. He was a handsome kid, thick reddish-brown hair, a prominent nose and close-shaved face, with intense dark eyes. He was tall but not particularly muscular or athletic. He’d just lost his father, but I didn’t see any indication on his face that he’d been crying.

Darrell went to the large bedroom windows, stared outside for a while, and then turned back to Gordon Brink’s son. “Jay, I’m Deputy Darrell Curtis. This is Deputy Rebecca Todd. We’re very sorry about your father.”

The teenager didn’t look away from the ceiling. “Thanks.”

“You and I met last week,” I reminded him. “I came over here when your stepmother called about the bucket of blood.”

“Yeah, I remember,” Jay replied. “Do you think whoever did that also killed Gordon?”

“It’s too early to know.”

Darrell was still by the window, and he nodded at me to continue the interview. I pulled a chair next to the bed and sat down. “I know this is a difficult time, but you might be able to help us figure out who did this to your father.”

Jay still showed no reaction on his face, and his voice had a flat, numb quality to it. “I have no idea.”

“Well, you might have heard or seen something that was important. A lot of times, people know more than they think.” I took out a notepad from my pocket and uncapped a pen. “I’d like to go over a little background with you first. Okay?”

“Sure.”

“Your stepmother, Erica, says she was away in Minnesota for the past several days. Is that right?”

“Yep.”

“Were you and Gordon the only ones staying here while she was gone?”

“Yep. Just him and me. The associates and paralegals stay in a motel. Gordon gets the big house. That’s how it works.”

I noticed for the second time that Jay called his father “Gordon.” Looking at Darrell, I could see that he’d noticed it, too.

“Where does your mother live?” I asked.

“Milwaukee.”

“You don’t live with her?”

“Normally, I do, but Gordon decided to bring me with him while he worked on the trial. It wasn’t up for debate.” The teenager rolled his eyes. “He said the Milwaukee schools were giving me all sorts of crazy ideas.”

“Like what?”

“Like we value money over people in this country. And lawyers are some of the worst offenders.”

“When did you get here?”

“October.”

“It must have been hard going into the high school in the middle of the semester. We’re pretty cliquish around here. Outsiders have a tough time being accepted.”

“Really? I didn’t notice.”

I heard the sarcasm laid on thick.

“Let’s talk about the last few days,” I said. “When did you last see your father?”

“Sunday morning at breakfast.”

“Have you been home since then?”

“Yep.”

“But you hadn’t seen your father for two days?”

Jay shrugged. “Gordon usually had lunch in his office. I wasn’t allowed inside. Nobody was. He wasn’t in the house for dinner on Sunday or Monday, so I had leftovers from the fridge.”

“Didn’t you think it was odd that he didn’t show up for dinner?”

“No. Sometimes he’d work all night. I figured that’s what he was doing.”

“Even on Christmas Eve?”

“It’s not like we were waiting up for Santa,” Jay replied.

“Did you hear your father in the house on Sunday or Monday? Do you know if he slept in his bedroom?”

“I have no idea.”

“Did anyone come by the house in the last few days? Did you see anyone?”

“Nope.”

“Are you sure? This is very important, Jay. You didn’t see or hear anybody else around here in the last two days?”

“Nope.”

“And you were home, you were in the house, the entire time?”

Jay stuttered a little. “That’s what I said.”

Darrell noticed the teenager’s hesitation. He interrupted from where he was standing by the windows. “You didn’t go out at all?”

“No, I was here.”

“Did you look outside on Sunday night?”

“I don’t remember. If I did, I didn’t see anything.”

“Your bedroom windows look out on the front yard,” Darrell went on, gesturing through the glass. “If somebody drove in here on Sunday, there would have been headlights.”

“I didn’t see any lights, and I didn’t hear anybody outside.”

“Were you in your bedroom all evening?”

“No. Not the whole time. I watched some TV. The den’s on the other side of the house. Maybe somebody came by while I was doing that. I don’t know.”

“What did you watch on TV?” Darrell asked.

More hesitation. “I don’t remember.”

Darrell frowned. I knew he didn’t believe what Jay was telling us. I leaned forward and put a hand lightly on the boy’s wrist.

“Jay, do you have any idea who killed your father?”

“No.”

“Do you have any idea why someone would want to harm him?”

“I assume it’s because of the lawsuit.”

“Why do you assume that?”

“That’s why we’re here. What else could it be?”

“Did your father talk about getting threats? Did you hear threats directed at him in town or at school?”

Jay finally turned his head and looked at me. “I can’t remember a day when there haven’t been threats. Nobody wants us here. They’ve made that very clear. I’ve had shit smeared on my locker half a dozen times. People broke our windows and slashed our tires. You saw what happened with Erica.”

“Do you know who was involved in any of these incidents?”

“No.”

“Was your father worried about them?”

“He said it was the usual harassment that comes with big lawsuits.”

I let the silence between us linger while I studied Jay’s eyes. He was a smart kid, but with stormy waters underneath the calm. Maybe it was the usual teenage angst, but I got the feeling there was more to it than that.

“Erica says your relationship with your father was difficult,” I said quietly.

“You could say that. He didn’t like me. I didn’t like him.”

“Why is that?”

“Mostly, I think he hated the fact that I knew who he really was.”

“Oh, yes?” I asked. “Who was he?”

Jay turned away and stared at the ceiling again. “You’ll figure it out sooner or later. Gordon was a monster.”

When Darrell and I were back outside, I lit a cigarette. I didn’t like smoking in front of him, because his wife was dealing with lung cancer and he blamed it on her lifelong habit. He’d given it up himself years earlier. Most of the other deputies smoked, and Darrell never said a word to me when I did it, but I felt guilty anyway. Even so, I was exhausted, and my nerves were shattered. The cigarette relaxed me.

“What’s your take on Jay?” Darrell asked.

“I think teenage boys hate the idea of growing up like their fathers, and fathers want their teenage boys to grow up just like them.”

Darrell responded with a low chuckle. “True enough. On the other hand, calling Gordon a monster? That’s an interesting choice of words, given what was on the wall. Almost like he’d seen it for himself.”

I shivered in the cold, my fingers trembling as I held my cigarette. The word rattled around in my head. Monster.

The snow had stopped, but the wind had come up in its wake, throwing silvery clouds around us. We stood near the dark trees that grew in a ring around the clearing. It was winter, and it still wasn’t dawn yet. I did what I always did, what I’d done hundreds of times hiking in the woods since I was ten years old. I listened for the hufffffff that told me the Ursulina was close by.

“You don’t really think Jay killed him, do you?” I asked.

Darrell took a while to reply. “No, I don’t. Then again, what’s my philosophy of life?”

“You never know.”

“Exactly. You never know. Here’s a kid who obviously had a terrible relationship with his father. He was at the house the whole time, so he had plenty of opportunity and no alibi.”

“Bad relationship or not, I can’t see a child doing that to a parent.”

Darrell shrugged. “Lizzie Borden took an ax.”

“So what’s next?”

“Next we talk to Sandra Thoreau. The lawsuit is still the likeliest motive for murdering Brink. We need to find out if anyone on her team has been making noises about going after him. It’s mostly been mischief up to now, but that kind of thing can get out of control fast.”

“Okay.”

I wasn’t done with my cigarette, but I threw it in the snow and stamped it down. I stared into the trees, still expecting a rustling in the branches and the noise of heavy breathing. My mind was awhirl. Everything was catching up to me — the night, the sleeplessness, the cold, the blood. Darrell called my name, but I was distracted and didn’t answer. He reached out and squeezed my shoulder.

“Are you all right?”

I managed a weak smile. “I’m just tired. And I’m fighting a cold. My head’s all congested.”

He hesitated before saying more. “I heard you and Ricky had a fight.”

“Money problems. We’ll get through it.”

“Is that all?”

“That’s all.”

Darrell didn’t push. Not right away. He studied the expression on my face, and I felt like one of his daughters again, under the watchful eye of their father. I didn’t like lying to him, and I was pretty sure he’d heard the rest of the gossip.

“Listen, it’s early,” he told me. “We don’t need to spoil Sandra’s Christmas morning at the crack of dawn. I want to go back to the office and pull the files on Kip and Racer anyway. Why don’t you go home and sleep for a couple of hours? I don’t need you with me. We can meet up later.”

Normally, I would have protested special treatment, but I was glad for an opportunity to get away and clear my head. “Sure. Okay. I’ll take a shower and then head back to the office. I won’t be long. An hour, tops.”

“Take as much time as you need.”

I smiled at him. There were days when he felt like my only lifeline around here. “Thanks.”

I headed across the snow for my car, hoping he’d let it go, but I knew he wouldn’t. He called after me in his soft-spoken voice. “Rebecca? This is your business, not mine. You don’t need to tell me anything if you don’t want to, but I have to ask. Are you thinking of leaving Ricky?”

My voice was as quiet as his. “I don’t know. That’s the honest answer, Darrell. I really don’t.”

“Well, if that’s the choice you make, you know I’ll support you.”

“Thanks,” I said again.

He was silent for a long time, but he had a look that said he wasn’t done. “Do you mind a word of advice?”

“Go ahead.”

“I know the type of man Ricky is. I know that kind of man all too well. I saw them in the military, and I see them around here every day. They’re tigers. You can see it in their eyes. They’re always waiting for their chance.”

“What are you saying, Darrell?”

“I think you know what I’m saying,” he told me. “If you go down that road, Ricky’s not going to take it well. You need to be very careful, Rebecca. Never turn your back on a tiger.”

Chapter Five

At home, we had no power. The generator had run out of fuel, and the house was an icebox. I hoped the hot water tank had enough heat left to let me take a shower.

Ricky and I owned a little two-story house in what locals jokingly called downtown Random, namely the five or six blocks around Main Street where a few hundred people lived. From our front door, I could walk to the sheriff’s department. The house wasn’t much — two small bedrooms upstairs; a kitchen, living room, and dining room downstairs; and an unfinished basement where mice took shelter from the winter cold. The yellow paint on the wooden siding was peeling away, the front porch needed repair, and the roof leaked over our bed when the rain got heavy. Even so, it was ours, and I didn’t want to lose it.

We’d stretched to buy the house three years earlier, with help from my dad. I didn’t know then that Ricky would be fired a year later and our income would be cut in half. But we were a young couple in Black Wolf County, and buying a house was what you did. There were no apartments, so either you lived with your parents or you saved up enough to strike out on your own. Or you left the area entirely and headed for the city. We’d stayed in my dad’s house for two years after we got married, and with him gone all the time, he was fine to have us live there as long as we wanted. But in his house, I was still a kid, and I wanted to be all grown-up. That was how life was supposed to go. You got married, you bought a house, you had kids.

I wanted that whole fairy-tale life more than anything. Believe me when I tell you that, sweetheart. But a fairy tale was not what I got.

When I got home, I kicked off my boots and sat on the living room sofa with my coat on. The Christmas tree in the corner was the only indication of the holiday. The tree was so tall that the top branch bent over at the ceiling, but we’d put it up right after Thanksgiving, so it was already turning brown and dropping needles. The ornaments on the branches were all the same, red and silver glass balls, and one had fallen to the floor and cracked. We couldn’t afford gifts, but my dad and brother had sent a few things, which we’d put under the tree. I’d made big plans to cook a roast and potatoes and bake pies in the days before Christmas, so all we’d have to do is heat everything up, but those plans had gotten away from me.

“You’re late.”

Ricky came into the living room from the kitchen. He gnawed on a pan-fried chicken leg from the refrigerator and sat down in the armchair next to the tree. He wore pajama bottoms, and his chest was bare.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

“I figured you’d be in bed when I woke up. You know, I sort of expect my wife to be in my bed in the morning.”

“Well, that was the plan.”

“What happened?”

“Gordon Brink got murdered.”

Ricky arched an eyebrow. “No shit? Who did it?”

“We don’t know yet.”

“Somebody kills a lawyer, do they get a prize or something?”

“It’s not a joke, Ricky.”

He wiped the chicken juice from his mouth with his arm. “So are you home for the day now?”

“No. I need to go back.”

“It’s Christmas.”

“Yeah, and this is a murder.”

He sighed with a little hiss through his front teeth. I think that was what frustrated me more than anything else, more than the drinking, more than the money he wasted, more than the times he came home smelling of drugstore perfume. It was the blame he directed my way when he didn’t get what he wanted. Like everything was my fault. Like we were drifting apart because of me. I was the one going to work, taking the night shifts, coming home and cooking meals and doing laundry. I felt like my life was a matchstick house, and I was holding it together with nothing but little dabs of glue. But to Ricky, it was never enough.

I’d met him at a high school football game six years earlier. This was not long after I’d gone to work at the sheriff’s office. At halftime, I was sitting by myself in the bleachers when a man with a cheesy grin under his mustache introduced himself as Ricky Todd. He wasn’t tall, but he had a tough, strong, mine-worker’s body, with big feathered blond hair and a mustache so thick you could mop the floor with it. Men came up to me all the time, so that wasn’t unusual. I was pretty and unattached, which is a rare combination in this town, but I had the reputation of shooting men down like Snoopy in his Sopwith Camel. Ricky didn’t let that stop him. He sat down and started talking to me.

What was it about him?

Why did I agree to go out with him when I’d turned down the others?

It wasn’t his looks, that’s for sure. In high school, he’d been popular and handsome, but then he went fishing with Ajax one summer, and while Ajax was horsing around with the reel, a hook caught Ricky in the face and yanked off a big chunk of his nose. The surgeons did their best to repair it, but it never healed right. Girls lost interest in him after that, in the shallow way that teenagers do. Ricky made jokes like it didn’t bother him, but way down deep, he was bitter as hell.

I didn’t care how he looked. No, what made him different was that he seemed fascinated by who I was. He asked a lot of questions, about my childhood, about growing up on my own, about my mother. It flattered me that he found my story intriguing. I didn’t understand then, or maybe I was too young to realize, that men can be like that about things they want to own. That one way to control someone is to learn everything about them, so you always have ammunition to use when you need it.

I married Ricky not long after that. Darrell, my father, my brother, they all told me I was moving too fast, but I was in a rush to feel normal at that point in my life. I wanted to do what other Black Wolf County girls did. I married a mine worker, I worked to make us extra money, I went to the 126 and drank and joked with friends, I cooked and cleaned and had sex with my husband on Wednesday nights and Saturday mornings. Lather, rinse, repeat.

That was how my life went for three years. Maybe that’s how the rest of my life would have gone, if Ricky hadn’t heard his supervisor making a joke about his damaged nose and thrown the man through a window. The assault got him fired from the mine. Everything changed after that; everything began to spiral downward, for me and for him. I began to see the other side of my husband, as if I were orbiting around the dark side of the moon. His failures as a man somehow became my shortcomings as a wife.

Darrell was right about the danger of living with tigers. Believe me, as a cop, I knew what happened behind closed doors to too many of the women in Black Wolf County. Ricky hadn’t touched me, not yet. Even so, I’d grown wary of what he might do. I’d noticed the heat of his temper, like a gas flame on high. When we argued, I saw him clenching his fists. His demands in bed had begun to make me uncomfortable. I felt like he was testing my boundaries, pushing me to see how far he could go before I pushed back. It was almost as if he wanted me to give him an excuse. All along, he had this odd, taunting look in his eyes that said: I dare you.

“I’m going to take a shower before the water gets cold,” I said. I got off the sofa and slipped out of my winter coat, but Ricky blocked my way.

“Was Ajax there?”

“What?”

“Were you with him this morning?” Ricky asked.

“I wasn’t with him. He’s a cop. He was at the crime scene, too.”

“Yeah. Sure he was.”

“What’s the problem? What are you talking about?”

Ricky’s blue eyes looked like ice on a glacier. “I know you’re screwing him.”

“No, you don’t know that, because I’m not.”

“He says you are. He threw it in my face at the movie on Sunday.”

“Well, Ajax is a liar. He pushes your buttons, and you let him do it.”

“He comes on to you,” Ricky said. “I’ve seen him do it.”

“Yeah, he comes on to me and every other woman in town, but there’s nothing between us.”

I was tired of this argument. We’d had it over and over. I was done defending myself, but I still felt the need to be a peacemaker. On that day of all days, I needed a little bit of peace.

“Look, I’m sorry about the argument on Sunday,” I went on. “I’m stressed about money. I’ll talk to my dad. He’ll help us out.”

“It’s not my fault there are no jobs, Bec.”

“I know. And I know it sucks that I have to work on Christmas. I’ll make it up to you. But right now, I need to shower and get back.”

With that, I dragged my tired body up the stairs to the second floor.

In the bathroom, with a little morning light coming in through the window, I stood in front of the mirror and took off my clothes. I hung up my uniform carefully, as if it were a disguise. I unhooked my flimsy bra and peeled down my underwear, and I stared at my reflection in the gloom. Two dark eyes stared back at me, dark as coal, with thick eyebrows like two black slashes. Underneath them were the bags that makeup couldn’t hide. I hadn’t slept more than a few minutes in days. My nose was Rudolph-red from the freezing cold temperature and from sniffling and sneezing. My cheeks were flushed, and my entire head felt thick.

I had a V-shaped face and a tiny mouth, but my lower lip bulged in a way that made men think I was puckering at them. I wasn’t. My black hair hung to my shoulders. It was messy, with split ends and a few strands going their own way no matter how many times I brushed them down. I was skinny. I’ve always been skinny. You could see my shoulder bones, my narrow hips, my knobby knees. My arms were as scrawny as the chicken leg Ricky had been eating. My breasts made shallow pyramids that ended in tiny pink points. My skin was pale, my whole body china white. It wasn’t just the winter; even in the summer, I never tanned.

I may have seemed fragile on the outside, but this was tough country, and no matter if you were skinny and small, you did what you had to do. I shoveled snow. I cut down dead trees. I cuffed drunks twice my size.

That was me, sweetheart. That was your mom.

I mean, not yet, but soon.

I climbed into the tub and turned on the shower. The brown water wasn’t hot anymore. It dribbled from the showerhead, mostly cool. I didn’t wash my hair, because I had no way to dry it with the power out, and I couldn’t leave it wet. Instead, I tucked as much of it as I could under a plastic shower cap. I soaped up quickly, watching dirt run down the drain, and I rinsed off, freezing.

When I yanked back the shower curtain, I screamed.

Ricky was right in front of me. He looked me up and down, his wife’s naked body, me shivering like a soaking-wet cat and wearing my stupid yellow polka-dot shower cap. His chest was still bare. His pajama bottoms and underwear were pooled around his ankles. The pudge of his stomach swelled from his waist, but everything else was muscle. He dangled, already beginning to grow. His hands took hold of my shoulders, and he squeezed with his thick fingers, not enough to hurt me, but definitely enough to remind me of his strength.

I felt the weight of his arms shoving me to my knees and making it very clear what he wanted.

“Ricky, not now,” I told him. “Not like this.”

I held my breath, wondering if words would be enough to put him off this time. He waited a long, long moment before he let go. Then he laughed, as if this was only a game. As if we hadn’t been on the verge of something ugly. He yanked up his pajamas with a shrug, but he gave me a look as he did, and I saw that same strange challenge in his eyes.

I dare you.

Chapter Six

“Where were you on Sunday evening?” Darrell asked Sandra Thoreau when we visited her later that morning. That was his very first question. We hadn’t told her about Gordon Brink, but I assumed that phones had been ringing all over town with news of the murder. She didn’t look surprised to see us.

Sandra’s eyes went from Darrell to me and back to Darrell. We were seated in the living room of her small rambler. When I’d seen her shortly after midnight, she’d been smoking and drinking a can of Old Style, and she still was. In between, she’d tied her hair back and put on jeans and a loose gray sweatshirt. I saw a few toys near the Christmas tree where her son, Henry, had unwrapped them. Henry himself was in the front yard, building a snowman. Sandra had told the boy to go outside when we arrived.

“Well, shit, Darrell,” she replied, blowing smoke at us. “Merry Christmas to you, too.”

“Believe me, Sandra, I’d much rather be home with my family than here asking you questions. The sooner we get this done, the sooner we’re out of here. Now tell me about Sunday evening.”

She shrugged. “There’s nothing to tell. I was watching the movie at the 126, like most everybody else. Probably fifty people saw me there.”

“Did you leave the bar at all during the film?”

“Yeah, I went out to grab a smoke and enjoy a little peace and quiet for a few minutes. I’ve seen the movie before. Did I hop in my car and go slice and dice Gordon Brink? No, I didn’t. I mean, that’s what this is all about, right? That’s what you want to know?”

“What time did you get home?” Darrell continued, focused on Sandra’s alibi. This time, he was asking the questions. I wondered if he thought I’d go too easy on Sandra because we were both women in what the rest of the town considered men’s jobs.

“I don’t remember. One o’clock. Two. By that point, I was pretty wasted.”

“Did anyone see you leave?”

“Ricky,” Sandra replied, with a sharp glance at me. “He was still there. He’s always there.”

“Did you have a babysitter for Henry?”

“Yeah. That cute Davis girl. Kelli. She was asleep on the sofa when I got home. Henry was in bed. I didn’t wake either of them up. In the morning, I made breakfast for the three of us, and Kelli went home.”

“So Kelli can’t confirm what time you actually got back home?” Darrell asked.

Sandra sighed. “No, I guess she can’t. You got me, Darrell. Do you want to put the cuffs on me now?”

Darrell softened a little. We were all tired, and nobody wanted to be doing this on Christmas Day. “I’m sorry, Sandra, but we’re talking about a murder, and you’ve got a hell of a reason to dislike the man who was killed.”

