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Amanda Fisk saw the DNA samplers out the door, with Flowers a step behind. She thought about Flowers: he was a convivial sort, easygoing, friendly, either naturally or because he’d consciously trained himself to be that way. She recognized it from other detectives she’d worked with over the years, the better ones. They could talk with anyone and get their suspects talking back.

If you were a criminal—Fisk didn’t usually think of herself that way but recognized that technically she was one—talking was one of the worst things you could do. Talking with anyone, but worst of all, a detective.

She’d talked a little too much with Flowers, she thought, though she couldn’t actually pick out any missteps. But she’d been talking. And Flowers was smart. She’d done a search of his name, and learned that he was not only known for his detecting abilities, he was a bestselling novelist and a magazine writer. Two of the articles she’d found mentioned he was known in law enforcement circles as “that f*ckin’ Flowers” for his unusual insights and nonstandard investigative procedures.

After brooding for a while, sitting alone in the big house, Fisk got up, went to her home office, brought her computer up, and began browsing the true crime sites. The true-crimers were still hunting down the men shown in Grandfelt’s last photos.

And she stumbled over the link between the true-crimers, Flowers, and Timothy. Timothy had been recognized in the old photograph by a man who was apparently suffering from dementia. Flowers had interviewed him, and after he’d left, one of the true-crimers had spoken to the man’s daughter, who confirmed both that her father had recognized Timothy, and that he was suffering from Alzheimer’s disease.

Reacting as a prosecutor, she would not want to put a demented man on a witness stand to confirm a key piece of information. On the other hand, that’s not what Flowers was doing—he might not know whether or not the demented man’s information was accurate, but it was enough to get him in the house, and a DNA match would stand by itself.

They wouldn’t get a match from the hair in the sink, which came from an anonymous donor at a St. Paul barbershop. If they became suspicious of the negative result on the hair, they could go looking for another sample. That might take them to Timothy’s clinic office, but that office space was shared, so there’d be massive amounts of contaminating DNA, and she’d already collected and disposed of all the personal clothing and equipment he’d kept there.

But the threat remained. Why would anyone be suspicious of the negative DNA result taken from a man’s own sink? Most cops wouldn’t be—but Flowers might be.

From what had become her compulsive reading of the true crime sites, it appeared to her that Flowers was leading the investigation. Davenport had been mentioned in the early days of the investigation, but after that, Flowers had come to the fore. Now, Flowers himself had said that Davenport was off in New Mexico.

If she could interrupt the rhythm of the investigation, perhaps get Flowers diverted to something else, a new man brought in, someone more conventional, someone more likely to take any DNA results at face value…

How to do that without bringing attention to herself?

—

Virgil felt he was working a couple of angles that could actually produce: the DNA samples, the various bits of research being done by the true-crimers, including the Carlson-Fisk marriage date. At the same time, it wasn’t what he wanted to do. He wanted to work on the novel. He wanted to do it badly enough that he’d begun to worry about his driving. He’d get in his truck and start off for somewhere, but then he’d start thinking about the novel, and later find himself at his destination without really knowing how he’d gotten there.

He was not, he thought, “in the moment,” as the Buddha might have recommended.

He had a laptop with him, but not a printer, and he really needed to see the book on paper, so he could pencil-edit. With the DNA results not available until next week, he decided that if nothing new came up, he’d go home on Friday afternoon and stay through the weekend, and maybe even take three days off.

—

He’d miss Lucas, for as long as Lucas was gone. He and Lucas thought about the world in different ways. Lucas had the ability to pick up on small, insignificant details in an investigation that were out of sync with how he thought the world worked, and more often than seemed likely, the insignificant turned out to be critical. Virgil tended to think in more global ways, like painting a picture, putting together colors and shapes until he could see an image emerging from the chaos.

And he was starting to sense something. The shapes and colors were coming together. George Baer, for instance, had suggested that Tina Locklin would have had one difficult problem to solve in planning the murder of Grandfelt, if it happened at Bee: how would she get into the building? How would she get a key?

He could think of ways, but they were all complicated and improbable. If Carlson was meeting Grandfelt on a regular basis, at Bee, which seemed improbable all by itself, Locklin might have followed him and perhaps seen him use a key to get into the building…and somehow might have gotten his key and copied it…

No. Never happened. That same thought applied to all other possible suspects. How would they get into the Bee building after hours? That one simple problem made it more likely that Doris Grandfelt wasn’t killed at Bee at all—that she’d been picked up in a bar or on the street and killed elsewhere.

But. Baer’s question about how Locklin would get into the Bee building made him consider the fact that at least three people had been regulars at Bee: Grandfelt, who worked there; Fisk, who worked there; and Carlson, a client.

That was odd all by itself, and he made another entry in the notebook, looked at the note, then paged back through his notebook to entries he’d made during the interview with Bee’s CEO, Cory Donner. The entry included a personal cell phone number, and Virgil punched it into his phone.

