Free Safe at Home by Alison Gordon Page A

one.”
    “Goody,” I said, following him down the path.
    “Look it up in Peterson so you know what you’re after.”
    I dragged the field guide he’d given me for my birthday (so romantic!) out of my bag. I was looking up the damned bird when he stopped again. I bumped into him.
    “Here’s an easy one. That’s a robin’s song. Everyone knows what a robin looks like. See if you can find him. He’s big.”
    “I don’t even know where to look. Does he like the trees or the ground?”
    “Yes.”
    “Thanks a lot.”
    “Listen. Follow your ears. Where does it sound like it’s coming from?”
    “Off to the right a bit, professor.”
    “High or low?”
    “I can’t tell.”
    “Try high.”
    I put my binoculars up and pointed them in the general direction of the sound. All I saw was a blur. When I focused, all I saw was a tree trunk.
    “I can’t,” I said.
    “Find it with your naked eye first, then focus tight.”
    He pointed. I saw the robin, then found it in the binoculars. I felt quite proud.
    “All right,” I said. “I’m ready for the hard stuff.”
    “That’s my girl,” he said, taking my hand and leading me down the path. I cringed. I don’t much like being called a girl, even affectionately, but it wasn’t worth fighting about. He meant well.
    He didn’t notice the cringe. He was too busy enjoying the birds. To tell the truth, I was even getting into it a bit. I even saw the kinglet. Cute little thing.
    After a few minutes we got to the concrete pillars of the Heath Street walking bridge. There were no traces of the body that had been dumped there, but there was an evil feeling in the place. Or my imagination was working too hard. I shivered.
    “Where was the body?” I asked. Andy pointed to a spot well off the path to the right. I could see remnants of the yellow crime-site ribbons in the bushes.
    “We think he dumped it off the bridge.”
    I looked through the binoculars at the spot. Something had caught my eye, something shiny. I couldn’t make out what it was.
    “There’s something there, Andy.” I stepped off the path into the brush.
    “Don’t waste your time looking for clues. Our people spent two days here.”
    He was right. All that was there was garbage: a pop can, styrofoam junk from a fast food joint, a bright yellow film wrapper, the advertising supplement for the Eaton’s Boxing Day sales—all slightly grungy from a winter under the snow.
    “Litterbugs,” I laughed, fighting my way back through the tangle of budding branches.
    “Was there snow on the ground when the body was found?”
    “Just patches,” Andy said.
    “It gives me the creeps to think of him carrying the body right by people’s houses. How could he be sure someone wasn’t watching?”
    “He probably waited until the middle of the night. They would have been asleep.”
    “Are you going to get him?”
    “Yes. There’s no question in my mind. I’ll never give up on this one. I just want to get him before he does it again.”
    “How much time do you figure you’ve got?”
    “It’s hard to know. He hasn’t kept to any discernible schedule so far. I mean, he hasn’t always done it on weekends, or Tuesdays, or the full moon, or some other god damned thing. It’s all so random. That’s what makes it so hard.”
    “Is this the worst murder you’ve ever investigated?”
    “They’re all bad,” he said. “They’re all the worst, at the time. But other ones, no matter how brutal, have at least made some sort of twisted sense.”
    He stared silently at the spot where the body had lain.
    “I mean that, in other cases, the victims had—quotes—done something to deserve being killed. Cheated on a violent husband, ripped off an associate in a drug deal, even been the wrong colour for some twisted racist. But not these kids. They are innocent victims. There is no sense to these killings.”
    “Not one we know, anyway.”
    “How could there be?” he snapped at me. “I don’t even believe in