anybody.'
'Did you hear or see anything at all between ten thirty and one in the morning?'
'Nothing,' Micki insisted. 'I was out cold.'
Stride shook his head in frustration. He knew that somewhere in that two-and-a-half hour span, one of two things had happened. Either someone came into the house and took Callie, or Marcus Glenn made his daughter disappear. But even with another witness in the house as the crime was taking place, they were right back where they had started. Without answers.
He left Micki and returned down the slope of the cemetery, past the collection of headstones. He stopped at the graves of Marcus Glenn's mother and father and thought about the surgeon making a pilgrimage here to the cemetery, returning to his roots. There were several other stones nearby carved with the name Glenn. The heart of the family was buried here through multiple generations — cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents. He wondered if Marcus planned to be buried here too, or whether he would choose higher ground.
Stride thought he knew the answer. You don't go backward, even to join the dead. Marcus Glenn already lived a world away on the shore of Pokegama Lake. Beautiful wife. Beautiful house. Beautiful daughter.
The perfect family. Minus one.
'Where are you, Callie?' Stride asked aloud.
He listened for an answer, but all he heard was the ringing music of the flagpole rope.
He wondered again: did they do the right thing?
Now that it was over, he'd hoped that his doubts would leave him. He stared at the child's bed and told himself: the only way to right a wrong is to take matters into your own hands. They'd done what needed to be done. It was the only thing that could be done. They were on the side of the angels.
All he wanted to do was forget. Put away the memory. Forgive the mistake. It seemed like a small thing to ask after the horrors of the past year. But no. He couldn't escape. When he tried to sleep, he cried in the darkness instead. When he finally closed his eyes, he was back in the woods.
He chose the burying place among the sheltering arms of the evergreens.
Cold wind roared in his ears. He tramped through low, woody brush, his footsteps crackling on the litter of fallen limbs and dried pine cones, until he reached a gap in the forest where he could dig. From where he stood, he stared through a web of spiny trunks and across the dirt road to the silhouettes of gravestones on the far slope. The trees quivered and whispered, as if they were afraid of him.
He stopped and waited to make sure he was alone. Night enveloped the cemetery like a blanket pulled over a child's head. There were no stars, no view of heaven above the crowns of trees and the angry clouds. Nothing dwelt in this place except animals and the dead souls.
He didn't even believe that God was here with him tonight. God had spent the past year traveling elsewhere.
The animals stayed hidden in the darkness, but he felt their eyes watching him. His flashlight lit up their black droppings on the forest floor. He was afraid of marauders that could smell decaying flesh buried in the ground and scavenge on it. The thought appalled him. That was why he needed to dig deep.
His spade cut through the soft bed of pine needles into the spongy earth. He levered the handle down with a heavy breath and turned over a shovelful of coffee-black soil. Then another and another, making a tinny noise of metal scraping against loose rock with each thrust. He worked quickly, wanting to be done with this gruesome task. The mouth he opened up in the ground grew deeper and wider. Loose grains of dirt spilled down the pyramid of ripped turf and back into the hole, which was almost ready to swallow up the linen-wrapped bundle at his feet. Swallow it down and consume it.
He continued to carve out the grave. When he was done, he dropped the shovel and sat down with his back against a thick tree trunk. His sweat made him cold. His nose ran, partly because of the night air and partly because of the grief breaking inside him. He was at the point of no return, and he wondered if he could really do it. Lay the child in the ground, cover it up, and leave it behind.
At least he had brought the child here, where the family ghosts could commune. Surely the dead souls would welcome a baby into their midst. Maybe, finally, God would come back and do what He had failed to do for so long. Watch over. Protect.
He couldn't put it off any longer. Even at this late hour, on a lonely road, someone might drive by and wonder about his car parked on the shoulder. Take down a license plate. Call the police. A teenager from one of the nearby farms might see his light and decide to explore. There was no reason for anyone to search here after he was gone, as long as he came and went undetected.
He picked up the child wrapped in clean cloth. It was practically weightless. He got down on his knees, balanced his elbows on the wet edge of the hole, and leaned down to lay the bundle carefully on the floor of the grave. Then he pushed himself up and wiped his face. He retrieved the shovel, took a wad of earth, and tipped it back into the pit. When the dirt hit the fresh white linen, his mouth twitched with dismay. He shoveled faster, covering up the body until only a postage stamp of white sheet remained, barely visible in the darkness. With the next scattering of soil, that was gone, too. His breathing came easier. He scraped all of the uncovered turf back into place, and then he began gathering handfuls of yellowed pine needles and scattering them over the circle of disturbed ground.
When he shone his light down, the forest floor again looked pristine, as if no one had been there. There was no evidence of a grave. It was as if the child had never existed at all. He should have left it like that, but he knew there had to be some marking. Some memorial. He dug into his pocket and found a crumpled paper toy and decided he would leave it behind. With the solemnity of a father placing flowers at a headstone, he laid it down among the twigs and dirt.
It was done.
He picked up his shovel and retreated through the woods to his car. He saw fog gathering in the valleys and hanging over the road like a cloud. With his lights off, he disappeared into the mist.
Stride returned from the cemetery late on Friday afternoon and parked outside the Itasca County Courthouse in Grand Rapids, where the Sheriff's Department was housed. The three-story building took up an entire city block and included space for most of the county offices. He and Serena were lucky to have a top-floor office not much bigger than a closet that served as the war room for the investigation.
He passed the granite veterans' memorial and under the snapping US flag on his way to the building entrance, but before he went inside, his stomach growled. He realized he hadn't eaten anything but a chocolate donut since dinner the previous night, and he was running low on caffeine to keep himself awake. On the other side of 4th Street, he spotted a Burger King restaurant, and he crossed the street to grab a late, greasy lunch.
In the parking lot, he passed a rusting Ford Taurus. A wafer-thin woman sat in the driver's seat and wolfed down a double Whopper and an oversized pop. Their eyes met, and she spat a bite of her sandwich into a paper bag and hurriedly rolled down her window to wave at him.
