Chapter 3

 

Both Ronnie Townes, the guy with the frazzled dreadlocks, and Tiller, the man who'd been horsing around with him, were assigned to my crew along with a skinny blond kid whose name I did not know.

Tiller slowed as we neared the farm trucks. When he turned toward me, the sunlight glinted off his wraparound sunglasses. He stretched out his hand. "I'll drive."

I paused. Since I had just spent the last four hours driving the Ford from barn to barn, and still had possession of the keys, the privilege of chauffeuring our little group around the farm was mine until I punched out at noon. According to Maddie, it was one of the shift's few perks. As far as I was concerned, if Stone Manor had been my permanent job, working the early shift was a perk in and of itself. Rising early and working six days a week were long ingrained habits, but getting off at noon was a proposition I looked forward to for as long as the job lasted.

What I didn't look forward to was dealing with jerks like Paul Genoa and, now, Tiller.

Ronnie and the blond kid had stopped walking. They shuffled around so they could see my reaction. Ronnie huddled in his parka and shifted his weight as his gaze swiveled between us.

Tiller took my hesitation as a sign of indecision, and a slow smile spread across his face.

I had dealt with enough bullies to last me a lifetime and had no patience for his game. I looked past him, jerked my head toward the truck, and said to Ronnie and the blond kid, "Get in the cab." I paused, then switched my gaze to Tiller. "You, ride in the bed."

"What the fuck?" Tiller leaned toward me, his weight on the balls of his feet, his arms locked at his sides. "You can't do that."

Barn one wasn't all that far away, but early in the morning, with a hard wind blasting across the fields, a short ride in the open bed of a pickup was still preferable to a longer walk under a weak sun.

I kept my voice calm. "Ride in the back or walk. I don't care which."

"Awh, man. This is bullshit. You had the truck all night. Now it's my turn." He held out his hand. "Give me the damn keys."

I ignored him, and as I pivoted on my heel, Tiller latched onto my shoulder. I spun around, brought my arm up in a quick block, and broke his grip. "Touch me again," I said, "I'll put you on the ground."

Tiller froze.

I don't know what he saw in my eyes, but he eased his weight back until he was standing flatfooted. The cold breeze whipped his greasy bangs over the edge of his watch cap, but I suspected the color flushing his cheeks had little to do with the weather.

I turned away from him.

Ronnie and the blond kid glanced at Tiller, then hustled over to the truck and scrambled onto the seat. Ronnie clicked the door shut as I slid behind the wheel. The wind had drained every trace of heat from the cab. I started her up, checked the rearview mirror, and backed out of the slot. When I paused alongside Tiller, he sullenly stepped into the bed and sat on the wheel well on the passenger's side. I could feel his gaze boring through the glass as I slipped the transmission into drive and pulled onto Bear Wallow.

As I swung the Ford onto Stone Manor Lane, the private road that served barns one through six, both of the guys up front glanced sideways at me, then snapped their heads back around when I straightened the wheel.

"What's your name?" I said to the blond kid, and both of them blurted their names in unison. I grinned. Ben, who was stuck in the middle, looked like he wished he were in the bed with Tiller. I cleared my throat. "Steve Cline."

They mumbled "hello."

Ronnie looked forward through the windshield and smiled. "Took Bruce a month to figure Tiller was jerking him around."

"Bruce?" I said.

"Yeah. Guy who had your job."

"Did he quit because of Tiller?"

"Nah," Ronnie said. "Ain't nobody know why he quit. He just don't show up one day is all."

I eased the pickup onto barn one's drive. "Just like that?"

Ben shook his head. "Job like this, it happens all the time."

"Yeah," Ronnie said. "The pay sucks."

"So do the hours," Ben said, and they both nodded.

"Working nights sucks, man," Ronnie said. "Give me the creeps, especially over at seven and eight, with the electric not hooked up."

"Gonna be now," Ben said, and Ronnie nodded.

"I hated those barns. The horses turned out over there at night, you can hear them moving around, but you can't see them 'til suddenly, bam! They're in your face. Moving in and out of the shed like friggin' ghosts. Man, I tell you, gave me the creeps. I checked them barns and got the hell outta there."

