"Yeah, a medium communicates with the dead. But, like I said, I'm not a medium."

Then what are you? But McDaniel stopped short of asking that question, uncomfortably aware of how it would sound. Instead, he said, "Maybe there aren't any ghosts at all out at The Lodge. I mean, there's been talk over the years that the place is haunted, but what old building doesn't have those sorts of stories around it? Anyway, what happened, happened out there."

"Twenty-five years ago. How many times has the place been remodeled or redecorated since then? How many people have come and gone? Christ, there aren't more than a handful of employees who were there, and I've talked to them all."

Responding to the last statement, McDaniel said thoughtfully, "Funny you should mention that. I'd forgotten, but as it turns out, there is a new employee there now who was also there twenty-five years ago. They just rehired him a few months back. Cullen Ruppe. He manages the stables, the same job he had back then."

Quentin felt his pulse quicken, even as he heard himself say, "I don't remember him. But then, there's a lot I don't remember about that summer."

"Not all that surprising. You were — what? — ten?"

"Twelve."

"Still. Maybe Ruppe can help fill in the blanks."

"Maybe." Quentin got to his feet, then paused. "If I do want to come back and sit in that conference room again—"

"You're welcome to, you know that. But unless you do find something new out there..."

"Yeah, I know. Thanks, Nate."

"Good luck."

Quentin hadn't yet checked into his usual motel in Leisure, and when he left the police station he barely hesitated before driving his rental car the fifteen miles or so along that lonely blacktop road out to The Lodge. It was a route he knew well, yet the journey never failed to rouse in him a vaguely uneasy sense of leaving civilization behind as the winding road climbed up into the mountains and then descended into the valley that housed The Lodge and nothing else.