D.D.’s cell rang. She checked the number, flipped it open. “What’s up?”

“We got a sighting,” Phil said tersely. “Girl was heading toward radiology. Apparently with a rope.”

“With a rope?”

“A rope.”

D.D. didn’t like the sound of that. To judge by the stricken look on Danielle’s face, neither did she. “Radiology,” D.D. confirmed. “We’re on our way.”

She flipped the phone shut, then she and Danielle rushed down the hall. “Elevators are too slow,” Danielle said. “Stairwell. This way.”

The nurse shouldered through the door and they clattered down the steps, rat-a-tat-tat-tat. D.D. stayed on Danielle’s heels as the nurse rounded the landings. She muscled through the exit door once again, then they bolted down a dimly lit hall.

This part of Kirkland Medical Center appeared quiet. Empty chairs, vacant receptionist desks. Three in the morning. Appointments done, just the odd job here and there for the ER docs. Lots of long, empty corridors for a child to wander at will.

They broke into what appeared to be a waiting area. D.D. glanced around, seeing half a dozen closed doors and little else. She heard running footsteps, then Alex and Phil burst in the area.

“Which way? Where?” D.D. asked. She was on the balls of her feet, ready for action.

“Think like a cat, think like a cat,” Danielle was muttering. “The imaging rooms! They’re small and dark, and sometimes still warm from the machines.” She pointed to a handful of doors, each bearing a number. “Go.”

D.D. grabbed the doorknob closest to herself as the others did the same. The first was locked; she went to the second. It opened and she dashed inside, to discover a dark cocoon. She flashed on the light, saw it was really two rooms. One with a table, and a smaller, glass-windowed chamber where no doubt a technician stood to man the imaging equipment. She checked both spaces. Nothing. She reappeared in the waiting area. Phil was exiting a room. Alex, too, then Danielle. Each was shaking his or her head.

More footsteps. Greg and Neil pounding down the corridor toward them.

“Other rooms?” D.D. asked Danielle.

“Sure,” the nurse said blankly. “It’s a whole level of rooms. I mean, janitorial closets, receptionist areas, offices. There are rooms and rooms and rooms.”

“All right. This is central station.” D.D. pointed where they stood. “We work from this area out, likes spokes on a wheel. Everyone, grab a room.”

They moved urgently now. The rooms were small, easily cleared. It took twelve minutes, then they returned to central station, eyeing one another nervously. The floor was quiet, just the distant twitches and hums of a large building that grumbled in its sleep.

Phil spoke up first. “Now what? I swear, we spoke to a janitor who saw her walking down this corridor. She had to be going somewhere.”

D.D. puzzled over that, chewing her bottom lip. This floor felt right. Dark, secluded, lots of little spaces. If you were going to hide in a hospital, this was the place to be.

And then…

She turned slowly, regarding the first room she had tried. The only locked door on an entire floor of unlocked rooms. And suddenly, just like that, she knew.

“Danielle,” she said quietly. “We’re going to need that key.”

The janitor supplied the master key. D.D. did the honors, already gloved, careful not to touch anything more than she had to.

The heavy wooden door swung open. She stepped in slowly, snapped on the light.

The girl’s body hung from the middle of the ceiling, rope secured to a hook, wheeled desk chair cast aside. The green surgical scrub shirt shrouded her skinny frame, and her body swayed lightly, as if teased in the wind.

“Get her down, get her down” came Danielle’s voice, urgent behind her. “Code, code, code! Dammit, Greg, call it in!”

But Greg wasn’t moving. It was obvious to him, as to D.D., that the time for medical attention had come and gone. To be certain, D.D. took one step forward, wrapped her hand around the girl’s ankle. Lucy’s skin was cool to the touch, no pulse beating feebly at the base of the foot.

D.D. stepped back, turned to Neil. “When you notify the ME, remind Ben we’ll want the knot on the rope left intact.” She turned to Danielle and Greg. “You two can return upstairs if you’d like. We’ll take it from here.”

But neither of them took the hint. Greg’s arm went around Danielle. She turned, ever so slightly, into him.

“We’ll stay,” the nurse said, her voice flat. “It’s the duty of the lone survivor. We must bear witness. We must live to tell the tale.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Six months after the funeral, Aunt Helen took me to pick out tombstones for my siblings’ graves. She’d already selected a rose-colored marble for my mother, inscribed with the standard name and timeline. But when the moment came to select a stone for Natalie and Johnny, Aunt Helen wasn’t able to bear it. She walked away.

So my sister and brother lay in unmarked graves for the first six months, until Aunt Helen decided it was time to get the job done. I went with her. It was something to do.

The monument store was a funny place. You could pick out lawn ornaments, decorative fountains, or, of course, tombstones. The man in charge wore denim overalls and looked like he’d be more comfortable gardening than helping a black-suited woman and her hollow-eyed niece pick out grave markers for two kids.

“Boy like baseball?” he asked finally. “I could engrave a bat and ball. Maybe something from the Red Sox. We do a lot of business with the Red Sox.”

Aunt Helen laughed a little. It wasn’t a good sound.

She finally selected two small angels. I hated them. Angels? For my goofy siblings, who liked to stick out their tongues at me, and were always one whack ahead at punch buggy? I hated them.

But I wasn’t talking in those days, so I let my aunt do as she wanted. My mother was marked in rose marble. My siblings became angels. Maybe there were trees in Heaven. Maybe Natalie was saving bunnies.

I didn’t know. My parents never took me to church, and my corporate-lawyer aunt continued their agnostic ways.

We didn’t bury my father. My aunt didn’t want him anywhere near her sister. Since she was the one in charge of the arrangements, she had him cremated and stuck in a cardboard box. The box went in the storage unit in her condo building, where it stayed for the next twelve years.

I used to sneak the key from my aunt’s purse and visit him from time to time. I liked the look of the box. Plain. Small. Manageable. Surprisingly heavy, so after the first visit, I didn’t try to lift it anymore. I wanted to keep my father this way, remember him this way. No bigger than a stack of tissues, easy to tuck away.

I could loom over this box. I could hit it. Kick it. Scream at the top of my lungs at it.

A box could never, ever hurt me.

My twenty-first birthday, I got drunk, raided my aunt’s storage unit, and, in a fit of rage, emptied the box into a sewer grate. I flushed my father down into the bowels of Boston, having to keep my mouth closed, but still inhaling bits of him up my nose.

Immediately afterward, I was sorry I’d done such a thing.

The cardboard box had contained my father, kept him small.

Now I knew he was somewhere out there, floating down various pipes and channels and water systems. Maybe the ash was soaking up the water, steadily expanding, enabling my father to grow again, to loom once more in the dark undergrowth of the city. Until one day, a white hand would shoot up, drag back a sewer grate, and my father would be free.

The cardboard box had contained him.