“Did I say the man had a gun?” Sanderson countered quickly.

“You said there were shootings.”

Both fell silent for a moment, and the policeman leveled his cool stare, probing for any glimmer of deceit or indecision. Slaton showed him desperation, rising anger.

Sanderson sighed. “Well, Mr. Deadmarsh, it appears you don’t understand what’s happening any more than we do.”

“I wish I did.”

“All the same, there might be something you can do to help us find your wife.”

“Anything.”

Minutes later they were weaving through traffic in an unmarked police car. Slaton was in the backseat, shouldered next to the larger of the two bookends, a massive and unsmiling man with a blond crew cut. He supposed they were trying to intimidate him, trying to force the right mind-set. At that moment, Slaton imagined he was going to waste the rest of his day answering questions. He expected photographs and stale coffee in a room that stank of sweat and fear. He expected takeout food on a scratched wooden table. He expected police headquarters.

He was wrong.

Chapter 7

SEVEN

Inspector Arne Sanderson tried to be discreet as he eyed the man in the backseat of his unmarked car. He was intrigued by the American in the mirror.

For the last twenty-four hours Sanderson had run an ambitious investigation. The first hours of any inquiry were critical, the time when cases were broken, yet this particular quest had hit a wall. His overall assessment was one of disconnects. He had a double shooting, but no apparent motive. A doctor with a spotless background who’d been chased through the streets, and who was concerned enough about her safety to have leapt onto a moving boat. And the most troubling thing of all—of the five people involved, the only one he’d identified was the doctor, and she seemed more a victim than a suspect. They had found driver’s licenses and passports on the two men who’d been collected by ambulances at the scene. All were Turkish items and all patently forged. Yet it was quality work, or so Sanderson had been told—biometric chips, color-changing ink, fluorescent fibers—all certainly fashioned by the same artist. Drug smuggling was his first inclination, and that could still be the case. But there was a niggling doubt. A doubt further driven by the man seated behind him.