“Now, son.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy bolted up from his seat, knocking his chair backward onto the white tile. He righted the chair while stumbling over an apology. “Sorry, sir … sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it, son. Accidents happen.” The man checked his watch. “Now let’s get moving. I have some calls to make before the game starts.”

Trying to stall, the boy looked down at his polished shoes. “Shouldn’t I … change first, sir? My school clothes might get …”

“A little water never hurt anything,” said his father. He turned and walked out of the kitchen.

The boy followed wordlessly. Head bent, he slowly mounted the stairs after his father. Silently, he delivered a petition to God: Please blind me. Don’t make me watch this time.

Chapter 1

MINNESOTA BRACED ITSELF for a White Halloween. One of the wettest summers on record had been followed by a frigid fall, inviting speculation that there’d be snow on the ground by the end of October. Northland kids were accustomed to incorporating rain gear into their costumes, creating Spidermen in slickers and vampires armed with umbrellas. Being forced to add boots and mittens and down vests to their ensembles wouldn’t be a huge leap; the show would go on.

In every neighborhood, picture windows were plastered with paper ghosts and Frankenstein monster heads, subtle declarations of war against the threatened early winter. Plastic tombstones were propped in front yards like protest signs. Bags of mini–candy bars were optimistically stockpiled in cupboards. Orange lights dripped from bushes and twined around tree limbs. Rubber skeletons dangled from porch ceilings while glowing skulls punched through the darkness.

The scariest thing about the Midwest that autumn, however, was the water.

Six college women had drowned in the Mississippi over a period of six months. Four had gone into the river at the University of Minnesota’s Minneapolis campus, and two had perished around the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse. Authorities determined that the women had killed themselves, but rumors of a serial killer and a cover-up persisted and grew. By that fall, the police and the public were at each other’s throats.

Students demonstrated on both campuses, demanding the investigations into the deaths be reopened. During a press conference held in La Crosse, angry community members shouted down the cops and college administrators. The father of one of the Twin Cities victims took a swing at a university vice president in the middle of a regents’ meeting. The mood was so volatile, professors on both sides of the border teamed up to issue an open letter to the cities asking for calm.

Bernadette Saint Clare, the FBI’s lone agent in its downtown St. Paul office—a subterranean cell in the Warren E. Burger Federal Building—was not invited to the investigation. She sat at her desk late Monday morning, reading a Star Tribune story that rehashed the deaths.

The first drowning had taken place in April. No one witnessed the woman’s plunge into the river, but University of Minnesota police found a note on the upper deck of the Washington Avenue Bridge. They called the death a suicide. The freshman’s own parents agreed with the ruling, revealing that the girl had struggled with emotional problems and had been seeing psychiatrists off and on over the years.

“Sounds pretty cut and dried,” Bernadette muttered, flipping to the next page of the news story.

The second drowning took place a month later, probably in the middle of the night. No one saw the jump, but authorities believed the graduate student could have gone off the same bridge. In place of a note, police found a telltale scarf left at the base of a lamppost. Another troubled young woman, they said. Another suicide. A drowning in June left investigators and university officials fearing a rash of copycat suicides. A flurry of press releases from health organizations followed, warning the public about the signs of depression. Television news tapped assorted shrinks for interviews. Suicide help lines geared up for action.

For two months, there were no drownings at the University of Minnesota. Downriver was another story. During the summer session at the University of Wisconsin in La Crosse, two girls died, one of them in July and the other in August. In each case, the young woman had left a tavern on a Saturday night and turned up floating in the Mississippi days later. Autopsies determined the girls had been drinking. While neither had left a suicide note, both had been battling depression and eating disorders.

Come September, a medical student disappeared from the University of Minnesota campus after attending an evening seminar. Her high heels were found at the base of the rail lining the Washington Avenue Bridge, inspiring the editor of an underground student newspaper to dub the walkway “Murderer’s Alley.” Her body hadn’t been found.

Reporters in both states connected the dots between the Twin Cities and La Crosse deaths, and the fists started flying.

Bernadette knew there were things going on behind the scenes that could serve to either placate the fearful public or inflame it further. The FBI’s Milwaukee and Minneapolis offices were joining together to quietly review all the evidence in the deaths to see if local law enforcement had missed something. Were these drownings truly suicides, or were they the work of a serial killer?

“I could figure it out,” Bernadette muttered to the newsprint.

She’d begged her immediate supervisor—Assistant Special Agent in Charge Tony Garcia—to let her pitch in. Garcia had instead assigned her to tracking down yet another bank robber, this one dubbed the Fishing Hat Bandit. She suspected her ASAC was holding her back from the bigger case because he feared she’d mess it up, especially if she tried utilizing all of her abilities.

She folded the newspaper and dropped it into the wastebasket next to her desk, one of three in her basement office. The other two were unoccupied, at least by living beings, and she used them as extra workspaces. They both contained dead computer monitors and were piled with paperwork.

Reluctantly, she reached for the manila file folder she’d kept pushed to the side of her desktop like a moldy sandwich. Flipping it open, she started to read. Overhead, she heard banging and sawing. They were renovating the building, a project that had started over the summer and promised to stretch well into the next calendar year. The sound of a jackhammer joined the chorus.

When her phone rang above the din, she was more than happy to drop the robber’s file and pick up the receiver. “Agent Saint Clare!”

Garcia: “Why are you hollering at me?”

The racket stopped, and she glanced up at the ceiling. “Sorry. Construction noise is making me deaf.”

“We’ve got another one, Cat.”

Bernadette ran a hand through her short blond hair. “Which bank?”

“No. Another drowning victim. I need you at the scene.”

She pushed the Fishing Hat file off to the side again. “What’s changed? Why do you want me now?”

“This one turned up dead in her own bathtub.”

She switched the phone to her other ear. “It can’t be a suicide, then, right? This is something else.”

“I don’t know what it is. Just get over here.”

Bernadette grabbed a pen and a pad. “Where am I going?”

“Dinkytown,” Garcia said.

Dinkytown was a Minneapolis neighborhood immediately north of the University of Minnesota’s east bank. “She lived in an apartment?”

“Shared a house with a bunch of other gals. It’s off Fourth Street.”

Bernadette scratched down the address and his directions. “I’ll be there in twenty.”