The Crying Killer

Prologue and Chapters 1-5

The evening is velvet-dark, quiet except for the trailer’s tin walls ticking as they hold the day’s heat. Nicholas Gajdusek, the Hendrickson girls’ best friend since middle school, sits cross-legged on the green carpet, staring at newborn Julia like he still cannot believe she is real. Tuesday Hendrickson, eighteen, perches on the edge of the rust-colored couch with a bottle, her long legs jiggling anxiously, her gaze flicking every so often toward the window. Sixteen-year-old Trixie Hendrickson sits nearest the baby, her body angled protectively, watching Julia’s chest rise and fall. She cannot stop rubbing a fingertip over Julia’s cloud fluff of hair. Nick says, “Three Musketeers and a baby.” Trixie whispers that Julia is perfect. Tuesday offers her little sister the bottle.

When Trixie leans over the secondhand bassinet, her sweatshirt pulls up and exposes a ridged X carved into her lower back. She tugs the sweatshirt down, but not fast enough. Tuesday’s eyes narrow. She asks if Trixie is positive he does not know. Trixie swallows but keeps her attention on Julia. She says she told Tuesday there is no way. He left town last December, and no one has seen him since. Wariness tightens Nick’s features. He does not live with the Hendrickson girls, but given how often he is over, he might as well. Trixie snaps that he is gone, and Julia makes a startled noise. Trixie immediately softens, murmuring apologies to the tiny bundle as she adjusts the blue baby blanket. Tuesday crosses her arms, the fresh high school graduate slipping into her usual role as protector. She asks what happens if he comes back. Trixie says he will not. She meets Tuesday’s gaze, steady and unflinching. In profile they are almost identical, with their strong noses and matching chins. Trixie says he does not know about her. She touches her lips to baby Julia’s cheek and inhales the honey powder scent. Nobody knows, except them, and it is going to stay that way.

Julia belongs to Trixie. Trixie’s, Tuesday’s, and Nicholas’s, that is what they agreed. The room falls quiet, so quiet it is hard to breathe. Nick runs a hand through his curls, his shoulders hunched. It is Tuesday’s idea to drive Trixie, who is screaming from labor pains, three towns over to the hospital in Willmar. They are less likely to be recognized there. Tuesday is also the one who insists they swap names. Pregnant at eighteen buys quiet sympathy; sixteen would trigger a barrelful of questions. The switch should have been easy. They have the same eyes, same thin lips, same dirty-blond hair. On the panicked ride to the hospital, Tuesday coaches Trixie on how to talk to the nurses. If asked where the father is, say he is out of state. If someone wants to know what her plans for the future are, tell them she is excited for college. If they want to know any family genetic issues, share that great-grandfather Hendrickson had epilepsy. Tuesday lives by these words: always tell the truth, but never the whole truth. In the end, nobody challenges them. The hospital staff treats Trixie like any other small-town girl too dumb to lock the barn door and too poor to afford health insurance. The birth is bloody and quick. The next day, the nurses bundle up Trixie and the baby and send them all on their way. They stop on the way home to pick up celebratory snacks, gummy bears and a splurge: Cool Ranch Doritos. Tuesday, Trixie, and Nick are too stunned to open either. They still cannot believe the hospital let them walk out with a helpless little human.

Trixie glances out the window, into the yawning dark beyond the glass. It is hot out there, one of those humid Minnesota summer nights that a fan cannot touch. She grabs for the bag of gummy bears but stops when Julia’s tiny hands clutch the air. She lets her daughter grip one of her fingers, and a tear slides down her cheek. Tuesday says firmly from the couch that they are getting out of Lilydale tomorrow. All four of them. Together. They will go where he will never find them, where Nick does not get ragged on every time the world spins sideways, and somewhere they are not treated like dirt because they had the crap luck to be born a Hendrickson in this cornhole town.

