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  Elizabeth turned a page in her notebook. “You say you know Sean Wrentmore’s dead. How? And what happened to the body?”

  “Buried in the woods,” Loogan said. “Look, there are a few more things. I can save you some time on Wrentmore. He lived in a condo on Carpenter Road.” He recited the address for her. “He also rented a storage unit, at a place called Self-Storage USA. I think he kept something important there. Unit 401. He gave his neighbor a key and told her that if anything ever happened to him she should go there. The neighbor’s name is Delia Ross. She and I drove out to the storage place on Saturday, but whatever Wrentmore kept there was gone by then. It would be interesting to know if anyone else has gone to that unit recently.”

  Elizabeth tapped her pen against the page. “Did Tom Kristoll bury Sean Wrentmore’s body?”

  “Didn’t I already say that?”

  “Not exactly. Did you help Tom bury the body?”

  His silence stretched so long that she thought he had put down the phone.

  “That’s a question I’d rather not answer,” he said finally.

  “Mr. Loogan, I need to know where to find Sean Wrentmore’s body.”

  “I liked it better when you called me David,” he said. “Look at it from my perspective. If I helped Tom bury the body, I may be the only one alive who knows where it is. That gives me a certain advantage. A certain leverage.”

  “Listen,” she said. “The story you’ve told me is outlandish. This Wrentmore was killed over a manuscript. Without a body, I don’t know how I’ll get anyone to take it seriously.”

  “I’ve said all I’m going to say for now. I think they’ll take it seriously.”

  “I don’t know why I should take it seriously.”

  “Because you believe me.”

  “I haven’t said so. Not about this.”

  “You believe me, and you want to find out who killed Tom,” he said, as if the matter were decided. “I’ve got to go. You’ll do what you think is best.”

  She tried to come up with something that would keep him on the phone. 1

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  “David—” she began.

  But the line had already gone dead.

  Her phone rang again as she drove to the end of Loogan’s block, heading for City Hall. She heard Sarah’s voice when she answered.

  “Hi, Mom. Did he call you?”

  Though she knew what the answer would be, she asked, “Did who call me?”

  “David. He called here a while ago, looking for you. I gave him your cell. He said he didn’t stab that man.”

  Elizabeth drove past lines of bare trees. “He said the same thing to me. I think it’s probably true.”

  “Well, no kidding,” Sarah said. “He’s an editor. He knows how to juggle. It’s not like he’s dangerous or anything.”

  Elizabeth didn’t have to convince anyone to take Sean Wrentmore’s death seriously. Loogan had been right about that.

  She arrived at City Hall to find that Laura Kristoll had just left. She and her lawyer, Rex Chatterjee, had met with Owen McCaleb in his office. The purpose of their visit was to deliver a brief statement—three pages, singlespaced. Elizabeth found a copy waiting on her desk. It was Laura Kristoll’s description of the circumstances of Wrentmore’s death, as they had been related to her by her husband.

  Carter Shan had sat in on the meeting. He told Elizabeth all about it. “I asked her why she didn’t come in sooner,” he said. “But Chatterjee wouldn’t let her answer. He said any further questions should be submitted to his office. Apparently we’re supposed to be grateful that she came in at all. We’re not supposed to notice that she’s been withholding knowledge of a homicide for nearly a month.”

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  Elizabeth thought she understood why Laura had decided to make a statement now. Loogan must have warned her that he intended to talk about Sean Wrentmore.

  Shan nodded toward McCaleb’s office. “The chief ’s on the phone with the county prosecutor,” he said. “Chatterjee’s attitude ticked him off. He wants to see if any charges can be brought against Laura Kristoll.”

  A moment later, McCaleb appeared at his office door and summoned Elizabeth and Shan inside. He shook his head wearily when Shan asked him about his conversation with the prosecutor.

  “He wants us to treat Laura Kristoll gently,” McCaleb said. “He thinks she’s suffered enough already, given the death of her husband.” He scowled.

