Holly

July 28, 2021

Emily stands at the bedroom window in the hour before dawn, looking out at Ridge Road, empty save for moonlight. Behind her, Rodney is sleeping with his mouth open, breathing in great rasping snores. The sound is mildly annoying, but Emily envies him his rest just the same. She woke at quarter past three and there will be no more sleep for her tonight. Because she knows what was nagging at her.

She should have known as soon as Gibney called with that cock-and-bull story about Dressler being suspected of car theft. It was so obvious. Why hadn’t she? At first she wondered if she was beginning to lose her mind the way Rodney is losing his. (In this small hour she can admit that’s the truth.) But she knows it isn’t so. Her mind is as sharp as ever. It’s just that some things are so big, so goddamned obvious, that you ignore them. Like an ugly, oversized piece of furniture that you get used to and just walk around. Until you run into it face first, that is.

Or until you have a dream about a certain black vegan bitch.

And I knew, Em thinks. I must have. I told him separate cases involving two of the people we’ve taken would be a very large coincidence. He shrugged it off. Said coincidences happen, and I accepted that.

Accepted it! God, how stupid!

Not once had she remembered—at least not then—that Gibney, using her LaurenBacallFan alias, had sent out queries to the Craslows she had found on Twitter. Em supposes that Dahl and Dressler really could be a coincidence. But Dahl, Dressler, and Craslow?

No.

Emily turns from the window and makes her slow way into their bathroom with one hand pressing into the small of her throbbing back. Standing on tiptoe (it hurts!), she reaches the top of the medicine cabinet and finds a dusty brown bottle with no label. Inside it are two green pills. These are their final escape hatch, should they be needed. Em can still hope they won’t be. She goes back into the bedroom and looks down at her snoring, open-mouthed husband. She thinks, He looks so old.

She lies down and puts the little brown bottle under her pillow. She’ll tell him what she now knows, and should have known earlier, in the morning. For now let the old dear sleep.

Emily lies on her back, staring up into the dark.

The melatonin worked. Holly wakes up feeling like a new woman. She showers and dresses, then checks her phone. She’s set it to DO NOT DISTURB, and she sees that she got a call from Pete Huntley at quarter past one in the morning. There’s a voicemail, but it’s not Pete. It’s his daughter, calling on Pete’s phone.

“Hey, Holly, this is Shauna. Dad’s in the hospital. He had a relapse. Goddam Covid won’t let him go.”

He said he was feeling stronger every day, Holly thinks. Like the Chicago song.

“He tried to take a bag of trash down to the garbage chute. Fainted in the hall. Mrs. Lothrop found him and called 911. I’ve been with him all night. No heart attack, no goddam ventilator, thank Christ for that. He seems better this morning, but I guess he might be one of those goddam long haulers. They’re going to run some tests and then send him home. They need the room. This fucking shit’s everywhere. You better take care of yourse—” That’s where the message ends.

Holly feels like throwing her phone across the room. It is, as Shauna Huntley might say, a goddam bad way to start a goddam day. She remembers Althea Haverty at the bowling alley talking about fake flu and looking at Holly’s offered elbow with mild contempt. Saying no offense, but I don’t do that. Holly doesn’t wish her in the hospital with an oxygen mask clamped over her fat Covid-denying face, but—

Actually she does.

Holly drives through Burger King for breakfast, wearing a fresh pair of gloves to pay at one window and pick up her food at the next. She eats in her room, checks out, then sets off for Rolling Hills Elder Care. She gets there still too early for visiting hours, so she parks, opens her door, and smokes a cigarette. She texts Barbara, asking what she meant by which one. She gets no reply, didn’t expect one, doesn’t really need one. Barb must have recognized Rodney Harris as well as Cary Dressler. Holly is very curious about how she met Professor Harris. One thing she knows for sure is that the idea of Barbara anywhere near Harris makes her uneasy.

She googles Professor Rodney Harris and gets all sorts of information, including pictures of a younger version with dark hair and only a few lines and wrinkles. She googles Professor Emily Harris and gets another info-drop, confirming what Keisha said. Bonnie knew Emily Harris. Worked for Emily Harris, in fact.

Rodney knew Cary Dressler. Didn’t smoke dope with him, but did bowl with him when the Golden Oldies needed a sub.

Rodney could have known Ellen Craslow. Could have chatted her up, in fact; they worked in the same building and according to Keisha Stone, the woman was not averse to conversation.

She texts Barbara again, this time being more specific: Is it Rodney Harris you recognized? Have you met him? I know you’re busy but let me know when you can.

She checks her watch and sees that it’s nine AM. Visiting hours have officially begun. She doesn’t expect to get anything new from Victor Anderson (if she gets anything at all), and she knows damn well she won’t get anything from Uncle Henry, but she’s here now, so she might as well go ahead. She can be done by ten, check in with Pete, then get on the road back to the city. Will she stop to talk with Ernie Coggins? She might, but she’s leaning against.

All signs point to the Harrises.

Holly goes to the front desk and states who she wants to visit. The woman on desk duty, Mrs. Norman, checks her computer and makes a brief call. She says Henry Sirois is currently having a sponge bath and getting his hair clipped. Victor Anderson is in the sunroom, and although he’s alert and aware, he’s very hard to understand. If Holly would like to wait a bit, his wife usually comes in shortly after visiting hours begin, and she understands him perfectly.

“Evelyn is a jewel,” Mrs. Norman says.

Holly agrees to wait for Anderson’s wife, because she’s had an idea. It’s probably a bad one, but it’s the only one she has. Her partner is in the hospital, Jerome is in New York, and Barbara is occupied with her dying friend. Even if she were not, Holly wouldn’t ask for her help. Not after Chet Ondowsky.

She boots up her iPad and looks at pictures of 93 Ridge Road, both on Zillow (where the Zestimate is $1.7 million) and on Google Street View. She’s seen the house; what she wants now is a look at the garage, but she’s disappointed. The driveway dips down and she can only see the roof. Enlarging the picture doesn’t help. Too bad.

A slim woman comes in—white slacks, white lowtop sneakers, white hair in a fashionable pixie cut—and approaches Mrs. Norman. They speak, and Mrs. Norman points to where Holly is sitting. Holly gets up, introduces herself, and holds her elbow out. Mrs. Anderson—Evelyn—gives it a tap and asks how she can help.

“I’d like to ask your husband a few questions. A very few, if it won’t tire him out. I’m investigating the disappearance of someone who used to work at the Strike Em Out Lanes—Cary Dressler. I understand Mr. Anderson sometimes bowled with him. Mrs. Norman said you could… well…”

“Translate?” Mrs. Anderson says with a smile. “Yes, I can do that. I never met Mr. Dressler, but I know who he is. Vic said he was an excellent bowler, and a nice fellow. Called him a mensch.” She lowers her voice to a whisper. “I think they sometimes went out back to smoke pot.”

“So I’ve heard,” Holly whispers back.

“Do you suspect… gasp… foul play?” Evelyn is still smiling behind her mask.

Holly, who suspects exactly that, says she’s only trying to find out where he went.

“Well, come on,” Evelyn Anderson says cheerfully. “I doubt if he can help you, but his mind is as clear as ever and it will do him good to see a new face.”

In the sunroom, a few old people are eating late breakfasts or having it fed to them. An episode of Mayberry R.F.D. is on the big-screen TV, laugh-track cackling away. Victor Anderson is sitting in a wheelchair that’s turned away from the TV so he can look out at the lawn, where a man on a riding lawnmower is cutting the grass. Anderson is actually two men, Holly sees, built like a longshoreman from shoulders to waist, broad shoulders and thick chest. Below those are pipestem legs ending in bare feet that are blotched with eczema. Anderson has an N95 mask, but it’s pulled down around his neck.

Evelyn says, “Hi there, handsome, want a date?”

He looks around, and Holly sees half of his face is drawn down in a stressful grimace that shows his teeth on the left side. The right side of his face tries to smile. He says, “Hi… yooful.”

