He shot off an e-mail to Boldt, hoping to give him a heads-up. His office would be the next to be contacted. He called his PIO into his office.

As the office’s public information officer, Deputy “Even” Eve Sanchez had the looks and the brains to be a crowd-pleaser. She was bilingual, beautiful, and young. The cameras liked her and so did Walt.

He briefed her on Gale and detailed the “potential land mines.” They’d spoken about the case periodically over the past few days, but not with the specifics of his suspicions and the Boldt interviews with Boatwright and Wynn-all information she needed. They would take a public position of “ongoing investigation” and therefore “no comment.” But McClure’s office needed to be warned, and Tommy Brandon and Fiona both needed debriefings with Eve. They scheduled to meet twice daily and he promised updates as he had them. For the time being he would not take any questions or interviews, but when pressed by her, agreed to join her at a press conference the following morning at ten a.m. She would meet him at his house later in the evening to prep him.

With Sanchez gone, he called Royal McClure to warn him and asked Nancy to bring Fiona and Brandon in as soon as possible.

He searched e-mails and his own notes about the case, mentally reviewed discussions he’d had with Boldt, and tried to see loose ends that needed tying off.

One that came to mind was the emergency room admissions for the night of Gale’s death. If they offered anything promising, he’d want to lock them down. The Louisiana list server for anyone affected by the Gale prosecution loomed large. It was just the kind of thing a reporter would scoop him on. He fired off a second e-mail to Boldt asking if he could pull strings as he’d offered.

He hung up from another call with Nancy-requesting the emergency room log for the night in question-and felt dizzy.

He needed food. He needed time.

He ordered takeout, called Lisa, and asked her to stay with the girls.

Nancy entered his office waving a sheet of paper.

“Emergency room records,” she said, placing it before him.

Walt straightened the sheet and read. Two admissions, one a child with a broken ankle, the other an ax wound to the leg. He stared at the page, unable to divorce himself from his father’s jabbing sarcasm about how unreal his son’s job was when compared to one in a major city. Each hospital in Seattle probably saw a dozen emergency room admissions a night, some several dozen.

“This is it?” he said.

“You’re looking at it.”

“Not much help.”

“No, I didn’t think so.”

He ran his hand through his hair.

“One of the guys was going to look into the convenience stores and drug stores-Chateau, and the Drug Store, in particular-and see if anyone remembers anything on that night. Can you chase that down?”

“Not a problem.”

“Wait!” he said, holding the page now, wishing he could choke it. “Midnight to midnight,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“He was found on the fourteenth, and we bagged him on the fourteenth. But Royal couldn’t give us a predictable time of death. Temperature drops too much each night. He was guessing he’d been there at least a day, and that seemed supported by the degradation-the predation to the face and limbs. So, let’s say he went lights-out the twelfth or thirteenth.”

“O… k… a… y?” she said cautiously, accustomed to being his sounding board and knowing to stay out of his way.

“Which is why I asked for the twelfth,” he said, shaking the sheet of paper. “But it’s a midnight start. It’s a true day, and if Gale was killed-”

“Late night the twelfth,” she said, unable to help herself.

“Exactly. Then we should be looking at the thirteenth, not the twelfth.”

“I’ll call.”

Impatience got the better of him over the next twenty minutes. He would try answering an e-mail, only to find himself holding down the backspace key and starting over. He looked over his “hot list” of follow-ups to accomplish before the press conference, but felt stymied.

His computer rang a tone. He saw notice of an e-mail from Boldt and read it. The detective had managed to contact a man in the Louisiana Attorney General’s office, a deputy A.G. by the name of Robert “Buddy” Cornell. Cornell believed he could scare up at least the e-mail addresses for those people on the Gale list server, and hoped to have it to Boldt by Monday morning.

Walt pounded out a thank-you and sent it off.

Nancy was standing in his doorway holding another sheet of paper. She looked different, like she’d tasted something funny. Gone was the playful Dr. Watson who’d sparred with him twenty minutes earlier.

“You need some food or something,” he said. “You want to go home, I can handle it from here.”

She said nothing as she stepped forward and slid the piece of paper across his desk, the St. Luke’s Wood River Medical Center banner across the top.

“That’s better,” he said, noting right away that there had been ten-no, eleven!-emergency room admissions on the thirteenth.

He glanced up from the emergency room report at Nancy, who stood staring down at him, still as pale as a sheet.

“I’m telling you,” he said, “you do not look well.”

“Second from the bottom,” she said, watching as his eyes found the printed line.

His stubby finger traced across the page. He looked up at Nancy, back to the page, back to Nancy.

“Head injury,” he said.

She nodded.

Despite his concern, he wasn’t ready to make that call.

25

Recognizing the caller ID as the sheriff’s office central number, Fiona answered her mobile phone, expecting to hear Walt’s voice. She was disappointed to discover it was Nancy, his secretary. Standing in the cottage’s small galley kitchen, she glanced out the window over the sink into the stand of aspen trees and the blinding shock of lilies mixing with the white bark.

“Nancy?”

“I need a little clarification on something. We just got the GPS coordinates for the pickup truck you requested-”

“Oh, thank God.”

“Thing is, the coordinates have it on the Engleton property.”

“What?”

“There’s like a five-yard possibility of error or something, so… I’m not exactly sure how to proceed with this. You want me to send a dep-”

“No, no!” she said, hurrying to the far side of the living room and looking toward the main house. “I can’t believe this. I’m so sorry. Let me look around and get back to you. Does it show where on the property? Does it get that detailed?”

“There’s a hybrid view: satellite image laid on top of the mapping software. It shows the truck as in the main house. Like the living room. But there’s that margin of error.”

“I’ll look.”

“Call me back, would you, please?”

“Promise. Give me five minutes.” She disconnected the call and slipped the phone into a pocket absentmindedly. She crossed the driveway, oblivious to the chittering of tree squirrels and a red-sailed para-glider working the thermals above a northern ridge. To her there was only the garage. The closer she drew to it, the more trepidation.

Maybe the device had been removed from the truck and left in the garage, and if so, what did that say about the truck’s disappearance? She and Walt had checked the garage, had stood in the empty bay.

She rose to tiptoe and peered through the garage door’s glass pane, looking in on the truck bed. Parked right where it belonged. She felt foolish and embarrassed to have put Walt up to the GPS search. Kira had obviously taken the truck and returned it, and Fiona found herself overcome with anger, furious at the girl for putting her through the worry and concern.

She marched to the front door of the home and found it locked. She knocked loudly, pounding on the door. Kira didn’t answer. She tried the handle again, and stormed back across to the cottage to get her key. Returning, she opened the door and barged inside.