Bloodstream – Gerritsen, Tess

BLOODSTREAM

 

 

 

BY

TESS GERRITSEN

 

 

 

 

PROLOGUE

 

 

TRANQUILITY, MAINE,

1946

 

 

If

she was still enough, quiet enough, he would not find her. He might think he knew all her hiding places, but he had never discovered her secret niche, this small hollow in the cellar wall, concealed by the shelves of her mother’s canning jars. As a young child she had easily slipped into this space, and every game of hide and seek had found her curled up in her lair, giggling at his frustration as he thumped from room to room, searching for her. Sometimes the game Would go on so long she’d fall asleep, and would awaken hours later to the Sound of her mother’s voice worriedly calling her name.

Now here she was again, in her cellar hiding place, but she was no longer a child. She was fourteen and barely able to squeeze into the niche. And this was no lighthearted game of hide and seek.

She could hear him upstairs, roaming the house, searching for her. He rampaged from room to room, cursing, slamming furniture to the floor

Please, Please, please. Someone help us. Someone make him go away.

She heard him roar out her name: “IRIS!” His footsteps creaked into the kitchen. Approached the cellar door. Her hands balled into tight fists, and her heart was a banging drum.

I am not here. I am far away, escaping, soaring into the night sky…

The cellar door flew open, slamming into the wall. Golden light shone down, framing him in the open doorway at the top of the stairs.

He reached up to pull on the light chain and the bare bulb came on, dimly illuminating the cavernous cellar. Cowering behind the jars of home-canned tomatoes and cucumbers, Iris heard him descend the steep stairs, each creak bringing him toward her. She pressed deeper into the hollow, flattening herself against the crumbling stone and mortar, and closed her eyes, willing herself to be invisible. Through the slamming of her own heartbeat she heard him reach the bottom of the steps.

Don’t see me. Don’t see me.

The footsteps moved right past the canning shelves and headed toward the far end of the cellar. She heard him kick over a box. Empty jars shattered on the stone floor. Now he was circling back, and she could hear his harsh breathing, punctuated by animal grunts. Her own breaths were coming short and fast, her hands clenched so tightly she thought her bones would shatter. The footsteps moved to the canning shelves and stopped.

Her eyes shot open, and through a chink between two jars she saw him standing right in front of her. She had slid down until her gaze was level with his belt. She cringed even lower, dropping as far below his line of sight as she could. He took a jar off the shelf and smashed it to the ground. The smell of pickles, sharp and vinegary, rose up from the stone floor. He reached for a second jar, then suddenly put it back, as though a better thought had occurred to him. He turned and walked up the cellar steps, yanking the light chain as he exited.

Once again she was in darkness.

She realized she had been crying. Her face was wet, sweat mingling with tears, but she didn’t dare release even a whimper.

Upstairs the footsteps creaked toward the front of the house and then there was silence.

Had he left? Had he finally gone away?

She remained frozen, not daring to move. The minutes went by. She counted them off slowly in her head. Ten. Twenty. Her muscles were cramping, the spasms so painful she had to bite her lip to keep from crying out.

An hour.

Two hours.

Still no sound from above.

Slowly she emerged from the hiding place. She stood in the darkness, waiting for the blood to recirculate in her muscles, for the feeling to come back in her legs. Listening, the whole time listening.

She heard nothing.

The cellar had no window, and she didn’t know if it was still dark outside. She stepped through the broken glass on the floor and crossed to the stairs. She climbed them one at a time, pausing after each step to listen some more. When at last she reached the top, her palms were so slick she had to wipe them off on her blouse before she could open the cellar door.

The lights were on in the kitchen, and everything looked startlingly normal, She could almost believe the horror of last night was simply a bad dream. A clock ticked loudly on the wall. It was five A.M., still dark outside.

She tiptoed to the kitchen doorway and peered into the hail. One glimpse at the splintered furniture, the splashes of blood on the wallpaper, told her she had not been dreaming. Her palms were wet again.

The hallway was deserted, and the front door hung open.

She had to get out of the house. Run to the neighbors, run to the police.

She started up the hail, each step bringing her closer to escape. Terror had primed her five senses to such acuity that she registered every fragment of splintered wood on the floral carpet, every tick of the clock in the kitchen behind her. She was almost at the front door.

Then she cleared the banister and came within view of the stairs, where her mother had toppled, head down. She couldn’t stop herself from staring at the body. At her mother’s long hair draping the steps, like black water rippling downhill.

Nausea surging up her throat, she lurched toward the front door.

He was standing there. In his hand was an ax.

With a sob she spun around and darted up the stairs, almost slipping on her mother’s blood. She heard him pounding up the steps after her. She had always been faster than he, and terror made her fly up the stairs like a panicked cat.

On the second floor landing she caught a glimpse of her father’s body, lying halfway out of his bedroom doorway. There was no time to think about it, no time to absorb the horror; she was already dashing up the next flight of stairs and into the turret room.

She slammed the door and latched it just in time.

He gave a roar of rage and began pounding on the closed door.

She scurried over to the window and forced it open. Staring down at the ground far below, she knew she could not survive a fall. But there was no other way out of the room.

She yanked on a curtain, puffing it off the rod. A rope. Have to make a rope! She tied one end to a radiator pipe, wrenched a second curtain down, and tied the two lengths of fabric together.

A loud thud sent a splinter of wood flying at her. She glanced back and to her horror saw the tip of the ax poking through the door. Saw it pried loose again for the next swing.

He was breaking through!

She yanked down a third curtain, and with shaking hands, knotted it to the first two.

The ax came down again. The wood splintered wider, more chunks flying.

She yanked down a fourth curtain, but even as she frantically tied the last knot, she knew the rope was not long enough. She knew it was too late.

She spun around to face the door just as the ax broke through.

1

 

THE PRESENT

“Someone’s going to get hurt out there,” said Dr. Claire Elliot, looking out her kitchen window. Morning mist, thick as smoke, hung over the lake, and the trees beyond her window drifted in and out of focus. Another gunshot rang out, closer this time. Since first light, she’d heard the gunfire, and would probably hear it all day until dusk, because it was the first day of November. The start of hunting season. Somewhere in those woods, a man with a rifle was tramping around half-blind through the mist as imagined shadows of white-tailed deer danced around him.

“I don’t think you should wait outside for the bus,” said Claire. “I’ll drive you to school.”

Noah, hunched at the breakfast table, said nothing. He scooped up another spoonful of Cheerios and slurped it down. Fourteen years old, and her son still ate like a two-year-old, milk splashing on the table, crumbs of toast littering the floor around his chair. He ate without looking at her, as though to meet her gaze was to come face to face with Medusa. And what difference would it make if he did look at me, she thought wryly. My darling son has already turned to stone.

She said again, “I’ll drive you to school, Noah.”

“That’s okay. I’m taking the bus.” He stood up and grabbed his backpack and skateboard.

“Those hunters out there can’t possibly see what they’re shooting at. At least wear the orange hat. So they won’t think you’re a deer.”

“But it looks so dorky.”

“You can take it off on the bus. Just put it on now.” She took the knit cap from the mitten shelf and held it out to him.

He looked at it, then finally, at her. He had sprouted up several inches in just one year, and they were now the same height, their gazes meeting straight on, neither one able to claim the advantage. She wondered if Noah was as acutely aware of their new physical equality as she was. Once she could hug him and a child would hug back. Now the child was gone, his softness resculpted into muscle, his face narrowed to a sharp new angularity.

“Please,” she said, still holding out the cap.

At last he sighed and jammed the cap over his dark hair. She had to suppress a smile; he did look dorky.

He had already started down the hallway when she called out:

“Good-bye kiss?”

With a look of exasperation, he turned to give her the barest peck on the cheek, and then he was out of the door.

No hugs anymore, she thought ruefully as she stood at the window and watched him trudge toward the road. It’s all grunts and shrugs and awkward silences.

He stopped beneath the maple tree at the end of the driveway, pulled off the cap, and stood with his hands in his pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold. No jacket, just a thin gray sweatshirt against a thirty-seven-degree morning. It was cool to be cold. She had to resist the urge to run outside and bundle him into a coat.

Claire waited until the school bus appeared. She watched her son climb aboard without a backward glance, saw his silhouette move down the aisle and take a seat beside another student—a girl. Who is that girl? she wondered. I don’t know the names of my son’s friends anymore. I’ve shrunk to just a small corner of his universe. She knew this was supposed to happen, the pulling away, the child’s struggle for independence, but she was not prepared for it. The transformation

had occurred suddenly, as though a sweet boy had walked out of the house one day, and a stranger had walked back in. You’re all I have left of Peter. I’m not ready to lose you as well.

The bus rumbled away.

Claire returned to the kitchen and sat down to her cup of lukewarm coffee. The house felt hollow and silent, a home still in mourning. She sighed and unrolled the weekly Tranquility Gazette. HEALTHY DEER HERD PROMISES BOUNTIFUL HARVEST, announced the front page. The hunt was on. Thirty days to bag your deer.

Outside, another gunshot echoed in the woods.

She turned the page to the police blotter. There was no mention yet of last night’s Halloween disturbance, or of the seven rowdy teenagers who’d been arrested for taking their annual trick-or-treating too far. But there, buried among the reports of lost dogs and stolen firewood, was her name, under VIOLATIONS: “Claire Effiot, age forty, operating vehicle with expired safety sticker.” She still hadn’t brought the Subaru in for its safety inspection; today she’d have to drive the truck instead, just to avoid getting another citation. Irritably she flipped to the next page and was scanning the day’s weather forecast—cold and windy, high in the thirties, low in the twenties—when the telephone rang.

She rose to answer it. “Hello?”

“Dr. Elliot? This is Rachel Sorkin out on Toddy Point Road. I’ve got something of an emergency out here. Elwyn just shot himself.”

“What?”

“You know, that idiot Elwyn Clyde. He came trespassing on my property, chasing after some poor deer. Killed it too—a beautiful doe, right in my front yard. These stupid men and their stupid guns.”

“What about Elwyn?”

“Oh, he tripped and shot his own foot. Serves him right:’

“He should go straight to the hospital.”

“Well you see, that’s the problem. He doesn’t want to go to the hospital, and he won’t let me call an ambulance. He wants me to drive him and the deer home. Well, I’m not going to. So what should I do with him?”

“How badly is he bleeding?”

She heard Rachel call out: “Hey, Elwyn? Elwyn! Are you bleeding?” Then Rachel came back on the line. “He says he’s fine. He just wants a ride home. But I’m not taking him, and I’m certainly not taking the deer.”

Claire sighed. “I guess I can drive over and take a look. You’re on Toddy Point Road?”

“About a mile past the Boulders. My name’s on the mail box.”

The mist was starting to lift as Claire turned her pickup truck onto Toddy Point Road. Through stands of white pine, she caught glimpses of Locust Lake, the fog rising like steam. Already beams of sunlight were breaking through, splashing gold onto the rippling water. Across the lake, just visible through fingers of mist, was the north shore with its summer cottages, most of them boarded up for the season, their wealthy owners gone home to Boston or New York. On the south shore, where Claire now drove, were the more modest homes, some of them little more than two-room shacks tucked in among the trees.

She drove past the Boulders, an outcropping of granite stones where the local teenagers gathered to swim in the summertime, and spotted the mailbox with the name Sorkin.

A bumpy dirt road brought her to the house. It was a strange and whimsical structure, rooms added haphazardly, corners jutting out in unexpected places. Rising above it all, like the tip of a crystal breaking through the roof, was a glassed-in belfry, An eccentric woman would have an eccentric house, and Rachel Sorkin was one of Tranquility’s odd birds, a striking, black-haired woman who strode once a week into town, swathed in a purple hooded cape. This looked like a house in which a caped woman might reside.

By the front steps, next to a neatly tended herb garden, lay the dead deer.

Claire climbed out of her truck. At once two dogs bounded out of the woods and barred her way, barking and growling. Guarding the kill, she realized.

Rachel came out of the house and yelled at the dogs: “Get out of here, you bloody animals! Go home!” She grabbed a broom from the

porch and came tearing down the steps, long black hair flying, the broom thrust forward like a lance.

The dogs backed away

“Ha! Cowards,” said Rachel, lunging at them with the broom. They retreated toward the woods.

“Hey you leave my dogs alone!” shouted Elwyn Clyde, who had limped out onto the porch. Elwyn was a prime example of an evolutionary dead end: a fifty-year-old lump bundled in flannel, and doomed to eternal bachelorhood. “They’re not hurtin’ nothin’. They’re just watchin’ after my deer.”

“Elwyn, I got news for you. You killed this poor creature on my property. So she’s mine.”

“What you gonna do with a deer? Blasted vegetarian!”

Claire cut in: “How’s the foot, Elwyn?”

He looked at Claire and blinked, as though surprised to see her. “I tripped,” he said. “No big deal.”

“A bullet wound is always a big deal. May I take a look at it?”

“Can’t pay you He paused, one scraggly eyebrow lifting as a sly thought occurred. “ ‘Less you want some venison.”

“I just want to make sure you’re not bleeding to death. We can settle up some other time. Can I look at your foot?”

“If you really want to,” he said, and limped back into the house.

“This should be a treat,” said Rachel.

It was warm inside the kitchen. Rachel threw a birch log into the wood stove, and sweet smoke puffed out as she dropped the cast iron lid back in place.

“Let’s see the foot,” said Claire.

Elwyn hobbled over to a chair, leaving smears of blood on the floor. He had his sock on, and there was a jagged hole at the top, near the big toe, as though a rat had chewed through the wool. “Hardly bothering me,” he said. “Not worth all this fuss, if you ask me.”

Claire knelt down and peeled off the sock. It came away slowly, the Wool matted to his foot not by blood but by sweat and dead skin.

“Oh God,” said Rachel, cupping her hand over her nose. “Don’t you ever change your socks, Elwyn?”

The bullet had passed through the fleshy web between the first and second toe. Claire found the exit wound underneath the foot. There was only a little blood oozing out now. Trying not to gag on the smell, she tested movement of all the toes, and determined that no nerves had been damaged.

“You’ll have to clean it and change the bandages every day,” she said. “And you need a tetanus shot, Elwyn.”

“Oh, I got one of them already.”

“When?”

“Last year, from ol’ Doc Pomeroy. After I shot myself.”

“Is this an annual event?”

“That one went through my other foot. ‘Tweren’t a big deal.”

Dr. Pomeroy had died back in January, and Claire had acquired all his old medical records when she’d bought the practice from his estate eight months ago. She could check Elwyn’s file and confirm the date of his last tetanus shot.

“I guess it’s up to me to clean that foot,” said Rachel.

Claire took out a small bottle of Betadine from her medical bag and handed it to her. “Add that to a warm bucket of water. Let him soak in it for a while.”

“Oh, I can do that myself,” said Elwyn, and got up.

“Then we might as well just amputate right now!” snapped Rachel. “Sit down, Elwyn.”

“Gee,” he said, and sat down.

Claire left a few packets of bandages and gauze wrappings on the table. “Elwyn, you come into my office next week, so I can check the wound.”

“But I got too much to do—”

“If you don’t come in, I’ll have to hunt you down like a dog.”

He blinked at her in surprise. “Yes, ma’am,” he said meekly.

Suppressing a smile, Claire picked up her medical bag and walked out of the house.

The two dogs were in the front yard again, fighting over a filthy bone. As Claire came down the steps, they both spun around to stare at her.

The black one trotted forward and growled.

“Shoo,” Claire said, but the dog refused to back down. It took another few steps forward, teeth bared.

The tan dog, spotting opportunity, snatched the bone in its teeth and began dragging away the prize. It got halfway across the yard before the black dog suddenly noticed the thief and streaked back into the fight. Yelping and growling, they thrashed around the yard in a tangle of black and tan. The bone lay, forgotten, beside Claire’s pickup truck.