Sandra stubbed out her cigarette in an ashtray. “Dislike him? Yeah. That’s for damn sure. Kill him? No. That would be stupid. I’m about the last person in town who would want to see Gordon Brink dead. Me and the other girls at the mine have been waiting years to get our day in court, and we finally, finally had it in sight. And now this. I know what happens next. The mine asks to have the trial pushed back because their lead attorney croaked, and they need more time to get someone else up to speed. Meanwhile, there goes another year of my life. So do I give a shit about a bastard lawyer like Brink getting killed? No. Good riddance to the scumbag. But believe me, I’d have given him a kidney if it meant keeping my trial date.”

She got up from the sofa and went to the window, where she watched Henry rolling in the snow. Her face had a sunken cast to it, which reflected years of hard living. She was in her midthirties but looked a decade older. I knew Sandra drank a lot, smoked a lot, and probably dabbled in harder stuff, too. She could go toe-to-toe with any of the men at the mine when it came to swearing and telling dirty jokes. But something changed in her eyes when she saw her son. When it came to Henry, she was a mama bear with a cub.

“Do I need to get Norm over here?” she asked us, turning away from the window. “If you seriously think I could have done this, maybe I need a lawyer.”

“We’re just trying to figure out what happened,” Darrell replied. “Do you have any idea who could have done this? Did you hear any talk about Brink over at the mine? Any threats?”

“I stopped listening to talk long ago. The only thing I do at the mine is try to get through my shift without someone sticking their hand down my pants. If I do that, it’s a good day.”

“I know it’s not easy for the women over there.”

“Not easy? It’s been seven years, Darrell. Nothing ever changes. That first year, I was one of four women in the whole place. All I wanted was to do my job. Instead, they grabbed me, harassed me, threatened me, did everything they could to get me to quit. They tried to buy me off to get me to go away. But you know what? You go through that shit, and you decide pretty fast that you’re never going to let them win. I would have chewed glass before I gave up my job.”

Darrell let her light another cigarette before he continued. “When did you last see Brink?”

“About ten days ago. Norm and I spent four hours in a deposition at Brink’s house. The two of us on one side and Brink and his circus parade of lawyers, paralegals, and secretaries on the other.”

“How did that go?”

“Oh, great. Lots of fun. Brink asked me everything from how many abortions I’ve had to how often I diddle myself. He wanted a list of all my sexual partners in the last ten years. I asked if he had a calculator.”

“They can do that?” I asked.

“They can do whatever they want unless a judge says no. Norm says they’re trying to intimidate us. They figure we don’t want our dirty laundry aired in court. Me, I don’t care if they ask me to show off my Adam & Eve toys for the jury. They can’t shame me.”

“Did the other women get the same treatment from Brink?” Darrell asked.

“Oh yeah, he went after everybody else, too. Birth control, affairs, porn, you name it. All except Ruby, of course. She’s their star witness, so they treat her like Snow White. Ruby thinks all of us girls are blowing everything out of proportion, you know. Boys will be boys.”

Sandra shook her head in disgust.

I knew that the bitterness between Sandra and Ruby Jackson ran deep. Ruby had been a vocal opponent of the lawsuit from the beginning, and having her on the other side undercut the entire case. Unlike Sandra and the others, Ruby had the advantage of being married to Ajax. All the men at the mine knew Ajax and didn’t want to get on his bad side. That protected Ruby from the worst of their behavior.

“There’s what, two dozen other women who are part of the litigation now?” Darrell continued. “That’s a lot of husbands, brothers, and fathers who must have been mad as hell about Brink asking questions like that.”

“Yeah. People were pissed. So?”

“Did anyone seem more upset than the others? Did anyone have plans to get even?”

“People blow off steam all the time. They get liquored up and say stupid shit. You know it doesn’t mean anything. Sure, we all hated Brink, and there may have been some pranks that went over the line, but that’s it. The fact is, we wanted our day in court. Nobody from our side was going to mess that up.”

“What about the people on Brink’s team? Did you see any friction between them? Arguments, disagreements?”

Sandra shook her head. “No, Brink was the big bad partner. Nobody challenged him. The others barely even opened their mouths. There was one secretary who looked upset by the questions he was asking, though. She gave me this look a few times, like she felt sorry for me.”

“What was her name?”

“Hell if I know.”

“What did she look like?”

“Kind of an Amy Irving type. Cute.”

Darrell rubbed the scar on his face as he tried to decide what to ask next. I knew he didn’t really believe that Sandra had killed Gordon Brink. Pig’s blood all over Gordon’s wife? Sure. Cutting him into ribbons? No. It takes some serious, blind, soul-deep rage to do that. Like a dormant volcano that wakes up with an explosion. That wasn’t Sandra. With her, what you saw was what you got.

“You’re tuned in to the gossip around town, right?” Darrell said.

“When it’s not about me,” Sandra replied with a wink. “Which isn’t very often.”

“Was there any gossip about Brink? Any stories going around town?”

She pursed her lips and thought about it. “Not a lot. Nobody ever saw him. He hardly ever left that house. Folks around town know his kid, Jay, better than Gordon. Jay goes to the high school. From what I hear, he’s had a rough time from the other teens. I felt bad about that. It’s not his fault who his father was.”

Outside the house, we heard Henry calling for his mother. His snowman was done, and he needed his mom to come out and admire it.

“Is that all?” Sandra asked us. “Are we finished?”

“For now.”

“Well, you know where to find me.”

The three of us headed to the front yard, where Sandra oohed and aahed about Henry’s snowman. Before we left, Darrell signaled to Sandra again and spoke to her under his breath.

“There’s one other thing I need to ask you. At any time during the lawsuit, did you get questions about Kip Wells or Racer Moritz? Or did Brink or anyone else mention them?”

Sandra’s face furrowed with concern. “Kip and Racer? No, why? They were killed before the lawsuit ever began.”

“Do you know if they ever worked at the mine?”

“Not while I’ve been there.”

Darrell nodded. “Okay. Thanks for your time, Sandra. Merry Christmas.”

He headed down the driveway. I went to follow him, but Sandra grabbed my elbow before I could walk away. “What’s going on, honey? What does any of this have to do with Kip and Racer?”

“I can’t say.”

“Come on, everyone’s going to know sooner or later. Tell me.”

I still kept quiet, but Sandra was smart enough to make the connection for herself. Her face bloomed with shock as she put the pieces together, and she exhaled a cloud of steam into the cold air. “Son of a bitch. After all these years. He’s back, isn’t he? The Ursulina is back.”

Chapter Seven

I got to work early the next morning, but Darrell beat me there. He had the records from his investigation into the murders of Kip Wells and Racer Moritz spread out on the table in the conference room. This wasn’t the first time he’d done that. We didn’t get many cold cases in Black Wolf County, and Darrell didn’t like unfinished business. So whenever things were slow — which happened a lot — he hauled out the file and insisted on going over the details with me.

Every time Darrell brought out the crime scene photos, they sickened me all over again. Nearly every square inch over every surface inside the mobile home was covered in blood, much as it had been in Gordon Brink’s bedroom. According to Darrell’s theory of the crime, Racer Moritz died first. He was found at the back of the trailer, stabbed so many times that the autopsy couldn’t give an accurate count. The postmortem blood test showed that he’d been drunk and high on weed at the time of his death. There were no signs of a struggle, so Darrell suspected that Racer had been asleep or unconscious when the murder occurred.

Kip Wells had been found just inside the trailer door. Darrell speculated that the killer murdered Racer and then waited for Kip to return before attacking him from behind. All the knife wounds — more than a hundred, the coroner said — were in Kip’s back. The frenzied attack on his body had continued long after he was actually dead.

Then there was the message from the Ursulina, painted on the trailer wall in Kip’s blood.

For as much time as Darrell had spent on the investigation, he didn’t have much to show for it. The trailer where the killings occurred belonged to Norm Foltz, who used it as a campsite when he took hiking trips in the forest. He was an amateur photographer and naturalist, so when he wasn’t in a courtroom, he was usually in the woods. Sometimes he went alone; sometimes his son, Will, went with him. But because of Norm’s extended stay in Stanton for a trial that summer, the trailer had been unused for a few weeks. It was impossible to know exactly when Kip and Racer had begun squatting there.

But why were they dead? And who killed them? Darrell didn’t know. Honestly, in Black Wolf County, nobody cared. Kip and Racer had bullied people around here from the time they were teenage dropouts. If there was a break-in or theft in town, deputies usually knocked on their doors first. Even the 126 had banned them, and it took a lot of bad behavior to get thrown out of the 126. Many of their worst crimes went unreported, out of fear of retaliation. One woman had accused them of rape, and a week later, her house burned down. People got the message to keep their mouths shut. So when the Ursulina ended Kip and Racer’s reign of terror, pretty much everyone was grateful. If anyone knew anything, they didn’t rush to give Darrell evidence to solve the case.

Even the Ursulina hunt, filmed for television by Ben Malloy, turned out to be a bust. Darrell let Ben and his volunteers trample through the forest surrounding the crime scene, because he hoped someone might find evidence of the real murderer while searching the ground for Ursulina tracks and Ursulina poop. But we didn’t find a thing. Kip and Racer’s killer, like the Ursulina, had disappeared from the woods without leaving a trace.

“Question,” Darrell said, as we sat across from each other at the conference table. He liked to use me as his sounding board, as if the process of thinking through the case again would help us unearth something we’d missed.

“Kip, Racer, now Gordon Brink,” he continued. “What are the similarities between the cases?”

“Well, the crime scenes obviously,” I replied. “The Ursulina message. Plus, the extreme violence in how the victims were killed.”

“And the differences?”

“The crimes happened six years apart. The victims back then were two local thugs versus an out-of-town partner at a corporate law firm. There’s nothing to connect them. We’ve got different murder weapons and different locations, one residential, one in the national forest.”

“What about possible motives for Kip and Racer?”

“Take your pick. They had their fingers in a lot of pies, everything from drugs and poaching to theft and assault.”

“And Brink?”

“Presumably the lawsuit.”

Darrell frowned. “So what does your gut tell you? Are we looking at a copycat or at the same killer?”

I reflected on what to say. “Well, everything about the second crime scene feels staged to look like the first. They’re the same, but they’re also different. That sounds like a copycat, doesn’t it?”

I didn’t have time to find out if Darrell agreed. Before I could say anything more, I heard the rustle of paper and the loud crunch of someone eating potato chips. I looked up and saw Ajax in the doorway of the conference room. He listened to us, with his tall body slumped against the doorframe. “You’re both forgetting something, you know.”

“Oh, yeah?” Darrell asked. “What’s that?”

Ajax came into the room and sat down across from me. His long legs stretched out, and I felt him rub my calf with his boot under the table. I pushed my chair sharply backward. He grinned and extended the bag of potato chips to offer me some, but I waved it away.

“There’s someone connected to both crimes,” Ajax said.

“Who?” Darrell asked.

“Norm Foltz. Kip and Racer were in his trailer. He’s the one who found the bodies. And now we’ve got Gordon Brink, who was on the other side of Norm in the mine lawsuit. He has links to all the victims.”

“Norm also has no motive,” Darrell pointed out.

Ajax’s thick eyebrows teased up and down. “Well, it was a monster’s moon. Who knows what happens to Norm after midnight? Maybe he transforms into a werewolf or something.”

“Not funny,” Darrell said.

Ajax shrugged off the reproach. “Okay, well, Norm has no motive that we know of, but that’s different from not actually having one. Like Rebecca says, Kip and Racer were into everything. As for Brink, there could have been something personal between him and Norm that we don’t know about. And I’ll tell you something else. I didn’t see Norm at the movie at the 126 on Sunday night. So where was he?”

Darrell hated to acknowledge that Ajax was right, but in this case, we both knew that somebody needed to ask Norm some questions.

“Okay, go talk to him,” Darrell told Ajax. He looked at me. “Take Rebecca with you.”

My horror must have shown on my face. “Why not do the interview yourself?”

“Sorry,” Darrell replied, shaking his head. “Norm and I are best friends, everybody around here knows that. You guys talk to him first. Find out what he knows.”

Ajax practically hummed with satisfaction at the assignment. He crumpled up his empty bag of chips and hopped to his feet, and he pointed his long finger at me like a gun. “Come on, Rebecca. Chop-chop.”

I waited until he left the conference room, and then I groaned. “Darrell. Are you kidding? Me and Ajax?”

“You’re going to have to learn to live with him sooner or later. You might as well start now.”

That was true, but I did a lousy job of hiding my annoyance. In the office, I shrugged on my coat, then followed Ajax out of the courthouse building, trying to keep up with his long strides. The Christmas snow lingered on Main Street and on the roofs of the buildings, but the day was bright and clear. Ajax slipped Foster Grants over his eyes as he slid behind the wheel of his cruiser. I kept a stony silence as I took the passenger seat next to him. He squealed his car into a U-turn and sped out of town like a Ferrari driver at Le Mans. Somehow I think this was supposed to impress me.

Ajax shot a sideways glance across the car and saw my mouth bent into a sour frown. “Jesus, lighten up already.”

“Lighten up?” I fired back. “Do you really have the balls to say something like that to me?”

“What’s eating you?”

“You know what. What did you say to Ricky? Did you tell him we were sleeping together?”

He chuckled. “Hey, we were just kidding around. Everybody knew it was a joke.”

“Everybody?”

“Sure, the whole gang at the movie. That’s what we do, you know that. We drink, we shit on each other. Hell, Ruby was right there. She heard everything I said, and she knew I was kidding.”

My fists clenched. “Don’t do it again. Don’t joke about me and you. Not to Ricky, not to anyone. Got that?”

“Got it,” he replied with a sarcastic salute. Then he shoved his sunglasses down to the end of his nose like Tom Cruise. “But just so you know, anytime you want more than what Ricky’s packing, I’m happy to help out.”

“Oh, shut up, Ajax. Just shut the hell up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

We didn’t speak for several minutes after that. I fumed in the passenger seat. We headed into the nowhere land that occupies most of the county, past miles of white-flocked evergreens hugging both sides of the highway. Eventually, Ajax got to a lonely T-intersection, where the 126 crossed with a dirt road that I knew well. Going left led toward Norm Foltz’s house, which was next door to the house where Darrell and his family lived. On the other side of Darrell was the house where I’d grown up with my father and brother. Almost a quarter-mile separated each of the lots, but we were all neighbors.

However, Ajax turned in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going?” I asked.

“I need to stop home first. I forgot my lunch.”

“Can’t you skip it?”

Ajax shook his head. “Man, are you on the rag, or what? Give me a break. It’ll take five minutes.”

He drove fast enough to get a little skid on the rear tires. The unplowed road was rutted with tracks in the snow. Three miles from the highway, we got to his house, which was a freshly built two-story big enough for a large family. The yard had been cleared, but there were still a few dozen tree stumps jutting out of the drifts. It was more house than you’d expect from a thirty-year-old deputy, but we all assumed that the sheriff had kicked in cash for his nephew.

“Want to come in?” Ajax asked.

“No, I’ll stay out here.”

“Suit yourself. I won’t be long.”

He got out of the car and marched up to his front porch. I saw the door open, and his wife, Ruby, came outside to greet him. He gave her a peck and then slapped her ass as he went inside. She glanced at the cruiser, which was when she spotted me. Her mouth pushed into a thin, unhappy line. I got the feeling that Ruby wasn’t convinced that her husband had been kidding around at the 126.

Ruby had a lush shag of deep mahogany hair that hung well below her shoulders. She was bony and small, except for the basketball-sized bump in her stomach. After she’d left the mine, they’d had two kids back to back, and the third was due in the next month or so. Her face was Barbie-doll pretty, in the same Ken-doll way that Ajax was handsome. She had fair skin, a sharp little dimpled chin, and big green eyes that could turn from sweet to ferocious in a blink. The genetic combination of Ruby and Ajax was undeniably impressive. Their kids were gorgeous.

She tramped through the snow. It was cold outside, but she wore no coat, just a holiday sweater and jeans. I knew she was coming to talk to me, so I got out of the car and lit a cigarette as I leaned against the door.

“Hi, Ruby.”

“Rebecca.”

“How are you? Feeling okay?”

“Fine.”

“Number three won’t be long now, huh?”

“No, not long.”

“Good.”

That was all we said, but I heard a different, unspoken conversation going on between us. Ruby knew what her husband was like. She knew that Ajax cheated on her every chance he got, because you couldn’t keep that kind of thing quiet in Black Wolf County. But Ruby was also intent on making sure that no matter who Ajax slept with, he always came home to her and her kids. She’d mess up any woman who tried to get in the middle of her marriage, and the look in her green eyes told me that she thought I was exactly the kind of woman who might try to do that. I was trying just as hard to tell her that nothing was going on between me and Ajax.

Finally, Ruby got more pointed.

“So where’s Darrell? Don’t you usually ride with him?”

“He asked me and Ajax to do an interview.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Gordon Brink got killed,” I added.

“Yeah, I heard.”

“So that’s all it is,” I told her, which was as close as I could get to saying out loud that I wasn’t trying to steal her husband.

“I suppose you’re talking to Norm,” Ruby said.

I covered my surprise that she’d guessed right. “Well, we’ll be talking to everyone who knew Brink. That’s how these things go.”

“You should start with Norm, that’s all I’ll say.”

“Why?”

“Ajax didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me what?”

“About Norm and Gordon.”

“No, what about them?”

Ruby glanced over her shoulder at their house. Ajax was still inside. I could see her weighing whether to say anything, but I think she loved the idea of lording a secret over me. “I had a deposition with Norm at Brink’s house a few days ago. Norm was trying to get me to say the men were harassing Sandra and the others at the mine. He kept pushing hard for X-rated details.”

“What did you tell him?”

“I said the worst sexual harasser I ever saw at the mine was Sandra.”

“So what does that have to do with Norm and Gordon?”

“We took a break midway through,” Ruby explained. “I had to pee. I have to pee like every twenty minutes with this kid sitting on my bladder. When I was done, I passed the back door to the house on my way back. I saw Norm and Gordon out in the yard, and I could hear they were having an argument. It was really hot, like they might go after each other. Gordon was shouting at Norm.”

“Was it about the deposition?” I asked.

Ruby shook her head. “No. It didn’t have anything to do with the lawsuit. They were arguing about Gordon’s son. Jay.”

Chapter Eight

Norm met us at the door before we even had a chance to knock.

I’d been in his house many times over the years, going back to when I was a girl. My father wasn’t as close to Norm as Darrell was, but any neighbor quickly becomes a friend around here. Our families had spent a lot of time around the firepit in Norm’s backyard, eating homemade Swedish potato sausage, playing Jarts and volleyball, and telling ghost stories. It was Norm who’d first told me the legend of the Ursulina when I was six years old.

“Ajax,” Norm welcomed him, with a smart twinkle in his blue eyes. “So Darrell pawned me off on you, hmm? What a smart man.”

Then he wrapped me up in a hug. “Hello, Rebecca. How are you doing? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.”

“You sure?”

“Yes, I’m okay. Really.”

He whispered in my ear, “If you ever want help with anything, I’m here for you.”

News traveled fast around Black Wolf County. I was sure Norm had heard about the troubles between me and Ricky, and I understood the kind of help he was talking about. Among the DWIs, estate plans, and petty criminal cases that were his bread and butter, Norm also handled the occasional divorce.

“Well, come on back,” he told us. “Let’s chat.”

He led us to a four-season porch overlooking the backyard and the thick forest. Norm’s house had started small, but he’d expanded it with a second story, a finished basement, a detached garage and workshop, and a multilevel deck, all of which he’d built himself, with help from his son, Will. In the middle of the snowy lawn, I could see an elaborate swing set Norm had constructed years earlier. I’d pushed Will there when he was just a little boy, but since then, he’d turned seventeen, grown to six foot two, and become a high school running back.

I took a seat on a wicker sofa, but Ajax remained standing, as if he could use his height to intimidate Norm. I knew that wouldn’t work. Norm simply eased into a cushioned armchair and took a sip from a glass of orange juice. He wore an L.L.Bean checkered flannel shirt, cream-colored khakis, and heavy wool socks with no shoes. He always looked comfortable in his surroundings, whether it was at home, at the courthouse, or deep in the woods.

Norm was in his midforties, rangy and lean, with thinning blond hair and long sideburns. He was a rarity around here, in that he wasn’t a native. He’d been born in Madison but had grown up hunting and fishing in this part of the world thanks to his father. After he graduated from law school and married his wife, Kathy, he’d whisked her away to Black Wolf County, bought this house, and built up a legal practice in an area that didn’t trust lawyers. People had mixed feelings about him from the start. He was a Sierra Club Democrat in a region where mine workers thought the environment was code for taking away their jobs. Even so, there was a legal niche to be filled in this area, and he filled it. When you got caught doing ninety with six empty cans of Schlitz in the front seat, you needed someone like Norm.

“Gordon Brink,” he said, leaping to the correct assumption about why we were there. “Wow, that’s a shock. Just horrible. I talked to the coroner about it, and he filled me in. I wouldn’t wish that kind of death on anyone. Not even Gordon.”

“The coroner told you about the crime scene?” Ajax asked with surprise.

“Oh, sure. He wouldn’t do it with anyone else, but Ross and I go way back. He knows that if you arrest somebody, I’ll probably be the one defending him. Anyway, I suppose you want to ask about the argument I had with Gordon last week, right? Ruby told you about that?”

I watched Ajax deflate as Norm took the air out of his big news. “Yeah, what was that about?”

“Well, you’ve met Gordon’s son, right? Jay? Smart kid. Sort of quiet and intense, but a decent boy. He transferred into the high school in October when Gordon arrived in town. The other kids gave him a hard time — some really terrible stuff. Will felt bad about it. You know Will, he likes everybody, everybody likes him. He made a point of reaching out to Jay. The two of them have become friends.”