Evelyn ruffles his iron gray hair and kisses his cheek. “I brought you company. This lady is Holly Gibney. She wants to ask you a few questions about your bowling career. Is that okay?”

He gives a downward jerk of his head that might be a nod and says something interrogatory.

“He wants to know what it’s about.”

“Cary Dressler,” Holly says. “Do you remember him?”

Anderson says something and gestures with his gnarly right hand. The left lies dead on the arm of his chair, palm upturned.

“He says he can hear you, he’s not deaf.”

Holly reddens. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. I’d pull up his mask, but then I wouldn’t understand him, either. He has been vaxxed. Everyone here has.” She lowers her voice. “A couple of the nurses and one of the aides refused, and they’ve been let go.”

Holly taps her upper arm. “Me too.”

“You remember Mr. Dressler, don’t you, Vic? You called him a mensch.”

“Meh,” Anderson agrees, and makes his one-sided smile again. Holly thinks there was a time, and not so long ago, when he must have looked like Lee J. Cobb in On the Waterfront or 12 Angry Men. Handsome and strong.

“Excuse me one minute,” Evelyn says, and leaves them. On the TV, Aunt Bea has just said something funny, and the laugh-track erupts in hilarity.

Holly draws up a chair. “So you do remember Cary, Mr. Anderson?”

“Yef.”

“And you remember Rodney Harris, right?”

“Oddy! All-all! Oore!”

Evelyn comes back. She has a small bottle of Cetaphil. “He says sure. I don’t know what all-all means.”

“I do,” Holly says. “Small Ball, right?”

Anderson does another of his jerky nods. “All-all, ight!”

His wife kisses him again, on the temple this time, then drops to her knees and begins rubbing cream into his scaly feet. There is a matter-of-fact kindness to this that makes Holly feel both glad and like crying. “Answer Ms. Gibney’s questions, Vic, and then we’ll have a nice little visit. Would you like some yogurt?”

“Oore!”

“All I’m really curious about, Mr. Anderson, is how well Professor Harris knew Cary. I guess not very well, right?”

Anderson makes a chewing motion on the side of his face that still works, as if trying to wake the other side up. Then he talks. Holly can only get a few words and phrases, but Evelyn gets everything.

“He’s saying that Roddy and Cary were good buddies.”

“Ooo-duddies!” Anderson agrees, and then goes on. Evelyn continues to work the cream into his feet as she listens. She smiles a couple of times and once laughs out loud, a sound Holly finds much more natural than the TV laugh-track.

“The prof didn’t go out with the others to smoke, but sometimes he’d buy Cary a beer after the game. Vic says the prof encouraged Cary to talk about himself because—”

“No one else ever did,” Holly says. She got that part. To Vic she says, “Let me be sure I understand, and then I’ll let you get to your yogurt. You’d say they were good friends?”

Anderson gives his jerky half-nod. “Yef.”

“Did they drink beer together at the bowling alley? The Bowlaroo, or whatever it’s called?”

“Nef’or. Elly’s.”

“Next door at Nelly’s,” Evelyn says, and caps the lotion. “Do you need anything else, Ms. Gibney? He tires easily these days.”

“Holly.” A woman who kneels to rub lotion into her husband’s feet can call her by her first name anytime. “Please call me Holly. And no, that was it.”

“Why the interest in Professor Harris?” Evelyn asks… and wrinkles her nose a little. It’s just a small tell, but Holly sees it.

“Did you know him?”

“Not really, but after the tournaments were over there was always a meal at someone’s house. You know, like a celebration, win or lose. With Vic’s team it was mostly lose.”

Anderson gives a rusty chuckle and his jerky nod.

“Anyway, when it was our turn we had a barbecue in our backyard, and the prof basically took over the grill. He said… actually said… that I was doing the burgers all wrong. Cooking the nutrients out of them, or something. I was polite about it, let him take over, but I thought it was very rude. Also…”

“Aw!” Anderson interjects. His grin is simultaneously awful and charming. “Aff-aw!”

“That’s right,” Evelyn says. “They were half-raw. I couldn’t eat mine. Why are you so interested in Professor Harris? I thought it was Cary you were investigating.”

Holly puts on her best perplexed expression. “It is, but I keep thinking if I talk to enough members of the bowling team, I’ll find a thread I can pick up and follow. I’ve already talked to Mr. Welch and Mr. Clippard.”

“Oowee,” Anderson says. “Oo-dole Oowee-a-Cli!”

“Good old Hughie the Clip,” Evelyn says absently.

“Yes, I got that. Vic, did Professor Harris drive a van?”

Anderson does that chewing thing again as he mulls this over. Then he says, “Oobayoo.”

“I didn’t get that, hon,” Evelyn says.

Holly did. “He says it was a Subaru.”

At the desk she tells Mrs. Norman she’ll be back to see her uncle shortly, but she forgot something in the car. This is a lie. What she wants is a cigarette. And she needs to think.

She smokes in her usual position—driver’s door open, head down, feet on the pavement, freebasing nicotine before going back inside to see Uncle Henry, who somehow missed Covid and continues to exist in what must be a twilight world of perplexity. Or maybe even perplexity is gone. He still has occasional brief periods of awareness, but these have grown farther and farther apart. His brain, once so adept at names and numbers and addresses—not to mention at hiding money from his niece—is now your basic carrier wave that gives an occasional blip.

She’s glad she came to see Vic Anderson, partly because it cheered her to see such long-term affection between a husband and wife, but mostly because it casts a fascinating light on Rodney Harris. He drives a Subaru instead of a disability van—no big surprise, since he’s obviously not disabled—but to Holly he looks more and more like someone who might be covering for the Red Bank Predator. Or abetting him.

According to Professor Harris, he and Cary Dressler were mere acquaintances. According to Vic Anderson, they sometimes had beers together at the bar next door—hops and grains apparently not defiling Harris’s ideas of nutrition the way that marijuana did. Anderson said Harris encouraged Dressler to talk about himself “because no one else ever did.”

Just a kindly old professor drawing out a lonely young man? Possible, but if so, why had Harris lied about it? The idea that Rodney Harris had a letch for Dressler, just as Keisha said Harris’s wife might have had a letch for Bonnie, occurs to Holly, but she dismisses it. The possibility that Harris was information-gathering seems more likely.

Harris isn’t killing people, not at his age, and the idea that his wife is helping him do it is ridiculous, so if what Holly is thinking is true, they must be covering for someone. She needs to check and find out if they have children, but right now she has to bite the bullet and see the human vegetable who still looks like her uncle.

But as she gets up, something else occurs to her. Holly doesn’t like Facebook and only goes on it once in awhile under her own name so her account won’t molder, but she goes there often as LaurenBacallFan. She does so now, and visits Penny Dahl’s page. She should have gone there sooner, and isn’t entirely surprised to see her own name. She is described as “noted local detective Holly Gibney.” She hates the word detective, she’s an investigator. And she should have told Penny not to post her name but didn’t think of it.

She wonders if Professor Harris knows she’s also investigating Bonnie Dahl’s disappearance. If he has been, in other words, one step ahead of her.

“If he is, I just caught up,” Holly says, and goes back into Rolling Hills Elder Care to visit her uncle.

A new millionaire walks into an old folks’ home suite, Holly thinks after giving a token knock on the door, which is already ajar. Some of the rooms in the Rolling Hills facility are single-occupancy; the majority are doubles, because it saves walking for the hard-working nurses, orderlies, and on-call doctors. (And doubtless maximizes profit.) There are also four two-room suites, and Uncle Henry has one of those. If the thought of how Henry Sirois, retired accountant, could afford such pricey digs has ever crossed Holly’s mind (she can’t remember if it ever did), she supposes she must have thought he had been a saving soul, just in case his old age should come to this.

Now she knows better.

Henry is sitting in his living room, dressed in a checked shirt and bluejeans that bag on a skinny body that used to be plump. His hair is freshly clipped and his face is smooth from a morning shave. Morning sun shines on his chin, which is wet with drool. There’s some sort of a protein drink with a straw in it on the table beside him. An orderly she passed in the hall asked Holly if she would like to help him with it and Holly said she’d be happy to. The TV is on, tuned to a game show hosted by Allen Ludden, who went to his reward long ago.

