{i.}

Upon arrival at the Kurtzes’, we found things roughly as Lucas’ phone call had indicated they would be: the kid was charging around shouting and tugging at great clumps of his hair, as if to cause some physical discomfort that would both balance his shock and keep him from tears, while Ambyr was sitting frozen at a small table in the kitchen, on which sat a single dim light that made it impossible to see into the corners of the space. The more illuminated living room gave a fairly clear picture of how gloomy home life had been for Ambyr and Lucas even before their parents had run out on them: it fairly screamed beer drunks, with furnishings not quite so broken down as those in the dwellings of completely dysfunctional alcoholics, but nonetheless old and worn, reflecting a desire to keep costs down and make sure that the requisite case was in the refrigerator every night. Efforts had been made to clean and cheer things up in a few spots, but these only served to remind one that Ambyr, for all her remarkable discernment, was blind, and could ultimately do no more than supervise two teenaged boys in the effort: boys who likely put as little value on making their home more cheerful as had the Kurtzes’ parents, if for very different reasons.

Once one’s eyes adjusted to the light in the kitchen, a sad duality became apparent. This was the room that, in most country homes, was both the light, active center of family activities and the receiving area for company: virtually no country house that I had ever seen, including Shiloh, used any other room as its primary entrance. The Kurtz house was no different, save that recent, blatant attempts to achieve greater hominess had been made: a small dinette set was plainly new, along with a set of still-sparkling steel appliances, all of which had doubtless been paid for by a state government desperate to hush up how badly Morgan Central School had bungled Ambyr’s physical crisis. But beyond these, wallpaper that had likely hung in the room since the early twentieth century stood fading and peeling. Amid this rather dispiriting contrast, the Kurtz siblings had lived their lives since Ambyr’s illness and their parents’ departure, somehow managing to become, in a testament to the defiance of the youthful spirit, two fully formed people who would have been exceptional whatever their circumstances.

Ambyr was dressed, I noticed as I drew closer to her chair, in a becoming but arrestingly out-of-place midnight blue Chinese silk robe. In one hand she held what I assumed was Derek’s departure note; in the other she cradled her head, keeping her eyes fixed on the table lamp as though she could see it. She must have heard our entrance, although she could not seem to gather the strength to quiet Lucas’ repeated protestations: “The whole thing’s wrong! It’s not his writing! I’m telling you, somebody must have forced him to go!”

I went to crouch by Ambyr’s chair. “Hey. Are you all right to talk?”

When I spoke to her, she sniffed away what seemed only the latest round of weeping, and nodded, shifting in her chair toward the sound of my voice. “I guess you’ll want to see this first,” she said, her voice still trembling just a bit as she held the note out.

I took the piece of paper from her hand, but before I had even a chance to glance at it, Lucas declared, “I don’t know why you wanna see it, it’s obviously a fake!”

“All right, Lucas,” Mike said. “We’ve gotten a good idea of your opinion. So get a grip on yourself and we’ll all get to work. Right?”

“Damn straight,” Lucas declared. “Get to fucking work is right: finding clues is what you guys should be doing! Get trace evidence, fingerprints, whatever it’s going to take. The only one who’s done anything so far is Kevin, over there, and he’s got no training—”

“Lucas, enough!” Ambyr finally said, warning him with a weary slap of her cane on the floor.

The mention of some unknown “Kevin” was momentarily baffling; but then and for the first time, I noticed that a young man, perhaps a little older than Ambyr, had been standing in the shadows near the kitchen door of the house the entire time. At the mention of his name, he came forward, and stood close enough to Ambyr that I found the proximity at first irritating, and then somewhat disheartening: I knew that Lucas had said that Ambyr had no boyfriend, but whatever her feelings for this presentable young man—who had the handsome looks and wiry frame of local youths who were a cut above their peers—he clearly felt very protective and even proprietary over her.

“This is Kevin Meisner, Trajan,” Ambyr said. “He drives me to and from the Disability Center, and he also lives right nearby. I was worried that we might have to get a ride up to your place, if you kept not answering your phones.” She turned to face the lamp again, pointing wearily toward the general area where Mike and I stood. “Kevin, this is Dr. Jones, and that’s Dr. Li.”

I stood to shake the stranger’s hand, finding that he possessed a good, confident grip; then Mike did the same. Kevin was very straight and deferential in his greetings—“How do you do, sir? Doctor?”—and he locked eyes with both of us in an admirable way that let us know that he had been called to help Ambyr and her brother, and would do all they required of him to achieve that end. That aside, however, for someone we had not yet heard anything about, he appeared very familiar with and at ease in the Kurtz house.

“Kevin goes hunting with Derek,” Ambyr said, “so he knows him pretty well, and I wanted him to see if there was any sign that anyone had been around the place while we were asleep.” Then she added, very pointedly, “We’ve told him what’s in the note.”

I got the message: Kevin knew about Derek, but that was all he knew. Ambyr and Lucas had kept him in the dark about our wider investigation. I made a noise of assent, then looked to our unaware interloper. “Well, Kevin, it’s good that you were able to get here—and did you find anything? Or maybe I should ask what you looked for, in the first place.”

“Kevin’s a very good tracker,” Ambyr rushed in to explain, “and—”

But she stopped when Kevin touched her shoulder, very softly and even tenderly, to indicate that he could speak for himself. It was an action that, in my foolishness, I found especially irritating. “I parked my truck up by the Francos’ old garage,” he explained steadily. “Their house is the next one to the north, and it ain’t been sold yet, so the driveway’s empty. I wanted to get a look and see if there were any fresh tire tracks in the driveway here that I couldn’t explain, but assuming that your Crown Vic’s got seventeen-inch Cooper radials—”

“Which it does,” Mike said. “Well spotted, Kevin.”

Kevin nodded appreciatively. “Then that was the last thing in and out of here. Course somebody likely just pulled off to the side of 34. None of the windows or doors in the house’ve been forced, although most of the windows were already open. But all in all, I’d say that if Derek went, he went on his own steam, and by his own choice.”

“Which only shows what you know, Kev,” Lucas said bitterly. Then the kid turned to me. “Look, L.T., Kevin may be an okay tracker, whatever, but he doesn’t really know Derek, they just hunt together, which means they sit in different spots in the woods for hours. Other than that, he’s just the guy that was assigned to drive Ambyr back and forth to the Disability Center, end of story.”

I looked at Kevin again. “Is that the case?”

“Well,” the young man said, showing great patience with Lucas’ little outburst, “originally, yeah, that was the truth. That’s my job, giving people lifts who are out of bus range for the Center.”

“But he’s been a good friend for a long time,” Ambyr said reassuringly. “And you, Lucas, can stop being insulting to people just because you’re worried. You know perfectly well that Kevin knows Derek and that he’s an excellent tracker—even Derek said so, whenever they went hunting together. Besides, we needed to find some way to get Trajan and Mike down here before—”

And then she stopped, rather awkwardly, especially for her, clearly showing regret that she might have made some kind of error. And, in the face of this, I turned quickly from her to Lucas. “Guys? Is there something else that Mike and I should know about? Have you called other people?”

Those questions quieted even Lucas, at long last, although his silence was less ambiguous than his sister’s. His gaze fell to the floor, as if he’d been caught at something more serious than the many transgressions I’d known him to commit during our acquaintance. Then he started talking fast: “Well—you guys still weren’t answering your cell phones at, whatever, four o’clock. I know you sleep up in that frickin’ enclosure sometimes, Doc, and I figured Mike was probably passed out in the house from the beat-down I gave him. We hadn’t thought of getting a ride from Kevin, yet, and then we didn’t know if he would even answer his phone. Plus, it was just a kind of an automatic thing, I guess you could say. I mean, she is our cousin…”

I nodded, glancing at Mike: it was understandable that they would have done it, of course, but it was not good news for us: “You called your cousin Caitlin?”

“I’m sorry, Trajan,” Ambyr said, quite genuinely. “But we were pretty out of our minds, and like Lucas says, she’s our cousin, and she promised to keep it quiet—”

“An impossibility,” I murmured, considering the matter. “I fear…”

“What’s he mean?” Lucas said to Mike, growing more bewildered and a little scared. “She said she would keep it quiet.”

“Lucas,” Mike explained quietly, “your cousin may be your cousin, but she’s also an officer of the law. There is almost no way she didn’t report this to her superior.”

“Yeah,” Lucas readily agreed. “To Major McCarron. She said she was going to, but that it wouldn’t go any farther than that.”

I sighed out the full measure of my foreboding. “That’s what I was afraid you’d say,” I told the kid. “Major McCarron is a very good man, Lucas, but he cannot treat the sudden disappearance of a minor as a private matter: particularly a minor who he knows to be—” I tried to find the gentlest wording I could: “Who he has legitimate reason to believe will have trouble safely navigating the world outside his established home and habits.”

“So any communication between your cousin and the major was almost definitely not private,” Mike continued. “McCarron had to report the matter. And once it was reported, everybody in law enforcement heard about it, and now they’re all gearing up to horn in on whatever happens next.”

“Which means we don’t have long,” I said, sitting in the chair to Ambyr’s right. “But before we begin—will you please tell me that you didn’t call anyone else? Like maybe the National Guard?”

Ambyr smiled and found my wrist with her hand—a gesture that Kevin noted with a quick movement of his eyes, although he betrayed no emotion about it. “No, Trajan,” Ambyr said, her voice quite intimate. “Just Kevin and Caitlin. And I’m sorry if Caitlin was a risk, but—can we just move on to whatever we’re supposed to do now?”

“All right,” I announced, pulling a small notepad and pen out of my jacket’s inner pocket and starting to scribble something on it. “Lucas,” I went on as I wrote, “you guys have, I presume, a computer with some kind of printer?”

“Sure,” Lucas said. “An iMac with a laser printer, upstairs—more goods from the state. Why? Don’t you want to read the note that’s supposedly from Derek?”