  “He won’t admit it, but I think Chatterjee already talked to him. The two of them went to the same law school.”

  As he sank into the chair behind his desk, Elizabeth began to tell him about the phone call she had received from David Loogan. She passed along Loogan’s version of what had happened at his house the night before. She saved the part about the blackmail letter for last.

  “So someone was blackmailing Tom Kristoll,” McCaleb said. “Someone who knew Sean Wrentmore was dead.”

  “Apparently.”

  Shan picked up the pages of Laura Kristoll’s statement from McCaleb’s desk. “There’s nothing in here about blackmail,” he said.

  “No,” McCaleb said mildly. “Mrs. Kristoll neglected to mention it.”

  “Do we think it’s possible she didn’t know?”

  “It’s possible,” said McCaleb. “We’ll have to ask her.”

  Pointedly, Elizabeth said, “Are we allowed to ask her?”

  McCaleb gave her a bitter smile. “We’ll ask her gently, through her lawyer. In the meantime, we’ll act on the information we’ve been given. Let’s see what we can find out about Sean Wrentmore.”

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  The bedroom of Wrentmore’s condominium had a set of vertical blinds along one wall. The blinds covered a sliding glass door opening onto a rectangle of cement that served as a patio. Elizabeth stepped out onto the cement. The sun had set and the grass beyond the edge of the patio looked sickly in the dark. A few pine trees made a broken row at the border of Wrentmore’s yard. Beyond those trees, the ground sloped down to the parking lot of a franchise restaurant. The sign above the restaurant’s entrance was a bright half-circle, like an enormous moon hanging low in the sky. Elizabeth was beginning to form an image of Sean Wrentmore. This was his view, the circumscribed world he lived in. Sitting at the desk in his bedroom, he would have looked out at that artificial half-moon, the same every night.

  He had been thirty-two years old, quiet, disciplined, slightly eccentric. Elizabeth had interviewed his neighbor, Delia Ross, and these were the words the woman had used to describe him. The photograph on his old college ID showed a plain, lean face, blond hair, eyes that seemed determined to stare down the camera. According to Laura Kristoll’s statement, Wrentmore had owned a laptop computer. Tom Kristoll had taken it and disposed of it after Wrentmore’s death. A laptop would have allowed Wrentmore the freedom to write anywhere, out in public or in any room of the house, but Elizabeth imagined him sitting at his desk, facing off against a white screen night after night. And when he rose from his desk, he would wander to the other rooms. He would look around his walls and see strangers in black-and-white photographs, people from Third World countries, their expressions intense, their eyes, like Wrentmore’s, staring down the camera. He would see their faces, not the faces of family members or friends. There were no snapshots that Elizabeth could find, no photographs of old girlfriends tucked away. No evidence that any woman had ever entered Wrentmore’s home. But Wrentmore had not been completely solitary. He had turned outward and had found Delia Ross. He had given her his manuscript to read, b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  and he had shared with her an odd secret. He had given her a key to a padlock.

  The next morning Elizabeth dr
ove out to Sean Wrentmore’s storage unit: number 401 at Self-Storage USA. Carter Shan accompanied her and when the metal door rolled up they looked together on Wrentmore’s sad belongings. Boxes of books and girlie magazines, scraps of furniture not worth keeping.

  Under a cloud-gray sky they crunched across the gravel lane to a tiny rental office. The attendant on duty was a muscular young man in his twenties, tattoos covering his arms and curling around his neck from under his collar. He leaned his thick forearms on a Formica counter and studied Wrentmore’s photograph.

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him before,” he said. “Are you really cops?”

  His face was animated, his voice enthusiastic.

  “We’re really cops,” Shan told him.

  “So if I tell you what I know about this guy—Sean Wrentmore of unit 401—that makes me a solid citizen, right?”

  Shan nodded. “Sure.”

  “It earns me credit,” the attendant said with a sly grin. “Like if I ran a red light, you’d cut me some slack.”

  “We’d let you off with a warning,” Elizabeth said.

