Kyle could have gone to her house. And he could have gotten beaten up there.

Because someone else was there, looking. Someone else who had a reason to want her dead.

And then, what? He went and bought a computer? Why?

Because whatever he found needed a computer to be read. So. A CD or a flash drive. And he was scared to read it on a computer that they owned.

She starts searching their room. She goes through bureaus, drawers. Nothing. She goes up and searches his office. An hour passes. Still nothing. She sits and tries to think like Kyle.

He goes to Danielle’s house. He finds something. He gets punched, repeatedly.

He would change clothes. He was in his running clothes, and the police took them.

She stands in her husband’s closet. Where would he hide something in here?

On his dusty top shelf there are shoeboxes. She searches them, all empty. There is a duffel bag he rarely uses. She starts unzipping the compartments.

In a side pocket she finds lint, expired breath mints, and a flash drive. Holds it up to the light.

She plugs it into her computer. Spreadsheets, with payments to “Firebird” and to “Lark.” They mean nothing to her. These payments were made years ago. What does that have to do with now?

Firebird, though. That’s the name of the company that called and left the voicemail at the Butler house.

She opens another folder. Photos of adoptions in Russia. She finds a folder named Pollitt. She clicks through. Pictures of them, in front of the hotel in Saint Petersburg, at the orphanage. Looking happy but stressed.

A photo of drops of blood on snow.

She stops. She stares. She goes on to the next picture. It’s fuzzy, looking lifted from a traffic camera. A man, getting out of a car. An SUV, with damage to its passenger side. He’s in a suit and dark glasses and a silver tie. But she can see his face, the high cheekbones, the small scar near his mouth.

The police showed her a picture of Marland last night, just his face, calm in death, to see if she recognized him. She didn’t. But now she does.

That was the SUV that hit them when they left the orphanage the first time.

That was the man she saw talking, animatedly, with Danielle in the hotel that first morning.

Iris stares at the pictures. She tries to gather her thoughts. Why is this happening? Why would this man step back into their lives? Who is he?

She can’t just show this to the police. It ties them even further to Marland. She can imagine telling Ponder and Ames: Well, you see, he tried to wreck our car once years ago. But we don’t know him.