The Gunshot

Later, Trixie drags herself to the back bedroom and crashes. Something wakes her. Was it whistling? She is so tired, the garage sale quilt holding her like a hug. She does not want to get up. It has been days, maybe weeks, since she slept deeply. There has been so much worry with the baby coming. She is drifting away again when a noise in the next room startles her awake, fully this time. The red numbers on the bedside clock say it is almost two a.m. Someone is talking out there. Someone is definitely getting into it in the living room. She does not recognize the voice at first, low and smooth. Her sister responds, her words slurring like she is tired or scared. Then a male voice comes clear: “It’s a nice match for the knife you put in my back.” Trixie is suddenly on her feet, all remnants of sleep vanishing as she recognizes that voice. She lunges for the door, but she cannot move fast enough. Julia’s wail cuts through the night, so pure it hurts. Then the gunshot. It is quick. Loud. Final.

New Year’s Day 1995

Eight years later, Tuesday stands at a frosty window on New Year’s Day. She presses her palm flat to the glass, cold enough to burn. Outside, wet snowflakes fall. Her mom used to call that kind of snow God’s dandruff. She would not say it like a joke, either. Her mom resented God and winter equally. Tuesday’s heart cramps thinking of her. Her mom has not recognized her the last few times she visited. It makes each time harder. Harder to know if she should bring Julia, harder to linger at the facility. But Tuesday will not abandon her. She knows how much that hurts. Her parents taught her and Trixie that.

The falling snow is mesmerizing, drifting lazily through the streetlight’s glow. The city keeps those star-shaped garlands on the light poles through the first week of January. The Victorian’s ancient wood floor squawks beneath Tuesday’s feet as she turns away from the window to get breakfast ready. Her kitchen used to be the second-story servants’ quarters, before the giant house was cut up to make two apartments, one on each floor. The kitchen is huge, though the sloped ceilings make it feel cozy. She yanks open the Harvest Gold Frigidaire and pulls out ingredients for eggs Benedict, Julia’s favorite. She even splurged to buy the name-brand Canadian bacon Julia loves, plus a package of bacon for Nic. The routine of cooking soothes her. Crack, whisk, simmer. Everything in her kitchen feels orderly. The white walls, the Nordic-blue-trimmed windows with their red curtains, the cobalt countertops, all of it is a Swedish dream. She can almost convince herself that she lives a normal life, that she deserves this peace.

The radio plays in the background, pop music and ads, white noise to drown out the memories. Tuesday has the bacon pop-crackling, the hollandaise ready to pour, and is mixing a cup of Suisse Mocha when the DJ’s voice obliterates her domestic thoughts. The DJ says today marks eight years since the Crying Killer’s final call. The kitchen sways around Tuesday. The DJ explains that the Crying Killer was Minnesota’s most famous serial murderer, calling in to this very radio station after each of his crimes, begging forgiveness. The female DJ cuts in, saying he called to apologize after killing people, and that it might be the most Minnesotan thing she has ever heard. The two of them chuckle merrily, like they are talking about a fumble at a football game. Tuesday fights to get to the radio and shut it off. Too bad her legs are cast in lead.

The male DJ winds down his laugh. He asks if the audience wants to hear one of the recordings. The female DJ chirps yes. Tuesday moans, her gut burning with acid. They play a snippet of the call. Just sobs, then the words “I didn’t mean to” in a breathy, high-pitched voice. The female DJ snorts that he does not sound like much, then asks if they caught him after that. The male DJ says no, he went on to kill one more person. Tears stream down Tuesday’s cheeks.

Chapters 6-11

Cornell “Corn” Stamoran’s office door creaks open, and the coconut curry smell of the hallway gives way to a faint mildew odor. Tuesday has worked as his number two for a couple of years now, ever since he retired from Narcotics and Vice and opened his PI agency above Curry Up and Wait. He knew she was going through a hard patch at the SPPD, and she gave up her pension to join him. It was one of the best decisions of her life. Corn glances up from his desk, a bulky man in his late sixties with a Magnum, P.I. mustache and sharp bottle-blue eyes. Today’s T-shirt reads I’m YOUR HUCKLEBERRY. He teases her about looking like she’s been hit by a truck, and she sets down a container of holiday leftovers, cold turkey and cold mashed potatoes, his favorite. He studies her in that way that makes her wonder how much he knows about her last week on the force. She told him only that she lost her sister in Lilydale the summer after high school and that she had a different last name back then. He never pressed.