Looking around at the sparse but very nice furnishings, including a king bed with hospital rails in the second room, Holly feels a dull and hopeless anger that is very unlike her. She was a deeply depressed teenager and still suffers bouts of depression, and she can be angry, but lacking Holly hope? Not her style. At least usually. Today, though, in this room, circumstances are different.

Esau sold his future for a bowl of lentil stew, she thinks. I didn’t sell mine for anything. They stole it… or tried. That’s why I’m angry. And the two who did it are beyond my reach and reproach, although this one is still breathing. That’s why I’m hopeless. I think.

“How are you today, Uncle Henry?” she asks, pulling a chair up beside him. On TV, contestants are trying to guess humiliate and not having much luck. Holly could certainly help them there.

Henry turns his head to look at her and she can hear the tendons in his neck creak like rusty hinges. “Janey,” he says, and turns his gaze back to the TV.

“No, I’m Holly.”

“Will you bring in the dog? I hear her barking.”

“Have some of this.”

She lifts the protein shake, which is in a capped plastic cup that won’t shatter or spill if he knocks it on the floor. Without taking his eyes off the television, he closes his wrinkled lips around the straw and sucks. Holly has read up on Alzheimer’s and knows that some things stay. Men and women who can’t remember their own names can still ride a bike. Men and women who can’t find their way home can still sing Broadway show tunes. Men and women who have learned to suck liquid from a straw as children can still do it even in their dotage, when all else is gone. Certain facts stay, as well.

“Who was the fifth President of the United States, Uncle Henry? Do you remember?”

“James Monroe,” Henry says, without hesitation and without taking his eyes from the TV.

“And who is President now?”

“Nixon. Nixy-Babes.” He chuckles. Protein shake runs down his chin. Holly wipes it away before it can dapple his shirt.

“Why did you do it, Uncle Henry?” But that isn’t the right question—not that she expects an answer; the question is what you’d call rhetorical. “Let me put it another way. Why did you let her do it?”

“Won’t that dog ever shut up?”

She can’t shut up the dog—if there ever was one it was in the long-ago—but she can shut up the TV. She uses the controller to do it.

“She didn’t want me to succeed, did she? She didn’t want me to have a life of my own.”

Uncle Henry turns toward her, mouth agape. “Janey?”

“And you let her!”

Henry raises a hand to his face and wipes his mouth. “Let who? Do what? Janey, why are you shouting?”

“My mother!” Holly shouts. Sometimes you can get through to him if you shout, and right now she wants to. She needs to. “Fucking Charlotte Gibney!”

“Charlie?”

What’s the point? There is no point. A new millionaire walks into a bar and discovers there is no point. Holly wipes her eyes with her sleeve.

The door opens and the orderly who asked if Holly would help her uncle with his protein shake looks in disapprovingly. “Is everything all right in here?”

“Yes,” Holly says. “I was raising my voice so he’d hear me. He’s a little deaf, you know.”

The orderly closes the door. Uncle Henry is staring at Holly. No, gaping at her, his expression one of deep puzzlement. He is a brainless old man in a two-room suite and here he will stay, drinking protein shakes and watching old game shows until he dies. She will come because it’s her duty to come, and he will call her Janey—because Janey was his favorite—until he dies.

“She never even left a note,” Holly says, but not to him. He is out of reach. “Felt no need to explain herself, let alone apologize. That’s how she was. How she always was.”

“James Monroe,” says Uncle Henry, “served from 1817 to 1825. Died in 1831. On the Fourth of July. Where is that fucking drink? It tastes like shit but I’m dry as an old cowchip.”

Holly raises the cup and Uncle Henry battens on the straw. He sucks until it crackles. When she puts the cup down the straw stays in his mouth. It makes him look like a clown. She pulls it out and says she has to go. She’s ashamed of her pointless outburst. She raises the remote to turn the TV back on, but he puts his gnarled and liver-spotted hand over hers.

“Holly,” he says.

“Yes,” she says, surprised, and looks into his face. His eyes are clear. As clear as they ever get these days, anyway.

“Nobody could stand against Charlie. She always got her way.”

Not with me, Holly thinks. I escaped. Thanks to Bill and only by the skin of my teeth, but I did. “You came out of the fog just to tell me that?”

No reply. She gives him a kiss and tells him again that she has to go.

“Get the man, Janey,” he says. “The one who comes. Tell him I need him. I think I might have pissed myself.”

Barbara is in Olivia’s living room, replying to Holly’s text when Marie calls down from the head of the stairs. “I think you should come up, honey. She wants us both. I think… I think she might be going.”

Barbara sends the text off unfinished and runs upstairs. Olivia Kingsbury—graduate of Bryn Mawr, a poet whose work spans almost eighty years, shortlisted for the National Book Award, twice bruited for the Nobel, once on the front page of the New York Times (at the head of a peace march and carrying one side of a banner reading U.S. OUT OF VIETNAM NOW), longtime teacher at Bell College of Arts and Sciences, mentor to Barbara Robinson—is indeed going. Marie stands on one side of her bed, Barbara on the other. They each hold one of the old poet’s hands. There are no last words. Olivia looks at Marie. She looks at Barbara. She smiles. She dies. A world of words dies with her.

On her way back to the city, Holly stops at a Wawa for gas. After she fills the tank, she drives to the far side of the parking lot and has a cigarette in her usual try-not-to-pollute-the-car position—door open, elbows on knees, feet on the pavement. She checks her phone and sees she’s got a text from Barbara. To which one Holly has sent What do you mean? followed by a more exact request: Is it Rodney Harris you recognized? Have you met him? I know you’re busy but let me know when you can.

The reply: Went to Emily Harris for an intro, didn’t dare cold-call on Olivia. Prof Harris was washing his car. We just said hi. BTW I added Jorge Castro to J’s MapQuest. Probably not impor

That’s where the text ends. Holly supposes Barbara sent it off unfinished by mistake, then got busy doing something else. Holly’s done that herself. She remembers Jerome telling her he marked the various disappearances on a MapQuest printout, but who is Jorge Castro?

She calls Barbara to find out. On the coffee table in Olivia Kingsbury’s living room, Barbara’s iPhone gives out a low phone-on-silent buzzing and then falls still. Holly starts to leave a message, then changes her mind. She locks her car and goes into the little Wawa restaurant (really just a jumped-up snack bar), where there’s free WiFi. She buys a hamburger that’s already grown old in its foil bag, adds a Coke, and sits down with her iPad. She plugs in Jorge Castro’s name and gets a whole slew of hits, including an auto parts millionaire and a baseball player. She thinks the most likely Castro is the novelist and yes, that one has a connection to the college on the hill. Below Castro’s Wikipedia entry is an article from The BellRinger, the college newspaper. She taps on the link, nibbling at her burger without really tasting it—not that there’s much to taste. The store’s WiFi is slow but gets there eventually. There’s a big headline, so Holly guesses it was on page one of the issue published on October 29th of 2012.

There’s more, including a photo of Jorge Castro teaching and another that must be an author photo from the back jacket of one of his books. Holly thinks he’s quite handsome. Not quite as good-looking as Antonio Banderas (a personal favorite), but in the same neighborhood.

She doesn’t believe the article she’s just read would come close to passing muster on a big city newspaper, even with the dire straits the print media has fallen into; it has a kind of undergraduate nudge-nudge, wink-wink feel that makes her think of Inside View or one of the New York Post gossip columns. But it’s informative. Oh yes. That heat is going up her spine again. She thinks it’s no wonder that Barbara added Castro to Jerome’s map.

Olivia Kingsbury must have told her about him. And it fits, doesn’t it? Even the notes fit. Castro: “I’ve had all I can take.” Bonnie Dahl: “I’ve had enough.” If those two disappearances weren’t nine years apart…

Yes, and if the police weren’t short-staffed because of Covid; if they weren’t afraid that one of the current Black Lives Matter protests might spiral into violence; if there had ever been a single body, something besides a moped and a bike and a skateboard…

“And if pigs could fly, poop would rain all around us,” Holly mutters.

