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inside the apartment and closed the door behind him. He had considered inviting Nelson, to show him the ropes, share the case a little, and feed the kid’s enthusiasm for the job. Butat the last minute, he’d demurred, assigning him the mini-canvass instead, less because of Nelson than for his own reasons. On a straightforward murder case, he would have been more inclusive and tutorial, but a gut feeling about this one was already warning him to pay closer attention. Something offbeat was afoot here, and he wasn’t sure what.
    He stood with the closed door to his back, motionless, surveying the single room.
    It was an awful place—small, dark, foul, looking like the aftermath of a Kansas twister, minus the missing roof that would have only improved things. Instead, it felt like the den of some creature, custom-made from a child’s nightmares.
    Slipping on a pair of latex gloves, Joe reached out and switched on the overhead light. A bare bulb hanging at the end of a wire illuminated the room’s center, casting an angular glare into all four corners. The single window was closed and covered with cardboard, duct-taped in place. The heat and stench made Joe’s nose tingle. He carefully removed his jacket and hung it on the doorknob, already feeling the sweat trickling between his shoulder blades and down the backs of his legs.
    He mopped his forehead with his forearm and pulled out a small flashlight. Distracted as he was by the clutter and his own wandering thoughts, he would need the bright halo of light to focus his concentration. He had to survey the room methodically, like an archaeologist, scrutinizing one square of an imaginary grid after another.
    It was onerous work, time-consuming and mentally taxing. As he pawed through discarded, soiled clothing, rotting food, child pornography of all kinds, and unsettling discoveries like a stack of children’s underwear, still in its original packaging, he became aware ofa man whose entire life had been given over to the exploitation of the very young in any number of perverse ways.
    Joe Gunther by now was at least aware of most human depravities. But this stuff got under his skin.
    There was a computer, of course. Nowadays, that was a given, like oxygen. He wondered, as he often did, if the people who’d first conjured up a fully computerized world had ever imagined that their machines would be so routinely used for such pursuits.
    It was a laptop, which he didn’t bother turning on. He knew what it contained, and only hoped that it might also provide insight on Castine’s recent movements and interactions. There, computers provided some redemption for the abuse they were put to: They remembered their instructions, and could often be used to thrust their erstwhile masters into the limelight, like unseen and unappreciated servants of old.
    But there were less exotic methods of tracking people, too. Everyone had to eat, for example, and few people of Castine’s habits bothered to cook. They bought fast food and junk; they were given receipts that ended up crumpled in plastic bags or stuck to damp bottles found thrown in the odd corner. And that’s where Joe located them and placed them into a careful pile, arranged by date and time stamp, including two from the day before.
    He found a phone—and noted to get a warrant for its records—two pistols and a hunting knife, a few bills addressed to a post-office box, and a pay stub from the lumber mill Ron had mentioned. He uncovered the quasi-obligatory stash of bagged marijuana, alongside a Band-Aid box full of Ecstasy pills. In the bathroom—moldy, stinking, and humid—he discovered tubes of K-Y Jelly that made him shudder, and a scattering of prescription pills without a bottle.
    Significantly, he hoped, he also discovered a receipt from an area psychologist named Eberhard Dziobek. He would certainly merit a conversation. Not only did folks of his calling generally keep records in some detail, but with a patient like