“Let me guess,” Abbott said quietly, “whatever she stood on was too short to reach.”

“How did you know?” Black asked suspiciously.

“He’s done the same thing here. Six times. So was there no investigation?”

Black said nothing for a long moment. “I cut her down. Nobody knew it was fishy.”

Abbott waited as Noah’s impatience grew. None of this was helping.

“Why?” Abbott finally asked.

“Because she deserved it,” he said harshly. “She never sold us, but she brought home any man who’d buy her next bottle. Sometimes they’d sneak from her bed in the night. I was big and could fight them, but Eddie was little. As I got older, I’d stay with friends to get away, but Eddie didn’t have many friends. He was stuck. I know some of those guys hurt him. One boyfriend in particular.

“I’d come home sometimes and see Eddie, cowering in the corner like an animal. Once I saw his eyes, and I knew. I should have told. I should have told,” he said again. “But that boyfriend was big and mean and I was barely fourteen myself. So I cleared out, moved in with a friend whose mom didn’t drink. There was food on the table and clean sheets on the bed. In other words, I saved my own hide. When I found her hanging, I cut her down and told the cops what they wanted to hear to make it all go away. I thought I was doing the right thing. I had no idea what he’d become.”

“Why that day?” Abbott asked. “Why do you think he picked that day to hang her?”

There was another silence. “Eddie was almost eighteen, he’d just gotten out of juvie. That day he’d taken a girl from town on a date, played up the bad-boy image. I guess she wanted a thrill. But I guess Eddie couldn’t… perform. I heard she was laughing at him, that she was telling everyone she’d laughed at him while he tried and couldn’t.

“When I heard that, I knew he’d killed our mother. He blamed her. I would have, too. If I’d told the truth, he would have gone to jail as an adult and I knew what would happen to him there. I figured he’d already done his time and maybe I felt guilty for never helping him. I wish I’d told the truth. I wish I’d known.”

Me, too, Noah thought woodenly. I wish you’d told the truth, too.

“What happened to your brother after that?” Abbott asked.

“I picked up, landed here in Fargo, made a life. I never heard from Eddie again.”

“He made a life here, as a psychologist,” Abbott said.

Again, Black went quiet. “So he pulled it off after all. He was supposed to be in juvie till he was eighteen, but he got out early. The school and the local cops fought hard to keep him in, but there was a shrink working with him, said he’d rehabilitated. I guess Eddie had him pretty fooled. I remember going to family court for the hearing. The shrink wore fancy clothes, used big words, and dazzled the judge. He made the cops look like rubes. Eddie told me that’s where the power was. That if you took a cop’s gun, that he was just a bully. I think Eddie’d had his share of bullies in juvie. He said he’d go to college, be one of those smart guys. I told him it would never happen.”

“Why?”

“Because colleges didn’t let in people like him. Poor, with a record. I guess he listened to me more than I thought. I guess he became somebody else.”

None of this was finding Eve. “Hurry up,” Noah mouthed and Abbott glared at him.

“We need to find him,” Abbott said. “He’s abducted at least two more women.”

“I know. Lieutenant Tyndale told me. I want to help you, but I can’t. I don’t know where he’d hide. Like I said, I haven’t spoken to him in nearly thirty years.”

“Well, thanks for talking to me,” Abbott said wearily. “And you should watch your back, Mr. Black. He’s got reports on you and your wife and kids. I guess he worried you were the one person who could identify him.”

Noah stared blindly at Abbott’s phone after he’d hung up. “That was useless.”

“Faye’s doing a property search on Irene and we’ve got roadblocks set up on every artery in and out of the Cities.” Abbott’s eyes were kind. “Go get us some coffee, Noah.”

What he really needed was a drink. Just one. Just to even my nerves. He knew it was a lie. Knew one would never be enough. And if they didn’t find her in time…

Noah gave Abbott a shaky nod and walked to the coffee pot in the bullpen, stood there for long minutes as he stared, fighting the urge to smash the glass pot. Smash everything in the damn place, then go hunt for something stronger to wet his lips. To give him courage. Or maybe just to forget how damn scared he was.

In his mind he saw the victims hanging… Pierce had been hanging his mother, each time. And now he has Eve. My Eve. He couldn’t think like a cop anymore. I can’t.

“Noah.” Noah looked up. Brock was coming down the hall, still in uniform. “I came as soon as I heard. Any news?”

“No,” Noah said. “Nothing.”

Brock put his arm around Noah’s shoulders. “I’ll buy you a coffee in the cafeteria.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t call you.”

“Noah.” Brock’s voice was gently chiding. “Eve’s smart and brave. She’ll hold on.”

He looked straight ahead, seeing nothing. “If I don’t find her? How will I hold on?”

Brock sighed. “Sometimes you have to take one minute at a time.”

As the elevator doors slid open, Noah’s cell phone buzzed in his pocket. His pulse shot up when he saw the caller ID. “Olivia, what is it?”

“I just got off the phone with Abbott.” She hesitated. “He ordered me not to tell you. I hope I’m doing the right thing.”

Noah pursed his lips in desperation. “Goddammit, Olivia, tell me.”

“Faye just took a call from Martha Brisbane’s vet, about her cat.”

Noah hissed out a breath. “Who gives a fuck about that damn cat?”

“Listen,” Olivia snapped. “The vet called to say Martha’s cat had been dropped off outside the gate of the Green Gables Kennel in New Germany yesterday. The security camera outside picked up a woman and a black BMW, registered to Pierce’s wife.”

Noah went still. “New Germany? That’s where Irene’s PO box is being forwarded.”

“I know, Kane told me.”

“Why would Pierce’s wife drop off the cat? And how do they know it’s Martha’s?”

“Don’t know why the wife did it, but Martha had the cat chipped. Vet scanned it and Martha’s name came up. He ’d read about her murder, called it in. I’m going out there.”

“Thank you,” he said fervently, then hung up and stepped into the elevator Brock had been holding open. “I’m going to New Germany.”

“I figured that out myself,” Brock said wryly. “Gonna tell me why?”

“Depends. You gonna turn me in?”

Brock studied him as the elevator descended. “I call shotgun.”

Noah nodded hard. “Thanks.”

Thursday, February 25, 3:00 p.m.

He sat in his kitchen, looking out the window at the woods, clean again after showering off Eve’s filth. The swaying trees always calmed him, but today, they did not.

Irene Black. How had Eve known? Who had she told? How can this hurt me?

Irene Black was a common enough name and the PO box he’d set up in her name was out of state. Highly unlikely they’d find it. This was the Hat Squad after all. Not the world’s greatest intellects.

They would never have gotten this far without Eve. He tightened his fist against his kitchen table. She needed to pay. Next time he went down he’d tape her mouth and glue her eyes open. He wanted to hear her beg for her life, and she would, once he’d worn her down. Once he’d worn her down, he’d take off the tape and her pleas for mercy would be music to his ears.

For now, he couldn’t let her get in his head. She knew too much. For now, he’d make her show him the fear. He’d glue her eyes open and make her show him her fear.

He hadn’t glued her eyes, he realized. It was always the first thing he did, so that he could see their terror as soon as the ketamine wore off. When the ket wore off, they thrashed like wild animals, making it impossible to get the glue on their eyes.