“I told you I’ll leave some money on the kitchen table.”

“You’ll leave seven hundred and fifty dollars on the kitchen table.”

“That’s way too much.”

“For supporting you all these years, it’s hardly enough.”

“If you didn’t want to support me you shouldn’t have gotten pregnant.”

“Accidents happen, unfortunately.”

Corrie could smell the acrid scent of burning filter as the cigarette was inhaled right down to the butt. Her mother looked around, stubbed it out in Corrie’s incense burner. “If you don’t want to contribute, you can go find yourself another place to live.”

Corrie turned roughly away and replaced her earphones, cranking up the music so loud her ears hurt. She faced the smudged wall, stone-faced. She could just barely hear her mother shouting at her.If she so much as touches me, Corrie thought,I’ll scream. But she knew her mother wouldn’t. She’d hit her once and Corrie had screamed so loud the sheriff came. Of course, the little bulldog did nothing—he actually threatenedher with disturbing the peace—but it had the effect of keeping her mother’s hands off her for good.

There was nothing her mother could do. She just had to wait her out.

Long after her mother had gone back to her room in a fury, Corrie continued lying there, thinking. She forced her mind away from her mother, from the trailer, from the depressing empty meaningless hell that was her life. She found her thoughts drifting toward Pendergast. She thought about his cool black suit, his pale eyes, his tall narrow frame. She wondered if Pendergast was married or had children. It wasn’t fair, the way he’d just dumped her like that and driven off in his fancy car. But maybe, like everybody else, he was disappointed in her. Maybe in the end she just hadn’t done a good enough job for him. She burned with resentment at the way the sheriff had come in and just laid those papers on Pendergast. But he wasn’t the kind to roll over and play dead. And hadn’t he hinted he was going to continue working on the case? Hehad to take her off the case, she told herself. It wasn’t anything she’d done. He’d said it himself:I cannot have you defying the sheriff on my account.

Her mind drifted toward the case itself. It was still so weird to think of someone in Medicine Creek doing those killings. If it really was someone local, it meant it was someone she knew. But she knew everyone in Shit Creek, and she couldn’t imagine any of them being a serial killer. She shuddered, thinking back over the crime scenes she’d witnessed firsthand: the dog, its tail hacked off . . . Chauncy, sewn up like some overdone turkey . . .

The weirdest of all was Stott, boiled like that. Why had the killer done that? And how did you boil someone whole, anyway? He’d have to have lit a fire, put on a big pot . . . It seemed impossible. Where could you get a pot like that? Maisie’s? No, of course not: the biggest pot she had was the one she used for Wednesday night chili, and you couldn’t even fit an arm in that. The Castle Club also had a kitchen—could it have happened there?

Corrie snorted to herself. The idea was nuts. Even the Castle Club couldn’t have a pot big enough to boil an entire person; for that you’d need an industrial kitchen. Or maybe he’d used a bathtub? Could someone have winched a bathtub onto a stove, cooked the body that way? Or set up a bathtub in some cornfield? But the spotter planes would have seen it. And the smoke from the fire would have been visible from all over. Someone would’ve smelled it cooking; smelled thesmoke, at least.

No, there was nowhere in Medicine Creek the body could’ve been cooked . . .

Abruptly, she sat up.

Kraus’s Kaverns.

It was crazy. But then again, maybe it wasn’t. Everyone knew that, during Prohibition, old man Kraus had run a moonshine operation in the back of that cave of his.

She felt a crawling sensation along her back: a mixture of excitement, curiosity, fear. Maybe the old still was still in there. Stills had big pots, didn’t they? And would that pot be big enough to boil a person? Maybe, just maybe.

She lay back in bed, her heart beating fast. As she did so, the ridiculousness of it came over her again. Prohibition had ended seventy years ago and the old still would be long gone. You just didn’t leave something that valuable rotting in a cave. And how would the killer sneak in and out of the cave? That prying old woman, Winifred Kraus, kept it locked up tight and watched over it like a hawk.

She tossed restlessly. Locks could be picked. She herself had downloadedThe MIT Guide to Lock Picking while surfing the Web on the school computers, and she’d even made a small pick of her own and experimented on the padlocks of school lockers.

If the killer was local he’d know about old man Kraus’s moonshine operation and the still. The killer might have brought the body in some night, boiled it, and been gone by morning. Old Winifred would never have been the wiser. Fact is, she hardly ever gave tours anymore.

Corrie wondered if she should call Pendergast. Did he know about the still? She doubted it—the bootlegging was just some ancient bit of Medicine Creek lore nobody would have thought to tell him about. That was why he’d hired her, to tell him just this kind of stuff. She should call him now and let him know. She felt in her pocket for the cell phone he’d given her, pulled it out, started dialing.

Then she stopped. The whole idea was absurd. Stupid. It was just a wild guess. Pendergast would laugh at her. He might even be angry. She wasn’t supposed to be on the case at all.

She dropped the phone and turned toward the wall again. Maybe she should check it out first—just in case. Just to see if the still was there. If it was, then she’d tell Pendergast. If it wasn’t, she wouldn’t make a fool of herself.

She sat up, put her feet on the floor. Everybody knew the cave only had one or two small caverns beyond the tourist area. The still would be in one of those. It wouldn’t be hard to find. She would duck in there, check it out, leave. And it would get her out of the house.Anything to get out of this hellhole.

She turned down the music and listened. Her mother had fallen silent.

She slipped off the earphones, paused to listen again. Then, ever so carefully, she got out of bed, pulled on some clothes, and slowly opened the door. All remained quiet. Shoes in hand, she began sneaking down the corridor. Just as she reached its end, she heard her mother’s door bang open and her voice ring out.

“Corrie! Where in hell do you think you’re going?”

She hopped through the kitchen and ran out the door, letting it bang behind her. She jumped into her car, threw her shoes onto the seat next to her, and turned the key, praying the thing would start. It thumped, choked, died.

“Corrie!” Her mother was coming out the door now, moving awfully fast for someone with a nasty cold.

Corrie cranked the key again, pumping the pedal desperately.

“Corrie—!!”

This time the engine caught and she screeched down the gravel lane of Wyndham Parke Estates, laying a spume of smoke, dust, and dancing pebbles in her wake.

Forty-Four

Marjorie Lane, executive receptionist for the ABX Corporation, was becoming increasingly agitated by the man in the black suit sitting in her waiting room.

He had been there ninety minutes. That in itself wasn’t unusual, but during that time he had not picked up any of the magazines conveniently laid about; he had not used his cell phone; he had not opened a laptop or done any of the things people usually did while waiting to see Kenneth Boot, the company CEO. In fact, it seemed as if he hadn’t moved at all. His eyes, so strange and silvery, always seemed to be looking out the glass wall of the waiting room across downtown Topeka, toward the green geometry of farms beyond the city’s edge.