Jake was grateful that Frank was keeping his mind off the places it wanted to go. Tortured, dark, foul places. “She puts pictures together. I’m hoping that she can see something in the photo stream of—” he paused, weighed the next word—“Jacob’s paintings. I’m probably wasting time I don’t have.”

Frank shook his head. “But he’s already left paintings of this guy.”

Jake thought about the faceless men on the studio walls. The hospital portrait rendered in his own blood. Jacob wanted his son to see those so he would get used to looking. Then the carpet mosaic—a portrait with a blank face constructed of pieces—fragments—like the Chuck Close. Like those canvas puzzle fragments. “He left faceless portraits, Frank. Those were to get me started. The portrait of the killer—if that’s what this is—is for my eyes only. I don’t think he trusted anyone else with this.” It was starting to look like his father had sent him away on purpose. “This is something he wants me to figure out.”

60

Judging by the lighted windows on the block, one in ten residents had opted to stay, probably figuring that if the hurricane got bad, and a storm surge rose up, they’d be safe this far inland. Everyone had been talking about how lucky they were that the storm had made landfall at low tide. Of course, no one thought that they were only nineteen feet above sea level and a good surge would scrub the town from Long Island. Or that the tide was destined to rise again.

Frank pulled the truck into the driveway of a small two-story postwar bungalow that was not dissimilar to Rachael Macready’s. They ran for the door, Frank zipped up in the oilskin jacket, Jake wrapped in one of Hauser’s rain ponchos. Mrs. Mitchell opened the door before they were up the steps and ushered them inside with the standard small talk that a change in weather generates. When they were inside she pulled the screen door shut, then the white-painted main door with the diamond window centered in it.

Jake could see her playing in the living room. Sobel had given Hauser her mother’s name and number and the sheriff had called ahead asking her mother’s permission for Jake to speak to her. Her name was Emily Mitchell. She was twelve.

Jake knew that there was no way to guarantee any sort of result. Maybe she was behind a linguistic wall that he wouldn’t be able to penetrate. Maybe he’d just burn up more time. But he didn’t have much in the way of options and even less in leads.

Jesus, he thought. Listen to me. Grasping at straws. If it hadn’t been so goddamned sad, he’d have laughed at it.

Mrs. Mitchell was bundled in an old cable-knit sweater that had splotches of paint on one arm and a patch on the other. Jake guessed that it was her version of a security blanket. “Mrs. Mitchell, thank you for this.” Jake pulled the hood off of the poncho. “This is important.”

Frank receded into a corner of the small entryway. “M’am,” he said stiffly.

Jake pulled out his badge and held it up. She dismissed it after a cursory glance—it was amazing how many people did that. “I talked to you at Dr. Sobel’s office this morning, I wasn’t sure you’d remember…”

On the table inside the entry were a kerosene lantern, a box of candles, and two flashlights that looked like Cold War relics. Jake wondered if she had tested them or simply pulled them out of whatever junk drawer they had been relegated to. Beside the hurricane essentials was another crappy novel, this one featuring a velvet-clad pirate in the midst of foreplay with a buxom countess whose expression belied lust more than rape.

“I remember you,” she said slowly, and something about the way she spoke told him a lot wasn’t being said. “I never thought you were an FBI agent, though.” She smiled awkwardly.

“I get that a lot.” But not as much as he had since he had come back to Montauk, he realized. “This is Frank.” Jake knew that the woman had to be a little skittery at having two strange men in her house during a hurricane asking her daughter questions as part of a murder investigation—regardless of what Hauser had said over the phone.

“Come in,” she said.

Jake pulled off his boots and Frank sat down on a small bench near the door to undo his old lace-ups. Mrs. Mitchell disappeared into the kitchen and he saw that the layout was identical to Rachael Macready’s house. “I made some coffee,” Mrs. Mitchell offered from the other room.

“That would be great.”

She came back with two steaming mugs just as Frank finished taking off his boots and Jake—the eternal student of human behavior—was surprised how flexible the old man was.

“Mrs. Mitchell—like Sheriff Hauser said on the phone, you don’t have to help me. Your daughter’s not a witness or anything like that. I am not even sure that she can help. I am here because I have nowhere else to go and, to be honest, I’m probably wasting your time as well as my own.” He was able to say it with conviction because it was the truth. “You’ve heard about the people who were killed in Montauk?”

She stiffened, and a little of the coordination seemed to leave her. “Everyone has.”

“I think the same man who killed those people also took my family.” He thought about Kay standing on her tiptoes so she could kiss him, about the way her hair smelled of papaya. And he thought about Jeremy and MoonPies. “My wife and three-year-old son.”

Mrs. Mitchell said, “I’m sorry,” barely above a whisper.

“I think I have an image of him but it’s in pieces.”

She held out the mugs. “Like a puzzle?”

“Yes.”

Frank took a sip of his coffee and said, “You’re an angel.”

She led them into the living room. “She either pays attention or she doesn’t. There are no in-betweens. Yelling doesn’t help. Shaking her doesn’t help. Slapping her doesn’t help. It can be frustrating. If she moves something, or touches something, don’t interfere, even if it’s yours—it makes her mad and you don’t want her to get mad.” She looked Jake over with an expression he hadn’t seen in a long time. “You have things to do, so you best be started.”

The living room was identical to the Macready victim’s, including the placement of the furniture. The only difference was a small bookcase crammed with candy-colored paperbacks with saccharine titles on their spines, denoting more romantic embraces between oversexed people with good hair and trust funds.

Emily was on the floor, putting a puzzle together. She had upended the box on the carpet and had flipped all the pieces over so they were upside down and all she had to work with now was a fragmented cardboard pallet of like shapes. She worked fast, snapping pieces home with the precision of an assembly-line robot. The scene looked like a film played in reverse.

“Emily,” Mrs. Mitchell said softly. “This man wants to show you something. It’s a puzzle. A picture puzzle.”

Emily kept locking the colorless cardboard shapes into place and the puzzle was growing rapidly. If she had heard her mother, Jake had seen no sign of it.

“She does these all the time. Won’t do a puzzle twice. I’ve tried to fool her by putting a puzzle she’s already done into a new box and laying it out upside down for her and she knows instantly. Just slaps it aside.” She brushed the hair out of Emily’s eyes and readjusted a big yellow barrette. “Don’t you, sweetheart.” She leaned over and kissed her daughter on the head. The girl hadn’t reacted to the introduction, the caress, or the kiss. She just kept firing the pieces of the puzzle home with the same blank expression Jake had seen on her face in Sobel’s office that morning. Back when he still had a family.

Mrs. Mitchell nodded at Jake and he put his laptop down on the floor in front of the girl. He opened it up.