I pulled the Ford off the drive and parked in front of the big aisle doors. Tiller must have jumped out of the bed before the wheels rolled to a stop, because he skirted the front fender and disappeared into the barn before I'd switched off the engine.

Ronnie jerked up on the door handle. "And now we got a torch to worry about. I am s-o-o glad I'm not on nights no more. First night I came in, there was a barn fire just south of here. Started on Maddie's shift though."

When I climbed out of the cab and stretched, a muscle in my thigh burned. "Ronnie, how many nights did you end up working?"

"Eight, and I hope to God I never gotta do it again," he said as he wrapped his coat flaps around his chest. "So don't go quitting on me, man."

I smiled. "Guess you were caught off guard when Dr. Nash asked you to work that shift, huh?"

"Weren't her who asked. Mr. Nash called me Sunday morning, my friggin' day off. Wakes me up to ask if I can come in Monday at two-thirty in the fucking morning."

Ben strolled into the barn, and Ronnie followed, saying over his shoulder. "Ain't natural, being up all night."

"Not unless you're a vampire," Ben added. "Or a werewolf."

I smiled at his comment. It reminded me of a guy I'd worked with at the track. He'd held a similar opinion of night work and the people who chose it.

The air inside the barn felt warm, relatively speaking, and was filled with the long familiar odors of horse, hay, and straw. And noise. The horses weren't as anxious as they would have been if we were there to feed them, but they were restless. Restless and alert to any action on our part that signaled we were ready to turn them out. They reminded me of school kids waiting for the clatter of the dismissal bell at the end of the day. And they didn't care how cold it was, either.

Metal screeched against metal as Tiller opened the back doors.

All of the foaling barns on the main part of the farm housed twenty mares, and out of the twenty in barn one, two had foals on the ground. The rest were due to foal within the next twenty-four hours to two weeks. Or longer. Horses were difficult to judge, and they were sneaky. Eighty percent of them foaled at night, and according to Maddie, they preferred foaling without human intervention.

After Tiller backed the tractor and muck wagon outside, each of us grabbed a lead rope. We started at the far end of the barn and silently worked our way down the length of the aisle, leading each mare to the back gate and turning her loose in one of the large fields. The horses were anxious but well behaved, and as I led a pretty bay mare across the back lot, I reflected that the start of the morning's chores mirrored so many other days in the past. The same routine, the same smells, the same rhythm played out on horse farms across the country, dictated by the needs of the animals themselves. The same everything except a lingering feeling of unease that had settled in the pit of my stomach ever since I'd seen the fire's glow reflect off the cloud base.

When the pregnant mares had been turned out, we split into teams. I followed Ben into a stall, and he clipped his lead onto the mare's halter. She was a big dapple gray, about sixteen-two, with an underdeveloped neck and a head that would have been ugly if not for her huge expressive eyes.

Her colt strutted over to me and nudged my chest with his nose.

I clipped my lead on his halter, and he tilted his head and tried to grab the cotton rope between his teeth. "How old's this guy?"

"About two weeks," Ben said. "Be careful when we get outside. Ornery as he is, ain't no question he's a stud colt."

I moved into position alongside the colt's left shoulder, and he tried to swivel around to face me but ran out of room when his right haunch bumped into the heavy oak planks that formed the partition between stalls.

Ben led the mare through the doorway, and Junior bounded forward. I made him wait until I'd stepped into the aisle before I let him proceed. He pranced into the aisle and whinnied to his dam with a high-pitched immature voice. His steps were light on the asphalt, his stride as long as mine as he tried to muscle his way past me.

We walked outside, into the pale sunlight, and after we'd gone two paces, his front end came off the ground. I fed the lead through my hand and walked alongside him. When he came back down, I snatched the lead and told him to quit. He responded by rooting against his halter. He snaked his head from side to side and loped forward. His steps sounded hollow on the frozen ground as we followed Ben and the mare into one of the private paddocks. I turned him to face the gate, and when I set him loose, he skittered around and took off after his dam.

