The 37th Hour

Malik straightened up. “What are you go

“That’s a good question,” I said. “Dogs are property. I guess there’s a property crime here. It’s not missing persons. I think we’re going to drop by the Wayzata police station and let them sort it out.”

As Vang made a U-turn and pointed the car back toward town, he looked hard at Bo

“I wonder what we’d find in that house if we went in,” he said.

“A civil suit,” I said, “waiting to happen.”

Vang drove us back to Mi

“I forgot to mention it yesterday,” Vang said, “but on Sunday night Fielding’s girlfriend got one of those phone calls, like Ma

“Oh yeah?” I knew what he was talking about. Everyone did. Two wives of He

The caller’s voice, in both cases, sounded sincere and regretful. He’d identified himself as ER staff and told Deputy Ma

She’d been distraught, naturally, and wanted more details. The caller had hedged, providing a little more information couched in medical terms. Then he’d been “cut off” before he could say which hospital he was calling from.

Mrs. Ma

Four weeks later the same thing happened to the wife of Deputy Juarez, except in her case, the caller regretfully said he’d been killed.

The coincidence was too great. A departmental memo was circulated, detailing the “sick joke” being perpetrated and telling officers to warn their families.

When the memo had gone around, a theory began to circulate right behind it, suggesting that the caller could be somebody with the county; somebody who’d gotten access somehow to a departmental phone list. Many cops had unlisted numbers, which helped to protect them from harassment or worse from people they’d arrested and helped build cases against.

“Is Fielding in the white pages?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Vang said, “but they’re saying it doesn’t matter. Because of the Sunshine in Mi

“Oh,” I said, remembering.

The Sunshine site took its name loosely from “sunshine” laws, or freedom-of-information laws that provided access to information on public processes and officials. The site, started by husband-and-wife community activists, was something like a Drudge Report/Smoking Gun for the city. Among the information posted were phone numbers and sometimes home addresses for police officers and sheriff’s deputies, all gleaned incidentally from various reports and court records that had been made public at one time or another. The theory, according to the site’s creators, was that cops would think twice about harassing i

“You’re saying that both Ma

“Juarez is actually in the phone book,” Vang said. “But yeah, all three are on the Web site, too. Nothing’s written in stone, but that’s one way this sicko could have gotten their numbers.”

I shook my head. “That site seemed kind of fu

“Yeah, well, nobody’s laughing about it downtown. Some of the guys are saying this could help get the site shut down, if they can prove it’s helping someone harass women anonymously.”

“Good,” I said as we pulled over to the curb.

“See you in about a half hour,” Vang said.

I enjoyed the shower more for its being belated. I was starting to have a good feeling about today. There was probably just enough time to stop and pick up a bagel. I’d get one for Vang, too, although I didn’t really know his tastes. Genevieve’s I would have known: she almost always chose a sundried-tomato bagel, spreading it with a parsimoniously thin layer of lite cream cheese. Vang, much younger, rail-thin, and male, probably would rather start his day with a doughnut.

Wet-haired, dressed again, with my bag over my shoulder, I headed toward the back door. The sun was spilling through the east-facing kitchen window, and it was so bright that I almost missed the flashing of the message light on the machine. Almost.

“This message is for Michael Shiloh,” an unfamiliar female voice said. “This is Kim in the training unit at Quantico. If you’ve had problems getting here or otherwise been delayed, we need to know. Your class was sworn in today. My number here is…”

I replayed the message right away, as though that would make it make more sense. Kim’s words revealed nothing new the second time and I felt the first rustlings of worry in my chest.

Come on, I told myself. You know he’s there. The message is just a bureaucratic mix-up. These are the feds; every ten years they do a census in which they lose several million of us. Just call her; she’ll tell you it was a mistake.

I picked up the phone.

“Good morning,” I said when she answered. “My name is Sarah Pribek. You left a message on my machine, asking about Michael Shiloh, my husband. I guess he was delayed, and I just wanted to make sure he got there.”

“He’s not here,” Kim said flatly.

“Oh,” I said. “Are you sure you would know? I mean-”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure,” she said. “It’s my job to know. Are you saying he’s not in Mi

“He’s not here,” I said after a moment. I felt the muscles in my throat work emptily as I swallowed without realizing I was going to do it.

“Sometimes people do back out,” she said. “Usually, they have second thoughts about the gun-carrying part of the job-”

“That wouldn’t be it,” I said. “I have to go.” On that abrupt and artless goodbye, I hung up.

My first thought: he’d been in a serious car accident, maybe on the road from the airport to Quantico. But that wasn’t right. If there’d been an accident, maybe Quantico and Kim wouldn’t necessarily have been notified, but I should have been. Shiloh would have been carrying his Mi

My next call was to Vang. “I’m not going to be in for an hour or so,” I said. “There’s something I need to run down. Sorry.”

“Something on a case?” he asked.

“Something personal,” I said, feeling evasive. “This probably won’t take all that long,” I said apologetically before hanging up.

Shiloh was not at Quantico. What did that mean?

If he’d changed his plans, if he’d decided to withdraw from the Academy, he’d have told me. And he’d have told them. But that didn’t matter, I thought, because he wouldn’t have changed his plans. Shiloh had wanted this. If he wasn’t there, something had gone wrong.

Had he even gotten as far as Virginia?

Whether he was in Mi

I reached for the phone book and looked up the number for Northwest Airlines.