what that is?”
“Internal affairs.”
Bloom nodded again. “His job is to maintain the integrity of the entire agency in any way he can. I had a talk with him about you yesterday. You curious about what he said?”
“I think I know what he said.”
“Well, then know this, too,” Bloom said. “He keeps files on people like you. And yours has a big red flag on it.”
“I haven’t broken any laws. Not now and not then.”
“You’re still trouble,” Bloom said. “You’re like some poisonous gas that sneaks in, leaves a few people dead, and disappears again.”
“What are you trying to tell me, Detective?”
“I’m telling you this,” Bloom said. “If you’ve had even a passing thought of trying to come back here and get a PI license or wiggle your ass back into a uniform, think again. That ain’t going to happen for you in Michigan. Ever.”
Bloom didn’t give him time to respond. He walked away, heading back toward the root cellar to direct the excavation of the bones.
Louis turned up the collar of his jacket and wandered toward the road.
He hadn’t. There had been a few lonesome nights since Joe left last January, but they weren’t enough to compel him to pull up the roots he had worked so hard to put into the Florida sand. He had connections there now — to a blind ex-cop who needed his friendship and a boy perched precariously on the cusp of manhood who needed to be caught if he fell.
Under the old oak tree, he stopped walking and looked out over the barren land.
This wasn’t his place in the world, and he knew that. Despite the fact that he’d spent most of his childhood here and went to school here. Despite the fact he had once dreamed of wearing a badge here. Despite the fact that the woman he loved now lived here. Despite the fact that he now had kin here.
“You’re Kincaid, right?”
Louis turned. A state trooper was standing there. He had Amy’s backpack in his hand.
“We found this out by an old tractor in the fields. My boss said you might want it back. We figured it belongs to the girl.”
“Thanks.” Louis took the bag and looked toward the TV vans and the clot of reporters.
The trooper started toward his cruiser.
“Hey,” Louis called out. “Could you give me a lift?”
“Sure.”
Inside the cruiser, Louis sat staring out the windshield at the old farmhouse. The fog had burned off, and the sun was now high in the sky, outlining the house’s unforgiving angles in sharp relief.
“Which way you heading?” the trooper asked.
“Just get me out of here,” Louis said.
Louis and Joe spent the next morning in Adrian filling out statements and giving taped testimony. Joe called Mike to tell him she had been involved in a fatal shooting that was probably going to get publicity. She promised him she would still be back in Echo Bay for the hit-and-run trial on Monday morning. She didn’t tell him she was bringing a sixteen-year-old girl home with her.
Shockey had made through it another night. Louis had learned he was awake and talking, anxious to know what was going on with the case. They hadn’t had time yet to go by and update him. Their first stop after Adrian was Saint Joseph Hospital in Howell to pick up Amy.
Louis stood at the door and watched as Joe helped her settle into the wheelchair. Amy was clutching the mud-stained backpack and the tattered stuffed rabbit. Louis thought she seemed a little subdued. Maybe it was just the painkillers, but he guessed it also had something to do with the fact that Joe had told her Owen Brandt was dead.
They hadn’t told her about Jean yet.
Phillip Ward, the Livingston County ME, had compared the skull found in the root cellar with Jean’s dental records and confirmed that it was Jean. Joe and Louis decided they would tell Amy on the way back to Ann Arbor.
When they got down to the hospital lobby, the nurse held the wheelchair while Louis helped Amy from it. Joe reached into the Bronco and pulled out a new jacket. This one was denim and lighter than the parka. Amy looked at it and smiled.
“I don’t need a jacket, Miss Joe,” she said. “It’s nice today.”
Louis looked up. He hadn’t noticed, but she was right. The sky was blue and cloudless, and the sun was generous.
Joe started to help Amy into the backseat, but Amy hesitated. “Wait,” she said. “I haven’t apologized to you for leaving. I won’t do it again. I promise.”
Joe looked at Louis. His subtle nod told her there was no reason to wait.
“Amy,” Joe said. “We found your mother.”
Amy’s eyes widened. “Where?”
“In the root cellar on the farm,” Joe said.
Amy sat back in the seat, hugging the rabbit to her chest. “She was in there the whole time?”
“It looks that way.”
Amy was quiet. There were no tears, just a faint sadness and, to Louis’s amazement, a quiet kind of joy.
“You know the hiding place you spoke of during your sessions?” Joe asked. “We think maybe the root cellar was it. Did you know it was out there?”
Amy pushed her hair from her face. “I must have,” she said. “Because I told — I told him that’s where she was.”
Louis noticed Amy’s hesitation when she said “him,” and he wondered how long it would take before she would stop thinking of Owen Brandt as her father.
“I told him she was there, but I don’t know why I said that,” Amy said.
Joe glanced at Louis.
“So, you don’t remember ever being inside the cellar, maybe when you were little?” Louis asked.
Amy’s sigh was heavy. “I don’t know.”
Louis thought it made sense that at some point, Jean Brandt had taken her daughter to the root cellar to escape one of Brandt’s rages. Maybe Amy would remember it someday. But he saw no point in pressing it now.
“Where is Momma now?” Amy asked.
Joe had been about to close the door and hesitated, again glancing at Louis. “She’s not far from here, at the medical examiner’s office,” she said.
“May I see her?”
“Amy, her remains are-”
“I know there will be only bones,” Amy said. “Please, may I see her?”
Joe was silent.
“She can do it, Joe,” Louis said.
“All right,” Joe said softly.
The bones weren’t laid out in a neat skeleton the way the black woman’s bones had been. The ME had taken possession of the bones only that morning, and when he got the call that Jean Brandt’s daughter was coming in, he had hastily tried to arrange them at least to hint at their once-human shape.
Louis didn’t think Amy cared.
She was standing next to the stainless-steel table looking down at the bones. Joe was close by so she could step in if Amy broke down. But from his vantage point on the other side of the table, Louis thought Amy seemed