“I’m betting Gordon didn’t like that idea,” I said.

Norm shook his head. “No, he most certainly did not. I mean, it was obvious that Gordon and Jay had a bad relationship. As a father, I get that. Will and I have always been close, but even with him, the teenage years haven’t exactly been Saturday in the park. That’s just the age. But Gordon seemed to have no clue how difficult it was for Jay around here. Empathy isn’t exactly a job requirement for partners at white-shoe law firms.”

“Get to the argument,” Ajax said impatiently. “What was it about?”

“In the middle of Ruby’s deposition, Gordon pulled me outside. He told me to keep Will away from Jay. He accused me of using my son to goad Jay into spying on the litigation. Needless to say, I didn’t take that well. I told him that I would never exploit my son like that, and that if either of the boys tried to give me inside information about the case, I would have shut them down on the spot. I also told him that he should be grateful to Will, because Jay had no other friends around here and was incredibly isolated and unhappy. Gordon told me to mind my own business, and I couldn’t really object to that. It wasn’t my place to interfere. So I let it go, and that was the end of that. When we went back inside to continue the deposition, Gordon acted as if nothing had happened. He was a master at compartmentalizing things.”

“It must have made you mad,” Ajax insisted. “Gordon attacking you and your son like that.”

“Of course it did. But not mad enough to kill him.” Norm’s mouth bent into a tiny smile. “Not even during a monster’s moon.”

“Where were you on Sunday evening?” Ajax asked. “I didn’t see you at the 126.”

“Kathy wasn’t feeling well. We stayed home.”

“Can anyone verify that?”

“No. The two of us watched a movie on our new VCR. I got her a copy of Wuthering Heights. She loves Olivier.”

Ajax sat down next to me and scowled like a chess player who didn’t see any winning moves. None of this was going the way he’d expected. When he didn’t ask anything more, I leaned forward on the sofa and took over the interview.

“Norm, do you have any idea who could have done this to Gordon?”

“I really don’t. It’s shocking and completely unexpected. However, if you’re looking at anyone on the plaintiff side of the litigation as a suspect, I can tell you, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Yes, a lot of people were angry at Brink, but I made it clear to the women and their families that any kind of violence or illegal behavior worked against us. The last thing we need to do is give the judge an excuse to rule against us on key motions.”

“That didn’t work out too well for Erica Brink,” I pointed out. “She got a face full of pig’s blood.”

“You’re right. Except that wasn’t us, either.”

“No?”

“No. Erica wasn’t the target, and neither was Gordon. Jay was. It was kids at school who did it. They simply hit Erica by mistake.”

“Are you sure about that?”

“I am. Will told me.”

“Do you know who did it?”

“Yes, I do, but I’m not going to tell you. Sorry, but it’s not my job to help you do yours. Anyway, Will laid into the kids who did it, and you don’t want to mess with my son. They won’t do it again.”

I shook my head, because Norm had an answer for everything, and his replies left us nowhere to go.

“We talked to Sandra,” I told him.

“Yes, I heard about that,” he replied smoothly. “Please don’t do that again without me present. She’s my client, and I don’t want her answering any questions without counsel.”

“Even if she’s innocent?”

“Because she’s innocent,” Norm said.

“Okay. Well.” I found myself stumbling, like Ajax. “If it was no one on the plaintiff side—”

“Then was it someone on Gordon’s side?” Norm continued calmly. “I have no idea about that. I didn’t see any of his people outside of the deposition proceedings, and hardly any of them said a word to me. They were all eager young associates. None of them struck me as Jack the Ripper, but as Darrell likes to say, you never know.”

“Sandra mentioned a secretary who didn’t seem too happy with the questions Gordon was asking. She didn’t know her name, but said she was sort of an Amy Irving look-alike.”

“Penny Ramsey.”

“Did you see any tension between her and Gordon?”

“Hard to say. Penny’s young, so she may have a few remnants of her soul left. Souls don’t last too long at corporate firms, you know. But tension? I didn’t notice. Sandra probably has a better eye than me for things like that. If she saw it, it’s probably true.”

Norm checked his watch, which was the signal for us to move it along.

“Is there anything else?” he went on. “I hate to rush you, but things are pretty busy for me. Gordon’s dead, but life goes on. I’m sure the mine will be asking for a continuance, and I need to be ready with a motion to oppose it.”

“I think that’s all for now.”

“Good.”

We were about to stand up, but Ajax suddenly interrupted. “Hang on. What about Kip and Racer?”

Norm settled back into his chair with a little sigh. “What about them?”

“If you talked to the coroner, then you know the crime scenes are similar. You’re the only person with a connection to all the victims.”

“You think I killed Kip and Racer?” Norm asked, chuckling.

“I think you know more than you’re telling us.”

Norm studied us like a cat debating the physics of a jump from roof to roof. Strangely, when I looked at Norm’s face, I realized that Ajax was right. Norm was hiding something. I narrowed my eyes in apprehension of what he might say. What did he know that he’d kept from us for six years?

“Fair enough,” he replied finally. “I guess I can share this with you now. Not that it’s likely to help you with regard to Gordon’s death. Do you remember what was found in my trailer, in addition to the bodies and the blood?”

I knew. “Liquor bottles. A lot of them.”

“Yes, exactly. A couple of weeks earlier, there had been an overnight break-in at a liquor store way over in Mittel County. The owner was lazy about cleaning out the cash register at night. The thieves took several hundred dollars and a few cases of beer and spirits. Somebody spotted a car peeling away that matched a stolen vehicle here in Random.”

“So what?” Ajax said. “We already suspected that Kip and Racer were behind the robbery. That’s why we were looking for them.”

“Yes, but what you don’t know is that Kip Wells called me. He thought he and Racer were likely to be arrested at any moment and they wanted me as their lawyer. Of course, I was in the middle of the trial in Stanton and couldn’t come home. Kip wanted to avoid the two of them being found until I was back in the county.”

“Norm, what did you do?” I asked, with a chill in my voice.

He shrugged. “I may have mentioned to Kip during our conversation that I was disappointed at not being able to spend time in my trailer because I was away from home.”

“You told them to hide out there to avoid arrest,” I said.

“I did nothing of the sort. That would be illegal.”

“You’re the reason they were there,” I said again, shaking my head with disgust.

“Rebecca, I made an offhand comment about being unable to visit a secluded property I owned,” he told us, still playing lawyer word games. “What they chose to do with that information was up to them. When I got back to Random, naturally I made a stop at my trailer to make sure everything was secure. That’s when I found the bodies and called Darrell. However, to be clear, that’s all I know about the crimes. I have no idea who killed Kip and Racer.”

Outside, Ajax and I lit up cigarettes next to his cruiser.

We both leaned against the hood. He stood close enough to me that his thigh brushed against mine. I was thinking about Norm and what he’d done, so I didn’t bother to move away. Believe me, Ajax noticed. He was smooth, taking his time, not spooking the bronco. After we’d smoked for a while, he slid his arm behind me like a teenager at a movie theater, and soon after that, his fingers began to stroke my hair. Just a casual thing. Harmless. Yes, I should have stopped him, but I didn’t. At that particular moment in my life, I liked being wanted. I couldn’t remember the last time Ricky had touched me with anything resembling affection.

And I know, I know, sweetheart, that’s how it starts. One time you get tired of resisting. One time you let it go, and the next thing you know, your whole life is in ruins. That’s how it happened for me.

Finally, I threw my cigarette into the snow and pushed Ajax away. That was only because I heard the whine of a power saw and spotted Will Foltz inside one of the open doors of Norm’s workshop. I felt a little embarrassed at the idea that Will might have spotted me standing so close to Ajax. It didn’t take much to start rumors around Black Wolf County.

Ajax saw him, too. “We should talk to Will.”

I nodded. “Let me do it, okay?”

“Why?”

“I’ve known Will his whole life. He trusts me. Plus, if Norm sees you talking to his son, he won’t like it.”

I crossed the driveway and went inside the workshop. Will was in the middle of crafting a miniature gazebo, something you’d put in a flower garden. Like his father, Will loved building things. He’d been designing and crafting everything from rolltop desks to built-in bookshelves since he was about ten years old. Ricky and I had rocking chairs on our back porch that Will had made for us as a wedding present.

He was a handsome kid. His physique was burly, but he was sleek, strong, and fast on the football field. His blond hair was thick, with some curl where it covered his ears. What made him irresistible was his high-wattage smile. Will turned on that smile, and high school girls swooned. All of Darrell’s girls were in love with him. A kid with that kind of charm could have become another Ajax if he’d had the wrong personality, but I had never known Will to exploit his good looks. As gregarious as he was, he only dated occasionally. He had too many other things on his plate.

“Hi, Will.”

Like a light bulb, that smile flashed to life. “Hi, Rebecca.”

“That’s a beautiful gazebo.”

“Thanks. I’m making it for Mr. Stedman. His wife always wanted one, and I thought he’d like to have it for her, you know?”

“That’s sweet.” I let him sand and plane for a minute, and then I went on. “Did you hear about Jay’s dad?”

He didn’t stop what he was doing. “Uh-huh.”

“Norm says you and Jay are friends.”

“Yeah, we hang out sometimes.”

“Have you talked to him?”

“Sure. I called him as soon as I heard.”

“How’s he doing?”

“It’s hard to tell with Jay sometimes,” Will replied, eyeing the length of the board. “He keeps things all bottled up.”

“I heard Jay and his dad didn’t get along too well.”

Will rolled his eyes. “That’s the understatement of the year.”

“It wasn’t good?”

“It was terrible. Gordon expected Jay to be just like him, and that was the last thing Jay wanted.”

“What did Jay want?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I’m not sure he knows. He’ll probably be a writer or something. I tried to tell Jay that lawyers weren’t so bad. My dad’s a lawyer, and he’s one of the good guys. I’ll probably be one, too.”

“When we talked to Jay, he called his father a monster. Do you have any idea why he’d say something like that?”

Will finally stopped his woodworking, and his brow wrinkled unhappily. “Why are you asking me about Jay, Rebecca?”

“We’re trying to figure out what happened to his father.”

“Well, Jay didn’t kill him,” Will said.

“I never said that he did.”

“Yeah, but you’re thinking it, right? Look, Jay and Gordon didn’t get along, and he may not show how upset he is about his dad getting killed, but that’s just the way he is. It doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel bad about it.”

“Do you think Jay has any idea who murdered Gordon?”

“Not that he said to me.”

“He told us he was home the whole time, but he says he didn’t see or hear anything. That’s a little weird.”

“He probably had his music cranked,” Will said. “Put on ‘Holiday in Cambodia’ and you won’t hear much of anything else.”

“Sure.”

“If Jay says he doesn’t know anything, then he doesn’t.”

“Okay. Well, thanks, Will.”

The teenager nodded at me and went back to his work. I started out of the garage, but when I’d reached the snow, he called after me.

“Rebecca?”

“Yes? What is it?”

This time there was no magnetic smile. Will had a serious look on his face. “I’m not kidding. You need to believe me. No matter what you think about him, Jay didn’t do it. He didn’t kill his father.”

Chapter Nine

Ajax and I tracked down Gordon Brink’s secretary before heading back to the sheriff’s office. Penny Ramsey was staying at a motel only a mile from the 126, along with the other members of the mine’s legal team. She looked extremely nervous talking to us.

“I can’t say anything about the litigation,” she insisted, when we were together in her small motel room. “That’s privileged. If I said a word, I’d be fired.”

“We’re not looking for legal secrets,” Ajax said. “We just want to find out who killed your boss.”

“Yeah. Okay.” Penny put her ear to the wall of the motel room. When she didn’t hear anything, she sat down on the twin bed, which was covered with heavy law books. She closed them one by one, and then she took a stack of yellow pads filled with spidery handwriting and shoved them inside a suitcase on the floor. “One of the associates is staying in the room next to me. He went cross-country skiing, but he could be back at any time. We need to do this fast.”

Ajax took a wooden chair and sat in front of her. They were face-to-face, their knees nearly touching. Sandra had called her an Amy Irving look-alike, and she was right about that. Penny had frizzy brown hair, parted in the middle, and blue eyes that looked a little wild, as if they might go spinning around without warning. She was small, no more than five feet tall, and to me, she didn’t look much older than twenty. She had pretty features but went a little heavy on the blush.

“You must still be in shock about Gordon’s murder,” Ajax said.

“Of course. Yeah.”

“Do you need some water? Kleenex or something?”

“No, I’m okay.”

“Well, if you need to stop and catch your breath, you just tell me. Okay, Penny? Do you mind if I call you Penny?”

Her nervous mouth broke into a little smile. “No, I don’t mind.”

“I’m Ajax.”

“That’s a cool name.”

He gave her one of his broad grins. “Thanks.”

I stayed in the corner, trying not to groan. I felt a grudging admiration as I watched Ajax work his magic on her. It was strange, seeing him operate on a woman other than me, but I wondered if this performance was partly to let me see how good he was at seducing his prey.

“How did you hear about Gordon’s death?” Ajax asked.

“Erica called Hal Barker. He’s the senior associate on the team. Hal told the rest of us.”

“You must have been surprised.”

“Well, sure, but I already knew something was wrong. Erica had called earlier to see if I knew where Gordon was. She said he was missing. Although at the time, I figured that was just an excuse.”

“An excuse for what?”

“To see if Gordon was with me. Erica watches me all the time. She thought Gordon and I were having an affair.”

“Were you?”

“No.”

Her denial was swift and sharp, as if even the idea of an affair with Gordon disgusted her. Ajax heard it, too. He glanced at me for help, and I came over and sat on the bed next to Penny.

“Is there something we should know about Gordon?” I asked.

“Nothing at all.” She pretended to be calm, but I saw her chest rise and fall like the rapid breaths of a bird. “Erica was suspicious of all the girls. I guess when you take your husband away from another woman, you’re always looking over your shoulder to see if someone is trying to do the same thing to you.”

“It doesn’t sound as if you like Erica very much,” I said.

“I don’t like women who turn a blind eye to who their husbands are.”

“Who was Gordon?” I asked.

Her wild eyes met mine. Somehow, I knew exactly what she was going to say. “He was a monster.”

Ajax and I exchanged a glance.

“Why would you call him that?” he asked.

Penny looked down at her lap. “I shouldn’t be telling you any of this. If it gets back to the firm that I’ve been talking to you, I’m out, and I need this job. I need the paycheck. Look, I’ve worked for Gordon for two years. This was my first job out of high school. I was lucky to get it, because the firm is very exclusive.”

Ajax put a hand on her shoulder. “Anything you tell us doesn’t go any further than this room.”

He knew that was a lie. Penny should have realized she was being played, but behind those scary eyes, she was a single city girl on her own in a small town, and she was being talked up by a very handsome cop.

“It sounds like you knew Gordon better than almost anyone,” Ajax went on, massaging her ego the same way he’d massage her thigh if they were in bed. “So you may know something that would help us catch whoever did this.”

“I don’t know anything.”

“Well, you called him a monster. What does that mean?”

Penny began to backtrack. “I just meant he was ruthless. Hard as nails. Lawyers have to be tough, you know. That’s their job. But the things he said to those women, the questions he asked. It was awful.”

“Did any of them get angry?”

“Sure. They all did. I couldn’t blame them. I wouldn’t want someone grilling me about my sex life like that.”

“Did you hear anyone make threats?”

“Not specifically. Not in the room. But it got pretty heated sometimes.”

I took over the questions again. “Penny, you said Erica suspected you of having an affair with Gordon, but she was wrong about that. Do you know if he was having an affair with anyone else while he was here?”

“I have no idea, but I wouldn’t be surprised. All the paralegals are women. So’s the other secretary working on the case. We’re all young and cute. That’s part of the job description if you work for Gordon.”

“Did you ever see him with any local women?” I asked.

“No. He worked sixteen hours a day. He hardly ever left the house. Some of us would go hang out at the bar in the evenings and on weekends, but Gordon never did. I mean, back in Milwaukee, he’d usually go out and have a drink and blow off steam with us. Not here. I don’t know...”

Her voice drifted off.

“What?” I asked.

“Gordon was on edge about something. The whole time he was here, he was angry and restless. He took it out on us. I mean, he’s always demanding, but this was worse. This case really seemed to get to him.”

“Do you know why?” Ajax asked, frowning.

“No.”

“He didn’t say anything about it?”

“Nothing. Not to me, anyway.”

“You worked with him for two years. What was he like as a lawyer?”

“I told you. Tough. Ambitious. He was the firm’s fixer. If a client had a problem, he made it go away. That was why he made partner so fast — two years before any other associate. But there was something different about this case.”

“What?”

“Well, for one thing, he tried to hand it off, rather than take it on himself. That was unusual. I heard him say the case was a loser and he wanted some other partner to take the first chair. I figured he was concerned that a big judgment against our client would hurt his reputation. But he couldn’t get out of it, because the mine insisted on him.”

“How was the case going?”

Ajax asked the question so smoothly that Penny answered without thinking.

“Hal — the senior associate — he’s pretty sure we’ll win if it goes to trial. He thought the depositions made the women look bad. Not sympathetic. Maybe he was right, but I’m not so sure. I mean, I’m not a lawyer, but their stories sounded pretty convincing to me. But Hal said our witness would offset whatever they claimed and make it sound like the women just wanted money.”

“Your witness?”

“A woman named Ruby,” Penny said.

Ajax got up from the chair quickly at the mention of his wife’s name. “Okay. Thanks. Penny, you’ve been a big help.”

Penny stood up, too. “You won’t tell anyone that I talked to you?”

Ajax put a finger over his lips and winked. “You’re an anonymous source. Just like Deep Throat. But hey, I could use your help on something else.”

“What?”

“People are bound to be talking about Gordon’s murder. You might hear things. Stories about Gordon, theories about what happened to him. If anything comes up that you think I should know about, you just call the sheriff’s office and ask to talk to Ajax. We can meet somewhere private. No one has to know. Okay?”

Penny nodded, biting her lip. “Yeah. Okay.”

Ajax and I left the motel together. We walked across the parking lot, but then I made an excuse to go back. “Hang on, I forgot my notebook.”

I jogged back across the parking lot. Penny answered the door, and I pointed at the dresser where I’d left my notepad. I nudged past her to retrieve it, but she didn’t move from the doorway. It was clear she wanted me gone.

I came up beside her again and spoke softly. “A monster?”

“It was a poor choice of words, that’s all.”

“I don’t think so, Penny. His son Jay called him the same thing. I was wondering if you talked to Jay one of the times you were in the house.”

“No, I didn’t.”

I waited, a clock ticking in my head. If we took much longer, Ajax would come back, and I didn’t think Penny would open up about any of this with a man. “Come on, it’s just you and me. What really happened?”

She hesitated. “Jay may have heard me talking to one of the paralegals.”

“What did you say?”

“I’m the one who called Gordon a monster,” she admitted. “It was me.”

“Why?”

Penny bit her lip and said nothing.

“Why did you say that?” I pressed her again.

She glanced at the parking lot, as if confirming that no one from the firm’s legal team was nearby. “We were going over deposition transcripts. Everyone else had left for the day. Daphne — she’s the paralegal — Daphne and I opened some wine. After a couple of glasses, she asked me about my first job interview with Gordon.”

“What about it?”

“She wanted to know if anything had happened between us.”

“Like what?”

Penny’s face soured. “Let’s just say my typing wasn’t the only skill he wanted to test.”

“He wanted you to sleep with him.”

“Yes.”

“Did you?”

She nodded unhappily. “It was pretty clear I wasn’t getting the job if I didn’t, and I really wanted the job.”

“What about Daphne? Did the same thing happen to her?”

“Yeah. Her, too. Pretty much everyone, in fact.”

“Who knew about this?”

“At the firm? They all knew, but they didn’t care. Nobody lifted a finger to stop him. Gordon was a rainmaker. You don’t mess with the partner who brings in the business.”

“What about Erica?” I asked.

Penny shrugged. “She started out as his secretary, like me. You think her interview was any different? I already told you. Erica knew exactly who her husband was. That’s why she didn’t trust him.”

Chapter Ten

Over the course of the next several weeks, information came at us so fast that we could barely keep up with it.

Darrell, Ajax, and I conducted interviews around Black Wolf County. The other members of Gordon Brink’s legal team came back from the Christmas holiday, and we talked to all of them. The lawyers. The paralegals. The other legal secretary. They were more discreet than Penny Ramsey, but the picture they painted of Brink largely agreed with everything she’d told us. He was a tough, ambitious lawyer. He was obsessed with winning. And although none of the women used the same word that Penny had, I could see it in their eyes regardless.

He was a monster.

We talked to the plaintiffs, too. Not just the women, but their families and friends. Every interview gave us a new suspect, because they all hated Brink. He’d spent hours digging into the most intimate details of their sex lives. He’d exposed their affairs, abuse, incest, and abortions. He’d called them liars. He’d left them in tears. As far as the plaintiffs were concerned, Gordon Brink deserved to be cut up into little pieces, and whoever did it deserved a statue in the town square.

But nobody knew who’d actually killed him.

We checked every dumpster behind every business in town. We dug through the garbage in the county landfill, but we didn’t find the murder weapon or the killer’s bloody clothes. It’s not like the murderer could have buried them under the frozen ground or thrown them into an ice-covered lake, but as soon as the spring thaw arrived, they’d be gone forever. There’s a lot of land around here where people can make things disappear.

When we’d gathered all the evidence, we still had nothing. We had a body, we had motives, we had dozens of people who would have wanted the victim dead, but we didn’t have a single witness who could place anyone at Gordon Brink’s house on Sunday night. The only person who’d been there with him was Jay, and he still claimed to have not seen a thing.

