“He’s probably dead. Jesus, North, I don’t want him to be dead. He’s an asshole, and he hurt Matty, but—” Shaw shivered, and North tightened his arm, crushing Shaw against him, filling his nose with the spiky musk of whatever hipster shit Shaw used in his hair.

“Let’s look around.”

Using their phones as flashlights, they patrolled the grounds around Hog Hollow Hocks and found nothing. On a return sweep, North paused at the gravel drive that led away from the lot, heading north and west down a long hill. Beyond, in the darkness, was a flood plain. Beyond that, the water treatment plant, and then the Missouri. A chain fence ran along the hill, and the gate at the gravel road was marked with a simple blue and white plaque that said Service Drive. No Access.

North swept the light back and forth. The frequent rains over the last few weeks and the humidity in the spring air had kept the ground soft—not wet, but soft. Soft enough, in fact, to take a print. And there, in the bare earth next to the gravel, was the clear mark of a heel. North crouched, crabbed forward, playing the light at an oblique angle until he saw the next print. This time, there were two of them. One was a full impression of a shoe—deep tread, probably a relatively new athletic shoe, a little smaller than North’s Red Wings. Maybe a men’s eleven. The other was behind the first and off to the side. It was smaller. It had no tread, just a triangle at the front and then a puncture mark at the back. High heels. A woman’s shoe. Or a queen’s.

He whistled.

“I’m not a dog,” Shaw said as he trotted over.

North pointed with the light at the first print and, when he was sure Shaw had taken it in, spun the light toward the next two.

Running a hand through his hair, tugging on the bun at the back of his head, Shaw said, “You can’t tell chronology with prints. Not without other clues, like if they overlap, if there was rain or snow or dust, something to mark time.”

“You think two people walked out here separately?”

“I’m just saying.”

At the fence, North boosted Shaw, and the lithe man slid easily across the top of the gate. North followed; the chain links shook and rattled under his weight, and when he dropped, hard, on the other side, he muttered, “Not a fucking word.”

They moved slowly down the gravel drive. Far ahead, on the flat pan of earth, stood the outline of the water treatment plant’s buildings. North tallied possibilities. The dead body could have gone into the river. Until it floated ashore or caught on a branch or a rock, there was no telling how far the water would carry it. Or the dead man might be in one of the warehouses or outbuildings or pumping stations at the treatment plant. Or, fuck, he might be in one of the machines. He might be anywhere out on the floodplain, where a thick scrub covered the ground. Dogs would make the search easier—dogs or a lot of manpower. It was too much ground, too empty and too wildly overgrown all at the same time, for Shaw and North to find a body by themselves. Hell, someone might have had a car waiting at the water treatment plant and he could have forced Mark Sevcik into the trunk at gunpoint and driven him anywhere. Best case scenario: abduction.