Chapter 4

I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

I reached for the keyboard, trying to use the keyboard, but nothing happened.

The girl let out an apologetic smile.

"I'm so sorry. Our security system's pretty old. It acts up sometimes. I'll need to reboot it before I can show you the footage."

"How long?"

"About thirty minutes, give or take."

"Is there another monitor I can use?"

"I'm afraid not."

I didn't hesitate.

"Then give me the key to Room 315."

She held out a keycard.

I took the elevator to the third floor.

I walked down the hallway, but my mind was still back in the face of Bennett.

Bennett had been here.

Not by accident.

How was he connected to any of this?

The lock clicked.

I stepped in and shut the door behind me.

Her suitcase was open on the rack.

On the vanity: her dry shampoo. A black hair tie with three of her hairs still in it.

Her toothbrush standing up in a ceramic mug, bristles bent to the left, the way she always mashed it.

Beside the bed a charging cable was still plugged into the wall.

I picked up the hair tie and my chest came apart.

“Bennett isn’t a good man, Emma. And you're letting Wren grow up in it.”

She said that to me in the kitchen eleven weeks ago.

I told her that could not be like that anymore. She said okay. We never talked about it again.

I don't know why I picked up the cable.

Because it was the saddest thing in the room, maybe.

Because it was still plugged in. Because she was coming back for it.

Then I went through her makeup bag.

There was something inside it.

A slip of paper.

Rolled small enough to pass through a wedding ring.

It was a receipt from the market down by the harbor.

Seventy cents. One coffee.

I turned it to the back.

WREN SAW IT.

DON'T ASK HER AT HOME.

I read it four times.

Wren saw it.

Saw what.

Suddenly, my phone went off in my coat.

Ring: Motion detected in the backyard --- 5 min ago.

The feed came up gray.

Our yard, Bennett was standing under the willow.

He still had his work clothes on and he had a spade.

He drove it into the ground, put his weight on it, and turned over a shovelful of dirt.

Then he looked up at the camera on the fence.

He looked into it for about two seconds, with nothing on his face at all.

Then he went back to work.

He raised the spade over his head and brought it down on that root, and again, and again, and again, and his shoulders were going and his chest was going and he was not stopping.

Then the icon started spinning.

Weak signal. Reconnecting.

The screen went black.

I sat down on the end of Sloane's bed with the phone in both hands.

That wasn't a fresh hole.

The dirt around it was flat and dark and rained-on.

There was a second pile past the edge with grass already starting on top of it.

He wasn't burying anything.

He was looking for something.