"That colt's gonna be a bitch to break," Ben said as he slipped off his gloves and latched the gate. "Been a handful since he was born."

"He's confident," I said.

"Yeah." Ben jammed his hands under his armpits. "Ain't afraid of nothing."

Too young to know better, I thought as I followed Ben into the barn.

We spent the rest of the morning mucking stalls, and at noon, when everyone broke for lunch, I punched out and drove into Warrenton to meet Corey, Bruce's sister. Except for Dr. Nash's chilly appearance first thing that morning, I didn't see her again. Ordinarily, I wouldn't have expected to since I'd been assigned to the stall-cleaning detail. But I'd half expected her to question me about the incident after she'd settled down.

I ate a leisurely lunch at McDonald's, then backtracked down Broadview. Up ahead, the traffic light turned yellow, then red. As I coasted to a stop, I relaxed into the bench seat and sighed. Farther down the block, sunlight flashed off street signs as they were buffeted by the wind. 17N on one, N 29 Business on the other. Then 211E. My grip tightened on the steering wheel.

I glanced around reflexively. Noted the van pulling up alongside me, the elderly woman stepping off the curb in the crosswalk, her bony hand clutching a scarf at her throat.

A quaint, quiet, middle-America town, and here I was, isolated in my pickup, feeling a sudden rush of panic squeezing my chest. I had known someone, once. Someone who'd disappeared off the face of the earth after the universal joint on his sedan fractured, and the drive shaft had gouged into the asphalt on 211 just west of town.

Hours before, he'd tried to kill me and had come within a knife's breadth of succeeding.

The driver in the pickup behind me tapped his horn. I glanced at the light, then accelerated through the intersection. But that was the past. He'd dropped out of sight because the law was after him. Bruce Claremont's disappearance felt much more ominous.

I spent an hour exploring the town and getting my bearings before cruising past Fauquier High School. Rock Glen Apartments, Bruce's home for the past eight months, sat on a rise directly opposite the school. I turned into the lot and parked in front of unit six-forty-one.

I jacked up the heat, cranked the blowers on full blast, and settled against the backrest. Corey had arranged to take off early so she could let me into her brother's apartment, but I didn't expect her for another hour. She'd wanted to give me a key when I'd accepted the job, but the idea of going in without her hadn't felt right.

Rock Glen Apartments had probably been nice twenty-five years ago, but time and neglect had taken its toll. Beneath the balcony railings and rain gutters, rust and mineral deposits streaked the brick walls, and the foundation shrubs obliterated the first floor windows.

I wondered why Corey had contacted me on her own after the police investigation had gone nowhere. What about her parents? Weren't they worried about Bruce?

When I shut off the engine, the heater in the old Chevy had only made a marginal dent in the cold. I slipped my feet over the transmission hump, stretched my legs, and scrunched down in the seat.

I must have dozed off. When I next opened my eyes, the sunlight slanted into the cab through the grimy back window and glinted off the rearview mirror. Close by, grit crunched under tires as a vehicle pulled up alongside the Chevy's passenger door. I sat up, and the change in position dispersed the body heat that had accumulated in my clothing and sent chills across my skin. I shivered.

Corey waved and flashed a tentative smile in my direction before she hunched forward over her steering wheel and switched off the ignition. She strode around the pickup's nose, hopped off the curb, and paused at the open door as I levered myself off the seat and slowly straightened to my full height.

"Oh, my God. You're frozen."

"Hmm." I reached back into the cab and yanked my duffel bag off the seat.

"How long have you been here?"

"Not as long as it looks, apparently."

She crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed her gloved hands up and down her biceps. The temperature felt like it had dropped into the teens, and the wind was still blowing.

"Let's get you inside." She pivoted around and bounded up the steps like the athlete she was.

I followed more slowly and half expected to find her jogging in place as she waited for me on the landing between the first and second floor. A smile flitted across her face before she headed up the next set of stairs with her sneakers squeaking on the concrete. She appeared weightless as her thigh muscles pumped under her woolly black tights.