“In a minute,” I replied, still scribbling. “Ambyr, we’re going to produce a little note of our own for you to sign, if you don’t mind, to try to forestall what I’m certain is going to be the interference of the Bureau of Criminal Investigation in what we have to do…” Finishing with the pen, I looked up at Ambyr’s would-be protector. “Kevin, I trust that your being here means that you understand that Ambyr and Lucas would like Dr. Li and myself to take the lead in finding out what’s happened to Derek? And, further, that your being here means that Ambyr trusts you enough to witness this document, and treat whatever takes place in the next few minutes in confidence?”

“Definitely,” Kevin answered.

“Good—then Lucas, take this.” I handed him my scribbled note. “Kevin, Mike will go with you two, and help you set up the formatting so that it looks like a semi-official document that you can sign right away.”

“Hey!” Ambyr said. “Can I at least hear what it says? I’ve gotten a little tired of signing things without knowing what they are.”

“Of course, Ambyr,” I said. “I was going to read it to you when it was printed up, so that you’d be sure everything was done right, but if you’d rather—” I leaned back to the others. “Michael?”

Mike snatched the note out of Lucas’ hand. “You’ll never be able to read it, anyway, kid, trust me.” Eyes on the paper, Mike deciphered: “ ‘I, Ambyr Kurtz, being the legal guardian of Derek Franco, a minor fifteen years of age, residing at,’ gives your address, ‘hereby authorize Doctors L. Trajan Jones and Michael Li,’ yada-yada, our address, ‘to act as private investigators in the matter of said Derek Franco’s disappearance on,’ yada-yada, then comes, ‘Said Doctors Jones and Li, having experience and expertise in these matters, as well as being personally acquainted with Derek, are hereby authorized to speak as my legal agents in all matters pertaining to this investigation, and are to be considered as acting with my full authority. Signed, Ambyr Kurtz.’ Then our signatures, and Kevin’s, ‘Legal Witness.’ You’re over eighteen, I assume, Kevin?”

“Yes, sir,” the young man answered dutifully.

“Okay then,” I said. “No need for a notary. I left it ambiguous, as we have no idea right now just what we’ll need to do. And I didn’t go so far as power of attorney, because that would have to be notarized, and I suspect that Ambyr’s had enough of monkeying with her legal rights, anyway.”

“Thanks, Trajan,” Ambyr said quietly. “So exactly what does this do, then?”

“Well, among other things, it entitles us to be present at any interrogation of either you or your brother, and to do whatever else you or we say is necessary to find Derek. The BCI won’t fight it—they’re not going to risk that kind of press.”

“Yep,” Mike said. “It’ll cover all that, at least for a while—and L.T.’s right, the BCI do not need any more bad publicity, right now. They’re still dealing with having to let the Patricks go.”

“Sound okay to you, Ambyr?” I asked.

She nodded quickly. “Of course. I’m sorry if I sounded suspicious for a second—”

“No need for apologies,” Mike interrupted. “We get it. But L.T.’s right, we need to get this puppy printed, signed, and witnessed before anybody else gets here.” He turned to Kevin, and then to Lucas. “Okay, junior, where’s the computer?”

Lucas took out some of his boiling frustration on Mike’s shoulder. “Hey! I told you about that ‘junior’ shit—the ‘kid’ crap is bad enough.”

“The computer, Lucas,” Mike answered wearily. “Let’s go…”

As the three of them started upstairs, the kitchen fairly filled with awkwardness, which Ambyr soon tried to dispel: “I’m so sorry, Trajan,” she said, but I cut her off, attempting to force a good-natured chuckle:

“Why? He seems like a very decent guy, certainly nothing to apologize for—”

“Will you stop?” Ambyr more ordered than asked. She grabbed my hand tight. “He’s just—he’s been doing favors for us for a long time, and I thought we were just friends. Then Lucas started warning me that he thought Kevin was going somewhere else with it—I guess I’d been trying to deny it, because there’s basically been no one else in Surrender that I’ve really felt we could trust. And then, when we asked him to come over tonight, in case we needed to get up the hollow fast—well, maybe I guess I couldn’t deny anymore that he thought I was giving him some kind of signal…”

“Ambyr.” I put my right hand atop the one of hers that held my left. “You don’t have to explain anything. Your life is your own, to do whatever you want with—you’ve earned that, God knows. And you certainly don’t want to go messing around with a sick old man like me.”

She paused for a long moment, and we both sat listening to the sounds of Lucas and Mike, somewhere upstairs, going through one of their arguments. When I dared glance up again, I saw that Ambyr’s eyes had teared up, and that her mouth was slightly agape. “What kind of person do you think I am, exactly?” she murmured.

“Oh,” I sighed, running for my life inside my head and feigning a smile that I forgot she could not see. “To tell you the truth—my judgments in this area, at least so far as they relate to my own life, have generally been so stunningly bad that…that I had to admit, long ago, that I just don’t know why most people who enter my orbit do the things they do. Not deep down, I don’t.”

“So…” Ambyr pulled her hand away and folded her arms, becoming the very tough matron of the house once more; but just then Kevin came back downstairs, entering the kitchen with a smile.

“I don’t know what those guys are fighting about,” he said, “but they’re going at it, all right. Anyway, I signed the paper.”

The awkwardness of being alone with Ambyr was only heightened by Kevin’s reappearance; and I needed to come up with some reason for him to leave, in part because I needed to be able to talk freely with Ambyr about Derek’s disappearance, in part because I didn’t feel like getting caught up in some struggle of wills with the young man, a struggle that, for all I knew, could simply have been a product of my imagination.

“Okay, then—practicalities,” I said. “Kevin, I realize it may sound rude, but you do not want to be around when the law gets here. Suspicion will fall on anybody present, if the BCI has its way.”

“He’s right, Kev,” Ambyr said. “Please don’t get into trouble.”

“You’ll be okay if I go?” he asked her.

“Sure, of course—but I won’t be if they suspect you of anything.”

“Take some back road out of here,” I advised. “The law will use the most direct route. What do you drive?”

“Got an old Dodge truck I fixed up,” he said. “All-terrain tires, can go just about anywhere.”

“Good. Then get yourself home quickly, staying off the highway.”

“Or do you have to be at work soon?” Ambyr asked.

Checking an old, yellowing plastic clock on the wall, Kevin said, “Yeah, I guess I will have to start heading over to the Center in an hour or so.”

“Better still,” I told him. “They’re not going to mess with someone who works there. So head home, then to Fraser, but keep an eye out, in case somebody’s watching and sees you leave.”

Ambyr had read my subtext quite accurately. “You’ll do that, right, Kev? I’ll feel a lot better.”

Nodding once, Kevin replaced a blaze orange cap with the Remington Arms logo and a camouflage pattern splashed across its visor on his head. Then he said, again very dutifully, “Sure—it was good to meet you, sir.”

“Absolutely,” I replied. “And thanks for the help. Get there safe.”

Ambyr accompanied him to the door, mumbling a few things that I couldn’t hear: intimacies, my mind decided, and I became further irritated—and injured.

Once he was gone, Ambyr returned to the table and sat beside me, though the chill was palpable. “That’s what you really think?”

“What’s what I really think?” I asked, ready to go on; but at that instant I heard the short squeal of a tire on hardtop, and an ugly thought flashed across my mind: I mumbled some vague apology, ran to the door, heedless of Ambyr’s asking why, then dashed outside and down to the county road. I knew what had made the sound, of course: it was Kevin’s truck. But what I didn’t know, and couldn’t tell from the quickly vanishing sight of his running lights, was what color that truck was, and whether or not it bore a white cap…

Convincing myself that this was one more manifestation of my jealousy, I hurried back to the kitchen, explaining to Ambyr that I’d thought it might be a cop tailing Kevin. That seemed to wash, and then I sat next to her again, finding that she was ready to pick right up where she’d left off: “You think I’d go ahead and kiss you while I was keeping some kind of secret boyfriend down here in my ‘normal life’? You really think I’d do that?”

“I think,” I said, retreating once again, “that your friend Derek, a minor for whom you are legally responsible, whether you like it or not, has gone missing. And I think we’d better concentrate on figuring out what happened to him…”

Thankfully, Mike came downstairs and swiftly into the room at just that moment, bearing the prepared document. “Well, I don’t know what I had to go up there with the kid for: his computer skills are fine, though getting him to let go of the thing was—” He stopped talking abruptly, as he observed the scowl that still dominated Ambyr’s features. “Of course,” he said quietly, “I could always go back up and make sure that he doesn’t, you know, start running off extra copies…”

“No, Mike,” Ambyr said coolly, even icily, as she stood suddenly and grabbed her cane. “You two are the experts, you go over Derek’s note, and I’ll go up and make sure Lucas is behaving. Besides, I’ve listened to what Derek said a dozen times, I know it by heart—but maybe Lucas and I will go through his room again, see if we missed anything there.” She headed for the doorway. “It seems like I’ve been off about a lot of things, this week, though I really didn’t think so.”

As she moved toward the stairs—which were located between the living room and what I would later learn was her own room beyond—Mike watched her go, and I began to spread Derek’s note out carefully on the table beneath the small lamp.

Letting out a low, quiet whistle, Mike shook his head as he sat down. “Nice work, L.T.; usually it takes a woman a year of being in an actual relationship with you to get that pissed. What’d you do, tell her the one about the three blind guys who walk into a bar?”

