3

Linden Hills, Minneapolis

Bel stepped out of the Minneapolis terminal, a one-hour red-eye flight having delivered her from Chicago to Minneapolis. She was bleary-eyed, face puffy from crying, still beautiful. Salem wanted to hold her but there wasn’t time. They sped through the disorienting pre-dawn—fog, henna-colored light, air scented with lake and leaves and eggy car exhaust—toward Grace’s four-story Linden Hills apartment building. They gripped hands, Salem unsure if it was her hand or Bel’s that was corpse-cold.

Still, the words didn’t come, not until they took a quiet corner in one of Minneapolis’s tonier residential neighborhoods and Grace’s apartment loomed into view.

“Holy shit.” Salem slapped her hand over her mouth. That was the wrong thing to say.

It’s just she hadn’t expected there to be so many police cars.

Neighborhood Halloween decorations added a level of surrealism to the scene. A witch collided face-first into a tree in the lawn south of the apartment building. A hanged rubber corpse was strung next to it. Fake gravestones decorated the yard of the house on the north side, strung with orange twinkle lights that pierced the predawn murk.

Bel flew out of the car before it rolled to a complete stop. She bounded past the fleet of police cars toward her mom’s apartment building and stopped at the nearest uniform, her badge in her hand.

Salem switched off the car in the middle of the street, snatched her purse, and raced to catch up. She scanned the gathering crowd for Vida. She’d tried her mom as soon as she’d hung up with Bel four hours and a lifetime ago, but Vida had never answered. She must be frantic. Gracie was her best friend. They’d been inseparable as long as Salem could remember, and they’d passed on that loyalty to their daughters.

Salem reached Bel’s side, out of breath. Bel was asking questions in her police officer voice, controlled and firm. Her hair was tied in a messy pony tail, her expensive jeans and Salvation Army t-shirt rumpled from the flight, but even so, she commanded respect. Salem saw it in the way the officers stood, their heads cocked, hands relaxed near their guns. It had always been this way for Bel. It wasn’t her height, though she was almost six feet, or her looks. She had a presence.

Still, Bel seemed to be talking too slowly.

“We’re here to see her,” Salem blurted. The cool of the morning air turned her breath into white plumes. The sun hadn’t yet risen, its promise of light barely agitating the horizon. “To see Grace Odegaard.”

The uniform’s eyes slid sideways to his partner. Salem suddenly felt like throwing up. “We’ll get the officer in charge,” he said. “Wait here.”

Salem bobbed her head, jittery. She tucked her arm around Bel’s waist. Her friend was so stiff she felt corded with steel. The crowd of gawkers kept a respectable distance, milling behind the police tape in their track pants and work suits and dog-walking clothes. Salem counted five women, seven men, two pair of glasses, one hat. Behind them, the water of Lake Harriet was as black as a grave. The proximity to water tightened her throat like it always did, but she went through the mantra her therapist had taught her: I’m safe on land, I’m safe on land. She inhaled the smoky, earthy smell of a Minnesota fall. She measured her heartbeats. Finally, a man in his early thirties and wearing a well-cut suit stepped out the main door of the yellow brick apartment building.

The other officers stood straighter when he appeared. He was tall, muscled, clean-shaven, his skin so dark it reflected a deep purple in the walkway lights. He glanced in Bel and Salem’s direction as the first officer leaned toward him to speak near his ear. Nodding once, sharply, he began walking toward the two women. Salem’s chest grew tighter the closer he came.

“Agent Lucan Stone,” he said, extending his hand toward Bel. “FBI.”

The elevator slid open onto the third-floor landing.

Salem gasped.

She’d been up here hundreds of times, but the crime had morphed it into a stage set. Grace’s open apartment door stood directly across the wide hallway, fifteen feet from the elevator. A deep carmine painted the far wall, a firehose-wash of ghoulish spray. The air smelled strongly of urine and something metallic, like wet pennies. A corpse lay to the right of Grace’s door, face up. Salem was reminded of the Resusci Annie doll they’d learned CPR on in high school, except this body wore a slipper on one foot and the other was bare, her upper torso shielded from Salem’s view by an examiner wearing white.