Corey stopped on the second floor landing and fumbled through her keys in front of a maroon door with 2D centered above the peephole. The steps continued up to the third floor and provided a cover over our heads. Otherwise, the stairwell was open to the weather, and the wind picked up a hell of a lot of momentum as it careened across the high school's grounds. It blasted into the alcove, and a cluster of dead leaves skittered across the landing and swirled into a mini cyclone in the corner.

The key turned in the lock; then Corey pushed the door inward and switched on the lights.

The foyer was defined by a four-by-four section of linoleum beneath our feet and a coat rack stuck in the corner with a Ravens windbreaker and two hooded sweatshirts draped over the brass hardware. Since we were in Redskins country, I wondered if Bruce ever caught any flack over that windbreaker.

I set my duffel bag on the floor and took off my coat as Corey strode briskly toward the back of the apartment. She returned a second or two later with her arms folded over her chest as if she were still trying to get warm. "He hasn't been here."

She gripped her lower lip between her teeth, then crossed the living room and drew back the curtains. The late afternoon sunlight stretched halfway across the room and puddled on the carpet in a pattern defined by the balcony railing. The room was sparsely furnished. A computer sat on a narrow stand in the corner to the right of the glass doors, and a functional sofa hugged the far wall, but a worn recliner close to the door looked to be Bruce's favorite spot in the room. It faced off with the entertainment center, and by the looks of it, he'd sunk the majority of his disposable cash into a big screen TV and impressive stereo system. A bulky homemade afghan had been folded and placed neatly on the sofa's backrest. A smaller one hung off the recliner. I wondered who had knitted them as I watched Corey walk into the dining room, essentially a nook cropped out of the main living space.

She dropped her gloves on the table, unwound a woolly scarf from her neck, and laid it across the back of one of the chairs. Strands of her short blond hair floated upward, charged with static electricity. Her purple shirt matched one of the colors in the complicated weave of her heavy fleece vest, and despite its bulk, her profile was straight and slender.

I walked over to her. "You okay?"

"He's never just disappeared like this before."

I wanted to reassure her, to tell her I'd find him, that everything would be all right. Instead, I said, "Mind if I look around?"

"No. Go ahead."

"Could you find a calendar and something to write on?"

She nodded, then headed into the kitchen. I glanced in as I walked past. The dining room's layout was generous compared to the kitchen's three-foot-wide aisle that was lined on both sides with cabinets and cheap appliances. I used the bathroom and noted Bruce's toothbrush wedged in the ceramic holder on the wall. Just like Corey had said. Nothing about the apartment indicated that he'd been planning a trip. I continued down a short hallway, past a closed door on my left. I paused, stepped back, and opened the door.

Bruce had crammed mismatched towels and bed sheets on the shelves along with a small Tupperware container stuffed with cold remedies and ibuprophen and orange plastic bottles of prescription medicine. I sorted through them. Prevacid, Amoxicillin, Zithromax. Most were nearly empty. Apparently, the risk of perpetuating drug-resistant strains of bacteria was not one of his pressing concerns. I slid the container back onto the shelf and closed the door.

Except for the alarm clock's digital readout, Bruce's bedroom was pitch black. I switched on the overhead light and walked around the bed. When I tried to pull back the curtains, I realized Bruce had tacked them to the window frame, and he'd wedged bath towels behind the curtain rods. Simple but effective light control.

A queen-sized bed and dresser took up most of the floor space. Closets lined the back wall. I opened one of the bi-folds, and a basketball rolled off the shelf and bounced across the floor. It came to rest at the foot of the bed. I tossed it back on the shelf, folded the door into place before something else toppled out, and decided that a thorough search would have to wait. I paused when I noticed a key ring on his dresser. I fingered the keys, then snatched them up.

Corey had organized a calendar, writing pad, and pen on the table like a place setting. She was sitting in an adjacent chair, flipping through a phone book. She'd crossed her legs and bounced them with nervous energy.

She looked up when she heard me step into the room. "Do you like pizza? Or maybe a sub? I thought we should probably have something delivered instead of going out," she gestured to the calendar, "so we can get to work."

"Sure. Pizza sounds good. Anything but anchovies."

"When do you plan on going to bed?" She covered her hand with her mouth and looked up at me. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. What I mean is, how long do we have to work? You have to get up early, right?"