She opened the door and was just sliding in behind the steering wheel when the image registered in her brain. She looked down at the ground, at the bone.

It was less than a foot long, and stained a rusty brown with dirt. One end had broken off, leaving jagged splinters. The other end was intact, the bony landmarks recognizable.

It was a femur. And it was human.

Ten miles out of town, Tranquility Police Chief Lincoln Kelly finally caught up with his wife.

She was doing about fifty in a stolen Chevy, weaving left and right, the loose tailpipe kicking up sparks every time she hit a dip in the road.

“Man oh man,” said Floyd Spear, sitting beside Lincoln in the cruiser. “Doreen got her snookerful today.”

“I’ve been on the road all morning,” said Lincoln. “Didn’t get a chance to check up on her.” He turned on the siren, hoping that would induce Doreen to slow down. She sped up.

“Now what?” asked Floyd. “Want me to call for backup?”

Backup meant Hank Dorr, the only other officer on patrol duty that morning.

“No,” said Lincoln. “Let’s see if we can’t talk her into pulling over.”

“At sixty miles an hour?”

“Get on the bullhorn.”

Floyd picked up the mike and his voice boomed out over the speaker: “Hey, Doreen, pull over! C’mon, Sweetheart, you’re gonna hurt someone!”

The Chevy just kept dipping and weaving.

“We could wait till she runs Out of gas,” Floyd suggested.

“Keep talking to her.”

Floyd tried the mike again. “Doreen, Lincoln’s here! C’mon, Sweetheart, pull over! He wants ta ‘pologize!”

“I want to what?”

“Pull over, Doreen, and he’ll tell you himself!”

“What in hell are you talking about?” said Lincoln.

“Women always expect a man to apologize.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

Up ahead, the Chevy’s brake lights suddenly lit up.

“See?” said Floyd as the Chevy rolled to a stop at the side of the road.

Lincoln pulled up behind it and climbed out of the cruiser. Doreen sat hunched behind the steering wheel, her red hair wild and tangled, her hands shaking. Lincoln opened the door, reached over his wife’s lap, and removed the car keys. “Doreen,” he said wearily, “you gotta come back to the station.”

“When are you coming home, Lincoln?” she asked.

“We’ll talk about that later. Come on, Honey, let’s get in the cruiser.” He reached for her elbow but she shook him off and slapped his hand for good measure.

“I just want to know when you’re coming home,” she said.

“We’ve talked about this and talked about this.”

“You’re still married to me. You’re still my husband.”

“And there’s just no point in talking about it any more.” Again he took her elbow. He already had her out of the Chevy when she hauled off and slugged him in the jaw. He staggered back a few steps, his whole head ringing.

“Hey!” said Floyd, grabbing Doreen’s arms. “Hey now, you don’t wanna go doing that!”

“Lemme go!” screeched Doreen. She broke out of Floyd’s grasp and took another swing at her husband.

This time Lincoln ducked, which only made his wife madder. She got in one more swing before Lincoln and Floyd managed to get her arms secured.

“I hate to do this,” said Lincoln. “But you’re just not being reasonable today.” He snapped the handcuffs on her wrists. She spat at him. He

wiped his sleeve across his face, then patiently guided his wife into the backseat of the cruiser.

“Oh man,” said Floyd. “You know we’re gonna have to book her.”

“I know.” Lincoln sighed and slid in behind the wheel.

“You can’t divorce me, Lincoln Kelly!” said Doreen. “You promised to love and cherish!”

“I didn’t know about the bottle,” said Lincoln, and he turned the car around.

They drove at a leisurely speed toward town, Doreen cussing a purple streak the whole time. It was the drinking that did it; it seemed to pop the cork off her bottle of demons.

Two years ago, Lincoln had moved out of their house. He figured he’d given the marriage his best effort and ten years of his life. He wasn’t by nature a quitter, but the despair had finally gotten to him. That and the sense that, at forty-five, his life was racing by, joyless and unfruitful. He wished he could do right by Doreen, wished that he could recapture some of that old affection he’d felt for her early on in their marriage, when she’d been bright and sober, not bubbling over with anger as she was now. Sometimes he’d search his own heart for whatever trace of love might still linger, some small spark among the ashes, but there was nothing left. The ashes were cold. And he was tired.

He had tried to stand by her, but Doreen couldn’t even see clear to help herself. Every few months, when her rage boiled up, she’d spend the day drinking. Then she’d “borrow” someone’s car and go for one of her famous high-speed drives. People in town knew to stay off the roads when Doreen Kelly got behind the wheel.

Back at the Tranquility police station, Lincoln let Floyd do the booking and locking up. Through the two closed doors leading to the cell, he could hear Doreen yelling for a lawyer. He supposed he should call One for her, though no one in Tranquility wanted to take her on. Even down south as far as Bangor, she’d worn out her welcomes. He sat at his desk, flipping through the Rolodex, trolling for a lawyer’s name. Someone he hadn’t called in a while. Someone who didn’t mind being cussed out by a client.

It was all too much, too early in the morning. He shoved away the Rolodex and ran his hand through his hair. Doreen was still yelling in the back room. This would all be reported in that nosy Gazette, and then the Bangor and Portland papers would pick it up because the whole damn state of Maine thought it was funny and so very quaint. Tranquility police chief arrests own wife. Again.

He reached for the telephone and was dialing the number for Tom Wiley, attorney at law, when he heard a knock at his door. Glancing up, he saw Claire Effiot walk into his office, and he hung up.

“Hey, Claire,” he said. “Got your safety sticker yet?”

“I’m still working on it. But I’m not here about my car. I want to show you something.” She set a dirty bone down on his desk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s a femur, Lincoln.”

“What?”

“A thigh bone. I think it’s human.”

He stared at the dirt-encrusted bone. One end was splintered off, and the shaft showed the gnawings of animal teeth. “Where did you find this?”

“Rachel Sorkin’s place.”

“How did Rachel get it?”

“Elwyn Clyde’s dogs dragged it into her yard. She doesn’t know where it came from. I was over there this morning, after Elwyn shot himself in the foot.”

“Again?” He rolled his eyes and they both laughed. If every village had an idiot, then Tranquility’s would be Elwyn.

“He’s okay,” she said. “But I guess a gunshot wound should be reported.”

“Consider it done. I already have a folder for Elwyn and his gunshot wounds.” He gestured to a chair. “Now tell me about this bone. Are you sure it’s human?”

She sat down. Though they were looking directly at each other, he felt a barrier of reserve between them that was almost physical. He had sensed it the first time they’d met, soon after she’d moved to town, when she had attended to a prisoner suffering from abdominal pain in Tranquility’s three-cell jail. Lincoln had been curious about her

from the start. Where was her husband? Why was she alone raising her son? But he had not felt comfortable asking her personal questions, and she did not seem to invite such intrusion. Pleasant but intensely private, she seemed reluctant to let anyone get too close to her, which was a shame. She was a pretty woman, short but sturdy, with luminous dark eyes and a mass of curly brown hair just starting to show the first strands of silver.

She leaned forward, her hands resting on his desk. “I’m not an expert or anything,” she said, “but I don’t know what other animal this bone could come from. Judging by the size, it looks like a child’s.”

“Did you see any other bones around?”

“Rachel and I searched the yard, but we didn’t find any. The dogs could’ve picked this up anywhere in the woods. You’ll have to search the whole area.”

“Could be from an old Indian burial.”

“Possibly. But doesn’t it still have to go to the medical examiner?” Suddenly she turned, her head cocked. “What’s all that commotion?”

Lincoln flushed. Doreen was shouting in her cell again, letting fly a fresh torrent of abuse. “Damn you, Lincoln! You jerk! You liar! Damn you to hell!”

“It sounds like somebody doesn’t like you very much,” said Claire.

He sighed and pressed his hand to his forehead. “My wife.”

Claire’s gaze softened to a look of sympathy. It was apparent she knew about his problems. Everyone in town did.

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Hey, loser!” Doreen yelled. “You got no right to treat me like this!”

With deliberate effort, he redirected his attention to the thigh bone. “How old was the victim, do you think?”

She picked up the femur and turned it over in her hands. For a moment she held it with quiet reverence, fully aware that this broken length of bone had once supported a laughing, running child. “Young;’ she murmured. “I would guess under ten years old.” She lay it on the desk and stared down in silence.

“We haven’t had any missing children reported recently;’ he said. “The area’s been settled for hundreds of years, and old bones are

always turning up. A century ago, it wasn’t all that unusual to die young.”

She was frowning. “I don’t think this child died from natural causes,” she said softly.

“Why do you say that?”

She reached over to turn on his desk lamp, and held the bone close to the light. “There,” she said. “It’s so crusted over, you can barely see it through the dirt.”

He reached in his pocket for his glasses—another reminder of the years’ passage, of his youth slipping away. Bending closer, he tried to see what she was pointing at. Only when she’d scraped away a clot of dirt with her fingernail did he see the wedge-shaped gash.

It was the mark of a hatchet.

2

 

When Warren Emerson finally regained consciousness, he found he was lying next to the woodpile and the sun was shining in his eyes. His last memory was of shade, of silvery frost on the grass and bulging pockets of soil, heaved up from the cold. He’d been splitting firewood, swinging the ax and enjoying the sharp ring it made in the crisp air. The sun had not yet cleared the pine tree in his front yard.

Now it was well above the tree, which meant he had been lying here for some time, perhaps an hour, judging by its position in the sky

Slowly Warren

Sat up, his head aching as it always did afterwards. His hands and face were numb from the cold; both of his gloves had fallen off. He saw the ax lying beside him, its blade buried deep in one end of a maple log. A day’s worth of firewood, already split, lay scattered around him. It took him a painfully long time to register these observations, and to consider the significance of each in turn. The thoughts came to him with effort, as though dragged from a great distance, arriving tattered and in disarray. He was patient with himself; eventually it would all make sense.

He had come out soon after sunrise to split his wood for the day. The result of his labor now lay all around him. He had almost completed the morning chore, had just swung his ax into that last log, when the darkness came over him. He had fallen onto the woodpile; that would explain why some of the logs had rolled off the top. His underwear was soaked; he must have wet himself, as he often did during a fit. Looking down at his clothes, he saw that his jeans were saturated.

There was blood on his shirt.

He staggered to his feet and walked slowly back into the old farmhouse.

The kitchen was hot and stuffy from the woodstove; it made him feel a little dizzy and his vision had started to fade around the edges by the time he reached the bathroom. He sat down on the chipped toilet lid, clutching his head, waiting for the clouds to lift from his brain. The cat came in and rubbed against his calf, meowing for attention. He reached down to her and drew comfort from the softness of her fur.

His face was no longer numb from the cold, and he was now aware of pain throbbing insistently in his temple. Clutching the sink for support, he rose to his feet and looked in the mirror. Just over his left ear, the gray hair was stiff and matted with blood. A streak of it had dried across his cheek, like war paint. He stared at his own reflection, at a face deeply etched by sixty-six years of hard winters and honest work and loneliness. His only companion was the cat, now meowing at his feet, not from affection but hunger. He loved the cat, and someday he would mourn her passing with tears and a solemn burial and nights of longing for the sound of her purring, but he was under no illusion that she loved him.

He removed his clothes, the frayed and blood-stained shirt, the urine-soaked jeans. He undressed with the same care he devoted to every other task in his life, leaving his clothes in a tidy heap on the toilet lid. He turned on the shower and stepped in without waiting for the water to warm up; the discomfort was only momentary scarcely worth a shiver in the context of his cold and uncomfortable life. He washed the blood out of his hair, the laceration stinging from the soap. He must have sliced his scalp open when he fell on the woodpile. It would heal, as all his other cuts had. Warren Emerson was a walking testament to the durability of scar tissue.

The cat renewed her meowing as soon as he stepped out of the shower. It was a pitiful sound, despairing, and he could not listen to it without feeling guilty. Still naked, he walked to the kitchen, opened a can of Little Friskies chicken bits, and spooned it into Mona’s cat bowl.

She gave a soft growl of pleasure and began to eat, no longer caring whether he came or went. Except for his skill with a can opener, he was extraneous to her existence.

He went to the bedroom to dress.

Once it had been his parents’ room, and it still contained all their possessions. The spindle bed, the bureau with the brass knobs, the photographs hanging up in their tin picture frames. As he buttoned his shirt, his gaze lingered on one photo in particular, of a dark-haired girl with smiling eyes. What was Iris doing at this moment? he wondered, as he did every day of his life. Did she ever think of him? His gaze moved on to another photo. It was the last one taken of his family, his mother plump and smiling, his father ill at ease in a suit and tie. And wedged between them, with his hair slicked to one side, was little Warren.

He reached out, fingers touching the photo of his own twelve-year-old face. He could not remember that boy. Up in the attic were the toy trains and the adventure books and the brittle crayons that once belonged to the child in that photo, but that was a different Warren who’d played in this house, who had stood smiling between his parents for a Sunday photograph. Not the Warren he saw when he looked in the mirror.

Suddenly he felt a terrible longing to touch that child’s toys again.

He climbed the steps to the attic and dragged the old blanket chest under the light. With the bare bulb swinging overhead, he lifted the chest lid. Inside were treasures. He took them out one by one and set them on the dusty floor. The cookie tin with all the Matchbox cars. The Lincoln Logs. The leather pouch of marbles. At last he found what he’d been looking for: the set of checkers.

He lay out the board and set up the checkers, red on his side, black On the opposite.

Mona came padding up to the attic and sat beside him, her breath smelling of chicken. For a moment she regarded the board with feline disdain. Then she tiptoed over to it and sniffed at one of the black pieces.

“Is that your first move then?” said Warren. It was not a very smart move, but then, what did one expect from a cat? He moved the black piece for her, and she seemed satisfied.

Outside the wind blew, rattling loose shutters. He could hear the branches of the lilac tree scratch against the clapboards.

Warren advanced a red checker and he smiled at his companion. “Your move, Mona.”

At six-thirty, as she did every weekday morning, five-year-old Isabel Morrison crept into her older sister’s bedroom and climbed under the covers with Mary Rose. There she wriggled like a happy worm in the warm sheets and hummed to herself as she waited for Mary Rose to wake up. There would always be a great deal of sighing and moaning, and Mary Rose would turn from one side to another, her long brown hair tickling Isabel’s face. Isabel thought Mary Rose was the most beautiful girl on earth. She looked like the sleeping Princess Aurora, waiting for her prince to kiss her. Sometimes Isabel would pretend she was Prince Charming, and even though she knew girls weren’t supposed to kiss each other, she would plant her lips on her sister’s mouth and announce: “Now you have to wake up!”

One time, Mary Rose had been awake all along, and had sprung up like a giggling monster and tickled Isabel so mercilessly that both girls had fallen off the bed in a duet of happy squeals.

If only Mary Rose would tickle her now. If only Mary Rose would be her normal self.

Isabel leaned close to her sister’s ear and whispered, “Aren’t you going to wake up?”

Mary Rose pulled the covers over her head. “Go away, pest.”

“Mommy says it’s time for school. You have to wake up.”

“Get

out of my room!”

“But it’s time for—”

Mary Rose gave a growl and lashed out with an angry kick.

Isabel slithered to the far side of the bed, where she lay in troubled silence, rubbing her sore shin and trying to understand what had just happened. Mary Rose had never kicked her before. Mary Rose always woke up with a smile and called her Dizzy Izzy and braided her hair before school.

She decided to try again. She crawled on hands and knees to her sister’s pillow, peeled back the sheets, and whispered into Mary Rose’s ear: “I know what Mommy and Daddy are getting you for Christmas. You wanna hear?”

Mary Rose’s eyes shot open. She turned to look at Isabel.

With a whimper of fear, Isabel scrambled off the bed and stared at a face she scarcely recognized. A face that frightened her. “Mary Rose?” she whispered.