A second person was taking instructions from the examiner, snapping photos with a flash camera as she pointed. A man and a woman peered at the wall to the right of Grace’s door. Everyone wore white latex gloves and shoe covers. Same with the three uniformed police officers standing to the left of the door, and a fourth officer who crossed in front of Grace’s open doorway from inside her apartment. A handful of dark yellow evidence markers were stacked across the floor. The foyer, the size of a large room, thrummed with the murmurs of quiet, intense activity.

Salem concentrated on these details to calm her jagged heartbeat.

The authorities are here. They’ll take care of everything.

Though she’d never been to church in her life, she fought the urge to cross herself.

Agent Stone nodded toward the technician bent over the corpse. “Forensics is still on scene.”

Bel stood taller, touching her hip for a gun that wasn’t there. “Four hours in?”

Agent Stone glanced at his wristwatch, its silver thickness a bright contrast to his skin. “Four hours and thirty-seven minutes since the initial 911 call. You made good time from Chicago.”

“I got in on standby. It’s a short flight.” Bel hesitated a moment before stepping off the elevator, followed by Agent Stone and then Salem.

Stone lightly touched Salem’s arm. “You okay?”

Salem brushed off his concern and stumbled closer to Bel. Her goal was to comfort her, but from this angle, the entire corpse was in view. It was the body of an older woman dressed for bed. Her robe was tied in front. The hem was blue, but the rest of the terry-cloth was mottled with blood so thick that it turned black at the shoulders. Her neck housed a four-inch, eye-shaped gash, the meat of it gaping at the ceiling. A pile of fur lay next to the woman. At first Salem thought it was an article of clothing, but then she caught the beady black eyes staring at her from the dog’s face, its body twisted the opposite direction.

She couldn’t blink. Her eye muscles had stopped working.

The terror was a lovely sticky web, adhering to her skin and tugging her down.

A tiny sound from Bel mercifully forced Salem’s attention away from the horrific sight. Bel was rocking back and forth, the move so slight that Salem would not have noticed if she hadn’t reached for Bel’s icy hand. She followed her friend’s stare, her eyes landing three feet above the corpse. The investigators were scraping something off the wall. Salem kept her eyes moving, to the open doorway that allowed the beginning rays of the chilly Halloween sunshine to filter into the hallway. The furniture inside Gracie’s apartment, at least what Salem could see from this angle, was undisturbed.

“We have one body.” Agent Stone’s voice was a deep rumble directly behind them. “She’s been positively ID’d as Carla Marie Gladia.”

Bel’s hand tightened in Salem’s. “Neighbor.” Her eyes flicked to the body.

“That’s right. And her dog, Dante.”

Salem spoke past the pressure at the top of her throat. “Someone murdered a dog?”

“Probably to keep the animal quiet.” Stone tipped his head toward the two corpses on the floor. “That’s exactly as the police discovered them.”

One of the uniformed officers walked over to Agent Stone, whispered something to him, and then stepped onto the elevator. The mechanical door closed behind them as Stone continued. “We have the security tapes from the lobby for the past twenty-four hours. You know this is a women’s-only building?”

Both Salem and Bel nodded, their eyes locked on apartment 307 as if love and wishes could coax Grace to walk out of it.

“We’ll review the tape, but for now, it appears that no males have been in or out of the building in the past twenty-four hours. Not even a repairman or delivery man. Yet, from the blood pattern, we know at least one of the killers, if there was more than one, entered through the front door. That narrows our suspects to females.” Stone cocked his head, his eyes unreadable. “Ms. Odegaard, did your mother have any enemies that you know of?”

Bel shook her head, the movement slow.

Salem’s heartbeat picked up as she connected two dots. “Wait, you have a body. Two, with Dante. Maybe all this blood is from them!” She turned to Agent Stone, realizing too late how excited she sounded about this grotesque reality. She swallowed past the spongy lump lodged between her chest and mouth.

Stone’s eyes remained trained on Bel. “I’m afraid that’s unlikely. There’s a secondary crime scene inside. If you’ll follow me?”

He handed them shoe covers before walking along the carefully-marked trail skirting the blood, indicating that Bel and Salem should follow. “Everything in the apartment appears to be in order—all major appliances accounted for, dishes done, bed made. We haven’t located a safe.”

“Mom didn’t own one.” Bel crossed the threshold and surveyed the apartment, her visual assessment snagged by drops of what looked like dried blood under the far window, two more examiners and a uniformed officer busy with the area. She paled. “You’re treating this as a murder-kidnapping?”