I smiled as I took a seat. Wishful thinking had me wondering if her comment had been a Freudian slip. "Because I'm training, I need to be there at two-thirty."

She nodded. "That's what I thought. Bruce had to do that, too."

"So, that gives us a couple hours. More if necessary." I laid the keys on the table. "Are these Bruce's?"

Corey's breath seemed to catch in her throat before she breathed out a throaty "Yes."

"His only set?"

"I don't know. Probably. That's why I'm positive something's happened." She lifted her slender arm, palm up, and gestured toward the door. The overhead light blanched her wrist, and the tendons beneath her skin bulged as she tightened her grip around a tissue. "Unless he has a spare, he can't even get into his apartment without going to the landlord."

"And his car?"

"It's in the lot."

"I don't get it. What did the police say when you told them both his keys and car are here?"

She shrugged. "Nothing. Just that he could have gone off with someone, taken a spare to the apartment and left the rest because he wasn't driving. It didn't seem to faze them one little bit." Corey sank back in her seat and wedged her hands between her thighs as if she were drawing into herself like a scared little kid.

I fingered the calendar. I had a million questions. What was Bruce like? Who were his friends? Did he have a steady girlfriend? What did he do in his spare time? But it seemed prudent to go slow. Even necessary. She'd returned to her brother's apartment, hoping against hope to find him.

When she got up and went into the kitchen to use the phone, I took out my own set of keys and matched up the clinic key I'd been given the day I started at Stone Manor with one on Bruce's key ring. They were identical. So, if he quit, why hadn't he turned it in?

I pocketed my keys, flipped the calendar open to February, and circled the twelfth, my first day on the job. From there, I counted back eight days, then one more to account for Ronnie's scheduled day off. If his memory was accurate, and I suspected it was, Bruce's last day on the job must have been February second, a Sunday. But that wasn't right. Maddie's long days were Sundays, when she worked both shifts.

Bruce's schedule, now my schedule, was easy to lose track of, so I scribbled it out on a sheet of paper: Sunday--off, Monday through Friday--3:00 a.m. until noon, and last but not least, Sunday--midnight to 7:00 a.m., then back to work at 6:00p.m., off at midnight.

I scanned the sheet. For the time being, I had to report in a half-hour early for training; otherwise, Bruce's and my schedule were one and the same. Maybe he'd left because he was plain tired.

I looked back at the calendar. Bruce's last day had to have been Saturday, February the first, and that sounded likely. Paul had described how he'd picked Maddie up at midnight, and the only time she got off at midnight was at the beginning of each Saturday, her day off and Bruce's long day. Paul had seen him punching in, but he'd quit by morning. I moved my hand to circle the date and paused. Below the pen's tip, someone had scribbled with a heavy black marker in a sloppy hand Corey B-day.

She must have seen something in my face because she gripped my wrist with her long slender fingers and moved my hand aside.

She read her brother's words.

Her fingers already felt cool against my skin, but now, the last bit of warmth seemed to drain out of them. Without taking her gaze off the ragged print, she released her grip and sat down. "Twenty minutes."

"What?"

"The pizza. It'll be here in twenty minutes." She looked up at me, then, and a single tear caught in her long pale lashes before slipping onto her cheek. She brushed it away with a trembling hand.

"I'm sorry, Corey."

"This job was the first time he'd ever worked nights, and he was worried that he wouldn't like it, but he did. He was looking forward to delivering his first foal." Corey sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. "Because of his hours, we had to schedule family get-togethers on Sundays. When he missed my party, I knew something was wrong."

I glanced down at the calendar and noticed that he'd scrawled 7:00 p.m. in Sunday's box. "What do your parents think?"

She shrugged impatiently. "Dad's not worried. He says there's nothing unusual about a guy his age going off and not telling anyone what he's doing or where he's at."

"Bruce is what, twenty-six?"

"Twenty-five. A year older than me."

I'd never tried to guess Corey's age before but realized I'd automatically assumed she was around my age, or younger, when in fact, she was two years older.

