“Nothin’.”

“The office?”

“Nope, clean. No files on his computer tracking Feb or you or any sick shit. Though his boss is stunned. Loved the guy. Said he was a genius. Said Denny got head hunted two, three times a year but was loyal to the company. Said Denny could be makin’ double, even triple, but he never left. Thought it was because he liked his job. Had no idea it was because Denny wanted to be close to anything Feb.”

That turned Colt’s stomach but he shook it off and kept questioning.

“Colleagues?”

“The Feds are hittin’ them this mornin’, as we speak.”

“More from the neighbors, any other friends?”

Sully shook his head.

“Anything else? He use a credit card? Called family, a friend, anyone been in touch with him since he did Marie?”

Sully took a drink from his coffee and another bite of his cookie. He did this while studying Colt.

Then he swallowed and said, “Nothin’ so far, we’re askin’ though. But apparently, he’s vanished.”

Colt sat back in the chair Feb always sat in and looked out the window, taking a drink from his own mug.

“Colt,” Sully called his attention back to him, “I know this is frustrating but we’ll get this guy. He’s fucked up, he’ll fuck up again.”

Colt knew he didn’t have to remind Sully but he did it all the same. “He fucked his wife pretending he was me and pretending she was February.”

“I could see that’d make you impatient for us to find him.”

“What makes me impatient to find him is, he gets word Feb’s in my bed, he’s likely to get gripped by another rage and anyone could get in his way.”

Sully changed the subject. “You been in that bed with Feb?”

Colt didn’t answer his question.

Instead he changed the subject himself. “You know Amy Harris?”

Sully’s wife was a local; she was two years ahead of Colt at school. Sully was from a small town about forty-five minutes away. He’d made the sacrifice, pulled up roots and made his life close to Lorraine’s people. He did this because she had two living parents, three brothers and a sister, all who still lived in town. Sully only had a sister and she lived in Maine. Lorraine’s way of thinking was, considering her family was close, and she was close to them, her town roots went deeper than his. Sully’s way of thinking was he’d give Lorraine anything she wanted, part because he loved her and part because she could be a serious nag.

He shook his head. “Nope.”

“She works at County Bank.”

“Lorraine and me do our banking at State.”

Colt lowered his voice. “I need you to mobilize the Lorraine gossip tree but I need you to do it without Feb, Jessie Rourke, Mimi VanderWal, Delilah or Jackie Owens gettin’ wind of it.”

Sully leaned forward. “What’s this about?”

“Gut,” Colt told him, “Amy Harris walked into J&J’s a couple nights ago. She’d lived in this town all her life and never been there. She eyed Feb in a way I didn’t like. She acted funny, we had a conversation that didn’t sit well and walked right back out. Then she disappeared.”

“Disappeared?”

“Never took a day off work that her boss remembers and now she’s had three, today, no call-no show. No one’s seen or heard from her and she isn’t answering her door.”

“What the fuck?”

“Found out she had a baby, ‘while ago. Don’t know whose as she’s not a girl who gets around. At all,” Colt told him.

“This somethin’ to do with Feb or is it somethin’ to do with Lowe?”

“Gut says, both.”

“How’s that?”

“Don’t know that either but I was surprised to hear she had a kid. We weren’t close but that was still news. Colleague reports she had a breakdown, took off from her station, early break so she could have a cryin’ jag, thinkin’ about her boy which was way out of her standard practice. But she had it after Lowe came in to make a withdrawal.”

Sully shivered and it was visible.

“You think he raped her?”

Colt shook his head, “No clue. I think she came in to tell me something or, way she was eyein’ Feb, her. I think it’s no coincidence she did it after Angie got murdered. I think it scared the shit out of her. And I think she lost her courage and didn’t do it. I want to know what that something was because what I do know is, after she did that, she disappeared.”

“What you want Raine to do about it?”

“I wanna know anything there is to know about Amy Harris.”

“Without any of Feb and her gang findin’ out Raine and her gang are askin’?”

“Without Feb or any of her gang findin’ out I’m askin’.”

Sully grinned. “Colt, man, you know, you’re gonna have to buy her girls with somethin’.”

Colt grinned back, “Sully, you’re so full of shit. Raine isn’t half as curious about the state of affairs as you are.”

“What?” Sully threw out a hand. “You’re my partner.”

Colt shook his head but said, “Tell Raine Feb made a frittata for breakfast this morning.”

Sully slammed his palm down on the table and gave a shout.

“Damn, man, you must be the master. Morrie tells me only thing better than Feb’s frittatas is being touched by the hand of God.”

Colt took another drink of coffee.

“They that good?” Sully pushed.

Colt thought of the best breakfast he’d ever had in his life. Jackie was no slouch in the kitchen, Melanie loved to cook gourmet crap and was always trying out a new recipe, and Frank’s specialty was breakfast and his restaurant was known throughout Indiana as a place you needed to have breakfast before you died.

Feb’s frittata beat all of them.

Colt’s voice was low again when he replied, “Best I ever had.”

Sully read his meaning and Colt realized it was a good idea to share. He’d helped his partner shake off the shadow of grief and remember life could be good.

Sully shoved the rest of his cookie in his mouth and took a slug of coffee right through it.

“I got a serial murderer to find,” he told Colt, still chewing and then turned his head to call to Mimi. “Meems, sweetheart, you got a to go cup?”

* * *

Colt got a seven o’clock reservation at Costa’s and called Feb to tell her he’d pick her up at the bar at six thirty.