It was the same situation Darrell had faced with the murders of Kip and Racer. No one really cared if Brink was dead. No one really cared if we put his killer behind bars. The town was ready to forget about this crime, to plow it under the snowdrifts and move on. Only Darrell still cared, because he was the kind of man who couldn’t leave a crossword puzzle unfinished. He had no intention of giving up. But even he knew the case was going nowhere.

By the time a full month had passed after the murder, we’d hit a wall. Evidence dried up. There was nobody left to talk to, no facts left to uncover. It was late January, and as the temperatures sank below zero, the investigation into the death of Gordon Brink turned as cold as the winter.

I assumed the case would stay that way forever. Unsolved.

So I had to face the other side of my life, sweetheart. The side that involved me and Ricky and our future. The beginning of the end for us came on movie night at the 126, and believe me, I’ve thought long and hard about whether to tell you any of this. But this isn’t just my story. It’s yours, and you deserve to know everything.

You see, some very bad things happened to me that January, but the best thing happened, too.

You.

You happened.

“Is that what you’re wearing?” Ricky asked me, making it clear he didn’t approve.

I glanced in the bedroom mirror and saw my reflection wearing a bulky striped sweater, jean skirt, and leggings. I’d brushed out my black hair, but that was a losing battle against the tangles. “What’s wrong with what I’m wearing?”

His mouth puckered as if he were eating a grapefruit. “You look like a high school virgin. Show a little skin.”

“It’s five below zero,” I reminded him. “Every time the door opens at the 126, it’s a refrigerator in there. You want me to shiver through the whole movie?”

“I want my wife to look sexy when we go out. That’s not asking a lot.”

“What difference does it make?” I protested. “No one will be looking at me. All the girls will be looking at Sean Connery, and all the guys will be looking at Kim Basinger.”

“Ajax will be looking at you. He always does. I want him to see what he can’t have.”

I shook my head, and exasperation crept into my voice. “Will you let it go about Ajax? He’s just trying to drive you crazy. He’s been doing that since you were kids.”

Ricky began unbuttoning his shirt. “Fine. If you’re going to be like that, we’ll stay home.”

I swore under my breath.

Yes, I could have stood my ground, but I wasn’t in the mood for a fight. Not that night. I wanted to drown my sorrows and not worry about anything else. I was in the mood to go out, to laugh, to forget, to drink. Definitely to drink. I wasn’t looking forward to the week ahead. I’d made up my mind like a New Year’s resolution to split up with Ricky for good, and I’d set up an appointment with Norm in a few days to talk about how to do it. But I wasn’t ready to tell Ricky yet, and until I did, I was determined to keep the fragile truce between us.

So I went back to our closet and stripped off my clothes. Ricky sat on the bed and watched me. I switched bras, putting on one that pushed up what little I had to push up. I found a flowered sundress that came only halfway down my thighs. It had poofy shoulders and a scoop neckline and would have been perfect for a Fourth of July picnic, not a late January night at the 126. I slipped it over my head and then did a pirouette that fluttered the hem.

“How’s this? Satisfied?”

“Hell yeah. Was that so hard?”

I summoned a fake smile at his reaction. I was already freezing.

That was how we went to the bar, with my arms and legs pebbled over with goose bumps and my nipples trying to burst through my dress so they could get back home and nestle inside a sweater. Ricky got what he wanted. I was definitely the sexiest girl there, because everyone else was buried under layers of flannel. I figured I could keep my long wool coat on to stay warm, but Ricky took it away when we sat down, which left me feeling like a Florida flamingo who’d been shipped to an Alaska glacier.

The 126 was a big place, with blond wood and kitschy décor that ranged from big-game animal heads to vintage hubcaps to coconut monkey faces. It had a central room where they put up metal folding chairs on movie night, and they could seat almost two hundred people. Then there was the long bar, with fake Tiffany chandeliers, neon signs for Budweiser and Bartles & Jaymes, a few beer taps, and red upholstered chairs that bore the butt prints of the regulars. Smaller rooms jutted off from the bar area, where you could play pool, foosball, pinball, and video games.

All this, and there was only one toilet stall for the women. The lines got long.

Ricky and I settled in next to each other for the Bond flick Never Say Never Again. He put his hand on my bare thigh. The lights went down low, but the noise didn’t. Movie night here was mostly a social thing. If you actually wanted to watch the film, you were in the wrong place. People made shadow puppets on the screen and shouted out the dialogue, because we’d all seen the movie before. Neighbors talked and joked, and teenagers made out, and kids ran around screaming, and we all got drunk. Me included. Very drunk. I drank way too much beer. By the time James Bond was sleeping with Fatima Blush, I was tipsy. I was also dancing in my chair because I needed to pee.

So I headed for the bathrooms, which were down a corridor near the back door, where it was as cold as a meat locker. I passed through a cloud of cigarette smoke and added to the cloud by lighting one myself. The hallway smelled of burnt popcorn and urine. Ten women waited for the bathroom, and I swore at the line, because I didn’t think I was going to last that long.

Sandra Thoreau stood in front of me. She laughed at my summer dress. “What the hell are you wearing, honey?”

I rolled my eyes. “Ricky’s idea.”

“Yeah, no shit. You want to borrow my coat for a minute?”

“You’re awesome. Could I?”

Sandra slipped off her wool coat, and I stuck my arms inside the sleeves and wrapped it around myself, feeling warm for the first time in two hours.

“How goes the Brink case?” she asked me. “Know who carved him up yet?”

“No.”

“Getting close?”

“No, we’re nowhere. Darrell’s not happy.”

“Too bad.”

My head spun with the alcohol, and I talked more than I should. “Nobody cares anyway,” I said.

“Oh, yeah?”

“Yeah. Kip, Racer, Brink. They were bad men.”

“Yes, they were.”

“Nobody cares,” I said again. “Nobody cares about bad men.”

“Hey, Rebecca?” Sandra murmured, her voice going down to a whisper as she put her lips to my ear.

“Yeah?”

“Ricky’s a bad man, too.”

It was a relief to hear someone else say it out loud. Like I wasn’t alone. “Yeah. You’re right. He is.”

“Honey, you need to get out of that marriage.”

“I know.”

“You’re so much better than he is. I never understood why you married a loser like him. You’re pretty, you’re smart, you’re tough. You’re special.”

I sighed and closed my eyes, feeling unsteady. “I never wanted to be special. I just wanted to be normal. Around here, normal girls get married.”

“Okay, but why Ricky?”

“He said he loved me.”

“He was lying,” Sandra said.

I didn’t understand. I couldn’t focus. There was too much noise, too much smoke, too much cold, too much stench wafting out of the toilets. I was going to be sick. “What are you saying?”

“The football game? The first time you met him? He’d been watching you for weeks.”

I stared at her, seeing two Sandras, then three, then four, like a mirror in a fun house. “That’s not true.”

“Honey, he bragged to everybody at the mine that he was going to get you. Ricky was stalking you like a deer in the woods.”

I took off Sandra’s coat and handed it back to her. “Here.”

“I’m sorry. Maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“I’m not upset.”

“You’re crying, Rebecca.”

“I’m not crying. I just really, really, really need to pee. What are those women doing in there?”

I was going to lose it. If I didn’t do something right then and there, I’d be peeing on the floor. I squeezed my bare legs together. I rubbed my face, which was wet, and I didn’t even know why. I saw the bar’s back door at the end of the hallway, and I wobbled that way on my heels, practically falling down. The only thing I could do was go outside in the snow. I could pee there. I really had to pee.

Then I met Ajax.

He came out of the men’s bathroom. There was never a line there. He was like a foot taller than me, looking all cocky and handsome, like Sean Connery when he was in Goldfinger and not older than dirt like in Never Say Never Again. Ajax checked out my face, my dress, my arms, my legs, my nipples, pretty much everything I had to offer the world. His mouth bent into a grin. It was a cute grin. He knew where I was going and what I had to do, and he thought it was incredibly funny.

“Gotta pee?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Go in the men’s room. I’ll watch the door.”

“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

The men’s room was foul, but I didn’t care. Nudie photos hung over the urinals, and the floor was wet and yellow where the boys had missed. A machine sold condoms and cigarettes, but someone had broken the glass and taken what was inside. The bathroom had one stall, and I ran in there and shut the door and barely got my underwear down before Niagara flooded over the cliff. I practically screamed with relief. As I sat there, I tried to read the graffiti on the door, but the dirty jokes and limericks made somersaults in front of my eyes.

By the time I was finished, yes, I was definitely crying, and I was trembling with cold so hard that my knees knocked together. I didn’t want to go back out there, I didn’t want to face everybody looking at me, I didn’t want to sit next to my husband again, but all I could do was go to the sink and try to clean myself up. I closed my eyes to make the world stop spinning, but I was riding a Tilt-A-Whirl inside my head.

Then he was there with me. I opened my eyes, and he was right there.

Ajax.

I hadn’t heard him come in. He turned me around and nudged me gently against the sink. His hand lifted my chin, and he bent down and kissed me. I won’t lie to you, sweetheart, he was a good kisser, and I needed to be kissed. I didn’t push him away. I put my arms around him and pulled him close to me. His body pressed against mine, and I could feel his muscles, hard everywhere. His hands were all over me. His fingers snaked under my skirt, pushing aside my panties, going places they shouldn’t go.

I finally woke up to what was happening, but I was too late.

I shoved him backward and slapped him hard, my wedding ring making a gash across his cheek. That was going to leave a scar. He was going to hate that. But I saw in that same moment that we weren’t alone. Ricky stood in the doorway of the bathroom. He’d seen everything; he’d seen Ajax kiss me, seen me kiss him back, seen me do nothing but moan as his worst enemy groped me under the dress I’d put on for my husband.

My cheeks flushed red. I stammered but couldn’t get out any words. Ricky grabbed my wrist. He grabbed it hard. As he pulled me out of the bathroom, I saw drunken images popping in my head like flashbulbs: Ajax bleeding profusely; people staring at us; Sandra shouting my name; the back door flying open; and then the moon and stars shining as Ricky carried me kicking and flailing across the snowy parking lot and threw me inside the car.

Nobody did a thing. Nobody tried to stop him.

Ricky didn’t say a word as we drove home. His silence felt utterly terrifying, cold and deadly. I sobered up fast. Twenty minutes later, we got to the house, and I didn’t want to go inside. Bad things waited inside. So he came around the passenger door, ripped it open, and again he wrapped me up and took me bodily inside as I squirmed and fought and screamed.

The light was off in the hallway. The strap on my dress had torn, and I was half-naked in front of him. He was in shadow, full of primal rage, completely out of control. A tiger. Slowly, I backed away, but he advanced toward me. There was a little lamp from my father on the table near the door, and Ricky picked up the lamp in a rage and threw it to the floor with a crash.

He was going to kill me. I knew that.

He was going to beat me to a pulp, and then he was going to kill me. I turned and ran for my life. He charged after me, yelling the most horrible things, calling me awful names. I ran up the stairs, but he was right behind me, catching my heel and trying to drag me down the steps. I kicked and broke free. I got to our bedroom and slammed the door shut and locked it, but that wasn’t going to stop him for long.

I went to my dresser and wrenched open the top drawer and reached for the gun inside. By the time I had my service revolver in my hand, Ricky was kicking open the door. It flew off the frame, and there he was, his eyes black with rage, his fingers curled like claws. I lifted the gun and pointed it at him.

“Stop,” I shouted.

He kept coming at me.

“Stop!”

This time I fired. Not at him. Over his head. The explosion sounded like a bomb, loud enough that I thought my ears would bleed. Plaster and dust cascaded on him from the ceiling.

“The next one goes in your head,” I told him.

Ricky stared at me, and he knew I was serious. He put up his hands, but I could tell that he wanted to put those hands around my throat.

“We’re done!” I hollered at him. “We’re over. We’re through. I never want to see your face again. Get out of here, Ricky. I want you out of this house. Leave right now and never come back.”

He backed away. I went toward him, my gun leading the way. I kept it level, my arms rock solid. He turned around as he headed down the stairs, and we crunched over broken glass in the hallway. I’d lost a shoe during the chase, and my foot began to bleed.

When Ricky got to the front door, he faced me again. I saw the taunt in his eyes. The threat. “You’re making a big mistake. You don’t want to do this.”

“Get out!”

“I’ll be back, and then you’ll see what I can do to you.”

“If you’re not out of this house in five seconds, I’m going to shoot you dead.”

He’d lost this round, and he knew it. He turned around and stalked away. Seconds later, the door slammed shut with him on the other side. I kept pointing the revolver at the door, unable to drop my arms. I heard a roar as he gunned the car engine outside, and then I saw the headlights as he sped off toward Main Street.

I slumped against the wall and slid to the floor. Slowly, carefully, I uncocked the revolver and laid it beside me. Then I put my face in my hands and sobbed.

After that night, sweetheart, I knew that nothing would ever be the same. I also knew, because I knew Ricky too well, that this was far from over.

Chapter Eleven

I was still in the hallway the next morning when I heard a knock on my front door. I knew it wasn’t Ricky, because Ricky wouldn’t knock. I pushed myself off the floor and went and put the chain on, just to be sure. Half the time, we left our doors open in Black Wolf County, but I didn’t think I’d be doing that for a while. I opened the door a crack and saw Darrell on my front step.

His face was grave with worry. He knew.

“Are you hurt?”

“I’m okay,” I replied in a low voice.

“Where’s Ricky?”

“I don’t know. I made him leave.”

“Come stay with me and the girls,” Darrell said.

“No. This is my house. I’m staying.”

“What do you need?”

“Half an hour,” I told him. “I need to shower and change, and then I’ll be ready to go.”

“That’s not what I meant. What do you need?”

“I need to work.”

“Rebecca, you’re in no shape for that.”

“Yes, I am. Give me half an hour, Darrell. I’m fine.”

He shook his head. “Well, in that case, how about I make coffee?”

I worked up a stubborn smile. I undid the chain and backed away, and I had to hold my dress up at the broken strap to keep it from falling. The morning air blew in and made me shiver again. It was still dark out, so I turned on the hallway light. Darrell came in, his eyes taking note of everything: the broken lamp, the blood on my foot, my revolver on the floor.

“Rebecca,” he murmured.

“Coffee,” I told him.

I went upstairs. I took a long, hot shower, feeling the sting of cuts and bruises, but the soap made me feel clean again. I washed my hair, which always turned it into a bird’s nest. When I was done, I brushed my teeth and put on my uniform, and I put my gun back in its holster. Just like that, I was a deputy.

The smell of fresh coffee drew me downstairs. I took it to go, in a Thermos, and brought it with me to Darrell’s cruiser outside. We hadn’t said anything more to each other. It was early, seven thirty in the morning on Monday, with the pink glow of the horizon struggling to push away the night. I sipped coffee and felt it revive me. Darrell didn’t start the engine. He studied me the way a father would.

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” he asked.

“I’m sure the gossip’s all over town.”

“I don’t listen to gossip.”

“Too bad. This one’s juicy.”

“Don’t joke, Rebecca. What’s going on?”

I could have given him the Reader’s Digest condensed version. Ajax came on to me, and I let him, and Ricky caught us, and he would have strangled me if I hadn’t gotten to my gun. What else was there to say?

“I’m getting a divorce,” I said.

“You’re sure?”

“Yes.”

“Think you’ll change your mind?”

“No.”

Darrell started the engine. “Well, it’s about damn time.”

And that was that. That was all he had to say about it.

Of course, that was not that. Not even close. I wasn’t fool enough to think this was over. But I’d had a hot shower, and I had hot coffee, and for the moment, I didn’t want to think about anything else.

“Where are we going?” I asked Darrell, because instead of heading to the sheriff’s office, he steered out to the highway. We headed east into the rising sun.

“Norm called. He drove out to his trailer around five this morning. He was planning to get some sunrise photos near Sunflower Lake. But when he got there, he found a car parked outside. Somebody’s squatting there again.”

“Does he know who?”

“No. Given what’s going on, he figured we’d want to check it out. So he came back home and called me.”

Darrell kept driving. Ours was the only car on the road at that hour. As the sun got above the trees, we had to squint at the brightness. Norm’s trailer was almost an hour outside town, which sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t in Black Wolf County. The dirt road that led to where the trailer was parked ran along the border of the national forest land. Skiers, day hikers, fishermen, and photographers all parked along here and followed the trails through hundreds of square miles of woods, rivers, and lakes. I’d done it myself dozens of times. It was in this same stretch of woods where we’d gone camping when I was ten, and I’d come face-to-face with the beast.

We followed the dirt road for another eight or nine miles. The plows didn’t come this way often, so we skidded through rutted snow. Darrell knew where he was going. He parked before the trailer was visible, so as not to advertise our arrival. He angled the car so that no one could escape around us. We both got out and hiked between the trees in the morning stillness, and ahead of us, we saw Norm’s Airstream.

Just as Norm had said, a car was parked outside the trailer door. It was a yellow Cadillac with California plates.

“What the hell?” Darrell murmured.

We peered in the car windows, but we didn’t see anything to give us a clue about who owned it. There was a Rand McNally road atlas on the passenger seat.

I walked completely around the Airstream, which was familiar to me. The campsite was the same; the trees were the same. Norm hadn’t moved the trailer in six years. I felt a little queasy, remembering the blood inside that had turned the white walls red. I put my ear to the metal exterior and listened, but I didn’t hear anything. I didn’t know if that meant the trailer was empty, or if the owner of the Cadillac was asleep.

I made it back to Darrell and shook my head. “Nothing.”

He took the lead on the way to the trailer door. His hand was near his gun, close enough that he could unholster it quickly if needed. His other fingers curled into a fist, and he pounded on the door.

“Black Wolf County Sheriff! Open up!”

When there was no response, he repeated the warning. This time, we saw the Airstream shudder and heard heavy footsteps. Darrell and I waited cautiously on either side of the door, and finally, it opened outward.

A pudgy giant of a man in a velvet bathrobe smiled when he saw us.

“Hello, Deputy Curtis,” Ben Malloy said to Darrell in a booming voice. “I figured I’d see you around here sooner or later. Looks like it’s time for us to go Ursulina hunting again!”

I’d never actually talked to Ben Malloy before, but I’d seen him on television and around Black Wolf County, of course. He was our local celebrity, a native of Random who’d gone on to success in Hollywood. Not that he was Tom Selleck or Richard Chamberlain or anyone like that. He’d had a supporting role on a 1970s sci-fi series as an alien fighter pilot who could replicate himself at will. Ben was funny, and the character was popular, even though the show itself only lasted for a couple of seasons. When it ended, he’d spent a year trying to land a new show, but other than minor guest parts on The Bionic Woman and Charlie’s Angels, he didn’t have much luck.

Then came the murders of Kip and Racer, which brought the legend of the Ursulina to life right in Ben’s hometown. His documentary about the crime and the search for the beast became one of the highest-rated shows of the year on NBC, and shortly thereafter, Ben Malloy Discovers premiered in prime time. For the next three years, he explored crop circles, the Bermuda triangle, Amelia Earhart, UFOs, reincarnation, and a variety of other unsolved mysteries every Tuesday night. The Ursulina had made Ben a rich man.

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

Ben trotted down the steps of the trailer. He reached into the pocket of his bathrobe and pulled out a pipe, which he stoked with a match. His pipe was his calling card. He’d ended every episode of his television show by smoking a pipe in a dark, cobwebbed library as he offered a final theory on whatever mystery he’d explored that week.

“Are you kidding?” Ben replied, taking a first puff. “Another Ursulina attack! The beast returns! This is big news, Deputy.”

“I meant, what are you doing here? This trailer doesn’t belong to you, or did you somehow forget that?”

“Oh, yes, yes, I know, but Norm won’t mind. He’s a good guy. I would have called him, but I didn’t get into town until after midnight. I figured the whole county was asleep. It was too late to check in at the Fair Day resort, and honestly, I wanted to spend the night out here with the beast. Back where it all started! Back where he made his first kills! Let him smell me, let him know I was in town again. So I did a little nighttime filming here by the trailer with my Super 8.”

Ben had a fast, exaggerated way of talking, as if he was always reading from a script and the camera was never off.

“Filming?” Darrell asked with a sigh.

“Filming, yes, of course! Five minutes after my mother told me about the latest murder, I was on the phone to the bigwigs at NBC. They’re jazzed about a follow-up to the original documentary. Couldn’t be better timing. I’ve got a team on the way, and they should be here in a couple of days. I’m already setting up interviews, getting the publicity engine in gear. Actually, I’d love it if I could interview you, Deputy. Get an update on the search for the monster.”

“There’s no monster,” Darrell replied, “and I don’t do media interviews.”

“Yes, I know, I remember. That’s a shame. Still, you were a big help last time. Two hundred volunteers out in the woods day and night for an entire week! What an event that was! The winter makes it harder, but perhaps we can stage a reprise. Hmm? What do you say?”

“That will be up to the sheriff.”

“Of course. I’ll call Jerry. It’s still Jerry, right? Ajax hasn’t weaseled his way into the chair yet?”

“It’s still Jerry,” Darrell said.

“Excellent.” Ben’s lips clamped around the end of his pipe, and his cheerful brown eyes focused on me. “Now, who’s this smoky black-haired beauty, Darrell? Is she your partner? You’ve traded up! That last man who was with you looked like a dead walleye washed up on the beach.”

“I’m Deputy—” I began, but then I hesitated.

Who was I?

Was I still Deputy Todd? Or was I someone else? Where did I go from here?

“I’m Deputy Colder,” I went on, making my decision. And once I made a decision, I didn’t go back. “Rebecca Colder.”