She unsnapped the bulky fleece vest she wore and let it slump onto the back of her chair; then she leaned forward and pulled a thin wallet from a back pocket. She fished out a photograph and handed it over.

Bruce stared intently into the camera's lens with serious green eyes, but if you looked closely, you could see the faintest of smiles tugging the corner of his mouth, as if he were trying not to smile. But as I studied the photograph, I wondered if, instead, he was forcing a smile. There was something about his eyes, a hint of weariness or disappointment that made me think the latter. The picture was taken outdoors, on a sunny autumn day. The kind of day when the air feels cool, but the sun seeps into your clothes and warms your skin. Bruce was standing alongside a goalpost, holding a football in his right hand, and he was wearing the same Ravens windbreaker that hung on the coat rack in the living room. Everything about him, from his neatly pressed slacks to his short brown hair and clean-shaven face spoke of an all-American guy who was going places. Everything except that hint of discontent beneath his penetrating gaze.

When I held out the photograph, Corey flapped her hand. "Keep it for now."

"Okay." I cleared my throat. "When did you talk to him last?"

"January twenty-sixth. I checked my phone records to be sure." She stood up. "That reminds me. I didn't get the mail."

"No, wait. I'll get it. I need to figure out his keys, anyway."

A frown creased her forehead as she watched me grip the table and lever myself out of the chair. She arched an eyebrow and cocked her head. "I don't believe it. This job's making you sore?"

"Not likely." I lifted Bruce's keys off the table and told her how some guy in a pickup had tried to run me over. Then I told her about the fires.

"Oh, God, Steve. How bad are you hurt?"

I shrugged. "Just stiff."

"Was he really aiming for you? Maybe he didn't see you."

"Oh, he saw me, all right."

"Oh, my God."

"It's all right, Corey."

"That's so spooky. Do you really think he was the arsonist?"

"The cops consider it possible." I rubbed the back of my neck. "Of all the barns at Stone Manor, barn seven's closest to the barn that burned down, and we only check that section of the farm twice a night. I wouldn't have driven over there in the first place, except for the fire."

I picked up the pen and printed FIRE in February thirteen's block, today's date; then I looked at the beginning of the month. Saturday the first, Bruce's last day at Stone Manor. Then Maddie worked all day Sunday, which meant Ronnie's first day on foal watch was Monday, February the third. As a reminder to myself, I printed Ronnie's name in that block, followed by FIRE. There'd been a second fire between the two, but I didn't know when. A quick trip to the library would fill in the blanks.

"Everyone on the farm would know the schedule, wouldn't they?" Corey said.

"Not necessarily," I said, thinking the only people likely to know the routine were management and any of the staff who'd worked the foal watch.

"You're not thinking the fires have anything to do with Bruce leaving, are you?"

I looked up and laid the pen on the table. The central heating kicked on with a vibration that sounded through the walls. "What do you think?"

She shook her head. "Maybe he found out who was setting them."

"Maybe, but the first fire wasn't set until after he quit."

I thought about Dr. Nash's fear of fire. Although I doubted many of the crew knew the story behind it, it appeared that most everyone knew her feelings on the subject. If I'd wanted to torment her, and I was diabolical enough for it, fire would be my first choice. Even if I couldn't manage to torch one of her buildings, one in the vicinity would carry enough impact to rattle her. Or send a message. What if Bruce hadn't quit, like everyone said, but had been fired, instead?

"What if he got fired," I said, "and held a grudge--"

"No." Corey shook her head. "He would never do that."

I glanced at the entertainment center. At the recliner and remote control readily at hand. "I agree. It doesn't explain his not coming home."

I had her show me which key fit his mailbox and which opened the apartment door; then I hustled down the steps. A Papa John's delivery guy pulled up while I was yanking Bruce's mail out of the box. He ran around the hood of his car, took the steps to the landing two at a time, and seemed relieved at the speed of the transaction. I was still fumbling between keeping the mail from being blown off the pizza box, jamming my wallet in my back pocket, and wiggling the key out of the lock when he peeled out of the lot.