  “Awesome,” the attendant said. “Get ready to be dazzled then, because I’m going to tell you everything I know about Sean Wrentmore. Starting at the beginning.” He turned to the computer on the counter beside him and tapped at the keyboard. “Sean Wrentmore has had unit 401 for fi ve years now. Since before my time.”

  “How long have you worked here?” asked Shan.

  “About two years. But like I said, I’ve seen him around. I talked to him once. We have the same tattoo.” The attendant raised his left arm to show them a series of linked rings, drawn in black ink, that circled his wrist. “He 1

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  showed me his, asked me where I got mine. That, I’m afraid, was the extent of my conversation with Sean Wrentmore.”

  Elizabeth exchanged a weary look with Shan. “We’re not dazzled,”

  she said.

  The attendant’s grin returned. “I’m not finished. I haven’t told you about the girl.”

  “What girl?” Shan asked.

  “The girl from unit 401. She came here two or three weeks ago. Drove up in a Chevrolet—gray, or light green. Parked in front of 401. Rolled the door up. She was in there for a while. I wandered over. It was a slow day. Besides, she was a hot girl. I thought I might help her out, like if she needed to load something in her car.”

  “And did you—help her out?”

  “I lifted a box for her, put it in her trunk. That’s all she ended up taking. It was heavy, one of those fireproof file boxes.”

  “Did you see what was in it?”

  “I didn’t see inside,” the attendant said. “But I think she had it open before I came around. There was a key in the lock.” He braced himself against the counter and lowered his voice a notch. “Now I’d like to be able to tell you I got her name and number, and Lord knows I tried. But the number she gave me, when I called it, turned out to be a Chinese restaurant. The name is probably a dud too. Mary-Louise.”

  The name caught Elizabeth’s attention. She thought of the letter Loogan had described—the letter signed M. L. Black.

  “What did she look like?”

  “Hot, like I said. Tall, but not too tall. Maybe twenty-four years old. Her nose wasn’t quite straight, but who cares? Great skin. Long hair—not quite red and not quite brown.”

  “Auburn,” Elizabeth said softly.

  Shan turned to her. “It’s Valerie Calnero. What does Valerie Calnero have to do with Sean Wrentmore?”

  Elizabeth closed the cover of her notebook. “Let’s go ask her.”

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  “So that’s good, right?” the attendant said eagerly. “That earns me some credit.”

  “It does,” Elizabeth said. “You’ve been a big help. We appreciate it.” She turned away from the counter. Shan was already at the door.

  “Cool,” said the attendant. “But where are you going? I haven’t covered everything.”

  She stopped and turned back. “What do you mean?”

  “I still have to tell you about the guy I talked to yesterday. You’re not the only ones interested in unit 401.”

  Chapter 25

  From where he had parked on the street, David Loogan had a clear view of a modest apartment building: three stories, glass doors at the entryway, bricks the color of sand. He watched Valerie Calnero walk down the steps with a small suitcase in one hand and a garment bag over her shoulder. She took these to a light green Chevrolet parked in the horseshoe drive in front of the building, where they joined the items she had already stowed away—more suitcases, cardboard boxes, a wicker laundry basket full of books.

  It was Wednesday morning. He would have gone to her sooner, but he’d had some trouble finding her. Her address was not in the phone book. It was on the Gray Streets list, but he had left the list behind at his house. He had it now, folded and tucked away in his glove compartment. He had retrieved it earlier in the morning—a calculated risk, based on the assumption that the police, with all they had to do, wouldn’t keep someone stationed at his house.

  Still, he had been cautious. He had parked around the block, walked through an alley, climbed the low chain-link fence that enclosed the backyard. Entered through the back door that opened into the utility room behind the kitchen. The Gray Streets list was in the office, among the papers in the deep drawer of the desk.

