Joe was not offended. “Sometimes,” he said, “cases come out of the shadows; they build up logically. Other times, I think they’re more like a crossword puzzle, where other words supply the letters you need to fill in the one you’re really after. To my mind, that’s what I got here. In some way I can’t see yet, that last missing letter’s going to fall into place.”

“And eureka?” James asked, one eyebrow raised.

Joe smiled. “You can’t say it’s never happened to you.”

James nodded. “No. I cannot. Well, when it does, don’t be shy about calling again. Till then, happy hunting.”

Joe poked his head through Fred Houston’s open office door and located the tech wizard at the far end of his long, windowless, computer-packed work space—a far cry from Joe’s own office in an ancient drafty building with an oversized leaky window.

“Hello?” Joe asked. “I never want to startle you when your thumb’s poised right over the Delete key.”

Fred shook his head and stood up from the stool he’d been occupying. “Doesn’t work that way. Good to see you. You’ve been busy.”

They relocated nearer to the door. “What’ve you heard?” Joe asked.

“That you had a drop-by at Shaw’s house that went sideways.”

“There’s an understatement. In retrospect, a bad idea. I was hoping to shake him up, put pressure on her, and maybe get something incriminating to add to what we have.”

“Scooter’s phone?”

“Not only. I’ve also landed a silver ashtray anniversary gift from Shaw to Lucy, found in a storage shed belonging to Cheri Pratt. But that was all plan A.”

“Did you manage to get something anyhow?”

“That’s where the ‘sideways’ part came in,” Joe explained. “At the door, we heard Lucy had died in the night and Lemuel was getting ready to have her cremated. That put Willy and me onto chasing the bigger issue, which was to preserve Lucy’s body for an autopsy.

“The whole idea of going by their house was a mistake anyhow. I moved too fast with too little. What sticks in my craw is that somehow—assuming I’m right about Shaw killing his wife—he already knew to cover his tracks, meaning we wouldn’t have found anything had we entered the house.”

“Unless she just died like we all do,” Fred suggested. “And there never was anything to find.”

Joe got up and began pacing the length of the narrow computer lab.

“Goddamn it. Right now, I’ve got one guaranteed murder, one incredibly suspicious, well-timed death, one revived missing child case—plus another connected to Boston—and poor little Angie Neal, who got caught up in the mix and, if she’s lucky, will only spend the rest of her life talking to shrinks. I have also enlisted Christ knows how many people to help, invoked multiple magical law enforcement protocols to let me hunt damn near anywhere I want, and have my squad wandering across two states. All for what? A dead cell phone and an ashtray.”

At the far wall, he turned, looked at Houston, and let out a sigh. “Okay. Maybe Lucy did die of natural causes right after opening a plastic bag of crackers. And maybe Lemuel is just a horny old rich guy who can’t get any at home and fantasizes at the local strip club. But to me, that’s like looking at a huge crater in the ground, ignoring the shrapnel and bodies around its edge, and calling it a hole. Sure it’s a hole,” he emphasized, “but something caused it. Something bad. And every time I get close to figuring that out, instead of proof, I find Lemuel Shaw claiming to be an innocent victim. It’s driving me crazy.”