'Isaac Hamilton,' she says.
The cop behind the wheel looks back at her. 'What?'
'That's him, isn't it?'
Neither of them replies, and that's all right. At this point she takes nothing for granted. As they roll through town she begins to feel something, light-headedness along with a flutter of nausea, and waits to see if it's going to get worse. But within seconds it's gone again. It's almost like a kind of mountain sickness, as if the air is thinner here but her body is learning to adapt more swiftly each time she passes through it.
At the Ashford Police Station the tow truck pulls her car around to the impound lot and the cruiser parks in front. The cops lead her up the steps and inside, bypassing the officer behind the booking desk, who buzzes them through. There's a TV and VCR under the desk, and Sue sees the booking sergeant is watching an old Clint Eastwood movie with the sound turned down. To her right she spots a bulletin board full of missing children posters.
They take her down a long white hallway that looks like it was recently constructed, past several darkened cubicles with computer monitors playing screensavers. At the end of the hall one of the cops opens a door for her, takes off her handcuffs, and ushers her inside, closing the door and locking it from the outside. Sue looks at her watch.
It's already four in the morning.
Veda, I've still got so far to go.
She looks around. The room is nothing but four white walls and a table with two chairs. She hears the climate control hum to life, pumping warm air into the room. It's already too hot in here. From the other side of the door she hears voices but can't tell what they're saying. Then it opens and the man with the beard walks in carrying a Styrofoam cup of coffee. Up close he looks even older than she thought, late sixties, past retirement age, dressed in a wrinkled white oxford with an ink stain on the breast pocket. He's got wintry gray eyes, caved-in cheeks, and the beginning of a gut sloping over his belt, and smells like cigarettes. He motions for her to sit and then sinks into the chair across from her and frowns.
'I'm Detective Yates, Ms. Young. We found the second body in your car. Want to tell me what's going on, or do you just want to call your lawyer?'
'You have to let me go.'
He looks at her, raises an eyebrow.
'I can't-' She stops. He actually seems to be paying very close attention to what she's about to say and it makes it that much harder to talk. 'There's no time to explain. If you let me go, I promise, I'll do whatever you want. I just have to get Veda back by tomorrow morning.'
'Veda is your daughter?'
'She's been kidnapped. The kidnappers gave me very specific instructions.' She waits for him to interject with a question but he waits her out with that same one-eyebrow-raised expression. 'There was a dead body, the one in garbage bags. I had to go dig it up.'
'From a grave?'
'No. It was buried under a bridge, back in Gray Haven.'
Yates flinches at the name of the town. 'And these kidnappers told you where to find it?'
For a half second Sue hesitates, not so much because she wants to tell him the truth but simply because it almost slips out on its own. Then she nods. 'They told me on the phone that I needed to go get it and drive it through this route, and when I got there they'd give me my little girl back.'
He wrinkles up his eyes at her. 'When was all this?'
'Earlier tonight.'
'And you didn't call the police?'
'He said not to.'
Yates doesn't move, doesn't even look at her, processing all of this.
'What about the other body, the girl?'
'She's my nanny. They killed her after they kidnapped Veda, then they brought her body back and put it in my car.' She forces herself to look into the impenetrable frown cut into the detective's face. 'Look, I know how it sounds, but if I don't do exactly what they tell me, they'll kill her.'
Yates looks at her for a while longer and stands up. He appears smaller now, shrunken. Something's been taken away from him. 'Have you seen his face, any kind of a vehicle, anything like that?'
'It's a gray van. I don't know the license plate number.'
He nods, once. 'I'll be back.'
'Wait, you can't leave me-'
The door swings shut and locks. Sue sits there and waits. And waits.
4:10A.M.
Ten minutes later Yates returns, smelling freshly of cigarettes.
He's carrying something in a transparent evidence bag and drops it on the table in front of Sue. She instantly recognizes it as the map with the route highlighted and the wordPUNISHED scrawled across the top.
'Where did you get this?' he asks.
'They gave it to me. It's my route. The kidnappers, they left it with Marilyn's body.'
He puts his elbows on the table and rubs his temples. In the fluorescent lights his skin appears almost blue, the fine veins beneath it darker still. 'Tell me, Ms. Young.' His fingertips tremble as he turns the map around to look at it. 'Are you from Massachusetts originally?'
'Yes.'
'Do you know about the Engineer?'
'What's this got to do with…?'
'Just answer the question.'
Sue gazes at him flatly, this tired-looking stranger with the gray seen-it-all eyes. Once again she feels the impulse to tell him everything. It would be so much easier, telling the truth to someone, and he already thinks she's crazy so why not give him the whole story? But again some mental circuit breaker clicks into place and she catches herself, holding back. Whether or not this decision is common sense or self-defense or simple instinct is not clear to her. At this point her motives-beyond the obvious one to get her daughter back safely by sunrise-are nebulous to her. But she holds back just the same.
'Of course I've heard of him. I was a teenager when it happened. I remember seeing it on the news and hearing my parents talk about it.' She shakes her head. 'But I don't understand how that's got anything to do with me or my daughter.'
Yates holds up two long fingers, like he's ordering a couple drinks. Sue notices that his nails are yellow and in need of trimming-bachelor's nails, she thinks. 'There are two reasons I bring it up. First, as you probably remember, in the summer of 1983, the murderer that they called the Engineer abducted and killed thirteen children. Second…' He points at the map in the baggie. 'This is the exact route that he traveled, east to west, through these seven towns, beginning June 12, 1983, in White's Cove and ending with the disappearance of the last child on August 22 in Gray Haven. So what's the connection?'
'I don't know,' she says. 'Honestly. I have no idea.'
Yates frowns at her, obviously not buying this. But there's something else in his expression besides incredulity, something both simpler and more complex, and Sue sees it. She sees it in the mesh of wrinkles around his eyes and the eyes themselves, the way they've fastened themselves to her. It's like a hunger, a fever to find out.
She thinks about what he said, about the Engineer, the ease with which he reeled off the specifics of the case, the exact number of children and the precise dates. Despite his disclaimers and the affectation of uncertainty Yates has linked the route to the Engineer, at least to his own satisfaction. Going over these things in her mind it occurs to her that he might have his own connection to what happened that summer, just as she does. 'Did you investigate the disappearances here?' she asks.
