One Cold Night

to form and hover in his mind — a man he knew almost nothing about, who therefore could be capable of anything. Dave’s thoughts kept turning back to Loder Hull. In the hour he had been a suspect in Becky’s abduction, the man had been many things. He had been a hardworking father whose death truncated a happy family life; and he had been a stalker, a rapist, a killer of young girls. Now as Dave thought about Peter Adkins and who he might be, his mind veered similarly in all directions. Not knowing enough about him was what crawled under Dave’s skin. His mind swerved between the two men, between Peter Adkins and Loder Hull. A year ago he had spent whole minutes wrapped up in the possibility that Loder Hull had never died, that he had come back to harm his own daughter. Then he had been wrong. Was it wrong now to think that Peter Adkins might have done the same?
    “What’s happening with our warrant for Seventy-seven Water Street?” Ramos asked Bruno. “We got to find out what that freak upstairs saw.”
    “Still on the DA’s desk.” Bruno snorted. “I been calling them, believe me you.”
    “Call Johnson’s cell,” Ramos told Bruno. “Find out if he’s been able to keep the building sealed. And tellhim to keep ringing doorbells. This warrant is taking too long; we gotta get inside.”
    “Lisa won’t be in that apartment,” Dave said, knowing Ramos didn’t think so either. If any of them really thought Lisa was that close they would have broken down the door hours ago. The face Dave thought he’d seen in the window was growing vaguer, and he felt increasingly certain he had imagined it; a ghost in a bright light, it evaporated as soon as he tried to remember it. Still, the missing handset from the Café Luxembourg was a concern; the call to Marie had been made from someplace nearby. Ramos was right — they needed to get inside that building, if only to cross it off their list — but Dave’s gut told him they would not find Lisa there. “His pattern before was to get her far enough away, somewhere that felt safe to him but someplace close enough to get to relatively quickly. Remember, Becky’s letter was sent from the Bronx, and that was where we found —” Dave stopped himself.
    “You can say whatever you have to,” Marie said softly.
    He didn’t need to say it; they all knew what had been found of Becky in that Bronx Dumpster: tiny green beads from her necklace, soaking in a marinade of blood.
    “If it’s Peter Adkins,” Dave continued, “he’s close, but not that close.”
    “We got the Amber Alert covering the whole tristate area,” Ramos said. “Transit, Housing, Port Authority, Aviation, Canine — everyone’s on alert. How far away could they be?”

Chapter 13
    Wednesday, 10:35 a.m.
    Lisa woke up in a cold sweat, knowing something was missing. Something was wrong. That feeling of having forgotten something — like her keys, or her tampons, or to brush her hair before leaving the loft — came over her in a panic.
    And then, bit by bit, her mind oriented itself to where she was. She could smell and feel and hear things: mold, a scratchy rug, the drone of motion.
    She was in a car. In the trunk of a car. Lying on her side. Her arms and legs were collapsed together in front of her and they were tingly; she tried to stretch them but there was no room in the trunk. It was dark in here, and smelly. She remembered now.
    It was a small red car. The back bumper was smashed in on the left. He had put a gun against her spine and made her get into the trunk.
    The trunk was sealed tight and her eyes couldn’t adjust to the dark. But her mind was waking up. She remembered now: She had been so afraid.
    The loner guy had stopped in front of her.
    “What’s the yellow line for?” he had asked her. He stood there in his tan canvas jacket with a dark brown corduroy collar, passing a stone back and forth between two hands. She had felt afraid of that stone; it was her first signal. He had a high forehead, wispy blond hair, a dimpled chin.
    “People park here that shouldn’t,” Lisa said. “Block us in.”
    “Who’s us? ”
    He tossed the stone between his hands. She stood up. The paintbrush dripped by her side but it seemed unwise to take her eyes off him.
    “Me and my parents.” She told it as a lie, then realized it was true: If Susan was her mother then that made Dave her stepfather, and technically they were her parents.
    He kind of smiled then; a thin-lipped smile,