So when 11:05 p.m. finally ticks over, and fat tires spray the driveway gravel, I’m not at all surprised to see Detective Rufus Sydell climbing out of his cruiser, adjusting his hat, looking professionally grim. He has news to impart and my thudding heart tells me it won’t be good.

Shane and I burst through our doors at precisely the same moment, like cuckoos out of the same clock.

“Evening,” says Roof, stepping back, a little startled.

Shane glances at me, then reaches out and gives my hand a reassuring squeeze. “Go on,” he says to the cop. “Something happened. What?”

“Um, you all mind if I come inside? Skeeters are fearsome.”

“Of course.”

I follow them into Shane’s room, slapping instinctively at the mosquitoes that follow. I have to restrain myself from leaping on the cop’s back and tearing the terrible truth out of him.

Roof takes off his hat, runs a ruddy hand over the gray speckles of hair on his shiny, freckled skull. He looks like he’d rather be elsewhere. Anywhere but here, reporting to a concerned mom. “Ma’am, I need to ask, how tall is your daughter?”

Taken aback, I stare at him stupidly. Why would he want to know such a thing? Then it dawns on me. They’ve located a body, need identification. He’s trying to break it gently.

“Ma’am?”

“Kelly is five foot five,” I tell him in my smallest voice. “Exactly my height.”

Roof drops into a plastic stack chair, causing the legs to creak ominously. He lets out a breath and breaks into a face-wide grin. “Well, that sure is good news! Didn’t mean to scare you, ma’am, but they come upon a body out in the backcountry, and the only thing they took off it so far is approximate height. Five foot ten is a long ways from five-five.”

“Oh my God.”

“Yes ma’am, it surely had me scared. Lots of tall girls these days.”

“So the search parties are still out there?” Shane asks, surprised.

“Not as such,” Roof says, fanning himself with his hat. “The tribal police was attracted by flames. Could be seen for miles, apparently. Seems there was a fire out that little airstrip Ricky used. The one Mr. Shane here located. An airplane was torched and a charred body was located not far from the aircraft. Body was burned so bad the, um, sorry ma’am, the gender isn’t immediately obvious. They’ll know more when they get the remains back to the lab.”

“So it could be a male?” Shane asks. “You’re thinking, who, Seth Manning?”

Roof looks around, spots the dented little refrigerator. “You wouldn’t happen to have a beer, would you? I’m not normally a drinkin’ man, but I surely could use one about now.”

“Sorry, no.”

“Can’t be helped,” he says, obviously disappointed. “Oh well, Where was we? Oh, right. No, it’s likely not Seth Manning, on account of the height I mentioned. Turns out he ain’t but a few inches taller than the girl.”

“Kelly,” I remind him.

“Right. A course.”

“You have another theory?” Shane prompts gently. “About the victim?”

“Just a hunch.”

“Hunches can be good,” says Shane.

“Well,” the cop drawls, pronouncing it wall. “I got to thinkin’, after our little talk. Decided maybe I’d take a look at Roy Whittle, since his name come up. Found he wasn’t home to talk to, but he had been seen recently in the company of a fella name Stick Davis. Stick being a pilot with a shady reputation. Come to me that Stick pretty well fits the description you gave, of the suspects checking out the stolen airplane.”

“Uh-huh. So you had your suspicions.”

Roof grins ruefully. “I’m a suspicious kinda fella, Mr. Shane. But until I know a fact I tend to keep it to myself. Made a call or two, and it seems like Roy and Dug and Stick was seen in Naples, at an airfield there, purchasing two drums of aviation fuel for cash money.”

Shane looks puzzled. “And what, they burned the plane? Getting rid of evidence?”

“Don’t need no drums of expensive fuel to torch a plane, all you need’s a match,” he points out. “I figure, they go to all the trouble to buy fuel for a turboprop, they intended to use it.”

“Move the plane?”

“More likely steal it. Wouldn’t be the first time Stick Davis involved himself in a stolen aircraft. That particular one, a nearly new King Air 350, they tell me that’d be worth two or three million on the black market. Sell it no problem whatsoever in Colombia or Venezuela, or maybe closer to home. All they do is swap out the transponder, change the tail numbers, and keep on aflyin’. Long as it don’t come back into the U.S. for inspection, no problem.”

“So what went wrong?” Shane asks. “You have a theory on that?”

“Not so much a theory as a guess, you might say. I ask myself a question, what if Ricky Lang found out they was hijacking that plane? Maybe he was in on the deal, maybe he wasn’t, I ain’t got clue one in that regard. But I ask you, Mr. Shane, who else do we know is crazy enough to burn a milliondollar aircraft?”

“No sign of the Whittle brothers?”

“Nope. They ain’t showed their face. Maybe they dropped off Stick and skedaddled. Or could be I got it wrong altogether.”

“Is there enough left to DNA the body?”

Roof gives me a careful look. “Expect there will be, when they get down to it. You know how it is with crispy—’scuse me, ma’am, charred victims. Sometimes it takes months to make a positive ID. Sometimes never.”

He stands up, plops the hat on his head, gives me an avuncular nod. “Glad I wasn’t bearing bad tidings, ma’am. Search resumes at dawn, I’m sure they’ll find your girl. Right now I’m off to locate me a beer, else I won’t be able to sleep.”

We again retire to our respective rooms, cuckoos retreating inside the clock. And the clock keeps ticking, increasing the sense of dread with every passing moment. A severed finger, a burned body, a psycho on the loose—try to make something good out of those ingredients. Try to find hope. Who said that, keep hope alive? Whoever it was must have known how easily hope fades, how the very idea becomes a cruel joke. As if we have the power to change events by thinking good thoughts, and therefore when bad things happen it’s through our own weakness.

As if, say, cancer is caused by bad thoughts instead of bad cells! Reasoning like that used to drive me crazy when Kelly was in the hospital. Doctors and nurses will tell you a positive attitude is important, but succumbing to the disease isn’t a sign of mental weakness—it’s proof that that human beings are frail vessels.

That’s where I’m at, here in Glade City. Back to the cancer ward, praying that my child may live. Bargaining with death. Take me if you must but please, please, let my daughter live. Take another child, not mine, please please please. She’s barely nine years old, she’s already suffered enough for any ten grown-ups. And now she’s barely sixteen, on the cusp of being an adult, her whole life ahead of her.

Let her live, God, or I will claw my way into heaven and bring you my full fury. You think fallen angels are trouble? Wait until you meet plain Jane Garner, mother of Kelly. Let her live, God, or I swear I’ll just close my eyes and die and make You miserable.

Close my eyes and dream I’m searching for Kelly in the hospital. She keeps fleeing down the long white corridors, hiding and laughing because she thinks death is a game she can win; she’s already won once, she says. I’m trying to warn her but my voice is too small, it barely gets beyond my lips, and my feet are so heavy I can’t run fast enough to catch her. My beautiful daughter running away, laughing at death.

Waking up is a shock because there’s no awareness of having fallen asleep. But suddenly it’s two in the morning and someone is knocking on my door. Politely but insistently knocking.

I crawl from the saggy bed fully clothed, stagger to the door, throw it open.