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  ‘No.’

  ‘All right. Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Danny went down to see him. He vanished outside and … and that was that.’

  ‘There you go again. That was what?’

  ‘Well, I was on a plane that night to Chicago, it was a big party, a lot of drinks had been taken, I was more concerned with making my flight than, who was that guy? And you know, the gate gives on to the Arboretum, it’s public access there, it could have been anyone.’

  ‘Did you ask?’

  Claire shakes her head.

  ‘I was somewhere between don’t forget to do the lunch boxes and feed the dog and passport-ticket-money, I just forgot about it. If I even registered it as anything.’

  ‘But you don’t think it was just anyone?’

  ‘I saw … I saw Danny look at the guy as if he recognized him. Cowl or no cowl. And now we see, here’s Gene Peterson, he’s dead. So I guess we make the assumption. Or at least, I do.’

  ‘Ms Taylor, is your husband the jealous type?’

  ‘There’s nothing to be jealous of! And no, he’s not the jealous type. He’s not the violent type. I don’t believe he did it, or could have done it. For God’s sake, the idea he would do that to Mr Smith!’

  ‘You’re taking it for granted that the same person who killed Gene Peterson killed your dog.’

  ‘Well. At first, I maybe thought it was some kind of horrible Halloween prank. But that was before a man was killed. And that’s another thing, Gene Peterson’s body wasn’t here last night, so whoever put it there must have done it in the early hours of the morning.’

  ‘You’re sure you didn’t just miss the body?’

  ‘There was a moon – not full, and it was cloudy. But OK, say I did miss the body, say the body was out there. Mr Smith’s body was what I stepped in. He was there, for certain. And now he’s not there any more. So at the very least someone must have moved the dog’s body.’

  Claire says this without a flicker. Nora nods her assent.

  ‘Now there’s absolutely no way Danny is going to kill a man and leave his body in our yard, or bury the body but leave the eviscerated carcass of the dog he loved, then come back the following night when he knows I’m home and secretly dig up the man’s body while burying or otherwise removing Mr Smith. Does that make any sense, Detective Fox?’

  Nora nods again, as if conceding the point, which on the face of it does make considerable sense. The problem is, nothing else about this case does.

  ‘What about you, Claire? You say you made it back from Chicago last night. Presumably you have proof of that.’

  ‘I have a plane ticket. I was on the flight. I stayed at the Allegro Hotel in Chicago. I can show you receipts, I have them somewhere.’

  ‘Detective Fowler will want to see all of your documentation, along with names and numbers of the people you spent time with in the city.’

  ‘You don’t think I killed him? That I could do anything like this?’

  Claire’s voice is suddenly shrill with indignation.

  ‘What we’re trying to do is eliminate all the possibilities, Claire,’ Nora says, turning to her partner.

  ‘Time of death, Ken?’

  ‘The medical examiner was only getting started. But indications are, the body is comfortably post-rigor, so we’re talking thirty-six to forty-eight hours at least. Abdominal swelling is still relatively minor, which would indicate no more than four days on the other side.’

  ‘So, Claire, provided you were where you say you were, that pretty much rules you out. Now, at the risk of repeating ourselves here, your husband’s vanished with your children and all your possessions, he knew your house had been foreclosed against, he hasn’t told you where he’s gone or why. Not a note, not a message. That’s right, isn’t it?’

  Claire nods, unable or unwilling to meet Nora’s eye now. She is fidgeting with a coil of her long auburn hair, teasing it between her fingers, then moving to a silver sleeper, twisting it around in the lobe, then back to the hair. For such a poised, controlled lady, Nora reckons this is Claire’s idea of a freak-out. Let’s see if we can stir the pot.

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense to me,’ Nora snaps. ‘So what are you telling me here?’

  Nora looks up and catches sight of Ken Fowler, briefly: he nods and flashes a wry smile. She acknowledges it, while shrugging it off; she’s still feeling her way; too early to come to any judgements or conclusions.

  ‘I’m telling you the truth,’ Claire says. ‘Isn’t that the easiest thing? Because I would like you to help me.’

  And when Claire looks at Nora Fox, they are both surprised to find that Claire has tears in her eyes.

  ‘All right then,’ Nora says. ‘Tell me about the money, Ms Taylor. Your husband must have been under huge financial pressure.’

