Inside, wood floors showed scars from long use and little care. Stairs rose to the right, the banister dark and slick. The kitchen was in the back, a glint of stainless steel and white linoleum that gleamed under hard lights. A uniformed cop nodded from the living room and Hunt nodded back. Another turned, and then a third. None of them looked Hunt in the eye, but he understood.

It all seemed very familiar.

David Wilson had been a professor, and the house felt like it: dark wood, exposed brick, a smell that was either fresh tobacco or old pot. Yoakum stepped in from the dining room and offered a smile that was perfunctory and meaningless. “I am not the bearer of glad tidings,” he said.

Hunt studied the interior of the house. “Start at the beginning.”

“The house belongs to the college. Wilson gets to live here as a perk. He’s been here for three years.”

“Nice perk.” Hunt reconsidered the house, noticed more quick glances from other cops.

Yoakum saw it, too, and lowered his voice. “They’re worried for you.”

“Worried?”

“Alyssa was a year ago, yesterday. No one has forgotten.”

Hunt looked around the room, eyes tight, mouth, too. Yoakum gave a shrug, trouble and worry in his eyes, too. “Just tell me about David Wilson,” Hunt said.

“He’s the head of the biology department. Well respected, as far as I can tell. Widely published. Kids admire him. Administration admires him, too.”

“You made it plain to the college that Wilson ’s not a suspect? I don’t want to ruin a good man’s reputation for no reason.”

“Material witness, I told them. Saw something that got him killed.”

“Good. Tell me what else you know about David Wilson.”

“You can start with this.”

Yoakum crossed an oriental rug that was probably older than the house. He led Hunt to a wall that held a number of framed photographs, each of which showed basically the same thing: David Wilson with a different beautiful woman. “Bachelor?” Hunt asked.

“You tell me. Engine parts on the dining room table. Steak and beer in the fridge, and not much else. Seventeen condoms in the drawer of the bedside table.”

“You counted?”

Yoakum shrugged. “It’s my brand.”

“Ah, humor.”

“Who’s joking?”

“Any indication of where or how he might have crossed paths with Tiffany Shore?”

“If there’s a great big clue in this house somewhere, I haven’t discovered it yet. If he really did find the kid, I’m guessing it was by accident.”

“Alright,” Hunt said. “Let’s break it down. We know that he’s lived here for three years. He’s athletic, well paid, and smart.”

“Athletic?”

“The ME thinks he may have been a rock climber.”

“Smart man, that Trenton Moore.”

“Yeah?”

“Come with me,” Yoakum said, and threaded his way through the kitchen to a narrow door at the back of the house. He opened it and warm air gushed in. “Garage is through the backyard.”

They stepped out onto wet grass. A privacy fence shielded much of the yard, and the garage loomed, square and blunt, at the far corner. Made from the same brick as the house, it was wide enough to hold at least two cars. Yoakum entered first and flicked on the lights. “Check it out.”

Rafters spanned a gulf beneath the peaked roof. Oil stained a dull cement floor. Two of the walls were made from peg boards, and on the pegs hung all kinds of climbing gear: coils of rope, carabineers, pitons, headlamps, and helmets.

“I’d say he was a climber.”

“With some stupid-looking shoes,” Yoakum said, and Hunt turned.

The shoes were ankle high, leather boots with smooth, black rubber soles that curved up the front and sides. Three pairs hung from different pegs. Hunt lifted a pair. “Friction shoes,” he said. “They’re good on stone.”

Yoakum pointed at the rafters. “Guy’s not scared of water, either.”

“Kayaks.” Hunt pointed to the longest of the kayaks. “That’s oceangoing.” He pointed to the short one. “That’s river.”

“There’s no car registered in his name,” Yoakum said.

“But oil stains on the floor.” Hunt lifted a set of keys from a nail by the door: black plastic at the fat end. “Spare set, I’m guessing. Toyota.” He looked at tire marks on the concrete. “Long wheel base. Maybe a truck or a Land Cruiser. Check with the college. Maybe it’s registered to the biology department.”

“We did find a trailer registered to David Wilson.”

“For his dirt bike, probably. The one he was riding when he was killed wasn’t street legal, so he probably took it out on a trailer. What he was doing out in the most forbidding corner of the county is the question. What he was doing and where he was doing it.”

They left the garage and pulled the door shut, started back across the yard. “It’s wild country up there. Lot of woods. Lot of trails.”

“Good place to dirt bike.”

“You think his car is still out there somewhere?” Yoakum asked.

They mounted steps to the back door, went inside and passed through the kitchen. “It has to be.” Hunt pictured the county in his mind. They were a hundred miles from the state capital, sixty from the coast. There was money in town: industry, tourists, golf; but the north country was wild, riddled with swamps and narrow gorges, deep woods and spines of granite. If David Wilson was dirt biking up that way, then his car could be anywhere: back roads, unmapped trails, fields. Anywhere. “We need some designated units up there.” Hunt ran some numbers in his head. “Make it four patrol cars. Get them up there now.”

“It’s pretty dark.”

“Now,” Hunt said. “And get the trailer’s plate number to Highway Patrol.”

Yoakum snapped his fingers and a uniformed officer materialized. “Make sure the state police have Wilson ’s plate. Tell them it’s related to the Shore case. They already have the Amber Alert.” The cop disappeared to make the call. Yoakum turned back to Hunt. “Now what?”

Hunt turned a slow circle, studied the shots of David Wilson with his collection of pretty females. “Bedroom. Basement. Attic. Show me everything.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

Levi moved carefully on the mud and slick rocks. The river tossed bits of light that reminded him of something from when he was a boy. There was a rhythm, a pattern, like a kaleidoscope his daddy gave him the year before the cancer took him. The trail bent to high ground and Levi used his free hand to pull on roots and saplings to get him up the slick clay. He dug in the edges of his shoes for traction. When he reached the high, flat stretch, he stopped to catch his breath; and when he started again, the river lights winked out behind the willows and the ash, the sweet gums and the long-fingered pines. It went truly dark, and that’s when he saw the faces. He saw his wife laughing at him and then suddenly not, her face gone reddish black and wet, almost by itself. He saw the man who was with her, and how his face went wrong, too, all red and crooked and flat on one side.

And the sounds.

Levi tried to stop thinking; he wanted to wash the images out of his head, pump water in one ear and flush it, dirty, out the other. He wanted to be empty, wanted to make room for when God spoke. He was happy then, even if it was just one word repeated over and over. Even when it was just a name that rang in his head like a church bell.

Sofia.

Levi heard it again.

Her name.

He walked on and felt warm water on his face. It took a mile for him to understand that he was crying. He didn’t care. Nobody could see him out here, not his wife or his neighbors, none of the ones that made jokes when people said things he didn’t understand, or laughed at how he went quiet when he found dead animals on the roadside. So he let the tears come. He listened for God, and let the tears run hot down his ruined face.