36

Mars waited in his car outside Nettie’s sister’s house.

He had to do this now for all kinds of reasons. Because Val had to be the first to know. Because it was possible the media would show up. Because Mars needed to tell Val himself, now, while he was still numb. He had to tell Val about Nettie before he believed what he was saying was real.

He watched the house for over three hours until, just after four o’clock in the morning, a light went on in an upstairs window. It was a high, small, shuttered window. Probably a bathroom window.

Mars could see motion behind the partially closed shutter slats. Then, improbably, one side of the shutter opened, and Val looked out.

Maybe to check the weather. Maybe because the emotion that had filled the night had reached her. She was looking out the window to try to understand why she felt the way she did. Why she’d wakened at four feeling worried.

She started to close the shutter again, then stopped. Mars saw her see his car, saw her peer more closely. Then she closed the shutter and turned out the bathroom light. He tracked her progress by lights being lit as she left the bathroom, came downstairs, turned on the hall light, then turned on the porch light.

When the porch light came on, Mars got out of the car and started toward the house.

Val opened the front door, holding the door with one hand, clutching her robe closed over her chest with the other. She squinted at him, still not sure she was seeing what she thought she was seeing.

“Mars? What in heaven’s name…”

Then she pulled back, suddenly knowing what it meant that he was there, alone at night.

Her words were soft at first—“Oh, my God, no. No. Oh, God, no”—then she came at Mars, screaming, her fists pounding against his chest.

“It’s your fault,” she screamed. “It’s your fault. Why did you get her into this…”

Val’s husband Roy came down the stairs, barefooted, in his shorts, grabbing his wife, trying to understand, looking at Mars, then at Val.

“It’s Nettie,” Mars said. “She was killed last night…”

Tears filled Roy’s eyes, and he pulled Val closer. He nodded at Mars. “Maybe you should go right now. I’ll call you in an hour or so…”

“It’s his fault,” Val wailed. “It’s his fault.”

Roy shook his head looking at Mars. “She doesn’t mean it,” he said, “it’s just such a shock.”

But Val hadn’t said anything Mars didn’t believe himself.

*   *   *

When Chris came back at eight-thirty, Gunner wasn’t at the door to greet him.

He walked into the living room where his dad was on the couch. Awake, but silent. Gunner was lying at Mars’s feet. He didn’t move.

“Dad?” Chris said. “What’s happened? What’s wrong? Why isn’t Gunner…”

Chris dropped down to his knees and took Gunner’s head between his arms. He looked up at Mars.

“Is it Nettie?”

*   *   *

Roy and Val came over shortly before noon.

By then Val was subdued, contrite when she looked at Mars.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “About what I said before…”

Mars said, “It was nothing more than the truth, Val. Nothing that I haven’t been saying to myself.”

Val got angry. “No! I won’t have you say that. It wasn’t wrong for me to say it because it was rude. It was wrong for me to say it because it wasn’t—it isn’t—true. It was disrespectful of Nettie for me to say it. Nettie didn’t do what she did because of you, Mars. She did what she did because she loved her work, because she was good at it, because she wanted to do it. To say anything else is to disrespect who she was.

“And something else,” Val said, starting to cry again. “She was grateful to you, Mars. Grateful you gave her the chance to do what she did.”

Val had meant telling Mars that last bit to comfort him. It didn’t. It made him feel worse. He turned away from her.

Roy said, “We want to talk to you about the funeral.”

His back to them, Mars closed his eyes. Funeral.

“I don’t want one of those processions with police cars lined up for miles, with flashers going,” Val said. “It will just make me think about how she died…”

Mars still couldn’t face them, still couldn’t open his eyes. Everything they said, every image their words conjured up, caused so much pain he couldn’t draw a breath.

“And we’re wondering if there’s someone who can help us with the media,” Roy said. “We’re already getting calls. From all over, not just local…”

Mars forced himself to draw a deep breath, then turned toward them. “Of course,” he said. “I’ll take care of that. And the funeral, if you want me to do that…”

Val shook her head. “No. If you could let us know who should be invited. Her colleagues. We’ll take care of family. We want the service to be private, otherwise we’ll be overrun with media.”

“I’ll get you a list,” Mars said.

*   *   *

The morning of the funeral, Mars looked out an apartment window toward City Hall. As he stood there, he saw the flag on the Hall’s tower being lowered. He turned from the window, lowering the blinds. Then he moved the metal shelving from the living room, standing the shelves in front of the window. There would be snow on the ground before he opened the blinds again.

*   *   *

Everybody that mattered came.

John Turner came from San Diego. His wife was ill, so he wasn’t able to stay. But Turner being there was the first balm on Mars’s soul since Nettie had died.

The mayor came, the Hennepin County medical examiner, representatives from the local FBI office, Danny Borg, and their colleagues from the BCA’s Cold Case Unit. Each of the five states Nettie had worked with on the Integrated Information project sent staff. The governor’s office had requested details regarding the funeral and had been told the service was private.

“He just wants to get attention,” Val said.

Mars, Chris, DeeDee Kipp, Boyle Keegan, and Karen Pogue went together. Mars had hesitated about inviting Karen, but not to have invited her would have been cruel. Nettie had never been cruel—not with anybody, not about anything. And whatever her personal feelings had been about Karen, Nettie had respected Karen professionally.

There was one other presence at the funeral. Gunner attended. Gunner’s coming had been Chris’s idea, and it had felt right to everybody.

“There were two heroes in that field that night,” Mars said. “Nettie and Gunner. He deserves to be there.”

And because the story of Nettie’s death was the story of two heroes—a beautiful young woman and a courageous dog—that involved decades of wrongdoing by people in high places and people who operated behind the wizard’s screen, media coverage was beyond anything Mars had seen before. Nettie was profiled in the local press, on cable television, on the BBC World News—there was seemingly no end to it.

Mars thought that he’d gotten it across to local law enforcement that Val didn’t want a police presence at the funeral. But as they drove from the church to the cemetery where Nettie’s ashes would be interred, police squad cars lined either side of the road. They were there from all five states, their flashers off, but they were there.

Mars hoped Val didn’t mind. Somehow it felt right to him. The motionless cars, flashers dark. It just felt right.

As they left the interment ceremony, Val stopped Mars. She put a small glass vial in his hands, closed her hands around his, stood on tiptoes to kiss his cheek, then returned to her family.

Mars didn’t have to look at what she’d put in his hands to know what it was.

Who it was.

*   *   *

Boyle and Karen went back to the apartment with Mars, Chris, and Gunner.

Karen was quiet, Boyle was bereft. “I should have locked you both up,” he said. “I should have arranged for federal protection…”

“Don’t,” Mars said. “I can’t think about all the things I should have done to keep this from happening.”

“Give me something to do,” Boyle said. “Something that Nettie would have wanted. Anything.”

Mars thought about DeeDee Kipp. About the one thing she had asked him for before Nettie had died. That she had asked him about again at the church.

“Nettie put her life on the line to save DeeDee Kipp,” Mars said. “Something that would mean a lot to DeeDee Kipp would be knowing the Green Man’s real name.”

Karen said, “What an odd thing to ask. Why would she care?”

Mars—the foster child in Mars—understood perfectly why DeeDee Kipp cared about the Green Man’s real name.

“DeeDee Kipp’s life has been a mystery. Now she knows everything except the name of the person who killed her mother. Knowing that would give her a word I’ve never liked. Giving DeeDee the Green Man’s name would give her closure.”