“Colder, Colder, Colder. Your father is Harold Colder, is that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Truck driver?”

“Yes.”

“Solid man, Harold. Seems to me he and I spent some nights together at the 126 in days gone by, when I was just a sprout of twenty-one or so. I don’t recall you being much more than a toddler back then. Now look at you and those dark eyes. Doesn’t she have amazing eyes, Darrell?”

Darrell looked as if he were chewing on a steak that was mostly gristle. “I’ve got to call in to the station and let them know everything is clear out here. And tell Norm that you broke into his trailer.”

“Oh, yes, yes, do what you have to do. Rebecca and I will hold down the fort.”

Darrell headed for the cruiser. Ben Malloy put his hands on his hips and sucked in a loud breath of cold air through his clenched teeth. He was a tough man to dislike, but also an easy man to be annoyed by. He was very tall and heavyset, but he had the cherubic face of a little boy. His short hair was brown and wavy, and he had a nervous habit of constantly pushing it back from his forehead. For a big man, he had quick, graceful movements.

“So, Rebecca Colder,” Ben proclaimed. “Are you going to help me find the Ursulina?”

“My job is to help Darrell figure out who killed Gordon Brink,” I replied.

“One and the same! One and the same!”

“This is a criminal investigation, Mr. Malloy. Not a television show.”

“Ah, I can see Darrell trained you in his image. No nonsense. Always serious. I like that. Well, it may surprise you to know that I’m a serious man, too.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Extremely serious,” Ben assured me.

“Serious about what? Money?”

Ben took his pipe out of his mouth and reappraised me with a whimsical smirk. “Well, well, well, you’re a smart one, aren’t you?”

“Darrell’s smart. I just work hard.”

“Oh, you can pretend all you want, but I can see you’ve got a lot ticking behind those dark eyes. People shouldn’t mess with you, should they? Well, here’s the thing, Rebecca Colder. Yes, I’ve made a lot of money selling tall tales. I won’t deny it. Did ancient astronauts visit Earth and leave their technology behind with the Mayans and Egyptians? Between you and me, probably not. Is there really a curse on King Tut’s tomb? Doubtful. But the Ursulina story isn’t just about ratings or money to me.”

“No?”

“No indeed. You see, I grew up in Black Wolf County just like you, and I know a secret.”

“What’s that?”

Ben winked and lowered his voice. He leaned in close enough that I could smell pipe smoke on his breath. “The Ursulina isn’t a myth. It’s real. I’ve seen it.”

Chapter Twelve

The return of Ben Malloy reheated the cold investigation into Gordon Brink’s murder. That was mostly because Sheriff Jackson began to get dozens of media calls from around the country asking if the Ursulina was back and whether we were any closer to trapping the killer beast.

“We look like idiots!” Jerry shouted at us in his office behind the closed door. “Did you see 60 Minutes last night? Andy Rooney did his whole piece on the Ursulina. He rattled off all the unsolved crimes we could put to bed now. He had a photo of the Ursulina on the grassy knoll in Dallas. The Ursulina burying Jimmy Hoffa. The Ursulina parachuting out of a 727 with D. B. Cooper’s ransom money.”

“Ben knows how to get publicity,” Darrell replied.

“Well, it was bad enough when he made laughingstocks of us six years ago. I was in that documentary, do you remember? The sheriff with the monster in his backyard. I’m not going through that again! Got it? I want to know who killed Gordon Brink, and I want an arrest.”

“I want that, too.”

“Next time People magazine calls me, we better have a human being behind bars, and if you can’t do that, then you can start sleeping in the woods until you find me a seven-foot-tall ape.”

Darrell didn’t smile. None of this was funny to him.

“The thing is, Jerry, I wish I could tell you we’re close to figuring this out, but right now, the investigation is dead in its tracks.”

The sheriff got up from behind his desk and paced. Physically, he was an older, grayer version of Ajax, tall, lean, and handsome, but his personality was like a lit fuse, always one spark away from a blowup. Jerry was in his midfifties, which made him several years younger than Darrell. Back when the previous sheriff had retired, a lot of people around the county assumed that Darrell would run for the job. But Darrell had no patience for politics. He let Jerry do the county fair and the Chamber of Commerce dinner and the 4-H picnic. Jerry had charisma, just like his nephew, and he ran unopposed. He’d been sheriff for more than a decade, and he would probably stay in the job until he was buried in the ground.

“There’s no such thing as a dead investigation,” Jerry snapped. “Just cops who need to get off their butts and get the job done.”

“I can’t make up evidence out of thin air, Jerry.”

“No, but you can shake things up.” The sheriff sat down at his desk again. I couldn’t help but notice that he hadn’t looked at me once since Darrell and I had come into his office. I might as well have been invisible.

“What do you suggest?” Darrell asked.

“You’ve got one legitimate suspect in this murder, and you’ve been treating him with kid gloves. Go in there and rattle his cage.”

Darrell sighed. “Jay.”

“Exactly. Come on, Darrell, a crime like this is personal. You don’t carve up somebody like that unless you’ve got a hell of a motive. More often than not, that means we’re looking at a family member. If you ask me, a wife is always the likeliest person to carve up her husband, but you confirmed that Gordon’s wife didn’t come back from Minnesota until after Gordon was killed. Right? So who does that leave us with? The son. Jay.”

“Except there’s no evidence the boy was involved.”

“No evidence? I’ve seen your notes, Darrell. Jay and Gordon hated each other. The kid showed no emotion about his father being killed. He called Gordon a monster — I mean, shit, does he have to spell it out for you? Plus, Jay admits he was home Sunday night. His room overlooks the front of the house, but he claims he didn’t hear or see anything. What are the odds of that?”

“Slim,” Darrell admitted. “If Jay was in his bedroom, he should have seen something.”

“So either he did, and he’s lying to protect someone, or he killed Gordon himself. Either way, you need to find out.”

I listened to the back-and-forth between the two men, and then I jumped in. “Bad relationship or not, Jay doesn’t strike me as a teenager who’d kill his father, Sheriff. I talked to his friend Will, who said the same thing.”

Jerry looked at me for the first time, and his mouth curled with rage. Just like that, I knew he had it in for me. “Do killers wear name tags, Rebecca? Or maybe they have special tattoos? You can read violence in someone’s eyes just by looking at them? That’s quite a talent. You must have acquired it in your grand total of two years on the job.”

I tried to hold my tongue. I was used to being condescended to, and propositioned, and ignored, but I’d had enough. I didn’t really care if I had to quit or if Jerry fired me. I opened my mouth to shoot back, but Darrell smoothly interrupted before I could make a job-ending mistake.

“Look, Jerry, you can be as sarcastic as you want to be, but that’s not getting us any closer to an answer. For what it’s worth, Rebecca’s right. I talked to Jay, too. The kid isn’t a killer.”

“Really?” Jerry asked, putting poison into the word.

“Really.”

The sheriff eased back in his chair and put his hands behind his head. He half smiled, half sneered, and when he did that, he looked exactly like Ajax. “Tell me about Gordon Brink’s office.”

Darrell looked puzzled. “What do you mean? What do you want to know?”

“Who had access to it?”

“Gordon,” Darrell replied. “Nobody else.”

“Nobody?”

“According to Erica, he kept it locked up tight.”

Jerry looked at me again, and the acid in his expression told me that he knew something we didn’t. “Is that right, Rebecca? Does Darrell have it right?”

“Yes. Erica told me she never went inside. She was even reluctant to have me go in there when Gordon was missing. That was where he kept all the privileged materials in the lawsuit.”

“What about Jay?” Jerry asked.

“He told us the same thing.”

“Yes, he did. I read the summary of your interview with him. I wasn’t allowed inside. Nobody was. It doesn’t get much clearer than that, does it?”

“What are you getting at, Sheriff?” Darrell asked.

Jerry reached into a drawer and pulled out a manila envelope, which he slapped on the desk. He jabbed at it with his finger. “Ajax gave me the results of the fingerprint analysis today. He dusted Gordon’s whole office, and guess what?”

Darrell and I stared at the envelope. We could guess what was in it.

“Jay Brink’s prints are all over the office,” Jerry went on. “He was there. He lied.”

I frowned. “Maybe Jay was in there when they first moved in. Before Gordon set up his office.”

“In the bedroom?” Jerry asked.

I stared at him. “What?”

“The bedroom. The bed. Right where Gordon was murdered. Jay’s prints are there, too.”

Darrell stood up, and I knew he was angry. Angry at Jay lying to us. Angry at being embarrassed in front of his boss. “We’ll talk to him.”

“Do that. But enough of the pussyfooting around, Darrell. Put the fear of God in this kid. Let him know we mean business. Like I said, either he butchered his father or he knows who did. Get him to admit it.”

“Yes, sir.”

Darrell headed for the office door, but as I stood up to follow him, Jerry held up his hand. “Deputy Todd, stay here a minute. I need to talk to you.”

From the doorway, Darrell gave me a look to see if I wanted him to stay. I signaled no, even though I figured my head was on the chopping block. Darrell went outside and closed the door behind him, and I sat down in the chair again. The sheriff’s anger had dissolved into a cold, calm formality, and in my experience, that was worse than when he blew up at you.

“Deputy Todd,” he said.

“Actually, it’s Deputy Colder from now on, sir. Ricky and I are splitting up.”

“Rebecca, I don’t care if you want to call yourself Deputy Dawg.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Ajax has filed a complaint against you.”

My mouth fell open. “What?”

“He says you assaulted him at the 126 on Sunday night. You slapped him and gave him a deep gash on his cheek.”

“I... well, I did, but he—”

“He says you needed to use the bathroom facilities after drinking too much beer, and he offered to let you use the men’s room because the line for the women’s bathroom was too long. After you came out of the stall, you began making sexual advances toward him. When he declined, you persisted. At that time, your husband entered the bathroom, and you covered your inappropriate behavior by striking a fellow deputy.”

I shot to my feet. “That is not what happened. Ajax came on to me. You of all people know what he’s like. You know how he’s treated me from the day I set foot in this office.”

“If you can’t handle the working conditions of this department, you never should have gone after the job,” Jerry replied. “Let’s face facts. You’re not cut out for it. You never were.”

“Because I’m a woman? Or because I won’t sleep with your nephew?”

The sheriff took a sealed number ten envelope from his desk and pushed it toward me. I could see my name where his secretary had typed it in capital letters. DEPUTY REBECCA TODD.

“This is a copy of the complaint,” Jerry told me. “It includes Ajax’s statement. There will be a formal inquiry. If the complaint is sustained, you’ll be subject to punishment up to and including dismissal.”

I shook my head. “You’re going to fire me because Ajax stuck his hand up my dress?”

“You should know that I discussed the facts of this matter with your husband, too.”

“My husband?”

“Ricky confirmed Ajax’s version of the events.”

“He wasn’t even there to see it! He’s just saying that because I kicked him out. Sheriff, this isn’t fair.”

Jerry wasn’t even listening to me anymore. He shuffled his papers, put on his reading glasses, and glanced at me as if he couldn’t understand why I was still in the room. “That’ll be all, Rebecca.”

Chapter Thirteen

“He’s not going to fire you,” Darrell told me as I drove us back to the crime scene at Gordon Brink’s house.

I hadn’t told him what happened with the sheriff, but he already knew. Everyone in the department knew, because Ajax was already spreading his version of the story. The version where I came on to him, rather than vice versa.

“Jerry’s been waiting for an opportunity to fire me for two years,” I said. “And this is it.”

Darrell shook his head. “Whatever happened with Ajax wasn’t your fault.”

I glanced across the front seat. I knew he was trying to be nice — he was always nice to me — but this was a day where I didn’t want to feel good about myself. I’d made too many mistakes, and I was paying the price.

“What makes you so sure, Darrell? Do you think I’m some kind of angel? How do you know it didn’t happen exactly like he said?”

“If you hit Ajax, he gave you a good reason to hit him. I know what he’s like. More to the point, I know you, Rebecca.”

I made the mistake of saying the first thing that popped into my head. “I’m not one of your daughters, Darrell. Don’t treat me like one.”

He shut up instantly.

I could see by the expression on his face that I’d wounded him deeply.

I know, sweetheart. You don’t have to tell me that I was being a jerk. What a stupid, graceless thing to say to this man who loved me and had helped me since I was a kid.

No, Darrell was not my father, but where was my own father? Off on the road somewhere. If I was lucky, I talked to him a couple of times a month. I’d always promised Dad that I was fine with that. I knew he was busy, but in fact, his long absences made me feel lost and alone. Not having him around made me angry, if you want the truth, so I can only guess how you feel about me. There were times when I’d desperately needed my father, times when I was hurt and crying and alone and in pain, times when I was so far down in a well that I couldn’t see blue sky, and he wasn’t there for me. I felt abandoned. Bitter. All I had from him was a poem in my head that he’d sung to me when I was a girl. But I needed more, and Darrell, more than anyone, had stood by me when my father didn’t. Here I was snappishly telling him to leave me alone.

Did I apologize for being cruel? No. I kept driving.

Finally, Darrell changed the subject, his voice cool. “Snow’s coming.”

“What?”

He leaned forward, studying the horizon over the trees. “Snow’s on the way. Probably a lot.”

He was right. Around here, we learned to read the winter sky. In another day, a blizzard would bury us. In another day, my life would take an irrevocable turn, thanks to the deep, deep snow. Of course, I had no way of knowing that, sweetheart, but as I look back, I wouldn’t have changed that day even if I could. That’s what you need to understand. Despite everything, I have no regrets.

Anyway, the snow hadn’t come yet. I just drove.

We reached the house where Gordon Brink had been killed. Erica was moving out. Boxes were packed and being loaded on a van. She oversaw the process, carefully telling the men what to put where. When she saw us, her face screwed up with annoyance, because we were interrupting her schedule. Even so, she smoothed her golden hair and told the moving men to take a break. Then she led us into the house.

“You’re leaving?” I asked when we’d taken seats in the living room, where a fire crackled in the fireplace.

“That’s right. Out with the old, in with the new. The firm is sending another partner to take over the litigation. Believe me, I can’t wait to be out of this place and get back to civilization. No offense. If you want to talk to me, you can call me in Minnesota.”

“Not Milwaukee?” I asked.

“No. I’m going back home to stay with my family for a while and decide what to do next. The last thing I want to do is go back and live in Gordon’s house again. It was always his house, not mine.”

“Of course.”

“So what do you want?” Erica asked. “I’m sorry to be brusque, but there’s snow in the forecast, and I’d like to be out of Black Wolf County today.”

“We have some follow-up questions for you, Mrs. Brink,” Darrell said. “And for Jay, too. Is he here?”

“No. He’s in school.”

I looked at her with surprise. “Isn’t he leaving with you?”

“Jay decided he’s going to stay in Black Wolf County for the rest of the school year. Who knows why? I assumed he’d jump at the chance to be out of here and back with his mother.”

“Will he stay in this house?”

“No. Norm Foltz offered to put him up at his place. He’s all packed. The movers will drop off Jay’s boxes at Norm’s house on their way out of town.” Erica glanced at her watch. “As I say, I’m in a hurry. Can we get through this quickly? What do you need from me?”

“We talked to someone who said your husband had a reputation among the women in his firm,” I told her.

Erica’s pretty jawline hardened. “A reputation?”

I didn’t know how to sugarcoat it, and I didn’t want to. “For demanding sex during job interviews.”

“Who told you that?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Let me guess. Penny Ramsey. Did Penny happen to mention that her reputation is for breaking client privilege? There was one particularly egregious example in which she told a friend outside the firm an anecdote involving one of our client’s executives. Gordon made sure she kept her job, when she should have been fired. So it’s rich to have her accusing him of anything now that he’s dead and can’t defend himself.”

“Was it true about Gordon?” I asked again. “Did he have a pattern of forcing himself on other women?”

“What does that have to do with your investigation?”

Darrell interjected, “Because that kind of behavior can be a motive for murder.”

“If you think Penny Ramsey or some other woman murdered Gordon over a fling on an office sofa, then you should talk to them, not me. I don’t have anything to say about it. If that’s all you have, then you can leave right now.”

She began to get up, but Darrell stayed where he was.

“There’s something else, Mrs. Brink.”

She sat down again, looking impatient. “What?”

“You said no one other than Gordon ever went inside the cottage.”

“Yes. So?”

“Was that always true? Or did you or Jay go in there sometimes?”

“Visit the sanctum sanctorum? No. Never.”

Darrell frowned. “So can you think of any explanation for how Jay’s fingerprints got there?”

Erica stared at us. “Jay was in Gordon’s office?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t see how that’s possible. The cottage was always locked if Gordon wasn’t there.”

“Could Jay have gotten hold of a key?” Darrell asked.

“I suppose he could, but it doesn’t make any sense.” Erica stood up again and faced the fire. She was in profile, her face flushed as she realized the implications of what Darrell was saying. “My God. You think it was him. You think Jay killed him, don’t you?”

“We need some questions answered,” Darrell said. “There are things that don’t add up here.”

Erica spun around. “Jay threatened Gordon.”

“What?”

“He threatened his father.”

“Why didn’t you tell us this before?”

“I didn’t know about it. It happened while I was gone.”

“How did you find out?”

“I talked to his mother two days ago. She and I don’t exactly have a warm relationship, but I needed to know what she wanted me to do about Jay. He’s her son, not mine. He told me he wanted to stay here, and I didn’t care either way, but I wanted to make sure his mother was okay with it.”

“Was she?” Darrell asked.

“Apparently so. Jay told her he was finally making friends, and he didn’t want to get shuffled around in the middle of the school year again. She also told me something I didn’t know. Jay and Gordon had a huge argument while I was away in Minnesota. Jay called his mother in tears over it.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Gordon planned to send Jay back home to his mother after Christmas break.”

“And Jay wanted to stay here?”

“Yes. Which was the opposite of how things were when we got here last October. Jay hated leaving Milwaukee and his mother. Now he hated going back. I don’t know why. Maybe he simply wanted to do the opposite of whatever Gordon wanted. As I told you, those two were fire and ice. However, according to his mother, Jay got pretty extreme.”

“How so?” Darrell asked.

“Jay said if his father tried to send him home, Gordon would be sorry.”

“What did he mean by that?”

“I don’t know. But his mother was afraid you’d think Jay killed him. She didn’t want me to say anything about it.”

Darrell frowned. “You said Jay’s things are in boxes upstairs?”

“That’s right.”

“We’d like to search them.”

Erica waved us toward the stairs. “Be my guest.”

Jay didn’t have much in the way of personal possessions to bring to Norm’s house. His music, posters, books, and clothes had been squeezed into two moving boxes. Darrell took the first box and dumped the contents onto the boy’s bed.

“What are you looking for?” I asked.

“I don’t know, Rebecca.” He was acting distant and professional with me, and I didn’t blame him after what I’d said. “A diary, maybe? Jay seems like the kind of kid who might keep one.”

“Is that really going to help us? I can’t see him confessing to his diary. ‘Tonight I had pizza for dinner. Also killed Dad.’ ”

Darrell shrugged. “Stranger things have happened.”

“I don’t think Jay killed him,” I said. “And neither do you.”

“That may be true, but the sheriff’s right. Jay is our only credible suspect right now, and the more we find out about his relationship with his father, the more everything points to him. Fingerprints where they shouldn’t be? Arguments and threats only a few days before Gordon was killed? No alibi? I may not be certain he’s guilty, but I’m no longer convinced he’s innocent.”

Darrell poked through the record albums and rolled-up posters, but there was nothing like a diary to be found. He dumped the next box, which was filled with books.

“Norm said Gordon thought Jay was spying on him,” I pointed out. “Maybe he was. If he was digging up dirt about Gordon or the litigation, that would explain why his fingerprints were in the office.”

“Yes, I thought about that.”

“Spying on his dad may be unethical, but it doesn’t make him a killer.”

“No,” he agreed. “No, it doesn’t. But this might.”

“What?”

Darrell pointed at a book on Jay’s bed, lying among the classics and the poetry collections that had been stacked in the boxes. I knew what the book was, because I had it on my own bookshelf. Everyone in Black Wolf County had read it.

The Ursulina Murders by Ben Malloy.

It was a blow-by-blow account of the deaths of Kip and Racer and what the beast had done to their bodies.

“For a copycat killer,” Darrell said, “this is a road map.”

Chapter Fourteen

Jay sat behind one of the desks in an empty classroom at the high school. Norm Foltz sat next to him. I told you that gossip spreads faster than a telegram in Black Wolf County, so everyone already knew by the time we got to the school that Jay had become a suspect in his father’s murder. Norm had arrived to act as the boy’s lawyer while we talked to him.

I tried to figure out what Jay was hiding from us. Because he was definitely hiding something. He didn’t even look up at me or Darrell as we asked our questions. He sat behind the school desk and pushed around a paperback copy of The Picture of Dorian Gray with his fingers. That book was an interesting choice, the story of someone presenting an innocent face to the world while a secret portrait grows more and more horrific.

Jay was neatly put together, his red hair clean and combed. His long, lanky legs jutted out under the desk. He wore an argyle winter sweater that looked expensive; it might have been cashmere. For a teenager trying to fit in with the other kids in Black Wolf County, that was the wrong way to do it. Most of us found our clothes in a Main Street thrift shop, and advertising your money was a great way to be hated. But I got the impression that Jay didn’t really care what anyone thought of him, and that included his father.

Darrell led the interview. He wore his marine face, which was no less intimidating in his sixties than it would have been when he was a sergeant in Korea thirty years earlier.

“Jay, when we first talked to you, you said you weren’t allowed in your father’s office,” he began.

“Yeah. So?”

“So why did we find your fingerprints there?”

