The trunk slammed shut and Frank emerged holding a long-handled windshield scraper with a plastic bag hanging off the end of it. In the other hand he held a pen. Not a pen. From one end of it shot a beam of green light. A laser pointer.

Frank aimed the laser at the security camera as he moved into its field of vision. Raised the windshield scraper. It took three tries to drape the plastic bag over the camera lens. Then he went back to the trunk and returned carrying the two boxes containing Mr. Murphy’s hardware. He rapped on Emily’s window. “What’s the combination?”

She picked up her gear bag and got out of the car. With not another human in sight, the storage facility felt like a cemetery, the units untended graves. She glanced at the CCTV camera, its lens now shrouded by a plastic bag that had once contained ten pounds of ice.

“Frank, have you seen my phone?” she asked.

“Again? You’re always losing it.”

Emily didn’t bother coming up with a response. She remembered the combination Becca had given her. She went over to the storage unit door, bent down, and entered the code. The lock popped open. Frank reached past her, raised the door, and turned on the light. Books and tubes were still on the floor in a dozen or so piles, just as they’d been when she was there this morning.

She hung back as Frank entered.

“Where do these go?” he asked.

She pointed to one of the now-half-empty shelves. He set the boxes down and was starting to turn away when he froze and picked up his head, hyperalert. He looked back, scanning the shelves. Emily knew at once what had happened. Even on high, the fan in the unit hadn’t kept him from noticing the shutter click.

At first he didn’t spot the box where Emily had set up her camera. But when the shutter clicked again, he did.

“What the hell . . . ?” He reached for the top shelf and carefully took down the box. The power cord plugged into the wall trailed behind it. Frank unplugged it. Raised the lid. He emerged from the unit and thrust the box at her. “Did you set this up?”

“Of course I did,” Emily said. She took the box, lifted out her camera, and detached the cord.

Frank stared hard at the camera. “Why didn’t the police find it?”

She glanced at Frank. His jaw was tense, his hands fisted. He thought the camera had been set up to take pictures days earlier, back when Emily had first opened the unit, before Walter Newell’s body was dumped there and the lock was changed.