Then she ran out of the room.

Her mother was downstairs in the kitchen, stirring a pot of oatmeal and trying to hear the radio over the screeches of their parakeet, Rocky. As Isabel came tearing into the kitchen, her mother turned and said, “It’s seven o’clock. Isn’t your sister getting up?”

“Mommy,” Isabel wailed in despair. “That’s not Mary Rose!”

Noah Elliot did a 360 kick-flip, popping the skateboard off the curb, into the air, and landing it neatly on the blacktop. All right! Nailed it! Baggy clothes flapping in the wind, he rode the board all the way down to the teachers’ parking lot, ollied the curb, and came around again, a sweet ride all the way.

It was the only time he felt in control of his life, when he was riding his board, when for once, he determined his own fate, his own course. These days it seemed too many things were decided by other people, that he was being dragged, kicking and screaming, into a future he’d never asked for. But when he was riding his board, with the wind in his face and the pavement streaking by, he owned the moment. He could forget he was trapped in this nowhere town. He could even forget, for one brief and exhilarating ride, that his dad was dead and that nothing could ever be right again.

He felt the freshmen girls watching him. They were standing in a tight group behind the trailer classrooms, glossy heads bent close together as they made giggly girl sounds. All their faces moved in unison as their eyes tracked Noah on his board. He rarely talked to them, and they rarely talked to him, but every lunch period, there they’d be, watching him as he worked through his repertoire.

Noah wasn’t the only skateboarder at Knox High School, but he was definitely the best, and the girls kept their focus on him, ignoring the other boys whizzing around on the blacktop. Those boys were just posers anyway, dudes pretending to be skaters, all dressed up in gear straight out of the CCS catalogue. They had the uniform down right— Birdhouse shirts and Keviar shoes and pants so big the cuffs dragged on the ground—but they were still posers in a hick town. They hadn’t skated with the big boys in Baltimore.

As Noah circled around to make his return run, he noticed the gleam of blond hair at the edge of the track field. Amelia Reid was watching him. She stood off by herself, cradling a book as usual. Amelia was one of those girls who seemed dipped in honey, she was so perfect, so golden. Nothing at all like her two jerky brothers, who were always hassling him in the cafeteria. Noah had never noticed her watching him before, and the realization that her attention was at this very moment focused on him made his knees go a little wobbly.

He ollied the board and almost lost it on the landing. Focus, dude! Don’t bite it. He zipped down to the faculty parking lot, spun around, and came rumbling up the concrete ramp. There was a handrail on one side, slanted downward. He spun around, and popped up onto the railing. It would’ve been a sweet slide all the way down.

Except for the fact Taylor Darnell chose just that moment to walk in front of him.

Noah yelled, “Outta the way!” but Taylor didn’t react in time.

At the last possible instant, Noah rolled off his board and tumbled to the pavement. The skateboard, its momentum established, slid all the way down the rail and smacked into Taylor’s back.

Taylor whirled, yelling: “What the hell, man? Who threw that?”

“Didn’t throw it, dude,” said Noah, picking himself up from the ground. His palms were both scraped, and his knee was throbbing. “It was an accident. You just got in the way.” Noah bent down to pick up the skateboard, which had landed wheels up. Taylor was an okay kid,

one of the first who’d come up to say hello when Noah first arrived in town eight months ago. Sometimes, they even hung out together in the afternoons, showing each other new skateboard tricks. So Noah was shocked when Taylor suddenly shoved him, hard. “Hey! Hey, what’s your problem?” said Noah.

“You threw it at me!”

“No I didn’t.”

“Everyone saw it!” Taylor looked around at the bystanders. “Didn’t you see it?”

No one said anything.

“I told you, it was an accident,” said Noah. “I’m really sorry, man.”

There was laughter over by the trailer classrooms. Taylor glanced at the girls and realized they were watching the exchange, and his face turned a furious red. “Shut up!” he yelled at them. “Idiot girls!”

“Geez, Taylor,” said Noah. “What’s your problem?”

The other skaters had popped up their boards and were now standing around, watching. One of them joked,

“Hey, why did Taylor cross the road?”

“Why?”

“Cause he got his dick stuck in the chicken!”

All the skaters laughed, including Noah. He couldn’t help it.

He was unprepared for the blow. It seemed to come out of nowhere, a sucker punch to the jaw. His head snapped up and he stumbled backwards and fell, his butt hitting the blacktop. There he sat for a moment, ears roaring and vision blurred as his shock gave way to hurt rage. He was my friend, and he bit me!

Noah staggered back to his feet and lunged at Taylor, tackling him head on. They both sprawled to the ground, Noah on top. They rolled over and over, both boys flailing, neither one able to get in a decisive blow. Noah finally pinned him, but it was like holding down a spitting cat.

“Noah Elliot!”

He froze, his hands still trapping Taylor’s wrists. Slowly he turned his head and saw the principal, Miss Cornwallis, standing over them. The other kids had all backed away and were watching from a safe distance.

“Get up!” said Miss Cornwallis. “Both of you!”

At once Noah released Taylor and rose to his feet. Taylor, his face by now almost purple with rage, screamed: “He shoved me! He shoved me and I tried to defend myself!”

“That’s not true! He hit me first!”

“He threw his skateboard!”

“I didn’t throw anything. It was an accident!”

“Accident? You liar!”

“Both of you, be quiet!” yelled Miss Cornwallis.

There was shocked silence in the schoolyard as everyone stared at the principal. They’d never heard her yell before. She was a prim but handsome woman who wore suits and low heels to school and kept her blond hair neatly tucked into a French twist. To see her shouting was a revelation to them all.

Miss C. took a deep breath, swiftly recovering her dignity. “Give me the skateboard, Noah.”

“It was an accident. I didn’t hit him.”

“You were pinning him on the ground. I saw it.”

“But I didn’t hit him!”

She held out her hand. “Give it to me.”

“But—”

“Now.”

Noah walked over to his board, lying a few feet away. It was well-worn, one chipped edged crisscrossed with electrician’s tape. The board had been a birthday gift when he turned thirteen. He’d added the decals underneath it—a green dragon with red fire shooting out of its mouth—and had broken in the wheels riding the streets of Baltimore where he used to live. He loved this board, because it reminded him of everything he’d left behind. Everything he still missed. He held it for a moment, then, wordlessly, handed it to Miss C.

She took it with a look of distaste. Turning to address the other students she said, “There’ll be no more skating on school grounds. I want all the skateboards brought home today. And if I see any boards tomorrow, I’ll confiscate them. Is that clear?”

There was a silent nodding of heads.

Miss C. turned to Noah. “You’re in detention until three-thirty this afternoon.”

“But I didn’t do anything!”

“You come to my office now. You’re going to sit and think about what you did do.”

Noah started to argue, then swallowed his words. Everyone was looking at him. He glimpsed Amelia Reid standing by the track field, and his face flushed with humiliation. In silence, head down, he followed Miss C. toward the building.

The other skaters sullenly parted to let them through. Only as Noah was walking away from them did he hear one of the boys mutter:

“Thanks, Elliot. You screwed it up for the rest of us.”

If one wished to take the pulse of the town of Tranquility, the place to go was Monaghan’s Diner. This was where the Dinosaur Club met every day at noon. It was not really a club, but a coffee klatch, six or seven retirees who, for want of a job to go to, hung around Nadine’s counter, admiring the pies under the plastic bells. Claire had no idea how the club got its name. Her guess was that one of the men’s wives, in a fit of pique over her husband’s daily absence, one day blurted out something like: “Oh, you and that bunch of old dinosaurs!” And the name stuck, as good names do. They were all men, all well past sixty. Nadine was only in her fifties, but she was an unofficial Dinosaur because she worked behind the counter and had the good humor to tolerate their bad jokes and cigarette smoke.

Four hours after the thigh bone was found, Claire stopped in at Monaghan’s for lunch. The Dinosaurs, seven of them today, all wearing blaze orange over flannel shirts, sat in their usual place, the far left barstools near the milkshake machine.

Ned Tibbetts turned and nodded as Claire came in the door. Not a Warm greeting, but gruffly respectful. “Mornin’, Doc.”

“Morning, Mr. Tibbetts.”

“Gonna be a mean wind blowing in today.”

“It’s already freezing outside.”

“Coming out of the northwest. Could have snow tonight.”

“Cup of coffee, Doc?” asked Nadine.

“Thank you.”

Ned turned back to the other Dinosaurs, who’d variously acknowledged her entrance, and were now back in conversation. She knew only two of them by name; the others were merely familiar faces. Claire sat alone at her end of the counter, as befitted her outsider status. Oh, people were cordial enough to her. They smiled, they were polite. But to these natives, her eight months in Tranquility was but a temporary sojourn, a city girl’s fling with the simple life. Winter, they all seemed to agree, would be the test. Four months of snowstorms and black ice would drive her back to the city, as it had driven off the last two doctors from away.

Nadine slid a steaming cup of coffee in front of Claire. “Guess you know all about it, don’t you?” she said.

“All about what?”

“That bone.” Nadine stood watching her, patiently waiting for her contribution to the community pool of knowledge. Like most Maine women, Nadine did a lot of listening. It was the men who seemed to do all the talking. Claire heard them when she walked through the local hardware store or the five-and-dime or the post office. They stood around and gabbed while their wives waited, silent and watchful.

“I hear it’s a kid’s bone,” said Joe Bartlett, swiveling on the stool to look at Claire. “A thigh bone.”

“That right, Doc?” another one asked.

The other Dinosaurs turned and looked at Claire.

She said, with a smile, “You already seem to know everything about it.”

“Heard it was whacked up good. Maybe a knife. Maybe an ax. Then the animals got at it.”

“You boys sure are cheerful today,” snorted Nadine.

“Three days in those woods, raccoons and coyotes clean your bones straight off. Then Elwyn’s dogs come along. Hardly ever feeds ‘em, y’know. Bone like that’s a tasty snack. Maybe his dogs’ve been chewing on it for weeks. Elwyn, he wouldn’t think to give it a second look”

Joe laughed. “That Elwyn, he just plain doesn’t think.”

“Maybe he shot the kid himself Mistook it for a deer.”

Claire said, “It looked like a very old bone.”

Joe Bartlett waved at Nadine. “I made up my mind. I’ll have the Monte Cristo sandwich.”

“Whooee! Joe’s goin’ fancy on us today!” said Ned Tibbetts.

“What about you, Doc?” asked Nadine.

“A tuna sandwich and a bowl of mushroom soup, please.”

As Claire ate her lunch, she listened to the men talk about whom the bone might belong to. It was impossible not to listen in; three of them wore hearing aids. Most of them could remember as far back as sixty years ago, and they batted the possibilities around like a birdie in play Maybe it was that young girl who’d fallen off Bald Rock Cliff. No, they’d found her body, remember? Maybe it was the Jewett girl— hadn’t she run off when she was sixteen? Ned said no, he’d heard from his mother that she was living in Hartford; the girl’d have to be in her sixties now, probably a grandmother. Fred Moody said his wife Florida said the dead girl had to be from away—one of the summer people. Tranquility kept track of its own, and wouldn’t someone remember if a local kid had vanished?

Nadine refilled Claire’s cup of coffee. “Don’t they just go on and on?” she said. “You’d think they was planning world peace.”

“How do they know so much about it, anyway?”

“Joe’s second cousin to Floyd Spear, over at the police department.” Nadine began to wipe down the counter, long, brisk strokes that left behind a faintly chlorinated smell. “They say some bone expert’s driving up from Bangor today Way I figure, it’s gotta be one of those summer people.”

That, of course, was the obvious answer—one of the summer people. Whether it was an unsolved crime or an unidentified body, the all-purpose answer served. Every June, Tranquility’s population quadrupled when wealthy families from Boston and New York began arriving for their lakeside vacations. Here, in this peaceful summertime colony, they would linger on the porches of their shorefront cottages while their children splashed in the water. In the shops of Tranquility, cash registers would ring merrily as the summer folk Pumped dollars into the local economy. Someone had to clean their Cottages, repair their fancy cars, bag their groceries. The business from

those few short months was enough to keep the local population fed through the winter.

It was the money that made the visitors tolerable. That and the fact that every September, with the falling of the leaves, they would once again vanish, leaving the town to the people who belonged here.

Claire finished her lunch and walked back to her office.

Tranquility’s main street followed the curve of the lake. At the top of Elm Street was Joe Bartlett’s gas and garage, which he’d run for forty-two years until he retired; now his daughter’s two girls pumped gas and changed oil. A sign above the garage proudly proclaimed: Owned and Operated by Joe Bartlett and Granddaughters. Claire had always liked that sign; she thought it said a lot for Joe Bartlett.

At the post office, Elm Street curved north. Already that northwest wind was starting to blow in across the lake. It blasted through the narrow alleys between buildings, and walking along the sidewalk was like passing through a series of icy wind tunnels. In the window above the five-and-dime, a black cat gazed down at her, as though pondering the stupidity of creatures out in such weather.

Next to the five-and-dime was the yellow Victorian where Claire had her medical practice.

The building had once served as Dr. Pomeroy’s business and residence. The door still had the old frosted glass with the lettering:

MEDICAL OFFICE. Although the name James Pomeroy, M.D., had been replaced by Claire Elliot, M.D., Family Practice, she sometimes imagined she could see the shadow of the old name lingering like a ghost in the pebbled glass, refusing to yield to the new occupant.

Inside, her receptionist, Vera, was yakking on the phone, her bracelets clattering as she flipped through the appointment book. Vera’s hairstyle was like her personality: wild and woolly and a little frazzled. She cupped her hand over the receiver and said to Claire, “Mairead Temple’s in the exam room. Sore throat.”

“How’s the rest of the afternoon look?”

“Two more coming in, and that’s it.”

Which added up to only six patients all day, worried Claire. Since the summer tourists departed, Claire’s practice had contracted. She was the only doctor with an office right in Tranquility, yet most of the

locals drove the twenty miles to Two Hills for medical care. She knew why; not many in town believed she’d last through one hard winter, and they saw no point getting attached to a doctor who’d be gone by the following autumn.

Mairead Temple was one of the few patients Claire had managed to attract, but it was only because Mairead owned no car. She’d walked a mile into town, and now she sat on the exam table, still wheezing slightly from the cold weather. Mairead was eighty-one and she had no teeth or tonsils. Nor did she have much deference for authority.

Examining Mairead’s throat, Claire said, “It does look pretty red.”

“I coulda told you that myself,” Mairead answered.

“But you don’t have a fever. And your lymph nodes aren’t swollen.”

“Hurts wicked bad. Can’t hardly swallow.”

“I’ll take a throat culture. By tomorrow we’ll know if it’s strep. But I think it’s just a virus.”

Mairead, her eyes small and suspicious, watched Claire peel open a throat swab. “Dr. Pomeroy always gave me penicillin.”

“Antibiotics don’t work on a virus, Mrs. Temple.”

“Always made me feel better, that penicillin.”

“Say ‘ah.”

Mairead gagged as Claire swabbed her throat. She looked like a tortoise, leathery neck extended, toothless mouth snapping at the air. Eyes watering, she said: “Pomeroy was in practice a long time. Always knew what he was doing. All you young doctors, you coulda learned a thing or two from him.”

Claire sighed. Would she always be compared to Dr. Pomeroy? His gravestone sat in a place of honor in the Mountain Street Cemetery. Claire saw his cryptic notes in the old medical charts, and sometimes she sensed his ghost dogging her on her rounds. Certainly it was Pomeroy’s ghost that now came between her and Mairead. Dead though he was, he would always be remembered as the town doctor.

“Let’s listen to your lungs,” said Claire.