  ‘I knew nothing about it,’ Claire says.

  ‘About the foreclosure? Well, that’s clear from your reaction. But modern marriage being what it is, you must have known something of the family finances that led up to it? It can’t simply have come out of the blue. Unless … did your husband like to gamble?’

  ‘We had savings invested with Jonathan Glatt,’ Claire says, lobbing this nugget toward Detective Fowler.

  ‘How much?’ Fowler says immediately, his tone poised unsteadily between professional and inquisitive.

  ‘A low five-figure sum,’ Claire says tightly, the good daughter putting a brave face on it, not about to tell the neighbors the family’s business.

  ‘And that didn’t put you under financial pressure?’ Detective Fox says, her tone skeptical but humane, and Claire shakes her head.

  ‘It was the girls’ college fund, a lot of money. But we have no mortgage on the house. Or at least, that’s what I understood. And Brogan’s …’

  ‘Brogan’s is an institution in this town,’ Nora says, deciding they’ve probably got enough. She is pretty sure Claire has had no idea what has been going on, money-wise.

  ‘I’m sorry. I know it sounds like something from the Olden Days, but Danny takes care of the money side.’

  Rich bitches, Nora thinks by reflex, skinny rich bitches don’t know they’re born. On the other hand, likeliest scenario is, the husband’s gone off the deep end and the kids are in danger. If they’re not dead already. And all the money is long gone. Have to feel sorry for her. Nora stands up.

  ‘As I say, Ms Taylor, it’s the kids we’re most concerned about.’

  Nora nods to Ken, who clears his throat.

  ‘In order for us to get moving on a search for your children, we need you to come downtown with us and file a missing person’s report, Ms Taylor. That way, we can notify our Dane County colleagues, state police and the federal authorities, and make the best start in trying to track them down. If necessary, issue an Amber Alert.’

  Nora Fox is waiting for Claire to respond when Officer Colby appears in the doorway with a large plastic evidence bag. She walks across to him, and he holds the bag out for her to examine; inside, there is a large knife, its blade stained black and red.

  ‘Murder weapon?’ she says.

  ‘Looks like.’

  ‘Sabatier. That’s a pricey knife.’

  ‘European?’

  ‘Sounds like. Open it up so we can all have a look.’

  Colby is wearing protective white paper gloves. He opens the bag and lifts out a knife and holds it out. Claire Taylor makes a sound in her chest, somewhere between a sigh and a gasp. And begins to shake.

  ‘Your husband like to cook, Claire?’ Detective Fox says. ‘Sure he does: Brogan’s Bar and Grill, known for its meat. And you had a barbecue here a week ago, he would have cooked at that for sure – barbecue is a man’s job. So we’d like to know if you think there’s any chance this might be his knife?’

  Ralph’s Book

  1976

  What happened was the Bradberrys were a family had a whole bunch of stories told about them, stories Danny Brogan had heard even before he got to J
efferson Junior High and was put sitting next to Jackie. Nowadays, people would describe their domestic situation as chaotic, and you’d hope they’d be the subject of assorted child protection investigations and have caseworkers on their backs all the time, although given the stories you read almost every day about this murderer and that abuser with precisely the same kind of background, you might be hoping in vain, but in any case, thirty years ago, they seemed to fly under the radar, maybe because they once had money, or the remnants of it. The father was a doctor, and used to be a good one, long as you caught him before lunchtime, but he had been struck off for malpractice (people said he’d misjudged a prescription and killed a man), and the mother was lace-curtain Irish from Chicago, Lincoln Park, with notions about how much she had sacrificed for the man she referred to as a country physician. Maybe she had, although when Danny saw her, whatever looks she might have thought she had were long gone. Maybe it was the drink, because it wasn’t just him, she drank too. A family can just about survive one drunk parent, as Danny well knew; much harder to get past two, especially when the mother seemed to be drinking to spite the father, and all the kids got caught in the crossfire.

  Anyway, there was a Bradberry in every class, and everyone knew they were trouble. One of the elder Bradberrys had been in juvie in Racine for some kind of assault, Danny heard it was rape, back when you were eight and rape was a word like sex or breasts, and you knew it was wrong but it was kind of exciting too, because you didn’t have a clue what it really meant. All the Bradberrys were kind of unkempt, bordering on smelly, and underfed, and they used to fall asleep in class, and they never had the right textbooks or permission slips or milk money, and the brothers were quick to start fights and the sisters wore the year before last’s tattered clothes and ratty hair styles, and were whispered about by the other girls, and like their brothers, they were quick to bully and to fight.

