Mahler took a business card from his shirt pocket and wrote on the back. Feeling the intensity of being so close to the woman’s unguarded rage, he watched his hand make an unfamiliar scrawl. “This is the direct line for Dennis Beech. He’s the officer in charge of missing person investigations. I’ll call him right now and tell him to expect your call.”

Knolls dropped the card in her purse without looking at it. She pushed back her chair and stood. “You cops. You sit here and you don’t say anything. And we’re supposed to be grateful. But I’ve heard about the way you look at these girls’ bodies when you find them. What you do is dirty and shameful.” She swung her purse strap over her shoulder and walked out of the interview room without waiting for Mahler.

(ii)

(TUESDAY, 11:37 P.M.)

“We’re being tested, you and me,” Frames said. “Like right now. This is a test.”

“What do you mean, tested?” Eden asked.

“We’re the new kids. They rotate in new detectives every few years. Try them out. Some make it, some don’t. And they give them tests. That’s how law enforcement works. It’s not what you know—it’s about proving yourself, not fucking up.”

They sat in the front seat of a Crown Victoria parked below the overnight campground in Spring Lake Park, hoping to find the homeless man who told the campers he had seen a body. The canopy of oaks made the world so dark they could see no more than twenty yards in any direction. For the past hour, they’d taken turns standing outside the car to listen for a man walking up through the trees. But now, for a few minutes, they’d agreed to sit inside to get warm. The only sound coming in the half-open windows was a deep chorus of frogs from the lake’s marshy edge.

“I think we’ve just got different jobs to do.” Eden poured herself a cup of chamomile tea from a thermos. There was something uncomfortably intimate about sitting next to Frames in the dark car—he in the driver’s seat, she in the passenger’s. In her two weeks on this job, they’d been alone together only once, in the break room, for a few awkward minutes. Maybe this was part of the test—being alone with another officer. “Lieutenant Mahler spreads the work around, tries to match the job with our talents.”

“Talents? So you and I have what? A talent for sitting outside in the fucking cold?”

“Maybe not, but we’re a team. We each do our part.” She was surprised at the assuredness in her voice. She found herself talking just to fill the silence.

“Well, I’ll bet two members of this team couldn’t be more different than you and me. Where’d you go to college anyway? Harvard?”