Mairead grunted and tugged at her clothes. It was cold outside, and she had dressed for it. A sweater, a cotton shirt, thermal underwear, and a bra all had to be pulled free before Claire could set her stethoscope on her chest.

Through the thump-thump of Mairead’s heart, Claire heard a distant tapping and she looked up.

Vera stuck her head in the room. “Call on line two.”

“Can you take a message?”

“It’s your son. He won’t talk to me.”

“Excuse me, Mrs. Temple,” Claire said, and went into her office to take the call. “Noah?”

“You have to pick me up. I’m gonna miss the bus.”

“But it’s only two-fifteen. The bus hasn’t left yet.”

“I’m in detention. I can’t leave until three-thirty.”

“Why? What happened?”

“I don’t wanna talk about it now.”

“I’m going to find out anyway, honey”

“Not now, Mom.” She heard him sniffle, heard the tears break through his voice. “Please. Please, can you just come and get me?”

The phone went dead. Haunted by the image of her son, crying and in trouble, Claire quickly dialed the school back. But by the time she reached the secretary, Noah had already left the office, and Miss Cornwallis was not available to speak to her.

Claire had an hour to finish with Mairead Temple, see two new patients, and drive to the school.

Feeling pressured now, and distracted by Noah’s crisis, she stepped back into the exam room and was dismayed to see that Mairead already had put her clothes back on.

“I’m not quite finished examining you,” said Claire.

“Yeah, y’are,” grunted Mairead.

“But Mrs. Temple—”

“Came for penicillin. Didn’t come to get no Q-Tip shoved down my throat.”

“Please, won’t you just sit down? I know I do things a little differently from Dr. Pomeroy, but there’s a reason for it. Antibiotics don’t stop a virus, and they can cause side effects.”

“Never caused me no side effects.”

“It only takes a day to get back the culture results. If it’s strep, I’ll give you the medicine then.”

“Gotta walk all the way into town. Takes up half my day.”

Suddenly Claire understood what the real issue was. Every lab test, every new prescription, meant a mile-long walk into town for Mairead, and then another mile walk home.

With a sigh, she pulled out a prescription pad. And for the first time that visit, she saw Mairead’s smile. Satisfied. Triumphant.

Isabel sat quietly on the couch, afraid to move, afraid to say a word.

Mary Rose was very, very mad. Their mother was not home yet, so Isabel was all alone with her sister. She had never seen Mary Rose behave this way, pacing back and forth like a tiger in the zoo, screaming at her. At her, Isabel! Mary Rose was so angry, it turned her face wrinkled and ugly, not like Princess Aurora anymore, but more like an evil queen. This was not her sister. This was a bad person inside her sister’s body.

Isabel huddled deeper into the cushions, watching furtively as the bad person in Mary Rose’s body stalked through the living room, muttering. Never get to go anywhere or do anything because of you! Stuck at home all the time. A baby-sitter slave! I wish you were dead. I wish you were dead.

But I’m your sister! Isabel wanted to wail, though she didn’t dare make a peep. She began to cry, silent tears plopping onto the cushions, making big wet stains. Oh no. Mary Rose would be mad about that, too.

Isabel waited until her sister’s back was turned, then she quietly slipped off the couch and darted into the kitchen. She would hide in here, out of Mary Rose’s way, until their mother came home. She ducked around the corner of a kitchen cabinet and sat down on the cold tiles, hugging her knees to her chest. If she just stayed quiet, Mary Rose wouldn’t find her. She could see the clock on the wall, and she knew that when the little hand was on the five, their mother would come home. She needed to pee, now, but she would just have to wait because she was safe here.

Then Rocky the parakeet began to screech. His cage was a few feet away, by the window. She looked up at him, silently imploring him to be quiet, but Rocky was not very smart and he kept screeching at her.

Their mother had said it many times: “Rocky is just a birdbrain,” and he was proving it now by all the noise he made.

Be quiet! Oh please be quiet or she’ll find me!

Too late. Footsteps creaked into the kitchen. A drawer was yanked open and silverware clanged to the floor. Mary Rose was flinging around forks and spoons. Isabel wrapped herself into a ball and squeezed more tightly against the cabinet.

Rocky the traitor stared at her as he squawked, as though to shout out: “There she is! There she is!”

Now Mary Rose paced into view, but she wasn’t looking at Isabel. She was staring at Rocky. She went to the cage and stood looking at the parakeet, who continued to screech. She opened the door and thrust in her hand. Rocky’s wings flapped in panicked whooshes of flying feathers and birdseed. She captured the struggling bird, a squirming puff of powder blue, and took him out of the cage. With one quick twist, she snapped the bird’s neck.

Rocky went limp.

She flung the body against the wall. It plopped to the floor in a sad little heap of feathers.

A silent scream boiled up in Isabel’s throat. She choked it back and buried her face against her knees, waiting in terror for her sister to break her neck as well.

But Mary Rose walked right out of the kitchen. Right out of the house.

3

 

Noah was sitting on the front steps of the high school when Claire arrived at four o’clock. She had rushed through her last two appointments, and had driven straight to the school five miles away, but she was a half hour late, and she could see he was angry about it. He didn’t say a word, just climbed into the truck, and slammed the door shut.

“Seat belt, honey;’ she said.

He yanked on the shoulder strap and rammed the buckle in. They drove for a moment in silence.

“I’ve been sitting around forever. What took you so long?” he said.

“I had patients to see, Noah. Why were you in detention?”

“It wasn’t my fault.”

“Whose fault was it, then?”

“Taylor. He’s turning into such a jerk. I don’t know what’s wrong With him.” Sighing, he slumped into his seat. “And I used to think we Were friends. Now it’s like he hates me.”

She glanced at him. “Is this Taylor Darnell you’re talking about?”

“Yeah.”

“What happened?”

“It was an accident. My skateboard ran into him. Next thing I know, he’s shoving me around. So I shoved him back, and he fell.”

“Why didn’t you call a teacher?”

“There weren’t any around. Then Miss Cornwallis comes out and suddenly Taylor starts yelling that it’s my fault.” He turned away from her, but not before she’d glimpsed the embarrassed swipe of his hand across his eyes. He tries so hard to be grown up, she thought with a twinge of pity; but he’s really still a child.

“She took my skateboard, Mom,” he said softly. “Can you get it back for me?”

“I’ll call Miss Cornwallis tomorrow. But I want you to call Taylor and apologize.”

“He turned on me! He’s the one who should apologize!”

“Taylor’s not having an easy time of it, Noah. His parents just got divorced.”

He looked at her. “How do you know? Is he your patient?”

“Yes.”

“What did you see him for?”

“You know I can’t talk about that.”

“Like you ever talk to me about anything,” he muttered, and turned once again to stare out the window.

She knew better than to rise to the bait, so she said nothing, preferring silence to the argument that would surely erupt between them if she allowed him to provoke her.

When he spoke again, it was so quietly she almost didn’t hear him. “I want to go home, Mom.”

“That’s where I’m taking you.”

“No, I mean home. To Baltimore. I don’t want to stay here anymore. There’s nothing here but trees and a bunch of old guys driving around in their pickup trucks. We don’t belong here.”

“This is our home now.”

“Not mine.”

“You haven’t tried very hard to like it here.”

“Like I had a choice? Like you asked me if we should move?”

“We’ll both learn to like it. I’m still adjusting, too.”

“So why did we have to move?”

Gripping the steering wheel, she stared straight ahead. “You know why.” They both knew what she was talking about. They’d left Baltimore because of him, because she’d taken a hard look at her son’s future and was frightened by what she saw. An enlarging circle of troubled friends. Repeated calls from the police. More courtrooms and lawyers and therapists. She had seen their future in Baltimore, and she’d grabbed her son and run like hell.

“I’m not going to turn into some perfect preppie just because you drag me up to the woods,” he said. “I can mess things up just as good right here. So we might as well go back.”

She pulled into their driveway and turned to face him. “Messing up is not going to get you back to Baltimore. Either you get your life together or you don’t. It’s your choice.”

“When is anything my choice?”

“You have lots of choices. And from now on, I want you to make the right ones.”

“You mean the ones you want.” He jumped out of the truck.

“Noah. Noah!”

“Just leave me alone!” he yelled. He slammed the door shut and stalked off to the house.

She didn’t follow him. She just sat clutching the steering wheel, too tired and upset at that moment to deal with him. Abruptly she shifted into reverse and backed out of the driveway. They both needed time to cool down, to get their emotions under control. She turned onto Toddy Point Road and headed along the shore of Locust Lake. Driving as therapy.

How easy it had all seemed when Peter was alive, when one of his cross-eyed looks was all that was needed to make their son laugh. The days when they were still happy, still whole.

We haven’t been happy since you died, Peter I miss you. I miss you every day, every hour Every minute of my life.

The lights from lakeside cottages shimmered through her tears as she drove. She rounded the curve, drove past the Boulders, and suddenly the lights were no longer white but blue, and they seemed to be dancing among the trees.

It was a police cruiser, and it was parked on Rachel Sorkin’s property.

She pulled to a stop in the driveway. Three vehicles were in the front yard, two police cruisers and a white van. A Maine state trooper was talking to Rachel on the porch. Beneath the trees, flashlight beams zigzagged across the ground.

Claire spotted Lincoln Kelly emerging from the woods. It was his silhouette she recognized as he passed before one of the searchlights. Though not a tall man, Lincoln was straight and solid and he moved with a quiet assuredness that made him seem larger than he was. He stopped to speak to the state trooper, then he noticed Claire and crossed the yard to her truck.

She rolled down the window. “Have you found any more bones?” she asked.

He leaned in, bringing with him the scent of the forest. Pine trees and earth and wood smoke. “Yep. The dogs led us over to the stream-bed,” he said. “That bank eroded pretty badly this spring, after all those floods. That’s what uncovered the bones. But I’m afraid wild animals have already scattered most of them in the woods.”

“Does the ME think it’s a homicide?”

“It’s no longer an ME’s case. The bones are too old. There’s a forensic anthropologist in charge now, if you’d like to talk to her. Name’s Dr. Overlock.”

He opened the truck door and Claire climbed out. Together they walked into the gloom of the woods. Dusk had rapidly thickened to night. The ground was uneven, layered with dead leaves, and she found herself stumbling in the underbrush. Lincoln reached out to steady her. He seemed to have no trouble navigating in the darkness, his heavy boots connecting solidly with the ground.

Lights were shining among the trees, and Claire heard voices and the sound of trickling water. She and Lincoln emerged from the woods, onto the stream bank. A section of the eroded bank had been cordoned off by police tape strung between stakes, and on a tarp lay the mud-encrusted bones that had already been unearthed. Claire recognized a tibia and what looked like fragments of a pelvis. Two men

wearing waders and headlamps stood knee-deep in the stream, gingerly excavating the side of the bank.

Lucy Overlock was standing among the trees talking on a cell phone. She was like a tree herself, tall and strapping, dressed in a woodsman’s wardrobe of jeans and work boots. Her hair, almost entirely gray, was tied back in a tight, no-nonsense ponytail. She saw Lincoln, gave a harassed wave, and continued with her phone conversation.

no artifacts yet, just the skeletal remains. But I assure you, this burial doesn’t fall under NAGPRA. The skull looks Caucasoid to me, not Indian. What do you mean, how can I tell? It’s obvious! The brain-case is too narrow, and the facial breadth just isn’t wide enough. No, of course it’s not absolute. But the site is on Locust Lake, and there’s never been a Penobscot settlement here. The tribe wouldn’t even fish in this lake, it’s such a taboo place.” She looked up at the sky and shook her head. “Certainly, you can examine the bones for yourself. But we have to excavate this site now, before the animals do any more damage, or we’ll lose the whole thing.” She hung up and looked at Lincoln in frustration. “Custody battle.”

“Over bones?”

“It’s that NAGPRA law. Indian graves protection. Every time we find remains, the tribes demand one hundred percent confirmation it’s not one of theirs. Ninety-five percent isn’t good enough for them.” Her gaze turned to Claire, who’d stepped forward to introduce herself.

“Lucy Overlock,” said Lincoln. “And this is Claire Elliot. The doctor who found the thigh bone.”

The two women shook hands, the no-nonsense greeting of two medical professionals meeting over a grim business.

“We’re lucky you’re the one who spotted the bone,” said Lucy. “Anyone else might not have realized it was human.”

“To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure,” said Claire. “I’m glad I didn’t drag everyone out here for a cow bone.”

“It’s definitely not a cow”

One of the diggers called out from the streambed: “We found something else.”

Lucy dropped knee-deep into the stream and aimed a flashlight at the exposed bank.

“There,” said the digger, gently prodding the soil with a trowel. “Looks like it might be another skull.”

Lucy snapped on gloves. “Okay, let’s ease it out.”

He slid the tip of his trowel deeper into the bank and gingerly pried away caked mud. The object dropped into Lucy’s gloved hands. She scrambled out of the water and up onto the bank. Kneeling down, she surveyed her treasure over the tarp.

It was indeed a second skull. Under the floodlight, Lucy carefully turned it over and examined the teeth.

“Another juvenile. No wisdom teeth,” Lucy noted. “I see decayed molars here and here, but no fillings.”

“Meaning no dental work,” said Claire.

“Yes, these are old bones. A good thing for you, Lincoln. Otherwise, this would be an active homicide case.”

“Why do you say that?”

She rotated the skull, and the light fell on the crown, where fracture lines radiated out from a central depression, the way a soft-boiled egg cracks when it is struck with the back of a spoon.

“I don’t think there’s any doubt,” she said. “This child died a violent death.”

The chirp of a beeper cut through the silence, startling them all. In the stillness of those woods, that electronic sound was strangely foreign. Disconcerting. Both Claire and Lincoln automatically reached for their respective pagers.

“It’s mine,” said Lincoln, glancing at his readout. Without another word, he took off through the woods toward his cruiser. Seconds later, Claire saw the dome light flashing through the trees as his vehicle streaked away.

“Must be an emergency,” said Lucy.

Officer Pete Sparks was already at the scene, trying to talk old Vein Fuller into putting down his shotgun. Night had fallen, and Lincoln’s first glimpse of the situation was of two wildly gesturing silhouettes intermittently backlit by the flashing dome light of Pete’s cruiser. Lin

coin pulled to a stop in Vern’s driveway and cautiously stepped out of his vehicle. He heard bleating sheep, the restless clucking of chickens. The sounds of a working farm.

“You don’t need the gun,” Pete was saying. “Just go back in the house, Vern, and we’ll look into this.”

“Like you looked into it the last time?”

“I didn’t find anything the last time.”

“That’s because you take so damn long gettin’ here!”

“What’s the problem?” said Lincoln.

Vern turned to him. “That you, Chief Kelly? Then you tell this—this boy here that I’m not about to hand over my only protection.”

“I’m not asking you to hand it over,” said a weary-sounding Pete. “I just want you to stop waving it around. Go inside and put the gun away, so nobody gets hurt.”

“I think that’s a good idea;’ said Lincoln. “We don’t know what we’re dealing with, so you go in and lock the door, Vern. Stay close to the phone, just in case we need you to call for backup.”

“Backup?” Vern gave a grunt. “Yeah. Okay, I’ll do that.”

The two cops waited for the old man to stomp into the house and shut the door.

Then Pete said, “He’s blind as a bat. Wish we could get that shotgun away from him. Every time I come out here, I half expect to get my head blown off.”

“What’s the problem, anyway?”

“Aw, it’s the third time he’s called nine-one-one. I’m so busy runnin’ my tail off with all these other calls, it takes me a while to get here. He always has the same complaint about some wild animal stalking his sheep. Probably just seeing his own shadow, that’s what.”

“Why does he call us?”

“Cause Fish and Game takes even longer to respond. I been here twice this week, didn’t find anything. Not even a coyote print. Today’s the first time I seen Vern this riled up. Thought I’d better get you out, just in case he decided to shoot me ‘stead of some wild animal.”

