He saw that the doorjamb was scratched, the metal door frame dented and jimmied, the lock broken from the outside.

The administrator hadn’t opened the door. Someone else had broken in.

Eph quickly looked inside.

The table was bare. Redfern’s body was gone.

Eph turned to the administrator, wanting more information, but to his surprise found her retreating a few steps down the hall, glancing back at him as she spoke with the cops.

Setrakian said, “We should go now.”

Eph said, “But I have to find out where his remains are.”

“They are gone,” said Setrakian. “They will never be recovered.” The old man gripped Eph’s arm with surprising strength. “I believe they have served their purpose.”

“Their purpose? What is that?”

“Distraction, ultimately. For they are no more dead than their fellow passengers who once lay in the morgues.”

Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn

NEWLY WIDOWED Glory Mueller, while searching online about what to do when a spouse dies without leaving a will, noticed a news report about the missing corpses from Flight 753. She followed the link, reading a dispatch labeled DEVELOPING. The Federal Bureau of Investigation was due to hold a press conference within the hour, it said, to announce a new and larger reward for any information about the disappearance from the morgue of the bodies of the victims of the Regis Air tragedy.

This story struck a deep note of fear. For some reason she now remembered, that previous night, awaking from a dream and hearing sounds in her attic.

Of the dream that had awakened her, she remembered only that Hermann, her newly deceased husband, had come back to her from the dead. There had been a mistake, and the strange tragedy that was Flight 753 had never actually occurred, and Hermann had arrived at the back door of their home in Sheepshead Bay with a you-thought-you-were-rid-of-me smile, wanting his supper.

In public, Glory had played the part of the quietly grieving widow, as she would continue to do so throughout whatever inquest and court cases might come her way. But she was perhaps alone in considering the tragic circumstances that claimed the life of her husband of thirteen years a great gift.

Thirteen years of marriage. Thirteen years of unrelenting abuse. Escalating throughout their years together, occurring more and more in front of their boys, ages nine and eleven. Glory lived in constant fear of his mood swings, and had even allowed herself—a daydream only, too risky to attempt in reality—to consider what it would be like to pack up the boys and leave while he was away this past week, visiting his dying mother in Heidelberg. But where could she go? And, more important—what would he do to her and the boys if he caught up with them, as she knew he would?