ASHLEIGH MATTHEWS SAT in a waiting room at Duke University Medical Center idly flipping through the pages of a dog-eared copy of Cosmopolitan. The only other person in the room—a man—surfed the channels on a TV mounted high on a wall.Her brother David had been in surgery for five hours and she’d heard nothing from the doctor. She dropped the magazine on the seat next to her and walked to the nurse’s station. “Have you heard anything about how things are going with David’s operation? How much longer it might be?”“The doctor will come and speak with you just as soon as he’s out of surgery.”“Does it usually take this long?”“What they’re doing with David? Yes.”“Thank you.”Ashleigh paced to a window, stopped, and scanned the view. The TV paused on each channel just long enough to hear six or seven words before jumping to another. She addres

IN THE CARDIAC CARE UNIT, I found Martha and Mom sitting in the room with Dad. He didn’t look good at all. None of them did. When Martha saw me, she rolled out with her head hanging low. I bent and gave her a hug. “How’s he doing?”“Not too well. How are you? Things are better for you now—after the fire. Right?”“I hope.”“That license plate number we got from the beach house belongs to a man named Dane Bonner from Charleston. Not much on him on the Internet, but I’ve got a lead I’m working on.”“There was a man at that house named Bonner.”“Then we might be onto something with that. Oh, by the way, I just talked to a nurse and learned that you can extract semen from a man by massaging his prostate gland. All you need is a rubber glove, some petroleum jelly, and a finger. She says the fertility nurses do it all the time.”&

AS THE LAST STRANDS of pink faded and the sky turned steel gray, I drove past the McLeod Hotel and parked several blocks away. It stood tall and proud at the center of the seediest part of Wilmington. Built in the late 1800s, it had not had a coat of paint since Hitler marched on France. A few windows on the bottom floor had been covered with plywood that had since grayed and curled, threatening to fall off. One window on the second floor was covered by cardboard. I got more than a few strange looks as I walked past the neon signs and cheap bars back toward it.The prostitutes propositioned me and the men kept an eye on me. The entrance to the hotel was too narrow and too congested with people I wouldn’t dare ask to move or try to slither through. I lowered my head and walked on by, disappearing into a narrow alley a few doors farther. Stepping over broken bottles, drug vials, and piles of excrement, I made my way to the back of the buildings.Night was falling q

AS I PULLED UP TO MY PARENTS’ HOUSE, I saw my mother flailing about the front yard flanked by two policemen and two neighbors attempting to console her. My first thoughts were that something had happened to Dad. I left the engine running and jumped out. “What happened?”Mother surged toward me screaming and crying, but her cries concealed her words. I took hold of her hands. “What? Slow down.”She tried to say something, but instead collapsed against me, her weight sending both of us against the side of the car.“What is it, Mama? Has something happened to Dad?”Like a wounded animal, she thrashed about sliding down the side of the car to the ground.“For Heaven’s sake, can’t someone tell me what’s going on?”The woman living next door stepped forward. “Your sister’s been in an accident.”“An accident?”Mom rolled to the ground

DETECTIVE SAM JONES and his partner Crabby Staten stepped from their car and were met by a pudgy fifty-year-old with a two-day beard and a jaw full of chewing tobacco.“We jus’ put this asphalt down Monday,” the man slurred in a deep southern drawl. “And a piece of it caved in t’day when somebody drove over it. We figur’d we had us a water leak, but when we dug in, this is what we found.”The two detectives stepped to the edge of a hole that had been cut into the asphalt, looked down, and saw the crown of a man’s head exposed in the bottom. A wisp of water misting behind it had washed a trench around the body.“Anybody missing on your crew?” Sam asked the man.“Nope.”“Where’s the cutoff to that water line?”“Got no idea. We jus’ do the paving.”Sam pulled the tail of his long coat up around his waist, stepped into the hole, sli