Lincoln glanced at the house, and saw the old man’s face silhouetted in the window. “He’s watching. Might as well check the property, just to keep him happy”

“Says he saw the animal over by the barn.”

Pete turned on his flashlight, and they started across the yard, toward the sound of bleating sheep. Lincoln felt the old man’s gaze every step of the way. Let’s just humor him, he thought. Even if it is a waste of our time.

He was startled when Pete suddenly halted, his flashlight beam trained on the barn door.

It hung open.

Something wasn’t right. It was after dark, and the door should have been latched to protect the animals.

He turned on his flashlight as well. They approached more slowly now, their jerky beams guiding the way. At the entrance to the barn they paused. Even through the earthy melange of farmyard odors, they could smell it: the scent of blood.

They stepped into the barn. At once the bleating intensified, the sound as disturbing as the cries of panicked children. Pete swung his flashlight in a wide arc, and they caught glimpses of pitchforks and fluttering chickens and sheep fearfully bunched together in a pen.

Lying on the sawdust floor was the source of that foul odor. Pete stumbled out of the building first, and retched into the weeds, one hand propped up against the barn wall. “Jesus. Jesus.”

“It’s just a dead sheep,” said Lincoln.

“I never seen a coyote do that. Lay out the offal.

Lincoln aimed his beam at the ground, quickly scanning the area around the barn door. All he saw was a jumble of boot prints, his and Pete’s and Vern Fuller’s. No tracks. How could an animal leave no tracks?

A twig snapped behind him, and he whirled around to see Vern, still clutching the shotgun.

“It’s a bear,” said the old man. “That’s what I seen, a bear.”

“A bear wouldn’t do this.”

“I know what I saw. Whyn’t you believe me?”

Because everyone knows you’re half blind.

“It went that way, into the woods,” said Vern, pointing to the forested edge of his property “I followed it over there, just before dark. Then I lost

it.”

Lincoln saw that the boot tracks did indeed head toward the forest, but Vern had retraced his steps several times, obscuring any animal footprints.

He followed the trail over to the woods. There he stood for a moment, peering into the blackness. The trees were so thick they seemed to form an impenetrable wall that even his flashlight beam could not pierce.

By now Pete had recovered, and was standing by his side. “We should wait till daylight,” Pete whispered. “Don’t know what we’re dealing with.”

“I know it’s not a bear.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not scared of bears. But if it’s something else.

Pete drew his weapon. “Rumor has it a cougar was spotted up at Jordan Falls last week.”

Now Lincoln drew his weapon as well as he moved slowly into the woods. He took half a dozen steps, the crack of breaking twigs under his boot as loud as gunfire. All at once he froze, staring at that wall of trees. The forest seemed to close in. The hairs on the back of his neck were standing up.

There’s something out there. It’s watching us.

Every instinct screamed at him to retreat. He backed away, his heart racing, his boots setting off explosions of noise. Only when he and Pete had emerged completely from the woods did that feeling of imminent danger fade away.

They stood once again in front of Vern Fuller’s barn, and the sheep were still bleating. He looked down at the boot prints. Suddenly his head came up.

“What lies beyond those woods?” he asked.

“Goes back a ways,” said Vern. “Other side’s Barnstown Road. Bunch of houses.”

Houses,

thought Lincoln.

Families.

 

Noah was watching TV when Claire got home. As she hung up her coat

in the hallway, she recognized the theme music from The Simpsons cartoon playing in the other room, and she heard Homer

Simpson’s loud burp and Lisa Simpson’s mutter of disgust. Then she heard her son laugh, and she thought: I’m so glad my son still laughs at cartoons.

She went into the front parlor and saw Noah flopped back against the couch cushions, his face briefly lit up with laughter. He looked at her, but didn’t say anything.

She sat down beside him and propped her feet up on the coffee table, next to his. Big feet, little feet, she thought with quiet amusement. Noah’s feet had grown so huge, they almost looked like a clown’s beside hers.

On the TV, an enormously fat Homer was bouncing around in a flowery muumuu, and shoveling food into his mouth.

Noah laughed again, and so did Claire. This was exactly the way she wanted to spend the rest of the evening. They would watch TV together, and eat popcorn for dinner. She leaned toward him, and they affectionately bumped heads together.

“I’m sorry Mom,” he said.

“It’s okay, Honey. I’m sorry I was late picking you up?’

“Grandma Elliot called. A little while ago?’

“Oh? Does she want me to call her back?”

“I guess.” He watched the TV for a while, his silence stretching through the string of commercials. Then he said, “Grandma wanted to make sure we were okay tonight?’

Claire gave him a puzzled look. “Why?”

“It’s Dad’s birthday.”

On the TV, Homer Simpson in his flowered muumuu had hijacked an ice cream truck and was driving it at breakneck speed, gobbling ice cream the whole way. Claire watched in stunned silence. Today was your birthday, she thought. You’ve been dead only two years, and already we’re losing bits and pieces of your memory.

“Oh god, Noah,” she whispered. “I can’t believe it. I completely forgot.”

She felt his head droop heavily against her shoulder, And he said, with quiet shame, “So did I.”

Sitting in her bedroom, Claire returned Margaret Elliot’s call. Claire had always liked her mother-in-law, and through the years, their affection had grown to the point that she felt far closer to Margaret than she ever had to her own coldly aloof parents. Sometimes it seemed to Claire that everything she knew about love, about passion, had been taught to her by the Elliot family.

“Hi, Mom. It’s me,” said Claire.

“Sixty-two degrees and sunny in Baltimore today,” Margaret replied, and Claire had to laugh. Ever since she’d moved to Tranquility this had been the running joke between them, their comparison of weather reports. Margaret had not wanted her to leave Baltimore. “You have no idea what real cold is,” she’d told Claire, “and I’m going to keep reminding you of what you’ve left behind.”

“Thirty-five degrees here,” Claire dutifully reported. She looked out her window. “It’s getting colder. Darker.”

“Did Noah tell you I called earlier?”

“Yes. And we’re doing fine. We really are.”

“Are you?”

Claire said nothing. Margaret had the uncanny talent for reading emotions from just the simple inflection of one’s voice, and already she had sensed something amiss.

“Noah told me he wants to come back here,” said Margaret.

“We just moved.”

“You can always change your mind.”

“Not now. I’ve made too many commitments here. To this new practice, the house.”

“Those are commitments to things, Claire.”

“No, they’re really commitments to Noah. I need to stay here, for him.” She paused, suddenly aware that, as much as she loved Margaret, she was feeling a little irritated. She was also weary of the gentle but repeated hints that she should return to Baltimore. “It’s always hard for a kid to make a fresh start, but he’ll adjust. He’s too young to know What he wants.”

“That’s true, I suppose. What about you? Do you still want to be there?”

“Why are you asking, Mom?”

“Because I know it would be hard for me, moving to a new place. Leaving behind my friends.”

Claire stared at the dresser mirror, at her own tired face. At the reflection of her bedroom, which still had few pictures on the wall. It was merely a collection of furniture, a place to sleep, not yet part of a real home.

“A widow needs her friends, Claire,” said Margaret.

“Maybe that was one of the reasons I had to leave.”

“What do you mean?”

“That’s what I was to everyone—the widow. I’d walk into my clinic, and people would give me those sad and sympathetic looks. They were all afraid to laugh or tell jokes when I was around. And no one, no one ever dared to talk about Peter. It’s as if they thought I’d break down in sobs if they just mentioned his name.”

There was silence on the line, and Claire suddenly regretted having spoken so frankly.

“It doesn’t mean I ever stop missing him, Mom,” she said softly. “I see him every time I look at Noah’s face. The resemblance is so amazing. It’s like watching Peter grow up.”

“In more ways than one,” Margaret said, and Claire was relieved to hear the warmth had not left her mother-in-law’s voice. “Peter wasn’t the easiest child to raise. I don’t think I ever told you about all the trouble he got into when he was Noah’s age. That’s where Noah gets his streak of mischief, you know. From Peter.”

Claire had to laugh. He certainly didn’t get it from me, his boringly scrupulous mother, whose most serious crime was neglecting to get that safety sticker

“Noah’s got a good heart, but he’s still only fourteen,” said Margaret with a friendly note of warning. “Don’t be too terribly shocked if there’s more mischief on the way”

Later, as Claire headed back downstairs, she smelled the odor of burning matches, and she thought: Well, here it comes, then. More mischief. He’s sneaking another cigarette. She followed the scent to the kitchen and came to a halt in the doorway.

Noah was holding a lit match. He glanced at her, and quickly shook it out. “It’s all the candles I could find,” he said.

In silence she approached the kitchen table. Her vision suddenly blurred with tears as she gazed at the Sara Lee layer cake he had taken out of the freezer. Flames danced atop eleven candles.

Noah struck another match and lit the twelfth flame on the cake. “Happy birthday, Dad,” he said softly.

Happy birthday, Peter,

she thought, and blinked away her tears. And she and her son blew out the candles.

4

 

Mrs. Horatio was going to pith a frog.

“It doesn’t hurt them a bit, once you’ve penetrated their brain stem,” she explained. “The needle goes in at the base of the skull, and you wiggle it around a little to destroy all the sensory tracts running up to the brain. This paralyzes them, stops any conscious movement, but it keeps their spinal reflexes intact for study.” She reached into the jar and picked up a squirming frog in one hand. With her other hand, she reached for the pithing needle. It was humongous.

Though a ripple of nausea stirred in his stomach, Noah sat perfectly still at his desk in the third row. He was careful to keep his legs casually thrown out in front of him, his expression bored.

He could hear the other students squirm in their chairs, the girls mostly. To his right, a horrified Amelia Reid covered her mouth with her hand.

He let his gaze slide around the room and he silently pronounced judgment as he looked at each student in turn. Nerd. Jock. Kiss-ass preppie. Except for Amelia Reid, none of them were kids he cared to hang out with. None of them were interested in hanging out with

him,

either, but that was okay. His mom might like it in this town, but he didn’t plan on staying forever.

Graduate, and then I’m outta here, outta here, outta here.

“Taylor, stop fidgeting and pay attention,” said Mrs. Horatio.

Noah glanced sideways, and saw that Taylor Darnell was gripping his desk with both hands and staring at the exam paper he’d just gotten back that morning. Mrs. Horatio had scrawled a giant D plus in red marker. The test paper was covered with Taylor’s angry slashes in black ink. Next to the humiliating grade, he’d written: “Die, Mrs. Whoratio.”

“Noah, are you paying attention?”

Noah flushed and turned his gaze back to the front of the class. Mrs. Horatio was holding up the frog for all to see. She actually looked like she was enjoying herself as she placed the tip of the pithing needle against the back of the frog’s head. Her eyes were bright, her mouth puckered and eager as she jammed the needle into the brainstem. The frog’s hind legs thrashed, its webbed feet slapping in pain.

Amelia gave a whimper and dropped her head down, her blond hair cascading over the desk. Chairs were squeaking all over the room now. Someone called out with a note of desperation: “Mrs. Horatio, can I be excused?”

“…have to move the needle back and forth with a certain amount of force. Don’t worry about the feet flapping around like this. It’s purely reflex action. Just the spine shooting off impulses.”

“Mrs. Horatio, I have to use the bathroom..

“In a minute. First, you have to see how I do this.” She twisted the needle and there was a soft crack.

Noah thought he was going to puke. Struggling to maintain that look of utterly cool nonchalance, he turned away, his hands clenched Under his desk. Don’t puke, don’t puke, don’t puke. He focused on Amelia’s blond hair, which he’d often admired. Rapunzel hair. He Stared at it, thinking how much he’d like to stroke it. He’d never even dared talk to Amelia. She was like a girl in a golden bubble, beyond the reach of any mere mortal.

“There now,” said Mrs. Horatio. “That’s all there is to it. You see, Class? Total paralysis.”

Noah forced his gaze back to the frog. It lay on the teacher’s desk, a limp, floppy carcass. Still alive, if you believed old Horatio, but showing no signs of it. He felt a sudden and overwhelming pity for that frog, imagined himself sprawled across that desk, eyes open and aware, body unresponsive. Darts of panic going nowhere, just exploding like firecrackers in your brain. He himself felt paralyzed and numb.

“Now each of you pair up with a lab partner,” said Mrs. Horatio. “And scoot your desks together.”

Noah swallowed and looked sideways at Amelia. She gave a helpless nod.

He moved his desk next to hers. They didn’t speak to each other; it was a partnership based purely on proximity but hey, whatever it took to get up close. Amelia’s lips were trembling. He wanted very much to comfort her, but he didn’t know how to, so he just sat there, his face assuming, by default, its usual bored expression. Say something nice to her, moron. Something to impress her You may never get another chance!

“Frog sure looks dead,” he said.

She shuddered.

Mrs. Horatio came walking down the aisle carrying the jar of frogs. She stopped beside Noah and Amelia.

“Take one. Each team works on a frog.”

The blood drained from Amelia’s face. It was up to Noah.

He shoved his hand in the jar and grabbed a wriggling frog. Mrs. Horatio slapped a pithing needle down on his desk. “Get started, you two,” she said, and moved on to the next team.

Noah looked down at the frog he was holding. It stared back at him, bug-eyed. He picked up the pithing needle, then he looked at the frog again. Those eyes were begging him, Let me live, let me live! He put down the needle, his nausea back full force, and looked hopefully at Amelia. “You wanna do the honors?”

“I can’t,” she whispered. “Don’t make me, please.”

One of the girls screamed. Noah glanced sideways and saw Lydia Lipman leap out of her chair and scramble away from her lab partner, Taylor Darnell. There was a wooden thud, thud, thud, as Taylor stabbed his pithing needle into the frog. Blood spattered on his desk.

“Taylor! Taylor, stop it!” said Mrs. Horatio.

He kept stabbing. Thud, thud. The frog looked like green hamburger. “D plus,” he muttered. “I studied all week for that test. You can’t give me a D plus!”

“Taylor, go to the principal’s office.”

He stabbed the frog harder. “You can’t give me a lousy D plus!”

She grabbed his wrist and tried to take the needle away from him. “Go see Miss Cornwallis now!”

Taylor yanked away, knocking the dead frog off his desk. It tumbled into Amelia’s lap. With a shriek, she jumped to her feet and the small corpse slatted to the floor.

“Taylor!” Mrs. Horatio yelled. Again she grabbed his wrist, this time forcing him to drop the pithing needle. “Leave this room immediately!”

“Fuck you!”

“What did you say?”

He stood up and shoved his chair to the floor. “Fuck you!”

“You are suspended as of right now! You’ve been sullen and disrespectful all week. This is it, buddy. You’re out of here!”

He kicked the chair. It bounced up the aisle and crashed into a desk. Grabbing his shirt, she tried to march him toward the door, but he twisted free and shoved her backwards. She fell against a desk, toppling the jar. It shattered, and frogs leaped free, scattering away in a writhing carpet of green.

Slowly Mrs. Horatio rose to her feet, fury blazing in her eyes. “I’m going to have you expelled!”

Taylor reached into his backpack.

Mrs. Horatio’s gaze froze on the gun in his hand. “Put it down,” she said. “Taylor, put it down!”

The explosion seemed to punch her in the abdomen. She staggered backwards, clutching her belly, and dropped to the floor with a look of disbelief. Time seemed to halt, frozen for one interminable moment as Noah stared down in horror at the bright river of blood streaming toward his sneakers. Then a girl’s terrified shriek pierced the silence. In the next instant, chaos exploded all around him. He heard chairs

slam to the floor, saw a fleeing girl stumble and fall to her knees in the broken glass. The air itself seemed misted with blood and panic.

Another gunshot exploded.

