He tried the front door, wasn’t surprised to find it locked. “Let’s go around back,” he said. The sliding glass doors off the kitchen were locked as well, so Merker kicked one of them in. I waited for an alarm or something to go off, but nothing did. Merker reached through the opening, unlocked the door, and slid it open wide enough for us to get inside.

“Let’s find the key first,” he said.

We went upstairs, into the bathroom. I opened the medicine chest, started to carefully remove items from the two glass shelves—deodorant, toothpaste, bottles of aspirin and Tylenol. “Who are you, Mr. Tidy?” Merker said, and shoved me aside, grabbed hold of the two shelves, and ripped them out of the cupboard, tossing them to the floor, where they shattered amidst everything that had been on them. The few pill bottles and cosmetics that had fallen to the bottom of the chest Merker swept out with his hand.

The rear panel was now totally accessible. It was not immediately obvious that it was fake. A nail file had fallen into the sink, and I used it like a screwdriver to pry out the edges of the panel.

“It’s not coming out,” I said. I rapped on the panel with my knuckles. It sounded solid. “I don’t think this panel moves,” I said.

Merker’s face went red. He made a fist, pounded on the panel. It was drywall, and it dented only slightly from the force of the punch. “Son of a bitch!” he said. “What did she really tell you?”

He grabbed hold of my jacket lapels and shoved me. I lost my balance, went into the bathtub, grabbing the shower curtain as I toppled, snapping it off its rings. My head hit the tile wall. Merker had one foot in the tub, his fist ready to pummel me.

“Stop it!” I screamed. “Stop it! I’m telling you the truth! That’s what she told me! She said the medicine cabinet had a false back! It has to be there! She wouldn’t lie about this, not where her kid is concerned!”

Merker was breathing like a bull ready to charge.

“Unless,” I said, thinking of the floor plan of the house we used to have two doors down, “there’s another upstairs bathroom.”

Merker was gone, running down the hall. I’d nearly crawled out of the tub when he shouted, “Down here!”

He already had everything out of the medicine chest in the second upstairs bathroom by the time I got there. He rapped on the rear panel, and there was a satisfying hollow sound.

With the same nail file, we had the back off in seconds. And there was the key, and the phony ID.

Merker looked very pleased. “Okay,” he said, pocketing the key and the document. “All we need now is the wig.”