Russell and Yarmark started walking.

“Run, shit for brains,” Gross roared.

Russell and Yarmark ran.

“Fucking disgraces,” Norman said. “You should’ve seen the two of them as soon as they got here. Wanted to measure their dicks, piss all over everything.”

“Yeah, they’re young, and they’re dumb,” Somers said.

“Somers,” Gross said, worrying at the buttons over his pot belly. “That’s not a figure of speech.”

Somers’s eyebrows shot up. “They really wanted to . . .”

Norman nodded.

“God damn. Ok, just make them work hard. Run them into the ground.” Then, to Nickels and Carlson, Somers said, “Anybody bring water?”

“Bottle in the car,” Nickels said.

“Me too,” Carlson said.

“What about dumb and dumber?” Somers said, jerking his thumb at Russell and Yarmark, who were now sprinting out into the field, chased by shouts from Gross and Norman.

“Who the fuck cares?” Nickels said.

“I care,” Somers said. “And you should. They’re cops. They’re your brothers. You can hate them. You can kick their asses if they deserve it. But we’re all on this side of the line, and that means we’re a team.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair and added, “I shouldn’t have to tell the two of you that.”

Nickels tried to hold his gaze and then looked away; Carlson kicked a chunk of gravel the size of a golf ball.

“We could go get some bottled water,” Carlson said.

Somers nodded, and the women left.

As Norman and Gross sent the younger patrol officers running out with stakes to mark the grid, Somers walked the gravel lot, studying Sexten Industrial Park. By day, with the remains of Susan’s gruesome murder removed, the place looked exactly like what it was: abandoned factories and warehouses, the older structures brick, the newer ones—newer being a relative term—out of corrugated metal. Pretty much every other small town in America had a Sexten, a reminder of the manufacturing industries that had built a middle class, industries that had been outsourced to China and India and God knew where else. A sad tale, but not a unique one, and Wahredua was luckier than most places because it still had the Tegula plant, still had the college, still had agricultural jobs, all three keeping the town’s heart pumping.

He was finishing his survey when he remembered his conversation with Dulac. He moved toward the spot where the Keeper had staged Susan’s body, and he called up the satellite maps he had looked at, trying to imagine his position from above, superimposing memory onto the landscape in front of him. She had been posed as though running, head turned so that she was looking back, the same way Phil had been. But which way had she been facing? Which way had the Keeper made it look like she was running?

Norman and Gross were standing in a clearing they had stamped into the waist-high weeds.

“Do you have pictures from the other night?” Somers said, tipping his head toward where Susan’s body had been.