“Don’t yell at me, Harry. He said she was in the trunk of his car.”

The sirens were louder.

“Where’s his car?” Harry asked.

“Harry, let the police—”

“Where is it?”

“Downstairs, I think, in the garage. Harry, don’t leave me.”

But he was going down the steps. He reached the garage, and pulled up the unlocked door just as the first police cruiser slanted into the parking lot and came to a halt. John’s red Audi, nose in, was parked in the dark garage. It looked far too ordinary to contain a body, to contain Caitlin’s body. It wasn’t possible, Harry thought.

“Did you call 911?” an officer was asking him.

Harry turned. “There’s a body up the stairs from here. In the kitchen. He’s dead.”

Another uniformed officer was already making her way up the wooden steps.

“Is this your car?” The officer again. He was young, with sleepy-looking slanted eyes.

“It’s . . . it’s not. I think there might be someone in the trunk.” Then Harry turned and said, in a slightly louder tone than his usual talking voice, “Caitlin? You in there?”

If I don’t open it, he thought, then it’s not happening.

“Sir,” the officer said, but didn’t add anything. His radio squawked, then Harry heard a few muffled words, the policewoman asking him to come upstairs.

“Stay right here, sir, okay? I’ll be right back.” The policeman looked frozen for a moment, unsure of what to do.

Harry nodded and said, “I won’t leave.”

The policeman made a decision and moved toward the stairs. There was another siren in the distance.

Harry pulled the driver’s side door, and it swung open. He fumbled along the floor near the bucket seat, finding a lever and pulling it. The trunk made a popping sound, but the lid stayed down. There was no other sound as Harry went back to the rear of the car, grasped the lid in his hand, and lifted it, praying silently to himself.

The body was on its side, in the fetal position, facing in. The sharp smell of urine stung at Harry’s nose, and he was hit by a wave of dizziness, dark nothingness pinching at his vision. Then he thought he saw the body twitch, shoulders contracting in as though she was cold.

“Caitlin,” he said, and shook her shoulder, rolling her onto her back. The bottom half of her face was coated in dried blood.

She stared up at him with what looked like lifeless eyes, and then she blinked.

Chapter 33

Now

They’d driven through the night, and the sun was now coming up behind them as they glided through flat Canadian farmlands in Paul Roman’s Prius. The sky, streaked in pink and orange, was like an enormous bowl. They’d crossed into Canada at Buffalo, skirting north of Lake Erie, the fastest route to get to Ann Arbor, Michigan.