“Michael,” I moaned, “can we please go over this note? We’ve got a complicated situation on our hands, and—”

“No, we don’t. You do, apparently. As far as the note goes, whatever it says—and Lucas told me some of it—Derek was a kid who was troubled on a whole lot of levels, and something like this was bound to happen. You knew it. Even Clarissa knew it. No reason to suspect that somebody magically snuck into the house and snatched him.” Then, seeing that I was almost writhing in discomfort, Mike pulled his chair closer, saying, “All right. Let’s go over it, word by fucking word…”

We began to dissect the sheet of paper that sat atop a pile of disheartening household bills, credit card charges inevitably on top. Written in pen on lined notebook paper in a simple block writing style, the lone page represented Derek’s attempt to explain exactly why he was making his mad run toward an irresistible but perhaps deadly beacon of what he believed was hope…

{ii.}

Even a detached analyst could have seen that the message betrayed an emotional struggle: the words had first been drafted in pencil to make corrections less conspicuous, and the paper was stained by a number of tears that had fallen as the work was done. The most immediate and conspicuous fact about the message, however, was that it had been written to Lucas alone. Seeing this, I glanced up at Mike quickly, understanding why Ambyr’s look of devastation had been so complete when we came in. “Jesus, Mike,” I said. “I mean, she may not have asked to be his legal guardian, but she never shied away from the job, either. And he doesn’t even address his goodbye to her?” I stared down at the wood grain of the kitchen table, not yet prepared to move on.

“Feeling kind of like a heel, hunh?” Mike said. “Well, don’t worry—based on the way you two have been behaving, I’m sure she’ll forgive you.”

I just shook my head dubiously at that, then started reading the note from the top once more:

Dear Luke,

I know you never believed me, but I did always tell you that one day it was gonna be my turn to go. And now it is. I can’t tell you anything about it, except that you don’t have to worry, I’m going to someplace really nice. I mean, REALLY nice, you probably wouldn’t believe me if I told you, anyway. But alls I wanted to say was that it’s just no good for me here, anymore. You know that. You’re moving on, and that’s good, but I’ve been stuck waiting my turn. Well, no more waiting. I won’t have to be in this lousy town my folks left me in anymore. And I know how much trouble I been for you and Ambyr, so at least that’ll be over. It just sucks that it has to happen this way, all secret, but that’s the only way to do it, they say. And it ain’t such a secret, anyway, you and Ambyr both know why I’m going. Anyway, as soon as I’m there and settled in and it’s safe, I’ll let you know where I’m at. Until then, I hope everything keeps going good for you guys, and sorry again for leaving like this. But it won’t be for that long. Soon we can get together, and you won’t believe where. So, anyway,

See you later, Luke,

Derek

p.s. took some stuff from the refrigerator—tell Ambyr not to be mad. Now she’s only got you to feed, after all, Ha, Ha!

“Whoa,” Mike breathed, sitting back once I’d finished. Neither of us spoke for a moment, and then he added, “Do you suppose they all sounded that way? Shelby—Kyle, Kelsey, Donnie?” He seemed to be absorbing the possibility that we might soon be adding Derek’s name to that grim list. “Do you think they all sounded so—happy, once they knew they were on their way?”

“More than likely,” I murmured, finally pulling myself away from the table. “At any rate, several things are immediately and plainly apparent—first, he makes mention, just as Latrell did, of ‘they’—not one person, but at least two and probably a group. That’s strong reason to believe the note’s genuine—it’s consistent. And, just as vitally, we now know whoever’s on the next rung up the ladder, whoever’s the point person for the ‘they’ in question, and is delivering these kids to the organization, so to speak—he or she’s got serious Pied Piper credentials.”

“Like a child molester?” Mike asked. “By which I mean, the kind of person that really knows how to ingratiate himself with kids. Like that teacher in Brooklyn, the one who handed out cigarettes and got high with his kids, and groomed new ones every year for sex—remember the case?”

“I’m not likely to forget it. Oh, the hipness of Brooklyn…” But I waved Mike off, still considering the note. “No, no. This guy or woman—and we have to keep the option that it might be a woman open, based on Derek’s reaction to those photos of Diana—is on a whole nother level than your average child molester. This person’s got something else. Nothing material, that’s almost certain, whether we’re talking about bags of drugs or dough. Consider what each dead kid had, after all, Mike—the things they were either found with, or that we know they spent time around during the time they went missing, like Kelsey and the thoroughbreds. What do they all have in common, what do they all represent?”

Mike’s brow tightened. “Well, each one was pricey, we know that.”

“But money wasn’t the key,” I countered. “Sure, the books, the horses, the clothes, they were expensive, but what about Donnie? We’ve known since we found out the details about those jerseys that he didn’t really care about them for their monetary value, or as collector’s items. I mean, he seemed to treasure the one he was wearing most, but for status. And the others? He kept them in that bag with his other stuff and slept on it all, as if he stole them to punish the people he was staying with, as we’ve already talked about. But it’s more: based on my talk with Latrell, I’d say any value the boy himself found in the jerseys was simply what they represented: not money; punishment, yes, but he could have thrown them away and achieved that; no, it was the experience of being at the games, of meeting the players and hanging out with the biggest names in basketball as if he were on some fantasy playground. And I’m betting that, to greater or lesser extents, it was the same for the other kids: despite the cost of the objects they were found to either possess or to have been in contact with when their bodies were found, possession itself—at least in terms of resale value or whatever—wasn’t the point. They were symbols of what the kids had always fantasized about, and had finally been offered, as a way of enticing them into their new lives; and symbols, after the arrangements had failed, of what they’d enjoyed in those lives. All those diverse objects and memories, they were…”

Mike gave me a minute, then demanded: “They were what, damn it?”

I looked at him a bit self-consciously—for my next words were not my own: “ ‘The, uh—stuff that dreams are made of…’ ”

Mike’s brow wrinkled even more. “The Maltese Falcon? Bogart’s last line?”

I nodded slowly. “The last line of the movie itself, actually.”

Mike nodded a little blankly. “Hunh—Dashiell Hammett, right? I could check on the list of what Kyle had, see if there was an early edition.”

“The only problem being that that line’s not in the book. John Huston wrote the script, along with directing the picture, and he lifted the line from Shakespeare. Has to be the only time that one line has been the signature of two otherwise unconnected hits written three hundred years apart…”

Mike’s forehead finally relaxed as he considered what I’d said. “The black bird,” he murmured. “Yep. Whoever this piece of shit is, he—or she—snatches the dreams right out of their heads, uses them to get the kids on board and compliant, so that when they meet our mysterious ‘them,’ who do the actual placement downstate—not to mention those people that they eventually get placed with—no questions will be asked, and they won’t be scared. Hell, that’d work better than drugs.”

“Indeed.”

“So—” Mike had one more issue he needed to wrangle to the ground: “Was Derek the dream stealer, then? Because whatever else I’d say about the kid, I wouldn’t have called him a piece of shit.”

I could only shake my head. “No. Derek certainly was an enigma—we saw that much. I think he would have done it, because he genuinely would have thought that he was helping the kids he approached. But at heart, he was a moderately autistic kid who had moments of real intelligence: indeed, when he talked about rifles, he displayed all the qualities of a savant. Did he have another area of particular brilliance—interpersonal brilliance—that he employed when approaching the other kids? Possibly. And did that talent not only allow him to pick out the ones that would fall for some very powerful lure, but determine what that lure was, and to proceed to dangle it so effectively that they would bite?” I shook my head. “It’s sounds like an awful lot, doesn’t it, for him? True, the note tells us that he was operating on levels that not even Lucas knew about—and Lucas was supposed to be not only his best friend, but the sharper of the two, but that’s not conclusive. One thing is clear, however: if we look at the way Derek addressed this note, along with the way he was behaving at Clarissa’s before dinner, we get a clear idea of what dream he himself was pursuing, along with at least a hint of who the ‘dream stealer,’ as you say, might have been, if it wasn’t him.”

“If I’m following you correctly, L.T.,” Mike offered, “you’re headed back to the idea of a teacher. But one way more sophisticated than that schmuck in Brooklyn.”

“I’m not thinking as much of a teacher,” I answered. “Although a teacher is certainly the most obvious type. But there is something that takes even more primary importance than a teacher, based on what we observed with Derek.”

Mike began to nod. “A woman,” he said uneasily, knowing the minefield of political correctness onto which we were setting foot.

“Not just a woman, but a maternal figure. She doesn’t need to be a teacher; indeed, I’d favor someone with even more intimate knowledge, who can blur the lines even more readily. A school counselor, maybe, above all, an idealized maternal figure. Derek’s farewell note is the last piece that tells us that.”

“Because,” Mike ventured, “despite the way that Ambyr took him on and looked after him, he didn’t address the note to her, and there’s no message, not even a thank-you, to her. So she never filled that role…” With that we both fell silent for an instant, absorbing the sorrowful weight of what had been said.

Not surprisingly, as Mike and I had studied the note and engaged in our ensuing conversation, we had been facing the table with our backs to the doorway that led from the kitchen into the living room and then to the front door of the house; and neither of us had heard anything that indicated that Ambyr and Lucas had returned from upstairs. It was therefore all the more disturbing when we were both struck, at almost the same instant, by the distinct feeling that we were being watched. We looked at each other and nodded slowly—the kind of nod we had learned to trust in dangerous situations, over the years—and then started to turn our heads still further toward the doorway. When we’d gotten far enough to see that there were human shapes there, but not to make out who they were, I shouted, “Go!” And before we had time for the action to become more than reflexive, Michael was in a kneeling position with his .38, while I was standing with my .45. Both guns were trained on the kitchen door—right at Ambyr’s and Lucas’ heads.

“Jesus-H.-fucking-Christ, don’t shoot!” Lucas screamed, stepping in front of his sister in an act of utter selflessness, yet at the same time shielding his own face comically with his hands.

“What the hell?” Mike managed to say, as he holstered his .38 and I did the same with my Colt. “You guys were supposed to be upstairs! What’s with sneaking up on us like that?”

But Lucas just turned to Ambyr and took hold of her arm. “You okay, sis?”

