right behind her. At the top, she stopped and pressed her ear to the door, holding her breath, listening for a long time before turning the knob.
The door opened onto a central hallway that bisected the house from front to back. To their right was the front door that Grace had peered through earlier from the other side, when she'd been standing on the stoop, wondering who on earth would cut all the phone lines in this little nowhere town.
They moved soundlessly through the house in a stealthy, tiptoe exploration, stopping briefly at the open, double-hung windows in the living room to look and listen. There were no sounds coming from the street anymore, and that in itself was chilling. There should be noise after a slaughter, Grace thought-the wail of sirens and people to mark the terrible occasion. And yet there was nothing.
In the kitchen, at least, they found evidence that someone actually lived in this town-there was an unopened package of four pork chops floating in a bowl in the sink. The three women raised their heads from the sink and looked around, more wary than ever that this abnormally deserted town had been normal not so long ago, populated by normal people who took pork chops out to thaw for supper.
The bedroom and bath belonged to an older woman, filled with a lifetime of knickknacks, crocheted doilies, and bizarrely, an old stuffed animal propped carefully against the pillows on the bed. Grace imagined a carnival game fifty years past and an aging woman's memories of a lanky boy and better times. The pervasive, sickly-sweet smell of cheap perfume that's been in the bottle too long lingered in the stifling air.
Sharon sat on the bed and reached halfheartedly for the phone on the nightstand. She knew it wouldn't work. It was just something you did. 'You heard them,' she said, putting down the useless phone. 'They're all dead. Everybody who lived in this town. The woman who lived in this house.'
Grace and Annie just looked at her. Well, yes, that was probably true, but that didn't mean there was any reason to just blurt it out like that.
'And they're not soldiers. Our soldiers do not kill civilians. They do not shoot down people in the street.'
Grace didn't think it was necessary to remind her that such unthinkable things had indeed happened, in this country and others. Sharon knew that as well as any American. But good soldiers and good cops had a bond and common purpose that Grace had never experienced. She'd been on the other side too long, glimpsing it only through Magozzi's eyes. And Annie didn't bother herself with such trifles, never trusted a man inside or outside of a uniform, as far as Grace knew.
'It wouldn't be the first time the military tried to bury a screwup,' Annie said tactlessly. 'Maybe it's not soldiers-maybe it's some fringe group of whackos with a charge card at the local surplus store, but it could be either. And in the long run, what does it matter? These are not nice people.'
Sharon narrowed her eyes. 'You sound like every conspiracy theorist I ever met. Do you really think soldiers just walked into this place and started shooting everybody?'
Annie found a little boudoir chair at a makeup table that interested her. It held a jumble of cosmetics tubes and jars and a surprisingly neat row of nail enamel in every color of the rainbow. She picked a jar of purple with sparkles in it and held it up to the window. 'I'll tell you what I think. I think something unexpected happened here- an accident, maybe-and those assholes in camouflage, whether they're soldiers or not, are trying to keep it quiet, and they're willing to kill people to do it-including us, just because we happened to stumble onto the place.'
Grace was watching Sharon's face, thinking this was harder for her. She was a good cop, like Magozzi. Believing the worst of the people you thought shared your ideals was almost impossible. 'Annie's right about one thing,' she said. 'Who or what they are doesn't make a whole lot of difference at this point. We need to get the hell out of here. Those men are all over the woods, and eventually they're going to find the Rover, then there won't be a place in this town that's safe.'
'Oh, Lord,' Annie whispered, staring into the mirror as if she were seeing something that wasn't her reflection. 'That's not the only thing they're going to find. We left our purses in the cafe.'
Sharon closed her eyes. 'Oh, Jesus.'
Grace blew out a long sigh and glanced out the window. 'What time does it get dark?'
'Seven-thirty, eight,' Annie said immediately, but Sharon shook her head.
'That's Minneapolis. It's a half hour earlier this far east, earlier still in woods like these.'