  After his first day, when Danny was put up the front of the class sitting next to Jackie Bradberry, instead of down the back beside Dave Ricks, Danny and Dave forever, and behind Gene Peterson and Ralph Cowley, which is where he had sat all the way through elementary school, Danny came home and complained to his mom about how Jackie Bradberry was kind of dumb, and his fingernails were filthy and he couldn’t do multiplication, and his mom just said it was a shame, what had happened to that Bradberry family, and there but for the grace of God, and Danny should make an extra special attempt to be nice to little Jackie, for her sake, and Danny saw how sad his mom looked and thought of laying awake at night listening to his dad yelling at her and he resolved to be Jackie Bradberry’s friend.

  The only thing was, he wasn’t really cut out to be Jackie Bradberry’s friend. For a start, Jackie had his own buddies, a couple of dim kids called Jason and Chad who laughed at his jokes and did what he told them, which was mostly to persecute the soft boys who couldn’t or wouldn’t fight back. And Jackie didn’t play sports, or watch sports, and he didn’t read books, not even comic books (he had dyslexia or something) and he didn’t listen to music, and the only movies he had seen were horror flicks like The Omen and The Exorcist and The Evil Dead that Danny wasn’t old enough to watch. And the guys, Dave and Ralph and Gene, well, they didn’t give a damn about Jackie Bradberry, and none of their moms had said a word to them about maybe trying to be kind to him, and after a week of grunts and shrugs from Jackie, who didn’t seem interested in Danny either, Danny decided enough was enough and went back to ignoring Jackie as best he could, given he was sitting beside him, and then Gene’s mom, who was on the school’s board of management, had a word with the assistant principal and suddenly Danny was back sitting beside Dave, and Jackie was back with one of his cronies, and their class teacher Mrs Johnson’s experiment in social integration – which was what it had been, Danny discovered later – came to an end. And when Danny took his place by Dave, Dave leant into Danny and whispered in his ear a sketch he’d learned by heart from Monty Python, which Danny and Dave loved and used to recite at each other. And Danny laughed and laughed, at the silliness of the sketch, and the voices Dave used, and with relief that he was back among his own people. And when he looked around the class, still laughing, he saw that Jackie Bradberry was looking at him, staring at him with a mean look in his eyes. A half-hour later, the first note arrived.

  Laugh at me an you are dead.

  Danny simply ignored it, didn’t even connect it with Jackie.

  The second note came an hour later.

  You are dead meat. Killer.

  This time it did register. Danny remembered Jackie insisting Jason and Chad call him ‘Killer’ and getting pissed at them because they kept forgetting to. Danny glanced across the class at Jackie, as if to say, ‘What’s this about?’ Jackie’s cronies looked astonished and outraged, as if Danny was some kind of telepath to have worked out who had sent the note in the first place. Jackie stared back at him, red-rimmed eyes dull, mouth slack, and shook a finger in the air. The third note was to the point:

  Death ground. back of the Cemetary after school. come alone.

  There used to be a patch of scrub ground hidden by pine trees between Forest Hill Cemetery and the adjacent golf course where older kids went to settle scores. The stories attached to it were legion: that kids who got killed in fights had to be buried there; that Hell’s Angels used it as a site for their initiation ceremonies; that the ghosts of the Union dead from Camp Randall and their Confederate prisoners arose from their graves and did battle every night. Danny and his buddies had long speculated over which of them would be first to be called out to the death ground, a junior-high rite of passage they were all simultaneously dreading and dying to get out of the way.

  Now Danny was the first chosen, but it wasn’t the way he had imagined it. He thought it would be, this big bully would challenge him, and he’d accept, and then all his buddies and all the bully’s gang would assemble at the death ground and the last man standing would be the victor, and it would be Danny, and the next day, the whole school would know. Instead, Jackie Bradberry had called him out alone, and when he had done it, when he had shaken his finger at him as if he was defiant and angry, well, Danny could see that he wasn’t really, that there was something in his eyes that looked a lot like fear.

