He had escaped.

Mallory returned to her car. Her headlights were dark as she rolled quietly out of the lot to pursue the sheriff ’s c ruiser down a moonlit road. The night was bright and he might have seen her if he had once looked back, but he never did. And this was another sign of guilt in Mallory’s e yes. She followed him into a town, where he parked his car in front of a municipal building with several doors, and one had a sign for the sheriff ’s o ffice. She was still his silent shadow as she followed him inside. The man never heard her footsteps, but he caught a look of surprise from the deputy at the reception desk. The sheriff turned to see her standing behind him, and it spooked him.

Good.

Holding up her gold shield and police ID, she said, “My name is Mallory.”

She thought the man was going to cry.

“Oh, Christ.” His voice was hoarse. “Mallory? Well, if that ain’t enough to make you believe in signs and omens and God Almighty.” He only glanced at her police ID. Turning away from her, he held up one hand, beckoning her to follow him through a door to a private office, where he pointed to a chair. “Have a seat. I got a feeling this might take a while.”

6

Mallory settled into an old armchair that was entirely too comfortable, not her idea of office décor. The rug of many colors had probably been braided early in the last century, and a telephone with extension buttons was all that she could date to modern times.

She had a shortlist of blunt questions and demands for the man seated behind the carved wooden desk, but this Missouri sheriff was part of a cop’s lifeline that extended from coast to coast. Instead of asking why he had run from the caravan parents, she said, “Tell me what you didn’t t e ll Magritte.”

“Probably nothing the old man didn’t already know,” said Sheriff Banner. “Eighteen months ago, we found the remains of a little kid, and she wasn’t o ne of ours. I figured that’s why all those folks turned out tonight.”

“How old was the girl?”

“Oh, she could’ve been tall for five or small for seven. Can’t be a hundred percent sure of the sex, either. Female was just the coroner’s best guess. So when the town picked a name for the gravestone, we wanted something that worked for a boy or a girl.”

“Then the body was decomposed.” She could not ask if it was buried or missing a hand. That would be like an invitation to a round of give-and-take. “You didn’t find it in plain sight.”

“Hell, no. She was buried and way past decomposed. Probably been in the ground for years. Never would’ve found her at all, but this old fart from California, he took it into his head to build himself a retirement house on Route 66. Said his best memories were on that old road. So a contractor’s crew found the body-the skeleton. Idiots. They didn’t have the sense to leave it be and call the cops. They brought what was left of that child into town in a sack-a sack of bones.”

“Anything unusual about the bones?”

“Nothing to tell us how she died-if that’s what you’re asking. When the bones were all laid out, we couldn’t account for one of her hands. My men were all over that construction site looking for it. Never did turn up.”

“Any chips on the wrist bones you had?”

It took a moment for the import to settle in, and he did not like this ugly picture she had planted in his mind. “No tool marks-it wasn’t chopped off. Could be predators got at the body before burial, but there were no teeth marks, either.”

Mallory preferred her own theory of a killer revisiting the grave after the child had gone to bones. “Did you ever ask the feds for help?”

“Bastards. They turned me down. Said she was probably a runaway. Did you know there’s ninety thousand runaway kids on the road in any given minute of a day? I guess they thought that little tidbit might be helpful, ’cause that’s all I ever got from them. Not their kind of case, they said. Then, about four months back, the feds went out to the cemetery and dug her up. Pissed everybody off. They wouldn’t t e ll us nothin’. I don’t t hink there’s more’n two or three people in this town that didn’t c hip in for the burial and the stone.” He slumped forward, as if the weight of this day had bowed his back. “I hope you can tell me something useful-before all those folks come knocking on my door tomorrow, maybe thinking that little girl was one of their own.”

That was not going to happen. There were rules about giving up details of another detective’s case, and this one belonged to Kronewald. However, this sheriff could catch a crumb or two if he was quick, and she thought he might be. “Did you ever get any flyers from other police departments-something similar?”

“Not really.” The man straightened his back a little. He had caught the drift of a serial killer in those words-and now they had a game. “Got a fax from Kansas awhile back. But that was about a teenager or a woman on the young side. And the Kansas victim was laid out in the middle of the road. No decomposition at all. One hand was missing. That was the only thing that matched up.” He sat back in his chair and waited for her to toss him another piece of an old puzzle. By all appearances, he was a patient man.

There was no point in asking if the Kansas police had found a child’s hand bones left in place of the missing adult hand; it was a detail that would have been withheld from the Missouri sheriff. And neither would Chicago Homicide want this known. “Did the fax mention anything odd left behind at the scene? Maybe the cops in Kansas had a few questions?”

“All I know is what I told you.” He waited her out for a few seconds, and now he nodded, understanding that no more information was coming his way. “Well, I expect you’ll be meeting up with the feds. There’s a whole pack of ’em about twenty miles down the road. If you talk to those bastards, I’d appreciate if you’d tell ’em we’d like to get the kid’s remains back for reburial… if they can’t find her own people. Whenever I ask, all I get are damn form letters.”

Mallory stared at the bulletin board on the wall behind the man’s desk. It was a jumble of paperwork, duty rosters, letters and posters. Dead center was the snapshot of a gravestone, a grand affair of carved filigree and angels, but no dates of birth or death. So many flowers, heaps of them covered the ground.

Curiosity renewed, the sheriff followed the track of her startled eyes to this photograph. “Oh God, you didn’t know.” Pushpins went flying as he ripped it from the corkboard, and an apology was in his voice when he said, “I thought you came on her account. I’m so sorry.” He handed her the photograph. “That’s the kid’s grave. We used that picture on the flyers. Like I said, we needed a name that would work as well for a boy or a girl. Now, that shot’s a little blurry. The line you can’t read-that one just says ‘Someone’s child.’ ”

But all the stone-carved text that she could make out was the largest lettering that spelled Mallory -just Mallory.

Near the southwest edge of Illinois, Detective Riker ordered a late supper at the roadside diner where, earlier in the day, a severed hand had been found in the trunk of a car. Their waitress, Sally, was recounting Mallory’s skill in flipping burgers and how the young cop had helped her to take down all the posters of missing children.

“It was enough to break your heart,” she said, “all those little kids.”

Riker carried his coffee cup back to the booth, where his traveling companion was poring over the contents of Savannah Sirus’s handbag.

“Sorry,” said Charles Butler. “If you’re looking for some connection between a suicide and serial murderer, it’s not in this purse.”

“Naw, t hat would’ve been too easy.” Riker looked out the window at the local remains of Route 66. “But I know that suicide has something to do with Mallory being on this road. I don’t b e lieve in coincidence. She’s hunting. And there’s gotta be a connection to Kronewald’s case. You know what’s really got me worried? She drove her car right through another cop’s crime scene. Now that’s rude.”