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SHAUNA BULGER STOPPED just outside Gloucester, on a forested strip of side road dappled with sunlight. She waited ten minutes, her eyes on the rearview mirror, anticipating with dread the appearance of the two men in the battered truck she had spotted outside her home in Needham.

She’d hopped into Mark’s pale-blue truck, leaving soon after she saw Kylie and Don off. She’d driven quickly past the two men, hoping against hope that they’d head into the house looking for the contents of the safe instead of following after her. Just in case they did, she had made a twisty, turny route through the suburbs as she headed for the highway. Nothing. They didn’t appear now. But they knew what the truck looked like. She’d need to get rid of it.

She got out and went to the back of Mark’s truck. She looked at the big suitcase lying on its side at the head of the truck bed, strapped into place between two similar suitcases loaded with Mark’s clothes and shoes. There was no blood seeping from the middle case. No ominous stains. Nothing to indicate what terrible cargo was curled within it.

Shauna got back into the truck and picked up the dead woman’s phone. It didn’t need an access code, which was an unexpected blessing. The device told her the flood of calls that had come in that morning were from a contact named simply “D.” There were no messages from that number. Shauna flipped through the recent messages in the lead-up to the intrusion at her home.

Yo Mar, you bringing somethat good shit to Franks party on Sat? Will pay.

We need reup at Smithton house. 50caps.

Shauna had spent enough decades as a cop’s wife to know what reups, caps, and bringing “good shit” to parties meant. It meant the female intruder and the one named Pooney were drug dealers. Shauna could have guessed something like that from their faces, their jittery movements, the terrible planning surrounding the break-in. All Shauna had to do now was find out who their boss was. She wanted to find the man who had sent them, the man who had set in motion this runaway train on which Shauna was now trapped, barreling down the side of a mountain. She again scrolled through the messages, each contact labeled only with a single initial. She stopped when she discovered texts from “P,” which she supposed must have been Poon.

Where u?the contact labeled P asked.

Dunkies,was the reply.

I h8 to wake up and u not here!

Well Im bringin breakfast home so stop your complainin, Poon!!!!

We need to get there early. We at least 1 day late on batch. Driver gonna kill us!!!! Get ur ass home!!!!

Driver. Was that “D”? Shauna went back to the list of messages but found none under “D,” only brief or unanswered calls in the recents list. She put the phone down and lifted the small plastic tub she had retrieved from the safe in the floor of her garden shed. (She was right about the combination code.)

She set the tub on her lap. This was it. This was what they had come for. What these people were prepared to beat, degrade, and humiliate her for. Possibly what they had planned to kill her for. It was also something her husband of almost five decades had wanted to keep from her so badly, he’d constructed an elaborate plan to ensure she never found out about it. The safe. The secret commissioning of it. The weekend away in Florida. It was all for whatever lay in the box on her lap.

There were five unsealed manila envelopes standing upright in the plastic tub. Shauna lifted the first one and peered inside. A small gray device lay blank and silent, its screen dark green, lifeless, and marked with scratches. A single piece of paper was wedged between the device and the side of the envelope. Shauna slipped it out and recognized Mark’s handwriting.

Michelle Dunbar, 1991. Richard Hannoy.

Shauna turned the envelope this way and that but found nothing else inside. She picked up the device, examined it. It was not a phone, but she didn’t recognize what it was. She picked up her own phone and googled the names and date from the slip of paper, clicked on the first story to pop up.

The family of missing teenager Michelle Dunbar have expressed their dismay at police mishandling of the case, claiming a Palm Pilot belonging to the teenager has gone missing from police custody. The personal electronic organizer, they claim, was recovered from Dunbar’s body and may hold the key to finding the girl after two years of investigative dead ends. Lead detective Mark Bulger refused to comment on how the crucial piece of evidence in the case was misplaced. Dunbar’s boyfriend, Richard Hannoy, was released from police custody without charge yesterday following exhaustive interviews in which…

Shauna sighed. Oh Mark. While she was tempted to scroll further through the story, to look at the images of the missing girl and the strained, grief-stricken parents, Shauna decided not to torture herself with further evidence of how twisted and manipulative her husband had been. Shauna had known, deep down in her soul, that there were probably cases out there that went unsolved because bringing them resolution would in some way disadvantage Mark. He had been that kind of man. That kind of cop. She flipped to the next envelope, which contained a pair of black lace panties and another set of names. In the third envelope was a flick knife. In the fourth, a leatherbound diary. Shauna lifted the final envelope and reached inside. She found a dusty builder’s glove, made of white cotton with protective plastic molding on the inside of the palm and fingers. On the back of the wrist was a reddish-brown stain that could have been old, dried blood. Shauna took the slip of paper from the envelope and read the names.

Georgette Winter-Lee, 1989. Norman Driver.