I nodded.
Matteo drew in a deep breath. He hefted his bulky form from the chair, went to the door, and gave it two hard knocks.
Fogel came in a moment later, carrying a large box. Detective Horton came in behind her. She had pictures of all the bodies found in the house—Stella was not among them.
The four of us wouldn’t leave that room for another three hours, but I would eventually leave, without the handcuffs. A little whisper at my ear had returned too, the one telling me how a drink would make all of this so much easier.
2
Detective Joy Fogel stared at the Wall of Weird.
She stared at Faustino Brier’s empty desk, a half-full cup of coffee next to his phone, the liquid inside cold and cloudy.
The last time she looked at a clock, it was half past three in the morning.
Photographs of Brier’s lifeless body littered her desk. Photographs of the other victims too, twenty-one in all. From weapons fire to grenades, the destruction could have been caused by a small army, yet all evidence pointed to a single assailant. She had pictures of him too, him and his car, but nothing else. The guy was a damn ghost. A well-armed, competent ghost.
“What the fuck, Brier,” she mumbled, flipping through the photographs.
His blank gaze stared back at her, the bullet hole in his forehead like a third eye.
They shouldn’t have split up. That was such a rookie move, and yet she hadn’t thought twice about it. Now Brier was dead, and she was probably looking at a suspension the moment her captain read the report, also sitting on her desk, far from complete. She had no idea what to even write.
She had one lead.
A single tire track had been left in the mud off the driveway. According to Forensics, the treads belonged to a Pro Temp 265x70R16 A/T Sport. She was told the tire didn’t match Brier’s car or the GTO. This was a stock tire not available to the general public, supplied only to General Motors, specifically to Chevrolet. Chevrolet used these tires on all Suburbans produced between the years 1990-1993 in the United States. Uniformed officers questioned all the neighbors and had been told that not only had they seen a white Chevy Suburban, but they saw more than a dozen identical white Suburbans come and go from the property on a regular basis, yet none had been on-site today.
Fogel obtained a picture of a 1993 white Chevy Suburban and pinned it to the Wall of Weird next to the image of the black GTO.
Oh, and that damn house.
About two hours ago, she spoke to a frustrated Zeke Grinton in Public Records. She tasked him with identifying the owners of the house at 62 Milburn Court. Usually a straightforward task, this proved to be anything but. The deed for the house was held by a corporation named Barrington Farm and Feed out of Wisconsin. Barrington Farm and Feed consisted of no more than a P.O. Box in the town of Dells, no physical property locally. No employees. That corporation was owned by another called Brainard Textiles in Vermont, another shell. From there, Grinton traced ownership back through six other corporations, holding companies, and LLCs, then lost the trail entirely when it went overseas.
Another dead end.
Then there was Stella Nettleton.
Fogel glanced up at theHave you seen me?poster tacked on the Wall of Weird, the sketch of the beautiful girl staring back. Social Security had no record of a Stella Nettleton. She had people checking birth records too, but already knew that would turn up nothing. They hadn’t found anything on Richard Nettleton either when the letter first surfaced, a copy of which was pinned beside the poster on the Wall.
When the phone at the corner of Fogel’s desk began to ring, she nearly jumped out of her skin. The loud electronic chirp cut through the otherwise silent and empty room, a room made even quieter by the early hour. She scooped up the receiver and pressed the flashing button for line one. “Fogel.”
“I’m sorry about Faust.”
Former Detective Terrance Stack, just Terry now.
Fogel closed her eyes, her fingers tightening on the receiver. She tried to muster a response, but nothing came out.
“Do you need to talk?”
“Yeah.”
“Be here in twenty,” Stack said. “I’ll get a pot brewing.”
3
Officer Elvin Putney dropped the remains of his cigarette and crushed the butt under the toe of his shoe. He then pulled another from the pack in his right front pocket, struck a match, and lit the tip. He sucked the nicotine deep into his lungs, held it, then slowly let it out in a series of smoke rings that drifted out from the front stoop of the house, over the driveway, and disappeared in the dark sky.
He glanced down at his watch.