Jorge Castro in 2012, Cary Dressler in 2015, Ellen Craslow and Peter Steinman in 2018, Bonnie Dahl in 2021. All three years apart, give or take, except for Ellen and Peter. Maybe one of those two had authentically run away, but wasn’t it also possible that something had gone wrong with one of them? Wasn’t what the Predator wanted? But what did he want? Serial killers who had a sexual motive usually stuck to either men (Gacy, Dahmer) or women (Bundy, Rader, et al.). The Red Bank Predator took both… including one male child.

Why?

Holly thinks there’s someone who can give her the answer: Professor Rodney Harris, aka Small Ball and Mr. Meat. That nickname makes her think of Jeffrey Dahmer again, but that’s too ridiculous to believe.

Holly tosses her half-eaten burger in the trash, takes her soda, and leaves.

It’s Barbara’s idea, and Marie agrees instantly. If, that is, they can get Rosalyn Burkhart on board. She’s the head of the English Department.

The two women are out back on Olivia’s patio, drinking sodas and waiting for the Crossman Funeral Home hack to come and take away the old poet’s earthly remains. There is no question about any of the arrangements; Olivia left complete instructions with Marie after her last bout of a-fib, right down to the music she wanted played (Flogging Molly’s “If Ever I Leave This World Alive” at the start; “Spirit in the Sky,” by Norman Greenbaum, at the end). What she didn’t specify was a memorial reading on the Bell College quad, and that’s what Barbara suggested.

When Rosalyn hears that Olivia has passed, she bursts into tears. They have Marie’s phone on speaker, and that makes them both cry. When the tears end, Barbara tells Professor Burkhart her idea, and the department head gets on board immediately.

“If it’s outdoors we can gather,” she says. “We can even make masks optional if people agree to stand six feet apart. We’ll read her poems, is that the idea?”

“Yes,” Marie says. “She has plenty of author copies. I’ll bring them and we can hand them out.”

“Sunset’s around quarter of nine this time of year,” Rosalyn says. “We can gather on the quad at say… eight?”

Barbara and Marie share a glance and say yes together.

“I’ll start making calls,” Rosalyn says. “Will you do the same, Ms. Duchamp?”

“Absolutely. We may duplicate a few, but that’s okay.”

Barbara says, “I’m going to the funeral home when Olivia goes. I want to spend some time in their chapel, just to think.” A new idea strikes her. “And maybe I can get candles? We could light them at the reading?”

“Wonderful idea,” Rosalyn says. “Are you the promising young poet Olivia talked about? You are, aren’t you?”

“I guess I am,” Barbara says, “but all I can think about now is her. I loved her so much.”

“We all did,” Rosalyn says, then gives a teary laugh. “With the possible exception of Emmy Harris, that is. Join us when you can, Barbara. My office is in Terrell Hall. I assume we’re all vaccinated?”

Barbara follows the hearse to the funeral home. She sits in the chapel, thinking about Olivia. She thinks this is the way birds stitch the sky closed at sunset and that makes her cry again. She asks Mr. Greer, the funeral director, about candles. He gives her two boxes of them. She says they’ll take up a collection at Olivia’s memorial to pay for them. Mr. Greer says that will not be necessary. She drives to the Bell campus and joins Rosalyn and Marie. Others come. They go outside, where there are tears and laughter and stories. The names of favorite poems are exchanged. More calls are made and more people join. Boxed wine makes an appearance. Toasts are given. Barbara feels the almost indescribable comfort of like minds and wishes she were one of these people who think stories and poems are as important as stocks and bonds. Then she thinks, But I am. She thinks, Thank God for you, Olivia.

The afternoon passes. In Olivia Kingsbury’s living room, Barbara’s phone sits on the coffee table, forgotten.

At three o’clock that afternoon Holly sits in her office, looking at her framed photo of Bill Hodges. She wishes he were here now. With no backup she can count on—unless she wants to call Izzy Jaynes, which she most assuredly does not want to do—Holly is on her own.

She goes to the window and looks out on Frederick Street. It always helps to speak her thoughts aloud, so that’s what she does.

“I’m not surprised that the police didn’t realize what was happening. This guy has been extremely smart as he goes about his business.”

And why wouldn’t he be? she thinks.

“And why wouldn’t he be? If I’m right, an extremely smart professor of biology has been helping him, getting background information before and planting false trails—at least in some cases—after. His wife is probably also helping him and she’s smart, too. There are no bodies, they’ve been disposed of somehow, and the victims have absolutely nothing in common. I have no idea what the Predator’s motive might be, or why the Harrises are aiding and abetting, but the very fact…”

She stops, frowning, thinking how she wants to say this (sometimes thinking is knowing, Bill used to say). Then she goes on, speaking to the window. Speaking to herself.

“The very fact that the victims are so different actually spotlights the method. Because in every case… except the Steinman boy, and I tend to think more and more that he was a victim of opportunity… in every case the Harrises are there in the background. Rodney bowled with Dressler. Craslow worked in the building where I’m sure Rodney has or had an office. Bonnie was one of their Christmas elves. And now this guy Jorge Castro. Emily Harris was his colleague in the Bell English Department. I think the Harrises are in this up to their necks. Are they using a disability van? Is one of them playing crippled quail?”

There’s nothing she can prove, not one single fracking thing, but there may be one thing she can do. It would be the equivalent of giving a potential witness a sixpack of photographs to see if the wit can pick out the doer.

She searches her iPad, locates what she wants, then finds Imani McGuire’s number in her notes and gives her a call. After re-introducing herself, Holly asks if she has Internet on her phone.

“Of course I do,” Immi says, sounding amused. “Doesn’t everybody?”

“Okay, go to the Bell College site. Can you do that?”

“Wait… gotta put you on speaker… okay, got it.”

“Select YEAR. It’s on the pull-down menu.”

“Yup. Which year? They go all the way back to 1965.”

Holly has already picked one out and is looking at it on her tablet. “2010.”

“All right.” Immi sounds interested. “What next?”

“Go to English Department Faculty. You should see pictures, some men and some women.”

“Yes, okay, I’m there.”

Holly is biting her lips. Here comes the big one. “Do you see the woman who cleaned out Ellen’s trailer?”

Imani doesn’t keep her in suspense. “Goddam! It’s her. Younger, but I’m almost positive.”

A defense lawyer would tear a big hole in that almost in court, but they’re not in court now.

“It says her name is Emily Harris.”

“Yes,” Holly says, and does a little dance in front of the window looking out on Frederick Street. “Thank you.”

“What was a college professor doing cleaning out El’s trailer?”

“That’s a good question, isn’t it?”

Holly writes a preliminary report, setting out everything that she’s discovered, partly through her own investigations and partly because the universe threw her a couple of ropes. She likes to think (but doesn’t quite believe) there’s a kind of providence at work in matters of right and wrong, blind but powerful, like that statue of Lady Justice holding out her scales. That there’s a force in the affairs of men and women standing on the side of the weak and unsuspecting, and against evil. It may be too late for Bonnie and the others, but if there are no future victims, that’s a win.

She likes to think of herself as one of the good guys. Smoking aside, of course.

The report is slow work, full of suppositions, and it’s late afternoon by the time it’s done. She considers who she should send it to. Not Penny; that needs to be an in-person debriefing, not bad news—terrible news—that comes in an email filled with stilted phrases like Investigator Gibney ascertained and According to Jet Mart store clerk Herrera. Ordinarily she would send a copy to her partner’s agency address, but Pete is in the hospital and she doesn’t want to trouble him with her current case… which he advised her against taking in the first place.

Except that’s bullshit.