Jay hesitated before answering, which told me he was making up a story. He was smart, but he had the cocky arrogance of a kid who thought he was smarter than everybody else. “I was just playing games with him.”

“What kind of games?”

“Sometimes I’d swipe Gordon’s key and go down and mess around in his office.”

“Mess around?”

“Move stuff. Just enough that he wouldn’t be sure if he’d left if that way himself. Gordon was paranoid, so I liked to mess with his head.”

“How often did you do that?”

“I don’t know. Three or four times. I hadn’t done it in a while.”

“Did you look at any of your father’s private papers when you were in the office?” Darrell asked, with a glance at Norm.

“Yeah, sometimes.”

“About the lawsuit?”

“Sure.”

“Did you tell anyone what you saw?”

“No.”

Norm put a hand on the boy’s arm. “Just to reiterate what I told Rebecca and Ajax, I never asked Jay to spy for me, and I never got any privileged information from him or Will.”

“But I would have done it,” Jay added, drawing a frown from Norm.

“Did Gordon find out you’d been in his office?” Darrell asked.

“No.”

“He never confronted you about it?”

“No.”

“Did he know you’d read materials about the litigation?”

“No.”

“Then why was Gordon convinced you were spying on him?”

“I told you, he was paranoid. He was looking over his shoulder the whole time he was here, like he expected something to happen.” An inappropriate smirk crossed the teenager’s face. “It’s almost like he knew the Ursulina would come after him.”

Darrell stared across the desk with a stony expression. “Your stepmother says you’re planning to stay in Black Wolf County to finish out the semester.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought you didn’t like it here.”

“I don’t. I mean, I’m sorry if I’m offending your little slice of paradise, but this whole county is a backwater piece of shit. The weather sucks. The food sucks. The people suck.”

“Then why stay?”

“Because I’ve already switched schools once this year, and I don’t need to have my grades messed up by switching again. I’m applying to colleges in the fall.”

“We heard your father planned to send you back to Milwaukee after Christmas,” Darrell said. “The two of you argued about it.”

“What else is new? We argued about everything.”

“Why did your father want to send you back? He’s the one who took you out of the Milwaukee schools to start with. You said he thought the schools there were putting ideas in your head.”

“That’s right.”

“So what changed?”

“Who knows? Maybe he got tired of having me around.”

“We heard you threatened him,” Darrell went on. “You said if he tried to send you back to Milwaukee, he’d be sorry. What did you mean by that?”

“I didn’t mean anything. I just said it. I was spouting off.”

“Did you threaten to reveal what you’d seen in his files?”

“No. I told you, he didn’t even know I’d been in his office.”

“Then what did you mean?”

“Nothing. It was a stupid thing to say.”

Darrell reached into his coat and removed a paper bag, and he dropped the contents in front of Jay. It was Ben Malloy’s book.

“Is this yours?” Darrell asked.

“Yeah.”

“Why did you buy it?”

“I heard stories about the beast hanging out in the woods around here. I was curious.”

“Did you read it?”

“I did. Gory stuff.”

“The circumstances in which we found your father’s body were very similar to what’s described in the book.”

“So what? You think I killed Gordon and used the book to make it look like the Ursulina did it?” When Darrell’s face didn’t move, Jay’s mouth dropped open with a shiver of fear. “Are you kidding? That’s what you think?”

“You need to be straight with us, Jay. Did you kill your father?”

“No! No way. I didn’t do that.”

“Your mother didn’t want Erica to tell us about the fight. She was afraid we’d think you murdered your father. Why would she be afraid of that?”

“Mom overreacts sometimes. She knows what Gordon was like to me.”

“What was he like to you?”

Jay stuttered. He began to flounder. “I mean, she knows we don’t get along. Didn’t get along.”

“You and your father argued all the time.”

“Yeah. I already told you that.”

“Gordon yelled at you? He verbally abused you?”

“Sure he did.”

“Did the arguments get physical?”

“What do you mean?”

“Did your father hit you?”

Jay frowned. “Yeah. Sometimes.”

“How often?”

“Well, all the time, in fact. Pretty much every day. He was a violent son of a bitch.”

“Did you ever hit back?”

“No.”

“But you wanted to.”

Jay’s hand curled into a tight fist. “Yeah, sure. I wanted to.”

“You hated him,” Darrell said, stating it matter-of-factly, like it wasn’t even a question.

I watched Jay’s eyes flash with anger. “Yeah, I did. So what? He was a pig.”

“There were days when you wanted him dead.”

“You want me to say it? Fine. Okay. I’ll say it. Sometimes I wished he was dead. You bet.”

Darrell was good at what he did. Admitting you wanted your father dead was a terrible thing, and even if you didn’t kill him, nobody was going to believe your denials after that. Norm obviously thought the same thing.

“We’re done, Darrell,” he interjected firmly. “No more questions.”

Jay continued, still not realizing the danger he’d put himself in. “You don’t know what Gordon was like. I told you he was a monster, and you wouldn’t listen.”

“Jay, not another word,” Norm murmured. “That’s enough.”

The boy slammed both fists down on the schoolroom desk. “No, I’m done pretending about him. Yes, I hated that son of a bitch. He beat the shit out of me whenever he wanted. He told me I was nothing. He called me—”

“Stop,” Norm insisted.

“But it wasn’t me!” Jay shouted at us. “I didn’t kill him!”

He sounded like a kid with chocolaty hands telling his mom he had no idea who ate the Hershey bar.

I had to do something. I couldn’t watch this kid incriminate himself any further, so I threw Jay a lifeline. No matter what the sheriff wanted, no matter what Darrell thought his duty was, I needed to give Jay a chance to tell us the truth.

“Jay, where were you on Sunday night?” I asked sharply.

The boy stared at me, and I thought his eyes were going to pop out of his head. “What?”

“Where were you?”

“At the house. I told you that.”

“Yes, but I think you were lying. Where were you?”

“I was in my room the whole night. I didn’t hear anything.”

“You didn’t hear anything, because you weren’t there,” I insisted.

“Rebecca,” Darrell hissed at me. “What the hell are you doing?”

I ignored him and grabbed Jay’s wrist. “If you have an alibi, you need to tell us what it is. If you weren’t home on Sunday night, you couldn’t have killed him. Do you understand that? Nothing else you said or did to your father means anything if you were somewhere else on Sunday night. Where were you, Jay?”

Our eyes met.

He knew I wasn’t playing a game with him. No tricks. For just a moment, the classroom felt empty, as if Darrell and Norm were gone, and I was alone with Jay. I could feel his desperation in wanting to open up to me, his secret clawing to get out. His eyes looked into mine and said: You know, don’t you?

Because I did.

I knew what he was hiding. I can’t even tell you how I knew, or what it was that gave it away. But knowing that, I also realized there was no way Jay was ever going to admit it. It was never going to happen.

“I’m telling the truth,” he told me again. “I was in my room all night.”

And then he added pointedly, “Alone.”

Chapter Fifteen

That night, I sat on the floor of my house in complete darkness, no lights on at all. I wanted it to look like I wasn’t home. The fireplace was cold, a whistle of icy wind coming down the chimney and making me shiver. I smoked, but I couldn’t even see the gray cloud when I exhaled. Every now and then, I got up and looked out the window, but there was no moon, no starlight, just the thick clouds that would be burying us in snow by morning.

I knew he was out there somewhere. Ricky.

I’d changed the locks since I threw him out, so his key wouldn’t work. When I got home, the first thing I did was check the windows to make sure he hadn’t broken in. I’d heard he was sleeping on the couch of one of his mine worker friends, but I knew he would come after me sooner or later. He was out for blood. Darrell continued to push me to stay with him and his family for a while — a gallant thing to do, since he was furious at me for interfering in his interrogation of Jay — but I told him no. For every night I spent safely, there was another night after that. Ricky would get to me eventually, and I had to be ready.

He’d left messages on my answering machine. First he was sweet, apologetic, trying to get me to change my mind. Hey, baby, we can work this out. Come on, you know I love you. And then, the more he drank, the more the belligerent side of him came out. The profanity. The abuse. The names. The threats. He called me things I wouldn’t repeat to anyone, sweetheart, least of all you.

I could have had him arrested, but what would that have done? Soon enough, he’d be back on the street, madder than he was before. No, our day was coming. I didn’t know when, but that was why I was sitting alone in the darkness, my gun within reach.

My father had left me a message, too. He was on the road somewhere, drunk and feeling bad. He promised me he’d call more, which was the same promise he made every year, but it never worked out that way. I understood. We loved each other, but we led separate lives. For a long time, I’d thought it was because we were all loners, me, him, and my brother. But that was never really true. It was losing my mom that split us apart. We each went off into our separate caves to grieve, and we never came back out.

There was also something in his voice on the answering machine. It was in his tone, not what he actually said, like he was regretting things in his life that he should have changed and never had. It made me wonder if he was ill. Another few months would prove me right about that.

I was half a pack of cigarettes into my night when I saw headlights in the driveway. Just like that, I was on my feet, my gun cocked and in my hand. I knew the engine rumble of Ricky’s truck, and this wasn’t it, but he’d be sly enough to borrow someone else’s vehicle when he came to get me. The headlights went off before I could see who it was. I heard footsteps approaching the front door, and then somebody called my name in a kind of hush.

“Rebecca?”

It was Ajax.

I stood on the other side of the door, not moving, not answering.

“Come on, Rebecca, I know you’re in there.”

He wasn’t going to go away. I turned on the light in the hallway and opened the door wide enough that he could see the gun in my hand. He put his hands in the air and grinned his typical Ajax grin.

“Don’t shoot,” he said.

“What do you want?”

He was wearing his deputy’s uniform, and his squad car was in the driveway. “Seems like you and me need to figure out how to work together.”

“Seems like you need to keep your hands off me,” I said.

“I didn’t hear any complaints until Ricky showed up.” Ajax touched the long, reddish scab on his face where my ring had cut him. “That was when you came down with cat scratch fever.”

“Go away, Ajax.”

“I’m willing to drop the complaint,” he told me, as I began to shut the door. “One word to Jerry from me, and the whole thing goes away. I know you need the job.”

“What do you want in return?”

“Nothing. You and me start over. That’s all. Come on, let me in, and we’ll talk. Just talk, I swear.”

I opened the door wider. “You lay a hand on me, and I’ll kick you where it counts.”

“I believe you.”

We went into the living room together. Ajax took one end of the sofa, and I took the other. He lit up a cigarette, and so did I. We watched each other warily. We didn’t say anything for a long time, which I suppose was his plan. He simply wanted to sit in my house and let me feel the sexual tension between us. And I did. I had experience in realizing that he knew how to kiss and what to do with his hands. The longer we sat there doing nothing but smoke, the more I thought about taking off his clothes. Just to see what it would be like.

“You’ll drop the complaint?” I said finally. “Are you serious about that?”

“Actually, it’s already done. I told Jerry to yank it. I told him I overreacted. We were at the bar, we’d both had a little too much to drink. Things happen.”

“Thank you.”

“Sure.”

“You know, I don’t get you,” I told him, shaking my head. “You’ve got a gorgeous wife and gorgeous kids. Why do you sleep around?”

“Why do you care?”

“I’m just curious.”

“Well, I don’t get you, either. You’re way out of Ricky’s league. Why did you marry him?”

“That’s what you do around here. You get married.”

“You could have done better.”

“In Black Wolf County? Not likely. You take what’s in front of you.”

Ajax slid his cigarette out of his mouth. “Ricky says you’re frigid, you know.”

“Excuse me?”

“That’s what he tells everybody. You don’t move when he screws you, like you can’t wait for it to be over.”

“I don’t give a shit what Ricky tells people,” I snapped.

“Is it true?”

“Go to hell, Ajax.”

“Hey, I don’t blame you. I see Ricky as a two-pump chump. Who wants that?”

“So what are you saying? One night with you will change me forever?”

“Maybe.”

“Wow, you’ve got quite the ego.”

Ajax chuckled. “Yeah, I plead guilty to that. But what would it hurt to give it a try? I mean, no one has to know.”

He didn’t hide what he wanted, which I found strangely attractive.

“Why do you want me as a trophy, anyway?” I asked. “Does it turn you on when I say no? There are plenty of other women around here who are happy to get on their backs for you.”

“You’ve got something the other women don’t.”

“Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

Ajax appraised me from the other side of the sofa. “Honestly? I don’t know. But Ricky saw it, too. The first time he laid eyes on you, he told me he’d found a girl who was different from everybody else. This fierce little loner with the amazing dark eyes. I thought he was full of it, but then I saw you myself, and damned if he wasn’t right. I thought about going after you, too.”

“Except you were already married to Ruby.”

Ajax shrugged. “Yeah. There’s that.”

“I’m not special.”

“Oh, sure you are. I don’t even think you believe that yourself when you say it. You know you’re different.”

“I think you should go.”

“What, don’t you trust yourself around me?”

In fact, I didn’t entirely trust myself not to make a stupid mistake. I was curious, amused, appalled, but a little aroused, too. Ricky was right that I didn’t get that way often. It’s just who I am. Sometimes I wondered what it would be like to have sex with someone where it wasn’t about power and control. To meet and be physical with a genuinely good man, as if such a thing existed in this world. But one thing was certain. That wasn’t Ricky, and it wasn’t Ajax, either.

“I appreciate your dropping the complaint,” I said, “but you need to leave. I’m not mad, and I don’t mind anything you said. In fact, I appreciate that you were honest with me. But nothing’s going to happen between us. Not tonight. Not ever.”

He took my rejection gracefully. At least for the time being. I had no illusions that he’d suddenly become a Boy Scout around me. But when I got to my feet, he did, too, and he followed me to the front door without any advances. No hand on my ass. No kiss in the hallway.

“See you tomorrow,” Ajax said.

“Yeah. See you.”

I opened the door, and I screamed.

Someone stood on the porch right in front of me. In the darkness, I thought at first that it was Ricky, but in the next instant, I realized with a stab of relief that I was wrong.

It was Will Foltz. This big, strong teenage football player burst past me and into the house. Oddly, he was crying.

“I told you he didn’t do it!” Will screamed at me. “Jay didn’t do it! And now Darrell’s trying to arrest him!”

Chapter Sixteen

Will paced frantically across the green shag carpet in my living room. I’d known him his whole life, and I’d never seen him so wildly upset. His easy smile was gone. His nose ran, and he wiped it on his sweatshirt. His breathing came so fast that he looked like he needed a paper bag to stop hyperventilating. The kid who liked everybody, whose approach to life was as mellow as an Eagles song, was melting down in front of us.

“Will, sit,” I told him.

He didn’t. He kept pacing. After I repeated it twice more, Ajax stopped the boy in the middle of the room and took him by the shoulders. “Sit.”

Will slumped onto the sofa, with his face in his hands. I sat next to him. As Will tried to catch his breath, I murmured to Ajax, “An arrest warrant for Jay? Did you know anything about this?”

“It must be Jerry. He wants the Brink case closed. I heard about the interview at the school, Jay going ballistic, talking about wanting his father dead. Combine that with everything else, and Jerry probably thinks they can make the charge stick.”

“He didn’t do it!” Will gasped again.

I took hold of his meaty shoulder. I’d babysat for him when he was a boy, but this kid was practically twice my size. “Will, tell me what’s going on. What happened?”

“Darrell came to my dad’s house. He was going to arrest Jay for murder. That’s crazy! I went and listened at the stairs and heard my dad talking to him. He said Darrell was using intimidation to get Jay to confess to something he didn’t do. But Darrell said he had no choice, and he had to bring him in. So my dad came upstairs to get Jay. He was already gone.”

“Gone?” Ajax asked.

Will looked down at his lap. “I told him to climb out the window. He ran away. I don’t know where he is now.”

“That was foolish, Will,” I said. “Running makes Jay look guilty, and it puts him in danger, too. You should have trusted your dad. He’ll figure out how to make this all go away.”

Will shook his head frantically. “No. Dad doesn’t know what’s going on, and Jay refuses to tell him.”

“Tell him what?”

“About Sunday night,” Will said. “Jay’s lying about what happened. I keep telling him to come clean, but he won’t do it. He’d rather risk going to prison for killing his dad than tell the truth. Well, I’m done with that. I’m not going to let him protect me anymore.”

Ajax finally sat down, too. “Protect you? What the hell, Will? Did you have something to do with Gordon’s death?”

But I knew Ajax had it all wrong. This had nothing to do with Gordon.

“Jay wasn’t home on Sunday night, was he?” I said.

Without looking up, Will shook his head.

“Where was he?” I asked quietly.

“With me.”

“Where?”

“My dad’s trailer in the woods.”

“All night?”

“Yeah. All night.”

Ajax still didn’t get it. “What were you guys doing, some kind of Ursulina hunt?”

“No,” Will murmured. “I mean, yeah, I’d told Jay about the Ursulina. I even got him Ben’s book, because he thought the whole thing was wild, like maybe the beast was real or something. That’s why we picked my dad’s trailer. It was kind of a dare to see if we could stay there all night.”

“You could have just said that,” I suggested. “You didn’t have to admit what was really going on.”

“No. People would have guessed the truth. I already see the looks at school. I hear the talk.” He looked at me with a silent plea to say it for him.

“The two of you are... gay?” I said with a little hesitation, in case I’d guessed wrong. But I didn’t think I had.

“Yeah. That’s right.”

“Is that why Jay’s been protecting you? To keep the secret?”

“Yeah.”

Ajax’s face darkened, first with surprise and then disgust. If I’d given him a thousand guesses, he wouldn’t have gotten it himself. He got up, saying something I won’t repeat. Regardless, the slur hit Will like a blow to the face, and he knew perfectly well that more were coming. Every day of his life, wherever he went, people around here would know who he was. This wasn’t the kind of story that could be contained, not in Black Wolf County.

“Does your father know?” I asked.

“Not yet. I guess I have to tell him now.”

“I know Norm. He’ll be okay with it.”

Will shook his head. “Don’t be so sure.”

“Jay wanted to keep this hidden?” I asked.

“Yeah, but not for himself. He didn’t want to out me. I told him we should come forward and admit it, but he knew what it would be like for me if people knew. He could go back to Milwaukee, and I’d be stuck here. But I’m not going to let him get arrested when I know he’s innocent. He was with me Sunday night. All night. He has an alibi. He didn’t kill his father.”

“Were Gordon’s problems with Jay about him being gay?”

“Oh, yeah. Gordon couldn’t deal with it. His son being gay made him less of a man. He actually said that, you know? That’s why Gordon took him out of school in Milwaukee. He thought it was the school that had turned him gay. He figured, bring him here, he’ll meet a nice blond girl.” Will gave a sour laugh. “Instead, he met a nice blond boy.”

I noticed Ajax standing in the shadows on the far side of my living room. He didn’t say another word; he didn’t even look at Will. His revulsion ran deep. I’d like to tell you that he was an exception around here, but the truth is, he was the rule. You could be a lot of things in this part of the world and people wouldn’t care, but being gay wasn’t one of them. This was the end of Will Foltz, popular kid and football star.

“Gordon found out about you and Jay?” I asked.

“Yeah. He caught us together. Honestly, it was stupid. I should have stopped Jay, but he wanted to do it in Gordon’s office. I think it was his way of throwing it all in his father’s face, you know? That’s how his fingerprints got there. Because we were there. In bed. Gordon came back while we were in the middle of things, and he practically had a stroke. That’s why he was so crazy for my dad to keep me away from Jay. It didn’t have anything to do with the lawsuit. He made that up. He wasn’t going to admit what was really going on.”

Just like that, in the middle of Will’s story, Ajax left the room. He didn’t say a word to either of us. He didn’t look at me or Will, he just left. Seconds later, I heard my front door slam. The whole house shook on its foundation. Outside, Ajax’s car squealed away.

“He’s going to tell everybody, isn’t he?” Will said.

I wanted to say no, but I couldn’t do that. Will wouldn’t have believed me, anyway. He knew the score. In a few hours, the news would be all over town. His life as he knew it was over.

“I don’t care,” he insisted, wiping his face. “Let them find out. Let them all find out. Jay’s innocent. I don’t care what happens to me.”

Chapter Seventeen

By noon the next day, Will was in the hospital.

It happened between the first and second period classes. Eight other boys jumped him as he was getting books from his locker. It took that many kids to overpower Will, who fought back and landed plenty of blows before they were able to pin him to the ground and begin beating on him. A couple dozen other teens stood and watched and cheered them on. The attack went on for almost ten minutes before two teachers finally intervened and were able to pull the kids away.

By the time Darrell and I reached the school, an ambulance had already taken Will to the neighboring county, which was where the nearest hospital was located. We arrested three teens who bore the bruises and black eyes of Will fighting back. They refused to identify any of the other teens who’d been involved, and none of the kids who’d watched in the hallway would talk to us, either. Even the teachers claimed to have not seen who else had taken part.

I had to leave the interview room rather than listen to the questioning, because I was sickened by what I heard. I knew these teens, and I knew their parents. Before that day, I would have called them good kids, funny, athletic, even a little naive about the ways of the world. These same teens had set upon a boy who’d been one of their heroes, and there was absolutely no regret in their eyes. They thought that they were the real victims, that Will had made fools of them, gulled them into being friends with a pervert. That was actually the mildest of the words they used to describe him.

There would be no legal consequences for what they did. I knew that. We’d arrested them, but the county prosecutor would make it all go away. Even in the unlikely event that the case made it to court, the judge would give them a stern lecture and set them free. There would be nothing on their records. Nothing that would follow them around for the rest of their lives.

