Enter, Night

important, and my sergeant would probably like to hear how you found it.”

“But what about Sadie?” Finn said urgently. “I can’t leave. I have to look for my dog. It’s getting dark. I can’t leave her out here.” He looked around wildly. For a moment Elliot thought he was going to bolt back off into the woods.

“I’ll tell you what, Finn,” Elliot said, reaching out and putting his hand on Finn’s shoulder. “After we go to the police station and you talk to the sergeant, I’ll drive you home, then I’ll take a drive around and look for Sadie myself. I’ll even come back here-well, maybe not all the way up here, since you’ve already looked, but around the lake. I’ll see what I can find. I bet she’s home by tomorrow, one way or another. But we really have to get to the police station, just in case what you found is really important.”

“Promise?” Finn looked doubtful. “You promise you’ll come back and look for her?”

“I promise,” Elliot said. “Now let’s get back down to the car. Have you ever been in police car before? It’s kinda fun.”

Finn didn’t answer. Instead, he pushed past Elliot and started down the path from the cliff towards the lake without looking back.

When the police cruiser pulled into the driveway, the first thing Anne Miller thought was, They found Sadie! Finn would be so relieved. That is, he’d be relieved after he was told he’d been grounded for a month. Mrs. Brocklehurst, the school secretary, had called her that afternoon to ask if Finn had her permission to leave school.

Anne had told Mrs. Brocklehurst that Finn had just lost his dog and was very upset. No, he didn’t have her permission, Anne explained, but she’d appreciate it if the school would look the other way just this one time. She’d speak to Finnegan when he got home and she personally guaranteed he’d be in school tomorrow.

Mrs. Brocklehurst, who had been the primary school secretary for twenty years, loved animals, said it would be fine, and she hoped Finnegan found Sadie soon, too. She’d lost a collie named Mingus when she was a little girl and it just about broke her heart. “I think a cougar got him,” she said sadly. “I have nightmares about it even today.”

Anne hadn’t even considered cougars, or jackals, or anything of the kind, and her heart sank. But she’d thanked Mrs. Brocklehurst and hung up the phone. Then she went to the kitchen and fixed herself a stiff rum and coke, even though she never drank during the day.

When she saw Finn in the back seat of the police cruiser, her hand flew to her chest and she gasped in shock. She opened the front door and said, “Finn, what happened? Are you all right?” The driver’s side door opened, and the policeman stepped out. Anne recognized him, of course.

“Constable McKitrick, what’s going on? What’s my son doing in a police car?”

“It’s nothing serious, Mrs. Miller,” Elliot said politely. “Finn here was up by Bradley Lake looking for Sadie. I found him and brought him home. That’s all.”

“Well, that’s a relief,” Anne replied. To her son, she said, “Finn, the school called, young man. You left early today. You and I are going to have a talk once your father gets home from the mill. Go on up to your room.”

“Actually, Mrs. Miller, Finn found something up on the slope near Spirit Rock, and we’d really appreciate it if you and he could come down to the police station and have a talk with Sergeant Thomson and I about how that happened.”

“I’m sorry, I’m confused-he ‘found something’?” Anne said. “What did he find? And what does that have to do with him coming down to the police station? I thought this was about him playing hookey. Or that you’d found Sadie. That’s his dog. I called the station about her earlier today.”

“No, ma’am,” Elliot said. “No sign of Sadie yet, but I’m sure she’ll turn up. In the meantime, I’m sure it’s nothing to be concerned about, Mrs. Miller, but there was an… incident up at Gyles Point recently, and we just want to make sure that what Finn found isn’t connected in any way to that incident.”

“What on earth did he find? Finn? What did you find?”

“It was a bag of knives, Mom,” Finn said. He wrinkled his nose.

“They’re all bloody and stuff, and they stink.”

“Oh my God,” Anne said, gasping. “And you think they’re…”

“We don’t know anything yet, Mrs. Miller,” Elliot said. “But if you and Finn would come down to the police station, we might be able to put this together and make some sense of it. Then,” he added winningly, winking at Finn, “we can get back to looking for Sadie.”

Anne hesitated. She looked at Finn standing awkwardly beside the police car. His hair was askew and his clothes were filthy. The emotional fracture of his separation from Sadie seemed to have actually bent Finn’s posture, and there was something broken in his demeanour that she’d never seen before. The last thing she wanted to do was go down to the police station right now to discuss Finn’s gruesome discovery just before dinnertime-it was probably nothing but hunters’ debris anyway. At the same time, she realized that if they cooperated now, she’d have the attention of the Parr’s Landing constabulary, which might chivvy them on when it came to looking for Sadie.

“I’ll just call my husband and let him know where we’ll be,” Anne said. “That way he can meet us there. I’d really prefer if my husband was present if you’re going to question Finnegan.”

“Would it be all right if we called your husband from the station, Mrs. Miller?” Elliot countered. “This is sort of important, and I’d rather not waste your time any more than we have to. And we’re not going to ‘question’ Finnegan, we’re just going to ask him some things and take a statement. There’s nothing to worry about.”

Anne looked from Elliot to Finn, then back to Elliot. “All right, if it’s that important. Is it?”

“It is, ma’am,” Elliot said firmly. “It is. I’d appreciate it.”

Without another word, Anne went into the house and took her purse off the hall table and took her coat out of the closet. When she came back out, Finn was already in the back seat of the car, waiting for her, and Elliot was holding the passenger-side door open.

As they drove through town towards the police station, Anne realized she’d never been inside a police car in her life and, fancifully, that Parr’s Landing looked different through its windows. The plain houses and shops they passed-houses and shops she’d passed her whole life- suddenly seemed alive with the possibilities of secret lives occurring behind their closed doors. This must be the way policemen see the town, she thought. She supposed that was what the police were for-to make sure that the secret lives of other people remained, if not pure, then at least contained.

The more practical part of her hoped against hope that none of her neighbours would see her and Finn in the police car and start gossiping.

Anne glanced at Finn, who was staring out his window. He was lost in his own thoughts-doubtless thoughts about Sadie. Anne was also grieving for Sadie’s disappearance, and worried, but she knew better than to break down in front of Finn.

She reached over and gently squeezed his hand.

When Finn didn’t respond, Anne held his hand until he extricated it from hers. Finn did this gently, as though to reassure his mother that it wasn’t her hand, per se, that he found unbearable, but rather that any human contact at all right now was a sorry substitute for the feeling of Sadie’s head under his chin, the soft black fur tickling his neck as he held her body close to his and inhaled her warm dog scent, and felt her heartbeat.

Later, at the station, while Anne tried unsuccessfully to reach her husband on the telephone, Finn told the police everything he could think of about how he’d found the bag up by Spirit Rock. The two cops listened closely, but gave no indication one way other another what they were thinking.

The older one-Sergeant Thomson-put on plastic gloves and looked through the bag. He’d kept his back turned to Finn and his mother while he did so, and all they heard was the clink of metal on metal, and then the sound of the hockey bag being zipped closed.

When he turned around again, Thomson asked Finn a series of questions that Finn answered as best he could while the younger one- McKitrick-took notes.

No, Finn said, he couldn’t think of anything else. No, he hadn’t seen anyone. No, he hadn’t been alerted by any noise-he’d only gone up that far because of Sadie’s terror of it when they’d walked there that morning a few days ago. He thought maybe she’d gone back up there. He didn’t know why he thought that-it was just a possibility.

“That’s what dogs are like sometimes,” he’d said with a shrug. “I thought maybe I’d find her there. I hoped I would.” He paused, his voice thickening. “I didn’t.”