He gestures her into the chair and hands her a folder. A woman named Melissa Hachette believes she’s being stalked, but the cops think she’s imagining it. Tuesday asks what he thinks, and he shrugs, saying she’ll figure it out. She flips open the folder to a photo of a woman in her mid-twenties, brown eyes a little close set, long brown hair, polished but forgettable. Tuesday asks to work from home, though she doesn’t tell Corn why, that she wants to be near the phone in case Julia calls with an emergency while out with Sarah. Corn hands her a floppy disk with database credentials and grumbles about tax prep. Then she freezes. Half buried beneath papers on his desk is an issue of Private Eye Monthly, and on the lower left, her photo stares back at her. The line beneath it reads: Rising Star: Tuesday Kenn. She snatches the magazine and demands to know what the hell this is. Corn, unbothered, says he nominated her for a Best Up-and-Comer award months ago. It’ll bring in business, especially anyone looking to work with a female detective. Tuesday’s voice rises to nearly a yell. She doesn’t want her picture in some dime-store detective magazine. Corn holds up a hand, reminding her the article is months old and she deserves recognition, but she doesn’t let him finish. She clutches the Hachette folder, dizzy, and storms out, slamming the door.

Her pulse pounds, and not just from anger. Corn doesn’t know that the nightmare of shots ringing out still wakes her some nights, her heart slamming her chest as she chokes back sobs. He doesn’t know how gunpowder and human blood smell like fireworks in a butcher shop. She bundled up Julia and fled to a Thrifty Scot Motel on the edge of the Twin Cities within a week of her sister’s murder. She doesn’t remember how she got there, just that she couldn’t drive anymore. Room 118 has murky green carpets that smell like cigarettes and swamp, paper-thin walls, and a couple next door who argue over a lottery ticket at two in the morning. Julia is just six days old. Tuesday barely sleeps. Every sound jerks her upright, heart jackhammering. A car backfiring is the killer. A shoe scraping in the hallway is the killer. The flickering neon is him, watching, waiting. One night she swears she hears him outside the door. She gathers Julia from a drawer lined with towels and locks them in the bathroom, perched on the tub’s edge with scissors clutched in her trembling hand until dawn. No one comes. The manager says it must have been the ice machine cycling on, the vibrations traveling through the walls. She nods but has him move them anyway. The police say the killer is dead, but they don’t know what it feels like to be helpless as your sister is gunned down, knowing you should have taken the bullet. That shame grows legs and follows her.

Across the street from the agency, in a café, he watches her stomp out. She always did have to make an exit. He hates her. He loves her. But mostly, he resents her, because no matter everything she’s been through, she still moves like she holds the world in her hand, shoulders squared against the January cold, strutting down the sidewalk like she owns it. That’s what gets under his skin, how she walks around like she doesn’t answer to anybody, talks without checking if people like what she says, takes up space like it’s hers for the claiming. Just the sort of girl who needed to be slammed down a notch. She disappears into her car and tears away. It doesn’t matter. He knows where she lives, and he’s always been patient. Long game.

Tuesday wakes in the middle of the night with the disorienting sensation of being back in the Lilydale trailer park, her sister about to be murdered. Her eyes fly open and her pulse bangs. Did she hear whistling? Her gaze darts to the corners of her bedroom, straining to see behind the chair, in the closet, under the bed. She catches ragged breathing and her heart jumps into her mouth, except it’s her own breath. Panicked air traps between her nose and throat. She’s losing it, panic taking over, when a whiff of perfume pulls her out: pineapple, sage, hyacinth. Benetton. Her perfume, today. She could never have afforded it in 1986, can barely afford it now, but grasping something current and real is grounding. Her gaze slows, less ricochet, more recognition. She’s in her bedroom in the converted Victorian. The cheap plastic mirror on the door reflects a dark new moon through the single window. She bought the mirror for fifty cents at a garage sale, with a Ziploc bag of jeweled plastic hooks taped to its back. The dresser and bed are scuffed oak, already residents when she moved in eight years earlier, back when Julia slept in a hand-me-down crib in this room.

Now Julia has her own room. They have the whole top floor, Julia, Nic, and her. Julia’s name pierces her paralysis. She lurches into a sitting position, nausea rolling through her, telling her to slow down. She isn’t fully out of the past yet and knows better than to rush, having woken to too many nightmares and ended up curled on the ground too many times. But she can’t stay still. She needs to check on her girl. She flexes her hands and slides her feet to the floor, forcing herself to cross the bedroom and open the door, still walking through time, part of her unable to escape the trailer.

