The car is submerged in deep reeds in a swampy patch behind the way back of the parking lot. Kateri watches as a tow truck pulls out a small, nondescript Nissan, water pouring from the doors, from the trunk. The waiting seems to take forever, but it’s Hurt who finally goes over and instructs the mechanic to unlatch the trunk, and there is the missing officer, Craig O’Neil, bound and gagged in his own trunk. In the water, the hands have turned puffy and blue. The head leans back at an unnatural angle. Elise Diaz is in the swamp water up to her ankles in rain boots. Cameras go off. Radios sound.

“Craig O’Neil,” Hurt says.

“The cop,” Kateri says. “He never made it inside.”

“Not from the looks of it.”

“Rookie?” Kateri asks.

“Twenty-two,” Hurt says.

Elise sloshes her way out of the cold marsh and approaches the detectives. “I estimate time of death between seven and nine yesterday morning,” she says. “I’ll give you my decision on a cause,” she adds.

Hurt looks at the sky, squinting. “Everything’s gone,” he tells Kateri. “Badge, cuffs, firearm.”

“So we’ve got an armed and dangerous,” Kateri says. “Willing to kill a cop. With a five-year-old girl.”

“That’s what it looks like,” Hurt says.

Diaz pats Hurt on the arm. “Meet me at the morgue?” she says, an eyebrow arched.

“I wish that didn’t sound like a standing date,” Hurt says.

Kateri watches as Elise peels off her gloves and hands them to a young male assistant. The stretcher comes away from the water and is loaded into the back of the ambulance. Radios are loud with messages and static.

“We’re going to have to go public,” Hurt says. “And there’s bound to be a frenzy.”

Kateri rubs her face. All she did was wash and dress, wind her hair into a ponytail, and rush out. She remembers that she’s still tired.

“Ambushed rookie cop,” Kateri says.

“I can do the press conference if you want,” Hurt says.

“Why would you? Why wouldn’t I?”

He looks off behind her. “Look,” he says. “Anything that goes wrong with the case … anyone not caught or who, God forbid, strikes again … they’ll come right back to you mishandling it, if yours is the face they associate with it.”

“They won’t do that to you?” Kateri asks. She feels her jaw tighten up into her ears and the beginnings of a headache.

“Come on, Fisher,” he says.

“Come on what? Because I’m a woman? Elise Diaz is a woman.”

“She’s sixty,” Hurt says. “You’re …”

“I’m thirty-two, Hurt. I’ve been in the force for twelve years.”

“You look young to people,” he says. “And …”

“What?” Kateri asks.

“Attractive,” Hurt says, deadpan.

Kateri laughs outright.

“I’m not saying it’s right,” Hurt says. “I’m just telling you how it is. If we put you on TV associated with this case, it’s going to put you in an uncomfortable spotlight, and if people go digging …” he says.