Maura had Child Protective Services on recall. If this boy, Michael Hebert, had lost both parents, he had to have ended up in a children's home or some assisted living institution.

Nick's figure stood in Jane's doorway.

Maura looked up and frowned deeply. "So, what do we have?"

"I ran everything through all the databases," Nick said. "I found Michael Hebert."

Maura nodded with relief. "Where is he now?"

Nick pressed his lips together. "We don't know."

"Isn't he on file at the registrar's office?"

"I didn't find anything. Almost like the Nameless One."

"The power to kill might be as satisfying as the power to create," the lawyer murmured.

Nick looked at her for a long moment and frowned deeply. "Excuse me?"

"Oh, nothing," Maura replied with a deep sigh." Be nice if we could get his address. Could it be that he changed his name?"

Nick nodded slowly. "Yes, it could be, but we wouldn't find that out through our data beacons. The data has been digitized toil and trouble and hasn't yet been synchronized with data like address and name changes."

"Annoying," the lawyer muttered. "What does Liz say?"

"Liz is on the phone with Jane, going after Carl. He's got a hot lead, and Jane says we need her here now, not chasing BPD interns."

Maura nodded slowly and frowned deeply. "Could it be that Carl knows more than we do? He's a smart guy, after all."

"He can still get into trouble when he gets back here, Jane said." Nick put his hands on his hips. "If he knows anything, he needs to share it immediately instead of running off on his own and potentially putting himself in more danger." He paused. "Of course, the same goes for Liz. Just speed off and only be reachable by cell phone, where the battery is dead every second."

At that moment, Maura's cell phone rang from Jane's desk. She grabbed the device. "Isles. Wonderful. Assisted living? Of course. And he was ... adopted what? By whom? Wait a minute!" She turned to Nick, who had turned toward the door, and held her hand in the air. "Is there anything in the database about who adopted this Michael Hebert?"

Nick furrowed his brows and shook his head. "No. But Child Protective Services would have to know that. So the ones you're talking to right now."

Maura sat up and drew her eyebrows together. "Let's make this quick. We need to know who adopted Michael Hebert. Can you find that out? Yes, quickly, please." She hung up and glanced at Nick. "The social worker is at a training session, but she'll be back at her desk in half an hour. I guess there's an acute placement from Child Protective Services after Hebert's mother was."

"So the trail is getting hot?"

Maura took a deep breath. "I hope we don't get burned on it."

xxx

The phone rang three times, then Elizabeth heard Jane's upset voice. "What the hell are you doing?" the chief asked. "Where the heck are you anyway?"

"Possibly gnawing on the solution, Ma." The car she suspected Carl was in was about fifty yards, and she stepped on the gas. "What's new?"

Jane told her briefly the story of Michael Hebert and the adoption she had just learned from Maura and Nick.

"Could Michael Hebert be our killer?" wanted Elizabeth to know with furrowed brows. "Does the boy perhaps think the punishment for his mother's murderer was far too lenient? Is that why everyone involved is being put in a situation similar to his when his mother died that time? Where they have to witness the death of a loved one? And afterward, they have to keep the wake?"

"I don't know," Jane replied, running her hand through her hair as she stood at the window in her office looking out over the city. "Sure, he would have a reason to punish everyone involved, maybe even kill them in revenge, because of what happened back then --" the detective heard Jane flipping through papers. A large traffic sign showed her leaving downtown Boston.

"But after so long?" the younger woman asked after too long a pause. "When was his mother murdered? Over ten years ago? And now it occurs to him that he wants revenge for that? Then why did he keep quiet for so long?"

"Maybe the wounds had healed and, for some reason, have only recently been reopened." What Jane said sounded logical. But it was only conjecture. "Where are you, Elizabeth?"

"We're heading toward Cohasset. I hope to have him soon. Best send a squad car after him in case we find something. What do you think, Ma?" The detective waited a few seconds for a response, but none came. Was her mother pissed? "Ma? Can you hear me?"

Still no answer.

Elizabeth looked at her cell phone.

Not a single line left on the battery.

Empty.

"Son of a bitch!" Elizabeth tossed the phone on the passenger seat, retook aim at the car chasing her and hit the gas.

She was cut off from her people. But she was also free. That could be good or bad.

Or both.

xxx

Elizabeth had followed the other car along a long forest path. At some distance, the other one didn't notice anything. Sometimes she had feared losing the scent if the car in front of her suddenly turned off somewhere, but she had managed not to lose visual contact.

Finally, the other car stopped in a clearing.

In front of Elizabeth rose a dark building that looked as if it had once belonged to some secret service that made undesirables disappear there. Or killed them outright.

CIA? NSA?

Elizabeth got out of her unmarked car, pulled out her service weapon, and took the safety off.

The squat building, which somehow reminded her of a fortress, stood in a clearing in the middle of the forest. It looked like a corpse slowly but steadily working out of its watery grave. Moss grew on the walls, yet the building bore no signs of decay but was perfect in its squalor.

Though the stones crumbled here and there, the wall was sturdy. As if no one who entered this building should ever leave it again.

It was humid. The trees that stood around the clearing were full of blossoms, but somehow this summer was already breathing the breath of the past, as if it were going straight into winter, with no detours via autumn. The land here was as drab as the gray concrete of the masonry, and a muggy, low-hanging cloudy sky already announced the shadows of evening.

As Elizabeth cautiously approached the entrance, a gloomy feeling, difficult to describe, weighed on her, but not alleviated by poetic sentiments or bringing them forth in the first place, as in many sad poems, yet gave hope and helped one to wring some beauty from even images of the bleak. No Bryon and Shakespeare helped her this time, as they had not long ago.

The building stood on the edge of a shimmering black, ominous-looking pond. Elizabeth gazed into the brackish water. She almost expected to see floaters and pale faces looking at her from dead eyes at the bottom of the pond, but she saw only her distorted reflection. Behind her was the building, the gray walls, and the blind window eyes that seemed to watch her incessantly.

Elizabeth shivered involuntarily. Once again, she looked at the reflecting surface of the pond.

What is real? What is a dream? she pondered. What is a mirror, and what is the real world? Did Carl go in here? And if so, who does he hope to find here? Isn't he in danger himself?

She raised her eyes and looked from the reflection in the pond to the building with a deep frown to be sure that it existed in reality.

Yes, it does exist.

A leaden mist hovered over the pond. And it seemed to Elizabeth that even the birds weren't singing here. As if before a thunderstorm.

Perhaps a storm was indeed brewing, for the sky was a dirty gray. And it could be a good thing because a thunderstorm would release the detective's tension to the breaking point. A thunderstorm would be a release, for this was the familiar calm before a storm which never came. This was like a man standing behind her with a loaded gun, never pulling the trigger but always staying at her back.

The clearing, the building, the pond. Everything was perfect in its depravity, as was the muggy, sultry day. With the dead, Samantha Conway died in the hospital, with the other bodies, and with the hangover still bothering Elizabeth from the whiskeys she had drunk with Katherine. She was still feeling the after-effects, even though it had been the night before last.

Then the detective saw the crack along the masonry that seemed to lead through the musty floor to the pond and was also reflected in the pool. It looked like it was splitting reality and taking her, Elizabeth, from one world to another.

She had now reached the door of the building.

The threshold, she thought. What lies beyond it may be quite different from everything before it. Another world.

She opened the door carefully and as silently as possible.

Felt the darkness behind it.

And then she entered the building.