Before, the Three Musketeers were bone-tired when they got back from the hospital, but none wanted to close their eyes and miss a second with the new baby. She is the first down, crawling to the back bedroom to grab a few winks, promising Nick and her sister she’ll take the next shift. Their voices through the wall soothe her, warm murmurs and laughter, probably fussing over Julia. Her whole world is right, and the blankets wrap around her like a second skin. She is soon out cold. A noise wakes her, a whisper or a whistle, and she falls back asleep until her eyes snap open a second time, hairs rising on the back of her neck. Through the thin walls she hears a new voice, an argument building. She jolts out of bed. Seconds pass before the gunshot cracks through the night. Julia is her first thought. Her sister comes second, one of the shames that will hang around her neck like stones. She charges toward the door and rips it open. Heat zooms past her cheek, the bullet passing through the doorjamb and raining splinters. She drops to her knees, cowering beneath her hands as three more bullets shred the trailer walls like a can opener. Two officers are already at the trailer park dealing with a domestic dispute, only five hundred yards away. They call for backup and hurry toward Pia’s trailer, arriving in time to see the Crying Killer stumble out, covered in blood. They fire before he falls back inside, returning their shots. Then they shower the trailer with bullets, not considering who else might be caught in the crossfire.

Nick runs past her down the hallway. She sees the flash of his shoes, hears the thunder of footsteps beneath the symphony of lead. Then another figure rushes past, or maybe just an echo. She tries to get to her feet, but her legs refuse. The police finally stop. Their trailer looks like smoking Swiss cheese. Reinforcements burst through the door with weapons drawn and find her still curled in a fetal position in the bedroom doorway. A single thought loops through her mind: if you move, it’ll make all this real. A cop grabs her and tugs her to her feet. Then she hears it, an infant’s cry piercing the chaos. Julia is alive. A raw, guttural noise escapes her throat. Someone shoves the baby into her arms, a wriggling bundle of powder and blankets speckled with blood, none of it Julia’s own. They lead her out, her legs unsteady, and she tries to focus on the baby in her arms, on the one thing

Chapters 12-16

Outside the Gopher Hole, Tuesday stands frozen a few feet from the body on the ice. The door opens. A man pokes his head out and asks if everything is okay. The woman Tuesday saw dragged into the alley gasps, stares at him and then at Tuesday, and runs. The man, likely the bartender, sees the body, swears under his breath, and ducks back inside, presumably to call the cops.

Tuesday studies the dead woman. She wears no coat. Blood blooms across the front of her white T-shirt, dark and glistening, soaking into the ice beneath her. Her chest looks lumpy, like pudding. Multiple stab wounds. But the face is what stops Tuesday's breath. The woman is a dead ringer for Trixie: same strong jaw, same sharp cheekbones, same dirty-blond hair arrayed around her like a halo. Which means she looks like Tuesday too. Panic and something worse crawl up her spine. She leans forward to take the woman's pulse. She is still warm, but she is dead. Tuesday's knees lock as she tries to search everywhere at once. This is not random. It cannot be. She forces herself to study the scene, trying to see what is not there. The woman's arms, the angle, they are just like the Crying Killer's other victims, all of them except Trixie. Trixie was different. Special. Tuesday fights the pull to turn the woman over, to check her lower back for the X. A siren shatters the night, red and blue lights reflecting off the sky. It is too early for them to arrive even if the bartender had gone straight to the phone, which means someone called it in before it happened. This was a setup. Tuesday hurries toward the parking lot, cold biting through her coat. There is no longer a question. Arsen has found us. Hasn't he?

