“I wish it were just a matter of merit,” I said. “But Hennepin County pays me to investigate cases where the law has been broken within its borders. That’s not the situation here. Look, I’ll talk to the PIs I know, see if one of them won’t take you pro bono. Maybe-”

A rustling from beyond us, the front of the house, made Marlinchen look up. Three boys, loaded down with backpacks, trooped into the kitchen. Their idle conversation stopped short when they saw me with their sister.

None was blond like Marlinchen; they had Hugh’s brown hair. The youngest boy’s was quite shaggy, but other than that, they looked well groomed and clean, and obviously healthy.

Marlinchen slid from the stool. “Guys, this is Detective Sarah Pribek,” she said. “I spoke to her the other day, about Aidan. You remember I said I was going into the city to do that.”

One of the boys, a muscular kid in a sleeveless T-shirt, spoke. “I thought that-”

“We can talk about it later,” Marlinchen said. She carried on with introductions. “Sarah, this is Liam, he’s 16,” the tallest boy, thin, with longish, slightly darker hair and wire-rim glasses, “and Colm, he’s 14,” the well-built boy who’d spoken, “and the little guy is Donal, 11.” Donal was the shaggy-haired one; underneath the mop his face was unformed, like children’s often are.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” I said, “but I really should get going. I’ve got to be at work.” To Marlinchen I said, “I’ll make those phone calls I mentioned, tonight or tomorrow, and get back to you with a referral.”

It wasn’t going to be an easy sell, I thought, but maybe I could catch one of the PIs I knew in a generous mood.

Marlinchen nodded. “Let me walk you out,” she said.

Outside on the deck, she turned earnest again. “Detective Pribek, you’re not going to report us, right?” she asked. “To Family Services?”

“I’m legally required to, Marlinchen,” I said.

Her shoulders dropped infinitesimally, and she looked away from me, toward the lake.

I didn’t know why she felt the way she did, as if she and her brothers were being sentenced to an orphanage of times past, with high Gothic gates and meals of thin gruel. But suddenly I saw myself through her eyes and didn’t like what I saw. I’d come in here and seen evidence of her careful housekeeping and her cooking and the obvious love she had for her younger brothers, and sorry, it wasn’t good enough and I’m reporting you to the county and by the way, I don’t care where your brother is. You want to find him, pay up.

“Look,” I said, relenting, “maybe I could help you out a little with Aidan.”

“Really?” she said.

“You said you’ve only got school until noon, right? Why don’t I come out tomorrow around one, and we can talk about this some more.”

To say that Marlinchen Hennessy smiled didn’t quite do it justice. Throughout our short acquaintance, she’d never made more than a small smile of greeting. I wasn’t prepared for the sight of her natural happiness; it was brilliant as the first fire-blossom of a lit match. The thought of getting more involved with the Hennessys wasn’t entirely appealing, but it was touching to see how much an offer of help meant to Marlinchen.

I gave her my card. “Both cell and pager are on there,” I said. “In case you have a schedule conflict, or something.”

“I won’t,” she said.

As soon as I was back in the car, I groped in my shoulder bag for the aspirin bottle. It wasn’t there.

It’s in the trash can in your bathroom, genius, where you threw it this morning after taking the last of the aspirin. You were going to pick up some more, remember?

The readout on my cell phone said it was 3:45. Even without a stop at a convenience store, I’d be late for work.

I backed the Nova around in a three-quarter circle and accelerated down the Hennessys’ long driveway. Someone at work would have a couple of painkillers I could score.

“Lieutenant Prewitt is looking for you,” Tyesha said, as soon as I came in.

“I’m only five minutes- oh, hell.” I’d forgotten all about Prewitt’s request that I come in early. “Is he in his office?”

He was, but we didn’t stay there. When I entered, Prewitt rose from behind his desk. “Detective Pribek,” he said. “Come on down to the conference room.”

“Sure,” I said.

He didn’t mention that I was thirty-five minutes late for whatever this appointment was, but obviously he knew it. It was too late for me to ask for another five minutes to score some aspirin off a co-worker.

“I’m really just making introductions here,” Prewitt said, and opened the door to our conference room. As we entered, the man sitting at the long table inside got to his feet.

My surprise distracted me from the pain in my ear. It was the stranger who I’d seen twice now: first watching me on my vice detail, then with Kilander on the street corner. Up close, he had a lean, tired face, yet a fairly young one too, despite the threads of gray at his temples. I didn’t revise my estimate of his age: about 35.

“Detective Sarah Pribek,” Prewitt said, “this is Gray Diaz, from the Faribault County district attorney’s office.”

Faribault County . Blue Earth.

Diaz came out from around his chair and offered me his hand. “Detective Pribek,” he said.

“Pleased to meet you,” I said.

He let go of my hand and nodded to Prewitt. “Thanks, Will,” he said. Prewitt withdrew.

“Please, have a seat,” Diaz said.

We did. I hoped, but doubted, that I looked better than I felt.

“Are you a prosecutor?” I asked.

“I’m a DA’s investigator,” Diaz said. “I’ve been with Faribault County for about six weeks.”

“Do you like it down there?” I asked.

“Well, it’s fairly quiet,” Diaz said. “That’s why I started reading some old files.”

A little drop of sweat crawled between my shoulder blades, down toward the small of my back.

Diaz set a thick manila folder on the table before him. “This is a case that was forwarded to our office about three months ago, before I came on board. It was a joint investigation by the Sheriff’s and Fire departments,” he said.

“Royce Stewart,” I said. There was no point in waiting for him to say the name.

“Yes,” he said, and there might have been a faint note of surprise in his voice at my forthrightness. “The file definitely caught my attention. Naturally, given your familiarity with the people and events in the case, I wanted to talk to you.” He tapped a fingernail against the file. “I thought we could start by just reviewing the known facts. You can correct me if you think I’ve got anything wrong.”

Diaz opened his file and ran down Royce Stewart’s life in the dry, telegrammatic fragments of an official record.

“Royce Stewart was 25 years old at the time of his death,” he began. “Lived most of his life in Faribault County, arrests and convictions there for indecent exposure and lewd conduct; a juvenile arrest for looking in the windows of a woman’s home late at night, charges dropped. At 24, he moved to the Twin Cities, where he had a conviction for DWI, and much more significant, was arrested and charged with the rape and murder of Kamareia Brown, the daughter of Detective Genevieve Brown of the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Department. Your partner.” Diaz paused, sipping from a glass of water at his side. “The case was dismissed for technical reasons, and Stewart returned to Blue Earth.

“In October, firefighters are called out to the property on which Stewart lived. The outbuilding that he lived in is ablaze, and his body is found in it the next day.” Diaz turned a page, although I was sure the details of the case were already locked into his memory. “A little over eight hours after the fire, former MPD detective Michael Shiloh turns himself in to police in Mason City, Iowa, and confesses to Stewart’s murder. The strange thing is that Shiloh asserts he killed Stewart a week earlier, by running him down in a stolen truck on the highway outside Blue Earth.