“You’ve got that line scrunched up between your eyebrows, Nora. The one that means you’re constipated about something.”

“Several things, actually.”

“What’s the first?”

“The boots,” she says.

“What about the boots?”

“Maybe she has another set. But that seems doubtful, given their circumstances. The fact that the boots—not to mention her bike and all the rest of her gear—were left behind . . . that doesn’t track with the theory she killed him.”

“Unless she’s dead too.”

“Oh, she’s undoubtedly dead.”

“Undoubtedly, huh? I got Bowers and a few others sweeping the woods. Called in a few cars too. They’re patrolling the streets surrounding the park. You’re thinking maybe murder-suicide?”

“No.”

“No?” He gives a little laugh. “Do you ever say anything that’s not decisive?”

“She didn’t kill him. A woman wouldn’t have done this.”

“You don’t think a woman can—”

“Of course I think a woman will kill. You know I think that. But you must realize that this was no lovers’ quarrel. It’s a ritualized killing. In all but the most exceptional cases, that kind of psychopathic behavior is not in my gender’s hardwiring.”

“I know,” he says and wipes a hand across his face. “I know it doesn’t fit the standard profile, but—”

“But what?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’re dealing with a new profile? You like everything neat and tidy, but human behavior doesn’t always, like, compute perfectly.”

“Except that it does,” she says. “It always does.”

Chives’s eyebrows are bushy, and they rise now in a silent question.

“Behavior is not random. There is always a reason someone does something. There is always an equation that informs a choice. There is always a wound that gives rise to troubled behavior. A wife shoots her husband because she is sick of him abusing her. A grandmother poisons the dog next door with a meatball because it attacked her grandchild. A troop leader molests a Boy Scout because he himself was molested.”

A girl goes missing . . . and the impossible grief makes it impossible for the parents to stay together, she almost says.

She and Chives do not raise their voices. This is how they talk. Gently challenging each other. Sussing things out. He operates more on feeling. She deals in calculations.

“Okay, boss,” he says. “Are we ever going to get around to talking about the elephant in the room? The real reason I dragged you out here? I know it’s a lot to ask, but I kind of expected a Holy shit or a No fucking way out of you.”

They look at each other for a long moment before she traces a finger along the thigh of the corpse, following the design intricately crosshatched into the skin that must have taken hours to carve. Her eyes rise from the body to Chives’s tired, puzzled expression. She says, “Crotter.”

“Yep.”