Donner answered on the third ring, and said, “Agent Flowers. I was wondering if I’d ever hear from you again.”

“Sorry to bother you so late in the day…”

“I work late,” Donner said. “How can I help you?”

“When Lucas and I spoke to you, you mentioned a sexual scandal you had at Bee a couple of years before Doris Grandfelt was murdered. You said that the company had instituted a somewhat draconian prohibition about sexual relationships between employees…”

“Yes, indeed. Draconian is the right word.”

“Did you ever have to enforce it?”

“No, not really. Actually, we softened it. Two of our employees began seeing each other, secretly, and when it got serious, the man, Tom Bergstrom, went to the CEO at the time, told him what was going on, and offered to resign if the company thought that was necessary. Tom was a good guy, is a good guy. He’s still with us. There was some conversation about it in the upper ranks. We all agreed that the absolute ban had served its purpose, as a warning, and could in some circumstances be inhumane. Both Tom and his girlfriend, Mickey Lee, were excellent employees and that had some influence as well. They eventually married.”

“Was that right around the time Doris was murdered?”

“No, no, that would have been later.”

“If a senior married executive had developed a relationship with Doris, back fairly soon after the relationship ban was instituted, would he have been fired?”

“Oh, yes, I think so. The original relationship, the one that caused the ban, was quite a shock to the company,” Donner said.

“So if Doris…”

“I see where you’re going with this. Doris develops a secret relationship with somebody who ate in the executive dining room, and then threatens to reveal the relationship unless he dumps his wife and marries her . So he kills her. With a cafeteria knife.”

“Just considering the possibilities.”

“I’ve got two words for you. Maybe three, depending on how you think of contractions.”

“And those are…”

“ We’re accountants . If we were going to murder Doris, we would do it carefully, unspectacularly, thoroughly, and a long way from Bee. We wouldn’t hack her to pieces.”

“Ah.”

“Was there anything else?” Donner asked.

“If somebody wanted to get into Bee at night, where would he or she get a key to the building?”

“That would be difficult. Doris had one—among her duties was what amounted to being a mail clerk. All the outgoing things would be collected at the end of the day and parceled out to UPS or FedEx. She would wait for the pickups and then lock up. That was one of her duties. Her friend Stephanie also had a key, and the same duties. We also had two receptionists who would arrive early, and would have had keys to open the building so employees could get in. Several executives had them; I did not, not then.”

“So the keys were controlled. They weren’t just handed out to everyone.”

“No, they weren’t. There’s quite a lot of sensitive information in our files. For instance, we hold tax returns for a number of prominent politicians and businesspeople. We’re responsible for that information, for its security. Right now, I believe there are twelve keys.”

“Okay.”

“I don’t feel like I’ve been much help,” Donner said.

“Actually, you have been. Thank you.”

Virgil rang off, looked at his watch. Time to head back to the hotel, get something to eat, read through his notebook, and get himself settled in front of his laptop to knock out some words.

—

Flowers was looking at Timothy as a possible DNA match for the last person to have sex with Doris Grandfelt. According to information Fisk found on a true crime site, Flowers had determined that the sex occurred very shortly before Grandfelt was killed. If he concluded that Timothy had killed Grandfelt, then she, Fisk, was safe, except for the possibility that the surviving Grandfelts might go after Timothy’s estate with a lawsuit. If they won the lawsuit, that would be a blow to her financial security.

But if an intense look into Timothy’s personality and history suggested that he hadn’t killed Doris Grandfelt—if they concluded that his contact was a one-time, sex-for-money deal—who would they look at next? If Flowers did a deep dive into her own history, he might find a series of violent deaths.

Even if he did all of that, she doubted that she would be indicted, or could be convicted. All the evidence would be purely circumstantial. But it would be ugly, and in a criminal case, nothing was certain.

She was now deep into pure speculation, but she had the sense that the investigation was turning against her best interests. Getting Flowers off the case, she thought, might be critical.

How to do that?

She went back to the Google satellite views of Flowers’s girlfriend’s farm. Way out in the sticks. She looked at the roads around the farm…

And after a while, she thought, small risk now, or possible bigger risk later? She would have to do an on-the-spot evaluation of risk…

She went to bed in sweatpants and a tee-shirt, lay awake for a while, a little too warm, then got up, went to the garage, opened a storage cabinet, and took out the final gallon jug of Drano Max Gel. She took a few seconds to unscrew a stubborn cap and pour the contents down the utility sink. Careful not to let it splash on her, she rinsed it three times, then took it in the house and put it in the kitchen sink while she went back upstairs to dress.

A half hour after that, she was at an all-night gas station. She filled the tank on the car, then without hesitation, the gallon jug. She tightened the cap on the jug and went inside, through a cloud of small moths, to claim her change.

Looked at her watch: 1:30 a.m.

Small risk now?

Faced with the reality of it, it suddenly seemed not so small.