Trap his adversary.

The stairway was carpeted. That made it easier to pad up in silence. Wu wanted to check the bathroom, to see if Freddy Sykes was still in the tub. He thought again about the hide-a-key in plain sight. Nothing about this setup made sense. The more he thought about it, the slower his step.

Wu tried to think it through. Start from the beginning: A person who knows where Sykes keeps a hide-a-key opens the door. He or she comes inside. Now what? If he finds Sykes, panic would ensue. He would call the police. If he doesn’t find Sykes, well, he leaves. He puts the key back in the rock and puts the rock away.

But neither one of those things had happened.

So again, what could Wu conclude?

The only other possibility that came to mind-unless he was missing something-was that the intruder had indeed found Sykes, just as Wu entered the house. There had been no time to call for help. There had only been time to hide.

But that scenario had problems too. Wouldn’t the intruder have turned on a light? Perhaps she had. Perhaps she had turned on the light, but then she saw Wu approach. She might have turned off the lights and hidden where she was.

In the bathroom with Sykes.

Wu was in the master bedroom now. He could see the crack under the bathroom door. The light was still off. Do not underestimate your foe, he reminded himself. He had made mistakes recently. Too many of them. First, Rocky Conwell. Wu had been sloppy enough to allow him to follow. That had been mistake one. Second, Wu had been spotted by the woman next door. Sloppy.

And now this.

It was tough to look at yourself critically, but Wu tried to step away and do just that. He was not infallible. Only fools believe that. Perhaps his time in prison had rusted him somehow. Didn’t matter. Wu needed to focus now. He needed to concentrate.

There were more photographs in Sykes’s bedroom. This had been Freddy’s mother’s room for fifty years. Wu knew that from his online encounters. Sykes’s father had died during the Korean War. Sykes had been an infant. The mother had never gotten over it. People react differently to the death of a loved one. Mrs. Sykes had decided to dwell with her ghost instead of the living. She spent the rest of her life in this same bedroom-in the same bed even-that she’d shared with her soldier husband. She slept on her side, Freddy said. She never let anyone, not even when young Freddy had a nightmare, touch the side of the bed where her beloved had once lain.

Wu’s hand was on the doorknob now.

The bathroom, he knew, was small. He tried to picture an angle someone might use to attack. There really was none. Wu had a gun in his duffel bag. He wondered if he should take it out. If the intruder was armed, then it could be a problem.

Overconfident? Maybe. But Wu didn’t think he’d need a weapon.

He turned the knob and pushed hard.

Freddy Sykes was still in the tub. The gag was in his mouth. His eyes were closed. Wu wondered if Freddy was dead. Probably. No one else was here. There was no place to hide. Nobody had come to Freddy’s rescue.

Wu moved toward the window. He looked out at the house now, at the house next door.

The woman-the one who’d been in the lingerie-was there.

In her house. Standing by the window.

She stared back at him.

That was when Wu heard the car door slam. There was no siren, but now, as he turned toward the driveway, he could see the red cruiser lights.

The police were here.

Charlaine Swain was not crazy.

She watched movies. She read books. Lots of them. Escapism, she had thought. Entertainment. A way to numb the boredom every day. But maybe these movies and books were oddly educational. How many times had she shouted at the plucky heroine-the oh-so-guileless, witch-skinny, raven-haired beauty-not to go into that damned house?

Too many. So now, when it had been her turn… uh-uh, no way. Charlaine Swain was not about to make that mistake.

She had stood in front of Freddy’s back door staring at that hide-a-key. She couldn’t go inside per her movie and book training, but she couldn’t just leave it alone either. Something was wrong. A man was in trouble. You can’t just walk away from that.

So she came up with an idea.

It was simple really. She took the key out of the rock. It was in her pocket now. She left the hide-a-key in plain view, not because she wanted the Asian guy to see it, but because that would be her excuse for calling the police.

The moment the Asian guy entered Freddy’s house, she dialed 911. “Someone is in the neighbor’s house,” she told them. The clincher: The hide-a-key was strewn on the walkway.

Now the police were here.

One cruiser had made the turn onto her block. The siren was silent. The car was not speeding bat-out-of-hell style, just moving at a clip solidly above the speed limit. Charlaine risked a look back at Freddy’s house.

The Asian man was watching her.

chapter 17

Grace stared at the headline. “He was murdered?” Cora nodded.

“How?”

“Bob Dodd was shot in the head in front of his wife. Gangland style, they called it, whatever that means.”

“They catch who did it?”

“Nope.”

“When?”

“When was he murdered?”

“Yeah, when?”

“Four days after Jack called him.”

Cora moved back toward the computer. Grace considered the date.

“It couldn’t have been Jack.”

“Uh huh.”

“It would be impossible. Jack hasn’t traveled out of the state in more than a month.”

“You say so.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing, Grace. I’m on your side, okay? I don’t think Jack killed anybody either, but c’mon, let’s get a grip here.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning stop with the ‘hasn’t traveled out of state’ nonsense. New Hampshire is hardly California. You can drive up in four hours. You can fly up in one.”

Grace rubbed her eyes.

“Something else,” Cora went on. “I know why he’s listed as Bob, not Robert.”

“Why?”

“He’s a reporter. That’s his byline. Bob Dodd. Google listed one hundred and twenty-six hits on his name over the past three years for the New Hampshire Post. The obituary called him-where’s the line?-‘a hard-nosed investigative reporter, famous for his controversial exposés’-like the New Hampshire mob rubbed him out to keep him quiet.”

“And you don’t think that’s the case?”

“Who knows? But skimming through his articles, I’d say Bob Dodd was more like an ‘On Your Side’ reporter, you know-he finds dishwasher repairmen scamming old ladies, wedding photographers who bail out with the deposit, that sorta thing.”

“He could have pissed someone off.”

Cora’s tone was flat. “Yup, could have. And, what, you think it’s a coincidence-Jack calling the guy before he died?”

“No, there’s no coincidence here.” Grace tried to process what she was hearing. “Hold up.”

“What?”

“That photograph. There were five people in it. Two women, three men. This is a long shot…”

Cora was already typing. “But maybe Bob Dodd is one of them?”

“There are image search engines, right?”

“Already there.”

Her fingers flew, her cursor pointed, her mouse slid. There were two pages, a total of twelve picture hits for Bob Dodd. The first page featured a hunter with the same name living out in Wisconsin. On the second page-the eleventh hit-they found a table photograph taken at a charity function in Bristol, New Hampshire.

Bob Dodd, a reporter for the New Hampshire Post, was the first face on the left.

They didn’t need to study it closely. Bob Dodd was African-American. Everyone in the mystery photograph was white.

Grace frowned. “There still has to be a connection.”