I went back to my desk, but I could hear the other deputies talking about it. Laughing, making jokes. Ajax was among them. Ajax, who’d probably gone straight to the 126 from my house and started the rumors flying. He’d known exactly what would happen to Will as soon as the news got out, but he didn’t care. I couldn’t even look at him. It sickened me to think I’d actually felt a physical attraction to this man. I sat at my desk for a while and tried to block it all out, but I realized I needed to get away from there. I grabbed my coat and left, feeling as if their voices were chasing me out the door.

Outside, the snow we’d been expecting had begun. It fell in a white cloud, heavy and dense, making the world seem quieter. A storm like this came once or twice in a season, gathering inch by inch as the hours passed, making you wonder if it would ever stop. I got in my cruiser and drove, and other than the occasional plow trying to keep up with the snowfall, I had the highway to myself. I struggled to stay in the lane and not slide off into a ditch, and I had to squint to see.

There’s something about the enveloping whiteness of a blizzard that makes you hallucinate. I had the strangest visions out there, of snowy owls, of bodies in the road, of my mother floating in the sky like an angel. I felt the beginnings of a deep depression, as if the emptiness of the blizzard had begun to mirror the emptiness in my soul. I’d felt that way only once before, a hollowness that had dogged me for weeks. There were days during that stretch when I didn’t get out of bed all day. I remember it had felt like I held a gun in my hand, and one by one, my brain was shooting down the things that mattered to me. I had never experienced a scarier time than that. I realized my only two choices were to die or start living again. I chose life, and after surviving that summer of discontent, I found the will to go on. That same depression had never come back to me, not like that, but I could feel it out there again. I could see it in the snow cloud, coming for me.

Ninety minutes later, I crossed the county line and made it to the hospital where they’d taken Will. He was unconscious. His face was barely recognizable, his black-and-blue eyes swollen shut, his head bandaged, one arm in a cast. This happy, handsome teenager, a boy I’d known since he was a baby, had been sitting next to me in my house the previous night. A day later, here he was, clinging to life. I sat by the bed and took his hand, and all I could do was tell him in a low voice how sorry I was.

“Who did it?”

I looked up and saw Norm standing by the curtain that divided the room. He had a cup of hospital coffee in his hand, and he looked as if he’d aged a decade in a few hours.

“What?”

“Who did it?” he asked me. “Who told everyone about Will? I know it wasn’t you, Rebecca.”

“Of course not.”

“Then who?” He sat down in the chair next to me. “Ajax?”

“Let it go, and focus on Will,” I said.

Norm shook his head, as if letting go was an impossible thing. He stared at his son, with his face frozen into a mask of helplessness and hatred. “My whole life has been about the law, you know? How to get things done within the system. And now the system is worthless. Ajax put a target on my son’s chest, and there’s nothing I can do about it. There’s no law. There’s nothing. I just want to kill the son of a bitch.”

“You shouldn’t say things like that,” I murmured.

Norm’s face twitched. As he sipped his coffee, he began to cry silently. I’d never seen him cry before.

“What do the doctors say?” I asked.

“He has a broken arm, broken nose, broken jaw, and fractured skull. They’re afraid of swelling in the brain. We won’t know more until he wakes up.”

“He’ll pull through,” I said, fervently hoping that was true. “He’s strong. He’ll be fine.”

Norm didn’t answer.

“Where’s Kathy?” I asked, because I assumed his wife was here, too.

“They had to give her a sedative. She’s in another room.”

“I am so sorry, Norm. This is all my fault.”

“There’s nothing you could have done.”

“Will came to see me last night. I–I wasn’t alone. Ajax was with me. Will was so upset, and he wanted to talk about Jay. I should have stopped him. I shouldn’t have let him tell me anything until it was just the two of us. I knew what he was going to say, and I should have known what the consequences would be.”

Norm stared at me. “You knew what he was going to say?”

“I guessed.”

“How?”

“I don’t know. I just had a feeling. I can’t even tell you where it came from.”

Norm shook his head. “He was my son, and I didn’t know. I didn’t have a clue. Neither did Kathy. The only way I even found out today was when I saw what they’d written on his locker. That word. I thought, they made a mistake. They nearly killed my son over a mistake. It never even occurred to me that it was true. When I saw Jay, he admitted it to me, and I couldn’t believe it.”

“You saw Jay?” I asked.

Norm nodded. “He came to the hospital. He was devastated. Just gutted. The way he looked at Will, the only way I can explain it is that he’s in love with him. And do you know what’s crazy? I don’t even know what the hell that means. I really don’t even understand it.”

I wanted to ask where Jay was, but Norm kept talking.

“You said Will came to see you last night?” he asked me. “He told you about him and Jay?”

“Yes.”

“And yet he couldn’t tell me. I’m his father, and he couldn’t tell me.”

“He only told me because he was trying to protect Jay. He knew the sheriff was planning to arrest Jay for Gordon’s murder.”

“But why wouldn’t he tell me?” Norm asked with a sad anguish. “What did he think I would say? Did he think we’d disown him? Kick him out?”

“What would you have done?”

Norm took a long time to answer. “Honestly? I don’t know. I like to think I’m open-minded, but I have no idea what I would have said. Maybe he sensed that. You know, the last couple of years, Will has been strange with us. Distant. Not sharing with us the way he did when he was a boy. He and I were always so close, but he’s been pulling away from me for a while now. I figured it was just the teenage years. I never dreamed he was struggling with something like this.”

“It couldn’t have been easy for him.”

“No.” Norm looked at me. “Gordon Brink knew, didn’t he? That’s why he was trying to keep Will and Jay apart.”

“Yes. That’s what Will told me. Brink caught them together.”

“I suppose you think this gives Jay another motive to kill his father.”

“I’m sure the sheriff will think that, but according to Will, Jay has an alibi. They were together that Sunday night.”

“That’s not going to satisfy Jerry. We both know that.”

“No, probably not. I doubt Will can prove that they were in your trailer together. The sheriff is going to say Will is simply covering for Jay, and people around here will be inclined to believe it.”

“Because who wants to take the word of a queer, right?”

“I’m not saying it’s fair.”

“Will wouldn’t lie,” Norm snapped. “If he says they were together, they were.”

“I know that. But regardless, I need to find Jay.”

“So you can arrest him?”

“That’s up to Darrell and Jerry. Frankly, being in a cell might be the safest place for him right now. You’ve seen what the kids did to Will. If they catch up with Jay, it’s likely to be even worse. I don’t want to see anything happen to him. Do you know where he is?”

“I’m his lawyer,” Norm said. “I can’t say anything about that. And don’t try to tell me he’d be safe locked up in a cell, Rebecca. I know the men you work with. I wouldn’t trust what they’d do to him. Besides, even if I wanted to negotiate a way for Jay to turn himself in, I can’t leave the hospital. I need to stay here with Will.”

“Norm, he’s in danger on his own.”

“What do you want me to do, Rebecca?”

“Trust me. Tell me where he is.”

Norm rubbed his face with exhaustion and mussed his thinning hair. “Can I talk to the Rebecca Colder I’ve known since she was a little girl? And not to the sheriff’s deputy?”

“Yes. I promise you that.”

Norm stared at his son in the hospital bed. In the low light, Will breathed in and out, but he showed no signs of consciousness. Even so, I felt as if Norm were pleading with his son for advice. And for forgiveness.

“Jay is out of control, Rebecca,” Norm said. “He blames himself for what happened to Will. He’s desperate.”

“That’s even more reason for me to find him. Where is he?”

“He was driving his dad’s car. The Mercedes. I told him to go back to my house and park the car in the garage and make sure the door was closed. I said he should stay in the house with the lights off and not answer if anyone came by.”

“How do I get in?” I asked.

“I keep a spare key inside the brass light fixture on the porch.”

“Thank you, Norm. I’ll find him, and I’ll keep him safe.”

I got out of the chair, but Norm took my arm gently before I could leave. “Rebecca?”

“What is it?”

He hesitated, struggling again, as if the lawyer were doing battle with the father. “There’s something else. You need to be very careful if you go in there.”

“Why?”

Norm swallowed hard as he tried to get the words out. “Jay has a gun.”

Chapter Eighteen

On the highway, the plows had given up their fight against the blizzard, and my tires punched and swerved through wet snow on the way back to Norm’s house. Drifts blew into terraced mountains that I had to navigate around. The storm showed no sign of letting up. My snow-ghosts — my hallucinations — followed me across the county, twisting my gut with the things I saw. I had visions of the three victims of the Ursulina standing on the shoulder, their skin in ribbons. I saw Ricky hiding behind every tree. Most of all, worst of all, I kept hearing the lonely, plaintive cry of a baby in the screech of the wind.

Call it a premonition. An omen or a sign.

Was it you, sweetheart? Were you telling me you were out there? Were you crying about things to come?

By the time I made it to the forest outside Random, the gray late afternoon sky had begun to darken into night. When I reached Norm’s house, I saw that I wasn’t the first to arrive. The vandals had already struck. A gay slur had been spray-painted in huge red letters across Norm’s garage, and several first-floor windows had been smashed. Splintered debris was everywhere, and ash and smoke floated in the air with the snow. I realized they’d broken into the workshop and thrown Will’s woodwork into the yard and burned it like a bonfire. They’d also scattered the contents of Will’s high school locker on the front steps and left a message for him painted on the door.

Don’t come back.

I didn’t bother knocking. I retrieved the key from the light post near the door and let myself inside. The house was cold, with winter air and snow hissing through broken windows. Sharp fragments of glass covered the hardwood floor.

“Jay?” I called. “Jay, it’s Rebecca. Are you here?”

There was no answer. I searched the whole house and couldn’t find him. His moving boxes had been delivered, but they sat on the floor of one of the upstairs bedrooms, unopened. When I went outside and checked the garage, I saw no sign of Gordon Brink’s Mercedes. Either Jay had left when he’d seen the damage, or he’d never come here at all.

The other kids in town were undoubtedly hunting for him. And Jay had a gun. That was a volatile combination. I needed to find him.

I thought about checking the house that Gordon had been renting, but I didn’t think Jay would go back there. And he was still a stranger to the area, so I doubted that he would know many of the hideaways that teenagers learned about growing up here. Plus, most of our secret places were summer escapes, and this was winter, and the snow was falling in waves.

Then I knew.

I knew exactly where Jay would go. He’d return to the place where he and Will had spent the night together.

I got back into my car and headed east. Night fell hard not long after I started out, and so I had to deal with the storm and the darkness at the same time. What would normally take me an hour took me two, as I fought the snow and tried to see. I missed the turnoff to the dirt road that led to Norm’s trailer, and I had to do a U-turn to go back and find it. The depth of the snow made the road almost impassible, but a couple of cars had obviously traveled this stretch before me, and I was able to use the ruts they’d left to make my way through the forest.

After several miles, my headlights reflected on the chassis of a car parked in a turnoff, barely visible among the trees. I could see that it was a Mercedes. I pulled in behind it and got out. The crowns of the trees overhead gave me a little protection from the snow, but the wind in my face was bitter and fierce. I trudged to the car and shined my flashlight inside, but it was empty.

“Jay?” I shouted, barely able to hear my own voice over the howl of the gales. “Jay, are you here?”

No one answered me.

There was no trail to follow, just snow, but I knew where I was going. I headed along a path through the trees, and ahead of me, I saw a faint square of light like a will-o’-the-wisp. It was the glow of windows in Norm’s Airstream. Someone was inside. As I neared the trailer, however, I spotted another car parked at the end of the trail. This one was a yellow Cadillac.

Ben Malloy was spending the night in the woods again.

I thumped on the trailer door. Ben answered with a pipe in his mouth, as he always did. He wore an open bubble coat, red corduroys, and moon boots. He had a camera with a flash attachment hanging around his neck.

“Deputy Rebecca,” he said with surprise. “What on earth are you doing out here in the middle of the storm?”

“I could say the same to you, Ben.”

“Well, I’m Ursulina hunting, of course. I was getting ready to go stalk the beast. Since you’re here, I’d be happy to have company on my quest.”

“Have you seen Jay Brink?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Teenage boy. Tall, reddish hair, dark eyes.”

“I haven’t seen him, but I haven’t seen anyone out here.”

“His car’s parked on the road. I need to find him.”

“Say no more,” Ben replied. He zipped up his coat and trundled down the trailer steps. “I have a compass, a lantern, and peanut shells.”

“Peanut shells?” I asked.

“To mark our trail and make sure we can find our way back. We wouldn’t want to get lost out here, would we?”

“No.”

“Any idea where to look for this boy?”

I shined my flashlight at the snow in the clearing surrounding the Airstream. It didn’t take me long to find Jay’s trail. Close by, fresh footsteps went up to the trailer windows and then led into the forest. “There. Jay must have realized someone was inside, so he went off by himself.”

With my flashlight guiding us, we followed Jay’s tracks. Ben stayed behind me, but he was invisible unless I turned the light directly at him. It was a difficult slog, and I could hear him huffing and puffing, but he didn’t complain. He crunched on peanuts, eating them and then dropping the shells like Hansel and Gretel leaving bread crumbs. The smell of his pipe followed us through the woods.

As the wind gusted and sprayed wet snow, my skin felt raw. I pushed my way forward, stumbling into branches that slapped my face. The drifts got inside my boots and melted, and soon my feet were cold and wet. Several times, I lost Jay’s footprints and had to stop and scan the ground to find them again before we could continue. During one long stretch, when I was afraid I’d lost his trail altogether, we heard movement not far away from us. Ben immediately had his camera up, and the pop of his flashbulb nearly blinded me. As my eyes swam with orange reflections, I spotted a deer bounding away through the trees.

“Next time, give me a little warning about the flash,” I said.

“And miss the Ursulina? I’m sorry, Deputy, but no. Strike while the iron is hot!”

I said nothing. I kept scanning the snow for Jay’s footprints. My chest felt tight with fear.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Ben murmured, his voice coming out of the darkness. Strangely, in the cathedral of the forest, it felt right to whisper.

“About what?”

“That when I was a boy, I saw the Ursulina.”

“I never said I didn’t believe you.”

“Well, when I told you about it the other day, there was a strange look on your face, which I assume was skepticism. Believe me, I’m used to it. However, even if you think my television show is a fraud, I’m not lying about what I saw.”

“No?”

“No, it really happened. Actually, it wasn’t all that far from here. I was camping alone on a weekend in September. I think I was eighteen. The woods have never frightened me, you know. Not like other people. I spend hours out here by myself, and I always feel perfectly at home.”

I wanted to say: Me, too.

“If I have my bearings right, we’re not far from Sunflower Lake,” Ben went on. “Do you know it?”

“Yes, I know it.”

I knew that lake, because this was where we’d camped when I was ten years old. My father, my brother, and me. This was where I’d gone into the woods and seen him, smelled him, heard him. Hufffffff. I’d come back to this place dozens of times to search for him. Weird, isn’t it? On some level, I missed the beast. He belonged to me in an unfathomable way. Not to Ben Malloy. Not to anyone else. Me. Rebecca Colder. I resented the idea that Ben had seen him, too.

“I was day-hiking along the lake,” Ben continued. “I was — oh, I don’t know — three or four miles from camp, staying close to the lakeshore. It was late, dusk, everything gray and shadowy, and that was when I heard this loud snort. It wasn’t like anything I’d ever heard before. I didn’t have a camera or anything, and I couldn’t see very well. But I ran along the beach, and that was when I saw him. Just a glimpse as he vanished into the trees with a crash. Upright, huge, spiky orangish fur. I ran, and I found the place where he’d disappeared, but it was dry, and there were no footprints. I spent another hour trying to find him, but he was gone. I’ve never seen him again. Mind you, I’ve looked and looked, but all I had was that one glimpse, a split second, no more. I’ll tell you the truth, though. Once you’ve spotted him, you grow obsessed with the experience. I won’t die a happy man unless I see him again. I suppose that sounds crazy. You probably can’t understand it.”

“Oh, I understand,” I said with a catch in my voice.

Ben pondered my tone. He turned on his own lantern and held it up to see my face, and then he simply stared at me. I tried to hide my emotions, but everything he said about his sighting — and how he’d felt afterward — was the same way I’d felt since I was ten years old.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” Ben said.

“What?”

“You’ve seen him, too.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“You search for him, don’t you? You listen for him. Just like me. That snort, it’s very distinctive, isn’t it? Sort of a hufffffff. ”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Ben shook his head in wonder, as if discovering a long-lost sister. “That strange look you had. It wasn’t skepticism. You were jealous. It’s hard to share him, isn’t it? I know what that’s like. It makes you feel special to have him to yourself. I’ve met a lot of people who’ve claimed that they saw the Ursulina, but honestly, I’m pretty sure most of them were lying. Except for this one old man. His story was almost exactly like mine, and there was this look in his eyes. A look that said he shared my obsession. I was actually depressed for days after I met him. I know how it sounds, but it’s like the monster had cheated on me. And yet, eventually, I came to realize that it was a good thing. I was able to put to rest that voice in my head that said I hadn’t seen what I did. You know the voice I mean, don’t you?”

“No. I really don’t.”

I turned away from his light, because I didn’t want him examining my face anymore. I swung my flashlight back to the ground, and in the snow piled near the trunk of a fat oak, I saw Jay’s trail again. It was quickly being erased by the wind. Soon the path would be lost altogether.

“Come on, we need to hurry.”

I moved as quickly as I could through the snow. Ben followed behind me. We were very close to the lake. Even in the darkness, I could see the paler light of a clearing not far away. The inlet was there, washing in from the deeper water, the trees ringing the shore. That’s where Jay’s footsteps led. Years ago, I’d been the one standing there by the lake, scratching my mosquito bites under the monster’s moon, listening to the warning of the owl and having no idea what was waiting for me in the woods.

The footsteps headed straight to the shore.

“Jay?” I called. “Jay, are you there? It’s Rebecca Colder.”

I stumbled forward to where the trees ended, my flashlight bobbing because I was practically running. The wind, with nothing to slow it down in the open, intensified to a roar, whipping the snow into a hurricane. The soft ground became a rocky beach under my feet. In some places, the snow was two feet deep, and in others, it had been blown clean down to the rough stones. There was no dark water in front of me, just a thick white bed of winter ice.

The cone of my light lit up a tiny piece of the inlet. There was Jay. He stood on the ice, snow swirling around him. A solitary teenager, overwhelmed by the cruelty of the world.

“Jay!” I called to him over the wind. “It’s okay. I’m not here to arrest you. I just want you safe.”

I motioned for Ben to stay where he was. I drew closer, walking down to the dividing line where the solidness of the land gave way to the solidness of the ice. Jay was about twenty feet away, buffeted by fierce gales. His hands were buried in his pockets, and his body shook. He looked cold. He’d been crying, but the tears had frozen to his cheeks. In the starkness of the light, his face looked haunted, almost like the hollow bones of a skull.

“Come on, Jay. Let me take you away from here.”

I took a step onto the ice, but then I stopped in horror. Jay took a hand out of his pocket and put a gun to the side of his head.

“No!” I screamed. “Jay, don’t! Put it down. You don’t want to do this.”

The teenager’s arm trembled, and so did the barrel of the gun. “Did you see Will? Did you see what they did to him?”

“I did. It’s terrible. But Will’s strong. He’ll get better.”

“The doctors say there could be brain damage. He’ll never be the same.”

“Jay, listen to me. He’ll get better.” I was trying to convince myself as much as him.

“I did this. He’s lying in that hospital bed because of me.”

“That’s not true.”

“I told him to stay quiet about us. Why couldn’t he stay quiet?”

“Because Will’s a decent, honorable kid,” I said.

“I love him.”

“I know.”

“I love him, but I destroyed his whole life. I wish I’d never met him. I wish I could go back and change everything.”

“I understand. Really, I do. I know exactly how you feel. But this isn’t the answer, Jay. Put down the gun. Put it on the ice, and walk toward me.”

Jay didn’t do what I said. Instead, he pushed the barrel harder into his head, and I flinched. I put up my hands and took a few more steps. The snow swirled, and the wind roared. I blinked as ice balls gathered on my eyelids. Under my feet, I could hear the thump of the water pushing like a body against the ice, trying to get free. I felt as if we were surrounded by the dead, all the ones who’d come before us. They came and went in the white cloud, ghosts pointing their crooked fingers at me. I felt a sickness in my stomach.

“Gordon hated me,” Jay said. He still couldn’t call him his father.

“No, he didn’t. Maybe he didn’t understand you, but fathers don’t hate their sons.”

“He hated me, and I hated him.”

“Don’t do this to yourself,” I told him. “Let me get you help. Put down the gun, and let’s get out of here.”

Jay shook his head. “I’m done.”

“You’re not. No way are you done. You are seventeen years old, and you have the rest of your life ahead of you. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“I want to confess. You’re a cop, right? I want to confess.”

“Confess to what?”

“I killed Gordon,” Jay said.

“No, you didn’t.”

“I did. It was me.” He jabbed a finger at Ben Malloy, who’d emerged from the trees and was standing by the lakeshore. “You! Do you hear me? Do you hear what I’m saying? I killed him! I killed Gordon Brink! Me and nobody else! I cut the bastard into little pieces. I sliced him up and watched him bleed to death. You’re looking for the beast that did it? The monster? That’s me!”

“Jay,” I begged him. “No! What are you doing?”

“I am the Ursulina!” he bellowed.

“Stop it! You’re not!”

“Will lied!” he shouted at us. “He wanted to protect me. Will’s not gay. I am. We were friends, that’s all. Tell everybody! It was a mistake! He lied because he didn’t want to see me go to prison. He made up the whole story. He sacrificed himself for a lie. We weren’t together out here. Nothing happened between us. I came on to him, and he rejected me. Tell them! I was home on Sunday night. I had a huge fight with Gordon, and I went down to the office to confront him. I hit him, and then I cut him up. Do you hear me? I used the book, and I made it look just like the others. It was me!”

