“Let me through!”
Someone seized him from behind. Nick tried to wrestle himself free, but the man holding him was strong. His fingers dug into Nick’s biceps. Nick took in the faces of the policemen surrounding him. One of them was smiling. Another was speaking about the Seattle Seahawks, a football team. Light glinted off the brass badge pinned to an officer’s uniform. The blur in front of him resolved itself into a face.
“Whoa there,” the policeman said. “What’s the rush, buddy?”
Several other policemen turned to look, their faces impassive. The plainclothes policeman in front of Nick—a tall, young man with a slightly pudgy face, dressed in a rumpled jacket and tie—alone appeared concerned. He held Nick by the shoulders, cataloging the cuts and bruises on his face.
“My name is Detective Adam Stolie,” he said. “Hey—don’t I know you?”
Nick shook his head. His throat was thick, and he couldn’t seem to find his voice.
“Slow down there,” the detective said. “You’re Nick Wilder, aren’t you? The photographer from the Telegraph. You’re so beaten up, I almost didn’t recognize you.” The detective glanced behind him at one of the other policemen. “Hey, Brady,” he said. “You want to come over here, give me a hand?”
A patrolman, shorter and thinner, broke free from the group of incongruously chatty policemen. Detective Stolie was studying Nick. “You want to tell me what you’re doing here?”
Nick looked over at the long black bag on the stretcher. The orderlies were strapping it down with wide blue polyester straps, latching them closed with steel buckles. His eyes filled with tears.
“That’s my brother,” he heard himself say. “That’s Sam.”
He twisted to one side, trying to free himself. Stolie released his grip and let him go, and Nick fell to his knees next to the stretcher. The orderlies stopped what they were doing and took a small step backward.
“Open it up,” Stolie said. Hesitating, one of the orderlies reached across Nick and unzipped the top of the bag.
Sam’s eyes were open, unseeing. Nick couldn’t make sense of his brother’s face. It had been badly slashed. His cheek was hanging in a flap off the bone. His mouth was a bloody pulp, nearly unrecognizable. His teeth had been kicked into his throat. His hair was plastered to his forehead with a dark black, bloody scab. A gelatinous goop was oozing from his ears.
Nick hardly noticed. He was staring into Sam’s open, lifeless eyes, crying uncontrollably. “What the hell are you doing?” Nick heard the wild shout. He didn’t understand, though, that the voice belonged to him. “Why’d you put him in this bag?” His hands were ripping at the heavy black polyester, trying to pull his brother out from the body bag. “Can’t you see? You’re going to suffocate him.” He turned on the orderlies, then, holding his bloody hands up toward the officers in supplication, found Detective Stolie with his eyes. “He can’t breathe. Damn it, help me!” His voice rose into a scream. “You’re going to kill him. Please, help me get him out of here!”
chapter 2
One month earlier, at the beginning of November, Nick had been woken up just before dawn by the buzzing of his cell phone. Despite how wintry it was outside, the building’s heat was set too high, and Nick’s cramped studio was hot and stuffy. He woke up disoriented, not certain what was happening. When the phone buzzed again, the dim light from its LCD screen gave shape to the dark room. Nick shielded his eyes and, raising himself onto an elbow, picked up the phone, becoming vaguely aware at the same time of the staccato rattle of the wind against the thin window panes. Recognizing the number, he settled back into bed and closed his eyes, then at last brought the phone to his ear.
“Officer Tyler.”
“My man, Nicholas.” The policeman sounded wide awake. No doubt he had been at the station through the night. “Sorry to wake you.”
Nick ignored the apology. He was used to these calls.
“I thought you’d want to know. I’m just about to dispatch a couple of units out to Kent. You know the Peck Bridge?”
“Sure.”
“There’s a body there. They say it’s a pretty bad sight. Something to see.”
Nick was pushing himself up onto the side of his bed. “Has it gone out on the radio yet?”
“You know I always call you first, my man.”
“What time is it?”
The police dispatcher didn’t answer. He was laughing without mirth as he hung up the phone.
The sky was beginning to lighten into a white blanket of mist twenty-five minutes later as Nick’s old white Toyota sputtered and choked to a stop near the Peck Bridge, on the outskirts of Seattle. The engine died when Nick stepped on the brake. Rather than try to restart it, he let the car roll silently to the shoulder of the two-lane road, then yanked on the emergency brake.
Outside, it was crisp and cold. There weren’t any buildings along this stretch of the road. The landscape was barren and gray. The trees that lined the bank of the river had lost their leaves, and their branches looked naked and sharp. Nick walked the rest of the way to the flat, nondescript bridge. Down beneath him by the river, a team of policemen were sealing off the area, running police tape from stakes they had planted in the wet soil. Even though their light was no longer necessary, a few of them were still carrying flashlights, the lamps burning yellow holes into the thin fog. As Nick watched them, a white Channel 11 news van pulled to a stop on the bridge. The passenger window rolled down, and a heavily made-up woman leaned her head out, holding her coiffed hair carefully in place. “Sometimes I think you must drive in with the cops,” she said to Nick.
Nick glanced back at her over his shoulder. On camera, the makeup made the woman look older. In person, Nick thought, she looked like a young woman with too much cream on her face. He noticed a smear of rouge in one of her eyebrows. He didn’t bother saying hello. “I don’t have the equipment to carry around that you do, Sheila.”
“So what’s it like down there? They letting the media in?”
Nick was noticing the hostile way the driver of the van was eyeing him. “I just got here. I don’t know.”
“Well, we’ll see you down there, Nick.” The window closed, and the TV van pulled forward, searching for a place to park and set up. Nick felt the woman’s eyes on his back as he crossed the street.
Looking for a path down to the riverbank, he walked to the edge of the bridge, then took a step into the thick brush. The soil was muddy, and his feet sank with every step. He felt the mud seep into his shoes, then through his socks. These were his newest running shoes, his orange and black Nikes. He would have to clean them when he got back home.
The highest-ranking cop on scene was a beat officer Nick hadn’t met before. They were still waiting for the homicide detectives to arrive from headquarters downtown. “What do you have?” Nick asked the cop.
The officer pointed toward the body. Nick could smell the coffee the man had been drinking a few minutes before. “As far as we can tell, she was murdered somewhere else. Her body’s cold. The killer must have brought her out here to dump the body.”
“Who was she?”
The cop sized him up. “You’re with the Telegraph, right?”
Nick showed him his