Ambyr nodded quickly. “Yeah. Yeah, I’m fine, Lucas, don’t worry. I’m assuming we almost got our heads blown off, just now?” She took a deep breath and steadied herself by letting it out. “Great. Well, there’s no point in lying, guys—we did sneak down. We wanted to hear what you thought of the note. We only heard the tail end of it, but from that—”

“From that,” Lucas interrupted, “before you went all Butch and Sundance on our asses, you guys made it pretty clear that you think that bullshit note was actually written by Derek.”

“I’m afraid that’s right, Lucas,” I said. “You might as well know.”

“Really? Well, here, geniuses—” He was holding another piece of lined paper, which he now shoved in our faces. “This is from one of Derek’s notebooks. I was using it for comparison before you got here. You try it. There are obvious differences.”

“Lucas,” Mike said. “Come on—even you should know that handwriting analysis is about two steps above voodoo, especially when one sample, like Derek’s note, has been drafted over and over to make sure of the wording. Remember, whatever you see people doing or saying on television—”

“I ain’t talkin’ about television!” Lucas cut in, dashing back into the living room and returning with a large yellow paperback book. “There’s a whole chapter on it, in here: and right on the first page, it says, ‘Handwriting analysis can be used in forensic science to establish whether or not forgery has been committed.’ And forgery is a fucking crime, Mike, in case you forgot!”

“What the hell have you got there, Lucas?” I said, moving over to him. Closing the book, I read out its title: “Crime Scene Investigations: Real-Life Science Labs for Grades 6–12. Hmm. This looks more up your alley, Mike. It even has cartoon illustrations.”

I tossed him the book, and Mike studied the cover. “Ho-lee shit,” he said. “And they give you a science credit for this stuff? Despite the fact that they’re openly saying that the level of the material is the same, whether you’re an eleven-year-old or a seventeen-year-old?” He flipped to the section on handwriting analysis that Lucas had quoted while he waited for the kid to answer.

“Well, yeah,” Lucas conceded, in a much more uncertain voice.

“Unh-hunh,” Mike answered, skimming the first few pages of the chapter. “Okay…Well.” He glanced around the kitchen, looking for and finding a trash can. “We’ll just put this where it belongs…” And with a little more force than was required, Mike did not so much lob as hurl the book into the trash, bringing a brief exclamation of objection from Lucas—who did not, however, attempt to retrieve the book. “And then I’ll tell you the single guiding scientific truth about handwriting analysis, at this point in history: it’s only considered, even by saps like the FBI, to have anything close to a shot at accuracy or value when it’s been determined that the sample in question, the one being matched against an original like that random notebook page you’ve got there, was written without any attempt to forge or deceive.”

“Whaaat?” Lucas droned. “But that would mean—”

“Right. It means only when the crime being investigated is not forgery. You can maybe use it as an adjunct to some other investigation, in other words, although I wouldn’t recommend it, but forgery cannot be the primary target.”

“But that—” Lucas was struggling. “But that would mean it’s basically useless.”

“Basically,” Mike said. “Although most of the time it’s used by law enforcement as a tool in forgery cases, because juries buy it. And why do they buy it? Because prosecutors, like the authors of your textbook, there, tell them it’s ‘forensic science,’ just like they see on CSI. Which, to the average modern jury, means it’s God’s revealed word. Still—it’s nice to know that your science textbook, if you want to call it that, is just as useless as everything else in that so-called school of yours.” Mike started running his hands through his hair in frustration, creating the brushlike effect. “Aw, hell, Lucas, look—we don’t even know how damned reliable fingerprints are, anymore. I mean…” At this point, having ignored both Ambyr and me during his tirade, Mike glanced at each of us in turn, and, finding that we were both listening rather uncomfortably, rose and grabbed Lucas by the collar of his T-shirt. “Come on, kid—I’ll explain it to you upstairs, and you can show me what other bullshit books you have while I try to answer your pissed-off questions about the note…”

They departed, the sound of Lucas’ vain protests soon fading as Michael told him to keep his voice down. That left Ambyr steadying herself on the doorway and me standing by the kitchen table, neither of us saying much for a minute or so until she asked quietly:

“You do think it’s real, don’t you?”

“I’m afraid so, Ambyr,” I answered. “I don’t know how much you heard, but—”

“We heard—almost all of it.” The violet eyes moistened, and she began to mumble, “I already knew it, though. I knew it was real. It’s just that…” Her lips began to tremble and her arms lifted in a manner that I couldn’t read precisely; all I could do was approach, not yet certain whether she felt helpless or intended to take a swing at me.

But swing she did not. Sensing I was within arm’s reach, or perhaps judging the distance from the sound of my footsteps, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around me, sobbing. It was another very delicate and confusing moment; and all I could do was put my arms lightly about her and let her sob her pain out into my chest. Soon enough, however, she began to blurt the same things that Mike and I had been discussing—primarily Derek’s complete failure to address her in the note—and then went on to wonder if in fact she had done as well by him as she could have, interspersing such talk with declarations of how little she had wanted to take charge of the boys in the first place. I knew what I was hearing: the adult she had only recently succeeded in becoming was straining against the confines of the arrangement they had all been left in by the disappearance of their respective parents, and she was decrying the injustice—heaped upon the other injustices of her younger life—of losing years during which she should have been allowed to enjoy that same new womanhood. Holding her slightly tighter, I tried to tell her that I knew only too well about stolen years of youth, and the irreparable hole they could leave in one’s soul; and as I spoke, her sobbing subsided, and she began to nestle into our embrace more out of comfort than desperation.

“You do know, you do know,” she repeated several times over; and before long, after drying her eyes on her sleeve, she moved her arms up, encircled my neck with them, and gave me another long, very passionate kiss, one that had none of the tentative quality that she had exhibited the night before. And such being the case, I could find no strength to restrain myself: I returned the kiss, wondering as I did where this eternally perplexing girl might be leading my confused and ungovernable heart.

“I’m sorry, Trajan,” she said, after a few long moments. “About before—I don’t mean to be a bitch, I never do, I know you were confused by Kevin being here, and that I should have told you first thing that he was. I didn’t mean to put you in the position I did—”

“Don’t worry,” I answered, leaning down to her face, which was made somehow lovelier by her sorrow and regret. “We’re here, now.” And then another a kiss, as I grew more certain of what I was doing. It’s one thing to receive the affections of such a young woman when one is confused; but to return them, when one thinks one has achieved clarity—then you are, just as Michael had said, truly dead.

And it was Mike who found us in that same position, and more quickly than I had expected. He burst through the kitchen doorway—without, fortunately, Lucas in tow—and, immediately upon seeing us, shielded his eyes. “Oh, whoa!” he quietly reacted, smiling beneath the visor formed by his left hand. “I’m sorry, guys—could not be more embarrassed. I should have announced myself. Although I have to say, Ambyr, that I also could not be more delighted.” Finally he looked up, observing that we had disentangled ourselves from our embrace. “But I’m afraid I have to ruin the moment even more. There’s what looks like cop lights out on Route 7.”

In short order I hustled to get Ambyr back to her seat, pen in hand. All that was required was for the three of us to sign the authorization, and my partner and I would, at long last, be given a legal and official standing in the case, by way of Derek’s disappearance.

“Lucas!” I called, bringing the kid at a run. “During your little festival of phone calls earlier this morning, did you happen to call any other family members, along with your cousin?”

“No!” he declared. “Of course not! Although…when I called Caitlin, she did happen to mention that maybe she was gonna call one or two of them. Why, am I in ultra-deep shit for it? I mean, come on, Ambyr woulda called somebody, anyway—”

“Lucas!” Ambyr scolded, turning, lifting her cane, and making the kid jump back; but she soon relented. “Oh, hell, Trajan, he’s probably right. I would’ve had to.”

“That’s okay,” I said. “This is one situation where I want you to have as much adult backup as you can—assuming, that is, that everyone your cousin called will understand the arrangement in that document.”

“Oh, they will,” Ambyr said. “Just let me handle them.”

“Okay,” I said, taking the printed sheet; and as I did, Ambyr very swiftly and deftly brought my hand to her mouth and let her lips linger on the back of my own wrist for an instant. But the spell of this startling feeling was broken by the wail of sirens outside, which very quickly grew louder, indicating that the column—and I had no doubt that it would, once again, be a column—of vehicles had turned onto County Route 34. I took Ambyr by her hands and began to give her something of a pep talk about the shitstorm that was headed our way, and my belief that she and Lucas could handle it; but in the time it took me to deliver it, the cruisers had screamed into the Kurtzes’ driveway and up onto the lawn, flooding the house with their halogen high beams, while still more cars crowded Route 34, making it necessary for some of the state uniforms to set up one-lane traffic with flares.

As the cars before me disgorged their passengers and I saw just who they were, I could not help but smile wide. This moment was going to be, I suddenly realized, even more satisfying than I had hoped.

{iii.}

At the front of the phalanx coming my way were two people I had expected to see—Frank Mangold and Mitch McCarron—along with a few that I had not thought to run into quite so soon: Cathy Donovan, Nancy Grimes, and, more sadly, Curtis Kolmback, whose presence, now, at all five deaths and/or disappearances, fully confirmed that he was in on the effort to obscure any true solution to the case. The why of this was plain, as plain as when we had stated it to Gracie: better to allow a serial killer case to erupt than to permit a child-neglect scandal to break out, in the minds of official higher-ups, perhaps much higher-ups, as our encounter in Hoosick Falls had indicated. Nonetheless, I was sorry to see that Curtis’ personal ambition was so much more mercenary than I had previously believed. The group came at me in something of a wedge, Mangold in front, but I simply held up one hand, trying to see clearly in the glare of the rapidly pulsing lights.

“I thought I was clear with you in Albany.” Mangold tried to wave me off. “You’ve got no standing in this case, profiler, and we’ve got a warrant. So move, and let the professionals take over.”

