Hunt pointed toward the house, which was invisible beyond the trees. “We found where Jarvis tapped into his circuit box. The cable is buried two inches down. The shed is completely off the grid. And you saw the trail in. It’s barely a footpath. None of this is visible from the road or the house. No permits. No utilities. It’s a shell. A dead zone.”

“Any luck with the kids?”

“They’re sedated. The doctor won’t let me see them.”

The Chief stepped into the shed and Hunt followed. He felt his skin crawl. “As you can see, the walls are padded with mattresses, probably for sound baffling. The windows are packed with fiberglass insulation and sealed with industrial plastic. Again, to muffle sound, but also to keep the site black. Look at this.” Hunt stepped to the far wall and pointed at a small, ragged hole. “This is where she tore out the hook that held her cuffs.” The hook had been bagged and numbered. Hunt picked it up and felt cold metal through the slick plastic. He held it out for the Chief, who touched it once, then knelt and placed a finger on the hole in the wall. It was a shallow hole. The concrete was crumbly and dry. “Tough kid,” Hunt said.

“So how’d she get out of the shed?”

Hunt led the Chief to the door and stepped outside. He gestured at the lock. It was a Yale, big and brass and solid. It was in the locked position, secured to the steel, U-shaped hasp. “He locked the lock, but failed to lock the door.”

“Accident?” The Chief lifted the lock, let it drop and swing. “Or arrogance?”

“Does it matter?”

A shrug. “The gun?”

“Unknown. It could have been in the shed all along. She could have found it in his house. That was unlocked, too.” Both men looked again in the direction of the house. Nothing was visible through the trees. Before dawn, though, with lights burning, Tiffany would have seen it. “I’m guessing he was intoxicated. We found liquor and drugs. The autopsy should tell us.”

“Any sign that there may have been other children?” The Chief kept his tone professional.

“Are you asking about Alyssa Merrimon?”

“Not specifically.”

The Chief was unflinching, his eyes implacable, as Hunt peered into the deep woods. “We’ll need the dog,” Hunt said. “If she’s buried out there, I want to find her.”

“Not much light.”

Hunt’s voice was bleak. “I’ve already made the call.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Behind the thin walls of a house that was not her own, Katherine Merrimon stared into the bathroom mirror. She’d recognized the lie in the cop’s face, felt it like a slap. So she asked herself the hardest question.

Was she a good mother?

Her skin stretched across the bones of her face, washed out and too pale. Hair hung with more weight than it should, and her fingers shook when she raised them to her cheek. She saw how chipped her nails had become, the way dark flesh rose up around her eyes. She looked for something familiar, but the eyes were cardboard eyes.

An image of Johnny pressed into her mind. He was bandaged, bled white; and his first thought had been of his sister.

Alyssa.

The name channeled through her lips, almost took her down. She gripped the sink until one hand rose. She found the mirror, and with great loathing, she opened it. Pill bottles lined three shelves. Orange plastic. White labels. She picked a bottle at random: Vicodin. She got the top off, dumped three pills into her palm. They could take it all away, the kaleidoscope memories, the loss.

Sweat trickled down her back. Her mouth went painfully dry and she could feel how they would be on her tongue-the hard swallow and the short, bitter wait. But when she lifted her gaze to the mirror, she saw those cutout eyes, and they looked faded, like copies of copies. They were the same as Johnny’s eyes, and they had not always looked like that. Not for either of them.

She tilted her hand and allowed the pills to fall. They made small sounds as they struck the porcelain. In a sudden frenzy, she scooped out all of the bottles, raked them into the sink. One by one, she tore them open, dumped the pills into the toilet. One bottle. Twenty. She emptied them all and flushed the pills down.

Fast.

It had to be fast.

She carried the empty bottles to the kitchen, threw them in the trash and hauled the bag outside. Time collapsed as she cleaned and scrubbed. Floors. The refrigerator. Windows. The hours became a hot blur of sweat and ammonia. She stuffed sheets into the washing machine, poured liquor into the weeds and threw bottles into the open can where they shattered and burst as she spun and went back for more. In the end, she confronted the same mirror. Blood hammered in the soft place beneath her jaw. She turned the water scalding hot and scrubbed her face until it hurt, but the eyes still looked wrong. She tore off her clothes and stepped into the shower; but it was not enough.

The dirt was on the inside.

Johnny woke alone in a strange room. He heard footsteps beyond the door, a muted voice. A doctor was paged over an intercom, and bits of memory came back. He touched the bandages on his chest, felt pain, then tried to sit as nausea pushed through him. Colors spiked at the edge of his vision: dull red through the window, flat white under the door. He looked for his mother and the walls twisted. When he sat, he saw remnants of soot under his nails, hints of berry juice and blood stains on his fingers. His feathers were gone, but that didn’t matter anymore. He closed his eyes and felt Jar’s impossible grip. He smelled car leather, felt the long, cold lines as Jar crushed his neck and slashed him with his own knife.

Johnny pulled his hands beneath the sheet, but still felt the warm, spongy hole in the back of Jar’s head. He heard sounds that went from hard to wet and remembered that Jar was dead. Johnny rolled onto his side and closed out the light.

The door opened so quietly that Johnny didn’t really hear it. He sensed the movement of air, the presence of someone by his bed. He opened his eyes and saw Detective Hunt, who looked haggard, his smile forced. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, then gestured at the chair. “Do you mind?”

Johnny straightened against the pillows. He tried to speak, but the world was wrapped in cotton.

“How do you feel?” Hunt asked.

Johnny’s eyes settled on the gun whose butt showed under the detective’s jacket. “I’m okay.” The words sounded thick and slow and false.

Hunt sat. “Can we talk?” Johnny did not respond, and Detective Hunt leaned forward. He made a steeple of his fingers and put his elbows on his knees. The jacket gapped open so that Johnny could see the worn holster, the black lacquer that seemed to coat the steel. “I need to know what happened.”

Johnny didn’t answer. He was transfixed.

“Can you look at me, son?”

Johnny nodded, but his eyes felt too heavy to lift.

“Johnny?”

Johnny stared at the gun. The checkered grip. The white bead of the safety.

His hand moved, all on its own, and the cop was dimming, even as Johnny stretched for the gun. He just wanted to hold it, to see if it was as heavy as it looked, but the gun receded into a ball of soft light. A weight came onto Johnny’s chest. It pressed him into the mattress and he heard the cop’s distant voice. “Johnny. Stay with me, Johnny.”

Then he was falling, and somebody drove black spikes into his eyes.

Katherine ironed her clothes and dressed. She fought to keep her fingers steady, but the buttons felt very small. She dried her hair, combed out the tangles, and debated over makeup. In the end, she looked like a normal woman stretched over the bones of someone very ill. When she called for a cab, she had to think hard to remember the numbers on the house; then she sat on the sofa’s edge to wait.