When I returned, Corey was standing in the middle of the living room, looking disoriented, like she couldn't exactly remember where she was. She brushed the bangs off her forehead, and they flopped back down to her eyebrows. "Oh, I was going to pay for that." Her voice cracked. "How much--"

"Don't worry about it." I set the box on the table, went into the kitchen, and opened the refrigerator. "What do you want to drink? Coke, beer, 7-Up?"

She stepped around the corner. "Beer?"

"Uh-huh. Miller Lite."

She frowned. "I'll have a Coke."

I placed the sodas on the table, and she peeled apart two slices of pepperoni pizza and dropped them on paper plates. She licked some sauce off her fingers as she sat down and tucked one leg beneath her in a maneuver that would have put me in traction.

She stretched over the pizza box, picked up Bruce's mail, and sorted the pieces like she was dealing a deck of cards. Junk mail in one pile, bills in the other, roughly in even measure, and nothing personal as far as I could see. One was stamped with FINAL NOTICE in red ink.

"Open his mail if you see something that could be a clue, okay?"

"All right," I said and wondered what law I'd be breaking doing it. "When did you go to the police?"

"My parents and I drove down last weekend, on the eighth." She slumped back in her chair and folded her hands in her lap. "I called him the Sunday before, when he didn't show for the party. Then I tried again, Monday and Tuesday. When I didn't get him on Thursday, I called Stone Manor, and they told me he'd quit."

I jotted down COPS on the eighth and said, "Who'd you talk to at the farm?"

"The secretary, and after a good deal of hysterics on my part, she put me through to the woman who runs the place."

"Dr. Nash?"

Corey nodded.

"What did she say?"

"Just that he'd quit. She didn't talk to him when he left. Her husband did. I took off from work Friday and went out there. Talked to him and some of the employees. Saturday and Sunday, I talked to Bruce's neighbors and went back to the police station again, and the farm, and got absolutely nowhere. If I'd had any idea he was going to stay missing, I wouldn't have waited so long."

"He's done this before?"

"Not exactly. He's forgetful though, and not terribly responsible. It's not the first time he's missed a family get-together."

By Sunday evening, she'd been frustrated enough with her lack of progress to ask me for help. I finished my pizza, and as I leaned forward and hooked another slice out of the box, I noticed that she'd only taken one bite of hers. "What else did the police do?"

"Nothing." She flapped her hand, glanced at the ceiling, and blinked back tears. "Well, I mean, they took a report and everything, but because of his age, and the fact that there weren't any signs of foul play, that's all they would do. In thirty days, if we still haven't heard from him, they'll put together a longer report and enter it into some kind of national database." She bit down on her lower lip. "The detective we talked to, he didn't come out and say it, but I got the impression that the information would be used for identification purposes," she swallowed, "if they found a body."

I glanced at Corey. She was keeping it together, so far. I ticked off thirty days from the eighth and wrote NCIC on Monday, March the tenth. For her sake, I hoped we'd have an answer by then. As I lifted my head, a tear slipped through her lashes and trickled down the side of her nose.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought I'd do better than this."

"You have nothing to apologize for."

She folded her arms under her breasts, and her face crumpled as she bowed her head. "I'm just so scared."

I lowered my gaze to the calendar. A current of warm air flowed from the vent above our heads, and the plop of water from a leaky faucet echoed in the kitchen like a metronome. The sound seemed to grow, pressing against the air around us, pressing against my skull. Something clattered to the floor above our heads, and a woman shouted.

After a moment, Corey lifted her head, snatched a napkin off the table, and blew her nose. "You must wish you'd never agreed to do this." She looked me in the eye and took my hand in hers. "But please. Stay with it, for a little while, at least."

I cleared my throat. "I'm not going anywhere."

"It's so much to ask. I know that."

"It's okay, Corey," I said and thought of my own selfish reasons for agreeing to her request. My desire to get away from a job I'd outgrown, to try something new. Some people would consider that kind of flexibility an asset. Others, a character flaw.

Corey went home soon afterward. I threw the leftover pizza in the fridge, took a shower, and lay on Bruce's bed. I wondered if he was trying something new, and as I drifted off to sleep, I hoped that was all he was doing.