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resort, he asked for traffic citations in the surrounding area on the night of the murder. Even if it was the way they had caught the Son of Sam, most detectives considered it a Hail Mary pass, too time-consuming with too little reward to pursue in most cases.
    But Carlan took the time, spending most of the night and early morning going through the citations, and just as he was about to give up, he came across it: a warning for parking in a no-parking zone on the morning after the murder, given to a “well-dressed” man in a late-model Cadillac Escalade, sleeping off a binge in the backseat. Carlan rang up Funk and had him plug the license plate number into the database, and it came back as being registered under the name Jonathan Evers at a motel in Bend on the night after the murder.
    In Bend. That’s too much of a coincidence , Carlan thought. The Portland cops had probably written it off, if they had even bothered to check it out. But as a resident of Bend, Carlan knew how much someone had to go out of his or her way to reach the High Desert city. It really wasn’t on the road to anywhere important. It was mostly a destination.
    Somehow, the owner of this SUV, this Jonathan Evers, had begun the morning a block from the scene of a murder and had ended up in the hometown of the murder victim the following evening.
    Carlan hurriedly packed up to go home. It was three o’clock in the morning. He’d have to convince the motel not to charge him for the night, but flashing a badge usually did the trick.
    One good thing had come out of the waiting. He’d been thinking about Jamie and her family. His mind kept returning to Jamie’s younger sister, Sylvie. When Carlan had first started dating Jamie, the girl had been only a teenager. Now she was legal: twenty-one or twenty-two years old, something like that.
    Sylvie was an even more beautiful woman than Jamie, with the same kind of purity that had drawn Carlan to Jamie. More purity, actually, since she was that much younger and less experienced. Jamie had been soiled by the time Carlan got to her––she’d lied to him, and it was only after slapping her in the face a few times for her lies that she’d told him the truth. She hadn’t been a virgin for years.
    Carlan had been willing to forgive her, before she ran off. But inside, he had recoiled.
    The more he thought about Sylvie, the more certain he was that Jamie’s death had kept him from making a big mistake. The younger girl was so much more appealing.
    He’d solve this case and present it to her like a gift. She’d be grateful, he was sure. She wouldn’t be like Jamie, who hadn’t known when she had it good.
    Yes, Sylvie had been the right one all along.
     
     

 
    Chapter 8
     
    The Hardaway residence was on the trendy west side of Bend, only a block from the Deschutes River. The house was small and had probably been owned by the family for generations. Updated bungalows surrounded it, but it still had its original plywood siding, warped by the infrequent rains.
    Terrill cruised past the house. Through the window, he saw a big-screen TV that seemed to take up half the little living room, a couple of old couches, and an older couple on opposite sides of the room, ignoring each other. It was nearly midnight, too late to knock on the door. There was no sign of the daughter.
    He felt restless. He drove out into the High Desert east of town, feeling vulnerable because of the lack of cover, trying to get used to the openness of the terrain in this part of the country. He got back to the motel room as dawn was breaking, the sunlight ready to stab down on him.
    It was mid-October, but the sun was shining brightly. Terrill chose the queen-size bed farthest from the windows and tried to get some sleep. He’d be up at the break of dusk. His internal clock would wake him automatically, honed by centuries of needing to feed at first possible moment.
    He turned onto his side, remembering Jamie.
     
    #
     
    They were