Noah’s gaze swept around in a slow-motion pan of fleeing bodies, and he saw Vernon Hobbs tumble forward and crash into a desk. The room was a blur of flying hair and churning legs. But Noah himself could not seem to move. His feet were mired in a waking nightmare, his body refusing to obey his brain’s commands of Run! Run!

His gaze panned back across the chaos to Taylor Darnell, and to his horror he saw that the gun was now pointed at Amelia’s head.

No, he thought. No!

Taylor fired.

A streak of blood magically appeared on Amelia’s temple and the rivulet slowly dripped down her cheek, yet she remained standing, her eyes wide and focused like a condemned animal’s on the gun barrel. “Please, Taylor,” she whispered. “Please, don’t.

.

Taylor raised the gun again.

All at once, Noah’s legs broke free of their nightmare paralysis, his body moving of its own accord. His brain registered a multitude of details at once. He saw Taylor’s head come up, face rotating toward Noah. He saw the gun slowly sweep around in an arc. He saw the look of surprise in Taylor’s eyes as Noah came flying at him.

Another bullet exploded out of the barrel.

“I’ve just noticed my patient was admitted. Why didn’t anyone call me?”

The ward clerk looked up from her desk and seemed to shrink when she saw it was Claire asking the question. “Uh

… which patient, Dr. Elliot?”

“Katie Youmans. I saw her name posted on one of the doors, but she’s not in the room. I can’t find her chart in the rack.”

“She was admitted just a few hours ago, through the ER. She’s in X-ray right now.”

“No one notified me.”

The clerk’s gaze dropped like a stone to her desk. “Dr. DelRay’s taken over as attending physician.’

Claire absorbed this dismaying news in silence. It was not uncommon for patients to switch physicians, sometimes for the most trivial of reasons. Two of Adam DelRay’s patients had transferred to Claire’s practice as well. But she was surprised that this particular patient would choose to leave her care.

Sixteen years old, and mildly retarded, Katie Youmans had been living with her father when she was brought in to see Claire for a bladder infection. Claire had noticed at once the circumferential bruises on the girl’s wrists. Forty-five minutes of gentle questioning and a pelvic examination had confirmed Claire’s suspicions. Katie was removed from her father’s abusive household and placed in foster care.

Since then, the girl had thrived. Her bruises, both physical and emotional, finally faded. Claire had counted Katie as one of her triumphs. Why would the girl switch doctors?

She found Katie in X-ray. Through the small viewing window, Claire saw the girl lying on the table, her lower leg positioned beneath the X-ray tube.

“Can I ask what the admitting diagnosis is?” Claire asked the tech.

“They told me cellulites of the right foot. Her chart’s over there, if you want to look at it.”

Claire picked up the medical record and flipped to the admission note. It had been dictated by Adam DelRay at seven

A.M. that morning.

Sixteen-year-old white female who stepped on a tack two days ago. This morning she awakened with fever chills, and swollen foot…

Claire skimmed the history and physical, then turned the page and read the therapeutic plan.

Quickly she picked up the phone to page Adam DelRay.

A moment later, he walked into X-ray, looking crisply starched as Usual in his long white coat. Though he had always been cordial toward her, he had never displayed any real warmth, and she suspected that under his Yankee reserve burned a masculine sense of Competition, perhaps even resentment, that Claire had lured away two of his patients.

Now he had laid claim to one of hers, and she had to suppress her own feelings of competitiveness. Only the well-being of Katie Youmans should concern her now.

“I’ve been following Katie as an outpatient,” she said. “I know her pretty well, and—”

“Claire, it’s just one of those things.” He lay a reassuring hand on her shoulder. “I hope you don’t take it personally.”

“That’s not why I paged you.”

“It was just more convenient for me to admit her. I was in the ER when she came in. And her guardian felt Katie needed an internist.”

“I’m perfectly capable of treating cellulites, Adam.”

“What if it turns into osteomyelitis? It could get complicated.”

“Are you saying a family physician isn’t qualified to take care of this patient?”

“The girl’s guardian made the decision. I just happened to be available.”

By now Claire was too angry to respond. Turning, she stared through the window at her patient. At her ex-patient. Suddenly she focused on the girl’s N, and she noticed the handwritten label affixed to the bag of dextrose and water. “Is she already getting antibiotics?”

“They just hung it,” said the X-ray tech.

“But she’s allergic to penicillin! That’s why I paged you, Adam!”

“The girl never said anything about allergies.”

Claire ran into the next room, snagged the IV line, and closed off the infusion. Glancing down at Katie, she was alarmed to see the girl’s face was flushed. “I need epinephrine!” Claire called out to the X-ray tech. “And IV Benadryl!”

Katie was moving restlessly on the table. “I feel funny, Dr. Elliot,” she murmured. “I’m so hot.” Wheals had swollen on her neck in bright blotches of red.

The tech took one look at the girl, muttered “Oh, shit,” and yanked open the drawer for the anaphylaxis kit.

“She didn’t tell me she was allergic,” said DelRay, defensively.

“Here’s the epi,” said the tech, handing Claire the syringe.

“I can’t breathe!”

“It’s okay, Katie,” soothed Claire, uncapping the needle. “You’ll feel better in just a few seconds She pierced the girl’s skin and injected a tenth of a cc of epinephrine.

“I—can’t—breathe!”

“Benadryl, twenty-five milligrams IV” Claire snapped. “Adam, give her the Benadryl!”

DelRay stared down with stunned eyes at the syringe the X-ray tech had just slapped in his hand. In a daze, he injected the drug into the line.

Claire whipped out her stethoscope. Listening to the girl’s lungs, she heard tight wheezes on both sides. “What’s the blood pressure?” she asked the tech.

“I’m getting eighty over fifty. Pulse one-forty.”

“Let’s move her to ER, STAT?’

Three pairs of hands reached out to slide the girl onto the gurney.

“Can’t breathe—can’t breathe—”

“Jesus, she’s really swelling up!”

“Just keep moving!” said Claire.

Together they propelled the gurney out of X-ray and ran it down the hallway. They careened around the corner and banged through double doors into the ER. Dr. McNally and two nurses looked up, startled, as Claire announced:

“She’s going into anaphylactic shock!”

The response was immediate. The ER staff swung the gurney into a treatment room. An oxygen mask was pressed to the girl’s face and EKG leads clapped to her chest. Within minutes a hefty dose of cortisone was dripping into her IV

Her own heart was still pounding when Claire finally left the room to let McNally and his staff take over. She saw Adam DelRay standing at the nurses’ desk, furiously scribbling in Katie’s hospital record. As she approached, he quickly shut the chart.

“She never told me she was allergic,” he said.

“The girl is borderline retarded.”

“Then she should be wearing a MedMert bracelet. Why isn’t she?”

“She refuses to.”

“Well, I can’t guess these things!”

“Adam, all you had to do was call me when she came in. You knew she was my patient, and that I’m familiar with her history. All you had to do was ask.”

“The guardian should have told me. I can’t believe it never even occurred to that woman to—”

He was interrupted by the loud squeal of the ER radio. They both looked up as the transmission came crackling through.

“Knox Hospital, this is unit seventeen, unit seventeen. We have gunshot victim en route, ETA five minutes. Do you copy?”

One of the nurses darted out of the treatment room and snatched up the microphone. “This is Knox ER. What’s that about a gunshot wound?”

“Multiple victims en route. This one’s critical—more on the way.”

“How many? Repeat, how many?”

“Uncertain. At least three—”

Another voice cut into the frequency. “Knox Hospital, this is unit nine. En route with gunshot wound to the shoulder. Do you copy?”

In panic, the nurse grabbed the telephone and hit 0. “Disaster code! Call a disaster code! This is not a drill!”

Five doctors. That was all they could round up in the building during the frantic moments before the first ambulance arrived: Claire, DelRay, McNally from the ER, a general surgeon, and one terrified pediatrician. No one knew any details yet, not the location of the shooting, nor the number of victims. All they knew was that something terrible had happened, and that this tiny rural hospital was not prepared to deal with the aftermath. The ER turned into a maelstrom of noise and activity as personnel scrambled to prepare for the injured. Katie, now stabilized, was whisked out and shoved into the hallway to free up the treatment room. Cabinets clanged open, bright lights flared on. Claire pitched in to hang IV bags, lay out instrument trays, and rip open packets of gauze and sutures.

The approaching wail of the first ambulance brought a split second’s hush to the ER. Then everyone surged out the double doors to meet the first victim. Standing among that crowd of personnel, Claire

heard no one speak; they were all focused on the swelling scream of the siren as it drew near.

Abruptly the siren was cut off and the flashing red light swerved into view.

Claire pushed forward as the ambulance backed up to the entrance. The vehicle’s rear door swung open, and the stretcher rolled out with the first victim. It was a woman, already intubated. The surgical tape used to secure the ET tube obscured the lower half of her face. The bandage on her abdomen was soaked with blood.

They rolled her straight into the trauma room and slid her onto the table. A confusing chorus of voices was shouting simultaneously as the woman’s clothes were cut away, the EKG leads and oxygen lines connected, a BP cuff wrapped around one arm. A rapid sinus rhythm raced across the cardiac monitor.

“Systolic’s seventy!” a nurse called out.

“Drawing the type and cross!” said Claire. She grabbed a sixteen-gauge IV catheter off the tray and snapped a tourniquet around the patient’s arm. The vein barely plumped up; the patient was in shock. She stabbed the vein with the N needle and slid the plastic catheter into place. With a syringe, she withdrew several tubes of blood, then attached the N tubing to the catheter. “Another lactated Ringer’s going in, wide open!” she called out.

“Systolic’s sixty, barely palpable!”

The surgeon said, “Belly’s distended. I think it’s full of blood. Open that surgical tray, and get suction ready!” He looked at McNally. “You’re first assist.”

“But she needs to be in the OR—”

“No time. We have to find out where the blood’s coming from.”

“I’ve lost her BP!” a nurse yelled.

The first incision was swift and brutal, one long slash down the center of the abdomen, parting the skin. With a deeper incision, the surgeon cut through the yellow layer of subcutaneous fat, and slit into the peritoneum.

Blood spilled out, streaming onto the floor.

“I can’t see where it’s coming from!”

The suction wasn’t clearing the blood fast enough. In desperation, McNally stuffed two sterile towels into the abdomen and pulled them out again, soaking red and dripping.

“Okay, I think I see it. Bullet nicked the aorta—’

“Jesus, it’s gushing!”

A ward clerk yelled through the doorway, “Two more have arrived! They’re wheeling them in now!”

McNally glanced across the table at Claire, and she saw panic in his eyes. “You’re it,” he snapped. “Go, Claire.”

With her heart in her throat, she pushed out of the trauma room and saw the first stretcher being wheeled into one of the treatment rooms. The patient was a sobbing red-haired boy shirt cut away, blood soaking through the bandage on his shoulder. Now a second stretcher whisked in the door—a blond teenage girl, half her face covered with blood.

children,

she thought. These are only children. My god, what has happened?

She went first to the girl, who was crying but able to move all her extremities. At that first glimpse of blood on the girl’s face, Claire nearly panicked, thinking: gunshot wound to the head. She forced herself to pause and take the girl’s hand, to calmly ask her name, even while her own heart was thundering. It took only a few questions to confirm that Amelia Reid was fully oriented, and her mental status was clear. The wound was just a superficial graze of the temple, which Claire quickly cleaned and dressed.

Turning her attention to the red-haired boy, she saw that he was already being attended to by the pediatrician.

“Are there any others on the way?” she asked the ward clerk.

“None en route. There may be more at the scene

.

A second surgeon arrived, trotting in through the ER doors and announcing: “I’m here! Who needs me?”

“Trauma room!” said Claire. “Dr. McNally needs to be relieved.”

He was just about to push through the door when a nurse popped out, almost slamming into him.

“Do we have that O-neg blood for Horatio yet?” she yelled to the ward clerk.

Horatio? Claire hadn’t recognized the patient under all that surgical tape, but she knew the name, Dorothy Horatio.

My son’s biology teacher

She looked at the clock and saw it was eleven-thirty. Period three. Noah would be in biology—in Mrs. Horatio’s class.

Another doctor arrived, another pair of hands—the obstetrician from Two Hills. She took one last glance around the room, and saw that the situation was under control.

She made the only decision a panicked mother could make.

She ran outside to her car.

The twenty-mile drive passed in a blur of autumn fields, the mist rising in wisps, stands of pine trees. Here and there farmhouses with tumbling porches. She had driven this country road every day for eight months, but never at this speed, never with her hands shaking and her heart sick with fear. She took the last rise with the accelerator floored and her Subaru leaped past the familiar sign:

You Are Now Leaving Two Hills. Come Back Soon!

And then, a hundred yards beyond that, a second sign, smaller, paint chipping.

WELCOME TO TRANQUILITY

GATEWAY TO LOCUST LAKE

POPULATION 910

She swerved onto School Road and saw the flashing lights of half a dozen emergency vehicles. Police cruisers were parked in a jumble near the high school’s red brick front entrance, along with two fire trucks—a full-scale disaster response.

Claire abandoned her car and ran toward the school’s front lawn, where dozens of stunned-looking students and teachers had gathered behind a tangle of police tape. Scanning the faces, she didn’t see Noah.

A Two Hills policeman stopped her at the front door. “No one’s allowed inside.”

“But I have to go in!”

“Only emergency personnel.”

She took a quick breath. “I’m Dr. Elliot,” she said, her voice steadier. “I’m a physician from Tranquility”

He let her pass.

She pushed through the front door into the high school. The building was nearly a century old, and inside hung the musty odors of teenage sweat and dust stirred up by thousands of feet trudging up and down the staircase. She ran up the steps to the second floor.

The doorway to the biology classroom was crisscrossed by strands of police tape. Beyond the tape were overturned chairs, broken glass, and scattered papers. Frogs hopped through the debris.

There was blood—pools of it congealing in gelatinous lakes on the floor.

“Mom?”

Her heart leaped at the voice. She whirled to see her son standing at the far end of the hall. In the dim light of that long corridor, he seemed frighteningly small to her, his blood-streaked face pale and thin.

She ran to him and threw her arms around his rigid body puffing him, forcing him, into an embrace. She felt his shoulders melt first, then his head drooped against her and he was crying. No sound came out; there was just the shuddering of his chest and warm tears sliding onto her neck. At last she felt his arms come around her, circle her waist. His shoulders might be as broad as a man’s, but it was a child who clung to her now, a child’s grief that spilled out in tears.

“Are you hurt?” she asked. “Noah, you’re bleeding. Are you hurt?”

“He’s fine, Claire. The blood isn’t his. It’s the teacher’s.”

She looked up and saw Lincoln Kelly standing in the hall, his grim expression reflecting the day’s terrible events. “Noah and I just finished going over what happened. I was about to call you, Claire.”

“I was at the hospital. I heard there was a shooting.”

“Your son grabbed the gun away from the boy,” said Lincoln. “It was. a crazy thing to do. A brave thing to do. He probably saved a few lives.” Lincoln’s gaze dropped to Noah, and he added softly: “You should be proud of him.”

“I wasn’t brave,” blurted out Noah. He pulled away from Claire, ashamedly wiping his eyes. “I was scared. I don’t know why I did it. I didn’t know what I was doing.

.

“But you did it, Noah.” Lincoln lay a hand on the boy’s shoulder. It was a man’s blessing, brusque and matter-of-fact. Noah seemed to draw sustenance from that simple touch. A mother, thought Claire, cannot knight her own son. It must be done by another man.

Slowly Noah straightened, his tears at last under control. “Is Amelia okay?” he asked her. “They took her in the ambulance.”

“She’s fine. Just a scratch on her face. I think the boy will be fine as well.”

“And

… Mrs. Horatio?”

She shook her head. And said, gently, “I don’t know.”

He took a deep breath and wiped an unsteady hand across his eyes. “I—I have to go wash my face..

