Max felt profoundly embarrassed. How had his instincts grown so dull? The whole trip had been a wild-goose chase—and to have it all play out in front of Niki. He needed to be put out to pasture—or better yet, shot. He had put Niki’s career at risk for nothing.

“I’m sorry, Niki. I thought…” He shook his head in disgust. “I should let Lyle know.”

He couldn’t bring himself to tell Lyle that he had screwed up, so he sent a text: Stand down. Wrong number. I’ll explain when I get back.

While he was texting Lyle, Niki had been typing on her computer. Max looked over her shoulder again. She was accessing a database that collected the names and addresses of crime suspects, witnesses, and victims.

“The house belongs to a woman named Olivia Molinar… sixty-two years old and—” Niki stopped and leaned in to the screen as if something had caught her attention. “Holy shit.”

“What?”

“Olivia Molinar was murdered in this home seven months ago.”

CHAPTER 36

Max hadn’t planned to spend the night in Minneapolis. He had expected the ping to locate the second burner phone somewhere in the Northwoods. They had to be keeping Pip nearby if Reed was hauling groceries out to him. If Max’s intuition had been on the mark, right now he would be driving north, with an address and a plan, certain that Pip would be back with his grandfather by morning.

But tracing that phone to St. Paul, to a house where a woman had been murdered, had shattered Max’s mental picture. If anything, this was bigger than he’d thought. The two crimes had to be linked somehow. Max didn’t believe in coincidences. But that meant at least one more day in the Cities for him, and for Pip, one more night as a missing child.

Before leaving the Homicide unit, Niki dug into Olivia Molinar’s case. The murder had been in St. Paul—Ramsey County jurisdiction—so what they had at their fingertips was little more than what had been reported in the press.

Molinar lived on a street lined with older Victorian and craftsman homes, the kind of well-tended neighborhood that would have neighbors telling TV reporters “You never think something like this could happen here.” In the early-morning hours of April fifth, a neighbor noticed Mrs. Molinar’s front door hanging open. Responding officers found Olivia dead. The cause of her death had not been released to the public, but the internal database listed her as the victim of a homicide. No arrests had been reported.

Max had gone to City Hall expecting a quick answer only to find another trail of bread crumbs. Exasperation ballooned in his chest. “I need to get a look at the Molinar file,” he said.

“Sure, tomorrow morning just stop by St. Paul PD and show ’em your badge and—Oh, wait, that’s right, you don’t have a badge.”

“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

“Hey, you made your bed. I’m just the stalker peeking in the window to watch you toss and turn.”