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"She told me all this, sitting in the Cherokee. Never cried. But she’s very worried about her brother. He won’t talk to anyone. Their father was killed by Andrew Thomas. Now the mother’s probably dead. And we may not catch this guy, Max."

"But you know it’s Andrew Thomas. I mean, who else would’ve pushed his old girlfriend off that lighthouse?"

"Of course we think it’s him, but the evidence isn’t there yet. The physical description of the perp from that terrified little girl doesn’t really fit Andrew Thomas. We got faint boot prints in the Worthingtons’ backyard. Reports of a gray Impala in the neighborhood on Sunday afternoon. The only promising piece of evidence is a laser pointer we pried out of Ben Worthington’s right hand. CSI lifted a partial and latent prints is checking it out. It’s the only hope we’ve got at this point. And even if it turns out it belongs to Andrew Thomas, we still have to find him, and he’s managed to hide for seven years."

"You gonna be able to detach from this? I mean, how long till I have my wife back? I can’t go for a week without you—"

"He murdered an entire family, Max. Children, you know? Tore up the parents something fierce. Since before we got married, my period has started every twenty-eight days between two and five o’clock in the afternoon. My body’s an atomic clock, and right now, I’m two days late. This didn’t even happen when Papaw died."

Max rolled over on top of Vi, held her face between his palms.

"I know what would take your mind off this," he whispered, planting delicate kisses along her eyebrows. "Wanna play?"

He had the long lean body of a runner and it fit perfectly between her legs. She sensed him swelling against her through his nylon pants, felt lewd for wanting him while the slaughter of the Worthingtons consumed her.

"I still have the smell of that family in my nose," she said. "How can you even—"

Max slid her sweatpants below her knees, kissed her inner thigh, and moved up slowly with his tongue.

"You just tell me when to stop," he said, "and I’ll go get your dinner."

He went back to work. She did not tell him to stop.

26

ON Halloween I flew into Rock Springs, Wyoming, rented a car, and by sunset was cruising north up Highway 191 into the unending bleakness of the high desert plain.

At dusk I pulled over at an abandoned gas station in Farson where 28 crosses 191 and runs northeast around the southern terminus of the Wind River Mountains for seventy miles to the city of Lander, my destination. Stepping out of the car, I walked across broken faded pavement into the middle of 191 and gazed north and west into the evening redness.

I wondered if my brother’s cabin still stood in this wasted country. Just thirty miles north I imagined I could feel it, a dark presence on the horizon exhuming memories I would not acknowledge. The wind was calm, the highway empty. The silence and loneliness of the desert bore down on me, matching my spirit.

At an elevation of 7,550 feet I crested South Pass. Through the driver side window I could see the lavender foothills of the Winds. When I swallowed my ears popped.

The highway descended at a gentle grade. A brown sign informed me that I was now in grizzly bear country.

The moon came up, lit the hills.

I drove through downtown Lander, a small town that in the summer months served as a port of entry to the eastside of the Winds. But now that the range was snowmantled and inaccessible most businesses had closed for the winter leaving the streets of Lander forlorn and listless.

Brawley’s Self-Storage Co. was located off 287, two miles north of town. I pulled up to the gate several minutes past eight o’clock and punched in the access code. The facility was dark and deserted. As I entered and the gate rolled shut behind me, I recalled the last time I’d come here, after fleeing the cabin seven years back, in that state of shock and dread. At the time I didn’t think I’d last through Christmas. My life was over in every way imaginable and the first