“You live alone. You have a demanding job.”
“He saved my life. He deserves better than what he’s got.”
“And you’re ready to be his mom? Ready to take on all his problems?”
“I don’t know!” Maura sighed and looked out at snow-covered rooftops. “I just want to make a difference in his life.”
“What about Daniel? How’s the boy going to fit into that relationship?”
Maura didn’t respond, because she herself didn’t know the answer. What about Daniel? Where do we go from here?
As they pulled into the hospital parking lot, Jane’s cell phone rang. She glanced at the number and answered: “Hey, babe. What’s up?”
Babe. The endearment slipped off Jane’s lips so easily, so comfortably. This was how two people who shared both a bed and a life spoke to each other, no matter who was listening in. They didn’t need to whisper, to slink off into the shadows. This was what love sounded like when it came out of the darkness and declared itself to the world.
“Is the lab absolutely certain about that result?” said Jane. “Maura’s convinced otherwise.”
Maura looked at her. “What result?”
“Yeah, I’ll tell her. Maybe she can explain it. We’ll see you guys at dinner.” She hung up and looked at Maura. “Gabriel just spoke to the toxicology lab in Denver. They ran a STAT analysis of the girl’s stomach contents.”
“Did they find organophosphates?” asked Maura.
“No.”
Maura shook her head in bewilderment. “But it was a classic case of organophosphate poisoning! All the clinical signs were there.”
“She had no degradation products in her stomach. If she swallowed that pesticide, there should be some trace of it, right?”
“Yes, there should have been.”
“Well, there was nothing,” said Jane. “That’s not what killed her.”
Maura fell silent, unable to explain the results. “You can also absorb a fatal dose through the skin.”
“Forty-one people got the stuff splashed on them? Does that sound likely?”
“The gastric analysis can’t be right,” said Maura.
“It’s going to the FBI lab for further analysis. But right now, it looks like your diagnosis was wrong.”
A medical supply truck rumbled into the parking lot and pulled up beside their vehicle. Maura struggled to concentrate as the truck’s rear panel rattled open and two men began unloading oxygen tanks.
“Gruber had pinpoint pupils,” said Maura. “And he definitely responded to that dose of atropine.” She sat up straighter, more convinced than ever. “My diagnosis has to be correct.”
“What else could cause those symptoms? Is there some other poison, something the lab might not have picked up?”
The noisy clang of metal made Maura glance out in annoyance at the two deliverymen. She focused on the oxygen tanks, lined up in the cart like green missiles, and a memory suddenly clicked into place. Something that she had seen in the valley of Kingdom Come, something she hadn’t registered at the time. Like those oxygen tanks, it had been a cylinder, but it was gray and encrusted in snow. She thought of the Code Blue in the autopsy suite, remembering Fred Gruber’s pinpoint pupils and his response to atropine.
My diagnosis was almost right.
Almost.
Jane pushed open her car door and stepped out, but Maura didn’t move from her seat. “Hey,” said Jane, looking in at her. “Aren’t we going in to visit the kid?”
Maura said, “We need to go to Kingdom Come.”
“What?”
“There’s only a few hours of daylight left. If we leave now, we can get there while it’s still light. But we have to stop at a hardware store first.”
“A hardware store? Why?”
“I want to buy a shovel.”
“They’ve recovered all the bodies. There’s nothing left to find there.”
“Maybe there is.” Maura waved Jane into the car. “Come on, let’s go! We need to leave now.”
With a sigh, Jane climbed back behind the wheel. “This is going to make us late for dinner. And I haven’t even started packing yet.”
“It’s our last chance to see the valley. Our last chance to understand what killed those people.”
“I thought you had it all figured out.”
Maura shook her head. “I was wrong.”
UP THE MOUNTAIN ROAD they drove, the same road that Maura had traveled on that unlucky day with Doug and Grace, Elaine and Arlo. She could still hear their voices arguing in the Suburban, could picture Grace’s lips pursed into a sulk and Doug’s unwavering cheerfulness as he insisted that everything would turn out okay, if you just trusted in the universe. Ghosts, she thought, and they still haunt this road. They still haunt me.
Today no snow was falling, and the road was plowed, but Maura could picture it as she’d seen it on that day, obscured by a blinding curtain of white. Here, at this bend, was the spot where they’d first talked about turning around. If only they had. How different everything would have come out if they had gone back down the mountain, if they had chosen, instead, to return to Jackson. They might have had lunch at a nice restaurant, said their goodbyes, and gone back to their lives. Perhaps, in some parallel universe, that was the choice they’d made, and in that universe Doug and Grace and Arlo and Elaine were still alive.
The PRIVATE ROAD sign loomed ahead. No snowdrifts, no chain or gate barred the way this time. Jane turned onto the road, and Maura remembered trudging past these same pine trees, Doug in the lead, Arlo dragging Elaine’s roll-aboard suitcase. She remembered the sting of blowing snow and the darkness thickening around them.
The ghosts were here, too.
They passed the sign for Kingdom Come, and as they started down the road into the valley, Maura glimpsed charred foundations, and the excavated burial pit. Strands of discarded police tape littered the field in bright slashes of color that fluttered against the snow.
Jane’s tires crunched over ice as they reached the first ruined foundation.
“They found the bodies all buried together, over there,” said Jane, pointing to the pit that still gaped in the snow. “If there’s anything left to uncover around here, it won’t be obvious until spring.”
Maura pushed open her door and stepped out.
“Where are you going?” Jane asked.
“For a walk.” From the back, Maura pulled out the shovel that she’d just purchased in the hardware store.
“I told you, they’ve already gone over this field.”
“But did they search the woods?” Carrying the shovel, Maura headed down the row of ruined houses, the ice crackling beneath her boots. Everywhere, she saw evidence that law enforcement personnel had combed this site, from the trampled snow to the multiple tire tracks to the cigarette butts and scraps of paper fluttering across the snow. The sun was sinking, taking with it the last daylight. She strode more quickly now, leaving behind the burned village, and started into the trees.
“Wait up!” Jane called.
She could not remember exactly where she and Rat had entered the woods. Their snowshoe prints had since vanished under subsequent snowfall. She kept moving in the general direction in which they had fled from the men and the bloodhound. She had not brought snowshoes, and every step was hard work, through knee-high drifts. She heard Jane complaining loudly behind her, but Maura kept plowing ahead, dragging the shovel, her heart pounding from the effort. Had she gone too far into the woods? Had she missed the spot?
Then the trees opened up and the clearing stretched before her, the snow mounded over heaps of construction debris. The excavator was still parked at the far edge, and she saw the skeletal frames of new buildings, still awaiting completion. Here was the place where she had fallen, mired in a deep drift. Where she’d lain helplessly as the bloodhound closed in. She saw it all again, her pulse thudding at the memory. The bloodhound leaping toward her. His yelp of surprise as Bear intercepted him in midair.