“Jay, don’t.” I was crying. I wanted to fall to my knees. “Don’t do this!”

His voice grew calm, and the calm was worse than everything else. It was the calm of someone who’d made his decision. “Please tell them. Save Will. Give him his life back.”

“Jay!”

The boy’s finger slid over the trigger. Time stood still. I ran, but I was too far away to do anything. I screamed at him, but in the next instant, he fired. The wind picked that moment to wail like a banshee, and I could barely hear the noise of the gun at all. The only way I knew that Jay was dead was that his body collapsed to the ice right in front of me.

Chapter Nineteen

My fault, sweetheart.

This was my fault. Will was in the hospital, and Jay was dead. Two sweet teenage boys, one life ruined, one life over. I wasn’t able to stop it.

All I can tell you is that I had a breakdown. I didn’t want to be who I was anymore. Staring at Jay’s body on the ice, the red blood from his head already freezing hard against white snow, I realized that I wanted to get away from everything around me. Leave it all behind. The deaths, the abuse, the loneliness, the failures, the specter of the Ursulina. The monster in the woods had obsessed me for too long.

I knew I had duties to perform. I was a sheriff’s deputy, and a boy was dead. There were calls to be made, evidence to be gathered, reports to be written, laws and procedures to be followed. I did none of those things. What I did was leave the scene in a kind of daze. Ben Malloy, who was in shock at what had happened in front of him, pestered me with questions, but I said nothing. I was numb, overwhelmed, unable to function. With my flashlight, I followed the trail all the way back to Norm’s trailer. I went to my cruiser, and I got inside and drove away, leaving Ben shouting in frustration at me.

That depression I told you about?

It fell down on me from the sky; it enveloped me like the snow. The gun in my brain that blasted away everything I loved, everything I cared about, everything that had any meaning, made a slow, inexorable turn, until its smoking black barrel was pointed at my face. I felt completely and utterly empty, a shell, with nothing to live for, no happiness, no joy. I’d added nothing to this world with my existence. Drop Rebecca Colder in the lake, and her body would sink with no ripples.

There was no question in my mind about what I should do. I was going to end it. That was my plan; that was all I could think about. The only thing I wasn’t sure about was where to go. Where to walk in those final moments. Where to draw my gun and place it in my mouth. I wondered what last image my eyes should have, before the whiteness of the snow became the blackness and nothingness of death.

I drove along the snowy highway, studying each crossroad and wondering which one had a sign that read: This way, Rebecca. Half a dozen times, I stopped, contemplating whether to turn the wheel. If you’re planning to kill yourself, one place really is as good as any other. But each time, I kept going. I guess life takes you where you’re supposed to be, for better or worse.

It was an owl that saved me.

An owl is why you’re here in this world, sweetheart.

I squinted through the slush on my windshield, and suddenly, there it was, face in front of me, wings spread like Jesus on the cross. The car hit the owl, or the owl hit the car, and then it was gone, rising in the air, going up and down drunkenly as if it was struggling to soar. I screeched to a stop on the shoulder and bolted from the car, scanning the woods for the bird. The owl had vanished, but its cry called to me, guided me. I ran toward the sound and found a break in the trees, near the entrance road to a national forest campground that was closed for the season.

Somewhere down there, the owl beckoned me with its call.

This way, Rebecca.

The snow came up to my knees. I couldn’t walk or run; it was as if I swam through it, which left me breathless. The entrance road took me to a clearing near the lake. The same huge lake that made a kind of sunflower in the middle of the forest, with rounded inlets like petals, which was how it got its name. The lake continued past the spot where Ben Malloy had seen the Ursulina; it flowed into deep water at its core where the winter ice was thin; and it extended all the way to the place where I’d stood and watched the monster’s moon, and where I’d just seen Jay Brink put a bullet in his head.

Do you believe in signs, sweetheart?

The owl led me to this lake. It led me to what I was destined to find, because when I got there, I discovered that I wasn’t alone. There was a pickup truck parked by the shore, practically buried in snow. It wasn’t going anywhere. And from the steamed-over windows, I realized that the truck wasn’t empty. Someone needed my help.

I had a purpose in life again.

I shouldered my way through the drifts and tapped on the driver’s window. When the window rolled down, I found myself staring at a young man only a few years older than me, no more than thirty, who looked ready to freeze to death. He had no coat; he was actually wearing a short-sleeved shirt. In January! He was a strong, strapping man, with a thick mane of slightly curly brown hair and a perfectly trimmed brown beard. His face, like mine, had a sadness about it, but I couldn’t help but notice how handsome he was.

Seeing me, this man gave me a smile that warmed my insides like the smoothest of whiskeys. What can I tell you? It was a smile without guile or cynicism or lust, just the earnest smile of a decent man. I liked him at once. In fact, sweetheart, you may or may not believe this, but I fell in love with him right then and there in that single moment. I saw his eyes and his smile, and I melted. Maybe it was the situation I was in. Maybe I needed to see a kind face when my nerves were stretched to the breaking point. But regardless, something about this man’s face made my heart soar.

“You must be an angel,” he told me, which was exactly what I was thinking about him. “I wasn’t sure I would make it through the night.”

I found myself at a loss for words, but then I finally recovered and said, “What are you doing out here, sir?”

“I’d tell you if I could, Deputy, but I don’t even know where I am.”

“Are you all right? Do you need a doctor?”

“No, it’s nothing like that. It’s been a difficult day. My mother died this morning.”

Something about the way he said it wounded me like the sharpest of arrows. I guess that’s the way we all are about our mothers. Saying goodbye to the woman who brought us into the world is a loss like no other. And yes, I know, with you and me, it’s much more complicated than that.

“I’m very sorry,” I told him.

“Thank you. I guess I had a kind of breakdown after it happened. I just got in my car and started driving. I’ve been driving for hours through the snow, and at some point, I ended up here. Where am I, anyway?”

“This is Sunflower Lake,” I told him. “In Black Wolf County.”

“It reminds me of one of my favorite lakes back home. Shelby Lake.”

“Shelby,” I said, rolling it around on my tongue. “That’s a pretty name.”

“And it’s a pretty lake, too. I don’t know, maybe that’s why I stopped here. Something drew me to this place. Like this was where I was going all along. Do you know what I mean? I guess we all end up where we’re supposed to be.”

“I do know what you mean,” I said.

“Anyway, the snow kept falling. I didn’t really pay attention to it, but a little while ago, I realized I couldn’t get out. Disaster sort of creeps up on you like that. And as you can see, I’m not exactly dressed for the weather.”

He had such an easy way of talking. His voice had a gentleness that seemed unusual for a big man. I enjoyed listening to it the way I’d enjoy someone quietly strumming a guitar. With his beard covering everything but his lips, he seemed to speak with his eyes. They were chocolate-brown eyes, serious but also sweet. I didn’t think I’d ever had a man’s eyes look at me the way his eyes did. He studied me carefully, but with no demands, no expectation, no ownership, just appreciation. With one look, his eyes told me I was pretty, and then they backed away to give me space. Which, suddenly, I didn’t want. I wanted no space from him at all.

We had a kinship, this man and me, both of us arriving here from dark places. That’s the only way I can explain it. And as for breakdowns, I knew what that was like, because I was in the midst of one myself. Weird, though, all my plans for what I was going to do somehow vanished from my mind as soon as I met him.

“What’s your name?” I asked him.

“Tom,” he told me. “Tom Ginn.”

Tom’s pickup truck wouldn’t be moving until the plows came. With my radio, I put in a request to have the campground cleared of snow, which normally they wouldn’t bother to do in this season. Even so, it would be hours before they got here. Snow continued to blanket the area, and the plows would be busy staying ahead of the drifts on the highways and town streets.

I could have — should have — taken Tom to the sheriff’s office. Essentially, I was AWOL from my job. I’d left a dead body on the ice and done nothing about it, but that night, I couldn’t face Darrell, or Ajax, or Jerry. As it turned out, Tom didn’t want to go to the sheriff’s office either. He was AWOL from his own job. I knew his name sounded familiar, and he reminded me that he was the sheriff of Mittel County, our distant neighbors on the eastern side of the state. He didn’t want to deal with questions, shoptalk, or false sympathy from the others in our office. This night was about him and his mother, and I totally understood his desire for privacy.

So I took him home with me.

Something about this man made me feel both protective and protected. Being with him gave me a kind of glow, as if I were part-mother, part-wife. He settled naturally into my house, stoking a fire in my fireplace. His clothes were wet, and he was almost blue with cold, so I let him change in my bathroom and take a hot shower. I put his clothes in the washer. He was a much taller, more athletic man than Ricky, so none of my husband’s clothes would have fit him. Instead, Tom put on a terry robe that was a little short for him and then modestly wrapped a blanket around himself. He sat down by the fire, and I showered and changed, too.

We both should have been hungry, because neither one of us had eaten in hours, but we weren’t. We sat next to each other on the worn carpet, hypnotized by the flames. He looked absorbed by his own thoughts as he stared at the fire, but I snuck glances at him. His skin had a tanned glow, even in winter, that made a contrast with my stark paleness. His brown hair was still wet from the shower. He was lean, maybe a little too skinny for his height, but strong and muscular. I felt small next to him, but a good kind of small.

“Was your mother ill for a long time?” I asked softly when we’d been silent for several minutes.

“Yes. She had early-onset dementia. It’s been getting worse for a while now.”

“How old was she?”

“Not even sixty.”

“Oh, you must be devastated.”

“Well, it’s hard to lose anyone you love, but I’ve been losing her day by day for five years. The cruelty of it is hard to fathom, to see someone so very strong and independent lose any sense of who they are. And unfortunately, my father is well on the same road, too. I expect he only has a few more months. He’s living with me now. I really should be there with him, but after Mom passed, I couldn’t go home. I asked a colleague of mine, Monica, to stay at my place, so at least I know Dad’s okay. But I feel guilty. I didn’t even call him to say that Mom — his wife — was gone. He wouldn’t have understood, and I couldn’t handle that. Thirty-five years together, and they didn’t know each other anymore. They were strangers. It’s such a lonely disease.”

“I’m so sorry, Tom.”

He smiled at me again. Then he reached out and took my hand. I liked it.

“You know what’s utterly terrifying?” he went on, turning back to the fire. “I know my time will come. It will happen to me, too. Sooner or later, I’ll be the man who forgets his past, his friends, his entire identity.”

“You don’t know that for sure.”

“Let’s just say my family history makes it a pretty safe bet. Genetics spares no one. But it’s not all bad, not really. A cloud over my head like that reminds me to live a life that matters. If I lose my own memory, at least I want to believe that others will have good memories of me.”

It made me inexpressibly sad to hear him talk like that.

“Are you married, Tom?” I asked.

“No. Between my job and my parents, I haven’t had time for anyone else in my life.”

“You’re very young to be the sheriff.”

“I know.” He laughed at himself. “Don’t think I’m so special. Truly, no one else in Mittel County wanted the job, and I admit, I did. It’s what I’ve always wanted to do. It was my dream ever since I was a boy watching The Lone Ranger on television. Some people go through life never knowing what they want, but me, I always did. My dad was still relatively lucid two years ago. He insisted I go after it when the old sheriff died. I thought I should wait until I was older. I also didn’t think I could juggle being the sheriff with caring for the two of them, but he told me, you can’t ignore opportunity when it comes knocking or it just moves on to somebody else.”

“I think I’d like your father,” I said.

“You’d like who he was, that’s for sure. Everything I am is because of him.”

“Well, I like you, too.”

Tom turned and focused his brown eyes on me. The fire made his face shine. Or maybe he was blushing. “Listen to me going on about myself. I’m sorry. I’m just the unwanted visitor here. Tell me about you.”

“There’s not much to tell.”

“I doubt that. Everybody has a story.” He nodded at my left hand. “I see a ring. So you’re married?”

“Not for much longer.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I finally realized he’s not a good person.”

“Well, there are men like that. You deserve someone better.”

“I’m not sure I do.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that. I just met you, but I can already tell that you have a good heart. It shows in your eyes. Not to mention the fact that you’re very pretty.”

This time I was the one blushing. “You’re sweet.”

“Well, how could I not be to the woman who rescued me?”

“I wasn’t even supposed to be in that campground tonight,” I admitted. “I was running away.”

“From what?”

I hesitated, but Tom made me feel safe, so I told him what was going on. About Will, about Jay, about the body on the ice, about being unable to stay there. He was a sheriff in charge of deputies like me, and I thought I’d see judgment in his face. If one of his men did what I’d done, he’d fire him. But Tom let me off the hook.

“Sometimes it’s hard to see the higher purpose from where we are,” he said. “If you’d stayed and done your duty, you might feel better about yourself, but I’d still be in my truck freezing to death. Remember that.”

“I guess you’re right.”

“I can call your boss and explain if you want. If you’re worried about your job.”

“You don’t need to do that.”

“We all make mistakes, Rebecca, but like I said, life has a way of taking us where we’re supposed to be. I’m glad you ran away. You saved me.”

“Actually, you’re the one who saved me,” I said, blurting out the truth.

“How did I do that?”

“You stopped me.”

“From doing what?”

I shrugged, as if it were nothing. As if it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of the universe. “Shooting myself.”

He reacted by grabbing my face with his strong hands, cupping my cheeks gently as if holding on to something precious. “Rebecca. Is that really true?”

“I don’t know. That’s what was in my head. Maybe I would have chickened out.”

“Why would you even consider something like that?”

I felt my lower lip quivering. Any moment, I would lose it entirely. I was so full of self-pity, weighed down with self-hatred, that I could hardly breathe.

“I don’t know what I’m doing in this world,” I told him. “I’m all alone. If I disappeared, no one would notice. No one would care. Some days I just want to walk out into the forest and never be seen again.”

I assumed I’d get the usual speech that people give when you talk like that. When they know you’ve been contemplating suicide. The pat on the head. The platitudes. You’re young. You have your whole life ahead of you. But that’s the last thing I wanted to hear. Having my whole life ahead of me was the problem. That was why I’d considered ending it. I couldn’t bear to think about living the rest of my life feeling the way I did.

But Tom said nothing like that to me. His entire demeanor changed. He captured me with those dark eyes and held me fixed with his aura of goodness and concern. It was as if hearing my story had given him a mission, and he was bound to see it through. I didn’t think I’d ever met someone who had such a fierce, reflexive loyalty. He was like a younger version of Darrell, and yet he had something that Darrell didn’t. I sensed no black-and-white morality from him. He’d seen strong people crumble. He was a strong person himself, and he knew someday he’d crumble, too.

I didn’t know this man at all. He was a stranger to me. We’d just met. And yet I already knew — I knew — that if I were in trouble, I could go to him, and he would suspend everything else in his life to be there for me. There was literally no one else I could say that about.

That’s the man Tom Ginn was, sweetheart.

But of course, you know that.

“What can I do?” he asked. “How can I help you?”

“I have no idea. I really don’t.”

“Talk to me.”

“I don’t know where to begin.”

“Well, I’m not leaving until you tell me everything about yourself.”

“Why would you want that?”

He was honest with me. “There’s something about you, Rebecca, and I can’t even explain what it is. But I want to know the real you.”

“I don’t show that to anyone.”

“Why not?”

“Because I’m scared of her,” I said.

“You won’t scare me.”

I really thought that was true. I thought I’d finally met a man who would believe me and understand me, a man I could share my deepest secrets with. Honestly, that was the one and only moment in my life when I was tempted to tell another soul about the Ursulina.

But no.

I didn’t talk. I was done talking. There was time for that later. In that moment, that was not what I wanted from Tom Ginn. That was not how I planned to spend our night together. I wanted something else from him.

Chapter Twenty

At four in the morning, I got a call from a county road crew to let me know that the campground had been plowed. Tom could go home. I drove him out there in the darkness, and we said little along the way. I suppose he expected me to talk about when we would see each other again, but I didn’t do that. I knew he had other responsibilities in life and no room for me. He’d given me one night as a woman in the arms of a good man, which was the only thing I’d asked of him. I’d never experienced a pleasure or closeness like that before.

I never would again.

We parted without saying much to each other, but not awkwardly. The situation between us was simply understood. He kissed me, he held me, he got in his pickup truck, and he was gone. I stood there in the empty parking lot for a long time, savoring what I felt inside myself, feeling warm and happy on a cold, black night. The storm had cleared, leaving behind stars. The wind had settled into a perfect stillness. I hummed, I sang. I blew a kiss to the owl, wherever he was.

Then it was time to go home.

I had to rejoin the world, after a night that felt like an intermission from it. I didn’t know if Ben Malloy had taken it upon himself to send the sheriff’s department out to the lake to find Jay’s body, but either way, I needed to change back into my uniform and do everything that I’d failed to do hours earlier. I was ready to take charge of my life and become a deputy again.

It took me an hour to get back to my house. The roads were slippery, but I admit, I was distracted by my thoughts of Tom. I could still smell his presence in the car and taste him on my lips. We’d held hands as I drove. I knew the time we’d spent together would be a jewel I’d remove from a velvet case in my memory for years to come and polish up until it was sparkling and new again.

I got home to a deserted street and darkness. Dawn didn’t break in January until much later. The sweet smoke of the fire we’d made lingered in the air, and the driveway was covered with snow, so I parked on the street. As I walked toward the front door, as I let myself into the house, part of me was still floating. I didn’t turn on any lights. I hung up my coat. I didn’t — and this is important — I didn’t have my gun with me. It was upstairs, where I’d left it with my uniform.

I went into the living room. Blindly, without seeing anything, I gathered up the clothes I’d shed there, as well as the robe and the blanket from Tom. I inhaled the scent of the robe as I held it. So many thoughts raced through my mind: thoughts of Tom, thoughts of my body and the things I’d been missing, thoughts of my job, my childhood, my mother, my father, my brother. The one thing I didn’t think about was the danger I should have remembered. I didn’t think about Ricky. I’d forgotten all about him. At that moment, my husband didn’t exist. I hadn’t left the lights on or checked the lock on the door or any of the windows.

Of course, that was a terrible, terrible mistake.

He came at me from nowhere, an invisible man bursting from the shadows. One moment I had clothes in my arms, and then the next moment I was literally flying through the air as Ricky threw me across the room. I’m not heavy; he had no trouble launching me off my feet. I hit the wall and smashed into a glass picture frame that broke, spraying shards that sliced open my face and arm. Before I even fell, he grabbed me and threw me again, this time full speed into the brick hearth of the fireplace. My head struck stone. Pain erupted like the burn of a flame behind my eyes. I slumped to the carpet, tasting blood in my mouth.

“You whore! You goddamn whore!”

He bent over me, shouting in my face. I was on my back, but I couldn’t focus on the dark shape over me, because I was caught in a tornado of dizziness and hurt. I put up my hands in a feeble effort to push him away, but he twisted my left wrist hard, and I heard the bone snap like a broken pencil. I couldn’t help myself; I screamed in agony. He drove his knee into my chest, making me choke, and then he leaned his whole weight into me. Next he used his fists on my face, over and over, and with each blow, my skull slammed into the floor. He broke my jaw. He broke my nose. Blood from my head ran into my eyes.

I wanted to die to make the pain go away. I begged for mercy, pleading with him to stop.

He just hit me harder.

He hit me and hit me and hit me and hit me until I finally lost consciousness there on the floor. That emptiness was a gift. I had no dreams. I had no awareness of what he was doing to me.

Thank God.

By the time I awoke again, hours had passed. The sun had risen. Outside, it was a beautiful morning, the snow and clouds forgotten. A winter cardinal trilled at the feeder beyond the window. Bright light streamed through the living room and across my body on the floor.

I was alone. The house was silent. Ricky had gone.

Everything in my world was pain; every movement stabbed me like a sharp knife. I tried to push myself up, but I’d forgotten my broken wrist, and my arm collapsed under me as another shiver of lightning seared through my nerves. I lay on my back.

For a long time, all I could do was cry.

Cold air through the chimney chilled my skin. I managed to sit up, swallowing down nausea as my vision spun. My eyes were practically swollen shut, making me squint. I could see just enough to realize that I was naked. My clothes, ripped and torn, lay around me, along with buttons that lay on the floor like acorns. I was completely covered in bruises that made me into a horrible rainbow. Blood had dried on the floor around me and all over my face and chest.

There was so much pain it was hard to isolate any one area, but one thing I knew was that the hurt was between my legs, too, a hurt that went deep inside me. When I touched myself down there, I winced, and I knew what he’d done. That was the final insult. The final humiliation.

I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so, so sorry to lay this burden on you. I didn’t want to tell you any of this. I thought I could leave it out, thought I could spare you the ugly details, but you have to know the whole truth of what happened that night. You need to know the horror I faced. Otherwise, how can you understand?

That was the night you were conceived, the night that brought you into this world. That’s where your story began.

Were you brought to life in love? Were you the product of those few blissful hours I spent with a man I’d just met?

Or were you born out of a violence that changed me forever?

I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I never wanted to know, never wanted to find out. Maybe I couldn’t bear to hear the wrong answer. I can’t tell you whether your father was Tom Ginn or Ricky Todd. Sadly, you weren’t in my life long enough for me to see the answer as you grew up. The only person I ever saw in your eyes was me. When I held you in my arms for the first time, I saw this perfect, beautiful, miniature version of myself looking up at me.

You were my daughter.

I knew that, I felt that, I sensed the connection we had. I loved you with all my heart, a love that seemed impossible to me because it went so deeply into my soul. I loved you more than I’ve ever loved another human being, then or since. You have to believe that, sweetheart. I loved you.

But I had to send you away.