The door bounced open and Miriam ducked inside rapidly, with Brill right behind her. The house was empty and cold—not freezing with the chill of a dead furnace, but as if the thermostat had been turned down. Miriam’s feet scuffed on the carpet as she rapidly scanned each ground floor room through their open doors, finishing in Iris’s living room—

No wheelchair. The side table neatly folded and put away. Dead flowers on the mantlepiece.

Back in the hall Miriam held up a finger, then dashed up the stairs, kicking open door after door—the master bedroom, spare bedroom, box room, and bathroom.

“Nothing,” she snarled, panting. In the spare bedroom she pulled down the hatch into the attic, yanked the ladder down—but there was no way Iris could have gotten up there under her own power. She scrambled up the ladder all the same, casting about desperately in the dusty twilight. “She’s not here.”

Down in the ground floor hallway she caught up with Paulette, looking grave. “Brill said Iris is gone?”

Miriam nodded, unable to speak. It felt like an act of desecration, too monstrous to talk about. She leaned against the side of the staircase, taking shallow breaths. “I’ve lost her.” She shut her eyes.

“Over here!” It was Brill, in the kitchen.

“What is it—”

They found Brill inspecting a patch of floor, just inside the back door.

“Look,” she said, pointing.

The floor was wooden, varnished and worn smooth in places. The stains, however, were new. Something dark had spilled across the back doorstep. Someone had mopped it up but they hadn’t done a very good job, and the stain had worked into the grain of the wood.

“Outside. Check the garbage.” Miriam fumbled with the lock then got the door open. “Come on!” She threw herself at the Dumpsters in the backyard, terrified of what she might find in them. The bins were huge, shared with the houses to either side, and probably not emptied since the last snowfall. The snow was almost a foot deep on top of the nearest Dumpster. It took her half a minute to clear enough away to lift the lid and look inside.

A dead man stared back at her, his face blue and his eyes frozen in an expression of surprise. She dropped the lid.

“What is it?” asked Paulette.

“Not Iris.” Miriam leaned against the wall, taking deep breaths, her head spinning. Who can he be? “Check. The other bins.”

“Other bins, okay.” Paulette gingerly lifted the lids, one by one—but none of them contained anything worse than a pile of full garbage bags which, when torn, proved to contain kitchen refuse. “She’s not here, Miriam.”

“Oh thank god.”

“What now?” asked Paulie, head cocked as if listening for the sound of sirens.