‘You do that,” said Lincoln gently. “Take your time, Noah. Your mom will be waiting for you.”

Claire watched her son walk away down the hall. As he passed the biology classroom he slowed down, his gaze drawn, against his will, to the open doorway. For a few seconds he stood hypnotized by the terrible view beyond that police tape. Then, abruptly, he pushed into the boys’ restroom.

“Who was it?” said Claire, turning to Lincoln. “Who brought the gun to school?”

“It was Taylor Darnell.”

She stared at him. “Oh god. He’s my patient.”

“That’s what his father told us. Paul Darnell says the boy can’t be held responsible. That he has attention deficit disorder and can’t control his impulses. Is that true?”

“ADD doesn’t cause violent behavior. And Taylor doesn’t have it, anyway. But I can’t comment on this case, Lincoln. I’m betraying confidentiality”

“Well, something’s wrong with the kid. If you’re his doctor, maybe you should take a look at him before he’s moved to the Youth Center.”

“Where is he now?”

“We’re holding him in the principal’s office.” Lincoln paused. “Just a Word of warning, Claire. Don’t get too close.”

5

 

Taylor Darnell sat handcuffed to a chair, swinging his foot, bam, bam, bam! against the principal’s desk. He didn’t look up when Claire and Lincoln walked into the room, didn’t even seem to notice they were there. Two Maine state cops were in the room with him. They looked at Lincoln and shook their heads, their thoughts transparent:

This one is totally bonkers.

“We just got a call from the hospital,” one of the state cops said to Lincoln. “The teacher’s dead.”

No one spoke for a moment; both Claire and Lincoln absorbed the terrible news in silence.

Then Claire asked, softly: “Where is Taylor’s mother?”

“She’s still on her way back from Portland. She drove down there on business.”

“And Mr. Darnell?”

“I think he’s rounding up a lawyer. They’re going to need one.”

Taylor was kicking his foot against the desk again in a ceaseless, accelerating beat.

Claire set her medical bag down on a chair and approached the boy. “You remember me, Taylor, don’t you? I’m Dr. Elliot.” He didn’t answer,

just kept up that angry banging. Something was very wrong. This was more than adolescent rage she was looking at. It appeared to be some sort of drug-induced psychosis.

Without warning, Taylor’s gaze rose and locked on hers, focusing with predatory intensity. His pupils dilated, irises darkening to ebony pools. His lips curled up, canines gleaming, and from his throat escaped an animal sound, half hiss, half growl.

It happened so fast she had no time to react. He sprang to his feet, dragging the chair up with him, and lunged at her.

The impact of his body slamming into hers sent her toppling backwards to the floor. His teeth sank into her jacket, ripping the fabric, sending goose down and feathers flying in a white cloud. She caught a glimpse of three frantic faces as the cops struggled to separate them. They wrenched Taylor away, dragging him backwards even as he continued to thrash.

Lincoln grasped her arm and lifted her back to her feet. “Claire— Jesus—”

“I’m okay,” she said, coughing on goose down. “Really, I’m fine.”

One of the state cops yelped. “He just bit me! Look, I’m bleeding!”

Even cuffed to the chair, the boy was fighting, bucking against his restraints. “Let me go!” he shrieked. “I’ll kill you all if you don’t let me go!”

“He should be locked up in a freaking kennel!”

“No. No, there’s something seriously wrong here,” said Claire. “It looks like a drug psychosis to me. PCP or amphetamines.” She turned to Lincoln. “I want this boy moved to the hospital. Now.”

“Too much movement,” said Dr. Chapman, the radiologist. “We’re not going to get very clear definition here.”

Claire leaned forward, watching intently as the first cross-section of Taylor Darnell’s brain appeared on the computer screen. Each image Was a compilation of pixels formed by thousands of tiny X-ray beams. Aimed at different angles along one plane, the beams distinguished between fluid and solid and air, and the various densities were reproduced in the image on the screen.

“See that fuzziness there?” said Chapman, pointing to the movement artifact.

“We can’t make him hold still unless we put him under anesthesia.”

“Well, that’s an option.”

Claire shook her head. “His mentation’s cloudy enough. I don’t want to risk anesthesia right now. I’m just trying to rule out any mass shifts before I do the lumbar puncture.”

“You really think encephalitis could explain these symptoms?” Chapman looked at her, and she saw skepticism in his eyes. In Baltimore, she’d been a respected family practitioner. But here she still had to prove herself. How long would it take before her new colleagues stopped questioning her judgment and learned to trust her?

“At this point, I have no choice,” she said. “The initial screen for both methamphetamine and PCP came back negative. But Dr. Forrest thinks this is clearly an organic psychosis, not psychiatric.”

Chapman was obviously unimpressed by Dr. Forrest’s clinical skills. “Psychiatry is hardly an exact science.”

“But I agree with him. The boy’s shown alarming personality changes in just the last few days. We have to rule out infection.”

“What’s the white cell count?”

“Thirteen thousand.”

“A little high, but not all that impressive. What about the differential?”

“His eosinophil count is high. Way off the scale, in fact, at thirty percent.”

“But he has a history of asthma, right? That could account for it. It’s some sort of allergic response.”

Claire had to agree. Eosinophils were a type of white blood cell that proliferated most commonly in response to allergic reactions or asthma. High eosinophil counts could also be caused by a variety of other illnesses such as cancer, parasitic infections, and autoimmune diseases. In some patients, no discernible cause was ever found.

“So what happens now?” asked the Maine state trooper, who’d been watching the procedure with a look of growing impatience. “Can we move him to the Youth Center or not?”

“We have more tests to run,” said Claire. “The boy could be seriously ill.”

“Or he could be faking it. That’s what it looks like to me.”

“And if he’s sick, you could find him dead in his cell. I wouldn’t want to make that mistake, would you?”

Without comment, the trooper turned and stared through the CT viewing window at his prisoner.

Taylor was lying on his back, wrists and ankles restrained. His head was hidden inside the CT cradle, but they could see the movement of his feet, twisting against the restraints. Now comes the hard part, she thought. How do we hold him in position long enough for the lumbar puncture?

“I can’t afford to miss a CNS infection,” said Claire. “With an elevated white blood count and changes in mental status, I have no choice but to do the spinal tap.”

Chapman at last seemed to agree. “From what I see here on the scan, it looks safe enough to proceed.”

They wheeled Taylor out of X-ray and into a private room. It took two nurses and a male orderly to transfer the struggling boy to the bed.

“Turn him on his side,” said Claire. “Fetal position.”

“He’s not going to lie still for this.”

“Then you’ll have to sit on him. We need this spinal tap.”

Together they rolled the boy on his side, his back to Claire. The orderly flexed Taylor’s hips, forcibly pushing the knees toward the chest. One nurse pulled the shoulders forward. Taylor snapped at her hand, almost catching her finger in his jaws.

“Watch his teeth!”

“I’m trying to!”

Claire had to work fast; they couldn’t keep the boy immobilized much longer. She lifted the hospital gown, exposing his back. With his body curled into a fetal position, the vertebral spines poked out clearly under the skin. In rapid order she identified the space between the fourth and fifth spinous processes in the lower back, and swabbed the skin with Betadine, then alcohol. She snapped on sterile gloves and picked up the syringe with local anesthetic.

“I’m putting in the Xylocaine now. He’s not going to like this.”

Claire pricked the skin with the twenty-five-gauge needle and gently injected the local anesthetic. At the first sting of the drug, Taylor shrieked with rage. Claire saw one of the nurses glance up, fear in her eyes. None of them had ever dealt with anything like this, and the violence coursing through this boy’s body was frightening them all.

Claire reached for the spinal needle. It was three inches long, twenty-two-gauge gleaming steel, the hub end open to allow cerebrospinal fluid to drip out.

“Steady him. I’m doing the tap now.”

She pierced the skin. The Xylocaine had numbed the area, so he didn’t feel any pain—not yet. She kept pushing the needle deeper, aiming the tip between the spinous processes, toward the dura mater of the spinal cord. She felt a slight resistance, then a distinct pop as the needle penetrated the protective dura.

Taylor screamed again and began to thrash.

“Hold him! You have to hold him!”

“We’re trying! Can you hurry it up?”

“I’m already in. It’ll just be another minute now.” She held a test tube under the open hub of the needle and caught the first drop of CSF as it slid out. To her surprise, the fluid was crystal clear with no blood, no telltale cloudiness of infection. This was not an obvious case of meningitis. So what am I dealing with? she wondered as she carefully collected CSF in three different test tubes. The fluid would be sent immediately to the lab, where it would be analyzed for cell count and bacteria, glucose and protein. Just by looking at the fluid in the tubes, she knew that the results would be normal.

She withdrew the needle and applied a bandage to the puncture site. Everyone in the room seemed to give a simultaneous sigh of relief; the procedure was over.

But the answer was no closer.

Later that evening, she found Taylor’s mother downstairs in the tiny hospital chapel, gazing numbly at the altar. They had spoken earlier, when Claire had requested the mother’s consent for the lumbar puncture. At the time, Wanda Darnell had been a bundle of nerves, all jittery

hands and trembling lips. She had been on the road all day, first the two-hundred mile drive to Portland to visit her divorce attorney, and then the harrowing drive back, after the police had contacted her with the terrible news.

Now Wanda seemed exhausted, all her adrenaline depleted. She was a small woman, dressed in an ill-fitting skirt suit that made her look like a child playing grown-up in her mother’s clothes. She looked up as Claire came into the chapel and barely managed a nod of greeting.

Claire sat down and gently placed her hand on Wanda’s. “The lab results have come back on the spinal tap, and they’re completely normal. Taylor doesn’t have meningitis.”

Wanda Darnell released a deep sigh, her shoulders slumping forward in the oversize suit jacket. “That’s good, then?”

“Yes. And judging by the CT scan, he has no tumors or signs of hemorrhage in his brain. So that’s good, too.”

“Then what’s wrong with him? Why did he do it?”

“I don’t know, Wanda. Do you?”

She sat very still, as though struggling to come up with an answer. “He hasn’t been

… right. For almost a week.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s been out of control, angry at everyone. Cursing and slamming doors. I thought it was because of the divorce. He’s had such a hard time of it

. .

Claire was reluctant to bring up the next subject, but it had to be addressed. “What about drugs, Wanda? That could change a child’s personality. Do you think he’s been experimenting with anything?”

Wanda hesitated. “No.”

“You don’t sound sure.”

“It’s just that She swallowed, tears flashing in her eyes. “I feel like I hardly know him anymore. He’s my son, and I don’t even recognize him.”

“Have you seen any warning signs?”

“He’s always been a little difficult. That’s why Dr. Pomeroy thought he might have attention deficit disorder. Lately, it seems he’s gotten Worse. Especially since he started hanging out with those awful boys.”

“Which boys?”

“They live up the road from us. J.D. and Eddie Reid. And then there’s that Scotty Braxton. All four of them got into trouble with the police back in March. Last week, I told Taylor he had to stay away from the Reid brothers. That’s when we got into our first really big fight. That’s when he slapped me.”

“Taylor

did?”

Wanda’s head drooped, the victim ashamed she’d been abused. “We’ve hardly spoken to each other since then. And when we do talk, it’s so obvious that Her voice slid to a whisper. “That we hate each other.”

Gently Claire touched Wanda’s arm. “Believe it or not, disliking your own teenager isn’t all that abnormal.”

“But I’m also afraid of him! That’s what makes it even worse. I dislike him and I’m scared of him. When he hit me, it was like having his father back in the house.” She touched her fingers to her mouth, as though remembering some long-faded bruise. “Paul and I are still in a custody fight. Two of us battling over a boy who doesn’t like either of us.”

Claire’s beeper went off. She glanced at the digital readout and saw the lab was paging her. “Excuse me,” she said, and left the chapel to make the call from the hospital lobby.

Anthony, the lab supervisor, answered the phone. “The Bangor lab just called with more of Taylor’s results, Dr. Elliot.”

“Did anything turn up positive on the specific screens?”

“I’m afraid not. There’s no alcohol, cannabis, opioids, or amphetamines in his blood. That’s a negative for every drug you wanted screened?’

“I was so sure,” she said in bewilderment. “I don’t know what else could cause this behavior. There must be some drug I’ve forgotten to test for.”

“There may be something. I ran his blood through our hospital gas chromatography machine, and an abnormal peak showed up at one minute, ten seconds’ retention time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It doesn’t pinpoint any particular drug. But there is a peak, which indicates something out of the ordinary is circulating in his blood. It could be completely innocuous—an herbal supplement, for instance.”

“How do we find out what it is?”

“We’d need more extensive analysis. The Bangor lab isn’t equipped to do that. We have to draw more blood and send it to our reference lab in Boston. They can simultaneously screen for hundreds of different drugs.”

“Then let’s do it.”

“Well, here’s the problem. It’s the other reason I paged you. I just got an order to cancel any and all remaining drug tests. It’s signed by Dr. DeIRay.”

“What?” She shook her head in disbelief. “I’m Taylor’s doctor.”

“But DelRay’s writing orders, and his are contradictory to yours. So I’m not sure what to do.”

“Look, let me talk to the mother and I’ll clear this up right now” She hung up and returned to the chapel.

Even before she opened the door, she could hear a man’s voice, raised in anger.

never exerted any control! Completely useless, that’s what you are. No wonder he’s so screwed up!”

Claire pushed into the chapel. “Is there a problem here, Wanda?”

The man turned to her. “I’m Taylor’s father.”

Personal crises bring out the worst in people, but Paul Darnell was probably not likable even at his best. A partner in the largest accounting firm in Two Hills, he was far more stylishly garbed than his wife, who seemed to shrink to inconsequential size in her ill-fitting suit. The brief interaction Claire had witnessed between these two ex-spouses told her what this marriage must have been like: Paul the aggressor, full of demands and complaints. Wanda always appeasing, retreating.

“What is this about my son taking illegal drugs?” he asked.

“I’m trying to find a reason for what happened today, Mr. Darnell. I was just asking your wife—”

“Taylor hasn’t been taking any drugs. Not since you stopped the Ritalin.” He paused. “And he was fine on the Ritalin. I never understood why you took him off

it.”

“It’s been two months since I discontinued it. This personality change is more recent.”

“Two months ago, he was fine.”

“No he wasn’t. He was tired and listless. And that diagnosis of ADD was never really established. it’s not the same as diagnosing hypertension, where there are definite parameters to go by.”

“Dr. Pomeroy was certain of the diagnosis.”

“ADD has turned into a catchall for all childhood misbehavior. When a student’s failing in class, or he gets into mischief, parents want to find a reason. I didn’t agree with Pomeroy’s diagnosis. When in doubt, I prefer not to push pills on children.”

“And look what’s happened. He’s out of control. He’s been out of control for weeks?’

“How would you know, Paul?” said Wanda. “How long has it been since you actually spent time with your own son?”

Paul turned to his ex-wife with such a look of hatred, Wanda shrank back. “You’re the one who’s supposed to be in charge,” he said. “I knew you couldn’t handle him. You screwed it up as usual, and now our son’s going to end up in jail!”

“At least I didn’t provide him with the gun,” she said softly.

“What?”

“It was your gun he brought to school. Did you ever notice it was missing?”

He stared at her. “The little shit! How did he get—”

“This isn’t helping!” Claire cut in. “We need to focus on Taylor. On how to explain his behavior.”

Paul turned to his wife. “I’ve asked Adam DelRay to take over. He’s upstairs looking at Taylor now.”

Paul’s blunt announcement left Claire speechless. So this was why DelRay had written orders; he was the new attending. She’d just been fired from the case.

“But Dr. Elliot’s his doctor!” Wanda protested.

“I know Adam, and I trust his judgment.”

Meaning he doesn’t trust mine?

