“A connection to what?”

“Maybe a connection to a lot of things. Including that e-mail sent from Logan. Including maybe the two of you having more going on between you than . . . I mean, it’s pretty obvious you’re under his spell. . . .”

“I wish you wouldn’t plant ideas like this with Lucy or anyone else.” I won’t let him finish such an accusation about my relationship with Luke.

“His father’s a big financial tycoon in Austria, right?”

“You really should be careful what you suggest to people.”

“You just saw Guenter at Anna’s funeral, right?” He won’t stop pushing.

Guenter Zenner is Anna’s only living sibling. I saw him briefly at her graveside service in Zentralfriedhof, a gaunt old man draped in a long, dark duster, leaning on a cane and immeasurably sad.

“Just so happens one of the things he’s into is oil trading,” Marino continues, as we crawl across the bridge, the low sun directly in our faces and as bright as the light from a burning lens.

“Lucy found this out?”

“What matters is it’s true,” he says. “And that pipeline from Alberta to Texas is a huge deal to oil traders. They’re counting on it, have huge investments and stand to make millions, maybe billions.”

“Do you have any idea how many oil traders there are in the world?” I remind him.

This had to come from Lucy, and I imagine her finding out about Marino staying at the CFC last night because at some point she looked for him. Maybe she went there to talk to him and discovered him drinking and napping on the AeroBed, I don’t know, and I reconstruct what happened after I received the anonymous e-mail at 6:30 p.m.

Benton and I spent some time discussing it before I called the Grande Prairie police and next was directed to an Investigator Glenn with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, who has been working the Emma Shubert case since she disappeared in August. What struck me most was the hesitation I sensed and what it implied, and I mentioned something about it to Lucy when we discussed the e-mail over the phone.

Dr. Shubert was skilled in reconstructing dino skeletons, Investigator Glenn said to me, and he was intimating that anyone who knows how to make molds and anatomically exact casts of bones in a lab might be capable of other types of fabrications, including a severed ear.

“The pipeline’s really important to global oil prices,” Marino continues, spinning his web, a web he intends to ensnare Luke Zenner in.

“I’m sure it is,” I reply.

“A multitrillion-dollar business venture.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me.”

“So how do you know for a fact there’s no link?” He glances over at me as he drives.

“Please explain how Guenter Zenner’s trading in oil among many other commodities, I can only imagine, would have something to do with Emma Shubert disappearing and my getting the e-mail?” I put it bluntly.

“Maybe she disappeared because she wanted to. Maybe she’s in collusion with people who have big money. The picture of the ear, the video are sent to you so we assume she’s dead.”