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he had gotten the brief from Harlene, their dispatcher. Instead, he had left the mudroom door, open when they arrived, pushed wide. Warm light spilling out. Cold air seeping in.
    “Jesus, Noble,” he said. “Try to pull it together.”
    Noble twisted his head in Lyle’s direction. “Pull it together,” he gasped out. “Did you… did you see her? Her face is just
gone
.”
    Lyle, shadowed against the bright light spilling from the mudroom and screened by the fast-falling snow, knew he was no more than a blur to his officer. And thank God for it. His self-control was hanging by a thread. One wrong word, one tiny misstep, and he was going to lose it as bad as Noble. Poor sonofabitch. He racked up his voice to make a steady shot. “I saw her.” Butchered like an animal. “You’re not going to help her by falling apart.”
    He scanned the road. A lone car drove toward them, slowed down, and kept on going. Good. He heard the muffled crunch of boots through loose and packed layers of snow. “Whaddya got, Eric?”
    “I completed the friend’s statement.” Officer Eric McCrea’s features emerged out of the darkness as he plodded toward the long rectangle of light. “Are you sure you don’t want me to run her down to the station and get it on video?”
    “No.”
    Eric leaned in closer, as if to pierce the shadow cast by the brim of Lyle’s cap. “This is not the time for shortcuts. We’re going to catch the fucker who did this, and when we do, we don’t want him getting off because we were half-assed putting the evidence together.”
    Lyle drew in a breath to ream McCrea out, but cut it short with a click of his teeth. It wasn’t his fault. He was on edge. They all were. And Lyle wasn’t going to be able to carry this off by himself. He was going to need one or two others backing him up. Containment—that was going to be the trick.
    “Well?” Eric demanded.
    A brilliant splash of light broke their stare-off. Another vehicle was churning up the driveway’s slope, its headlights bouncing through the billows of white.
    “Shit. That’s Kevin Flynn’s truck.” Lyle glared at McCrea. “Did you call him?”
    “No. But what if I did? What the hell’s the deal, MacAuley?”
    The almost-new Aztek looked like what it was, the prize possession of a boy who got his first learner’s permit seven years ago. It rumbled to a stop behind McCrea’s badly angled squad car, and Flynn jumped out. Kevin, the most junior officer of the Millers Kill Police Department, was finally getting enough meat on his bones to lessen his resemblance to a six-foot Howdy Doody puppet. In an effort to look older than sixteen, he had lately grown a soul patch, a would-be-cool square of facial hair beneath his lower lip. Unfortunately, Flynn’s facial hair was the same color as the stuff on top, and he now looked—to Lyle’s old and uncool eyes, at least—as if he had an enormous furry freckle on his chin.
    “Harlene called me! On my cell phone!” Kevin kicked through the snow, his face open and eager. “I told her I wasn’t working today, but she said to get over here. Whadda we doing at the chief’s house?” He had gotten close enough to finally make out Lyle’s and Eric’s expressions. He frowned. “Guys? What’s up?”
    Harlene called him. Lyle’s heart sank. Christ, she was probably ringing up every guy on the force to pitch in. How the hell was he going to manage this now?
    Behind him, Noble lurched upright, a messy, tear-sodden bear emerging from its den. Flynn saw him. “Noble?” He turned to Lyle. He looked scared. “Is it… is it the chief?”
    “No.”
    The one-word answer didn’t do anything to relieve the anxiety on Kevin’s face. Lyle breathed in and tried again. “The chief is fine, Kevin. We’re trying to… deal with a crime scene here without drawing too much attention to ourselves.” Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Eric’s jaw swing open. “This is what you can do for me. Take your