The memory comes unbidden. She is still on the Saint Paul force, a week before the anniversary of Trixie's murder. She and her partner, Shawn, get called out on a routine domestic. It is another rainy Saint Paul night in the squad car. Shawn takes statements while Tuesday checks the perimeter. That is when she spots Arsen Bauer for the first time since her sister's murder. He wears a clean version of the leather Members Only jacket he always wore. He has the rolling swagger, like he owns whatever ground his feet touch. For a second she cannot breathe, her lungs seizing up like they had that night in the trailer. But this time she moves. Her hand finds her gun and she is out of the car before conscious thought kicks in. The guy must feel her coming. He turns, and in the sodium glow of the streetlamp she sees Arsen's face, a face she has known since high school. She yells, "Police! Don't move, Arsen!" Her voice sounds strange, stretched thin. Of course he runs. She chases him down, boots slapping wet pavement. He is fast but she is faster, riding a wave of half a decade of rage. When she tackles him, they go down hard. She has her knee in his back, cuffs out, heart thundering in her throat. Shawn comes up behind her: "Tuesday? What the hell?" She says it is him, Arsen Bauer, the guy who shot her sister. Shawn crouches and shines his flashlight on the suspect's face. The suspect is crying, pleading innocence. He is young and scared, probably not even eighteen. It is not Arsen, just some random guy in a leather jacket with features that seemed familiar in the dark but now look nothing like her sister's killer's. She releases him, hands shaking. Shawn helps him up, apologizing, while the guy bleeds and watches her like she is some sort of wild animal. Shawn wants to cover for her, but she reports herself to her superior that night. Nothing comes of it. She is the only one who seems to care what she did. That is the week Nic shows up, slipping back into her life like she had never been gone. Nic has finally become herself, and her timing could not have been better. She saves Tuesday, which means she saves Julia. If Nic were standing next to Tuesday now, in this frozen night, she would say this was not the Crying Killer's work outside the Gopher Hole. It could not be.

Tuesday hurries back to her car, sticking to the shadows, when the first wave of cops arrives. They are uniforms, none she recognizes, but moments later a detective pulls up and steps onto the icy pavement with the kind of ease that suggests she does not know how to slip. Tuesday pauses behind a tree, covered in inky dark, and studies her. The suit beneath her open coat is tailored, expensive, the lines clean. Tuesday bets it feels like armor, wearing clothes like that. The detective scans the perimeter, her gaze sharp and calculating. Her eyes seem to pause on the spot where Tuesday is hiding before sweeping to her right and finally landing back on the body. That is Tuesday's signal to leave. She keeps to the shadows, wondering if she is finally, once and for all, losing her mind.

The man watching cannot believe his damn luck the first time, three weeks back, when he sees Her sneak out. He has been outside that drafty old house, watching like always, planning his next move, when out the front door She marches. He has a choice between testing Her fancy security system and following Her. He goes after Her. She drives straight to some dive bars near Macalester College. He cannot guess what She is up to until midnight or so, when a guy and a gal stumble out of some hole-in-the-wall, both of them in a loud argument. The guy pulls back like he is going to smack the chick, and then Little Miss Hero jumps out of an alley and punches him in the kidneys. The guy drops like a sack of potatoes. It makes him laugh, honest to god. But the laugh burns out quick. The crazy bitch thinks She is some kind of savior. Thinks She is better than everyone else. Always has. That is when the idea hits him, clear as day. He will pay a couple lowlifes to put on a show for Her. A fake attack, quick and dirty. Girl goes one way, guy goes the other, just long enough to make the princess doubt what She is seeing. Then he will step in, finish the job for real. It takes a few tries to line up the help. Drunks are unreliable as hell. But it all comes together tonight. He watches Her when it all goes down. The shock, the confusion. She is for sure thinking She is losing it, like Her crazy mama up in that hospital. He almost laughs again, has to bite it back. He does not want to draw looks. She is not strutting around proud anymore. Not after this, no way. He has put the fear back in Her, good and deep. The world is starting to feel right again.

Tuesday parks in front of the Victorian and flies out of her car, boots crunching against the snow. The cold bites at her face and chest. She spots movement inside the foyer, a figure swishing back and forth in front of the door's side windows. Her heart leaps into her mouth before she recognizes the form. Coretta. Tuesday disarms the security system and steps inside, the stifling smell of wood polish hitting her. Coretta is whacking the wall above her door with the brush end of her broom, her face twisted in concentration. She wears a flannel robe over a pair of jeans, its hem trailing the floor. She does not glance Tuesday's way. "Julia's fine," she says. "Sleeping still." Tuesday melts with relief, fighting the urge to hug Coretta. Coretta is not a fan of physical affection. Tuesday has witnessed her intimidate many a person, but they have not seen her tenderly clean Julia's skinned knees, braid her tangled hair, teach her how to roll perfect pie crusts on a Sunday afternoon. Coretta talks rough and sharp, but she loves hard, and she would do anything for Julia. Plus, Tuesday knows she would fight to protect Julia just as hard as Tuesday would.

