The molecules of the air shifted ever so slightly, parting to let in a faint pewter light. The miracle of a coming day.
I tightened my hold on Clyde.
As with the last six mornings, I’d left Cohen sleeping in the beachfront cottage he’d rented for my convalescence and come down to the Massachusetts shore to wait and sit with Clyde and to think about everything that had gone down four weeks earlier. I’d been doing a lot of thinking lately. That, and physical therapy and eating lobster and watching old comedies on TV with Cohen, my body curled into his on the couch and, later, our bodies entwined in bed as heat and sweat rose from our skin and were erased by the ocean air.
I’d been doing a lot of dreaming, too. Those things we could not resolve in the daylight followed us into the night, urging us to find answers. To find a way to lay our ghosts to rest.
The answers were slow to come.
A month after I’d put a drill to Craze’s skull and killed him, we still didn’t know who he was.
We’d learned a few things about him, confirmed others. We knew he’d been in Noah’s home under the guise of friendship. That he’d raped women in assisted-living facilities throughout the Denver metro area after taking a brief job with a cleaning company under the name John Smith.
We had linked him to at least fifteen rapes.
Carolyn Jackson now had a picture of her mother’s attacker. It was the best we could do. None of the details we dug up gave us a name or offered insight into el diablo.
This man isn’t crazy, Evan had told us. He’s evil.
Those words followed me into my dreams.
Whatever Craze might have been, he was at least in the system now. Maybe someday a detective with a name and a bit of DNA from an old robbery or an assault would enter them into a database and discover he’d stumbled onto a serial criminal. A rapist. A killer. And just like that, a name would be attached to all those other crimes.
Or maybe the clue would come from familial DNA—an aunt or a cousin creating a family tree and unwittingly leading the police to Craze.
I had to believe it would happen.
A light bobbing down the beach caught my attention. Maybe a shell hunter. Or someone walking their dog.
But Clyde and I got to our feet. I watched the light from the corner of my eye and continued my rumination.
Kurt’s and Riley’s deaths sat in my dreams, too. Along with the knowledge of what the surviving members of the Superior Gentlemen had planned. When police and federal agents found Kurt’s boxes in the basement where Markey and Craze had gone to ground, they discovered terrible things beneath carefully packed toilet brushes, cleaning rags, and scrubbers.
Rifles with sniper scopes and night-vision goggles and maps of hotels and schools and churches. The makings of bombs and photographs of their targets. Everything needed to destroy the worms.
The why of that did not leave me. Nor did the horror of what happened when unhappy loners found each other and decided to spread their misery.
Damn Fox and Street Cred had confessed to their roles in propping open the ColdShip refrigerator car, but swore they had no idea what Craze had planned. A jury would decide if they were telling the truth.
Todd Asher was a bright spot in all this. While we’d been tearing apart the city trying to find him, he’d been hiding from the world at his girlfriend’s house, emerging astonished and relieved at the news that his brother’s killer had been found.
And that he was dead.
The bobbing light drew closer. Clyde and I backed away from the water’s edge, went to stand near a tumble of rocks. A few minutes later, the light resolved into a flashlight, and soon a father walked by with his young son. The toddler wore rubber boots and carried a plastic pail. The father whistled a tune under his breath. They held hands and smiled. They passed on by, never seeing us in the gray gloom.
For many, the world was still a safe and sane place.
And that was how it should be.
I leaned against the rocks and—finally feeling ready—reached into my pocket for the letter that had arrived three days earlier from Noah’s mother, Julia Asher. I slid my finger under the flap, opened the envelope, and eased out the folded pages.
Dear Sydney,
Forgive my boldness in addressing you by your given name, when I know you have worked hard to earn the title of detective. But what I want to say to you feels better when shared between women.
First of all, I’ve been spending a lot of time with Ami.
I paused in my reading while the wind fluttered the edges of the paper.
Ami. She of the long silences and downcast eyes. The obvious wounds, and the deeper, hidden scars.
She’s doing as well as we can hope. Erica and Lupita and Helen have all moved into Ami’s father’s house with her. Helen is a mother hen with those girls. They need each other. I actually spend a lot of time there. Lupita taught me how to make pozole rojo.
The writing blurred in the salty air. Pearl-pink light spread over the unending swells of the ocean. The sand beneath my feet turned russet.
I’ve filed for divorce from Noah’s father. For years I was okay being Hal’s step-and-fetch. Running the household, entertaining the wives of the men who worked at his company. Planning his parties. Making his goddamn martini every night. But not anymore. Not after what happened to Noah. I have to do something that matters. Something that makes a difference.
The flashlight bobbed on the beach again. The boy and his father making their way back along the shoreline. Seagulls swooped and wheeled overhead, and the boy shouted in glee.
Some families made
