“Sorry,” Susan said, stuffing the tampons back in the box.

She sifted her hand through her purse again and came up with a few more tampons, some change, a flattened Hershey’s Kiss, and a few loose Chinese uppers.

There was something else in her hand, too, something she had scooped up along with the tampons. She caught the black glint of metal against the white of the tampon wrappers.

A hot acidity rose in Susan’s throat.

She knew what it was. How could she not? She had held one just like it in her hand an hour ago.

This didn’t make sense. She wasn’t supposed to have this. Was it Henry’s? Had she accidentally put it in her purse?

No. Henry’s was still on his key chain. Archie had been holding it when she’d left.

This was another key.

Small. Black. Round bow. Just like the others.

Susan’s face felt hot.

How long had it been in her bag?

“They found a dead horse floating in John Day River,” Gloria said.

It could still have fingerprints on it.

Susan looked up. It was not like the big scene in the movie where the scary organ music plays and everyone in the room gasps with shock. Gloria’s eyes were glued to the TV. Barry had his head bent over one of his phones.

Susan let the key fall from her hand into the tampon box and rose to her feet, clutching her purse to her chest.

There were a thousand explanations. All of them creepy.

“I have to go,” she said.

She left Archie’s card on the table, along with a half-melted watermelon Jolly Rancher and thirty-seven cents.

Chapter 26

CHAPTER

26

Archie had enlarged the photographs of the keys and tacked them to the bulletin board in the task force conference room. The key from Henry and the one from the kid had been taken for testing. That left three. He held up his pinkie finger and pointed to the middle knuckle. “The keys are half the size of my little finger,” he said. “What do they open?”

Heil, Flannigan, and Ngyun sat around the conference table, each on their third or fourth cup of coffee. Archie stood. The fridge in the room was dying, and its failing motor made a low grinding noise. The clock on the wall ticked. The rain fell. Two chairs at the table sat empty. One Henry’s, one Claire’s.