Tuesday, 6:45 a.m. PST

“LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT -your daughter received a call from Lorraine’s cell phone.”

“Exactly.”

“But not from Rainie. Just her phone.”

“She never heard Rainie’s voice,” Quincy reiterated, “but she did hear the sound of someone breathing heavily in what seemed to be a moving car. Then she heard a distinct sequence of metal pings, which Kimberly believes may have been an attempt at signaling SOS.”

Sergeant Kincaid sighed. He was standing beneath a white awning covering Rainie’s Toyota. He’d been photographing it for the past twenty minutes. Now he was sketching out the position of the seat and mirrors, as well as documenting each dial-how many miles on the odometer, how much fuel in the tank. The sergeant’s hair was soaked, his smooth black face was wet; he looked exactly like what he was, a man who’d been pulled out of his snug bed in the middle of the night, to stand in the middle of a rainstorm.

“Mr. Quincy-”

“My daughter is an FBI agent. She’s been with the Atlanta field office for the past two years. Surely, Sergeant Kincaid, you are not going to discount the instincts of a fellow law enforcement officer.”

“Mr. Quincy, I would ‘discount the instincts’ of my captain if he came to me with a story like this. All you know is that your daughter received a call from a specific phone; you’ve given me no proof of who the caller might be.”

“It’s Rainie’s phone!”

“It’s a cell phone! People lose them, drop them, share them with friends. For God’s sake, my eight-month-old son has already placed a call on my cell phone by holding down one of the speed-dial buttons. It’s not so hard.”

“Pull the records,” Quincy said stubbornly.

“As part of my investigation, I most certainly will. And I’m gonna look at her landline phone, too. As well as her credit card statements and a detailed reconstruction of her past twenty-four hours. You know, I’ve done this kind of thing before!”

Kincaid seemed to realize how strident his voice had become. He took a deep breath, then exhaled slowly. “Mr. Quincy-”

“I’ve done this kind of thing before, too,” Quincy said.

“Yeah, I know you’re the expert-”

“I lost my oldest daughter to a madman, Sergeant Kincaid. He killed my ex-wife, he almost got my youngest daughter. Maybe in your world these kinds of crimes don’t happen, but in my world, they do.”

Kincaid inhaled deeply again. Quincy could tell the sergeant didn’t want to believe him. And in his own way, he understood. Detective work was inherently about playing the odds. And the statistics said that of the 200,000 adults who went missing each year, only 11,000 stayed missing, and of those, only 3,400 were deemed abducted against their will. If Rainie had been a small child, or maybe a college coed, things might be different. But she was a middle-aged woman and an armed member of law enforcement.

Kincaid was here because of two possibilities: one, that the missing driver of this vehicle, possibly under the influence, had wandered into the woods and gotten lost, or two, that the missing driver of this vehicle, possibly under the influence, had gone into those woods and killed herself.

He would investigate all options, of course. But police work inherently started with a theory. Kincaid had his theory, Quincy now had his.

“Okay,” Kincaid said abruptly, surprising Quincy. “Just for a moment, let’s have it your way. Your wife was abducted from this car; that’s what you think.”

“I would like to pursue that possibility.”

“How? According to you, she carried a piece at all times. Plus she’s trained in self-defense. Seems to me, a woman like that doesn’t disappear without a fight. Look around, Mr. Quincy. What fight?”

“One: I don’t know for certain that she had her Glock. As a general rule, she did keep it on her person, but we would need to conduct a thorough search of the residence to confirm that assumption. Two: we can’t, at this point, discount the fact that she may have been drinking, and that may have diminished her capacity to protect herself. Three: look around, Sergeant Kincaid. It’s a giant mud puddle, what evidence either way?”

Kincaid frowned, regarded the mud, then gave Quincy a speculative stare. The sergeant, at least, was digging this game.

“All right. Who would do such a thing? Who would have a motive to abduct Lorraine Conner?”

“You mean other than her estranged husband?” Quincy asked dryly.

“Exactly.”

“Rainie handled a variety of cases, as a deputy with the Bakersville Sheriff’s Department, then as a private investigator, and then as my partner. That put her in contact with a certain segment of the population right there.”

“Can you provide us with a list of names?”

“I can try. I’d also contact Luke Hayes, the former sheriff in Bakersville-”

“Sheriff Atkins’s predecessor?” Kincaid’s voice implied another question.

“Luke decided to step down from the office for personal reasons,” Quincy supplied. “I haven’t met Sheriff Atkins just yet, but I’ve heard good things.”

“Okay, so Mr. Hayes should be willing to talk about the good old days. What about current cases? Working anything sensitive right now?”

