Here She Lies

its case.
    I dressed and went downstairs to the quiet kitchen, where I made coffee, then carried my mug into the living room and turned on the TV. Just as I settled into the couch, the phone rang. This early, in such total quiet, the sound hit me with the impact of a full-scale malarm and I stood abruptly, the seed of panic planted, before realizing that it was only the phone. A pretty televisionreporter I recognized from yesterday’s news conference, a blond woman in a pink suit, appeared on the screen. She was standing outside the Great Barrington Police Station, holding a microphone to her mouth, and at that moment I knew it was Lazare calling the house and that this time his preemptive warning had failed. The phone stopped ringing — Bobby must have answered upstairs — and I watched with the rest of the world for news of my child.
    “It seems that Julie Milliken, who is being sought in the abduction of her niece, whom the world has come to know as Baby Lexy, is also under investigation in a just-developing case of identity theft. The victim: her identical twin sister, Annie Milliken-Goodman, Lexy’s mother. It was in front of Julie Milliken’s Division Street home nearly two weeks ago that this woman” — a picture of Zara Moklas, smiling, appeared on the screen — “was brutally murdered. Just last night, Thomas Soiffer, who had been sought in connection with that case” — a replay of his surrender — “turned himself in to the police. And now the police are on their way to Barton, Vermont, where early this morning a motel owner reported renting a room to a woman and baby resembling Julie Milliken and Lexy Goodman. Barton police are already at the scene.”
    Bobby, fully dressed, came running down the stairs into the living room.
    “Come on,” he said. “We’re meeting Lazare. If we’re not there in ten minutes, he’ll leave without us.”

Chapter 11
    A sign reading NORTHWEST KINGDOM MOTEL & CABINS stood at a turnoff from Route 5 in Barton, Vermont. Bobby and I sat in the backseat of the squad car that had met our helicopter at a local airfield; Lazare sat up front in the passenger seat. Our car kicked up dust all the way down the long road bordered on both sides by towering pines. Half a mile along we were forced to stop. The road was blocked by four different camera crews, each with its satellite tower reaching skyward from vans that seemed too small to hold it. In the near distance I could see a clapboard motel. To its right, attached cabins, each with its own porch, staggered backward into the woods. Lazare thanked the cop who had driven us and got out. Bobby and I exited opposite doors of the squad car — and we ran.
    About a hundred feet ahead, two men talking with each other stood out for their lack of uniforms: one a middle-aged man with close-cropped red hair, in baggy jeans and battered work boots, the other a tall man with a shock of white hair and a full beard, also injeans and work boots. Beyond them, at the farthest end of the asphalt parking lot, outside the last cabin, I saw my pale blue rental car. The trunk and all four doors were wide open. An unmarked van was parked at an angle beside it and some kind of technician in a green jumpsuit was leaning into the trunk.
    The two men turned around when they noticed us running toward them. Closer, I saw that the red-haired man was holding a walkie-talkie. He said something to the other man and walked to meet us.
    “Detective Lazare?” He must have recognized him from TV.
    “That’s me,” Lazare said. The two men shook hands.
    “Detective Andy Phipps. Pleased to meet you.”
    “These are the parents, Annie and Bobby Goodman.” Lazare introduced us. “Baby girl here?”
    “Not now, but she was,” Phipps answered. “Come on, meet Leo Brook, owns the place. You can hear it from the horse’s mouth.”
    Brook greeted us with a nod of his bushy chin. This close, I noticed the bulbous nose and bloodshot eyes of northern solitude. I knew his kind from my New England college winters. They were the locals, men and women skilled at hunkering against the bitter cold year after year, spending too much time alone, maybe drinking too much, emerging in spring older than a single season.
    “Like I was telling the detective” — Brook’s voice was coarse yet gentle — “they checked in early this morning, using the name Erin Garfield. Wanted the farthest cabin. Said she didn’t want the baby to wakeanyone in the night. I told