She found another trail leading out of the woods and onto the fire road. Following a memory, she counted sharp twists and wide curves, and then she saw the turnout up ahead, the place where her mother had always left the car. As the horse clopped toward that old parking space, Isabelle passed another turnout closer to a favorite place in the forest, and there stood an empty van. In the dirt, there were signs of other vehicles recently stopping here.

She dismounted and guided the horse through the trees where there was no clear path. High in the branches, warbling songsters were drowned out by a magpie's whining, quizzical song.

Maag? Aag-aag?

And then came a rapid fire of notes. Wah-wah-wah-wah?

Sections of yellow tape were visible between tree trunks. And now she heard human voices. Drawing closer, Isabelle could see that the tape cordoned off an opening in the ground. Two teenagers, wearing T-shirts with university logos, knelt beside the hole, sifting dirt through screens. A third student used a soft brush to dust away the dirt from an object in her hand.

A bone?

So this was the grave of Josh Hobbs and a nameless stranger-here in the place her mother loved best among the million acres of forestland.

Isabelle tightened her hold on the reins, and the horse shied in sympathetic anxiety.

Oren stared at the photographs on the wall of Ferris Monty's study. He stood close behind the gossip columnist, who was scrolling through a file on his computer.

"You see?" Monty ran one finger down a list on the screen and paused at mentions of individual students. "They were all at UCLA that same year. Here's William Swahn-something of a prodigy, barely fourteen when he got his first college degree. Here's the librarian. She was in her twenties then. And Sarah Winston was twenty-four." One finger tapped the screen on this line. "This is her maiden name."

"That's it? You've got nothing on Ad Winston." Oren's eyes traveled back to the damning pictures on the wall.

Ferris Monty rose from his chair and removed these prints of the bank photographs to stack them facedown on his desk. "Concentrate on the photos at the post office. Before William Swahn was mutilated, I believe he had a relationship with Sarah Winston."

"When they were at UCLA? He was a little boy." Oren folded his arms and watched Monty's frustration grow with this little piece of bait. "I don't see Mrs. Winston as a pedophile."

"Not then." Monty paused to purse his lips and perhaps to censor his next words. "Later. When the child grew up-that's when they had the affair."

"The alleged affair," said Oren. Apparently Swahn's nondisclosure agreement had teeth and staying power. Ferris Monty's research had never turned up a rumor that the man was gay.

"All right," said Monty. "It's speculation. But what if it's true? What if that relationship continued after Swahn moved to Coventry? What if Addison found out about Mavis passing Swahn's love letters to his wife? I know a woman's bones were found with Joshua. Suppose Addison meant to kill Sarah… and he murdered a stranger by mistake? And let's say your brother was following her that-"

"You think any man could mistake a stranger for his own wife?"

"He could've hired one of his criminal clients to kill her-someone who didn't know her." Monty was like a dog vainly watching Oren's face for signs of approval.

Civilians and their damn theories, their television ideas of murder. First Millard Straub was hiring an assassin to murder Evelyn, and now Ad Winston was the one voted most likely to put out a contract on his wife.

"I know the dead woman was hit from behind." Monty waited for payback on this offering. Getting none, he made another. "And she's been identified. That's how I know she had light blond hair… like Sarah Winston's. I have a very reliable source."

"Someone in the sheriff's office? Maybe a deputy?"

Monty puffed out his chest in a small show of courage. "I would never give up a source."

"You bought your information from Dave Hardy." Oren knew he was right. Ferris Monty's eyes popped a bit too wide; he probably knew the penalty for bribing an officer of the law, and he would not fare well in prison. This little man was having a very bad day.

After a short canter down the fire road, Isabelle found an old picnic spot, a favored stop on the solitary horseback rides of childhood. She tethered Nickel to a tree and spread a blanket on the ground. Seven birder logs were laid out in chronological order. Upon opening the first one, she labored over the code of pictures and birdcalls. At the time of this entry, her mother was still happy to be alive.

The insanity began later, after Isabelle had worked her way through the Pages of winter and spring. A day in early June had begun with a delicate bird that had no song. The blue-eyed lark lay on the ground, broken wings spread at odd angles. Its eyes were closed.

In death?

There was blood on the young bird's face just below one eye. The sun was shining.

Isabelle's mind turned toward the trio of student grave diggers in her mother's favorite clearing. The year on the book spine was right, and the page was dated to that fatal Saturday. How could the lark be anyone but Josh Hobbs?

What could her mother know of Josh's death on that afternoon? The town had not gone looking for the boy before nightfall. And what of the blood? This journal entry had been written two decades before the disappearance had been called an act of violence.

Nowhere on this page or the next was there any sign of the stranger buried with Josh. The omission of a second victim argued for her mother's innocence. Isabelle rationalized the journal entry as a story come by secondhand.

On all of the following pages, Coventry was grotesquely altered. It was always night, a nightmare town of birds with animal claws instead of talons. Their beaks were filled with long teeth.

And her mother had lost her mind.

It might be best to replace the birder logs on the tower bookshelf, to hide them there in plain sight. But what if the investigation should lead to an interrogation of her fragile mother and a search of the house?

She could destroy these books, but that might also damn her mother in the cover-up of a crime. At some later date, this evidence might be needed to prove innocence-or madness. Isabelle's mind continued to work along criminal lines as she decided to hide the journals in the care of an honest man.

Taking a shortcut through the woods, Oren neatly sidestepped a recent deposit of horseshit. And so it was natural to be thinking of Isabelle Winston, the only one who had ever used the hiking trails as bridle paths. In summers past, he and Josh had sometimes encountered her on horseback. The girl had always waved hello to his brother. Oren, of course, had been beneath her notice.

A path forked off the trail and led him out to the fire road. He was headed downhill and homeward when he heard the sound of a horse's hooves. Oren was hopeful as he turned around. And there she was.

He saw her red hair on a distant rise-and the same silver horse.

Impossible.

That stallion had been old when the rider was a teenager.

Well, it was a day for ghosts, human or equine. And it was long past time to have a few words with Isabelle Winston. He stood in the middle of the dirt road and waved her down as she came trotting toward him, not slowing any, but riding faster, cantering, then galloping, galloping.

That horse was huge.

Oh, shit!

He dove into the woods, lost his footing in a tangle of deadwood and landed hard, all the wind knocked out of his chest as horse and rider sped by him. A near miss. And the lady never looked back.