Quincy shook his head. “We’ve been assisting with a double homicide out of Astoria, but our activities are behind the scenes. If the suspect in question was nervous, maybe he’d target the officer in charge, but not us.”

“Wait a minute-you’re talking the double homicide out of Astoria?”

“We don’t get that many around here.”

“Beginning of August, wasn’t it?” And then, Sergeant Kincaid proved he really was bright. “The September tenth DUI,” he murmured.

“The September tenth DUI,” Quincy acknowledged.

Kincaid’s gaze shot back to the woods, to the thick blackness just beyond the reach of the powerful spotlights. Once again Quincy knew what the sergeant was thinking, but he still couldn’t go there. Then again, Quincy had never thought Rainie would take a drink again, so maybe the husband was really the last to know.

“I didn’t think there was a suspect in that case,” Kincaid said curtly.

“Our analysis revealed one very clear suspect. Last I heard, however, there was no evidence for making the case. The detectives are continuing to work it, of course. As of this time, however, I am not optimistic.”

“Shit,” Kincaid murmured.

“Shit,” Quincy agreed, quietly.

“What about the photos in her trunk?” Kincaid probed. “That looked like a helluva case. Poor Deputy Mitchell is still puking his guts out.”

“Nineteen eighty-five. Most of the work we do now is seeing if we can shed new light on an old crime. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t.”

“Old crimes lead to new time,” Kincaid murmured. “Any murderers out there still have incentive not to get caught.”

“True, but how would they know about our work? We’re consul- tants, Rainie and I. For the most part, we operate under the radar screen.”

Quincy had flipped open his cell phone. He was trying Rainie’s number again. Still no luck. It was ringing though, which told him it was turned on. So maybe the phone was out of range, or in a place where she could no longer reach it.

Maybe she was in no condition to reach it.

He didn’t want to have that thought. Rainie had never believed him, but the Astoria case had disturbed him, too.

“So where does that leave us?” Kincaid was asking. “By your own admission, there really isn’t anyone out to get your wife.”

“Maybe. Well, wait a minute.” Quincy held up a hand, frowning. “One, we can’t yet rule out a stranger-to-stranger crime. But two, there is an avenue to pursue. Rainie had started some recent volunteer work-”

“Volunteer work?”

“She wanted to become an advocate for foster children. Represent them in the courts; there’s an organization you can join…”

Kincaid waved away Quincy’s explanation. “Yeah, yeah, I’ve heard of it. So she was going to help kids.” Kincaid nodded, showing once again he could read between the lines. “That makes some sense.”

“She already had her first charge. A young boy, Douglas Jones. Douglas-Dougie, actually-claims his foster father is beating him. According to the foster family, however, Dougie is making it all up because he’s finally met his match in their ‘tough love’ parenting style. I should add that Dougie already has a long history of theft, animal cruelty, and petty arson.”

“How old?”

“Dougie’s seven.”

“Seven?” Kincaid’s brows shot up. “You want me to suspect a seven-year-old?”

“No, no,” Quincy said, then added dryly, “though it won’t be too long before you may wonder about that statement. Rainie has been assigned to work with Dougie, to basically determine if he’s telling the truth, in which case she’ll be his voice in court, or determine once and for all that he’s lying, in which case she’ll try to mediate some sort of resolution between him and his foster family. The father in the case is Stanley Carpenter. Who’s thirty-six years old, works the loading docks for the cheese factory, and is rather famous for being able to lift half a pallet of cheese on his own.”

“Big guy.”

“Very big guy. Interestingly enough, that’s his defense in the case. A man his size hitting a boy Dougie’s size… You wouldn’t have to wonder about the abuse. The ME would be documenting it at the morgue.”

Kincaid laughed. “That’s the craziest damn defense I’ve ever heard. And yet…”

“It makes sense.”

“Yeah, it makes sense.” Kincaid turned back to the car, more thoughtful now. Quincy had his phone back out. He was compulsively hitting Send. Rainie still didn’t answer, but nor did the sound of ringing come from the woods. It gave him the slightest bit of hope.

“She think he did it?” Kincaid asked. “This Stanley guy was beating his kid?”

“She had her doubts. And those doubts could lead to her filing police charges, which for Stanley…”

“Would be a very bad thing.”

“Yes.”

“And a guy that big,” Kincaid filled in, “could probably abduct a woman against her will, even someone with training. Assuming, of course, she didn’t have a gun.”

“Assuming she didn’t have her gun.”

“All right,” Kincaid said abruptly. “That’s it. Not like we can do jackshit here anyway until the rain dries out. We’re off.”

“I get to come, too?”