“We were living on the South Side of Chicago—a bad neighborhood. My mom was a single mother, only nineteen, liked to party. She worked as a stripper to keep the lights on and everybody knew it. Probably half the block knew she kept cash in her closet. I was staying with my grandma, like I always did on nights she worked. Some junkie busted in, shot my mom, snatched the money, and ran. Wanna know how much he took? Four hundred dollars. Four hundred dollars, for a life.” She laughed, but it was without humor. “The cops caught him a week later trying to pawn some cheap shit jewelry one of my mom’s regulars gave her. He spent ten years in jail.”

“Good,” Dea croaked out.

“Lucky,” Kate corrected her. “Extremely lucky. The guy wasn’t connected to my mom, didn’t know her, wasn’t even a regular at the club. They made sure of that first thing. They grilled every single guy she’d ever screwed—and God rest her soul, there was a long list—and every guy who’d come through the doors at Pole Dancer’s in the past two months. Poor fuckers. All they wanted was a good lap dance and suddenly they’re on the hook for maybe killing someone.”

Again, Dea could find nothing to say. She’d never heard anyone speak the way that Kate did, and she couldn’t reconcile the story with the woman who sat next to her in a bright red anorak, drinking a coffee with a billion sugars, her cheeks red from the cold. Maybe, Dea thought, she and Connor weren’t the only ones with horrible secrets and dark, twisted paths. Maybe everyone was walking around carrying ugly monsters and dark little corners, nightmares and broken pasts.

“Do you know how hard it is, Dea, to catch a murderer with no connection to the victim?” Kate asked. Dea knew she wasn’t expected to answer. “It’s nearly impossible.” She paused, letting the word sink in. “Fortunately for the police, it’s also incredibly rare. The vast majority of women are killed by their partners, or by ex-partners.”

“Connor’s dad didn’t do it,” Dea said quickly. “He was away on a business trip.”

Kate sighed, as if Dea were failing to see a very obvious point. “I didn’t say he did. And Connor didn’t do it, either. I know that.” Her voice softened. “His fingerprints were found on the gun, though.”

Dea felt her face heating up. “It was his father’s gun,” she said quickly. “Maybe he was allowed to play with it. Maybe the real killer wore gloves.”

“Maybe,” Kate said neutrally. Again, Dea had the sense that she was missing something. “Look, the point is, Connor’s mother wasn’t killed by a stranger. Sure, a window was broken. But it was a safe neighborhood, and nothing was stolen. The baby was killed but not the older brother, whose fingerprints were found on the gun. And why wear masks inside the house? Why bother with masks at all?”

The sun was slanting hard through the dirty windshield, making Dea’s head hurt. She felt as if she were climbing slowly along the ladder of Kate’s words, trying to make sense of them. “They didn’t want to be recognized,” she said.

“Right.” Kate hooked a right turn abruptly, at a sign for Chapel Hill Housing Development, and pulled over, throwing the car in park. Across a bare-scrubbed hill, Dea saw big blank houses with walls orange in the sun, many of them just skeleton structures. It was going to be a perfect day. “But recognized by who? Connor’s mom was the target. Connor’s brother was just a baby. He wasn’t going to talk.” She turned her eyes to Dea. They were a brown so dark they were nearly black. “So who the hell were they afraid of?”

“Connor,” Dea said slowly. “It could only be Connor.”

Kate looked satisfied—as if Dea had, at long last, resolved a complex math problem. “That’s right,” she said. “I’ll tell you something, Dea. Connor doesn’t think he knows who did it, but he does.”

Dea got a sudden shock, an electrical understanding she felt in her whole body at once. “So do you,” she said, knowing as soon as she said the words that they were true.

Kate deflated almost instantly. “Yeah,” she said. Now she just sounded sad. “I do. I just can’t prove it without Connor.”

Dea looked at her. “Why do you care so much?” she said.

Kate sighed, as if she’d been waiting for Dea to ask. “The truth is hard,” she said. “But the lies are worse.” Then she put the car in drive again, and started slowly up the hill.

TWENTY-EIGHT

Chapel Hill was a ghost town. No workers, no Realtors, no people: just a network of cul-de-sacs, burnt into the hillside, black as tar, and houses in various stages of construction. Some were no more than skeletons, all bleached wood scraping up to the sky. Others were practically complete, though Dea noticed that none of the houses had curtains or shutters, and the blank windows gave them a haunted look, as though they were on the watch for something.

But as soon as Kate pulled into a parking space boxed out of the land in front of one of the more completed houses, Dea spotted Connor’s truck, concealed behind a wall of hedgerow. The front door was unlocked; Kate explained that she knew a guy who knew the guy who owned the development.

Inside, it was as cold as a refrigerator, with the same faint plastic smell. The house was furnished, presumably for showing. As soon as Dea opened the door, she heard voices. A moment later, Gollum flew out of the kitchen, her hair a bright fuzzy crown around her head, and catapulted into Dea’s arms.

“Oh my God, Dea.” Gollum was squeezing so tightly, Dea felt as if her ribs were going to crack. “I’ve been so worried about you. I swear when you called I almost had a heart attack. For serious. I was convinced you were getting hacked to pieces by some hitchhiking psycho killer or maybe you’d been abducted by a cult or something. Corn maze! Like it was some religious message from your leader.”

“I’m all right.” Dea pulled away, smiling for the first time in what felt like days. “No pieces missing, see? I’m still whole. And I haven’t been converted to a church of crazy, either.”

Connor had been hanging back a few feet, leaning in the kitchen doorway. He looked exhausted and thin, but he was smiling. Now he came forward.

“Hey, kid,” he said, his voice soft, his eyes warm and bright. “Good to have you back.”

He pulled her into a hug. He was wearing an old fleece so soft it felt like a blanket, and he smelled like he always did, like warm and spicy things, like a brightly lit room. In that moment her whole body felt alive and aware, electric with closeness. How could she ever leave Connor? How could she ever leave the world where he was?

How could she choose anything but him?

Gollum was still babbling. “It’s been crazy, Dea. You’re, like, the most famous person in Fielding. You’re the most famous person in Fielding history. Even I’m famous just for knowing you. Connor practically has his own security tail. You want to know how we escaped this morning? Driving lessons. He’s been giving me driving lessons. After yesterday when Briggs had to watch me do three-point turns in a parking lot for four hours, no way was he going to waste his time again.” She took a deep breath, having temporarily run out of air. “I really did do a three-point turn, though. And Connor taught me how to parallel park.”

“She only hit one trash can,” Connor said solemnly. But his eyes were still smiling, softened with color.

Gollum turned serious. “What are you going to do, Dea? You can’t really go on the run, can you? I mean, I guess some people do it. My dad used to love this show, America’s Most Wanted—”

“Hey, Eleanor.” Kate Patinsky was still standing by the front door. Dea had nearly forgotten she was there. “How about you and I head to the diner and pick up some real food? I nearly poisoned Dea with gas station donuts this morning. I’m thinking eggs and pancakes and bacon. You must be hungry, too. And Connor and Dea can have a breather.” Her expression as she looked at Dea was almost pleading, and Dea understood then that Kate wanted something from her. But she didn’t know what.