“I’m sorry to disturb you,” he said as we came out the back door and crossed the grass. “I wanted to talk to you, but not in an official capacity. And not where anyone would see.”

I glanced back at the house, which was silent. Rose must be a heavy sleeper. The houses on either side were dark. Rose’s neatly fenced yard backed onto shrubby green space and, beyond that, trees.

“What’s going on?” Eddie asked.

Officer Syed shifted on his feet. “I guess they didn’t fill you in on too much when they let you go.”

“They didn’t fill us in on anything,” Eddie said.

Officer Syed nodded. He was in his early thirties, clean-shaven, handsome, a little tired at this early hour, his dark hair brushed back from his forehead. His wedding ring looked new, like mine. I wondered what his wife was like and if they had any kids. His eyes were troubled, as if he’d heard something upsetting.

“Max Shandler has been officially charged with murder,” he said.

Eddie and I were silent. Somewhere far off, a starling called in the trees.

Officer Syed took a deep breath. “I grew up here,” he said. “Max is only a few years younger than me. I can’t say we were friends, but we were acquainted. Everyone is acquainted in a town this size.” He turned to us, his brown eyes pained. “If you’re gonna ask if I ever thought Max could do this, the answer is no. He wasn’t one of those guys you know is headed for trouble. So no, I never thought he could.”

“Did he confess?” I asked.

“No. At first he told us that he was home alone when Rhonda Jean was killed, but then he admitted he had no memory of that night. None at all. He remembers getting in his truck to pick up some beer, and nothing else.” He shook his head. “Maybe that’s a lie, too—I don’t know. Max has a lawyer now, so he isn’t talking.”

Eddie crossed his arms as an early-morning breeze ruffled the grass. “Was it the backpack? That was the evidence that proved it?”

“Rhonda Jean Breckwith’s backpack was in his truck, yes,” Officer Syed said. “There’s blood on the backpack. There’s also blood in the cab of the truck. We’re testing all of that. A neighbor passed Max’s truck as it left his driveway that night, so we know he left home. And the jacket Rhonda Jean was wearing when you found her, when she died—that jacket belonged to Max Shandler.”

We were quiet. I remembered Rhonda Jean in the army-style jacket that seemed too big for her, that she’d pulled closed as she stood at the side of the road. Mitchell hadn’t said she was wearing a jacket when she left Hunter Beach and got into the truck.

“After we left Atticus Line with you two yesterday morning, we sent two uniforms to keep searching the roadside,” Officer Syed continued. His expression was stark. “They found the knife in the grass. It had blood on it. We’re processing it for fingerprints. Max probably kept a knife in his truck because if you get in an accident, a knife is handy for cutting your seat belt. A lot of us keep a knife in our car for that.”

I spoke up. “Officer Syed—”

“Call me Kal,” he said to me with an attempt at a smile. “It’s short for Khalid. It’s what you can call me before my shift starts.”

“Kal,” I said. “You’re saying that this man picked up Rhonda Jean, stabbed her, then put his jacket on her and left her at the side of the road? Why would he do that?”

Kal shook his head. “I wish I could tell you. Max doesn’t have a criminal record. He’s twenty-eight. He works on his parents’ farm. He had a fiancée for a while, but it didn’t work out. She never called the cops on him that we know of.” He lifted both hands and scrubbed them through his hair, his frustration and confusion evident. “I keep thinking, I’m a cop in this town and I had no idea Max could do something like this. No idea at all. And then I think about the other hitchhiker a few years ago.”

“Katharine,” I said.

“Could he have done that?” Kal asked, tormented. “We’re looking into the timeline, but it looks like Max was in town when that happened. Katharine was strangled and left dead—not stabbed, put into a jacket, and left alive. But she was a hitchhiker on that road. Which means it could be—Jesus, I can’t even think the words. In my town, right under my nose, while I was dealing with drunks and teenagers and car accidents and beach parties. It can’t be.”

Eddie supplied the words for him. “A serial killer.”

Kal nodded. “Yeah. That.”

“Quentin has thought about it, though,” Eddie said. “That’s why he and Beam showed up so fast that night.”