She doesn’t want to send it to him or anyone, at least not yet. Holly has come a long way from the shy introvert Bill Hodges met lurking outside a funeral home all those years ago, but that woman still lives inside her and always will. That woman is terrified of being wrong and still believes she is wrong as often as she’s right. It’s a quantum advance from the woman who thought she was always wrong, but the insecurity remains. At sixty and seventy—at eighty, if she lives that long, which she probably won’t if she keeps smoking—she will still be getting up from her bed three or four nights a week to make sure she turned off the stove burners and locked the doors, even though she knows very well that she’s done those things. If a case is like an egg, she is, too. One with a fragile shell. She is still afraid of being laughed at. Still afraid of being called Jibba-Jibba. This is what she carries.

I need to see the van, if it’s there. Then I can be sure.

Yes. Getting a look at the van, plus Immi McGuire’s identification of Emily Harris as the woman who cleaned out Ellen Craslow’s trailer, will be enough to satisfy her. Then she can tell Bonnie’s mother everything tonight at nine. She can give Penny the choice of having her continue the investigation, or the two of them going to Isabelle Jaynes of the city police. Holly will recommend the latter, because Izzy can have the Harrises brought in for questioning. According to their Wikipedia entries they are childless, but you can’t trust everything you read on Wiki. What she believes—no, what she knows—is that these two old people are protecting somebody.

She doesn’t try to fool herself into believing that the Harrises are harmless just because they’re in their eighties; almost any human or animal will fight when cornered, old or not. But Rodney Harris no longer bowls because of his bad hips, and according to Imani, his wife suffers from sciatica. Holly thinks she’s a match for them. Assuming she takes care. Of course if they catch her snooping around their garage they could report her to the police… but if the disability van is in their garage, and a potential mine of DNA evidence, would they?

Holly realizes she’s been sitting in front of her preliminary report for almost forty-five minutes, going over and over her options like a gerbil on an exercise wheel. Bill would say it’s time to shit or git. She saves her report and sends it to nobody. If something should happen to her—unlikely, but possible—Pete will find it. Or Jerome, when he comes back from his great adventure.

She opens the wall safe and takes out the .38 Smith & Wesson. It’s a Victory model that was Bill’s, and his father’s before him. Now it’s Holly’s. When Bill was on the cops, his service weapon was a Glock automatic, but he preferred the S&W. Because, he said, a revolver never jams. There’s also a box of shells in the safe. She loads the gun, leaving the chamber under the hammer empty as per Bill’s instructions, and closes the cylinder. She drops the gun into her shoulder bag.

There’s something else of Bill’s in the safe, something she’s taught herself to use with Pete’s help. She takes out a flat alligator-skin case, nine inches by three, its surface rubbed smooth. She puts it in her bag with the gun (not to mention her few cosmetics, her ChapStick, her Kleenex, her little flashlight, her small can of pepper spray, her Bic lighter, and a fresh pack of cigarettes).

She asks Siri what time the sun sets, and Siri—accommodating and knowledgeable as ever, she even knows jokes—tells her it will be at 8:48 PM. She can’t wait that long if she wants to get a good picture of the hoped-for van, but she thinks dusk is a good time for dirty work. The Harrises will probably be in their living room, either watching a movie or the Olympic games going on in Tokyo. Holly hates to wait, but since she has to, she decides to go home and kill time there.

On the way out of the office she thinks of an ad she’s seen on TV. Teenagers are running from a guy who looks like Leatherface. One suggests hiding in the attic. Another in the basement. The third says, “Why can’t we just get in the running car?” and points to it. The fourth, her boyfriend, says, “Are you crazy? Let’s hide behind the chainsaws.” So they do. The announcer intones, “When you’re in a horror movie, you make poor decisions.” Holly isn’t in a horror movie, though, and she tells herself she isn’t making a poor decision. She has her spray, and if she needs it, she has Bill’s gun.

In her deepest heart, she knows better… but she also knows she needs to see.

At home, Holly makes something to eat and can’t eat it. She calls Jerome and he picks up at once, sounding euphoric. “Guess where I am!”

“On top of the Empire State Building.”

“No.”

“Times Square.”

“No.”

“Staten Island Ferry?”

He makes a buzzer sound.

“I give up, Jerome.”

“Central Park! It’s beautiful! I could walk for miles in this place and see something new everywhere. It’s even got an overgrown part like the Thickets in Deerfield Park, only it’s called the Ramble!”

“Well, don’t get mugged.”

“No, I can always do that when I come home.” He laughs.

“You sound happy.”

“I am. It’s been an authentically good day. I’m happy for me, I’m happy for Barbara, and Mom and Dad are happy for both of us.”

“Of course they are,” Holly says. She isn’t going to tell him that Barbara’s friend and mentor died; that’s not her news to pass on, and why bring him down? “I’m also happy for you, Jerome. Just don’t spoil it by calling me Hollyberry.”

“Wouldn’t think of it. What’s going on in the case?”

A thought blips across her mind: This is my chance to get in the running car instead of hiding behind the chainsaws. But the part of her mind that insists on checking the stove burners, the part that can never forget she left A Day No Pigs Would Die on the bus, whispers not now, not yet.

“Well,” she says, “Barbara may have run across another one.”

She tells him about Jorge Castro. After that the conversation turns to his book and his hopes for it. They talk awhile longer, then Holly lets Jerome go to continue his magical mystery tour of Central Park. She realizes she hasn’t told him about the sudden upgrade in her personal worth, either. Not him or anyone else. In a way, it’s like not talking about the possibility of the van. In both cases there’s a little too much baggage to unpack, at least now.

Barbara and Marie brought author copies of Olivia’s twelve books, including a few of the hefty Collected Poems, but it turns out to be unnecessary. Most of the people gathering on the quad in the shade of the iconic bell tower bring their own. Many are dog-eared and battered. One is held together by rubber bands. Some are also carrying pictures of Olivia at various stages of her life (the most common is the one of her and Humphrey Bogart standing in front of the Trevi Fountain). Some bring flowers. One is wearing a tee-shirt, surely specially made for the occasion, reading simply OK LIVES.

Frankie’s Dog Wagon shows up and does a brisk business in soft drinks and foot-longs. Barbara doesn’t know if that was Rosalyn’s idea or if Frankie showed up on his own. For all Barbara knows, Frankie is a fan of Olivia’s work. That wouldn’t surprise her. This evening nothing would surprise her. She has never felt so simultaneously sad, happy, and proud.

By six-thirty there have to be over a hundred people on the quad, and more are coming. No one is waiting for the candles to be lit at dusk; a young man with a Mohawk mounts a stepstool and begins reading “The Foal in the Wilderness” through a bullhorn. People gather around to listen, munching dogs, drinking sodas, munching fries and onion rings, drinking beer and wine.

Marie loops an arm around Barbara’s shoulders. “Isn’t this wonderful? Wouldn’t she have loved it?”

Barbara thinks back to her first meeting with the old poet, Olivia patting her enormous fur coat and saying Fo, fo, faux fur. She starts crying and hugs Marie. “She would have loved it so much.”

Mohawk Boy gives way to a girl with a snake tattooed around one upper arm. The girl raises the bullhorn and begins reading “I Was Taller When Young.”

Barbara listens. She’s had a little wine, but her head has never felt clearer. No more to drink, she thinks. You have to remember this. You have to remember it all your life. As Tattoo Girl gives way to a skinny bespectacled guy who looks like a grad student, she remembers that she’s left her cell phone at Olivia’s house. Ordinarily she goes nowhere without it, but tonight she doesn’t want it. What she wants is a hotdog with lots of mustard. And poetry. She wants to fill herself up with it.

While Barbara and Marie are handing out copies of Olivia’s books to the few who don’t have them, Roddy Harris is walking in Deerfield Park, as he often does in the late afternoon or early evening. It limbers up his sore hips—they’re sorer than they should be after weeks of partaking with fresh comestibles courtesy of the Christmas elf—but there’s another reason, as well. He doesn’t like to admit it, but it’s becoming harder and harder to hold onto things. To not lose the plot, as the saying is. Walking helps. It aerates the brain.

