He picked up the handset again and pressed the star button.

“Yes, sir?”

“Mr. Fitzwilliam, we have lost our contact within the Canary project. You will ignore any further calls from his mobile phone.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And we need to dispatch a team to Queens. It seems there may be something in the basement of the Jamaica Hospital Medical Center that needs retrieving.”

Flatbush, Brooklyn

ANN-MARIE BARBOUR checked again to make sure that she had locked all the doors, then went through the house twice—room by room, top to bottom—touching every mirror twice in order to calm herself down. She could not pass any reflective surface without reaching out to it with the first two fingers of her right hand, a nod following each touch, a rhythmic routine resembling genuflection. Then she went through a third time, wiping each surface clean with a fifty-fifty mix of Windex and holy water until she was satisfied.

When she felt in control of herself again, she phoned her sister-in-law, Jeanie, who lived in central New Jersey.

“They’re fine,” said Jeanie, referring to the children, whom she had come and picked up the day before. “Very well behaved. How is Ansel?”

Ann-Marie closed her eyes. Tears leaked out. “I don’t know.”

“Is he better? You gave him the chicken soup I brought?”

Ann-Marie was afraid her trembling lower jaw would be detected in her speech. “I will. I…I’ll call you back.”

She hung up and looked out the back window, at the graves. Two patches of overturned dirt. Thinking of the dogs lying there.

Ansel. What he had done to them.

She scrubbed her hands, then went through the house again, just the downstairs this time. She pulled out the mahogany chest from the buffet in the dining room and opened up the good silver, her wedding silver. Shiny and polished. Her secret stash, hidden there as another woman might hide candy or pills. She touched each utensil, her fingertips going back and forth from the silver to her lips. She felt that she would fall apart if she didn’t touch every single one.

Then she went to the back door. She paused there, exhausted, her hand on the knob, praying for guidance, for strength. She prayed for knowledge, to understand what was happening, and to be shown the right thing to do.

She opened the door and walked down the steps to the shed. The shed from which she had dragged the dogs’ corpses to the corner of the yard, not knowing what else to do. Luckily, there had been an old shovel underneath the front porch, so she didn’t have to go back into the shed. She buried them in shallow soil and wept over their graves. Wept for them and for her children and for herself.