The Burying Place

'I'm not confirming a search at the cemetery,' Stride told her.

'Right, you have to talk to Valerie first and give her the bad news. I get it. But I'm going on the air about the search.'

'I told you, I'm not confirming that any search is planned.'

'You say no, but Craig Hickey says yes, and my money's on Craig.'

'Who the hell is he?' Stride asked.

Blair shrugged. 'You'll find out soon enough, so what the hell. Craig has a spread near Cohasset, and I dated his son Terry for a couple years in high school. I still bum around with Terry sometimes. Remember, Lieutenant, this is my town. I know everybody.'

'So?'

'So Denise Sheridan called Craig, and Craig called Terry, and Terry called me. That's just the way things work around here. You see, Craig is the go-to guy on the Range when the police need dogs. Rescue dogs. Bomb-sniffing dogs. Drug-sniffing dogs.' She got on tiptoes and whispered, 'Or cadaver dogs.'

Chapter Thirty-nine

Stride hadn't spent much time with Valerie Glenn, but he knew that she was the kind of woman that men wanted to rescue. He talked to Valerie in her kitchen, where she used a gleaming chef's knife to dice a yellow onion on a cutting board. Her eyes were hooded as she looked down, following her work, but every so often she froze and glanced through the window at the pitch-black night. Then, with nothing more than a flick of her blue eyes, she would let her gaze fall on Stride as if to say: it's dark out. There are monsters. Protect me.

The onion brought tears to his eyes, but Valerie seemed unaffected. She cut it with precision, as if one cube larger than another would destroy the orderliness of what she was doing. He thought he understood her. She was a woman of walls, like Serena, but unlike Serena, she was desperate for someone to break them down.

'You're not saying much, Lieutenant,' Valerie told him. 'When people avoid telling me things, I'm afraid it's because they have bad news to share.' She stopped what she was doing, and her broken eyes pierced him again. 'Is it bad news?'

'It's too early to tell,' he said, stalling.

He gave bad news all the time, but he was reluctant to destroy this woman, and that was what he had to do. The toy horn was in his pocket. He had to show it to her, and he knew what it would mean when he did. Her hope would be shredded. Her prayers would have been met with silence. For all her calm, she was balanced on a precipice.

'I already know about what happened to Regan Conrad,' she said. 'I won't pretend I'm upset.'

'I understand.'

'Where is Marcus?' she asked.

'We're still questioning him.'

She performed another even stroke with the blade. 'He was in her house?'

'Yes, he was going through her medical files,' Stride said.

'But Denise says you don't believe he killed her.'

'Whatever happened in Regan's bedroom took place overnight. Was Marcus here?'

'Yes.'

'Then he didn't kill her.' Stride added, 'I was wondering if you had any idea what your husband was looking for in Regan's files.'

He watched her hand stutter, and the point of the knife stabbed her finger and drew a drop of blood. She winced and put the tip of the finger in her mouth and sucked on it. When she took it out, a red trail of blood reappeared.

'Are you all right?' he asked.

'I'm fine. I'm not normally careless.' She ran cold water over her finger in the sink and then unwrapped a small bandage from the cabinet.

'You didn't answer my question,' he said.

'I'm sorry. No. I can't imagine what Marcus would have been looking for.'

She was a bad liar. She knew what Marcus was looking for, but she wasn't going to admit what it was. Stride looked at her in a way that said they both knew she was lying, but she simply picked up the knife and resumed her work. This time, a single tear dripped from her eye, and he didn't know if it was the onion or her sense of impending grief.

'I have to show you something,' he told her.

'Oh?' Her demeanor had cracks, as if she were about to split apart.

He reached into the inner pocket of his coat and withdrew a plastic bag, where he had preserved the powder-blue toy that Micki had found in the forest. He dangled the bag in his hand, close enough for Valerie to see. 'Do you recognize this?'

She leaned forward, confused. 'What's that?'

Then she saw. She understood. The warm blush on her face turned white. She reached out to take the bag, but Stride pulled it away. 'I'm sorry.'

'Where did you get that?' she asked.

'Do you recognize it?'

One tear became many. 'They had those toys at the hospital that night.'

'When Callie was born?'

Valerie didn't reply. She walked away in a daze and ran the water again, letting it flow over the knife blade to clean it. She used a new sponge to rub the shiny surface and then wiped it dry with a towel. She laid the knife next to the wooden block, leaving the single slot empty. The onion sat on the cutting board in a mountain of perfect, tiny cubes. She walked away from the kitchen island and sat down in a chair beside the elegant glass dinette table.

'Mrs Glenn?' he persisted in a quiet voice.

'I told Serena that I was tired and in pain for much of the night,' she said. 'I didn't have any sense of time. I was alone a lot, waiting. I remember the noise of the horns waking me up. It was midnight. People were in the hall, and everyone was laughing, and they were kissing each other. A nurse came in to wish me happy New Year, and she put one of the toy horns on the tray near my bed.'

'The horn she gave you, was it blue like this one?'

'I don't remember. I think so. Where did you find it?'

'Micki Vega says she found it in the woods near the Sago Cemetery. On the night Callie disappeared, her mother saw someone in the forest.'

Valerie wrapped her hands around herself and rocked in the chair. 'Oh my God.'

'I'm afraid we have to search the cemetery.'

'Search?' she asked, dazed.

'We have to see if someone buried something in the woods where the toy horn was found.'

'Callie,' Valerie moaned.

'Please don't assume the worst. It may mean nothing at all.'

She covered her mouth with her hands and didn't say anything. The pull of her despair made him want to go to her and wrap her up in his arms. Stiffly, like a soldier, he stayed where he was, letting her suffer alone.

'I have to ask you a few more questions,' he said.

Valerie's empty stare didn't change. She didn't react.

'Did you bring a toy like this home with you from the hospital?'

She spoke through her hands. 'I wanted to.' She wiped her eyes and slowly put her hands in her lap. 'I thought we should keep it. Save it. It was like a symbol of what that night meant to me. A new year. A new baby. A new lease on life. But it wasn't with the things we brought home from the hospital.'

'What happened to it?'

'I gave it to Marcus. I asked him to make sure we didn't lose it.'

'Did you ask him about it?'

'Yes. It was weeks later. There was so much to do with Callie being home, and she needed so much, and I was always so tired. I didn't have a chance to catch my breath for the first month. Then I started gathering up the keepsakes from her birth, and that was when I realized the little toy was missing.'

'What did Marcus say?'

Valerie shook her head. 'He told me he threw it away.'

Chapter Forty