“But that’s a crime of opportunity,” Henry said from the driver’s seat of the unmarked Crown Vic. Henry hated Crown Vics. And yet somehow he always ended up with one. “She fits his profile. You think he just drives around looking for high school girls who look right enough to snatch? That he just got lucky?”

“He broke the bike,” Archie said quietly from the backseat. He pulled the pillbox out his pocket and absentmindedly rotated it between his thumb and forefinger.

“He broke the bike,” Henry agreed emphatically, nodding. “Which means he had her picked out. Knew she had the bike. Knew which bike was hers. Maybe even knew it was crappy. That she’d drag the thing home like usual. He’s watching them.”

“Still leaves us with some missing time,” Claire said. “Next kid left rehearsal at six-thirty. Didn’t see her. The bike rack is right by the door.”

Archie’s head throbbed. “We’ll do the roadblock again tomorrow. Maybe someone else saw her.” He extracted three pills from the pillbox and put them in his mouth one by one.

“You okay, boss?” Henry asked, glancing back at Archie in the rearview mirror.

“Zantac,” Archie lied. “For my stomach.” He leaned his head back on the seat and closed his eyes. If the killer had stalked Kristy, then he’d probably start looking for another girl soon. “You sure the other high schools are secure?” Archie asked, eyes still closed.

“ Fort Knox,” Claire confirmed.

“Set up surveillance at all four tomorrow,” Archie told them. “Run the plates of every car that goes by Jefferson between five and seven.” He opened his eyes, rubbed his face with an open hand, and leaned forward between the two front seats. “I want to go through the autopsy reports again. And let’s go door-to-door again tonight. Maybe someone’s remembered something.”

Henry glanced over at him. “We should all get some sleep. We’ve got people working tonight. Smart people. Awake people. I’ll have them call if anything turns up.”

Archie was too tired to argue. He could do the work back at the apartment. “I’ll go home,” he said. “If you take me by the office so I can pick up the reports.”

“She’s still out there, right?” Claire said. “It’s not all for nothing? There’s a chance. Right?”

There was a long silence and then Henry said, “Right.”

The phone was ringing when Archie got back to the apartment. He had an armload full of police reports and citizen tips he planned to read that night and he stacked them perilously on the hallway table, picked up the cordless, and set his keys on the table next to the charger.

“Hello?”

“It’s me.”

“Hey, Debbie,” Archie said to his ex-wife, grateful for the momentary distraction. He walked through the kitchen, got a beer out of the fridge, and opened it.

“How was your first day?”

“Futile,” Archie said. He unclipped his gun from his belt and set it on the coffee table and sat down on the couch in front of it.

“I saw you on TV. You were very intimidating.”

“I wore that tie you bought me.”

“I noticed that.” She paused. “Are you coming to Ben’s thing on Sunday?”

He swallowed hard. “You know I can’t.”

He could hear the sigh in her voice. “Because you’ll be with her.”

They had been through this before. There wasn’t anything left to say. He let the phone slide down his face, his neck, until the base of the receiver rested against his breastbone. He pressed it hard against the bone until it hurt. He could still hear her, muffled and distant, like someone talking underwater.

“You know how sick that is, right?”

The vibration of her voice deep inside his chest made him feel better, like there was something alive in there.

“What do you two talk about?”

She had asked before. He had never told her, would never tell her. He lifted the phone back to his ear. He could hear her breathing. She said, “I just don’t know how you’re going to get better until you cleanse her from your life.”

I’m not going to get better, he thought. “I can’t just yet.”

“I love you, Archie. Ben loves you. Sara loves you.”

He tried to say something. I know. But he wanted to say something more, and he couldn’t, so he didn’t say anything at all.

“Are you going to come out and see us?”

“As soon as I can.” They both knew what he meant. He felt the splinters of another headache starting. “There’s this reporter, though,” he continued. “Susan Ward. She’s doing a series about me for the Herald. She’ll probably call you.”

“What should I tell her?”

“Tell her you won’t talk to her. And then, later, when she tries again, tell her anything she wants to know.”

“You want me to tell her the truth?”

He ran his fingers over the nubby fabric of his cheerless couch and imagined Debbie sitting on their couch, in their house, in his old life. “Yeah.”

“You want that published in the Herald?”

“Yeah.”

“What are you up to, Archie?”

He took a swig of his beer. “Closure,” he said with a hollow laugh.

Gretchen doesn’t let him sleep that first night, so he is already losing track of time. She injects him with some sort of amphetamine and then leaves for hours. Archie’s heart races and he can do nothing but stare at the white ceiling and feel the pulse throb in his neck and his hands shake. The blood has dried on his chest and now itches. He is in excruciating pain every time he inhales, but it’s the itching that is making him crazy. He tries for a while to keep track of time by counting, but his mind drifts and he loses the thread of numbers. Judging by the stink of the corpse on the floor beside him, he has been here for at least twenty-four hours. But more than that, he can’t say. So Archie stares. And blinks. And breathes. And waits.

He does not hear her come in, but suddenly Gretchen is there, smiling beside him. She caresses his hair, which is wet with sweat. “It’s time for your medicine, darling,” she purrs. With a swift motion, she tears the tape off his mouth.

She is gentle as she pushes the funnel into his throat, but it still makes him gag. He fights it, jerking his head from side to side, trying to lift himself on his elbows, but she knots her fist in his hair and holds his head firmly in place. “Now, now,” she scolds.

She has a handful of pills and she drops them down his throat one by one. He gags and tries to spit them out, but she extracts the funnel, presses his jaw shut, and rubs his throat with her hand, forcing him to swallow them like a dog.

“What are they?” he croaks.

“You don’t get to talk yet,” she says. She smoothes another piece of tape over his mouth. He is almost thankful. What is there to say?

“What do you want to do today?” she asks.

Archie stares at the ceiling, his eyes burning for sleep.

“Look at me,” she says between clenched teeth.

He does.

“What do you want to do today?”

He raises his eyebrows in an expression of ambivalence.

“More of the nails?”

He can’t stop himself from flinching.

Gretchen beams. He can tell his pain pleases her. “They’re looking for you,” she says in a singsong voice. “But they’re not going to find you.”

Wherever they are, she is reading the paper, watching the news, he thinks.

She puts her face next to his so he can see her smooth ivory skin, her huge pupils. “I want you to think about what we’re going to send them,” she says matter-of-factly. She runs her fingertips lightly along the skin of his arm, his wrist. “Hand, foot, that sort of thing. Something nice to let them know we’re thinking of them. I’m going to let you pick it out.”

Archie closes his eyes. He is not here. This is not happening. He tries frantically to conjure Debbie’s face on the black canvas of his eyelids. He can see her as she was that last morning. He has already mentally cataloged every item of clothing she was wearing. The thick-cabled green wool sweater. The gray skirt. The long coat that made her look like a Russian soldier. He conjures every freckle on her face. Her tiny diamond earrings. The mole on her neck, just above her breastbone.