“I don’t even like Adam DelRay,” said Wanda. “He’s your friend, not mine.”

“You don’t have to like him.”

“If he’s taking care of my son, I do.”

Paul’s laughter was grating. “Is that how you choose a doctor, Wanda? Pick whoever gives you the most warm fuzzies?”

“I’m doing what’s best for Taylor!”

“And that’s exactly why he ended up here.”

Claire’s temper at last burst through. “Mr. Darnell,” she said, “this is not the time to be attacking your wife!”

He turned to Claire, and his contempt was clearly meant for her as well. “Ex-wife,” he corrected. And he turned and walked out of the chapel.

She found Adam DelRay sitting at the nurses’ station, writing in Taylor’s chart. Although it was late in the evening, his white coat was starched and fresh, and Claire felt rumpled by comparison. Whatever embarrassment he’d suffered earlier that day during the crisis with Katie Youmans had been conveniently forgotten, and he regarded Claire with his usual irritating self-confidence.

“I was about to page you,” he said. “Paul Darnell just decided—”

“I’ve already spoken to him.”

“Oh. So you know.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “I hope you don’t take it personally.”

“It’s the parents’ decision. They have a right to make it,” she acknowledged grudgingly. “But since you’re taking over, I thought you should know the boy has an abnormal peak on gas chromatography. I suggest you order a comprehensive drug screen.”

“I don’t think that’s necessary.” He set the chart down and stood up. “The most likely drugs have been ruled out.”

“That peak needs to be identified.”

“Paul doesn’t want any more drug tests.”

She shook her head, puzzled. “I don’t understand his objections.”

“I believe he reached that decision after speaking with his attorney.” She waited for him to walk away before picking up the chart. She flipped to the progress notes and with growing dismay read DeiRay’s entry.

History and physical dictated.

Assessment.

1. Acute psychosis secondary to abrupt Ritalin withdrawal.

2. Attention Deficit Disorder.

 

 

Claire dropped into the nearest chair, her legs suddenly unsteady, her stomach queasy. So this was their criminal defense strategy. That the boy was not responsible for his actions. That Claire should be blamed, because she took him off the Ritalin, triggering a psychotic break. That she was the one who should be blamed. I’m going to end up in court.

This was why Paul didn’t want to find any drug in the boy’s bloodstream. It would shift the blame away from Claire.

Agitated, she flipped to the front of the chart and read DelRay’s orders.

Cancel comprehensive drug/tox screen.

Refer all future questions and lab reports to me. Dr. Elliot is

no longer the attending physician.

 

She slapped the chart shut and felt her nausea intensify. Now it was no longer just Taylor’s life on the line; it was her practice, and her reputation as well.

She thought of the first rule of defensive medicine: cover your ass. You can’t get sued if you can prove you didn’t make a mistake. if you can back up your diagnosis with lab tests.

She had to get a sample of Taylor’s blood. This was her last chance to draw the specimen; by tomorrow, any drug would be cleared from his system, and there’d be nothing left to detect.

She crossed the nurses’ station to the supply room, pulled open a drawer, and collected a Vacutainer syringe, alcohol swabs, and three red-top blood tubes. Her heart was racing as she walked up the hall to Taylor’s room. The boy was no longer her patient, and she had no right

to be doing this, but she needed to know what drug, if any, was circulating in his bloodstream.

The state trooper gave her a nod of greeting as she approached.

“I need to draw blood,” she said. “Would you mind holding down his arm for me?”

He didn’t look happy about it, but he followed her into the room.

Draw it quick and get out of here.

With shaking hands she snapped on the tourniquet and twisted off the needle cap. Get out of here before someone finds out what you’re doing. She swabbed Taylor’s arm with alcohol and he gave a shout of rage, twisting against the trooper’s restraining grip. Claire’s pulse accelerated as she pierced the skin and felt that subtle and satisfying pop as the needle penetrated the vein. Hurry. Hurry. She filled one tube, slipped it into her lab coat pocket, then squeezed another into the Vacutainer. Dark blood streamed out.

“I can’t hold him still,” said the trooper, wrestling for control as the boy bucked and cursed.

“I’m almost done.”

“He’s trying to bite me!”

“Just keep him still!” she snapped, her ears ringing with the boy’s shrieks. She slipped the third tube into place and watched as a fresh stream of blood shot out. Just one more. Come on, come on.

“What the hell is going on in here?”

Claire looked up, so startled she let the needle slip out of the vein. Blood dribbled from the puncture wound and dripped onto the sheets. Quickly she snapped off the tourniquet and applied gauze to the boy’s arm. Cheeks burning with shame, she turned to face Paul Darnell and Adam DeIRay, who were staring at her incredulously from the doorway. Two nurses peered over their shoulders.

The trooper said, “She was just drawing some blood. The boy got a little noisy.”

“Dr. Elliot isn’t supposed to be in here,” said Paul. “Didn’t you hear about the new orders?”

“What orders?”

“I’m the boy’s physician now,” snapped DelRay. “Dr. Elliot has no authority. She shouldn’t even be in here.”

The trooper stared at Claire, and his anger was unmistakable. You used me.

Paul thrust out his hand. “Give me the blood tubes, Dr. Elliot.”

She shook her head. “I’m following up an abnormal test. It could affect your son’s treatment.”

“You’re no longer his doctor! Give me the tubes.”

She swallowed hard. “I’m sorry, Mr. Darnell. But I can’t.”

“This is assault!” Paul turned to the others in the room, and his face was florid with outrage. “That’s what this is, you know! She assaulted my son with that needle, and she knows she has no authority!” He looked at Claire. “You’ll be hearing from my attorney.”

“Paul,” interjected DelRay, playing the role of diplomat to the hilt. “I’m sure Dr. Elliot doesn’t want this kind of complication in her life?’ He turned to her and spoke with the smug voice of reason. “Come on, Claire. This is turning into a circus. Just give me the tubes.”

She looked down at the two tubes she was holding, weighing their value against a charge of assault. Against the probable loss of her hospital privileges. She felt the gaze of everyone in the room watching, even enjoying, her humiliation.

In silence she handed over the blood tubes.

DelRay took them with a look of triumph. Then he turned to the Maine state trooper. “The boy is my patient. Is that clear?”

“Perfectly clear, Dr. DelRay.”

No one said a word to Claire as she walked out of the ward, but she knew they were staring at her. She kept her gaze focused straight ahead as she turned the corner and punched the down button. Only when she’d stepped into the elevator and the door slid shut did she finally allow her hand to slip into her coat pocket.

The third blood tube was still there.

She rode the elevator to the basement lab and found Anthony sitting at his lab bench, surrounded by racks of test tubes.

“I’ve got a sample of the boy’s blood,” she told him.

“For the drug screen?”

“Yes. I’ll fill out the requisition myself.”

“The forms are on that shelf over there

She took one off the stack and frowned at the letterhead, Anson Biologicals. “Are we using a new reference lab? I’ve never seen one of these forms before.”

He glanced up from a whirring centrifuge. “We just switched over to Anson a few weeks ago. The hospital signed a new contract with them for our complex chem and radioimmunoassay work.”

“Why?”

“I think it was a cost issue.”

She scanned the form, then checked off the box for gas chromatography/mass spectrometry; comprehensive drug and tox screen. in the space for comments at the bottom of the page, she wrote: “Fourteen-year-old boy with apparent drug-induced psychosis and aggression. This lab test is for my personal research only. Report results directly to me.” And she signed her name.

Noah answered the knock on his front door and found Amelia standing outside in the dark. She was wearing a bandage, a bright slash of white across her temple, and he could tell it hurt her to smile. In her discomfort, the best she could muster was a crooked lifting of one side of her mouth.

He was so surprised by her unexpected visit, he couldn’t think of a single intelligent thing to say, so he just gaped at her, as dazzled as a peasant who suddenly finds himself in the presence of royalty

“This is for you,” she said, and she held out a small brown package. “I’m sorry I couldn’t find anything nice to wrap it in.”

He took the package, but his gaze remained on her face. “Are you all right?”

“I’m okay. I guess you heard that Mrs. Horatio She paused, swallowing back tears.

He nodded. “My mom told me.”

Amelia touched the bandage on her face. Again he saw a flash of tears in her eyes. “I met your mom. In the emergency room. She was really nice to me.

. .“ She turned and glanced over her shoulder at the darkness, as though expecting to see someone watching her. “I’ve got to go now—”

“Did someone drive you here?”

“I walked.”

“You walked? In the dark?”

“It’s not so far. I live just the other side of the lake, right past the boat ramp.” She backed away from the door, blond hair swaying. “I’ll see you in school.”

“Wait. Amelia!” He held up the gift. “What’s this for?”

“To thank you. For what you did today.” She took another retreating step, and was almost swallowed up in darkness.

“Amelia!”

“Yes?”

Noah paused, not knowing what to say. The silence was broken only by the rustle of dead leaves scattering across the lawn. Amelia stood on the farthest edge of the light spilling from the open doorway, her face a pale oval eclipsing into night.

“You want to come inside?” he asked.

To his surprise she seemed to consider the invitation. For a moment she lingered between darkness and light, advance and retreat. She looked over her shoulder again, as though seeking permission. Then she nodded.

Noah found himself panicking over the disorder in the front parlor. His mom had been home for only a few hours that afternoon, to comfort him and cook dinner. Then she’d driven back to the hospital to see Taylor. No one had tidied up the parlor, and everything was still lying where Noah had dropped it that afternoon—backpack on the couch, sweatshirt on the coffee table, dirty tennis shoes in front of the fireplace. He decided to bypass the parlor and led Amelia into the kitchen instead.

They sat down, not looking at each other, two foreign species struggling to find a common language.

She glanced up as the phone rang. “Aren’t you going to answer that?”

“Naw. It’s another one of those reporters. They’ve been calling all afternoon, ever since I got home.”

The answering machine picked up, and as he’d predicted, a woman’s voice came on: “This is Damaris Home of the Weekly Informer. I’d really, really like to talk to Noah Elliot, if I could, about

that amazing act of heroism today in the classroom. The whole country wants to hear about it, Noah. I’ll be staying at the Lakeside B and B, and I could offer some financial compensation for your time, if that would make it more worth your while.

.

“She’s offering to pay you just to talk?” asked Amelia.

“Crazy, isn’t it? My mom says it’s a sure sign I shouldn’t talk to that lady.”

“But people do want to hear about it. About what you did.”

What I did.

He gave a shrug, feeling unworthy of all the praise, of Amelia’s praise, most of all. He sat listening as the call ended. The silence returned, interrupted only by the soft beep of the message reminder.

“You can open it now. If you want,” said Amelia.

He looked down at the gift. Though the wrapping was plain brown paper, he took great effort not to tear it, because it seemed uncouth to go ripping it open in front of her. Gingerly he peeled off the tape and folded back the wrapping.

The pocket knife was neither large nor impressive. He saw scratches on the handle, and realized it was not even new. She’d given him a used knife.

“Wow,” he managed to say with some measure of enthusiasm. “This is a nice one.”

“It belonged to my dad.” She added, quietly: “My real dad.” He looked up as the implication of those words sank in. “Jack is my stepfather.” She uttered that last word as though it were an object of disgust.

“Then J.D. and Eddie.

.

“They’re not my real brothers. They’re Jack’s boys.”

“I guess I wondered about it. They don’t look like you.”

“Thank god.”

Noah laughed. “Yeah, that’s not a family resemblance I’d want to have, either.”

“I’m not even allowed to talk about my real dad, because it makes Jack mad. He hates to be reminded there was someone else before him. But I want people to know. I want them to know Jack has nothing to do with who I am.”

Gently he placed the knife back in her hand. “I can’t take this, Amelia.”

“I want you to.”

“But it’s got to mean a lot to you, if it belonged to him.”

“That’s why I want you to have it.” She touched the bandage on her temple, as though pointing to the evidence of her debt to him. “You were the only one who did anything. The only one who didn’t run.”

He didn’t confess the humiliating truth: I wanted to run, but I was so terrified I couldn’t move my legs.

She looked up at the kitchen clock. With a start of panic, she abruptly stood up. “I didn’t know it was so late.”

He followed her to the front door. Amelia had just stepped out when headlights suddenly cut through the trees. She spun around to face them, and then seemed to freeze as the pickup truck roared up the driveway.

The door swung open and Jack Reid stepped out, whippet thin and scowling. “Get in the truck, Amelia,” he said.

“Jack, how did you—”

“Eddie told me you’d be here.”

“I was just about to walk home.”

“Get in the truck now.”

Instantly she clammed up and obediently slid into the passenger seat. Her stepfather was about to climb back behind the wheel when he met Noah’s gaze.

“She doesn’t hang out with boys,” he said. “I want you to know that.”

“She only came by to say hello,” said Noah angrily. “What’s the big deal?”

“The deal, boy, is that my daughter’s off limits.” He climbed in

and slammed the door.

“She’s not even your daughter!” Noah yelled, but he knew the

man couldn’t hear him over the revving engine.

As the truck swung around in the driveway, Noah caught one

last glimpse of Amelia’s profile, framed by the passenger window, her terrified gaze focused straight ahead.

6

 

The first snowflakes spiraled down through the bare branches and gently dusted the excavation site. Lucy Overlock glanced up at the

sky and said, “This snow’s going to stop, isn’t it? It has to stop, or it’ll obscure everything.”

“It’s already melting,” said Lincoln. He sniffed the air and knew, by some instinct developed during a lifetime in these woods, that the Snow would not last long. These flakes were merely a whispered warning, deceptively gentle, of the wintry months to come. He did not mind the snow, did not even resent all the inconveniences that came With it, the shoveling, the plowing out, the nights without power When the lines went down from the weight of it. It was the darkness he disliked. Darkness fell so early these days. Already daylight was fading, and the trees were featureless black slashes against the sky.

“Well, we might as well pack

it up for the day,” said Lucy. ‘And hope it’s not buried under a foot of snow by tomorrow.”

Now that the bones were no longer of interest to the police, Lucy and her grad students had assumed the responsibility of protecting the dig. The two students pulled a tarp over the excavation site and

staked it in place. It was a futile precaution; a marauding raccoon could rip it away with one slash of its claws.

“When will you finish here?” asked Lincoln.

“I’d like to take several weeks,” said Lucy. “But with the weather turning bad, we’ll have to rush. One hard freeze, and that’s it for the season.”

Headlights flickered through the trees. Lincoln saw that another vehicle had pulled into Rachel Sorkin’s driveway.

He tramped back through the woods, toward the house. In the last few days, the front yard had become a parking lot. Next to Lincoln’s vehicle was Lucy Overlock’s Jeep and a beat-up Honda, which he assumed belonged to her grad student.

At the far end of the driveway, parked under the trees, was yet another vehicle—a dark blue Volvo. He recognized it, and he crossed the yard to the drivers side.

The window hummed open an inch. “Lincoln,” the woman said.

“Evening, Judge Keating.”

“You have time to talk?” He heard the locks click open.

Lincoln circled to the passenger side and slid in, shutting the door. They sat for a moment, cocooned in silence.

“Have they found anything else?” she asked. She didn’t look at him but gazed straight ahead, her eyes focused somewhere among the trees. In the car’s gloom, she seemed younger than her sixty-six years, the lines in her face fading to uniform smoothness. Younger and not so formidable.

“There were only the two skeletons,” said Lincoln.

“Both were children?”

“Yes. Dr. Overlock estimates their ages at around nine or ten years old.”

“Not a natural death?”

“No. Both deaths were violent.”

There was a long pause. “And when did this happen?”

“That’s not so easy to determine. All they have to go on are some artifacts found with the remains. They’ve dug up some buttons, a coffin handle. Dr. Overlock thinks it’s probably part of a family cemetery.”

She took her time absorbing this information. Her next question came out softly tentative: “So the remains are quite old?”