“It’s been going on for twenty years,” Kal said. “Hitchhikers getting killed on Atticus Line. But it isn’t all the time, you know? There’s a stretch of years between each one. The victim before Katharine was in 1991, and he was a nineteen-year-old boy. The force is pretty divided about it. Some cops think it’s just bad luck—something that happens when you get a lot of hitchhikers on a back road like that, where there’s no one to see. People are partying, drinking hard, doing drugs. Sooner or later someone gets killed, and how will you ever solve it when everyone who was there has already left? Most of them don’t even give their last names. So maybe it’s just a numbers game.”

“That isn’t what Quentin thinks,” Eddie supplied. “That’s why he kept asking me if I’d been here before, why we were on that road. Like it couldn’t have been a mistake.” He shook his head. “He wanted to know if I was hunting.”

Or me, I thought, remembering my conversation with Beam. Maybe it was me that was hunting.

“Katharine O’Connor was only two years ago,” Kal said. “Max could have killed her. So could you. The kid in 1991, too.” He and Eddie exchanged a glance, and Kal looked away. “Katharine was an upper-middle-class girl who was taking a year to travel while she decided what she wanted to do with her life. She wasn’t a runaway. She was meeting people and having fun. She called her parents collect every other day from wherever she was, until the day that she didn’t. Her family was beside themselves. They made a lot of noise. Quentin and Beam worked the case hard, but they never got anywhere. The case went cold.”

“And then we showed up,” I said. It made sense now, why we’d been leaned on so hard, why we were suspected. The police had nothing to show for Katharine, no results after all of that pressure. They had been looking for someone to blame.

“I haven’t been on the force all that long,” Kal said. “There’s a class system between the local PD and the state police, and with my name and the color of my skin, you’d better believe I’m at the bottom of it. Guys like Quentin and Beam don’t sit down with me to talk about their murder cases.”

Exactly what Rose had said about Robbie. “Still, you’re involved,” I said.

“Of course I am. This is my town. I suspect that Quentin has talked to experts to give advice on whether this is one killer. Maybe some of the deaths were linked and others weren’t, you know? Maybe one serial killer started in the seventies, and when Atticus Line got a reputation, it drew another psychopath to keep it going. Maybe there’s just one person, hunting along that road, starting in his twenties and still going. He wouldn’t be that old.” He shook his head. “If so, that person couldn’t be Max. But Quentin doesn’t think any of it is bad luck or a numbers game. He doesn’t think those murders happen just because it’s a dark, remote road. He thinks there’s a killer. There have never been any witnesses—just bodies on the side of the road. No one has ever seen anything. Until you two.”

The sun was rising now, the light orange tinged with yellow, like a bruise. The sky was hazy and the wind was hot. Eddie and I had been the break in Quentin’s case, until the evidence had pointed to Max Shandler instead. If Max was convicted—if the blood and fingerprint evidence connected him, along with the fact that Rhonda Jean was wearing his jacket and her backpack was in his truck—then it blew up the theory of a single serial killer on Atticus Line. It also blew up the theory that Eddie and I killed Katharine O’Connor—or anyone else. It sent Detective Quentin back to square one for the earlier murders, which would stay unsolved.

I almost felt sorry for him. Almost.

“One of the kids at Hunter Beach saw Rhonda Jean get into a black truck that night,” I said. “She was hitching. She wasn’t heading for Hunter Beach; she was leaving.”

“You two went to Hunter Beach?” Kal looked shocked. “Who said they saw her?”

“A kid named Mitchell,” Eddie said. “Age twenty or so, long, curly hair. Dark blond. Five-six, five-seven maybe, a hundred and eighty pounds. If you’re lucky, he might still be there.”

Kal looked flustered. “Jesus. I—I’ll need you both to come to the station and make an official statement.”

“No,” Eddie said. “You have your killer. You’re done with us. Do your own murder investigation. We’re getting our car back and leaving town.”

“Mr. Carter, this is important.”

Eddie crossed his arms over his chest. In the old tee he’d yanked on to come out here, the pose made his biceps rise. He wasn’t posing like that on purpose, but it still had an intimidating effect. “My wife and I are leaving town,” he said again. “There’s nothing you folks can do to stop us. We’d like our car back, but we’ll walk if we have to. No more interrogations. No more drives on Atticus Line. We’re done.”