Hazard started for the center of town and the little Arts-and-Crafts neighborhood where he and Somers had bought a house. He kept to the sidewalks where possible, although once he left the hospital grounds, the sidewalks were few and far between; this was an older section of town, and even on the residential streets, apparently sidewalks had been optional, or at the owner’s discretion. A little brown bungalow would have thirty feet of sidewalk, and then Hazard would hit grass again. Or a telephone pole would be planted right in the path. Or the resident asshole would park his Thunderbird half up on the curb, which, although Hazard didn’t know much about cars, looked like it would be hell on the suspension. So he’d duck back onto the street, cutting around the Thunderbird or the recycling bin or the telephone pole. Or, on one memorable occasion, the CPR dummy with a leopard-print thong and a sign hanging around its neck that said USE ME AND ABUSE ME.

As he walked, he let his mind go blank in the front; weaving around the obstacles in his path was just taxing enough to keep that part of his brain from running rampant. The back of his brain, where logic flowed in cold channels, ramped up. He was fully committed to finding the Keeper, but without access to the crime scene or the forensic information, his options were extremely limited. Even the search for Mitchell had hit a dead end. So, Hazard went back to the facts. What were the facts? Someone had killed Susan Morrison. Someone had taken Mitchell, perhaps killed him as well. And now someone might have taken Nico, if Marcus was right. Darnell, from what Hazard had learned recently, had a seemingly solid alibi. It would have been very difficult to fabricate that kind of backstory for his employment, and so Hazard was willing, provisionally, to accept that Darnell had been traveling back from Albany during the exact time that Susan had been killed and Mitchell abducted.

But.

A cool spike interrupted the flow of thoughts.

But Darnell had said that Nico was supposed to pick up the second moving truck and meet Dulac at his apartment. And Dulac was AWOL. And Nico was missing, according to Marcus. And Dulac had been on the list of suspects that Hazard had made.

Hazard made himself bring that train of thought to a halt. He was willing to admit that he didn’t like Dulac; he could understand that his feelings, to some extent, might prejudice him. But if the killer really had infiltrated Hazard’s life, then Dulac made a compelling suspect. He was clearly fixated on Somers; he seemed emotionally unstable; and he had an obvious need for stimulation and escalating levels of excitement. Those were all classic traits of psychopaths.

On the other hand, Hazard thought as he skirted a plastic tub full of brown glass bottles, on the other hand, Dulac was Somers’s partner. And Somers had an uncanny ability to read people. If Somers had ever had the slightest whiff of suspicion, Hazard believed he would have said something. And so far, Somers hadn’t said anything.