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Harry had put in another call to Melissa Cairns, his friend who worked at the FBI. He’d gotten in touch with her briefly after

the discovery of Angus Tanner’s body, wondering whether the bureau had ever come across any cases where a victim’s bones had

been removed from the body. She’d made some mention of a case in Des Moines, had said she would get back to him, but he hadn’t

heard from her.

So he’d left a message for her after Delbert Dorfman stuffed a pack of cigarettes into his mouth and set himself ablaze. There’d

already been a couple of very dark jokes around the station in the wake of that, something about how maybe the anti-smoking

lobby might want to make that dude their “In Memoriam” spokesperson, or how a picture of his flaming head might be best placed

on every pack of smokes as a deterrent.

Harry hadn’t laughed.

Melissa was originally from Lucknow, and she and Harry had been in some of the same classes at the local high school. Harry

could still recall sitting at the back of his history class, admiring the way Melissa, in her short skirt, one row over and

three desks ahead, would sit slightly sideways and cross her legs, dangling one shoe. Pretty much drove him out of his mind.

Didn’t dare walk out of that class without holding a binder in front of him.

As he headed for his office, Mary waved a couple of yellow message slips in the air and said, “Rachel Bosma called, and there’s some TV reporter from Montpelier who wants to do an on-camera interview about Tanner and Hillman.”

Harry took the messages, crumpled them, and tossed them into the closest wastebasket.

Mary, nonplussed, said, “If they call again I’ll say you have no comment at this time but that you are aggressively pursuing

various leads.”

Harry filled a mug with coffee from the machine in the break room, went into his office, and closed the door.

He needed a minute.

Harry kept thinking about how when he depressed the whistle button on that toy train transformer, the dog from next door started

barking and howling. When he took his finger off the button, the dog went quiet. He hung out in young Tyler’s bedroom for

a few more minutes, repeating the experiment. Every time he held the button down, that mutt nearby went nuts.

The whistle, Harry concluded, did work, but was not producing a sound that could be heard by human ears. It was operating at a much higher frequency, one that

could only he detected, at least in this case, by dogs. The toy train version of a dog whistle.

The Lucknow department did not have a canine unit, but the state police did, its so-called K-9 unit. Harry had brought them

in in the summer of 2000, more than a year ago, when a five-year-old boy got separated from his family during a camping trip.

The tracking dogs were brought in and the boy was found within twenty-four hours. Cold and hungry and covered in mosquito

bites, but he was okay.

Harry went to his Rolodex, found the number he’d called in, and made a call.

“John Garfield, K-9.”

Yes, it was true. The head of the canine unit’s surname was the same as a famous cartoon cat. And yes, he also had the same full name as a once-famous movie star who’d died at the young age of thirty-nine. But the cat connection was funnier.

“Harry Cook over in Lucknow.”

“Hey, Harry. You got another lost kid?”

“No, nothing like that today, thank God. But it’s good to know your dogs are at the ready next time we’re in a fix like that.”

“What can I do for you today?”

“I want to talk to you about dog whistles.”

“Dog whistles? What, you getting a dog? Training him?”

“No, nothing like that. I wanted to know what effect a high-pitched whistle could have on a dog.”

“Uh, well, as you know, people can hear sounds above twenty thousand hertz, but dogs hear in the range of forty-seven to sixty-five

thousand hertz.”

“I’ve no idea what that means, John. Are you saying dogs hear way better than we do?”

“Yeah. At way higher frequencies. You know when a dog tilts its head when it looks at you, all cute? He’s probably hearing

something you can’t hear and moving his head, trying to make it clearer. It’s got nothing to do with thinking you’re adorable.”

“Okay, so let’s say you could make a sound that was way up in that higher range. Something no person could hear. Would that

hurt a dog?”

“Hurt him? Might make him a little uncomfortable, but it wouldn’t hurt him,” Garfield said. “Although, yeah, it’d be like

if someone blew a regular whistle super-loud right by your ear. It would startle you, might damage your eardrum. So, yeah,

high enough frequency, duration, it might damage a dog’s ability to hear. If you don’t mind my asking, Harry, the fuck is

this about?”

