A tiny hiss of breath from Richie, leaning in close beside me, but neither of us looked up. The skeptic posted a smiley rolling its eyes; someone else posted one tapping its temple; someone else told Pat to take the blue ones before the red ones. Trap Guy told them all to back off: You guys, quit it. I want to know what he’s got. If you piss him off so bad he never comes back then what? Pat-the-lad, ignore these dumb shits. Their mamas never taught them manners. You get yourself some live bait and give that a try. Mink like killing. If it’s a mink it won’t be able to pass that up. Then come back and tell us what you got.

Pat was gone. Over the next few days there was some banter about Trap Guy going over to Ireland to catch this thing himself, some semi-sympathetic speculation about the state of Pat’s mind and his marriage (This type shit is why I stay single), and then everyone moved on. The exhaustion was making things sideslip inside my mind: for a jumbled split second I worried about Pat not posting, wondered if we should go out to Broken Harbor and check on him. I found my water bottle and pressed its cold side against my neck.

Two weeks later, on the twenty-second of September, Pat was back and he was in much worse shape. PLEASE READ!!! Had some trouble getting live bait—finally got to a pet shop + got a mouse. Stuck it down on one of those glue baords + put it in the trap. Poor little bastard was squeaking like crazy, felt like shit about it but hey a guy’s gotta do what a guys gotta do right?? I watched the monitor practically EVERY SINGLE SECOND ALL BLOODY NIGHT—swear on my mothers grave I only closed my eyes for like twnety minutes around 5 am, didn’t mean to but I was shattered + just nodded off. When I woke up IT WAS GONE. Mouse + glue trap GONE. Foothold trap WAS NOT TRIGGGERED it was STILL WIDE OPEN. Soon as my wqife took the kids out this morning for school I went up there to chekc + yeah trap is open + mouse/glue board are NOWHERE IN THE ATTIC. Like what the fuck??!!? How the hell could ANYTHING do that??? And what thje fuck do I do now??? I cant tell my wife this, she doesnt understnad—if I tell her shes gonna think I’m a lunatic. WHAT DO I DO????

I had a sudden wild flood of nostalgia for just three days earlier, that first walk-through of the house, when I had thought Pat was some loser stashing drugs in his walls and Dina was safely making sandwiches for suits. If you’re good at this job, and I am, then every step in a murder case moves you in one direction: towards order. We get thrown shards of senseless wreckage, and we piece them together until we can lift the picture out of the darkness and hold it up to the white light of day, solid, complete, clear. Under all the paperwork and the politics, this is the job; this is its cool shining heart that I love with every fiber of mine. This case was different. It was running backwards, dragging us with it on some ferocious ebb tide. Every step washed us deeper in black chaos, wrapped us tighter in tendrils of crazy and pulled us downwards.