“I don’t think so,” she said, starting to peck at her keyboard. “VonHader, VonHader, VonHader.”

“That only works if you say it into a bathroom mirror at midnight,” Creed volunteered.

“What?”

“You summon someone by saying his name three times into a mirror.”

“You say ‘Bloody Mary’ three times, and she comes out and kills you. I think that’s how it works. I’m not a hundred percent certain. I’ve never been to a pajama party.”

“No friends?” he asked.

“I had to get up early and help with the cows.” She stopped typing for a moment and put her hand on her lower back.

“How are you feeling after that bad date and impromptu dip in the water?”

Blinking, she cranked her chair around to stare at Creed.

He stared back at her from across the room. “What’s wrong?”

“I didn’t tell you about going out to dinner with Matt or getting knocked into the river.”

“Nor did you inform me about the close call you had in the basement with those reprobates.” He folded his arms in front of him. “You’ve been holding back on your partner, and I don’t appreciate it.”

“How do you know about all that?”

“Phone conversation between you and Garcia.”

She hadn’t picked up the phone yet that morning. “Ruben—”

“I need to be briefed on these things and not via eavesdropping.” He leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about this VonHader.”

“I visited Dr. VonHader at home yesterday.”

“The guy who was the shrink for a couple of these dead girls,” Creed said. “Your bad date’s brother.”

“Yeah. Right.” She paused, confused about what she’d actually told him versus what he was gleaning some other way. “I—I saw a blank space up on the wall where a picture must have hung. When I asked about it, the doctor flipped out.”

“You think the missing picture has something to do with the case?”

“At the very least, it has something to do with how the brothers turned out, all screwed up and such. That’s the only lesson I took away from my visit to porn central: how boys are raised determines their sexual habits.”

“‘Of all the animals, the boy is the most unmanageable.’”

“Plato,” she said numbly, remembering the quote.

“Very good.”

“What did you think of the surveillance at the professor’s house?” she asked evenly.

“Thorsson did his usual to screw things up. Too bad about that Cameron girl. Are you sure her death is connected to these drownings? It seems a separate incident entirely.”

Working hard to keep her voice calm, she said, “You’ve been following me around.”

“I have not,” he said.

“You’ve been following me around, and I want it to stop.”

“I’m looking out for my partner. Doing my job.”

She twined her arms around herself. “Have you been going home with me? Where have you been? What have you seen?”

He stood up and went around to the front of his desk. “I apologize if you feel violated.”

“Don’t do it anymore. Please.”

His eyes went to her computer. “Need some help?”

“No,” she snapped. Then in a softer tone: “No, thank you.”

“Would you work more efficiently if I left for the day?”

She knew how much he enjoyed getting back into the job, but he was rattling the hell out of her. “Would you mind?” she asked.

“I have other things I can do,” he said.

“Thank you.” She returned to her typing. A minute later she glanced toward his desk, and he was gone. She exhaled with relief and got back to her research.

Abandoning her usual government databases, Bernadette started surfing the Internet. A Google search using the words Luke VonHader turned up screen after screen listing awards, research projects, and articles in professional journals. They all involved the doctor’s stellar career, and she’d read enough about that. She wanted to get to his family life. She tried using the brothers’ names together, and one article came up: a brief story that had run in a neighborhood newspaper about a donation they’d made to a health care facility, Sunny Park Nursing Home.

She remembered Matthew’s comment during the morose, drunken dinner conversation about dead parents.

At least they never had to be in a nursing home.

So why did they dump so much money there? The article didn’t say. She tried plugging in just the last name—VonHader—and the name of the nursing home. In addition to the donation story, one other Web offering came up. It was the page from an electronic memory book maintained by St. Paul’s daily newspaper, the Pioneer Press. The entries—mostly from nursing home workers expressing their regret for the family’s loss—were about someone named Ruth.

Ruth. That was the name painted on Matthew’s boat.

Bernadette read the entries carefully.

I’m so sorry for your loss. I was Ruth’s night aide for ten years. Even though she couldn’t thank anyone herself, I know she appreciated everything we tried to do to make her time at Sunny Park enjoyable. Be comforted knowing she is now resting peacefully with the angels.

—Respectfully, Cecelia O.

Ruth was a beautiful soul who suffered silently for so many years. She has surely earned her place in heaven. I will include her and all of you in my prayers.

—From the Rev. Stephen Whitrockner, nursing home chaplain

I am truly sorry for your loss. Ruth must have been a lovely girl when she was a teenager. You could still see that beauty in her face, especially in her pretty eyes. I will keep her family in my thoughts as you struggle to get through what must be a difficult time. All my sympathies.

—Tamara, the first-floor medication nurse

“Depressing as hell,” Bernadette muttered. She was grateful to arrive at the final entry, a brief one that gave her pause:

Still waters.

—Love, C.A.

Who was C.A., and was that water reference a coincidence? She filed the question away.

The deceased had to be an elderly relative of the VonHader boys. An aunt or a grandmother. None of the entries indicated when Ruth had died.

A return to government databases didn’t come up with a death record for a Ruth VonHader, but that didn’t surprise her. There were hiccups in the system. How many dead people were still receiving Social Security checks? She couldn’t find anything else in those databases about this Ruth. Still, there had to be a paid obituary notice containing this matriarch’s story. She went to the Pioneer Press Web site and dove into its electronic archives.

There it was, a life summarized in two lines:

VonHader, Ruth A. Died at Sunny Park Nursing Home, St. Paul.

Private services and interment.

No age, survivors, day of death, or cause was listed. From the date of the archived obituary, however, she could surmise the month of death—and it made Bernadette’s heart race. The woman had died that April, the same month bodies started turning up in the Mississippi River.

To find out more about Ruth VonHader’s life, Bernadette would start with her place of death. She couldn’t find a Web site for Sunny Park Nursing Home, so she turned to the phone book. The facility was in St. Paul just off Lexington Parkway, a major road that crossed Summit Avenue—the street where the doctor lived.

She picked up the phone and told Garcia what she’d uncovered and said that she was going to visit the place where the woman had died.

“I guess you don’t need someone covering your back at a nursing home,” he said. “How is your back?”

“Good,” she said, lying.

“I’ve got some news on the news front,” he said. “Cops are holding a press conference in time for the six o’clock broadcasts. They’re going to issue a description. They aren’t releasing the name of Klein’s neighbor, but they’re going to say someone saw her with a fellow the night she was murdered.”