  With the list in hand he risked a detour upstairs. There was a guitar in a solid black case in the spare bedroom. He remembered seeing it when he first moved into the house. The guitar itself was glossy and unworn, as if it had never been played. Loogan left it in the bedroom. He took the case. Valerie Calnero slammed the trunk of her car and headed back into the b a d t h i n g s h a p p e n

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  building. Loogan watched her through his windshield, a slim figure in a lightweight, tapered jacket and blue jeans. He got out of his car, grabbed the guitar case from the backseat, and jogged to the horseshoe drive, up the steps. The entrance door was wedged open with a folded newspaper. The hallway on the second fl oor was deserted. Valerie lived in number 203. Loogan had a moment of doubt as he reached for the doorknob. If you were loading a car, going in and out repeatedly, you might leave the lock disengaged. Then again, you might not.

  The knob turned. Loogan opened the door an inch, held it with his foot. Laying the guitar case against the hallway wall, he worked the snaps, opened the lid. Sean Wrentmore’s shotgun was inside.

  Loogan still had the key to Wrentmore’s condo. He had picked up the gun there the day before.

  Passing through the foyer of Valerie’s apartment, Loogan kept the shotgun aimed at the floor. The door closed behind him. The rooms looked abandoned. The furniture remained, but there were open cupboards, empty cardboard boxes. On the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room stood a plastic pet carrier. A gray and white cat peered out at Loogan from behind the carrier’s wire door. It whined at him softly. There was a purse on the counter too, and, on the fl oor below, a briefcase and several small travel bags piled together—and a fireproof file box, the size of an ottoman, with a key resting in its lock. Down a short hallway Loogan heard water running, a door opening. Valerie stepped into the hall, froze when she saw him. He knelt by the fi le box, turned the key, opened it. There was nothing inside. Valerie stepped closer. “Mr. Loogan,” she said.

  He drew himself up. “Miss Calnero.”

  “You can take the box if you want,” she said. “You’ll save me the trouble of getting rid of it.”

  She regarded him coolly. Eyes remote behind glasses with black plastic frames, auburn hair drawn tight in a ponytail.

  Loogan thought, just then, of something Michael Beccanti had said to 1

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  him. Some people, you break in
to their house, they get hysterical. Valerie Calnero wasn’t one of them. He matched her bland tone. “Will you sit with me for a minute?”

  “I’m pressed for time,” she said.

  The barrel of the shotgun swayed like a pendulum at Loogan’s side. With his free hand he waved her into the living room. “It shouldn’t take long.”

  He stepped back so she could pass, and she waded through empty cardboard boxes and bubble wrap and settled onto the sofa. Loogan took a chair.

  “I know what you want,” she said. “I can’t help you.”

  A single line of worry appeared in her smooth brow. Loogan studied it.

  “I think you can,” he said. “You can tell me about the box. I know it came from Sean Wrentmore’s storage unit. You can tell me what was in it. And what it has to do with Tom’s death.”

  She looked at him sidelong. “Does it have something to do with Tom’s death?”

  “You were blackmailing Tom about Sean. The two things can’t be entirely unrelated.”

  “Do you think I wrestled Tom out his office window, Mr. Loogan?”

  “I think you know who did. Or you have suspicions.”

  “And if I did—have suspicions—why would I share them with you?”

  He made a point of not looking at the shotgun that lay across the arms of his chair. “Because you want to leave,” he said, “and I can’t let you leave until you tell me what you know.”

  “Suppose I told you Sean was a friend of mine,” she said. “He let me keep some things in his storage unit. Keepsakes. Chapters from my dissertation. When I was a child, my grandmother’s house burned down. I’m paranoid about losing things in a fire.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “But it’s not a bad story, and the part about my grandmother’s house is true.”

  “I don’t think the police would be convinced.”

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  “They may never get a chance to ask. I intend to be out of their jurisdiction soon.”

  Loogan crossed one leg over the other, resting his ankle on his knee. The barrel of the shotgun fell across the instep of his shoe. He said, “Do you think that’s smart, leaving town right now, after all that’s happened? It makes you look guilty.”