"You're up early," Tuesday tells her, trying to get a grip on her breathing. "Am I?" Coretta shoots back. "Maybe that's because someone snuck their child into my apartment in the middle of the night, and these noises in the walls have been keeping me up ever since." She jabs the broom upward again. "Blasted squirrels. Sounds like a pack of wild dogs running around up there." Tuesday tilts her head. "I don't hear anything." Coretta stops long enough to glare at her. Coretta is small and wiry, with a head of tight gray curls and an expression like she has been chewing lemons since birth. "Don't patronize me, Tuesday Kenn," she says. "You think I don't know what squirrels sound like? I've owned this house longer than you've been alive." "And it's still standing," Tuesday says, trying a joke. "Guess that's thanks to you." Coretta's eyes narrow. "You want to be helpful, go up those attic stairs and scare them out yourself. At least peek up through that access panel in your bedroom ceiling, see what you can see. I'm guessing there's a whole colony." Tuesday promises she will get to it.

Chapters 17-23

Before

It is the summer before Tuesday, the oldest of the three, will enter high school. She, Trixie, and Nick are as close to innocence as they can get, given the families they were born into. Cicadas whine in the trees. Heat presses through the thin walls of the rental house. Tuesday sits cross-legged on the carpet with a deck of cards fanned in her hand. Nick waits for her play, fingers drumming on his knee. He stares at her. Tuesday says so without looking up. Nick's cheeks flush pink. Trixie calls from the couch that he has hearts in his eyes. She is painting her toenails with Wet N Wild polish. Trixie used to be jealous of the attention Nick gave Tuesday, until Tuesday pointed out that their father liked Trixie better, and that was an improvement over having an annoying boy always gawping at her. Nick tells Trixie to shut up. Tuesday lays down a straight and grins. Nick may have taught them poker, but Tuesday usually wins. He mutters under his breath and gathers the cards too fast. Trixie laughs without looking up from her toes.

Then the back door rattles open. All three freeze. Keys jangle, heavy and deliberate. The door slams. Daryl Hendrickson's boots strike the linoleum, an ominous drumbeat they all know too well. He does not stop in the kitchen to wash his hands like usual. His steps angle toward the hallway. Tuesday's gaze darts to Trixie. Her sister goes rigid on the couch, nail polish brush hovering in the air. They hear a key slide into the hall closet lock. A metallic click. Hinges groan. Their father visits that closet frequently, always after going out with friends he never brings home. The closet door bangs closed. The key twists again, snicking, final. Boots climb the stairs. Floorboards creak above. Then silence.

Nick whispers and asks what is in that closet. Tuesday and Trixie swallow hard. They broke into it a few weeks ago. It was Trixie's idea, because everything dangerous is. They immediately regretted it when they saw what was inside. A smear of something on a tarp. A chain looped on a hook, heavy enough to blister the drywall. A glass jar with something cloudy floating in it. Tucked in the corner, a Styrofoam cooler sealed with tape. They never ask their dad what it all is, and he never explains. The lock on that door is enough of an answer.

Tuesday says too quickly that it is nothing. Trixie gives a nervous laugh, thin as paper, and says nothing good, anyhow. She caps the polish and shoves it into the cushion beside her. Nick leans closer, eyes searching Tuesday's. He says she knows. She looks back, steady, and says she doesn't. It is a lie, or half of one. She feels it catch and hold in her chest, but she does not flinch. Nick lifts his chin and tells her she is good at that. At what, she asks. Not saying the whole thing, he says. His voice is soft, almost admiring. She does not know how to answer, and she does not have to. She is the oldest, after all. Trixie swings her legs off the couch, nail polish forgotten. She says they should get out of there. Her eyes are too bright, the way they always get when she is scared. She suggests the river. Anywhere but here. For a moment, none of them move. Upstairs, a floorboard creaks again. They hurry outside, into the purifying sunlight.