Grace was weighing the risks of trying to escape in daylight against waiting another hour until dark. It was one of those decisions that could either save your life or get you killed, and it never occurred to her to let someone else make it. 'We'll wait for dark,' she decided. 'If it seems safe, we can pick up the purses on our way.'
'And just how are we supposed to get out?' Sharon asked. 'Those guys are too hard to see in the woods, and we sure as hell can't just stroll down the road. . . .'
'Not on it, but right next to it, down in the ditch, on our bellies again if we have to. And not back the way we came in. We know there are soldiers covering that end of town, so we'll try the other direction. Even if they're patrolling the road itself, they'll do it by jeep, and we can hear them coming.' She looked at Sharon specifically. 'How does that sound?'
Sharon almost smiled. That Grace had asked the question at all was simply a courtesy, because ultimately, Grace MacBride would do what she wanted to do. 'Actually, it sounds wrong. I've got a gun and two badges, and I'm supposed to be chasing bad guys, not running away from them.'
'Honey, not even Rambo would take on these kinds of odds,' Annie said.
'Yeah, I know,' Sharon said, stretching her arm until the fingers of her right hand brushed the long, silky fur of the stuffed animal next to her on the bed. Suddenly she went still, frowning. The fur felt . . , sticky. She focused on the strands twined in her fingers, then raised her gaze slightly and stared straight into the glassy eyes of a very dead Yorkshire terrier. Some awful liquid had oozed from its open mouth to puddle and congeal beneath the fur of its chest-the very fur she had been stroking. 'Oh, shit,' she whispered, launching herself off the bed, holding her hand at arm's length. 'That's a real goddamned dog.' Then she raced into the bathroom.
Grace and Annie moved to the bed and stared down at the pathetic pile of fur. From this angle, it still looked remarkably like a stuffed animal; they had to bend even closer to see the extent of the horror that had sent Sharon on her first solo flight of the day.
Annie squeezed her eyes shut as Grace handled the dog, slipping her fingers into its long hair, searching. Finally she straightened.
'There isn't a mark on that dog,' she said quietly.
Annie wrinkled her nose. Unlike Grace, she wasn't all that familiar with death. As a matter of fact, she'd seen only one dead person in her entire life, and since she'd inflicted the damage herself, the gross-ness of it hadn't really bothered her that much at the time. But this was disgusting. 'It looks like it threw up. Poison?'
Grace shrugged. 'I suppose it could have been. Or any number of natural causes, for that matter. Death is seldom a pretty event.' She looked down at her hands and hoped Sharon would finish in the bathroom soon so she could wash them.
ROADRUNNER WAS PACING back and forth across the considerable length of the office, his shoes screeching on the polished wood with each pirouette and about-face. Harley hunkered down a little lower in front of his computer screen, trying to ignore him as he worked on a trace of the bank account that had financed Gino Rolseth's humiliation by dunk tank-a simple enough task if you didn't have a string bean in Lycra melting down in front of your eyes.
'Goddamnit, Roadrunner,' he finally snapped. 'You're wrecking the floor.'
'I am not. I'm wearing sneakers.'
'Okay, how about this?You're driving me fucking crazy. I can't work with you clumping and screeching all over my quarter-sawn oak. And you're upsetting Charlie. Look at him. He's frowning.'
Harley nodded toward Grace's morose-looking wirehaired mongrel, who had assembled himself on a stool at a small bistro table in the corner.
'He's frowning because you gave him too much ice cream. You know it gives him headaches.'
Charlie's head lifted and his little stump of a tail wiggled when he heard 'ice cream.'
'Does that look like a dog who gets ice-cream headaches? I don't think so. Did you feed him his chicken stew yet?' Roadrunner stopped pacing.'Chicken stew?' 'Yeah, it was in that square plastic thing.. . . Oh, Jesus, don't tell me you ate the dog's food.'
Roadrunner turned a vibrant shade of crimson. 'I thought Grace brought that over for us.'
Harley put his head in his hands. 'One day I'm going to replace that little toy brain of yours with the brain of