Stone followed her glance. “For now.”

She indicated the activity at the window. “The secondary crime scene?”

“Yes, extending outside onto the fire escape.”

“Can I check the bedrooms?” When Stone nodded his assent, Bel marched toward the open doorway.

“Stay here and touch nothing,” Stone commanded, before following Bel.

Stay was all Salem could do. Stay and stare at anything but all the blood in the hallway behind her, suffocating her, threatening to drown her like an encroaching crimson ocean, thick and salty, Mrs. Gladia’s screams echoing through its depths like whalesong. She reached out to the TV nightstand to steady herself, the glass edge a sharp return to reality. That’s when she spotted the wooden jewelry box her father had helped her craft for her mother when Salem was a seventh grader.

What the hell?

She’d sawn the balsa wood herself, loaded the secret spring that would open the box, glued it all together, heat-etched the om symbol on the top, and lined the interior with purple felt. She hadn’t laid eyes on it since she’d gifted it to her mom. She reached out a trembling hand, surprised at how light the container was. Her finger traced the black, looping groove of the om. When she was twelve, before her dad’s suicide, she’d been into Buddhism, or at least attracted to the concept of karma and the comfort of stretch pants.

She hardly remembered that girl.

The box made a clinking sound when she turned it over. Her heartbeat picked up. She glanced furtively at the window. The investigators there paid her no heed. Same with the ones behind her in the foyer. She held the box to her ear and shook it. There was definitely something inside. Squeezing the two long sides, she centered her pointer finger in the middle of the bottom to release the spring. The lid slid open. Inside lay a pair of ancient spectacles, and underneath, a note scratched out in her mother’s scrawling handwriting. She tugged both out and read the message.

Bits: bwsmttmijwcbzmdmvombpmvowpwumnwttwebpmbziqtbzcabvwwvm

Salem’s stomach somersaulted. “Bits” had been Salem’s dad’s nickname for her growing up. The moniker had cemented itself once she’d discovered her love for computers, though only her mom, Gracie, and Bel had ever called her that.

What followed was a secret code.

Her heartbeat thick and loud, she peeked again at the nearest investigators. They were photographing the base of the window, pointing at a spot, talking. Stone and Bel would return from the other room any second. She floated in a bubble of invisibility for the smallest moment.

What do I do with the box?

Salem felt like she was chewing on alum. She glanced a third time toward the window, a greasy sweat trickling down her neck. She clutched the code and spectacles, unsure if they’d been in the balsa wood box for ten hours or ten years, or if they were even meant for her. She didn’t want to steal, or pollute a crime scene. Nor did she want to ignore a message from her mother, not under these circumstances. The indecision was agonizing. She was about to close the box and return it to the TV stand when Bel stepped into the living room, Agent Stone on her heel. Salem instinctively shoved the glasses and note into her purse and slid the box closed, her pulse a rocket in her veins.

Stone’s intelligent glance flicked at her hands. She held up the now-empty balsa box like a shield, unable to meet the ink of his eyes. “My mom, Vida Wiley, owns this. I made it for her when I was in middle school.” Her voice quavered. “She might have been here last night.”

Stone stepped toward her and took the balsa box with his gloved hands, examining it from all sides. His voice was a controlled growl. “I told you not to touch anything.”

She didn’t respond.

He called over the uniformed officer from the window and commanded him to enter the box into evidence without taking his eyes off of Salem. “Do you have any reason to suspect she might have been here last evening other than this box?”

Salem shook her head, biting her lower lip to keep it steady. “But she’s not answering her phone.”

He studied her for a moment longer, an exclamation point of crisp darkness in the dawning light of the apartment, hair shaved close to the scalp, eyes bright and quick, nose strong over sculpted lips. Salem risked a glance, and his gaze laid her bare.

“Are you and your mother close?”

No, Agent Stone, we are not. “I last saw her a few weeks ago.” Her cheeks burned so hot that her eyes watered as she stared at her feet. “But she always answers when I call.”

He paused a moment before answering. “I’ll send officers to her home immediately.”

Salem clenched her jaw so no emotions could leak past, only words. “Thank you. Also, I’m not feeling well. ” She glanced at Bel, passing her a look they hadn’t used since high school. “Can you come with me?”

The secret code hummed inside her purse.

It sounded like an urgent, papery whisper of warning.