After

When Tuesday blinks, she realizes the man hauling Christmas lights down Summit Avenue does not look like her father, not really. But something in the way he moves, that loose-limbed swagger, the tilt of his head, is pure Daryl Hendrickson, a ghost in broad daylight. Probably a family hangover from the holidays is making her raw, peeling back the years until she feels like a kid again, all nerve endings and need. The car ahead crawls to a stop, and she taps her brakes, watching the Dad-guy drop the lights into the back of a pickup truck. He must have been hired to remove holiday decorations. Just the sort of job her jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none father would have done.

Her mind skitters back to the golden days of her childhood before he ditched. Sure, he was a drunk, and he once beat Mom so hard she permanently lost hearing in her left ear, but all of them looked for the good in their parents, no matter how bad they were. It was survival. And Dad, when he was sober, had a way of spinning their shabby reality into something magical. Their two-story rental with its groaning refrigerator and curling wallpaper was not just some run-down house. It was their kingdom. That is what he called it, and back then, they believed him. Every queen starts small, he would say in his Southern drawl. You girls will learn.

Mornings are the best. If he is not hungover, he shuffles into the kitchen wearing a ratty T-shirt and flannel pajama pants, talking a mile a minute, telling stories about his own family, who they never met, each one worse than the last with only him coming out on top. He has this dish he loves to cook when he tells his family stories. Hot brown with eggs, like some kind of diner special. He layers the bread just so, topping it with turkey, tomato slices, and bacon before pouring neon-orange melted Velveeta over the works. It makes the whole house smell sharp and rich. Tuesday and her sister sit at the table, legs swinging, watching him work like they are seeing a magic trick. And maybe they are, because Dad shops at the excuse store more often than he cooks. Mom already knows what kind of man he is by the time they come into the picture. They can tell by the way she sharpens her words on him. It takes Trixie and Tuesday longer to figure out the truth of him, and even after they do, they still do not want to look straight at it.

Don't have the rent money this month, he says when it is late again. I'll cover it next time. Next time never comes. Mom works several jobs, back when she can keep her worlds straight. Tuesday is not sure what Dad does, other than teach them how to fix things: lawn mowers, leaky sinks, the washing machine that rattles like a train about to derail. He has a knack for breaking and mending in equal measure. Even now, the smell of a two-stroke engine makes her nostalgic for him. It is funny how many skills he taught her and her sister, given how much he hated independent women. Three drinks in, that is his favorite group to rail against. The car behind her honks, dragging her back to the present. The guy taking down Christmas lights has disappeared into a yard. She eases her foot off the brake and drives to Melissa Hachette's.

Melissa Hachette's Door

Melissa Hachette lives in a quadplex that resembles a wooden box the color of dishwater. Tuesday crunches up the frozen walk, climbing the porch stairs to the four black mailboxes. Her breath clouds as she squints at them, finding Hachette's last name in a barely legible scratch beneath the second one. She jabs the appropriate doorbell. The sound vibrates faintly, like a wasp nest in the walls. She waits, shifting from foot to foot as the chill January air works its way inside her coat. Nothing. No footsteps, no shadows moving behind the door's frosted glass pane.

The research Tuesday has done on Hachette since Corn handed her the file reveals nothing that alters the case. She has no criminal record, not even an unpaid parking ticket. She works at a retail shop on Grand Avenue. She is single as far as Tuesday can tell, and active in two internet relay chat rooms, one on true crime and the other devoted to Janet Jackson. She is mostly a lurker in the first and a gushing fan in the second. The most notable thing Tuesday knows about her is that she alleges she is being stalked and the police do not care. Tuesday wants to see her face the first time they speak so she can get a feel for her relationship with the truth. She has no trouble believing Hachette is in danger and is not getting the help she deserves. What she needs to see is whether Hachette knows the guy and has failed to share that information with Corn. Society puts forth a real effort to make women feel responsible for the behavior of the guys in their life, and shame makes a person do stupid things.

Tuesday gives it another two minutes before reaching into her bag and pulling out two cards from a silver holder she scored at a garage sale. One card goes into the mailbox, the other she wedges carefully into the door handle. The phone number on them is the landline back at the office. More and more people walk around with their eyes glued to pagers these days. She figures it is only a matter of time until everyone carries them like a colostomy bag, and she wants no part of that. Her work messages can stay at work, where they belong. She turns and heads back to the car, the frozen air stinging her nostrils.

A quick stop at the station to drop off the folder, and then she will pop into the office, finish her