In the last weeks Roddy has eaten half a dozen dessert parfaits containing a mixture of ice cream, blueberries, and elf brains, but it’s still harder and harder to stay mentally sharp. This is both bewildering and infuriating. All his research insists that consuming a diet rich in human brain tissue has positive and immediate benefits for the consumer. When male chimpanzees steal and kill the offspring of mothers unwise enough to leave their babies unguarded, they always eat the brains first. The reason might not be clear to them, but it is to researchers; the brains of primates contain fatty acids that are crucial for neurological development and neurological health. Fatty acids (and the human brain is sixty per cent fat) aren’t manufactured by the body, so if they are being lost—as his are—they must be replaced. It’s quite simple, and for the last nine years it’s worked. Stated in simple terms that he would never dare put in a monograph or articulate in a lecture, eating healthy human brain tissue, especially the brain of a young person, cures Alzheimer’s.

Or so he’s believed… but what if he’s wrong?

No, no, no!

He refuses to believe his years of research are in any way incorrect, but what if he is excreting neurological fats faster than he can take them in? What if he is quite literally pissing his brains out? The idea is ludicrous, of course, and yet he can no longer remember his zip code. He thinks he takes a size nine shoe, but can’t be positive; maybe it’s an eight. He would have to check the insole to be sure. The other day he had to struggle to remember his own middle name!

Mostly, he’s been able to hide this erosion. Emily sees it, of course, but not even Emily has realized the extent of it. Thank God he’s not teaching anymore, and thank God he’s got Emily to edit and proofread his letters to the various academic journals he subscribes to.

A great deal of the time he’s as sharp and on-point as ever. Sometimes he thinks of himself as a passenger in a plane flying over a clear landscape at low altitude. Then the plane goes into a cloud, and everything is gray. You hold onto your armrests and wait out the bumps. When questions are asked, you smile and look wise instead of answering. Then the plane flies out of the cloud, the landscape is clear again, and all the facts are at your fingertips!

His walks in the park are soothing because he doesn’t have to worry about saying the wrong thing or asking the wrong question, like the name of a person you’ve known for the last thirty years. In the park he doesn’t have to be constantly on guard. He can stop trying so damn hard. He sometimes walks for miles, nibbling at the little balls of deep-fried human meat he keeps in his pocket, savoring the porky taste and the crunch (he still has all his own teeth, a thing he’s damn proud of).

One path leads to another, then to a third and fourth. Sometimes he sits on a bench and looks at birds he can no longer name… and when he’s by himself, he no longer has to name them. Because after all, a bird by any other name would still be a bird, Shakespeare was right about that. On occasion he’s even rented one of the brightly colored little boats lined up on the dock of Deerfield Pond and pedaled across it, enjoying the still water and the peace of not caring if he’s in the cloud or out of it.

Of course there was one occasion when he couldn’t remember how to get home, or what his house number was. He could remember the name of their street, though, and when he asked a groundskeeper to kindly point him in the direction of Ridge Road, the man did so as if it were a matter of course. Probably it was. Deerfield is a big park and people got turned around all the time.

Emily is suffering her own problems. Since the Christmas elf, with her bonanza of fatty tissue, her sciatica is better, but these days it never leaves her entirely alone. There was a time—after Castro, after Dressler—when he watched her tango across the living room, arms outstretched to embrace an invisible partner. They’d even had sex, especially after Castro, but no more. Not in… three years? Four? When was Castro?

It’s wrong for her to feel that way, all wrong. Human meat contains macro- and micronutrients that are available in such abundance in no other flesh. Only genus suidae even comes close—warthogs, boars, your common barnyard pig. Human muscle and bone marrow cure arthritis and sciatica; the Spanish physician Arnold of Villanova knew that in the thirteenth century. Pope Innocent VIII ate the powdered brains of young boys and drank their blood. In medieval England, the flesh of hanged prisoners was considered a delicacy.

But Em is fading. He knows her as well as she knows him, and he sees it.

As if thinking about her has summoned her, his phone plays a bit of “Copacabana,” Emily’s ringtone.

Gather yourself, he thinks. Gather yourself and be sharp. Be there.

“Hello, my love, what’s up?”

“There’s good news and bad news,” she says. “Which do you want first?”

“The good, of course. You know I like dessert before vegetables.”

“The good news is that the old bitch who stole my protégé has finally popped her clogs.”

His circuits are firing well just now and it only takes him a second to respond. “You’re speaking of Olivia Kingsbury.”

“None other.” Em gives a short and humorless laugh. “Can you imagine how tough she’d be? Like pemmican!”

“You speak metaphorically, of course,” Roddy says. He’s ahead of her this once, aware that they are talking on their cells, and cell phone calls may be intercepted.

“Of course, of course,” Em says. “Ding-dong, the bitch is dead. Where are you, lovey? In the park?”

“Yes.” He sits down on a bench. In the distance he can hear children in the playground, but not many, from the sound of them; it’s dinnertime.

“When will you be home?”

“Oh… in a bit. Did you say there was bad news?”

“Unfortunately. Do you remember the woman who came to see us about Dressler?”

“Yes.” He has only the vaguest recollection.

“I think she has suspicions that we’ve been involved in… you know.”

“Absolutely.” He has no idea what she’s talking about. The plane is entering another cloudbank.

“We should talk, because this may be serious. Be back before dark, all right? I’m making elf sandwiches. Lots of mustard, the way you like it.”

“Sounds good.” It does, but only in an academic sort of way; not so long ago the thought of a sandwich made with thin-shaved slices of human meat (so tender!) would have made him ravenous. “I’ll just walk a little more. Work up an appetite.”

“Okay, honey. Don’t forget.”

Roddy puts his phone back in his pocket and looks around. Where, exactly, is he? Then he sees the statue of Thomas Edison holding up a lightbulb and knows he’s near the pond. Good! He always enjoys looking at the pond.

The woman who came to see us about Dressler.

Okay, now he remembers. A little mouse too frightened to take off her mask. One of the elbow-tappers. What could they possibly have to fear from her?

Thanks to earplugs coated with human fat—he wears them at night—his ears are as good as his teeth, and he can hear the faint sound of someone at the college huckstering through an amplification system. He has no idea what can be going on up there with the college shut down for the summer, not to mention all the ridiculous scaremongering about what Emily calls the New Flu, but maybe it has to do with that Black lad who was killed resisting the police. Whatever it is has nothing to do with him.

Roddy Harris, PhD in biology, renowned nutritionist, aka Mr. Meat, walks on.

Uncle Henry used to say Holly would be early for everything, and it’s true. She makes it halfway through the evening news, David Muir spieling on about Covid, Covid, and more Covid, and then she can wait no longer. She leaves her apartment and drives across town with the evening light, still strong, slanting in through her windshield and making her squint even with the sun visor down. She cuts through the campus and hears something happening on the quad—words she can’t make out blaring through a mic or a bullhorn—and assumes it’s a BLM rally.

She cruises down the long curving street past the Victorians on one side and the park on the other, obeying the 25 MPH speed limit and being careful not to slow as she passes the Harris home. But she gives it a good look. No sign of life, which doesn’t mean anything. They may have gone out to dinner, but given the country’s current situation—Covid, Covid, and more Covid—Holly doubts it. They’re probably watching television or eating in, maybe both at the same time. She can’t see if the garage has two bays because of that damn sloping driveway, but she can see its roof, and it certainly looks big enough for two vehicles.

She also scopes out the house next door, the one with the FOR SALE sign out front and a lawn that needs watering. Real estate agent should take care of that, Holly thinks, and wonders if the agent might by chance be George Rafferty. The sign doesn’t say. It’s not the agent or the lawn she’s interested in, anyway. It’s the privacy hedge running the length of the vacant property. All the way past the Harris garage.

Holly continues down the hill and pulls in at the curb a little way up from the playground. There’s a parking lot there (the very one from which Jorge Castro was taken, in fact), and there are plenty of empty spaces, but she wants to smoke while she waits and she doesn’t want little kids watching her indulge her nasty habit. She opens her door, swings her legs out, and lights up.

