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us.”
    They walked in silence for another moment. Grove took in a deep breath of musky country air, and tried to clear his mind. Drinkwater was his star pupil, but also an outsider. He needed to handle this situation delicately, but he was too distracted by the loss of his best friend and the improbable connection between the Archetype killer and the strange death note that ushered in the section chief’s last moments on earth:
    A dark figure, like a shadow. No face, just an outline.
    Grove could not get those disturbing phrases and fragments out of his mind. They festered and fomented there like tangled cancerous threads:
    Not tellin yo
    Grove wondered if Geisel’s reference to “not telling you” concerned something that Geisel had not told him about a case, maybe a recent one, maybe a cold one; perhaps that was what Geisel felt bad about, which led to the most disturbing part of the note, and the reason Grove was dragging Drinkwater into this right now:
    s’thing they tol me bac then
    Grove let out another sigh and tried to clear his mind. He looked at Drinkwater. “Bob Wexler over at Justice says you’re a regular bloodhound.”
    â€œDeputy Wexler said that?”
    â€œYes ma’am, he did.” Grove gazed out at the distant hills. “Says you could find the needle in the proverbial haystack.”
    â€œI don’t know about needles.” Edith Drinkwater had a defensive sort of tang in her voice. “But you got an individual wants to hide out, they’re a little shy, I can usually dig ’em up.”
    â€œGood, I’m glad to hear that. Because I need your help on a case.”
    Drinkwater cocked her head ever so slightly at him then, and the way she did it—that trademark sister-girl double take—sent a faint jolt of recognition through Grove. Drinkwater still had some of the playground in her, some of the street. Grove admired that more than anything else about her.
    Right now she was giving him an incredulous look. “An active case?”
    He looked at her. “That’s right. On the down low, if possible.”
    â€œPardon?”
    â€œThink of it as independent study.”
    She gave him a look. “I’m getting a grade on this?”
    â€œAs a matter of fact, you’re getting something better than a grade.”
    â€œWhich is?”
    â€œThe chance to save somebody’s life.”
    After a moment she asked, “What am I going to be doing exactly?”
    Grove gritted his teeth, thinking of that next female, white, forty-two-year-old victim—an unlucky winner—he would find mutilated and left for the maggots. Pain throbbed in his jaw, a sensation not unlike biting down too hard on an ice cube. It was a symptom of his compulsive teeth-grinding. He saw a dentist about it once, who had prescribed a rubber bite-plate to avoid tooth wear, but the mouthpiece did little to alleviate the pain. Later, a doctor told him he also had early signs of TMJ—or temporomandibular joint syndrome due to a subtly misaligned jaw—which made the grinding all the more excruciating. But Grove had very little control over it. “You cannot tell your closest family member about what I am about to tell you,” he said finally.
    â€œOkay, sure.”
    Grove took a girding breath. “There is a serial murderer at large who may or may not have some connection to me, to my history at the Bureau, and maybe even to my relationship with Tom Geisel.”
    Drinkwater took this in, kept walking, didn’t say a word, just nodded.
    Grove went on: “The clock is running. I do not have time to pursue the two parallel tracks of this investigation. I need you to dig into something that happened to me.”
    Now Drinkwater looked more intrigued than nervous. She waited for him to continue.
    â€œWhen I was a kid, way back in the Stone Age, I have reason to believe some people were following me.” Grove paused and