“Ever see a dog lose his shit because of a whistle?”

“What do you mean, lose his shit?”

“Become violent. Like, a mad dog. Vicious, attacking. A dog that up to that moment had always been gentle, a dog you could

trust with kids. But it was like a switch got flipped, the dog goes crazy.”

“Never seen anything like that. What the hell’s going on in Lucknow?”

Harry managed a chuckle. “I wish I knew. We had this—”

One of the other lines on his phone lit up. “I got another call I gotta take, John. Thanks for letting me bend your ear.”

He ended the one call and answered the other.

“Cook.”

“Hey,” said Melissa. “Sorry not to get back to you sooner.”

“I was just thinking about calling you.”

“I did a little checking. On victims with their bones removed. I was thinking there was something like that in Des Moines,

but turns out it was Duluth. But it was a long time ago, Harry. We’re talking back in the seventies, nearly thirty years ago.

One case. A homeless guy, early forties. Police believed some sort of satanic cult or something did it, but they never got

anywhere with it. And at the time, they were aware of another case they’d got wind of, in Nashville, but that went all the

way back to ’55. We’re talking close to half a century, Harry.”

“Huh,” he said, making some notes.

“This guy you found at the side of the road, I don’t see how it could have anything to do with those other homicides, so I’m

sorry if I got your hopes up, thinking there was a pattern. For it to be the same perpetrator, you’re looking at someone who’s

been active for nearly fifty years. Even if he—and we always assume it’s a he —started off in his late teens or early twenties, we’re talking someone who’d now be in his seventies. Doesn’t fit any pattern that I’m familiar with.”

“Look, I appreciate this. I really do.”

“If you had any other commonalities, I could see whether there was anything that jumped out.”

Commonalities , he thought.

Harry had been looking for commonalities between his one homicide and any others that might have happened. But maybe that

wasn’t where he needed to be looking for things in common. They had been occurring elsewhere, in events that were in no way

related to the death of Angus Tanner.

Unless they were.

“You there?” Melissa asked.

“Yeah, sorry. My mind was wandering there for a second.”

“How’s Janice?” she asked.

“She’s good, she’s great. And Dylan’s getting taller every day.”

“Kids have a way of doing that.”

Harry knew that Melissa had two children of her own, two girls, and that her husband, Albert, also worked for the FBI.

“You take care, Harry, and if there’s anything else you want to bounce off me, let me know.”

Was there a hint, Harry wondered, of condescension in her voice? Like she was the big federal agent, counseling the small-town

chief who stayed behind because he didn’t think he could make it in the big leagues? Or did he hear that tone because that

was exactly how he felt? He was in over his head and knew he couldn’t handle this on his own?

“Thanks, Melissa,” he said. “Best to the girls and Albert.”

He hung up the phone and took a sip of his cold coffee.

Commonalities.

Darryl Pidgeon died when his barbecue blew up in his face. Not a murder. An accident.

Nadine Comstock died of an electrical shock in her bathtub. Not a murder. A suicide.

Delbert Dorfman smoked himself to death on the roof of his house.

Betty Wilford shot her dog dead when it went crazy and attacked her.

Four unrelated tragedies.

But at least three of them had something in common.

“This is nuts,” Harry said under this breath. “Totally nuts.”

When Darryl Pidgeon died, there was a train.

When Nadine Comstock died, there was a train.

When Betty Wilford shot her dog, there was a train.

And in each case, he was willing to bet, they had come from a shop run by Mr. Edwin Nabler. But none of these events had anything

to do with what had happened to Angus Tanner.

Hang on.

Harry thought back to the night Angus Tanner’s body had been found. He’d knocked on the door of one Darrell Crohn and asked

him whether he had seen or heard anything in the night. Maybe a car stopping by the side of the road, someone getting out

and dumping a body.

Crohn hadn’t heard or seen anything. At least, nothing like that.

But there was the sound of that train in the night that brought him out of a deep sleep. Harry had dismissed it. Even Crohn

had to admit he might have imagined it. He’d had quite a bit to drink before nodding off.

After all, it simply wasn’t possible. There wasn’t a rail line anywhere near there.