Husk

responded with a flicker, flashing a horde of electronic gibberish across its screen. A second later, it went blank.

Oh, that’s terrific, Melissa’s brain screamed. Now what? I don’t have a radio in my car, and the nearest phone must be at least a five-minute drive away. There and back, the person will surely be gone by the time I return. So, what are my options? The nearest phone is the one inside—

She looked up from behind the car.

The Damerow house. The front door.

It stood open.

CHAPTER 27

Frank’s flashlight beam cut through the moist night air like the Reaper’s scythe, illuminating the names of the dead in the Saints Peter and Paul Cemetery outside the town of Loretto.

He’d already swept the light across the small graveyard twice, yet not one plot of land below any of the tombstones appeared recently filled.

Kane isn’t here.

Abandoning the night for the lit interior of his Blazer, he climbed behind the wheel and studied each of the three outdated maps of Minnesota he’d brought, crosschecking them with the newer ones on his computer. Even with the global positioning system on his laptop and other technical equipment he’d installed in the vehicle, his quarry eluded him.

“Where are you, dammit?”

He’d already checked three local burial grounds, and not one held a plot for anyone named Kale Kane. Even if Catherine had gone to the extent of having him buried beneath a marker declaring him as someone else, there still hadn’t been any new burials in any of the local cemeteries. Not in this area, at least. He hadn’t spoken with anyone to confirm the fact, but each of the cemeteries he’d inspected had been small enough so a simple check of the ground sufficed.

But it has to be here.

Frank knew it the moment he arrived in Judge Anderson’s neighborhood. His previous bout of deja vu had proven correct, and when the cluster of newer homes came within sight, he realized the second of Melissa’s two crime scenes sat atop the same land Kale Kane had grown up on.

Frank had been there before, when he questioned Kane’s parents about a rusted orange van registered in their name. The van had been spotted outside a small pawnshop in White Bear Lake, where someone sold a silver pendant that belonged to one of the missing women. A description of the victim’s jewelry comprised one of the few details Frank had released to the press, and the shop’s owner phoned in his discovery the moment the seller left the store.

Frank remembered the sense of high-octane anticipation he experienced on the drive to the business—and the feeling of defeat when he discovered the pawnshop’s security camera had failed to record the transaction, capturing only static for the duration of the seller’s visit. He’d gathered other bits of information to investigate, namely the ID the seller used to pawn the pendant, but the real break came when he stepped outside to leave and noticed a drive-up bank across the street.

The bank had an ATM machine that faced the pawnshop.

The ATM machine had a camera.

And that camera succeeded where the shop’s camera failed, recording both the suspect’s departure from the store and the rear end of his vehicle when he pulled away from the curb.

But his excitement soon crumbled beneath dueling emotions of elation and anger when the bank manager printed out the four still shots and handed them over. After all his hard work, after facing the victims’ families and promising them he’d bring the killer to justice, he finally had a photographic glimpse of the mystery man who’d evaded capturer over the last seven months. But because the camera’s lens worked best at taking close-up shots, not one of those pictures revealed the man’s identity, or even the license number on his van.

The wheel-cover over the spare tire attached to the rear lift gate of Frank’s Blazer still showed the dent where he’d vented his frustration.

Nevertheless, two eyewitness descriptions of the van, a data link to the Department of Motor Vehicles, and a pot of coffee started him on the kidnapper’s trail. And that trail had led here, to this area, where Kale Kane’s creepy alliance first began sometime in the past.

Now, he searched the night again, knowing Kane’s remains had to be here, somewhere close to home.

And if he could locate them, he’d find the accomplice.

CHAPTER 28

The Damerow house.

Melissa edged toward the open door, firearm ready.

She came out from behind her car and navigated the path from the driveway to the house like a predatory cat on the hunt.

It’s your duty, she told herself, but guessed that any other officer would’ve labeled her insane for entering a situation with so many unknowns. After her bizarre phone incident earlier, she wondered if they’d be wrong.

With her back to the outside frame, she paused in the doorway.

Had the prowler remained in the house, or had he already snuck outside?

She glanced toward the vast front yard and frowned at how little she could see of it. Verdant trees lined the far borders of the property, decorative boulders clustered near the walk, and terraced flowerbeds broke up the land’s level surface, totaling dozens of places for someone to hide.

Cursing, she turned away from the night and pivoted in through the entry.

On a good note, the foyer’s design worked to her advantage. A half-wall partition separated the greeting area from the living room, permitting her a fair view of the home’s open forward rooms while providing some protection.

No lights shone in this part of the house, but a vaulted ceiling allowed for the front-facing windows to reach two stories high. The ambient light from outside illuminated a great deal of the room, reflecting off white leather furniture and glass tables like moonlight on freshly fallen snow. In that pallid gloom, Melissa spotted the much darker, two-foot wide discoloration of dried blood that covered one of the couch cushions and part of the floor. Her gaze traced a trail of crimson splashes that led out of the room, toward a hallway entrance on her side of the dining room archway.

She didn’t move to follow the gory trail right off, however. Instead, she remained statue-still, listening for the sound of someone treading across the carpet or releasing a breath from around a corner. She didn’t know how many people could be in the house, or even if the one person she’d seen had stayed in the basement, and she didn’t like the idea of putting her back to an adversary while investigating where the blood went.

Something clattered to the floor in another room. Something metal. Downstairs.

Melissa froze. The prowler was still in the basement.

She moved from her crouched position and hurried to the hallway, crossing the distance with her back against the wall. She peeked around the corner, finding a hallway short enough to see into the four open doors it contained. She spotted a bedroom, a bathroom, a den, and a staircase.

The basement. She knew that’s where she needed to go, but leaving two unchecked floors above her had the same appeal of playing Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver.

The faint squeak of a hinge issued from below, there and gone, like a swooping bat.

The window, she thought.