Thinking clear, that’s something to cling to, something to strive for. All she has to do, be as brave as her nine-year-old self. Back then she actually visualized herself in a coffin, and the hot steel box is not a coffin, not yet. Has to be a way out. There’s always a way out, right?

“Right? Right? Right?”

Kelly’s not too sure, but she may actually have said that out loud. Shout or a whisper, she can’t tell—the darkness makes it hard to distinguish words from thoughts, and her volume control is totally whacked.

Let there be light, she thinks, switching on the lamp. Holding it up to the grate, she can see where the narrow vent takes a ninety-degree turn. There are no fans blowing or circulating air, but to Kelly it feels as if the air is fresher at the vent, and she decides to linger in the vicinity.

If the air is fresher it must be coming from the outside, right?

“Right! Right! Right!”

Weird, but it’s like she can see herself screaming into the vent. Only she’s not screaming help! she’s screaming, “Right!” Which is pretty mental, when you think about it. What would someone think? They’re walking down the street, minding their own business, and a voice shouting “right!” comes out of a vent? They’ll think crazy person, mind your own business.

Kelly gets a grip, puts a different word in her mouth.

“Help! Help! Help!” she screams, shouting into the vent. Shouting into her own personal black hole. Black hole sucking in her fear, making it part of the darkness. Black hole where the little girl inside her still lives, visualizing coffins, facing the monster.

23. Snow Bunnies In Heaven

Randall Shane stands in the doorway, watching her sleep. Keenly aware that not all sleep is quiet or restful. Example: Mrs. Garner moaning softly, fingertips quivering against the pillow. Her large and lovely eyes move fitfully beneath her eyelids, indicating an active dream state—they won’t be good dreams, either, not with a daughter missing, presumed kidnapped.

Interesting woman, Jane Garner. Interesting not only because she’s strong willed and self-reliant, traits he admires, but because she’s an accomplished liar. Deftly pulling the curtain to hide a significant portion of her life, a crucial something having to do with the identity of her daughter’s biological father.

Rape? Shame? Some dark variation on family tragedy? What, exactly, makes her hold tight the secret, even at a time like this?

Shane backs away, closes the door, walks to the daughter’s bedroom in his stocking feet, holding his Top-Siders lightly in his left hand. Moving as quietly and purposefully as a big jungle cat, with the athletic balance and grace of a much younger man. Grateful as always that he had the sense to quit football after a single high school season, while his knees were still uninjured. Lots of big men his age, early forties, were already limping from joints damaged long ago, when size and agility and adolescent adrenaline had put them into violent collisions with young men of similar size and agility. The human knee is a marvelous feat of biological engineering, but it is not meant to endure the sideways force applied suddenly by a two-hundred-and-fifty-pound tackler running at full speed, leverage enhanced by cleats. As Shane had determined on his own, at age fifteen, disappointing every coach who’d ever seen him move. Guy your size and speed, they’d say, what a waste. I’m fine, his shyly proud, teenage self would respond. Coaches would come back with promises of athletic scholarships, unaware that the big, rangy kid was an actual scholar, top of his class academically, that he’d read and understood medical research papers on sport-damaged joints and made a rational decision not to participate. Not because he was afraid of pain or injury—as an adolescent he had been totally fearless—but because he liked the feel of his large strong body, what it was becoming, and wanted to keep it that way.

He’d had plans, big plans. All of which changed one remarkably cold day in Rochester, New York. Enrolled in the tough-as-nails engineering school at R.I.T., Shane maintains a perfect 4.0 average, despite working several part-time jobs. His job as a library assistant includes returning books to the higher shelves—they call him the human ladder—and keeping the pathways leading to the library clear of snow. That’s where it happens, outside in the wickedly crispy cold. One minute he’s leaning on his shovel, daydreaming about the Nobel Prize he will one day be given for his work in chemical engineering—astonishing discoveries that will change the world—the next minute Jean Dealy walks by in her arctic survival suit, armored and padded and insulated against the fierce winter wind roaring in from the Genesee River. This on a campus where students routinely go hatless at ten below, and the truly foxy coeds wear thin little miniskirts, or less, no matter how cold it gets. And yet this young woman has chosen a genderless arctic survival suit that covers her from toes to nose, obscuring every feature but her marvelous eyes, peeking out of the padded suit. Eyes that floor Randall, stopping his heart as she passes by, the snow squeaking merrily under her fur-lined boots. The squeak of his big plans grinding to a halt because in that moment Jean Dealy becomes his new big plan, even before he knows her name or sees himself reflected in her amazing eyes.

Twenty-some odd years later, the thought still makes him smile. Strange how the physical act of smiling sets off a pang of loss that closes his throat, as powerful as a fist to the larynx. Mother and daughter connections, that’s what does it, that’s what gets him in the secret place where he tends his memories. Because, like his new client, Randall Shane has secrets of his own.

Snow bunnies in heaven, that’s just one of his many secrets.

He sits sideways at Kelly Garner’s computer because his knees are too big to fit under the desk. He scans the teenager’s files, makes a few notes and then carries the notebook to the front door, where he dons his Top-Siders. Out in the driveway he manually unlocks the Lincoln Town Car because the woop-woop of the remote key might awaken his sleeping beauty.

In the hush of the big sedan he picks up the clunky car phone, presses a key for an oft-called number, leaves a message.

“It’s me. Any and all information regarding the following individuals—Jane S. Garner, her daughter Kelly Garner, no middle initial.” He gives the address, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, then concludes, “Particular attention to any information regarding Kelly’s birth father. Soonest. Thanks.”

Shane hangs up, glances at his wristwatch—too soon for the next call, the crucial call. The call that just might find the missing girl, or at least point him in the right direction. He powers the seat, lays it back as far as it will go. Closes his eyes, tries to rest, willing his mind to blankness. He thinks: Superman has his Fortress of Solitude, Randall Shane his Lincoln Town Car.

The self-comparison to a comic-book character makes him smile again, and this time the smile does not hurt.

24. Janet Reno’s Dance Party

In the dream my bed lies on a train, a swaying commuter train, and a giant peers in an open door, watching me sleep. Part of me knows I should wake up, search the train for Kelly, but I can’t keep my eyes open. It’s the train’s fault, because trains make me sleepy.

“Mrs. Garner? There’s someone to see you.”

Shane in the hallway, making his voice big enough to be heard through the solid panel of the bedroom door.

One moment I’m asleep, dreaming, the next I’m up, a cold thrill in my blood. Stepping into linen Capri pants, shrugging on a top and calling out, “What? What happened? Is it Kelly? What do you mean ‘someone to see me’?”

Shane waits until I open the door. Hands me a mug of hot tea. His cheerful smile has to be a good sign. “My friend from the agency,” he says. “She was kind enough to drop by.”