The Burying Place

'We want to know what he was doing there,' Stride said.

'You won't be happy until you bring him down, will you? Dr Glenn would never do something like that. He couldn't.'

'He's acting like he has something to hide. I think you know what it is.'

'Me? How would I know?'

'You know Dr Glenn. You knew Regan Conrad. You were in the house when Callie disappeared.'

'So what? I hadn't talked to Nurse Regan in months. I've told you all that before. Why can't you leave me alone?' Micki went back to stirring the rice with angry swirls of a wooden spoon.

'If you know anything about Dr Glenn and Regan Conrad, you really need to tell me,' Stride said. 'I understand you feel gratitude for what he did to help you, but if he was involved in these crimes—'

'He wasn't,' she snapped.

'Regan Conrad thought he was.'

Micki looked up from the stove. The steam from the pan raised a moist glow on her forehead, and she wiped herself with a towel. 'Why do you think that?'

'Regan contacted Valerie Glenn. She told her that Dr Glenn was involved in Callie's disappearance.'

'How would she know?' Micki asked.

'I don't know, but now Regan is dead, so she'll never have a chance to tell us.'

'She was wrong.'

'How can you be sure?'

'I know Dr Glenn,' she insisted. 'He would never have deliberately harmed his child. Never. Whatever happened, it was something else.'

'Deliberately?' Stride asked. 'Do you think it was an accident?'

'You're twisting my words. I'm telling you, he's innocent.'

'Migdalia,' a raspy voice called from the other side of the trailer.

Stride saw Micki's mother pointing an index finger at her daughter. The oxygen mask that had been draped across her face was clenched tightly in her fist. She inhaled and coughed raggedly and then, dragging in another breath, she spat out words in Spanish. 'Migdalia, digale:

Micki slapped the spoon down and shoved the frying pan off the heat. 'Mama, callate. No te metas:

'Si no le dices, le estas dando tu espalda a Jesus.'

Her mother blinked and put the mask back over her face. Her chest heaved as she sucked in air.

'No lo voy a traicionar,' Micki retorted, stamping her foot on the metal floor.

Her mother waved a hand at Micki insistently, and her face paled with the effort. She spoke again behind the mask with strained, muffled words. 'Digale.'

Micki folded her hands over her chest. She kicked a beer can on the floor of the trailer and muttered under her breath.

'What did she say?' Stride asked.

'She said I should stay out of this,' Micki retorted loudly, eyeing her mother. 'She said nothing good ever comes from talking to the police.'

'Maybe I should ask her myself,' Stride said.

'Leave my mama alone! You see how she is. She has no strength. I don't want you putting her in the middle of this.'

'Is she involved?'

'Of course not,' Micki snapped. She pushed past Stride and sat down in a metal folding chair. She laced her hands tightly together and stared at her feet. Her left leg twitched. 'Why don't you just go?' she told him.

Stride squatted beside her. 'Think about Callie. You felt something for that little girl, didn't you? You took care of her.'

'She was an angel,' Micki said with a little smile.

Stride nodded. 'Imagine if your own baby had disappeared and you never knew what happened to her. Imagine how desperate you would feel. If you know something, Micki, you simply can't remain silent. Callie deserves better than that.'

'Dr Glenn didn't harm her,' Micki repeated.

'Then what is he hiding? Why was he in Regan Conrad's house?'

Micki shrugged. She got out of the chair and turned her back on Stride. She walked to the recliner in front of the television and used the remote control to shut it off. She stroked her mother's hair. The two women didn't speak to each other, but as Stride watched, Micki's mother reached out and clutched her daughter's wrist in her thick fingers. Micki's lower lip bulged as if she was about to cry. She separated herself gently from her mother's grip and bent down behind the recliner. Her mother watched her. When Micki stood up, she held a cardboard shoe box in her hands.

Stride waited, saying nothing.

Micki sat down again with the box in her lap. She covered the lid with her forearms and stared at the trailer door.

'I was late coming home that night,' she said. 'Mama was worried.'

'The night Callie disappeared?'

Micki nodded. 'She kept looking out the window for me.'

'What did she see?' Stride asked.

'A light,' Micki said. 'She saw a light in the woods near the cemetery. Someone was out there.'

'When was this?'

'Somewhere around midnight. She told me about it on Saturday, and all I could think about was how people bury things out there. And I thought, you know, that Dr Glenn's family is buried here. He comes to see his mama a lot. So I went to look.'

'What did you find?' Stride asked.

Micki hugged the box in her lap and didn't say anything.

'Please,' Stride urged her. 'What did you find?'

She peeled the lid off the box. Inside, Stride saw an odd mix of memorabilia crammed together. Dirty plastic flowers. Dog collars with rhinestones. Wrinkled, faded photographs.

'This is my collection,' Micki said. 'People leave things behind at the graves. And in the woods, too. I keep them. I like to think I can feel a little of the love, you know? It's silly, but I can spend hours this way.'

'Did you find something in the woods?' Stride asked. 'Near where your mother saw the light that night?'

Micki reached into the box and pulled out a small toy, a rolled-up paper horn with a plastic mouthpiece. Stride recognized it. It was the kind of blow horn that revelers used on New Year's Eve. 'I found this in a little clearing,' she said.

'Do you realize what this means?' Stride asked. 'Callie was a New Year's baby.'

'Yeah, I know.'

'Did you find anything else?'

Micki nodded. 'Someone tried to cover it up, but I could tell from the ground when I kicked the leaves away. Something was buried there.'

Chapter Thirty-eight

Maggie saw Kasey's eyes dart with fear as the young cop got out of her car. Her body was caught in the cross-section of headlights from the squad cars parked in the fields around Regan's house. Kasey squinted and held up her hand with her fingers spread as she passed through the gauntlet of lights.

'What's going on?' she asked. 'What do you want?'

'He struck again,' Maggie told her.

Kasey shivered and pulled her coat tighter around her body. 'Who is it?'

'The house belongs to a nurse named Regan Conrad.'

'A nurse? Isn't she the one Serena was talking about at dinner yesterday? The one connected to the baby case in Grand Rapids?'

Maggie nodded.

'So why'd you want me here?'

Maggie frowned. 'I have to show you something. It ain't pretty, Kasey.'

Kasey put her hands in her pockets. 'I know I'm a cop, but I'm not awfully good with dead bodies, you know? It doesn’t come up a lot on my beat.'

'There's no body.'

Kasey cocked her head. 'What?'

'No body, just a lot of blood. He took the body with him the way he did with the other women.'

'No body?' she repeated. 'How do you know it's Regan? How do you know she's dead?'

'We won't know for certain until we run tests, but no one has seen her today. As for being dead, you don't lose that much blood and tissue and stay alive. Looks like she took a shotgun shell to the head.'

Kasey looked flustered. 'What do you need to show me?'