“You wait for her that night?”

“Yes.”

“Why didn’t you help her, then? If it was me out there, I guarantee nothing would’ve happened.”

Milton looked at him dead straight, staring right into his eyes; the boy immediately looked down into the dregs of his coffee. “She didn’t give me a chance,” Milton said sternly. “Something happened to her at that party and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. By the time I got to her she was already in a mess.”

“So where is she?”

“She ran. That’s all I know.”

He gestured towards the door. “That dude — you tell him I’m sorry, will you? I didn’t want to say anything and, you know, muscling in on another guy’s girl, that ain’t the way I do things, that ain’t my style at all, you know what I’m saying?”

“I’m sure it isn’t,” Milton said.

“Alright,” he said. “I’m done.”

“The agency. How can I get in touch with them?”

“What are you gonna do?”

“I’m going to visit them.”

“And?”

“And get as much information as I can.”

“No way, man. I can’t. That shit’s gonna come back to me, right? They’ll figure out I’ve been talking. I don’t know. I don’t know at all.”

He got up quickly, the chair scraping loudly against the floor. He made to leave but Milton reached out a hand, grabbed the boy around the bicep and squeezed.

“Shit, dude!” he exclaimed. “That hurts.”

Milton relaxed his grip a little but he didn’t let go. “Have a think about it,” he said, his voice quiet and even. “Think about Madison. If you care about her at all you give me a call and tell me how I can get in touch with the agency. Don’t make me come and find you. Do we understand each other?”

“Shit, man, yeah — alright.”

Milton took a pen from his pocket, pulled a napkin from the chrome dispenser and wrote his number on the back. “This is me,” he said, putting it in the boy’s hand. “Take the rest of the day to think about it and call me. Okay?”

The boy gulped down his fear and nodded.

Milton released his grip.

23

Milton drove them as near to Headlands Lookout as he could get. Trip was nervous, fidgeting next to him, almost as if he expected them to find something. The police had blocked the road a hundred yards from the parking lot, a broad cordon cutting from the rocky outcrop on the right all the way down to the edge of the cliff on the left. Half a dozen outside broadcast trucks had been allowed down to the lot and they were crammed in together, satellite dishes angled in the same direction and their various antennae bristling. Milton slowed and pulled off the narrow road, cramming the Explorer up against the rock so that there was just enough space for cars to pass it to the left. The skies were a slate gray vault overhead and rain was lashing against the windscreen, pummelling it on the back of a strong wind coming right off the Pacific. Visibility was decent despite the brutal weather, and, as Milton disembarked, he gazed out to the south, all the way to the city on the other side of the Bay.

They made their way through the cordon and down to the parking lot. There were several dozen people there already, arranged in an untidy scrum before a man who was standing on a raised slope where the phalanx of cameras could all get a decent view of him. Milton recognised him. It was Commissioner William Reagan, the head of the local police. He was an old man, close to retirement, his careworn face chiselled by years of stress and disappointment. The wind tousled his short shock of white hair. He pulled his long cloak around him, the icy rain driven across the bleak scene. An officer was holding an umbrella for him but it wasn’t giving him much shelter; he wiped moisture from his face with the back of his hand.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said into the upheld microphones, “before I get into my remarks let me identify those who are here with me. I got Chief of Detectives Stewart Webster, everyone knows the Chief, and I got Inspector Richard Cotton.” He cleared his throat and pulled out a sheet of paper. “As you know, we’ve found two bodies along this stretch of the headland. I wish we hadn’t, but that’s the sad fact of it. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two bodies ended up in this area. It appears that they were taken down from the road into the foliage and hidden there so that they wouldn’t be seen. We’re assuming they were dumped here by the same person or persons.”

A brusque man from cable news shouted loudest as he paused for breath. “You identified them yet?”

“No,” Reagan said. “Not yet.”

“So you’re saying you’ve got a serial killer dumping victims along this stretch of land?”

“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that two ended up in this area, but I don’t want anyone to think we have a Jack the Ripper running around with blood dripping from a knife.” He blinked. “Which might be the impression that some people would get … ” He trailed off. “This is an anomaly,” he said. “Don’t worry.”

“You expect to find anyone else?”

“That’s impossible to say. But we’re looking.”

“There’s snow forecast for the weekend. Does that add pressure?”

“It doesn’t help. We want to make sure we don’t miss anything.”

“So are you or are you not looking at it being the same guy?”

“Well, you know, I’m not gonna say that but, certainly, we’re looking at that.”

* * *

The Press Roadshow decamped and moved to Belvedere. A slow crawl of traffic worked slowly along the narrow road, Milton and Trip caught in the middle of it. Their purpose in driving out of the city had been to go and speak to Brady but Milton had not anticipated all this extra company. It made him nervous. The vehicles turned left and headed north, taking the right and doubling back to the south. Milton gripped the wheel tightly and ran the morning’s developments through his mind. It wasn’t surprising that they had reached the conclusion that Madison’s disappearance must have been connected. Why not? Two working girls turning up murdered just a few miles away, another working girl goes missing: it was hardly a stretch to think that she was dead, too, and dead at the hands of the same killer.

As they reached Pine Shores it was obvious that the prospect of a community of potential suspects was just too tempting to ignore. The gates stood open — it looked as if they had been forced — and the cavalcade had spilled inside. Reporters and their cameramen had set up outside the two key properties: the house where the party had taken place and Dr. Brady’s cottage. Police cruisers were parked nearby but the cops inside seemed content to let them get on with things. Milton parked the Explorer and joined Trip at the front of the car. They watched as two reporters for national news channels delivered their assessments of the case so far — the discovery of the two bodies, the fact that a third girl had gone missing here — and suggested that the police were linking the investigations.

Milton looked at the cameras.

“We shouldn’t be here,” he said, more to himself than to the boy.

“What are they doing outside his place?” Trip said, his eyes blazing angrily as he started up the street towards Brady’s cottage.

“Trip — stop.”

“They think he did it, right? That must be it.”

Milton followed after him and took him by the shoulder. “We need to get back in the car. They’ll be all over us if they see us and figure out who we are.”

Trip shook his hand away. “I don’t care about that. I want to speak to him.”

He set off again. Milton paused. He knew he should leave him, get back into the car and drive back to the city. He had been stupid to come up here. He should have guessed that it would be swarming with press. It stood to reason. He didn’t know if they would be able to identify him but, if they did, if he was filmed and if the footage was broadcast? — that would be very dangerous indeed.