Except, of course, then there had been sirens. Things got a little fuzzy for Brad after that. Mostly, he was high, he knew he was high, and, oh yeah, he was driving a car that wasn’t his while having a suspended license. Even his baked brain had understood that could be a problem.

So he’d run for it. Real exciting, like Hollywood, he’d informed them, as the blood had poured from multiple cuts down his face, and yet, thanks to his morning binge, he still wasn’t feeling any pain.

“Didn’t even know a Suburban could drive that fucking fast,” he’d exclaimed. “I mean, it’s like supercharging a rhino, man. A beast, swerving around this corner, that corner. Dude, I thought I was gonna die. Cool!”

Wyatt and Kevin gave up on the pothead, returned to the motel. The original reporting officer had greeted them in the parking lot, very excited to hear how things had turned out. Wyatt and Kevin didn’t talk. They got Thomas’s room number. They crashed through the door, and they discovered exactly what they expected to find. An empty room, Thomas Frank nowhere in sight.

“Door-to-door,” Wyatt had instructed the uniformed officer. “Get everyone out of their rooms. Thomas didn’t just disappear. He stole a car, copped a ride, something. Get everyone talking until you know exactly how he left this property. Then report back to me immediately. We gotta update the APB.”

A very subdued officer went to do as he was told.

Kevin called for the evidence techs to process the room; then they returned to what they did have: one wrecked Suburban, their lone link to Thomas Frank. They both started searching.

Wyatt took the front seats, Kevin the rear bench seat. Like his wife’s, Thomas’s tastes ran toward the neat and tidy. No food wrappers, crumpled-up receipts or discarded maps.

Glove compartment yielded the normal vehicle operations manual, insurance card and valid registration in the name of Thomas Frank. Wyatt picked up a black baseball cap from the floor, still slightly damp to the touch. From Wednesday night’s storm, maybe wearing it when he followed, pursued, somehow tracked down his wife?

He also discovered an E-ZPass toll transponder; unfortunately, the only tolls in New Hampshire were to the south, so it couldn’t help them track local movements.

“Is it just me,” Wyatt muttered to Kevin, who’d moved on to the rear cargo area, “or is it almost as if the Franks were trained to leave no mark behind?”

“I got something.”

“Thank God.”

Wyatt gave up on the front, moved to the rear doors of the Suburban, where Kevin was currently standing.

“In the spare tire well. First item of interest.” Kevin held it up in gloved hands. “A collapsible shovel”—he gestured to the sales tags—“recently purchased.”

“Interesting. Thomas on his way to bury something?”

“Which brings us to item number two, a brown paper bag. Which . . .” Kevin started coughing heavily. “Smells like scotch. Blech.”

“The clothes.” Wyatt grabbed the bag. “Betting you now, Nicky’s clothes from Wednesday night.”

He donned gloves to open up the sack, which absolutely reeked. Of whiskey, wet earth and something worse.

He and Kevin weren’t talking anymore as Wyatt drew out a pair of mud-encrusted jeans, a black turtleneck, a gray fleece.

He gagged slightly as the odor became more pronounced. Blood. Definitely. Dried. Soaked into the fabric, now permeating the bag. From Nicky’s injuries that night? Or something else?

“Wyatt.” Kevin gestured to a crumpled object that had just fallen from the jeans. Wadded, sticky, nearly black in color. Except not black, of course, but a deep, dark red.

Wyatt used a pencil and took his time. As bit by bit, he unwrapped the blood-encrusted latex, until a familiar shape lay before them. Ripped, tattered, but nonetheless distinct.

The proverbial bloody glove.

“Just what the hell were they doing Wednesday night,” Kevin whispered, “that involves a collapsible shovel and bloody gloves?”

Wyatt didn’t say a word.

Chapter 27

VERO IS BRAIDING my hair. We aren’t in the tower bedroom anymore. Maybe it’s her mood, maybe it’s my mood, but we’ve downgraded to the little room. With the one narrow window and the twin beds shoved tight together because that’s all the space will allow. At the foot of the bed is a tattered blue area rug. Neither of us look at the rug.

I’m sitting on one of the beds. Vero is kneeling behind me, efficiently plaiting my long dark hair into braids. She is lecturing me as she works.

“You can’t trust them.”

I don’t say anything. Nor do I move. Every now and then, the flesh disappears from her hands, and I feel her skeletal fingers rake across my scalp.

“Where were the police thirty years ago? If they’re so good, they should’ve found you then. If they’re so hardworking and trustworthy, they should’ve rescued you then. Even cops have appetites. You know it’s true.”

In the distance I can hear the sound of a lawn mower. I don’t know why, but it makes my expression soften, my shoulders relax. If I wasn’t here with Vero, I would get up now, climb across the beds to the tiny window. I would look out and see . . .

“You need to pay attention!” Vero tugs my hair. Hard. I wince. She doesn’t care. “Time is running out; don’t you get that?”

I can’t turn my head to look at her, so I shrug.

“I’m trying to help you. You still won’t see what you need to see. You still don’t know what you need to know. How long do you plan on being so stupid?”

“What are you?” I ask. “My childhood ghost, my guilty conscience?”

She yanks my hair, definitely annoyed. “I know what I am, but what are you?” she taunts back.

“I think you’re a tool.”

She gasps, clearly surprised by this mundane description, maybe even put off.

“You are the gatekeeper of the memories I can’t face,” I continue, thinking out loud. “Whatever happened all those years ago . . . I boxed it up. Put it away with a sign that read ‘Keep Out.’ Except things don’t like to stay boxed up, do they? Even the past wants to be heard. I think you’re its avatar, the face of all the memories trying to break free.”

“If you’re so fucking smart,” Vero informs me, “then why are you so stupid?” She drops my hair, steps off the bed, clearly done with me.

But I don’t let her go. I’m running out of time. Something worse is lurking out there. I’ve started a process that can’t be undone, and now, if I don’t figure out everything, and fast . . .

The past doesn’t just want to be heard. Sometimes, it wants revenge.

The smell of smoke. The heat of the flames.

The sounds of her screams.

Even in my own mind, I automatically reach out a hand for Thomas.

“Why does Chelsea hate me?” I ask Vero now. “This room . . .” I drift my fingers across the threadbare brown coverlet. “There was just the two of us. I thought we’d be friends.”

“She can’t be your friend,” Vero says immediately. She is standing on the blue carpet. Her skin is back on her face, but her hands remain skeletal.

“Why not?”

“There are no friends in the dollhouse. You survive in this place. You endure. You don’t make friends.”

Vero’s voice sounds funny. I study her carefully and discover she is crying.

“You’re sad,” I whisper. I don’t know why this surprises me. Of course she’s sad. The memory of a kidnapped little girl. She should be devastated.

“The secret realm, the magical queen,” she singsongs now. Her hair is starting to fall out in clumps, the white of her skull showing through. “Once I had a life. Once I had a story. I told you those stories. Over and over again. Because someone had to know. Someone had to remember what was real.”

“I understand.”

“Chelsea doesn’t have a story. Even before the dollhouse. There was no magical queen, no secret realm. No one has ever loved her, not even you. No one wants to be her”—she eyes me slyly—“not even you.”