“I’m a private investigator,” I told her. I liked the sound of that so much I repeated the phrase—I’m a private investigator—a half dozen times with different inflections, making it sound like I was either a swashbuckling adventurer or I made my living repairing refrigerators.

“You’re annoying me,” she said.

“This is getting old, Cynthia. Ever since I told you I thought Alison was alive, you’ve been ragging on me to quit the case, telling me she didn’t break any laws, telling me she has a right to be left alone. Fine. I get the message. Now quit it, will ya? I don’t tell you what cases to take.”

We were in bed—my bed to be precise—and for the first time since we’d become intimate, our bodies did not warm each other. She was lying on one side and I was lying on the other, and the few inches that separated us might as well have been the Grand Canyon.

“What’s the big deal, anyway?” I asked.

“It’s wrong.”

“I’ll tell you what’s wrong. What’s wrong is Irene Brown and Raymond Fleck sitting in the Dakota County jail because neither can make bail, waiting to see if they’re going to be tried for killing a woman who’s not dead.”

“Since when do you care about them?”

“I don’t,” I admitted. “But I’m the one who put them on the spot—at least Irene—and that makes me responsible.”

“If only I could believe that.”

“What?”

“I think you’re trying to find Alison because you want revenge.”

“Revenge?”

“Yes, revenge. When you thought she was dead, you acted like she was the great lost love of your life—”

“Stop it,” I told her.

“You kept staring at her photograph with such longing—don’t tell me you didn’t; I know you did—but then you discovered that she had an affair, and suddenly you don’t like her anymore. Taylor, you act like she had cheated on you. Well, she didn’t cheat on you. She didn’t do anything to you. She didn’t even know you. So why don’t you leave her alone? She was treated shitty enough in her life.”

“She gave as she got,” I told her.

“How do you know?”

“I know.…”

“You know nothing about her except what some people told you, and even then you’re only listening to the bad and none of the good. Why do you believe Emerton and that doctor? Why do you insist that they’re right about Alison and not Marie Audette and Alison’s other friend, the deputy?”

“Because—”

“Because you don’t want to.”

“Are you going to let me finish?”

“I’ll tell you what I think. I think you hope Alison really is dead. That way you can recast her as the virginal innocent in the fantasy you’ve created in your head.”

Something cold gripped my heart. Alison dead? No, I didn’t want that. I most certainly did not.

“You might find this hard to believe, Cynthia,” I said, working hard to keep my voice calm and level, “but I have no emotional investment in locating Alison.”

“Yeah, right.”

“If you want to argue that I’m trying to find her just to prove that I can, fine. Maybe there’s something to that. But it’s my job, you see. It’s what I do for a living.”

“It’s wrong,” Cynthia reiterated.

“Why? Why is it wrong? When I was trying to find her dead body, I was a good guy. Now, because I’m trying to find her live body, I’m a jerk. Why is that?” Cynthia didn’t answer, so I added, “It’s just a job, honey.”

“And if someone gave you four hundred dollars a day and expenses to investigate me, you’d do it, wouldn’t you?”

“Cynthia, please. This is not about you.”

“But it could be. That’s the thing. It could be. If somebody wanted to learn about my past, if they wanted to hurt me with my past—”

“I’m not hurting anyone,” I insisted.

“—me or anyone else on the planet, all they have to do is pay you four hundred dollars a day and expenses.”

And then I understood. Cynthia didn’t want me to find Alison because she didn’t want a detective to one day find her, the real her. The expensive clothes, the furniture, the store-bought manners, they allowed Cynthia to do what Alison was doing: hide. That was why she worked so hard at her profession, why she so enthusiastically embraced the media. She was building a life beyond reproach, strengthening her reputation against the day that someone—like me—would discover that Cynthia Grey, attorney at law, was once a drug addict, that she had danced topless for a living. I understood that, only I wasn’t thinking. Instead, I let my mouth do all the work, my brain just standing there leaning on a shovel while I talked myself into a hole.

“I ferret out people’s secrets,” I replied, trying to make my voice sound just as icy as hers. “I do it for money. And most of the people who hire me? They’re lawyers. You act like all this is new to you, Cynthia. But we both know it’s not. You’ve worked with PIs before; hell, you’ve worked with me. You want information you can take into court, you come to us. You want dirt you can use to help your clients and hurt your adversaries, you don’t even quibble about our fee. Well, what I’m doing now is no different than what you’ve hired done in the past. You’re no different than Hunter Truman.”

Cynthia had nothing more to say. She left the bed and dressed in the dark. The rustle of her clothes and the creak of floorboards told me she was near, but I couldn’t see her, and when I reached out, I caught only air. I wanted to say something to her, but what? I’m sorry? Yeah, right, that would cover it. I’m sorry, Cynthia, I was only joking. Sure.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that,” I told her.

She didn’t reply.

“Cynthia?”

The floorboards creaked again.

“Cynthia, if you loved me, you would ignore me when I say stupid things.”

“Taylor, you’re a jerk,” she answered softly. And then she was gone. I listened as she made her way down the stairs to the front door, slamming it behind her.

“Taylor, you are a jerk!” I agreed.

I had run out of coffee beans and was finishing my last Dr Pepper when Hunter Truman called. He wanted an update. I told him I had nothing positive to report and asked if I should give it up. He said no, and I sighed my relief. I had no intention of quitting the chase, but it was starting to get expensive. That’s why so many skips and missing persons remain unfound because it’s not worth the cost of finding them. And I would rather hunt for Alison on Truman’s nickel than mine.

“What do you want ’em for?” Stephen Emerton asked when I requested all of his and Alison’s canceled personal checks starting one year prior to her disappearance.

I convinced him that I was helping the Dakota County attorney strengthen his case against Irene Brown; told him that if she were convicted of killing Alison, the insurance company would be forced to pay off on Emerton’s claim. He gave me a box of canceled checks dating back eighteen months.

“What do you want them for?” Sarah Selmi asked when I requested Alison’s complete employment history at Kennel-Up, emphasizing those days when she did not report to work, plus a record of all her business trips and a list of the long-distance phone calls she had made.

I was bound by Hunter Truman’s directive not to tell her the truth, and I couldn’t think of a viable lie, so I simply said: “Because it’s important that we have all the information correct for the trial.” It sounds absurd, I know, but it worked. It usually does. Half the time when you start a sentence with the word “because,” people don’t even hear the rest of it. They hear only the word “because,” which they translate to mean, “It’s all right, go ahead.” If you don’t believe me, try it sometime.

Sarah Selmi gave me everything I requested except for the phone information. Kennel-Up had a WATS line, and they had no way of determining which employees called where. She said it was an ongoing problem since her employees shamefully abused the service, dialing up long-lost relatives halfway around the planet.