“Did you have a bad day?” she persisted.

“No.”

“I thought you were in a better mood the last few days.”

“The caseworker at the employment office always looks right past me,” he said finally.

“Past you?”

“She sits there, and we talk and talk, but her eyes are on the window behind me. Like some job was about to climb in. Or she feels like jumping out.”

“A job will climb in soon. Take my word for it.”

She knows me through and through, he thought, but she hasn’t guessed anything yet. When the hauls get a little bigger, she might suspect something, but that won’t be anytime soon. Maybe I’ll get a regular job first. Bigger miracles have happened. But by then I might not want it anymore.

He couldn’t get the bloodstained clothes out of his mind. When he had stood and stared at them, they seemed to be beckoning to him, or screaming something for his ears only.

He would never know how he had managed to get the clothes back in the garbage bag, and he could only pray that he had left the bedroom in the same shape as he’d found it. Why hadn’t the idiot just burned them? I haven’t seen anything, he told himself.

4

THE MUFFLED SOUNDS OF WINTER FOLLOWED THEM INTO POLICE headquarters and lingered in their clothing as they rode the elevator to the fourth floor of the homicide division.

The corridors were lined with tile. For most of the year, noises that made their way in from the street bounced dissonantly off the walls. Now they just rolled by like loosely packed snowballs. A circle of silence surrounds everyone and everything, Winter thought as he stepped out of the elevator and turned the corner. Maybe January is my month after all.

The investigation team gathered in the conference room. The massive effort of the first few days was winding down. Only the core group was left. Just like always.