  Danny hadn’t shown Dave or any of the other guys the notes Jackie sent, had been almost embarrassed by them, as if it was all happening the wrong way and he was somehow implicated in that. After school, he told Dave he had to pick up a book in the library and to go on without him, and then he cycled straight to the death ground, coming in off Speedway Road, swarming over the wall at the golf-course end and dropping down among the pines.

  Jackie Bradberry was waiting, alone, no sign of Jason or Chad, and Danny looked at Jackie, at how slight he was, at how his bike was an old hand-me-down caked in rust, at how the dull glow in Jackie’s eyes was less violent than reproachful, peevish, even, as if Danny had hurt his feelings in some way. This isn’t a proper fight, Danny thought, where it’s you against a bully or a creep. This is like at home, after Dad has stopped yelling and is sleeping and Mom is sitting in the living room with the blinds drawn even though it’s daytime, and no one is allowed to speak, and you don’t know what you’ve done but somehow it’s not just their fault, it’s your fault too. But how is this Danny’s fault?

  ‘What’s up, Jackie? Or would you prefer if I called you Killer?’

  Jackie flinched, and his freckled face reddened. Almost all the Bradberrys had red hair and pale blue eyes (except for the elder brother who’d been in juvie in Racine, who was dark and who people said was a bastard, in both senses of the word), but Jackie had the worst of it, hair that looked like it had faded in the sun and tiny, watery eyes, and when his face flushed, he looked like a little pig, the runt of the litter, and Danny suddenly realized he wasn’t afraid, not remotely, remembered Jackie was the Bradberry his brothers picked on, Eric and Brian, even his sisters used to slap him across the back of the head, Jackie Bradberry who stopped
playing sports because he’d always get picked last. Danny Brogan could take Jackie Bradberry with one hand tied behind his back.

  ‘Killer,’ Danny said, and laughed, fed up with having to feel guilty for his father making his mother so sad. He had done what she asked, he had tried to be Jackie’s friend. It hadn’t worked out. He wasn’t to blame.

  ‘What’s up? What’s up, “Killer”?’ Danny said, taunting now, not bothering to hide his contempt.

  ‘What’s up? I called you out, that’s what’s up,’ Jackie said, his voice creaking, its pitch uncertain.

  ‘Why? I didn’t do anything. I don’t want to fight you.’

  ‘Oh, what, are you chicken? You afraid to fight me, is that it?’

  ‘Nah, I just … I just don’t see the point. I mean, a fight should be for a reason, and I didn’t do anything to you, did I?’

  ‘I saw you,’ Jackie said, and he contorts his face into a snarl so cartoonish it makes Danny laugh, involuntarily.

  ‘That’s right, laugh. That’s what you were doing with your buddies, weren’t you, laughing at me?’

  ‘Why would I laugh at you, Jackie? Sorry, Killer. Why would I bother? I mean, you’ve got your friends, I’ve got mine. What’s the big deal?’

  Jackie flinched again, like Danny sort of knew he would, like a dog that’s been hit too often, all you’ve got to do is raise your hand; Jackie’d been told he was dumb so many times he smarted at the hint of it. He flashed back to their second day, when Danny was trying to make the effort with Jackie, for his mom’s sake. Some kid had brought in his father’s Purple Heart from the Korean War for Show and Tell and it had gone missing, and Mrs Johnson started this whole big investigation where she asked everyone in the class if they had taken it, and then she was going to search everyone’s bag, and she said she had ways of finding out who had taken it so the guilty person had better just own up now, and Danny leaned into Jackie and said, ‘Who does she think she is, Sherlock Holmes?’ And Jackie had looked at him blankly, and said, ‘Who is Sherlock Holmes?’ And even if he hadn’t read any Sherlock Holmes stories, ’cause he couldn’t really read properly, he should have heard of Sherlock Holmes from the old movies, which were always on TV, or when Daffy Duck played Dorlock Holmes, and without meaning to, just by reflex, Danny made a face, the kind of face he would have made with Dave or Ralph, a face that said, ‘what’s the matter, are you dumb or something?’ And Jackie’s face just fell, like he’d been asked that question for real a hundred times a day every day of his life. He flinched and he flushed and he turned away, humiliated, belittled, back in his box. Who is Sherlock Holmes?