Twenty past seven. She takes her phone out of her pocket, thinks about calling Isabelle Jaynes, and puts it away again. She needs to see if that van is in the Harrises’ garage. If it isn’t, Holly will tell Penny she’s against going to the police—no proof, only a few circumstantial path-crossings that could be dismissed by the Harrises (or their lawyer) as coincidence—but if there’s even a faint chance that Bonnie is still alive, Penny will almost certainly opt for the cops. That will tip off the Harrises that they’ve been pegged, and they will pass that news on to whoever they’re protecting. That person, that predator, will then likely disappear.

The van. If the van is there, all will be well.

Most of the little kids have left the playground now. A trio of teenagers, two boys and a girl, are goofing on the little roundabout, the boys pushing, the girl riding with her arms lifted and her hair flying back. Holly supposes they will be joined by others. Whatever is happening at the college on the hill holds no interest for townie boys and girls.

She checks her watch again. 7:30. She can’t wait too long if she wants to get a good picture of the van, always supposing there is one, but there’s still too much daylight. Holly decides to wait until quarter of eight. Let the shadows draw a little longer. But it’s hard. Waiting has never been her forte, and surely if she’s careful, she could—

No. Wait. Bill’s voice.

The teenagers at the roundabout are joined by a few others and they stroll off into the park. They might be bound for the Thickets. They might even be bound for Drive-In Rock. Holly lights another cigarette and smokes with her door open and her feet on the pavement. She smokes slowly, but even so it’s only seven-forty by the time she finishes. She decides she can wait no longer. She puts the cigarette out in her portable ashtray and puts the tin (currently choked with butts, she really has to stop… or at least cut down) in the center console. She takes out a Columbus Clippers gimme cap and pulls it down on her forehead. She locks her car and starts up the sidewalk toward the empty house next to the Harrises’.

Provisional clarity returns and Roddy thinks: What if the woman who’s got Em worried knows about the Black girl? He can’t remember the Black girl’s name—possibly Evelyn—but he knows she was a vegan, and troublesome. Did Em say something about Twitter? Someone checking out that Black girl on Twitter?

Leaving the pond behind, he walks slowly along a wide gravel path that comes out near the playground. He sits on a bench to rest his hips before climbing the hill to his house, but also to avoid any interaction with the teenagers who are playing on a merry-go-round meant only for little kids.

Across the street, maybe forty or so yards up from the playground parking lot, a woman is sitting with her car door open, smoking a cigarette. Although she only looks vaguely familiar, there’s nothing vague about the alarm bells that start going off in Roddy’s head. Something’s wrong about her. Very wrong.

He can still clear his mind when he absolutely has to, and he makes that effort now. The woman is sitting with her elbows on her thighs, her head lowered, raising one hand occasionally to take a puff on her cancer stick. When she finishes, she puts it out in a little tin, maybe a Sucrets box, and sits up straight. He thinks he knew even before that, because she’s wearing the same cargo pants she had on when she came to the house, or a pair just like them. But when he sees her face, he’s sure. It’s the elbow-tapper who came asking about Cary Dressler. The woman who is also investigating Bonnie Dahl, although she never said so.

She has suspicions, Emily said.

This may be serious, Emily said.

Roddy thinks she’s right.

He takes his phone out of his pocket and calls home. Across the street, the woman puts on a hat, pulling it down low against the evening sun (or to hide her eyes). She locks her car. It flashes its lights. She walks away. In his hand the phone rings once… twice… three times.

“Come on,” Roddy whispers. “Come on, come on.”

Emily picks up. “If you’re calling to say that now you’re hungry—”

“I’m not.” Across the street, the elbow-tapper is heading up the hill. “That woman is coming, Molly Givens or whatever her name is, and I don’t think she’s coming to ask more questions, or she wouldn’t have parked down the street. I think she’s snoop—”

But Emily is gone.

Roddy puts his phone back into his left front pocket and pats the righthand one, hoping he has what he wants. He usually carries it when he’s walking by himself, sometimes there are dangerous people in the park. It’s there. He gets up from the bench and crosses the street. The woman is walking fast (especially for a smoker) and his bad hips mean he can’t keep up, but it may still be all right as long as she doesn’t look back.

How much does she know? he asks himself. Does she know about the vegan girl, Evelyn or Eleanor or whatever her name was?

If she knows about her as well as Cary and the Dahl girl, it… it…

“It could spoil everything,” he whispers to himself.

Emily hurries into the downstairs office. It hurts to hurry but she hurries anyway, making little whimpering sounds and pressing the fingers of both hands into the lumbar region of her back, as if to hold it together. The most excruciating pain of the sciatica passed after they ate the Dahl girl’s liver—Roddy gave her the lion’s share and she gobbled it half-raw—but it hasn’t gone away entirely, as it did after Castro and Dressler. She dreads future pain if it returns full force, but right now there’s this inquisitive bitch to deal with, not Molly Givens but Holly Gibney.

How much does she know?

Em decides she doesn’t care. With Ellen Craslow added to the equation, she knows enough. Roddy may have gotten her name wrong, but he’s right about one thing: you don’t park your car a quarter of a mile down the street if you’re just coming to ask questions. You only park a quarter of a mile down the street if you want to pry into other people’s business.

They have a state-of-the-art alarm system that covers the entire perimeter of the house and grounds. It doesn’t call the police unless it’s not been shut off sixty minutes after it’s first tripped. When it was installed, burglars and home invaders weren’t their primary concern, although of course they never said that. Em turns on the alarm, sets it to HOUSE ONLY, then turns on all ten of their cameras, which Roddy installed himself in a happier time when he could be trusted to do such things. They cover the kitchen, the living room, the basement (of course), the front of the house, the sides, the back, and the garage.

Emily sits down to watch. She tells herself they’ve come too far to turn back now.

Holly approaches the vacant house at 91 Ridge Road. She takes a quick glance ahead of her and to the far side of the street. She sees no one, and with no hesitation, because she who hesitates is lost, veers onto the dying lawn and walks up the left side of the house, putting the bulk of it between her and 93 next door on the right.

Behind the house she crosses a flagstone patio toward the hedge dividing this yard from the Harrises’. She steps briskly, without slowing. She’s in it now, and a colder version of Holly takes over. It’s the same one that threw all those loathsome china figurines into the fireplace of her mother’s house. She walks slowly down the hedge. Thanks to the hot, dry summer and the lack of any lawn and grounds maintenance, at least since the previous owners moved out, Holly finds several thin places. The best is opposite what she guesses is the Harrises’ kitchen, but she doesn’t want that one. The worst is opposite the garage, which figures, but that’s still the one she means to use. At least she’s wearing long sleeves and long pants.

She bends and peers through the hedge at the garage. It’s a side view and she still can’t see if it’s a one- or two-car garage, but she does see something interesting. There’s only one window, and it’s entirely black. It might be a shade, but Holly thinks it might also have been painted over on the inside.

“Who does that?” she murmurs, but the answer seems obvious: someone with something to hide.

Holly turns her back, hugs her shoulder bag against her breasts, and pushes through the hedge. She emerges with nothing worse than a few scratches on the nape of her neck. She looks around. There are a couple of plastic garbage cans and a recycling bin beneath the garage’s eave. To her right she can see the driveway leading back to the street and the roof of a passing car.

She walks to the one window and yes, it’s been blinded with matte black paint. She goes around to the rear and finds what she was hoping to find—a back door. She expects it to be locked and it is. She takes the alligator-skin case out of her bag and opens it. Inside, lined up like surgical instruments, are Bill Hodges’s lockpicks. She examines the lock. It’s a Yale, so she takes out the hook pick and slides it in at the top of the keyway—very gently, so as not to disturb any of the locking pins. The second pick goes in beneath it. Holly twists the second pick to the right until it binds. Then she’s able to trip the top pin with the hook pick… she hears it retract… and the second pin… and…

Is there a third? If so, it hasn’t engaged. It’s an old lock, so it’s possible there isn’t. Slowly, her upper teeth pressed into her lower lip almost hard enough to make it bleed, she rotates the hook pick and pushes. There’s an audible click and for a moment she’s afraid she’s lost one of the pins and will have to start over. Then the door comes ajar, pushed by the pressure of the two picks.

