You’ll love me more when I’m dead.

The memory of her daughter’s words makes the hair on the back of her neck stand up. Or perhaps it’s just Black Harbor and the way she can’t help but feel chilled to the bone whenever she finds herself skulking in its shadows. Eighteen years in this purgatory; Rowan would have thought she’d be used to it by now.

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It could be that there are some things you never get used to: babies in dumpsters, brains smeared on sidewalks, junkies lying on the lawn, their last needle offering a stiff salute from their basilic vein.

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Dead girls in gullies.

Shards of white glint on the river rocks, little snowflake fractals. But it’s only mid-October in Wisconsin, which means it’s too early for anything but hoarfrost. The broken triangles are teeth, knocked out of the skull of her daughter’s best friend.

Madison Caldwell lives just around the bend, a handful of houses down.

Lived.

Rowan shines her flashlight on the corpse. It stares up at a starless sky, head nesting on tendrils of blond hair. The skin is snowy and soft; the eyes float in pools of plum-colored bruises. Crouching low, Rowan flutters the eyelashes and receives no response. She presses two fingers to the victim’s neck, then, and feels nothing. After she lifts them, her prints stay there in white, blanching the skin. Next to them is a red mark. Rowan squints and leans closer. A hickey?

She turns the victim’s head and examines the other side. A second mark peeks from beneath the hood. With her work phone, she snaps a picture of each injury, and hears the sound of leaves shuffling as an evidence technician crouches to place a yellow placard by what appears to be a set of house keys. No chance they belong to the killer. They wouldn’t get that lucky.

The scene is crawling with law enforcement. There are ten officers with flashlights and black memo pads, including the four members of the Violent Crime Task Force. At least two officers must have gone to notify the parents. It’s a responsibility usually reserved for a sergeant or lieutenant, but they’re too shorthanded to be concerned about formalities. A fifteen-year-old girl is dead. Someone has to tell her parents.

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