“But if she were distraught enough?” said Gabriel. “People do drastic things.”

Jane frowned at him. “You’re talking what? Suicide?”

Gabriel kept his gaze on Brophy. “Exactly what’s happened between you two recently?”

Brophy’s head drooped. “I think we’ve both come to realize that… something has to change.”

“Did you tell her you were going to end it?”

“No.” Brophy looked up. “She knows I love her.”

But that’s not enough, thought Jane. Not enough to build a life.

“She wouldn’t hurt herself.” Brophy straightened in the chair, his face hardening in a look of certainty. “She wouldn’t play games. Something is wrong, and I can’t believe you’re not taking this seriously.”

“We are,” said Gabriel calmly. “That’s why we’re asking these questions, Daniel. Because these are the same questions the police will ask in Wyoming. About her state of mind. About whether she might have chosen to disappear. I just want to be sure you know the answers.”

“Which hotel was she staying at?” asked Jane.

“It’s in Teton Village. The Mountain Lodge. I’ve already called them, and they said she checked out Saturday morning. A day early.”

“Do they know where she went?”

“No.”

“Could she have flown home earlier? Maybe she’s already back in Boston.”

“I called her home phone. I even drove by her house. She’s not there.”

“Do you know anything else about her travel arrangements?” Gabriel asked.

“I have her flight numbers. I know she rented a car in Jackson. She was planning to drive around the area after the conference was over.”

“Which rental agency?”

“Hertz.”

“Do you know if she’s spoken to anyone besides you? Her colleagues at the ME’s office, maybe? Her secretary?”

“I called Louise on Saturday, and she hadn’t heard anything, either. I didn’t follow up on it because I assumed…” He looked at Jane. “I thought you would check on her.”

There was no note of accusation in his voice, but there might as well have been. Jane felt a guilty flush in her cheeks. He had called her, and she’d dropped the ball because her mind had been on other things. Bodies in freezers. Uncooperative toddlers. She had not really believed that anything was wrong, had thought it was merely a lovers’ spat followed by silent treatment. This sort of thing happened all the time, didn’t it? Plus, there was the fact that Maura had checked out of her hotel a day early. That didn’t sound like an abduction, but a deliberate change in plans. None of it absolved Jane of the fact that she’d done nothing beyond placing that call to Maura’s cell phone. Now almost two days had passed, the golden forty-eight, that window of opportunity when you’re most likely to find a missing person and identify a perp.

Gabriel stood. “I think it’s time to make some calls,” he said, and went into the kitchen. She and Brophy sat silent, listening to him speak in the other room. Using his FBI voice, as Jane liked to call it, the quiet and authoritative tone he adopted for official business. Hearing it now, she found it hard to believe that that voice belonged to the same man who’d been so easily defeated by a stubborn toddler. I should be the one making the calls, she thought. I’m the cop who failed to follow up. But she knew that just hearing those letters FBI would make whoever was on the other end of the line snap to attention. When your husband’s a fibbie, you might as well take advantage of it.

“… female, age forty-two, I think. Black hair. Five foot six, around a hundred twenty pounds…”

“Why would she check out of the hotel a day early?” Brophy said softly. He was sitting rigid in the armchair, staring straight ahead. “That’s what I haven’t figured out yet, why she did that. Where was she going, another town, another hotel? Why suddenly change her plans?”

Maybe she met someone. A man. Jane didn’t want to say it, but that was the first thought that occurred to her, the first thought that would occur to any cop. A lonely woman on a business trip. A woman whose lover has just disappointed her. Along comes an attractive stranger who suggests a little drive out of town. Ditch the old plans and have a little adventure.

Maybe she had an adventure with the wrong man.

Gabriel came back into the living room, carrying the portable phone. “He’ll call us right back.”

“Who?” asked Brophy.

“The detective in Jackson. He said they’ve had no traffic fatalities over the weekend, and he’s not aware of any hospitalized patients who remain unidentified.”

“What about…” Brophy paused.

“Or bodies, either.”

Brophy swallowed and slumped back into the chair. “So we know that much, at least. She’s not lying in some hospital.”

Or the morgue. It was an image Jane tried to block out, but there it was: Maura stretched out on the table like so many other corpses that Jane had stared down at. Anyone who’d ever stood in an autopsy room and watched a postmortem had surely imagined the nightmarish scene of someone they knew or loved lying on the table. No doubt it was the same image that was now tormenting Daniel Brophy.

Jane brewed another pot of coffee. Out in Wyoming, it would be eleven PM. The phone remained ominously silent as they watched the clock.

“You never know, she may surprise us.” Jane laughed, jittery from too much caffeine and sugar. “She may turn up at work tomorrow, right on time. Tell us that she lost her cell phone or something.” It was a lame explanation, and neither man bothered to respond.

The ringing phone made them all snap straight. Gabriel picked up the receiver. He did not say much; nor did his face reveal what information he was hearing. But when he hung up and looked at Jane, she knew the news was not good.

“She never returned the rental car.”

“They checked with Hertz?”

Gabriel nodded. “She picked it up Tuesday at the airport, and was supposed to return it this morning.”

“So the car’s missing as well.”

“That’s right.”

Jane did not look at Brophy; she didn’t want to see his face.

“I guess that settles it,” said Gabriel. “There’s only one thing we can do.”

Jane nodded. “I’ll call my mom in the morning. I’m sure she’ll be happy to watch Regina. We can drop her off on the way to the airport.”

“You’re flying to Jackson?” asked Brophy.

“If we can find two seats on a flight tomorrow,” said Jane.

“Make it three,” Brophy said. “I’m coming, too.”

14

MAURA AWAKENED TO THE SOUND OF ARLO’S CHATTERING TEETH. Opening her eyes, she saw it was still dark, but sensed that dawn was near, that the blackness of night was just starting to lift to gray. In the glow from the hearth, she could count the sleeping bodies: Grace curled up on the sofa; Doug and Elaine sleeping close together, almost touching. Always almost touching. She could guess who had migrated toward whom in the night. It was so obvious, now that she was aware of it: the way Elaine looked at Doug, the way she so frequently touched him, her eager acquiescence to everything he suggested. Arlo lay alone beside the hearth, the blanket molding his body like a shroud. His teeth clattered together as a fresh chill gripped his body.

She rose, her back stiff from the floor, and placed more wood in the fireplace. Crouching close, she warmed herself as the fire crackled to life, bright and fierce. Turning, she looked at Arlo, whose face was now illuminated by the flames.

His hair was greasy and stiff with sweat. His skin had taken on the yellowish cast of a corpse. If not for his chattering teeth, she might have thought him already dead.

“Arlo,” she said softly.

Slowly, his eyelids lifted. His gaze seemed to come from some deep and shadowy pit, as though he had fallen far beyond all reach of help. “So… cold,” he whispered.

“I’ve built up the fire again. It’ll be warmer in here soon.” She touched his forehead, and the heat of his skin was so startling that she felt as if her hand were seared. At once she went to the coffee table, where they had lined up all the medicines, and struggled to read the labels in the dark. She found the bottles of amoxicillin and Tylenol, and shook out capsules into her hand. “Here. Take these.”