Holly lets out her breath and puts the picks back into the case. She drops the case into her bag, which is now hung around her neck. She straightens and takes her phone from her pocket.

Be there, she thinks. Please be there.

Emily can’t wait for Roddy; for all she knows, his slippery mind has skated him off in some other direction entirely. Three concrete steps lead down from the kitchen door to the Harris patio. She sits on the lowest, then lies down. The concrete riser biting into her back is painful, but she can’t think about that now. She cocks one of her legs to the side and puts one arm behind her, at what she hopes will look like an awkward angle. God knows it feels awkward. Does she look like an old lady who’s just taken a serious fall? One who needs help badly?

I better, she thinks. I just better.

The van is there, and Holly doesn’t even have to check if it’s been customized with a chassis-lift to allow for a ramp to emerge. Above the rear bumper is a Wisconsin license plate with the wheelchair symbol that means this is a duly accredited vehicle for people with disabilities. The light coming in the back door is fading but more than adequate. She raises her iPhone and snaps three pictures. She thinks the plate alone will be enough to get a police investigation started.

She knows it’s time to go, past time, but she wants more. She shoots a quick glance over her shoulder—no one there—and approaches the back of the van. The windows have been darkened, but when she puts her forehead against one and cups her hands to the sides of her face, she can see inside.

She can see a wheelchair.

This is how they do it, she thinks with a burst of triumph. This is how they get their targets to stop. Then whoever they’re working with—the real bad guy—pops out of the van and does the rest.

She really has to stop pressing her luck. She takes three more snaps of the wheelchair, backs out of the garage, and pulls the door shut. She turns toward the hedge, meaning to go back the way she came, and that’s when a weak voice cries, “Help! Will somebody help me? I’ve fallen and it hurts terribly!”

Holly isn’t convinced. Not even close. Partly because it’s awfully convenient, but mostly because her own mother has played the same oh the pain is so bad card when she wanted Holly to stay around… or, lacking that, to leave feeling so guilty that she’d come back sooner. For a long time it worked. And when it stopped working, Holly thinks, she and Uncle Henry ran a con on me.

“Help! Please, someone help me!”

Holly almost backs through the hedge anyway, leaving the woman—Emily Harris for sure—to emote on her own, then changes her mind. She walks to the end of the garage and peers around it. The woman is sprawled on the steps, one leg cocked, one arm bent behind her. Her housedress is rucked up to mid-thigh. She’s skinny and pale and frail and certainly looks in pain. Holly decides to put on a little performance of her own. We’ll be like Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane, she thinks. And if her husband comes out, so much the better.

“Oh my God!” she says, approaching the downed woman. “What happened?”

“I slipped,” the woman says. The tremble in her voice is good, but Holly thinks the sob of pain that follows is strictly summer stock. “Please help me. Can you straighten my leg? I don’t think it’s broken, but—”

“Maybe you need a wheelchair,” Holly says sympathetically. “There’s one in your van, isn’t there?”

Harris’s eyes flicker a little at that, then she gives a groan. Holly thinks it’s not entirely fake. This woman is in pain, all right, but she’s also desperate.

Holly bends down, one hand deep in her bag. Not gripping Bill’s .38 but touching its short barrel. “How many have you taken, Professor Harris? I know about four for sure, and I think there might be another one, a writer. And who have you taken them for? That’s what I really want to—”

Emily brings her hand out from behind her back. In it is a Vipertek VTS-989, known in the Harris household as Thing One. It throws 300 volts, but Holly doesn’t give her a chance to trigger it. From the moment she saw Emily Harris so artfully posed on the patio steps, she hasn’t trusted the hand behind the woman’s back. She pulls Bill’s revolver from her bag by the barrel and in one smooth motion slams the butt against Emily’s wrist. Thing One goes clattering across the decorative bricks unfired.

“Ow!” Emily shrieks. This shriek is entirely authentic. “You broke my wrist, you bitch!”

“Tasers are illegal in this state,” Holly says, bending to pick it up, “but I think that will be the least of your worries when—”

She sees the woman’s eyes shift and starts to turn, but it’s too late. The electrodes of a Vipertek are sharp enough to penetrate three layers of clothes, even if the top one is a winter parka, and Holly is wearing nothing but a cotton shirt. The electrodes of Thing Two penetrate it and her bra’s backstrap with no problem. Holly goes on her toes, throws her arms into the air like a football ref signaling the kick is good, then collapses to the bricks.

“Thank God the cavalry has arrived,” Emily says. “Help me up. That nosy cunt broke my wrist.”

He does so, and as she looks down at Holly, Em actually laughs. Just a shaky chuckle, but real enough. “It made me forget all about my back for a moment, there’s that. I’ll want a poultice, and perhaps one of your special tisanes. Is she dead? Please tell me she’s not dead. We have to find out how much she knows, and if she’s told anyone yet.”

Roddy kneels and puts his fingers on Holly’s neck. “Pulse is thready, but it’s there. She’ll be back with us in an hour or two.”

“No she won’t,” Emily says, “because you’re going to give her an injection. Not Valium, either. Ketamine.” She puts her good hand in the small of her back and stretches. “I think my back is actually better. Maybe I should have tried cement-step therapy before this. We’ll find out what we need to know, then kill her.”

“This may be the end,” Roddy says. His lips are trembling, his eyes wet. “Thank God we’ve got the pills—”

Yes. They do. Emily has brought them downstairs. Just in case.

“Maybe, maybe not. Never say die, my love; never say die. In any case, her days of snooping are done.” She deals Holly a vicious kick in the ribs. “This is what you get for sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong, bitch.” And to Roddy: “Get a blanket. We’ll have to drag her. If she breaks a leg when we slide her down the stairs to the basement, too bad. She won’t suffer for long.”

At nine o’clock that night Penny Dahl is sitting on the front porch of her neat little Cape Cod in the suburb of Upriver, about twelve miles north of the city center. It’s been another hot day, but it’s cooling off now and it’s pleasant out here. A few fireflies—not as many as when Penny was a girl—stitch random patterns above the lawn. Her phone is in her lap. She expects it to ring at any moment with the promised call from her investigator.

By nine-fifteen, when the call still hasn’t come, Penny is irritated. When it hasn’t come at nine-thirty, she’s simmering. She’s paying this woman, and more than she can afford. Herbert, her ex, has agreed to chip in, which lightens the burden, but still—money is money, and an appointment is an appointment.

At nine-forty she calls Holly’s number and gets voicemail. It’s short and to the point: “You’ve reached Holly Gibney. I can’t come to the phone now. Please leave a brief message and a callback number.”

“This is Penny. You were supposed to update me at nine. Call me back immediately.”

She ends the call. She watches the fireflies. She has always had a short fuse—both Herbert Dahl and Bonnie would testify to that—and by ten o’clock she’s not just simmering, she’s boiling. She calls Holly again and waits for the beep. When it comes, she says, “I’m going to wait until ten-thirty, then I’m going to bed and you can consider yourself terminated.” But that bloodless word doesn’t adequately express her anger. “Fired.” She pushes the end button extra hard, as if that would help.

Ten-thirty arrives. Then quarter of eleven. Penny realizes that she’s getting dew-damp. She calls one more time and gets another helping of voicemail. “This is Penny, your employer. Former employer. You’re fired.” She starts to end the call, then thinks of something else. “And I want my money back! You’re useless!”

She stalks into the house, flings her phone onto the living room sofa, and goes into the bathroom to brush her teeth. She sees herself in the mirror—too thin, too pale, looking ten years older than her age. No, make it fifteen. Her daughter is missing, maybe dead, and her crack investigator is probably out somewhere, drinking in a bar.

She’s crying when she undresses and goes to bed. No, not drinking in a bar. Some people undoubtedly are, but not that mousy little broad, with her careful masking and oh-so-current elbow-bumps. She’s probably home watching television with her phone off.

“Forgot all about me,” Penny says into the dark. She has never felt so alone in her life. “Stupid bitch. Fuck her.”

She closes her eyes.