I ignored him, for the moment, and turned to Mitch McCarron. “Major,” I said, ribbing him. “Glad to see you brought the full three-ring circus, although one really would have been enough.”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that, Trajan,” Mitch replied, moving his Stetson back on his head. “Just couldn’t convince anybody that this would be better handled quietly.”

“Can’t say that surprises me too much, Mitch,” I said, “given the company you’re running with.” I looked Mangold’s way again. “Where’s your MRAP, Frank? Forget to bring it?” Seeing that Mangold was simply too steamed to speak, I turned toward the two women, who were approaching quickly. “Ms. Donovan. Director Grimes.” As they each nodded acknowledgment, the first with a knowing smile, the second rather sourly, I looked past them to the ever-harried, ever-shuffling “CSI” Kolmback. “And Curtis. I can’t say I’m happy to see you in this company.”

Curtis lowered his eyes, and was about to speak; but a look from Grimes shut him up.

“As Frank says, Doctor,” Donovan announced coolly, “you have no authority, here, and this is the scene of a child’s disappearance. So I have to wonder why you’re risking a charge of obstruction.”

I held up my hand again. “Yes, I know you’re dying to toss the house and start your…investigation. But, Mitch, if you’ll take a look at this”—I produced Ambyr’s agreement from my inner pocket—“I think you’ll find that it entitles Dr. Li and myself to be present during all the proceedings, and at just about anything involving the Kurtzes and the search for the Franco boy that we damn well choose to be involved in…”

Glancing over the document, Mitch began first to nod and then to smile. “Well—I’m afraid he’s got you, Frank. You too, Cathy. They’ve got full authority from the family, and it’s been witnessed. If I were you, I’d swallow my pride and just let them be…”

This caused a heated council among the officials present, while their foot soldiers stood behind them, pressing forward to hear what was being said. But the end result was fairly predictable, though no less satisfying: Mangold ranted, Nancy Grimes complained about infringement upon her authority, and Cathy Donovan just stared inscrutably at me. Finally, I stepped out of the doorway and allowed the flood tide in, reminding the officers as they passed that they had an obligation to be especially careful during their search, since the sole occupants of the house were a teenage boy and a young woman who had been literally blinded by the state’s incompetence. Then I turned the management of the search over to Lucas, urging him to instruct the officers rather than respond to them, and to be brief and forthright, but nothing more, in answering questions. Delighted with this authority, Lucas took to it like the young terror that he was, handling the sometimes-rude troopers with impressive aplomb and dispatch. Then I advised Ambyr to lock herself in her bedroom until her relatives arrived; and this several of them soon did, led by Cousin Caitlin and her father, Bass Hagen, a towering man who was almost a dead ringer for Otto von Bismarck, so Germanic were his features. He pushed through the cops—“Get your God damned asses outta my way, I was in Desert Storm, and you little shits don’t stack up to nothing against the ragheads!”—until he locked eyes with Mike and me; and then, Lucas in tow, we withdrew into the kitchen to straighten things out.

“The way the kids tell it, Doctors,” Bass said, with what looked like one of Caitlin’s brothers, along with that impressively uniformed trooper herself, flanking him, “you been a real help to them. So thanks for that. But now I’m wondering if maybe you’re not the cause of this whole mess.”

“Not the cause, Mr. Hagen,” I answered. “But, if I can suggest something, we may be the solution, or as close as Ambyr and Lucas can come to one, for now.”

“And what the hell’s that supposed to mean?” By now Lucas had fetched Ambyr, and Bass put a huge arm around her, which she plainly found immensely comforting.

“This situation is only going to get worse,” I told him. “There’ll be more cops, soon, but that’s not the worst of it. If I know the media, and Dr. Li and I know them well, they’re going to descend on this place at any minute. You don’t want your niece and nephew exposed to that, trust me.”

“Hmm,” Bass grunted. “You’re right, there. Maybe I should just take ’em to our place.”

“I don’t think so,” I replied. “That’ll be the first place they’ll look. These crime reporters—and a lot of them will be national media—are first-class shits, but they know their shitty business. No, I was thinking that maybe Ambyr and Lucas could come and stay at Shiloh for a while.”

Ambyr’s expression eased with sudden relief, though I could feel Mike’s eyes boring a look of shock into the back of my skull; but Lucas, to my relief, immediately declared, “Oh, hells-to-the-yeah, we can! I’m packing, Uncle Bass.” Then he started out the kitchen doorway.

“Hold on, hold on,” Bass said, grabbing the writhing kid with his free arm. “That’s a generous offer, Doc—maybe a little too generous. What’s in it for you guys, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“Does something have to be in it for us?” I asked stupidly.

“Yeah—it does,” he answered. “I know your great-aunt some, from farm business. She’s a good woman, so I’m not worried about anything shady. But she’d be the first to ask the same question: what’s in it for you?”

“Okay,” I conceded. “The fact is that Ambyr and especially Lucas have been great helps to our own investigation. I don’t want to see these idiot cops screw that up. Plain and simple.”

Bass Hagen considered that for a minute or two, scrutinizing first Mike and then me with eyes the color of the slate that made up so much of the Taconic Mountains. “Plain and simple,” he said at length. “And right, I guess.”

“Yes!” Lucas declared, unwisely choosing that moment to offer his middle finger to several passing state troopers, who, mercifully, failed to notice him. “Come on, sis—let’s get ready!”

“Hang the hell on, Lucas,” Bass said, keeping ahold of the kid. “When would you figure to go?”

“We’ve got work to do here, yet,” I said. “I’d like to handle the first wave of reporters, who should be here any minute, and try to take the spotlight off your niece and nephew. Then we need to talk to one or two of these people about just what is going on; after that, we’ll sneak away. Mitch McCarron will tape off the house, and we’ll head up the hollow to let it all settle down. Right, Mike?”

Mike had yet to speak, and I hoped the tone of my question would indicate to him the importance of his backing me up. This, it evidently did: “Absolutely right,” my partner said, with none of the hesitation I’d feared. “It’s the wise move to make, Mr. Hagen—if they stay here, the state agencies will try to keep them under absolute control. But we can avoid that, and get them out of here smoothly. It’s something we’ve, uh”—and he coughed once at my head— “prepared for.”

Bass smiled, ever so slightly and knowingly. “You’re taking a lot of chances, for a couple of guys who’ve got just about everybody in law enforcement pissed off at them. Been through that before?”

“You…might say so,” Mike answered, thankfully failing to elaborate.

“Okay, then.” Bass finally released the struggling Lucas. “Now you can go pack, squirt. You too, Ambyr. God only knows how long this circus is gonna go on…” Looking at me once again, this lone rock of familial stability in Ambyr and Lucas’ life nodded. “And I’m grateful. Doctors…”

With Lucas’ withdrawal upstairs to get his things together, Bass took over the job of preventing the investigating officers from doing any real harm to the house; and that gave me a chance to withdraw into the kitchen with Mike and Ambyr.

“Trajan, are you sure about this?” Ambyr asked. “It’s a lot to ask, and you did not plan on it.”

“No, we didn’t,” Mike said, giving me a shake of his head. “But—much as I hate to admit it, Ambyr, L.T.’s right: it’s the smart thing to do. I just hope Miss Clarissa sees it that way.”

“She will, trust me,” I said. “So for now—you get your stuff together, too, Ambyr, while Mike and I see if we can’t take the heat off of you and Lucas out front. Plus—I want to talk to Curtis, Mike. He knows more than he’s telling, and we need to make him spill.”

“Check,” Mike said, moving ahead through the troopers toward the front door, knowing that Ambyr and I would need a minute. I was grateful for his tact, though it left me uncertain about what to do next; but that decision was quickly taken from me. Ambyr began to pull me, at a careful rate that would cause no notice, into a small pantry that I had not noticed was just off the kitchen, behind the big new steel refrigerator. There she threw her arms around my neck in a rush and once again kissed me, causing still another new (or renewed) reaction within my spirit. Then, after offering some final words of encouragement and brushing a few of her foremost strands of long hair behind her ears, I tried to leave her there in that little room and follow Mike out the kitchen door.

But she would not be left; not quite so soon. She pulled me back once again, kissed me more deeply than before, and whispered, “Just tell me this is all going to work…”

I wasn’t certain just what she was referring to, the immediate situation or our own; so I decided to answer the practical question first: “I can square it with Clarissa, trust me. But you’ve got to let me handle the first wave of the media. When it goes out that this is the fifth case in what certain sources think is a string of disappearances and serial murders, it’s going to go national—and you haven’t known hell until you’ve known that. So let’s get you two out of here before it happens. Hell, Lucas practically lives at Shiloh already, and Clarissa really will not allow reporters anywhere near the place—and as for the cops, they’re afraid of her. And you’ll have your own room, don’t worry about that, so will Lucas, there’s nothing but room—”

She pulled close again. “And if I don’t want my own room?” she murmured into my ear.

It was all going way too fast, now, for my rusty inner self. “Oh, Ambyr,” I sighed, trepidation in every syllable. “Let’s take it one step at a time, okay? First, we move you up there.”

She kissed me again, quite suddenly and firmly, as if to seal the deal. “You got it. But do square it with Clarissa—she’ll probably want to make sure for herself that it’s all legit.”

“Oh, you don’t have to worry about that,” I said, starting to pull away again. “Clarissa is very fond of you both. So now”—we finally released our holds on each other—“let me do what I’ve got to do. We’ll be back in a little bit, and right outside if there’s an emergency.”

“You’re the boss,” Ambyr said; but just when I had actually come close to leaving the pantry, she called to me in a murmur one last time: “Oh—and Trajan? As soon as we get there, we go feed Marcianna, right? She must be going a little crazy.”

“Absolutely,” I said, taking a step back into the shadows—far enough for her to grab me and let me have another very deep kiss. By the time I was finally able to force myself from the little space, my head was absolutely spinning; but I had to try to pull it together before I joined Mike outside the front door, even if my heart was thundering with very confused delight.

