“I should’ve been smarter,” she said.

“Stop this.”

“I am so sorry . . . so sorry.”

“You have nothing to be sorry about.”

Her eyes bore into his. “No!” she said. “I should’ve seen it coming.”

“Listen to me. It doesn’t work that way. I know.”

She was shaking her head.

“Something happened to me,” Louis said. “Up in Michigan. Men are dead because of something I missed.”

She was quiet now, looking at the floor.

“We all miss things,” he said. “But you can’t keep beating yourself up over it. You go on with your life. You do better next time. You deal with it.”

She looked up at him. He couldn’t tell if she was hearing him or not. He glanced at her arm. The gauze was soaked through.

“Emily,” he said, “go get yourself stitched up.”

She looked down at her arm and nodded slightly.

Louis heard the door open and looked back to see the paramedic standing there. Louis eased Farentino up from the chair. The paramedic came forward, took her arm, and led her out.

“When you’re ready, why don’t you guys leave by the back,” Horton said.

Wainwright nodded. A young woman poked her head in the door. It was Karen, the public information officer.

“Chief, it’s getting ugly out there,” she said.

Horton glanced at his watch. “I’m not waiting for Mobley,” he said. “Come on, Karen. Let’s go throw ’em some meat.”

Louis and Wainwright left Horton’s office and went out the back entrance. The morning sun was still low in the sky but the day was already warm. Louis and Wainwright stood just outside the door for a moment, neither saying a word.

Wainwright moved away, going to a nearby bench and sinking down onto it. Louis joined him. Two uniformed patrolmen came up the walk, stared at Wainwright’s wrinkled uniform, and went in.

“Think she’ll be all right?” Wainwright asked.

“Yes,” Louis said. He leaned his head back against the brick building, closing his eyes.

For several minutes, neither man moved or said a word. Louis knew they were both long past exhaustion.

“Louis,” Wainwright said finally, “what were you talking about back there?”

“When?”

“When you were telling her what happened in Michigan,” Wainwright said. “When you said you should have seen it coming.”

Louis opened his eyes. Wainwright wasn’t looking at him. He was staring straight ahead.

“I made a lot of mistakes,” Louis said.

He could feel Wainwright’s eyes on him now. He drew in a long breath. “Mistakes I could have prevented if I had seen it coming.”

Wainwright said nothing. Finally, Louis looked at him. Wainwright was staring straight ahead again, but his eyes were unfocused, distant.

“Remember Skeen?” Wainwright asked after a moment.

“The Raisin River killer.”

“Right before the end, right before the last little girl was murdered, my wife Sarah committed suicide,” Wainwright said.

Louis waited.

“She had been depressed for a long time,” Wainwright went on. “I was away all the time then. She was holding everything together with the kids, the house, and she never said anything.”

Louis remembered the photograph on the mantel back at Wainwright’s house, the one of the pretty brunette woman.

“The signs were there,” Wainwright said quietly.

“I saw that eventually. But I didn’t at the time. I didn’t see it coming.”

Louis stared at Wainwright’s profile. For a long time, Wainwright just sat there, looking off at the parking lot across the street.

“I’ve buried it, just buried it, for a lot of years,” Wainwright said. “It’s why I came down here, because I didn’t want to deal with it. My kids—” He stopped, wiping a hand roughly over his face. “I haven’t seen them for a while,” he went on. “After Sarah died, my oldest—Kevin—I think he blamed me. Gina didn’t, but Kevin . . . he was the one who found Sarah and . . .” His voice trailed off.

Louis waited. Finally, when he was sure Wainwright was not going to say anything more, he put a hand on Wainwright’s shoulder.

“Let’s go,” Louis said quietly.

Wainwright shook his head. “I can’t sleep.”

“I can’t either. Let’s go take a look at that shack.”

Wainwright nodded. “Yeah . . . yeah. Good idea. Thanks.”

Chapter Thirty-nine

They stood at the door to the storage shack.

The crime scene techs were almost finished. Louis had watched as they meticulously dusted every inch of the walls, the wooden table, the wooden crab traps, and the chair that still sat in the middle.

Under the chair, they had scraped up blood Louis guessed would turn out to be Emily’s. From another area, they took samples of blood that Louis was sure belonged to Tyrone Heller. The techs had also found tiny specks of dried blood, probably from the tread of a shoe.

Bags of evidence had been removed: fish scales and shrimp shells, hairs, fibers, some rusted cans, crumpled pieces of tissue, blue and white buoys, and some cigarette butts. On both arms of the chair, there were several loops of yellow plastic rope.

Louis’s eyes swept over the tiny room, trying to get a feel for what had happened. No . . . a feel for the killer’s mind, that’s what he wanted. He focused for a moment on the chair, then moved to the bloodstain, rimmed with black paint. It was smaller than the bloodstain from Quick up on the overlook. But Mayo had dragged Heller out right after killing him. Louis’s eyes went now to the walls. The old gray planks were splattered with blood. There was more on the ceiling.

He realized he was feeling nothing. No vibrations. And worse, no emotion.

“We need something out of this mess to tie Mayo in,” Wainwright said. “We need proof he was here.”

“Mayo’s prints are on file,” Louis said. “Maybe we’ll get a match from here.”

“He’s using gloves. He hasn’t left his prints anywhere else.”

Louis was looking at the bloodstain again, noticing something new. There was less blood than at the overlook but more paint.

“He used a lot of paint on Heller,” Louis said.

“I was thinking the same thing,” Wainwright said. “Why do you think he went overboard this time?”

“Remember what Farentino said she heard him say? ‘Get it right this time, you fucking idiot.’ Maybe she heard it wrong. Maybe he said ‘idiots.’ ”

“Plural?” Wainwright asked.

Louis nodded. “Maybe he was talking to us.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he saw the press conference. Maybe he’s pissed that we didn’t mention the paint. It’s important to him and he wants us to notice it this time.”

Wainwright nodded. “Farentino said he might react to anything. I guess we found out.”

The techs moved out, taking the table. They told Wainwright they would return for the chair and to tear up the stained floorboards and walls.

Louis’s eyes went back to the chair. “Why didn’t he kill her?” he asked.

“Maybe your theory about the skin shades is wrong and he’s not working toward a white victim,” Wainwright said.

Louis shook his head. “No, I still think there’s something to it. Heller is lighter than the others and he killed him.”

“Then why did he even bother to take Farentino in the first place?” Wainwright asked.

“Maybe she was just in the way,” Louis said. “Maybe he was going to kill her but changed his mind.”

“Doesn’t make sense. Doesn’t fit his profile.” Wainwright paused. “Maybe it’s like all the paint this time. Maybe he wants to tell us something and Farentino was just the messenger.”

“What’s the message?”

Wainwright let out a weary sigh. “I don’t know. We’re both so fucking tired we can’t think straight.”

They were silent for a moment. “He’s not finished,” Louis said. “I still think he’s moving toward something.”

Wainwright’s eyes were focused on the bloodstain. “The question is, what?”