He also called Doc to ask him if Amy came around to see him the day before. Or, more to the point, he called Doc’s receptionist Leslie, who was old as dirt but had been sweet on Colt from the minute Colt’s mother swayed in, drunk off her ass, yanking Colt, who was six and who’d burned his hand on the stove trying to make soup, behind her. Colt owed a lot of people in that town for their kindness when he was living his hell; it was part of why he earned his badge.

Leslie told him no Amy even though she shouldn’t have done it, she would have done anything he asked. Not because she was sweet on him, because she trusted whatever he was doing, it was the right thing.

An hour later, Colt got a surprise when Doc called him direct.

“What’s this I hear you callin’ ‘bout Amy, son?” Doc asked.

Colt stifled his surprise and replied, “Concern, Doc. She’s been missin’ a few days and she’s no call-no show at work. Not her style.”

“Since when the po-lice investigate no call-no show?” Doc asked an excellent question.

Doc was a good old boy and sounded like a hick. He did this because he wanted his patients to talk to him about what ailed them, body and mind, so he could do something to help. They wouldn’t do that if they held him up on the pedestal where most put doctors just because of their schooling. Doc broke down those barriers by affecting a personality that said I’m one of you. He was smarter than hell and should have retired years ago but the town wouldn’t stand for it. He’d be shoving thermometers under sick kids’ tongues until the day he keeled over and died.

“Since it’s Amy Harris. She doesn’t have kin close, no friends to speak of and this is well out of character,” Colt answered.

Doc was silent.

Then he said quietly, “Let this be, son.”

That cold hit his chest and it went into deep freeze.

“Let what be, Doc?”

“Just let it be. I hear you and Feb’re finally patchin’ things up. No sense diggin’ up the dead dog. It’s dead. That’s all you need to know.”

“Doc, this could be tied to a murder investigation. You know something, you aren’t doin’ right not sharin’.”

Now Doc was surprised. “What murder investigation?”

“We’re guessin’, and it’s a good guess, that Denny Lowe killed his wife, Feb’s ex, Pete Hollister, Angie Maroni and a man named Butch Miller.”

“Hoo,” Doc’s shock was audible; it came out of him like someone punched him in the gut.

Colt ignored the noise and thought about Amy.

Amy would go to Doc. Doc would have done her pregnancy test. He likely arranged for her care and even the adoption. Doc was a pillar of that community and he was for a reason. He wasn’t just a doctor, he was much more.

“You know somethin’ about Amy and Denny, we gotta know,” Colt told him.

“Knew Marie, heard ‘bout her this mornin’. Cryin’ shame, she was a nice woman,” Doc noted then asked, “Denny?”

“Evidence is pointing to him.”

“Hard to believe, son.”

“You don’t know what I know,” Colt told him. “You got somethin’ for me?”

“No, Colt, I don’t. Not on Denny and I would tell you, you know I would. Amy, I’m just sayin’, you best leave that alone. She’s a good girl.”

“She connected to Denny?”

“Not that I know of, would shock me deep I heard she was.”

“Then why would you need to tell me she’s a good girl?”

“Because, no matter what, it’s plain old true.”

The old man was hiding something.

“Doc.”

“All I’m gonna say.”

“Doc –”

“Colt,” Doc said firmly, quietly and in a way that made the cold inch tighter, “let it alone. Hear me, son?”

“I can’t. I’ll take it as read you’ll keep this between you and me but this shit with Denny is tied to me, it’s tied to Feb and we’re not talkin’ in good ways. You seen a lot of sick in your life but I’ll bet you your pension you haven’t seen sick like this,” he heard Doc take in a sharp hiss of breath but talked through it, “Feb’s in danger and I am too. If Amy’s in danger, she needs protection and she needs it now. Hell, Doc, she needed it last week and it’s my job to see that she has it.”

“I’ll tell you, Colt, far’s I know, Denny Lowe ain’t tied to Amy. God’s honest truth.”

That meant whatever he was hiding, and he was hiding something, might be tied to Colt or Feb and he wasn’t saying. Which meant it was.

“Doc, no matter how deep you bury that skeleton in your closet, somethin’ always happens to make it rattle.”

“You hear those bones rattlin’, son, take my advice. You close the closet door.”

Then Doc hung up. Another dead end.

“Fucking shit,” Colt cursed as he put down his phone.

“Looks like your day’s turnin’ out good as mine,” Sully noted as he walked up.

Colt knew what Sully was talking about. Colleagues, neighbors and friends of Lowe were being interviewed everywhere. All they got was a few “We always thought he was a bit quiet,” but nothing else. It was a shock even to his Mom and Dad, who still lived in town. Denny’s mother was so cut up she’d had to be sedated by paramedics. No one had heard from him or seen him since the day Puck died, which the coroner told them was also the day he reckoned Marie died. They were coming up zero which meant the only thing they had left was waiting for him to kill again.

He had no chance to reply to Sully, the phone on his desk rang again. He pulled it out of the receiver and put it to his ear.

“Lieutenant Colton,” he answered.

“She’s dead.”

Colt knew the voice, even if it was a whisper. Julie McCall.

Fuck.

“What?”

“She’s dead, Lieutenant. I’m standin’ in her house and she’s dead.”

“Who?” Colt asked but he knew.

“Amy,” she whispered and it surprised him, coming from that woman, but he heard tears in that one word.

“Exit the house immediately, Ms. McCall. Don’t touch anything. Officers will be there shortly and I’ll meet you out front.”

“Okay.”

“Don’t touch anything,” he repeated.

“I won’t.”

He hit a button on the phone and then hit the extension for dispatch. “Connie, get a unit out to Amy Harris’s house, one six eight Rosemary Street. We got a four one nine.”

“Four one nine,” Connie repeated. “Sure thing, Colt,” she finished and disconnected.