“Took you long enough,” Mike said, eyeing me with a grin. “And you might want to tuck your fucking shirt in, you crippled old dog, you…”

“Shaddap” was all I could say, as I straightened my clothes out.

“Come on, it’s perfect!” Mike’s grin grew wider. “You two will be in the same place, away from everything…Just do me one favor, will you? When the big night comes, lemme know.” He tried to contain a sharp laugh. “Remember, my room’s right under yours, and I don’t much like the idea of getting buried alive in century-and-a-half-old beams and plaster when you finally—”

“That’s enough,” I declared, in a voice that convinced him to silence his stream of torment. “You’re a pig, Li, do you know that?”

“Oh, no I’m not,” Mike said, still grinning merrily. “You know what I am.”

“Shaddap,” I repeated, trying not to laugh; but my expression straightened when a new group of vehicles appeared on County Route 34. “Oh, holy fucking hell…”

Mike’s gaze followed mine, and then he braced himself. “Shit. There they are. And unless I miss my guess…” He gave the vehicles a few minutes to get closer, and then said, quietly but firmly, “But I don’t. That’s an MSNBC truck. Leading the way.”

“And you know what that means,” I said.

“Fuck yes, I do,” Mike answered, getting his own attire straightened out as another grin inevitably crept across his face. “It means we’re bad, dude—and we’re nationwide…”

And with Mike humming and singing that ZZ Top tune quietly, we awaited the next round of confrontation.

{iv.}

Almost as soon as the media cars and vans pulled up, Mike’s humming turned to laughter, as an obvious model/actress who had decided, like many before her, to give the news a shot was disgorged from the lead vehicle. “Will you look at that?” he said. “These mooks that they send out from Albany to cover local news, I will never get over it…”

“Pull yourself together, Chuckles,” I answered. “The national CBS truck, and the NBC, the ABC, the cable networks—especially MSNBC: they’re the ones we need to be worried about.”

Sure enough, when the reporters pooled, it was one of the nitwits who was then covering lurid crime stories all over the country for ABC who spotted us at the front door. “Hey,” he called out. “Hey, wait a minute, aren’t you those guys from New York? You know—those guys,” he said dimly, as if we might have forgotten who the hell we were. We didn’t answer, but then still another dope, a CBS reporter who covered crimes with “national appeal”—school shootings, serial killings, celebrity violence—made us right away:

“Oh, yeah,” she said, “those guys who got fired after the hotel prostitution scandal! Jones and Li—excuse me, Doctors, but what are you doing up here? And why are you at this scene, in particular?” Mike and I still did not reply, prompting the woman to take it up a notch: “Is it true that this is the latest in a series of child murders extending beyond this region? And that the governor is personally overseeing the investigation?”

“Shit,” Mike breathed. “Doesn’t take them long, does it?”

I shook my head, took one or two steps forward, and raised my voice: “Ladies and gentlemen, we have a brief statement to make, after which we will not be taking questions, and you will not be allowed access to this house. Dr. Li and I are acting as the authorized representatives of the Kurtz family in this investigation. Nothing concrete is known about the disappearance of Derek Franco, legal ward of Ambyr Kurtz, at this time. And that’s it.” I turned around to see Mike staring at me.

“You really think that it’s going to end just like that?” he asked.

“No,” I answered. “In fact, I’m counting on it not ending just like that…”

And in just a few seconds, I heard an expected voice: “Dr. Jones, do you really feel fit, or even qualified, to represent this family, or to investigate this case for them, given your record?”

I knew just who was speaking, having suspected she’d be in the MSNBC truck. “Ah,” I said, staring at the peeling grey paint of the porch floor. “Melissa Ward…”

“That’s right,” she replied; and I finally turned, raised my eyes, and cast a cold stare on her as she stood on the rear bumper of her network’s van. “What I meant was,” she went on, arranging something that resembled a smile on her overpainted face, “given the fact that you and your partner, Dr. Li, were repudiated by both the New York City Police Department and its crime lab—”

“Largely thanks to you,” I said, stepping down and moving slowly through the mob toward her. “And your propagation of what you knew to be blatant falsehoods.”

“Hey,” she said, trying to laugh my statement off, “I don’t think you can say—”

“You know something, Melissa?” The sea of reporters kept parting for me, like kids anticipating a schoolyard fight. “There are easier ways to get in good with cops and politicians in this country than by blindly repeating what they tell you. Maybe you’ve tried those methods already, though. But to answer your question, yes, Dr. Li and I both feel fit to handle this case. And the fact that we were only ‘released’ from our positions in New York, and never brought up on any charges of, oh, say, contriving evidence, as you told the world we would be, I think speaks for itself. As does the fact that three of the five officials we implicated in covering up those crimes were eventually prosecuted, although you didn’t waste a lot of time covering that. Anything else?”

Ward looked at the faces around her for support and, receiving none, mumbled, “Not—not at this time.”

I moved back through the press pool, returning to the porch. “Well,” Mike said, as we walked back through the front door and closed it behind us, “you handled that suavely, L.T.”

“But,” I answered, trying not to let anyone see me smile, “I took the spotlight off our guests, didn’t I? Now let’s find Curtis. I’ve got a few things I want to ask him, away from the others…”

Heading inside, we found Lucas on the living room couch, a large, overstuffed knapsack at his feet. The delight of bossing cops around had clearly begun to lose its luster: he had the television on, keeping one eye glued to a rerun of That Metal Show on VH1 Classic and the other on the milling officers, whom he occasionally barked at, although Bass Hagen was now doing most of that work. Most of the men and women from law enforcement had by now plainly realized that they were serving no purpose by being where they were: the scene had rendered unto Curtis Kolmback all that it was going to, in terms of trace evidence, and nobody, not even Frank Mangold, was going to take on the task of interrogating a fifteen-year-old boy and his blind sister/guardian right there in their house.

“Hey, kid,” Mike said. “You seen that guy in the blue CSI suit wandering around?”

“In the kitchen,” Lucas replied. “He’s dusting Derek’s note for prints—or some such shit.”

“You ready to go, when we give the word?” I asked.

He kicked his knapsack. “Ready as fuck all. We gotta move, Derek’s been missing for hours.”

Nodding, I made my way with Mike through the cops and into the kitchen, where we found Curtis alone and leaning over Derek’s note, trying to raise a latent print with various types of dust.

“Oh—hey, guys,” he said as we entered. “Nothing much to see in the house, no trace samples or jimmying signs on the windows, so I’m trying this. But I think the Franco boy must have been wearing gloves, if he wrote it—and that would be pretty unusual, right? Why does a runaway—”

“Curtis,” I said. “Forget that, for now. We need a word—in the garage out back.”

The tech began to sweat just at the request; and the stern tone of my voice was only making things worse. “A word with me? Well, what about, I mean, I don’t know anything—”

“Easy, Curtis,” Mike said, playing the good (or at least the better) cop without knowing what, specifically, I had in mind. “We already know all about it—but we’d like to get your side, that’s all.”

“My side of what?” Curtis said, as Mike and I took hold of each of his elbows and pretty much picked him up out of his chair, although he didn’t really resist.

“You know what, Curtis,” I said, moving him toward the kitchen door. “You don’t really want to go on with this charade, do you? No, I didn’t think so…”

The poor guy whimpered a few more halfhearted protests as we crossed the backyard and entered the little red garage. “You’re not a bad guy, Curtis,” Mike said. “We know that.”

“The only problem being,” I added, switching on the place’s bare bulb, “we’ve now established that you were the only tech at all five crime scenes—and that’s not exactly regular practice, is it?”

“No,” Curtis finally whined submissively. “But, guys, you have to understand, it wasn’t my idea!”

“We know that, Curtis,” Mike said soothingly. “We just want to know whose idea it was. Who’s been giving you your orders, and how high up does all this actually go?”

“Oh, come on, not you guys, too!” Kolmback looked from one to the other of us in terror. “Look, I can’t tell you that, fellas—I’d like to, really I would. But that’d be the end of my career, and maybe even my damned life.” He took in a deep breath. “You still don’t know exactly who you’re messing with, here, do you? I mean, when you moved that kid’s body—at least, I’m assuming it was you who moved it—”

“Body?” Mike asked. “We didn’t move any body.”

“And you’re ducking the question—if there’s some kind of conspiracy to cover this thing up, how the hell high does it go? And who else has been asking you about it?” I finally abandoned my halfhearted attempt to strong-arm the guy: “Curtis, at some point you have to think about yourself, here, and not just about whoever’s been threatening you: this gets to the licensing board, and it will end your career. Whatever they’re promising you, they’ve made you break the rules, already: you’ve been the only tech on five scenes. You’re supposed to have—”

“But I did!” he defended, still turning from Mike to me desperately, somehow thinking that perhaps we might be able to get him out of the jam into which his natural vulnerability, combined with that evil streak of ambition that ran through nearly all crime scene techs, had gotten him. “I wasn’t the only one there from our department: Nancy—Director Grimes—she was there, too, you should be taking this up with her!”

“We will, but right now we’re talking to you,” I said. “I’m trying to help you, here, Curtis!”

“We both are,” Mike added. “But we’ve got to know who’s involved.”

“I—I—” Curtis’ fear was becoming panic, which I initially thought might be good for our cause; but I had underestimated how much the tension and pressure had gotten to him. “Listen, maybe you guys could get my license revoked, but they might kill me—I’m serious!”

“Well, then—” I laid hold of one of his shoulders. “Abandon ship, Curtis: come back down to the house, we’ll take you aside with Major McCarron and he’ll guarantee your safety.”

“McCarron?” Curtis said, with tears plainly in his eyes. “And what’s McCarron going to do when the governor calls? Or worse, what’s he going to do when the—shit, you guys, I cannot talk about this! I’m getting out of here, I can’t do it anymore!”

And with a short, muffled wail, Curtis suddenly tore his no-longer-sterile blue suit from his body and, dressed only in his pants and a white T-shirt, ran through the back door of the garage and up the hill onto the Morgan Central athletic field where I’d strolled with Ambyr. Mike and I followed as quickly as we could, just in time to see the deranged tech vanish into the tree line on the far side of the field.

“What in the hell…?” Mike murmured in somber amazement.

“God damn it,” I said, glancing around quickly. “God damn it all.” I indicated the hills beyond the field with my hand. “I truly hate to say it, Mike—but there’s at least an even chance that Curtis will never come out of those woods alive. Fuck…”

Mike got my point: “The sniper on the mountain—you figure he’s around here now?”

“Yeah, that’s what I figure,” I said. “And if he saw Curtis with us, or anybody else did…” A guilty wave crashed over me; but it passed as I realized one key fact: “Well…we may have triggered his crack-up, but we certainly didn’t start the whole thing. One thing’s for sure, though,—now, we’ve really got to get the fuck out of here.” I spun round on my cane, and began walking as fast as my hip would allow back down to the Kurtzes’ house.

“You’re just freaking out, L.T.,” Mike said, trying very hard to believe it. “It’s been a fuck of a morning, and it’s understandable, but I think you’re imagining things.” He glanced around at the sky. “Doesn’t help that a storm’s blowing in, I’ll admit, but—it can’t be as serious as all that.”

“No? Remember what he said, Mike.” I tried to recall it precisely as we reached the backyard of the house. “ ‘What’s McCarron going to do when the governor calls? Or worse, what’s he going to do when the…’ Fill in the blank.”

“Jesus,” Mike said, looking over his shoulder. “Curtis, you poor, dumb schmuck…Still—I hope he’ll come out of it okay.”

“So do I—but, much as we might both like to make it our problem, right now it isn’t. We need to get Ambyr and Lucas and make a break. So get to the car, and tell Mitch we’re leaving. Ask him to clear a path to the far side of 34. I’ll get the other two set, and we’ll meet you there.”

“Got it.” Mike branched off toward the Empress as I stepped onto the deck behind the kitchen door. But before I could open it, Mitch McCarron came walking out. “Trajan!” he said, looking up at the storm clouds. “Say, you haven’t seen Kolmback, have you? Frank wants a word with him—he’s pretty pissed off about something, though he won’t tell me what it is.”

I couldn’t blatantly lie (not to Mitch), but neither could I be entirely forthcoming—if only because he’d effectively just told me that the other person trying to shoehorn information out of Curtis was Frank Mangold. I therefore had no choice, for the moment, but to bend the truth a bit: “Yeah, actually. We were coming out to find you and get our car in gear—Bass Hagen’s agreed to let us take Ambyr and Lucas up to Shiloh for a while, get them out of this business, and then you can tape the house off and have at it. Anyway, we ran straight into Curtis, who was coming out of the garage and headed like a bat out of hell up that hill.”

“Really?” And it was a testament to Mitch’s decency and trust that he accepted my story at face value. “Well, I wonder what the hell those two are up to…” He shrugged, then turned toward the Crown Vic. “You’re going to need some help getting out of here, I guess.”

“You read my mind,” I answered. “Mike’s getting the car started, and I’ll get the Kurtzes. Mind giving him a hand?”

“No, no, not at all,” Mitch said with a nod, holding the screen door for me. “But listen—on your way inside, maybe steer clear of Mangold. I don’t know what his deal is, but he’s on a tear, sure enough. You might just do as a target, if he can’t find the one he wants.”

“Thanks, Mitch,” I said, feeling even more guilty about not having told him all.

He paused before heading off Mike’s way. “Say—you don’t suppose that’s what made Curtis take off, do you? Knowing that Frank has a bone to pick with him?”

“It’d be enough to make me start running,” I answered. “If I could run, that is.”

“Yeah.” Mitch considered it for another moment. “Well, I’m gonna have a couple of my boys take a look up there. Maybe he’s just hiding, but it isn’t smart. Only gonna piss Frank off even more.”

It had been one of the oddest sequences of events during the investigation thus far; and, though I didn’t yet know as much, it was also the beginning of another warning to Mike and myself to lay off probing into the conspiracy we had detected…

Once inside, I returned to the living room couch and put our junior member on notice: “Take your bag and get out to the far side of 34, Lucas. Mike’ll be coming around in the car—we’re getting out. Very quietly, kid: keep clear of the vehicles, and don’t let anybody in the media see you.”

“Aw, come on, L.T.,” the kid whined. “I wanna be on Dateline NBC, dude, I’ll be famous!”

“You want Derek to be famous, too?” I asked: perhaps a little harshly, I realized, when I saw Lucas’ expression droop. “Just don’t screw around, right now. And where’s Ambyr?”

“Over in her room.” Lucas signaled toward the chamber beyond the stairs with a nod. “Getting the cat in his carrier.”

“Damn…I forgot we’d have to tell Clarissa about a cat. Ah, screw it, she’s taking your rodent ass in, she can take a cat, too. It can stay in Ambyr’s room; or, if Clarissa goes batshit, in the plane.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Lucas said, lifting his knapsack onto his shoulder with a groan. “Okay—I’ll make sure nobody sees me, and meet you at the car.” And with that, the kid was off.

As I approached the bottom of the staircase and the front door opposite it, I could see that the latter was open, and that the glare of portable camera lights was streaming through it. Moving quickly toward Ambyr’s room, I also saw that Cathy Donovan and Nancy Grimes were holding court before a mix of both local and national reporters, and trying to emphasize that the suspected “ringleaders” of a child-exploitation “gang” had already been questioned and were still under surveillance, and that they were sure that Derek Franco, while he had likely been lured from his home by one of the known “associates” of these ringleaders, would soon be found: which was all I needed to hear. I tried to push on, but my path was quickly blocked by Frank Mangold.

“You and me have got things to discuss, profiler,” he said. I sighed wearily, but before I could protest, he went on: “Who’re you actually working for here, Jones?”

“What gives you the impression I’m not actually working for this family, Frank?”

“I’m not sure, yet.” Mangold turned to glance at Donovan and Grimes. “But I’m not getting the whole story—and I just want to know if you’re one of the reasons why.”

“Frank, if someone’s keeping things from you, trust me, it isn’t Dr. Li or me. Our interest is in solving this case and getting this family back together—that is absolutely it. Anybody who has a larger agenda than that”—and at these words, Mangold’s buzz-cut head snapped around again, so that he was staring daggers through me—“is not somebody I’m either doing business with now, or have any interest in doing business with in the future.”

“Maybe,” Mangold said in his unsettling manner. “But I’m not so sure I buy it.”

“Buy whatever you like, Frank—but buy it somewhere else, and get out of my way.”

He grabbed hold of my arm. “Say—you haven’t seen that little shit Kolmback, have you?”

“Not lately,” I answered. “And I’ll give you about two more seconds to move that hand.”

Yet—surprisingly—Mangold did not rise to this blatant challenge, instead releasing his grip. “That fucker knows more than he’s telling. And I’m gonna find him…”

He moved off toward the kitchen without further communication, his points having been made; yet for the life of me, I mused as I approached Ambyr’s closed door, I still had no idea just what those points were. My first suspicion, and the one that made the most sense, was that they’d been a series of traps, designed to catch me in a lie; but I simply didn’t have time to consider the matter any further. Instead, I knocked on Ambyr’s door several times, letting her know it was safe by quietly calling her name into the jamb of the thing as I did.

{v.}

At first I got no answer, which didn’t bode well: if Ambyr was going to have trouble leaving her home, and had only realized as much when she started packing, it was likely going to take more time than we had to talk her around. So I tried a few more knocks and calls, then felt as much as heard a click vibrating through the door. Trying the knob, I found the thing unlocked.

“Hope you’re decent,” I said softly, as I cracked the door open, “because I’m coming in…”

The room was almost completely dark, the scarce light provided by whatever could get through the slightly open door and through lace panels backed by opaque blinds that covered the two windows: and that wasn’t enough for my eyes to adjust to quickly. I stood there helplessly, then turned with a bit of a start when someone shut the door firmly—from within the room.

“Ambyr?” I whispered, in what was now near-blackness. “Come on, now, no games…”

“Oh, it’s no game,” she replied, in a tone that was hard to define: one would not have called it sinister so much as ghostly. Then, without my hearing a sound, she got close enough from behind me to murmur in my ear, “Now you know what it’s like to live in my world…” The chilling quality in her voice was worsened when the next thing I heard was her laughing lightly from the other side of the room. My eyes had begun to adjust, and I could at last make out some of what was before me, in the eerie dimness:

On each side of the window frames heavy curtains of burgundy velvet hung from iron rods, the ends of which were molded in lattice lines around glass balls of, yes, an amber color. The dark blinds obscured all view of what was taking place amid the rising storm outside; while on a tasteful antique wooden bed frame and queen mattress lay a white lace spread of an equally traditional and pleasing design. A large, rolling black travel case sat on the floor, the handle of which was extended, as if prepared for departure. The fact that Ambyr’s cat sat in his large carrier next to the case, rubbing his face up against the thin black bars of the door the minute he saw me, further indicated that Ambyr had in fact gotten herself ready for departure. The only incongruous facts about the little scene were that she herself was still nowhere to be seen, while a small, portable iPod dock on an old chest of drawers was playing Puccini’s “E lucevan le stelle” from Tosca, heightening the sad, romantic, yet still-unnerving atmosphere of the room. All this, despite what was happening outside.

The sound and comparatively bright light of a match striking caught me completely unawares; and, startled, I made a move for my Colt. Yet even as I did, I saw Ambyr’s hands feel their way to light a thick candle on the opposite side of the bed; then she disappeared into the shadows once more. Seconds later, however, I felt a delicate warmth on my eyes and the parts of my face around them, and was reassured.

“Ah-ah-ah…” came a whispered warning in my ear. “You don’t really want to shoot the girl of your dreams, do you?”

I half-raised my hands to indicate surrender (even though she couldn’t see it, I realized), then smiled and turned around slowly. “I don’t know,” I said. “Have I ever met the girl of my dreams?”

“You bet your ass you have, Mister Doctor Jones, MD, PhD, who ought to know better,” Ambyr answered with a laugh, pushing me back toward the bed. She was wearing yet another summer dress, this one the color almost of flame. It suited her coloring, as did all her clothes, and by the time I felt the back of my knees touch the edge of the bed, I also felt the need to protest:

“We really have to get up the hollow, Ambyr. And this place is crawling with cops, as the saying goes; I’m not sure it’s just the right moment for—”

But then another sharp push sent me helplessly onto the bed, and before I could say any more, Ambyr had gotten on top of me, her own movements as lithe as a cat’s. “Oh, I’m totally sure that it’s the right time for dot, dot, dot,” she answered, again breathing the words into my ear in a way that was so electric that any aches and pains caused by my brief night of outdoor sleep simply vanished. I quickly discovered that the particular dress she was wearing was quite sheer, revealing—what had to be deliberately—equally thin, delicate undergarments beneath it. But what shocked me most, even as her hair fell over my face in a tumble and her mouth moved to meet mine, was her strength: she took my wrists and held them down so powerfully that it would have been something of a struggle, with only one leg, for me to get back upright. Her thighs, meanwhile, slid out from beneath the skirt of her dress and closed in on my hips hard enough to pin me; yet not so hard, on my left side, that I needed to cry out in pain. Eventually she let my arms and hands loose, and they moved, as if in a thoroughly practiced motion, around her back, my fingers feeling the heat of it for several moments and then beginning to toy, helplessly, with the straps of her dress.

“So,” she whispered in reaction, her lips still on mine. “They didn’t quite kill you with all that radiation, now, did they?”

“I—” It was enormously difficult to find the words: “I honestly thought that they had…” Feeling the need to regain some control of the moment, I said, “Why the opera, by the way? You didn’t tell me you liked it.”

“I don’t, really,” she answered, pulling her hair back into a murderously sexy ponytail. “But I figured you did, and it would get you in the mood.”

“What made you figure that?”

“Okay—” A look of deliberately theatrical yet nonetheless enormous pride filled her face. “After I listened to your class the first time, I went online at the Center in Fraser and found out that, guess what? There’s a Braille edition of your book about your hero.”

I pulled myself up on my elbows. “You’re reading about Dr. Kreizler?”

“Well, it took a while to come through the library lending system,” she answered, leaning down on her arms and again pressing her lips to mine. “So I haven’t gotten far. But you do talk about him being a big opera buff, so I figured it would work…Why, isn’t it?”

“Yeah. Although I’d rather hear the music you would want to listen to, right now.”

“Oh!” She brightened and popped off the bed and onto her feet. “In that case…” I heard a few sharp clicking sounds come from the iPod, as the Puccini was silenced and then replaced by Roxy Music’s “More Than This.” Then she leapt back atop me, her every movement in the near-darkness unhesitating and precise. For a moment, her face hovered over mine, waiting for a response.

“My God,” I laughed quietly. “It’s a household of classic rock fans…”

“Hey.” She laid a playful little slap across my cheek. “Lucas got it from me, and never forget that. Besides…” She leaned down again to kiss me, my arms went around her, and her legs tightened once more as she spoke into my lips. “It’s the sexiest, most romantic fucking song in the world…”

“Yes,” I whispered, taking her warm face in my right hand. “Actually, it may just be…”

I wasn’t at all sure what we’d been up to, Ambyr and I, in the afternoons and nights leading to that stormy day. But as we lay there on her bed and listened to that song which has wrought decades of ecstatic havoc on so many people’s emotions (and which Ambyr had contrived to have her iPod play over and over again), all the while learning whether or not each facet of our respective bodies conformed to the other’s in the manner that is so essential, especially for two people who have sound reasons to doubt hasty decisions about becoming intimate with anyone, much less persons known for so comparatively short a time; and when we went on to find that our bodies did indeed so fit…suffice to say that our desires and, more importantly, our hearts raged increasingly toward that hungry compassion that is the only thing I have ever known to constitute human love. The fact that we were surrounded on all sides both by our antagonists from the state and by media hacks who would have loved nothing more than to catch a glimpse, through some narrow slit in the window blinds, into that room, while it gave me some little pause, only delighted Ambyr; and more and more, I found that I was allowing her to set the pace of what was apparently becoming our romance…

When we eventually sat up and began reassembling ourselves (one of us literally), I suggested to Ambyr that something rather more conservative than the dress she was wearing might be more appropriate for running the gauntlet of media jackals that were outside the house.

“Way ahead of you,” she replied, moving to a closet next to the bathroom door and pulling out a long coat of medium heaviness, one that might have looked quite sexy if left open, but that could also be made to look quite prim, if buttoned all the way up. Then she slid her bare feet into a pair of cork-soled sandals and spun toward me. “Well? Do I look okay?”

“Perfect,” I said, although the rather carefree note in her voice was beginning to have the same effect on me that Lucas’ similar tone had; and so I carefully asked, “Ambyr—when Mike and I got here this morning, you and Lucas were both understandably devastated about Derek. But now you seem so—so—”

“So…?” she said coyly.

“So—upbeat, I suppose I would say. What happened?”

“Think back,” she said more seriously, “to our little moment in the pantry.” She came over and put her arms around my neck. “Because that’s when I figured it out.”

“ ‘It’?” I asked, putting my own head atop hers. “Which it?”

She let out a long, somewhat sad sigh. “Faith,” she whispered simply.

Which was unexpected. “Hmm,” I noised, considering it. “Neither of you has ever struck me as particularly religious. Although,” I hurried to add, “if you are, it makes no difference to—”

She thumped an open hand on my chest. “No, you idiot.” Turning her face up to mine, with her eyes searching for just the right spot to fix on, she soon smiled and said, “How in the world did you ever get all those fancy-assed degrees? Did you bribe somebody?”

I had to pause. “I’m afraid I’m not getting you.”

“No,” she answered, putting her head back on my chest. “But I get you. That’s what I realized, and what I told Luke—oh, Jesus, don’t let him know I said ‘Luke’ to you, please, he’ll have a fit. He’s so serious about you guys. And that’s why he believed me when I told him that we should have faith in you. Well, you and Mike. If anybody can find Derek before anything bad happens to him, you guys can. And no, I’m not trying to say that it’s totally guaranteed. Derek is, you already know, not—like other people. And it can make him really stubborn, really determined, sometimes. So it’s possible that he’s gotten into a situation that could go bad, and nobody can stop it. But if anybody can, you and Mike are the ones.”

“Oh,” I said, swallowing hard once. “So—no pressure, or anything.”

“Yeah,” she answered, quite frankly. “You have got a lot of pressure on you, right now. And that’s one reason we’re going with you. I talked to Mike about all this, and he says you’ve had nobody but Marcianna for female companionship for way too long. Now, I love Marcianna, I totally get it; but you, Mister Doctor Jones, need something else. So as of right now—”

I didn’t let her finish, but leaned down to kiss the rest of the explanation away.

Once we’d gotten back out to the front porch, Ambyr rolling her bag and me carrying Tommy the cat in his carrier, we pulled Mitch McCarron, who’d already guided Mike out, and Steve Spinetti over and worked out a plan: I would make a statement, backed up by Steve, to the press, and as that crowd of information-crazed souls collected around me, Mitch would quietly get Ambyr out to the Empress, which was sitting on Route 34 pointed toward home. I would join them there, after which Steve and Mitch would seal the house as a crime scene.

And it went off without a hitch: by the time I made it to the microphones at the front door, Mitch was already obscuring Ambyr as they moved to the highway; and by this point, even Nancy Grimes and Cathy Donovan had run out of things with which to satisfy the reporters, so they gladly let me step to the fore. There, I elaborated my position as representative of the Kurtz family, and stated calmly that Mike and I would be working in full cooperation with the county and state, along with “any other interested agencies.” After that, I moved toward the county road, managing to ignore Melissa Ward, this time; in fact, the only voice I really heard was Steve’s: “That looked like it took real effort, Doc—good for you. And keep us posted, right?”

I nodded and mumbled assent and thanks to him as Mitch McCarron took over guiding me, from the edge of the blacktop and across it, whence he rushed me around to the far side of the Empress. The door was already open, and Mitch gave me a firm pat on the back as I lowered myself in. “We’ll be in touch,” he said, closing the door and slapping its roof.

Mike pulled out with a little squeal onto the wet road, as I glanced into my wing mirror and said, rather proudly, “Nobody’s following us, Mike.”

At which point I felt Ambyr, in the back seat right behind me, throw her arms around my neck, whispering in my ear, “Thank you. I know that was hard.” Then I felt her lips on my neck, followed by an outburst from Lucas:

“Hey, hey, hey!” he protested. “You two are okay, like, in theory, but that’s it. Bad enough it took you so long to get out here, but I don’t wanna have to actually look at it, for fuck’s sake.”

“Then look out your window, snot,” Ambyr said, without moving. “And watch your mouth.”

“Oh, no, sis,” Lucas said, obeying her first order by speaking into the window. “We’re not home, now—I get to talk any way I fucking want to.”

“Yeah?” Mike laughed. “I wouldn’t let Clarissa hear you say that, kid.”

“Exactly,” Ambyr piled on. “And maybe you can talk like that when you’re working—but around anybody else, you cut the cursing, okay?”

“Oh, man,” Lucas whined. “I knew this whole thing was a bad idea…”